Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Characters
Map
1. Fun and Games
2. Friends Reunited
3. A Face from the Past
4. Trail of Blood
5. A Tiger by the Tail
6. The Mask
7. Waking the Devil
8. Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
9. Siege
10. Into the Lair
11. Captive
12. Alone in the Dark
13. Code-breakers
14. Escape
15. Missing
16. Pursuit
17. Red Centre
18. One False Move
19. Before the Maelstrom
20. Racing the Flames
21. Trapped
22. Blood in the Sand
23. The Hunt
24. Closer
25. Uluru
Chris Ryan’s Top Sas Tactics on Escape and Evasion
About the Author
Also by Chris Ryan
Copyright
About the Book
Target: Terrorist Hostage-Taker
The five members of Alpha Force train hard and are prepared to go anywhere in the world to combat injustice. Recruited to help on a survival show in Australia, they are suddenly thrust into a terrifying ordeal when a hunted terrorist takes desperate measures to escape capture. Alongside the Australian SAS, Alpha Force must act quickly to save lives – even if it means facing the terrifying heat of an out-of-control bush fire…
A breathtaking and action-packed adventure in the Alpha Force series, from bestselling author and ex-SAS hero Chris Ryan, a man who has faced the gruelling reality of modern hostage situations.
Contains Chris Ryan’s top SAS tactics on Escape and Evasion
Meet the team:
Alex – A quiet lad from Northumbria, Alex leads the team in survival skills. His dad is in the SAS and Alex is determined to follow in his footsteps, whatever it takes. He who dares …
Li – Expert in martial arts and free-climbing, Li can get to grips with most situations …
Paulo – The laid-back Argentinian is a mechanical genius, and with his medical skills he can patch up injuries as well as motors …
Hex – An ace hacker, Hex is first rate at code-breaking and can bypass most security systems …
Amber – Her top navigational skills mean the team are rarely lost. Rarely lost for words either, rich-girl Amber can show some serious attitude …
With plenty of hard work and training, together they are Alpha Force – an elite squad of young people dedicated to combating injustice throughout the world.
In Red Centre Alpha Force are in Australia. What begins as a fun mission soon becomes a terrifying ordeal when a hunted terrorist crosses their path …
ALPHA FORCE: RED CENTRE
CHRIS RYAN
1
FUN AND GAMES
BEING UP THE tree wasn’t the scary part. It was OK if you looked straight ahead at what was in front of your nose. All you saw was the trunk, which was solid, gnarled and rough, with warty areas like the hide of a prehistoric animal. In places Hex could see tiny cracks, where a softer, redder substance showed through the bark. It smelled warm and woody and wet. In fact everywhere was warm and wet. Hex’s clothes were drenched with sweat and when he breathed in, the air was damp like steam.
The trouble started if you looked anywhere but straight ahead. Not down – Hex knew better than to look down – but on either side. Then he saw thin air and foliage fading into a blue haze in the far distance and his senses started turning somersaults.
He felt his teeth baring in a fierce grin that was outside his control. It was partly nervousness, partly a sense of the absurdity of his position. Here he was, suspended ten metres up a red cedar tree in the Australian rainforest with his foot on a branch, waiting for the signal to swing on a rope to the next tree. A week earlier Hex hadn’t even realized Australia had thick jungles like this. Now he knew – thanks to an online virtual tour while waiting to board his plane – that the vast continent harboured a great variety of terrains, and many extremes. Here at the very tip of the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland all was lush, wet and tropical. Hex knew that only ten or so kilometres away, the land became arid and the trees shrivelled to scrub and bush.
Hex focused on the tree he was clinging to, then swivelled his head slowly like an owl, careful not to risk a disorientating glance up or down. His gaze found the next tree, his destination. A bright yellow star-shaped target glittered there, pinned between two branches.
Together with four friends from far-flung corners of the globe, Hex was part of the group they called Alpha Force. They had tackled many arduous missions together but this had to be one of the strangest – volunteering to try out a series of games for a reality TV show. It’s for charity, Hex reminded himself soberly, forcing the grin off his face before it turned into hysteria. For every star collected, a sponsor would pay money to a chosen charity, and so Alpha Force were here doing a trial run before the real contestants arrived.
