Unreachable
Alex watched apprehensively as Carver and Troy finished donning their scuba equipment. In a minute, they would be diving, searching for the underwater cave that would take them to the Devil's Chimney and up to the house of the unsuspecting Russian general.
Even though he had known from the beginning that the two American agents had reluctantly allowed him to ride in the boat only on the condition that he did not dive himself but stayed with Garcia in the boat, he was still disappointed that he was not allowed to go under with them.
It was beautiful. The perfect day for scuba diving. Had the group been here for a pleasant vacation like they had told the customs agent, this excursion would have been exactly what Alex would have loved to take.
The air was cooling off now, but was still warm enough that the deep blue water seemed especially welcoming. The water was so clear that he could see the coral and schools of tropical fish below him. It would have been any ocean photographer's dream to be forty feet below him right now as the sun was sinking into the horizon.
But they weren't there for pleasure. They were there on a mission. The CIA wanted to find Sarov's uranium supply and the bomb he had made from it, if a bomb had yet been made. Their agents were about to go into his home to find out just that. MI6 had sent Alex along with the two Americans as well; in fact, the CIA had requested his services after hearing from Blunt what he had done in Cornwall and in France. But, because he was still just a fourteen year old boy, he would not be diving into the cave which Garcia said was close by.
It was perfectly acceptable for Alex to be pulled on a potentially lethal mission without telling him anything about their real reason for being there, but apparently, it was not in keeping with the safety standards to let him scuba dive now that he was supposedly on vacation and "nothing was going to happen".
It wasn't like it was going to be dangerous. Carver and even Troy had assured him that this would be simple reconnaissance. No danger whatsoever.
They were going to see if the cave actually did exist and if it did, whether or not it would allow them access to their final destination. Sarov didn't know about the cave, so it wouldn't be guarded and they weren't going far enough to run into any guards. At least, not on this first pass. They would make that without any superfluous gear, just to make sure that things were okay. And then, they would switch oxygen tanks and actually go in to the man's backyard.
So Alex didn't see why he couldn't tag along for at least this first trip. He was a certified scuba diver, his uncle Ian had taught him all of the rules and regulations and so it wasn't as if he would be left behind in the other operatives' bubbles. He wouldn't slow them down. An extra pair of eyes might even do them good. None of them knew just how big this cave entrance was nor how easy it would be to spot it. Alex might be able to see the cave where they might pass over it and he might be able to fit inside where a grown agent wouldn't.
In addition to all of that, Alex was part of their cover. He was supposed to be part of their family and he couldn't imagine a set of parents going on a sunset scuba dive while leaving their teenage son to wait for them in the boat. That was simply ridiculous. If they really wanted to avoid suspicion and convince the guard at the top of the cliff that they were in fact who they said they were, they would have been a lot smarter and a lot better off to have let Alex dive with them.
But the pair wouldn't see reason on this issue. Troy simply refused to hear anything about it- she had relented too much when she said he could ride on the boat in the first place. Carver, usually a little more sympathetic to his plight and wished to be involved after he had saved his life, also agreed that Alex's presence underwater was unnecessary and, to appease his long-time partner, would not give in to Alex's arguments.
They would go alone. Alex would be left to wait in the boat.
"We will only be gone for twenty minutes," they said speaking to Alex for the last time before they finished gearing up. After a final check, the Americans decided that it was high time to move. With the hand signal that everything was alright, Carver and Troy fell backwards into the water and disappeared.
It was the last time that Alex would see them alive.
Had he known that, the thought would have made him sick. The knowledge would have made anyone feel queasy, but it would have been especially hard on Alex to know that he would never again meet up with his "mother" and "father," the agents who had actually begun to take an interest in him over the past few days. What would have been even more sickening would be the knowledge that he would not see them again was not because they would be captured or killed on this excursion, but because he would be the one to die within the hour.
Of course, he didn't know this, so he did not feel sick as he offered a last salute to the rapidly vanishing duo. He didn't even feel uneasy.
Indeed, how could he have known that the events to unfold would lead to his death when all of the evidence had pointed to theirs?
