Snakehead

down. That’s why Alex is here. Our job is to find the control room and get him there. He can deactivate Royal Blue—but no one else can, so if he gets shot we might as well pack up and go home. You hear what I’m saying? I want you to watch his back. And his front and his sides.”
    Alex glanced down. He understood what Scooter was saying and why he had to say it, but he still didn’t like being picked out in this way.
    “I’m afraid this mission isn’t as easy as it seems,” Scooter continued, although Alex wouldn’t have said it looked simple to begin with. “We’ve got no idea where the control room is. There are five different levels, two separate platforms. Yu could be on either. You’ve got to think of Dragon Nine as two metal cities. They’ve got their own storage depots, dormitories, mess halls, and recreation rooms as well as fuel tanks, desalination units, pump rooms, engineering blocks, and all the rest of it. Somehow we have to find our way through all that until we find what we’re looking for. Then we have to deal with Royal Blue. And when we start, it’s possible that we’re going to be spread out all over the place. We’re lucky that there’s not too much breeze, but there’s no moon. Just try not to fall into the sea.”
    He paused. Eleven silent faces watched him from the two rows of benches. Alex could feel the clock already ticking. He wanted to be out and away.
    “So what do we have on our side?” Scooter asked. “Well, first there’s the element of surprise. Major Yu thinks he killed Alex, so he’ll have no idea we’re on our way. And also, there’s the question of timing.” He looked at his watch. “Yu can’t detonate the bomb whenever he likes. He’s tied into the one hour starting at midnight. That’s when the earth, sun, and moon are going to be in the right position. It’s nine o’clock now, and we’re only two hours from drop-off. That means we’ll have one hour plus to find Royal Blue before he can throw the switch. And there’s something else we know, thanks to Alex. The bomb can only remain at depth for twenty minutes. So it’s not there yet. And if all goes well, it never will be.”
    He looked around.
    “Any questions?”
    There were none.
    “We’ve got to move quickly and quietly,” he concluded. “Take out as many of Yu’s people as we can before they know we’re there. Leave the guns and grenades for as long as possible. Use your knives. And find the control room! That’s what this is all about.”
    He set down the pointer.
    “Let’s go.”
    Everyone stood up. Ben had Alex’s parachute—black silk, for a night drop. He’d packed it himself before the briefing, and now he helped Alex put it on, pulling the straps tight across his chest and around his thighs.
    “It’s probably a bit too late to ask you this,” he muttered. “But have you ever parachuted before?”
    “Only once,” Alex admitted. That had been eight months ago. Alex had landed on the roof of the Science Museum in London. But he decided not to go into all that right now.
    “Well, don’t worry if you miss the target,” Ben said. “The sea’s warm. Conditions are perfect. And with a bit of luck, there won’t be too many sharks.”
    The Australian SAS men were already moving. Ben strapped on his own parachute, and the two of them followed the others out of the hangar. There was a helicopter waiting for them on the tarmac—the same one that had picked Alex up in the jungle. The Chinook CH-47 was the ideal machine for this night’s work. Often used to ferry troops or supplies, its wide rear exit was also perfect for parachute drops. It would fly them to the target at 190 miles per hour and at an altitude no higher than 8,500 feet. That wouldn’t leave long to deploy the chute.
    Ben must have been reading his thoughts. “We’re using static line,” he said. The static-line deployment system meant that they wouldn’t have to pull a rip cord. The parachutes would open automatically.
    Alex nodded. His mouth was suddenly too dry to speak.
    They climbed in the back. In the jungle, Alex had used a door just behind the cockpit, but this time the whole rear section of the Chinook had been opened, forming a ramp big enough to take a jeep. Alex looked in. The pilot and the co-pilot were already in their seats. There was a third man, a flight engineer, cradling a 7.62-millimeter M60 general-purpose machine gun, which must have been bolted on at some time during the