Hex wasn’t entirely in his element. The kind of games he excelled at involved codes and were firmly grounded in cyberspace: he was an expert hacker and code-breaker. His natural habitat was indoors, at his computer or in the gym. When he wasn’t on a mission with Alpha Force, the only contact he had with the great outdoors was running and cycling across Hampstead Heath. But here he was, hanging up a tree in a steamy rainforest, waiting for the camera crew to finalize their positions and lighting.
The other members of Alpha Force weren’t having it any easier. As Hex was edging his feet nervously along the branch, his Anglo-Chinese friend Li was hurtling towards the ground twenty metres away at the end of a bungee rope. Unlike Hex, though, Li most definitely was in her element. She was grasping the rope with both hands with her knees bent and her feet out ready for the impact. The moment she touched down on the forest floor, she folded at the waist and knees and then sprang up like a cat, propelling herself towards a box high up in another tree. The move was graceful and smooth, and executed with the pinpoint accuracy of one who has trained as an athlete from an early age. The tight plait of Li’s long black silky hair sailed out behind her like a tail and her slim legs caught a branch with the ease of a trapeze artist. She wrapped her legs around it and steadied herself while she reached into the box for one of the yellow stars. Then, like a monkey, she dropped back down to the ground and lifted off again in one slick movement.
Paulo would have been happy right then to have joined his friends in the trees. He was on his hands and knees in a Perspex tunnel which was like a greenhouse in the fierce Australian heat. Brushing sweat out of his eyes with his wrist, Paulo came across one of the yellow stars and grabbed it, eager to finish the game trial and get back out into fresh air – or, at any rate, fresher air; the whole rainforest was like a sauna at this time of day. On Paulo’s list of priorities right at that moment, saving the tiger from extinction ran a distant second to gulping down an ice-cold cola float.
Paulo lifted the target. ‘Got it!’ he called to the camera crew.
The first thing that hit him was an angry droning noise. On the earth in front of him, a black shape was spreading like treacle. Was it tar? Oil? Paulo had a split-second when he noted with curiosity that the black stuff glinted with a blue metallic sheen, and then a cloud of huge flies hurtled up into his face like missiles. They buzzed around his ears and pelted his skin, seeking out the sweat that dripped off him in a constant flow. He let out a splutter and they swarmed into his open mouth. He felt a crunching sensation, a bitter taste, and spat violently, shaking his head and then his whole body in an effort to dislodge them. Crunched flies stuck between his lips and teeth. The walls of the tunnel rocked from side to side. It made no difference. The flies were glued to the sweat on his face like a black lace veil. They began to swarm down under his collar and creep up his sleeves.
Paulo had reckoned he was fairly used to flies: on his ranch in Argentina flies and other insects were a constant torment to the livestock and the people who handled them. But this was something else.
‘Who dreams up TV shows like this anyway?’ he muttered under his breath as he crawled doggedly on into the next chamber. This was hung with spider webs. Maybe webs were just what he needed to deal with the flies, Paulo thought.
The webs stuck to him like sticky muslin, but he barely noticed against all the droning and fizzing in his ears. He lifted the next target and under it was a large spider.
Paulo grimaced at the spider. ‘I’ll swap you that star for all these delicious flies – how about that?’ he said.
‘Hold it there, Paulo,’ called one of the camera technicians. ‘We need to set up the close-up on the spider. Won’t take a second.’
Paulo waited, grumbling to himself in his native Spanish. He wasn’t too squeamish about wildlife, but this spider wasn’t exactly his first choice of company in a confined space. Its body was dark and torpedo-shaped and marked with fine yellow flecks. Its legs were as long as Paulo’s fingers and sported yellow bands. They shifted and fidgeted and Paulo imagined hypodermic needles ready to offload poison. Not that it would really be poisonous, of course. Not in a TV game show; Paulo knew that. He just had to keep telling himself.
‘Sorry, Paulo,’ called the technician. ‘This is going to take longer than we thought. Make yourself comfortable.’
‘Looks like we’re stuck with each other,’ Paulo told the spider wryly. ‘Got any yarns you’d like to spin while we wait?’