It would have made a lot of sense for Carver and Troy to have been the ones killed that day. Even though it was just a simple reconnaissance mission and they had assured Alex that everything would be alright, the guard watching them with binoculars from the tower atop the cliff spoke to the contrary. A simple phone call would have alerted more guards and it wouldn't take a leap of logic to figure that the two agents would be picked up long before they could discover anything.
And if they had been picked up snooping around a secret entrance to the home of the man building a bomb, there wasn't much chance that he would let them walk free, even if they did hold American citizenship.
Because of this, Alex was worried, but not surprised when the specified twenty minutes was up and the agents still had not returned. Another five, ten, twenty minutes passed before he realized that something must be terribly wrong. They should have come back. They said they would come back and they hadn't.
If they had not found the cave entrance, they would have come back to switch out oxygen tanks and if they had found it, their assessment of the position would only have taken a couple of minutes, but nothing to prolong their stay more than twice the length they had planned. They had taken no equipment with them, so it made no sense that they had continued on with their mission once they had gained entrance to the Devil's Chimney.
No, the only logical explanation was that they had been found and taken in for questioning.
So what was he to do?
He had been ordered to stay in the boat with Garcia. He had been ordered to do nothing, to sit and wait. Be he was an MI6 operative. He may not have actually been an official agent with them, he may even have told them to leave him the heck alone, but that didn't change the fact that Mrs. Jones and Mr. Blunt treated him like an operative. His age only came into play when they needed to have complete and total authority over him and pulled their blackmail we-can-send-Jack-away-and-then-where-will-you-be-young-underage-school-boy card. Otherwise, he was nothing more than an agent to them, an asset; an asset that they had sent here to Cuba for a reason.
He was supposed to be helping Carver and Troy, not just sitting around in a boat waiting for them when they obviously weren't coming back. He hadn't been trained by his uncle just to sit around and do nothing. He hadn't battled Herod Sayle and the crazy clones of Dr. Grief only to bob up and down with the tide somewhere on the coast of Skeleton Key.
He knew that he had to act.
Unbeknownst to Alex, everything was actually just fine with the two CIA agents. Things had not gone quite according to plan, and they were now working on with one made up on the fly, but the snags were nothing they couldn't handle.
They had found the entrance of the cave fairly quickly, only about ten minutes into their dive. It was a dark hole that looked like the mouth of some submerged sea monster, with great gleaming stalagmites and stalactites for teeth.
Although they had told their young companion that Sarov would have had no knowledge of the underwater cave, that had been to ease his mind and keep him from worrying. They knew that there was a definite chance that the Russian general would be very aware of every nook and cranny of his secret fortress. He was a careful man who left nothing to chance.
It would surprise them if the secret ladder up the cliff was actually secret and unguarded. So it was with extreme caution that they moved forward, eyeing the sides of the entryway for any signs of man or manmade defence mechanisms.
It was Carver who noticed the tiny black box buried in the side of the rock. It would have gone unnoticed had the red light not caught on his goggles for just a fraction of a second. Tiny pricks of red light spelled danger, no matter who you were. They certainly meant nothing good for two undercover agents swimming underwater where no red lights should be.
Upon closer inspection, Troy discovered that there were two more of these boxes set up in the entrance to the cave. They were angled and if she looked very closely at the sand, she could see that the lights criss-crossed the entrance with infrared beams. It was the trigger to a booby trap.
Signaling to each other, the two agents knew what had to be done. They had expected a snag of some sort and were prepared to take this one in stride. They made the calculations quickly. Drawing their limbs close to make themselves as small and hydrodynamic as possible, the two agents barely flicked their fins to move carefully through the spaces left unguarded by the laser beams.
They were both nearly through when Carver's flipper moved a fraction of an inch upward into the beam. They both knew exactly when the system had been triggered. The whole cave seemed to come alive. The water around them tremored with the sounds of large objects grating against each other. Without even needing to look, both agents immediately knew that they needed to move. They needed to move fast.
They each kicked as hard and as fast as they could through the cave, hoping that they could move quickly enough through it to avoid whatever pitfalls Sarov and his security team had installed.
They had seen the metal rungs leading up the side of the cliff on the backside of the cave. If they could reach it and pull themselves up into the air, they could escape whatever dangers the water held for them.
