Scorpia Rising

head with his hands, afraid that he was about to be torn to pieces. A slice of broken metal shot past him and shuddered into the brickwork.
    And then the helicopter was gone, yanked into the air as if it were a fish on the end of an invisible line. It was completely directionless, the whole thing spinning around and around. Alex dragged himself to his knees, gazing at his handiwork with a sense of disbelief. The helicopter was like a mad thing. He wondered what sort of nightmare the pilot and his passenger must be experiencing inside. It was still moving fast. Already it was a quarter of a mile away, mercifully flying upriver, away from the bridge. Alex stood up. The helicopter tried to right itself, but it wasn’t going anywhere. It stopped, then crashed down into the river. There was a great explosion of white water and then nothing. Alex couldn’t see any more.
    Were the two men dead? Alex didn’t know and, in truth, he didn’t really care. He’d given them a lesson they’d richly deserved. After all, they had just tried to kill him. They had opened fire on a classroom full of kids and they hadn’t cared what might result. Alex wondered if Tom Harris was all right. He was sure the injury hadn’t been too serious, but he knew all too well the shock of being wounded by gunfire. He thought of phoning him, then remembered that he had left his mobile in his locker at school.
    A couple of people had run out of the office and were making their way across the yard to the jetty. Alex had scratched and bruised his arms and knees when he threw himself down. His school pants were torn. More needle-work for Jack!
    He limped back in through the emergency exit, climbed down the stairs, and went in search of his bike.

9

    SAFETY MEASURES

    SITTING IN THE BACKSEAT of his chauffeur-driven Jaguar XJ6, Alan Blunt was in a bad mood. He hadn’t spoken a word in the thirty minutes it had taken them to drive from Liverpool Street, gazing out the window with narrow, expressionless eyes as if the entire city had somehow offended him. Mrs. Jones was next to him and she knew exactly what he was thinking. The two of them were breaking every rule in the book. They were on their way to see Alex Rider when really he should have been summoned to see them.
    They already knew what had happened at Brookland—but then, of course, the whole country did. A gun attack on a school in west London was the sort of story that would travel instantly all over the world—and the intelligence services had been forced to move quickly to rein it in. This was Alex Rider’s school. They had made the connection instantly and had done everything they could to turn media attention away. There was no sniper, they said, and certainly no sniper rifle. It was just some local vandal with an air gun who had managed to break into a building site and had fired a couple of shots at the windows. One boy had been slightly injured but nobody had been killed.
    Even so, the shooting had been the main story on all the six o’clock news shows and would be on the front pages the next day. Tom Harris had been filmed in his hospital bed with one arm in a sling, surrounded by flowers and chocolates and looking quite happy to be at the center of so much attention. The police had mounted roadblocks all over Fulham and Chelsea. The home secretary had promised she would be making a statement to the House. All the children at Brookland were being offered counseling and the school would remain closed until the end of the week.
    As a result of the media frenzy, two other stories were given less attention than they might otherwise have received. In a completely unrelated incident, a helicopter had crashed into the River Thames near Wandsworth Bridge. The police were still looking for the pilot and passenger. Neither had yet been named. And in Greece, one of the world’s richest men, Ariston Xenopolos, had died after a long fight against cancer. He had left behind a fortune of more than thirty-five billion dollars.
    Alan Blunt had been in one of his regular meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the news came in. He had left at once, joining Mrs. Jones for an emergency briefing. It was obvious to both of them that Alex had been the target. The sniper had missed—that much was known. But Alex seemed to have disappeared. He had last been seen cycling away from the school. When Blunt had heard about the helicopter crash just one hour later, he had assumed at once that there must