Alex meanwhile was also crawling – even more uncomfortably. He was on his hands and knees in a trench that had been turned into a miniature swamp, complete with weeds and leeches – and an authentically rank smell. As Alex moved along he felt the bottom for the tell-tale hard edges of a yellow star. Actually, although the trench was most people’s idea of hell, Alex didn’t find it too unpleasant. It reminded him of stories his father had told him. Alex’s dad was in the SAS, and survival lore – along with deliciously hair-raising stories of SAS selection – had been as natural a part of Alex’s upbringing and education as football and double maths.
Alex’s fingers found a target under the mud and he yanked it up, pulling it free of the weeds. The mud slurped thickly and released a pungent gust of gas – a clammy, rotting smell that caught the back of Alex’s throat and made him gag. He paused and closed his eyes tightly, willing the nausea to pass. His dad had once told him how he had had to crawl through a sewer on a covert mission in Colombia – or maybe it was after a night on the tiles in Glasgow? Either way, Alex told himself he would have to be prepared for anything if he was to follow in his father’s footsteps.
The mud was up to his shoulders and hips at this point and felt like thick warm slurry inside his T-shirt and shorts, but Alex looked on the bright side: at least it kept the mosquitoes away. He paused and slicked some of the mud over his face and neck like camouflage cream. This would be heaven if I was a hippo, he thought.
A short time later, the fifth member of the team, Amber, was wading chest-deep in a lake a few hundred metres away, making her way towards a clump of reeds where she could see a star target. Fronds of water weed brushed against her bare legs and occasionally she felt something more solid slither past, but that might have been her imagination. She was wearing her walking boots, so she felt fairly well protected. On the whole she was finding the games good fun. The lake formed an open clearing in the heart of the jungle, and Amber was enjoying being out in the sun, her black skin soaking up the rays greedily. It was the first time she’d seen the sun since Alpha Force had arrived in the rainforest the day before. So far they’d stayed under the immense canopy of trees; even at high noon it was like a dark, damp underworld. The green light filtering in shifting patterns through the leaves had reminded her of scuba-diving in the gloom of the ocean floor. Now she felt as if she had swum up and broken through the surface.
Water was a natural habitat for Amber. She was as much at home on water as in it. Her parents had been software billionaires and had owned several yachts. As well as being an expert sailor, she was proficient at all water sports, skiing, horse riding and archery. After her parents had died in a plane crash, Amber had discovered that they were a good deal more adventurous than she had ever imagined. Secretly they had put their skills and wealth to good use, exposing human rights abuses and smuggling film from oppressive regimes to newsrooms around the world. Amber had led a sheltered rich-kid existence up till then. Now she, like Alex, was determined to uphold the family tradition.
As Amber untangled the first target, she caught sight of Hex at the water’s edge. He must have finished his game. Let’s see how alert he is, she thought. With a flick of the wrist she frisbeed the target out of the lake.
Hex caught it in a smooth movement. ‘You throw like a girl,’ he shouted.
‘Yeah? You catch like a geek,’ said Amber, flashing him a grin.
Tracey, a production executive in her early twenties, was standing on the bank waving her wide-brimmed bush hat. ‘Over there, Amber.’
Amber looked round. There was a second yellow star on a rock a little way off. She set off towards it, wading purposefully.
On the bank, Hex tapped Tracey on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, but have you seen that?’ He pointed to a clump of reeds. A crocodile skulked low in the water, its rough back glistening in the sun like a wet log. Its half-closed eye was just visible above the water line.
Tracey looked up from her clipboard and peered at Hex over the top of her rimless glasses. ‘It’s not a real crocodile,’ she said in a laboriously patient tone, as if talking to a small child rather than a teenager with genius-level IQ. She pointed to other dark shapes in the water. ‘Look – there, and there. They’re just props. Plastic.’
‘I can see those other ones are plastic,’ replied Hex. ‘But I just came up from that direction and there wasn’t a crocodile there then.’
Tracey gave him a condescending smile. ‘They’re plastic,’ she said again. ‘That means they float, and they tend to drift around a bit once people wade in and start stirring up the water.’
Another target came whizzing across. Hex caught it on reflex, even though he hadn’t been looking. As he turned, he noticed a couple of men in green ranger uniforms standing near the water’s edge holding what looked like tranquillizer guns.