They soon saw what those dangers were. In just a few seconds, the cave seemed to have gotten smaller, the teeth of the non-living beast closer to them, hungry for human flesh. The stalactites came crashing down and the stalagmites pushed soaring up past the gallons of water threatening to keep them down. The ancient stonework was actually modern metal, the points sharpened to impale any creature who dared the cave.
They only had a few seconds left to reach the safety of the outside. Already, the stalactites were descending upon them, almost blocking the ladder from view. They knew they had to hurry and that adrenaline combined with the water rushing with the compression compelled them forward with a speed that their strong kicks alone could never have attained.
Incredibly, they reached the rock uncrushed. Troy's flippers had been caught in the final descent of the metal teeth, missing her toes by mere inches. Frantic, she kicked them off and Carver helped her away.
They quickly hauled themselves out of the deadly waters via the slimy algae covered rungs drilled into the walls. Only when they had climbed at least twenty yards above the artificial jaws did they stop to catch their breath and look down.
They had been incredibly fortunate to escape Sarov's first line of defence. It was only luck that had saved them from being crushed to death. Alex would not be so lucky.
It was clear without even consulting each other that they could not go back to the boat that way. They didn't have the time to wait for the cave to resume its innocent appearance and they simply could not risk another such run in order to get the Geiger counter, harpoon gun, and other equipment. They were on their own, with the meager supplies Carver had fortunately snuck into the pocket on his wetsuit.
They would continue up the Devil's Chimney, scout across the Casa D'Oro, and with any luck, stumble upon something that would incriminate the general, perhaps even lead them to the bomb they suspected was there.
They didn't have any communicative gear, so there would be no way to let Alex know about their change in plans or what they were going to do next. They wouldn't be able to meet up with him again until they all got back to their hotel room later that night… or perhaps the next morning. They couldn't have given him a decent timeframe even if they were able to talk to Alex. There was no saying how this operation would go since they hadn't planned to enter the grounds this way. It all depended on what security was around and what they could find out before being caught.
Thankfully, they had ordered Alex to stay in the boat. He might only be a fourteen year old English schoolboy, but he did work for MI6. He had been officially attached to their CIA unit and they had given him strict orders to stay in the boat with Garcia. He may be bored out of his wits by the time the night was out, but he would stay in the boat with Garcia.
When they didn't show up again at their appointed deadline, the Spanish man and English boy would head back to town. They would explain what had happened later, but right now, they needed to continue on with the mission. There was no turning back.
As Carver and Troy finished climbing the long, long cliff side, figuring that everything would be as they had left it, Garcia had given Alex the old diving computer which he had just strapped to his wrist. Stripped down to his white t-shirt and shorts, he had already fastened the oxygen tank to his back and was getting ready to break every single rule in the book.
Garcia didn't approve the boy diving alone here, but he didn't disapprove either. This didn't really involve him. If Alex wanted to break the instructions he had been given, that was up to him. He could deal with the punishment Carver and Troy would dole out when they all got back.
So he didn't say anything as Alex tipped over the side, cutting his wrist on the boat as he tumbled into the water.
The two American agents had reached the cliff top and taken out the guards who waited for them in the tower. They had begun to make their way through the stone path that meandered its way through a thick grove of palm trees long before Alex had found the cave entrance.
They neared the pale yellow bricked house when Alex first saw a dark shape glimmering above him. Troy pointed to and Carver took out a single guard walking across the lawn toward the tennis courts when Alex realized the trouble that he was in. He had recognized the silver silhouette above him as a great white shark and knew the danger he was in from even small graze on his arm.
His blood began to race but he knew that he had to quell his fear in order to escape the notice of the menacing creature. Perhaps it would ignore him if his heartbeat didn't accelerate to the point where he became a ringing advertisement. No sudden movements, breathe calmly from the air tank, ignore the sleek animal that wanted nothing more than to tear him apart limb from limb, ignore the jerky swimming pattern and smaller circles that signaled the shark was closing in on him, readying itself for the kill.
He was too far from the boat to make it back in time to save him, the sea was too open behind him to get away, and there was nowhere he could go. Unless… he could find shelter in the cave. He knew that the rungs would take him to safety up the Devil's Chimney if he could only get inside.