‘Smart catch,’ said Tracey.
‘Are they for authenticity too?’ said Hex, nodding towards the men.
‘Yes, we’re going to use them during filming. It makes the audience think it’s all for real, you see.’
Amber was wading towards a third star target when she stopped abruptly.
Hex instantly tensed. Something caused the hairs on his neck to prickle. ‘Amber, you OK?’ he called.
‘My foot’s stuck in some weed,’ replied Amber. Hex could see her shoulders jerk as she pulled hard. But she didn’t move. ‘Darn,’ she muttered. ‘Must be caught on my boot.’ She jerked her foot again, harder.
Hex’s uneasy feeling hadn’t gone away. He looked over to the crocodile again. It looked much the same as it had before. Or did it? Hex had an excellent eye for detail. He could explore high security computer systems and erase all trace that he had been there. He had learned to trust his instincts. Think, he told himself. What’s wrong with this picture?
He looked at the other crocs. They were just as low in the water as the one he’d noticed, moving from side to side in the ripples created as Amber tried to pull her foot free.
And then Hex realized what was wrong. All the other crocodiles were moving. But this one was dead still. It was real! It had sensed that Amber was in trouble and was stalking her.
In the water, Amber swore again, took a deep breath and sank below the surface.
Hex yelled at the top of his lungs, ‘Amber, no!’
In the murky depths, Amber didn’t hear him. She couldn’t see a thing either. She had kicked up so much silt that the water was like vegetable soup. She groped around her ankle and felt the rope-like weed that had snared her foot. Her fingers explored it and she found a thick section, with some thinner fronds that had caught on the hooks of her boots. She was stuck fast.
Breathing out hard, Amber surfaced. The first thing she heard was Hex shouting furiously: ‘Amber! Get out of the water! There’s a crocodile!’
Amber’s head shot round. She saw Hex waving his arms frantically, while Tracey was rooted to the spot. Next to them, the rangers were raising tranquillizer guns to their shoulders. Her heart pounding, Amber followed the line of the barrels and saw a dark shape, low in the water. She yanked her foot hard but it remained tethered to the bottom. She was helpless – an animal in a trap.
Tracey was crying, her voice hysterical. ‘It’s no good. The guns aren’t loaded yet!’
‘It’s my boot,’ shrieked Amber. ‘I’m going to try to get it off.’
Hex saw Amber sink down again. Keeping her head above the water, she was feeling for her bootlaces. Her face was a mask of desperation as she scrabbled to undo them. Hex knew the type of boots Amber wore. They were built for strenuous outdoor hiking, durable as Kevlar and tightly fixed around her ankles with criss-crossed lacing. When the others were waiting for Amber to get ready, they often complained about how fiddly those boots were. ‘That’s the whole point,’ she always said. ‘I know they aren’t going to come off in a hurry.’
Now those reliable boots had become a death trap.
‘The croc’s gone,’ said one of the rangers. He lowered his gun warily.
‘It’s underwater somewhere,’ said the other ranger.
Amber’s fingers must have worked like lightning. She was free of her boot and powering towards them in a strong front crawl.
‘Go, Amber, go!’ shrilled Tracey. She was jumping up and down in almost a cartoon parody of panic.
With a hungry crocodile in the water behind her, Amber needed no encouragement. She hit the lake edge, and all eyes were on her as she splashed through the reeds and out onto the shore. Weals showed bright red on her dark skin where her leg had been cut into by the cable-hard weeds. She scrabbled across the mud and collapsed at Hex’s feet, gasping.
‘Where is it …?’
Tracey stepped closer to the water’s edge and peered down. ‘It’s gone,’ she said. She turned and looked back at them with a smile. ‘Vanished. We must have scared it off.’
Realization hit Hex like a thunderbolt. He moved back, dragging Amber with him. ‘Get away from the edge!’ he shrieked. ‘Get away!’
Tracey turned, puzzled. At that moment the water beside her exploded as the crocodile erupted from the lake like a missile. Hex saw the great hinged jaws outlined in a spray of water. It was a sight to inspire shock and awe: a gaping prehistoric mouth filled with uneven reptile fangs. It was a frozen fragment of time, an uncanny glimpse into a Jurassic morning.
Adrenaline made Hex move like Max Payne in bullet time. He seized one of the useless tranquillizer guns. Swinging it directly over his head like a kendo stick, he brought it down with all his strength. The blow landed solidly on the soft part of the crocodile’s nose. The reptile twisted round, still with a fixed expression of cold-blooded glee, and hit the water with a heavy splash.
‘Run!’ yelled Hex. This time nobody bothered to ask questions. As one, the party raced for the tree line. Hex knew that the croc might possibly follow them onto the lake shore, but one glance back told him that it had had enough. It was heading back towards the centre of the lake.
Then they stood, leaning on trees, panting and gasping, as they got their breath back. Tracey was on all fours, her stomach heaving in and out like bellows, her eyes wide and horrified.
Amber fell to her knees and then rolled onto her backside. ‘Ow, my foot,’ she yelped, sitting up and inspecting her bare sole. ‘I’ve trodden on something I shouldn’t have.’
One of the rangers looked at her. ‘I thought you’d had it there, girl.’
Hex stretched out flat on the ground and let out a long sigh. ‘It wasn’t Amber it wanted after all. It was more interested in the people standing on the shore.’
‘I feel quite offended,’ said Amber, laughing in sheer relief. ‘What is it? Don’t I look tasty? Not enough fat on me, or what?’
‘Oh my God,’ said Tracey to Hex. ‘You just saved our lives.’
‘Yeah …’ Amber looked at him, shaking her head slowly. ‘How did you know to do that?’
‘I thought I’d better learn a martial art so I took advantage of a cut-price, fourteen-day holiday at the Shaolin Temple,’ said Hex.
Amber gave him her sternest look.
Hex propped himself up on his elbow and grinned. ‘OK, I saw it in a game.’
They were all quiet for a moment. Then Amber said brightly, ‘Well, the next game is to find my lost boot. Any volunteers?’
2
FRIENDS REUNITED
THE RAINFOREST WAS serenading the sunset.
Barely fifteen degrees off the equator, night falls quickly. In less time than it took to get the campfire blazing, the soft green light had thickened to blackness. It was as though a stage curtain had been lowered around the camp.
And then the noise started. Every frog, bird, insect and animal within twenty miles had begun to sing, chirrup, rasp, hoot, click and caw. It was the most deafening natural sound that any of Alpha Force could recall. They sat on logs around a fire, while a stew of chicken and vegetables bubbled gently in front of them.
‘It’s incredible,’ said Hex, whose knowledge of the world, though extensive, came mainly from what he had read and seen on the Web. Real experiences never failed to astonish and delight him – the outward manifestation, as Hex saw it, of an underlying mathematical pattern.
‘I thought a night under the stars would be peaceful,’ shouted Paulo. ‘But this is as deafening as any nightclub!’
Alex smiled and cupped his ear. It was almost impossible to hear, so the five of them sat in silence, their conversation drowned out by the din. Each was left with his or her own thoughts.
When Alex had arrived the day before, his first stop after checking in at the hotel was the gym. As with the other members of Alpha Force, exercise had become a way of life for him, and he constantly tried to increase his strength and stamina and learn new skills. After the long, soporific journey that had started in Northumberland and ended in Queensland, he was stiff and bristling with pent-up energy, and he planned a workout in a cool air-conditioned gym to get the kinks out. Alex found Hex already there on the treadmill. Pretty soon, Li bounded in wearing micro-shorts and hurtled over to ambush the two boys with a bear hug that they pretended to find embarrassing. When Paulo and Amber arrived, itching to get moving after their flights from America, Alpha Force was complete for the first time this holiday.
They set up an impromptu circuit. The gym superviser stopped reading his fitness magazine and began to watch with interest as one of them ran on the treadmill, three of them sparred on the mats, and the other did press-ups and sit-ups with a medicine ball. He had never seen teenagers exercise so diligently. After a few minutes they took a thirty-second break and swapped to a different activity. After several circuits, the first rush of exuberant energy now burned off, they started to get their second wind.