The dark hole looked menacing with its sharp stone teeth, but not quite so menacing as the shark's blank and bloodthirsty eyes. He decided that it was his only chance, and he would have to take it.
Alex quickly swam downward, hoping to avoid the shark's sensory glands long enough to swim into the cave. He waited until it was swimming away from the entrance of the cave instead of blocking his escape route. As soon as it had moved far enough away, Alex darted forward with all of the strength and speed he could muster.
What he failed to recognize, of course, in the heat of the moment, were the small black boxes with the infrared triggers that the two American agents had been so fortunate to discover in advance.
Alex swam straight through one of the invisible lines, setting the vast metal machinery in motion. Without the foreknowledge of booby-traps—the last information he had to go on was that Sarov could not have had any idea of the cave nor prepared for anyone coming in this front—he had no reason to suspect anything was amiss when he first entered the cavern… minus of course the bloodthirsty terror on his tail.
The great white had decided to follow its prey and swam after Alex through the mouth of the underwater cave, adding its vast expanse to the triggering of the deathtrap. Even without the knowledge of the stalactites and stalagmites coming together to kill him, the fear of the shark was enough to make Alex move forward as fast as humanly possible.
Without flippers, though, he had no chance. He knew it when he first noticed the vast teeth of the cave closing in upon him and the creature that had followed him in.
He gave a huge kick, then another and another, desperate to get away from the Russian defence system, to make it to shore.
Maybe this was what had happened to Carver and Troy, he thought. Maybe it was their blood and not Alex's that had attracted the monster in the first place. They hadn't known that this place would try to kill them. Maybe they hadn't made it as far as the rungs on the far wall. But he knew that wasn't the case. There had been no discoloring of the clear water, no foreign taste in the salt of the sea, and no bodies or pieces of equipment floating around anywhere near him. No, the American agents had made it through.
The shark, with its massive girth, had not.
And Alex Rider, the English schoolboy extraordinaire, would not either. The steps were still more than ten feet away when the teeth made their final and deadly descent.
Alex stared in disbelief as the sharp metal tips came to greet him. In all of his wildest imaginings, even when he had first been recruited by MI6 and he thought of the many varied deaths that could come to a spy, he had not thought that this would be the way he would go, alone except for a shark, and lost somewhere off the coast of Cuba when Blunt had promised him nothing but two weeks in the sun.
Why had he even listened to Blunt in the first place when he said that this vacation on Skeleton Key was exactly what the doctor had ordered? Oh right, because 1,900 Chinese agents had him on top of their hit lists because of events the week before when he had listened to Crawley's plea for help at Wimbledon.
He needed to stop listening to agents when they told him that they knew what was best for him. Although, had he actually listened to Carver and Troy this time around, he would still be safely on the boat with Garcia, or even back in the air-conditioned hotel room. He would not be staring at his death as it came to greet him in the now rushing discolored water.
His time was up. He couldn't move any further, the metal jaws of the monster had closed around him too tight. In a moment, he would be trapped, impaled, crushed, dashed to pieces, and then ground up until there was nothing left of him for anyone to find.
Closer, closer the metal rods came, puncturing first his air tank and then his body. His vision swam and darkened almost before he had time to register the pain.
.
Garcia waited alone in his boat all night long with nothing but a quickly dwindling supply of cigarettes and his own hoarse singing voice to keep him company. He stayed there, bobbing up and down with the water as it splashed against the cliff side until the two American agents hailed him from a rented boat the next day.
Their first thought was to grab their gear for a second and more exploratory run on the house, now that they knew where they were going and how they would go about getting there. It was only when they had moored the boats together that they suddenly realized Garcia was alone.
His voice held no emotion when he told them that the English boy had followed them into the cave an hour after they had left and hadn't come back.
Carver, for once in his life, was speechless. Troy's face went completely white.
Co-written with my brother. As we were listening to Skeleton Key on tape, we heard the sentence "It was the last time he would see them alive" and both turned to each other going "woah. That… was not what I expected…" and the story line just built from there.
I'm a new fan and this was my first attempt to write Alex Rider, so please let me know how this went. :D