Alex and Hex took to the treadmills. On the mats, Li spun and flip-flopped past them, doing a variety of Arab springs, tumbles and back-flips. Amber and Paulo, both expert horse riders with excellent balance, found a pair of FitBalls that looked like giant beach balls. They stood upright on the balls and trundled them along the length of the gym, hooting with laughter as they wobbled furiously to and fro. Hex tried it too, managed to walk his ball forward a few inches, and then tumbled off spectacularly to land smack on the mat. Commandeering his ball, Li was soon bowling along, her acrobatic prowess giving her the edge.
Only when they started to warm down, getting their heart rates back to normal and stretch their muscles, did the jet lag finally start to creep up on them. Amber was stretching her back in a yoga pose when she started feeling very sleepy. She looked around and laughed when she saw Alex yawning, his grey eyes screwed up and his blond fringe flopping over his forehead. Li, folded up in the lotus position with her head on the floor, her black hair in an inky pool around her, looked as though she was on the point of dozing off. Paulo and Hex, helping each other with hamstring stretches, were struggling to keep their eyes open.
Alex clapped his hands. ‘C’mon, guys, let’s get some rest. Big day tomorrow.’
They had hauled themselves upright with an effort and went up to spend their last night on soft beds with cotton sheets. Tomorrow they were bound for the rainforest, and three days of hammocks and waterproof sleeping bags in a makeshift camp on the edge of the competition area. The campsite area for the actual celebrity contestants was still being finalized but Alpha Force would be camping out in an out-of-the-way area, leaving no trace afterwards that they had been there. This, of course, meant camping with minimal equipment. Catching up would have to wait until they had the basics set up.
Gradually the sunset cacophony subsided.
Paulo was first to speak. ‘As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, this spider was enormous …’ His brown eyes twinkled as he told his story. He got up and lobbed another log onto the fire; it sent a shower of crackling red sparks up into the night sky.
Li selected a cooking pot for the rice, checking it for wildlife before filling it with water. She looked sceptically at Paulo, her eyes narrowed. ‘So, this spider – you’re saying it was black, with little yellow spots and a yellow band on each leg?’
Paulo nodded. ‘Great long legs. This long.’ He found a couple of twigs ten centimetres long in the pile of kindling and walked them along the ground.
‘It’s an orb spider. It’s harmless.’ Li sniggered. ‘Unless you’re ticklish.’ She looked over at Paulo mischievously, and then twitched as though something had run up her sleeve. ‘Ooh, I feel all itchy.’
The joke struck a nerve. Paulo shuddered, a movement that ran through his body from top to toe. It didn’t take much to make him remember the feeling, but he refused to give Li the satisfaction of seeing him scratch.
‘Ow, ooh,’ chortled Li. ‘What’s that crawling in my hair? It tickles.’
Paulo tried to concentrate on sorting wood for kindling, putting out of his mind the uncomfortable notion that some of the flies might have crawled into his inner ear to spend the night.
‘When I saw this guy earlier,’ said Alex, building the fire, ‘he was covered in flies. There were more than a jeans warehouse, I’m telling you. You looked like the inside of an Eccles cake, Paulo.’
‘Urgh, gross,’ exclaimed Amber. She was making a circuit of the camp, driving slim stakes of wood into the ground near each of the camp beds. They would be useful later for hanging boots and clothes on when they went to bed. Anything left in contact with the ground would probably be damp and full of wildlife by the morning.
Damp was almost as much of a problem as the flora and fauna. They were all constantly dripping with sweat in the humid atmosphere and Hex was worried about his palmtop. He had wrapped it in a sock to absorb moisture, and then in a plastic bag, before stowing it carefully in its carrying case.
‘No, Eccles cakes are nice,’ replied Alex. He was lighting a new fire with a spill. He bent down and blew on it until it caught, then brought over some more logs and put them to dry.
‘I don’t know about Eccles cakes, amigo,’ said Paulo. ‘But after your game you looked like a mud pie!’
Amber used a twig to brush away a hairy caterpillar that had found its way onto her camp bed. ‘I hope these aren’t on the menu tonight.’ She curled her lip. ‘I draw the line at eating grubs and creepy crawlies.’
Hex moved close to Amber and said in a low voice, ‘Did you get your foot seen to? You have to be careful. Did you tell the TV people—?’
‘Course I did, code boy,’ said Amber, rolling her eyes. Any wound could become infected in a jungle environment, but Amber was a diabetic, which meant she might not heal as quickly as normal. Cuts on her hands and feet had to be treated with great care, and she had learned to be meticulous about her medication. Everywhere she went she carried glucose tablets and insulin injector pens in a small leather pouch.
Coming up to Paulo as she completed her circuit of the camp, she paused and reached down into his curly mop of hair, pretending to pluck out an insect. ‘Got it!’
Paulo swatted her away. ‘Pack it in, you guys,’ he said, although he had to use considerable willpower not to start scratching.
There was a kind of contentment in the way they all worked together as a team, quietly and efficiently, anticipating each other’s needs. The rudiments of building a camp were as familiar to Alpha Force as their ABC, and they had replayed this scenario in so many different ways in remote areas all over the world. Usually they wouldn’t be looking forward to chicken stew and rice; more commonly it would be boil-in-the-bag rations in foil containers. If they were lucky, they would have them hot; but if it was impossible to light a fire, they would eat them cold. When they were together, their other lives – studying in places as diverse as Argentina and inner London – seemed to belong to different people. Now, all that seemed to exist for Li, Alex, Amber, Paulo and Hex was a cooking fire surrounded by their camp beds and a forest ticking with wildlife. It could be anywhere, and now they were all together it felt very much like home.
After supper Li handed round mugs of eucalyptus tea, made in a billycan from a sprig of eucalyptus plucked from a nearby tree.
Alex sniffed his with suspicion. ‘What’s this for? I haven’t got a cold.’
‘It’s refreshing, you moron,’ replied Li, and drew in the vapour with relish. Alex didn’t look convinced.
‘So, Amber, I didn’t get what your uncle’s connection is with all this …’ said Hex.
John Middleton, Amber’s uncle, had been her parents’ anchor man and financier, and had helped the five friends set up Alpha Force. Now history was repeating itself as he provided back-up for their covert operations. Although he wasn’t entirely happy about his niece getting involved in dangerous missions, he realized it had given her a new lease of life. She had an outlet for her energy and intelligence, and it helped to ease the pain of losing her parents. He had an extensive network of contacts which he used to arrange training for the five friends.
‘It was through an old news colleague of my folks,’ said Amber. ‘Mum and Dad smuggled him several exclusives over the years. He’s now in TV production and needed some guinea pigs to try out the games here so that the camera crew could sort out the angles. Uncle John thought it might be a way to brush up on our survival skills in a situation that was a little less dangerous than some of our missions.’
Hex grimaced. ‘Less dangerous? Funny, that,’ he said.
Amber smiled ruefully. ‘Yes, I’ll think twice before volunteering for a nice safe water game again.’
Paulo leaned forwards and peered at her intently, frowning. ‘Volunteered? You mean you got to volunteer? Amber, if I ever find out you had anything to do with my ending up in a spider case for half an hour, covered in spiders’ favourite food, I’ll pour bees in your ears.’ He turned to Alex and grinned. ‘What do you say, Alex? Did you enjoy your swamp crawl?’
Alex was looking thoughtful. He smiled to himself, as though what Paulo said had echoed a private joke.
Paulo read the expression at once. ‘Come on, Alex, what are you thinking? Spill the beans.’
Alex took a breath. ‘Well, I was thinking I might have to do that sort of thing soon anyway. I’ve applied to join the army. I’ve been to see them and I had to do some exams and aptitude tests; then there were lectures about the regiments.’
Although Alex usually kept himself to himself, he began to warm to his subject. His face became more and more animated in the firelight as he spoke. ‘In a year I could be patrolling in Bosnia or Kosovo, or applying for the Paras. Whatever I do, eventually I’ll want to have a crack at getting into the SAS, of course. But that’s a bit of a way off and I’ll have to work hard – they don’t just take anyone.’
In the darkness they could hear the lone cry of a rainforest animal. Normally nothing ventured out at night, and the sound seemed desolate and lost.
Li was the first to break the silence. ‘Gosh, I haven’t really thought about what I’ll be doing next,’ she said.
sure