Chapter 6
Author's notes: I don't pretend to be a medical expert but I think that Alex being shot and then a week later being thrown into another adventure then going straight into the Snakehead after that stretches medical credibility, even with the suspension of disbelief required for such a story. That could just be me, though.
Okay, so I wanted to get this finished before summer holidays are over and I have to go back to school. It doesn't look like that's going to be possible, but I'm going to try and move the plot along a bit. So here you go, enjoy!
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Later that night, when Alex was asleep (or, at least, in his room; they hadn't checked to see if he was asleep.), K-unit met up in the living room after checking that the house was secure.
"We could get his file," Snake suggested. "Then you won't have to bug him with questions all the time." He was looking at Eagle as he spoke.
Wolf shook his head. "Tried that. They won't let the file out of the building, and we don't exactly have time to go over there and read it."
"We could," Eagle said brightly. "If we took him with us. It'd be a fun day out for the whole family."
Wolf looked at him. "You want him to ask for your file while we're there?"
Eagle looked uncertain. "They'd let him, wouldn't they?"
Snake nodded. "Yes. It's not nearly as fun to be on the other side of that question, is it?"
"It's not that, exactly," Eagle hesitated. "I don't know, actually. There's nothing really bad in there, I think. Maybe the psych evaluations. Some of the covert Iraq stuff. I don't know," he repeated.
"You just wouldn't want him to see it," Snake summarized quietly.
"Well, no," Eagle admitted. "The thought of anyone reading my file is disturbing. Actually, having my entire life in a file is disturbing. People reading it is creepy."
"Yet you wouldn't mind reading his?" Snake asked pointedly.
Eagle scowled at him. "That's your equivalent to jumping up and down screaming 'hypocrite!' isn't it?"
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"Look, Manny," Mike said into his cell phone, "I can't talk right now. I'll meet you at the bar later, okay?" He paused for a second. "Yeah, Alton pub."
Ben nearby, overheard the conversation. There was absolutely nothing that should have attracted his attention about it. It was devoid of all details of dastardly plots, or information that Ben had been searching for. Except Mike was twitching, nervously scanning the room, and looking over his shoulder as though he had been plotting to murder the queen.
Which was exactly the wrong way to keep a seemingly unsuspicious phone call unsuspicious.
So, later that evening, when he had been dismissed from the warehouse, Ben found his way to Alton pub. It was a semi-small place, with a bar along one side wall and a pool table nearly smack bang in the middle of the room. He was there for a while, nursing a beer at the bar, watching some guys play a bad game of pool, before Mike walked in. He made his way to the bar, ordered a beer, and while he was waiting for it, semi-casually scanned the room.
Ben waited, hoping that he wouldn't be spotted. Then Mike's eyes met his over the crowded bar. Even from across the room, Ben could see Mike tense noticeably. Thinking quickly, he casually raised his glass of beer in a friendly salute of acknowledgement. Mike relaxed and, when it was poured, raised his own glass in return.
Ben grinned, a 'hey, out of all the pubs in town, what are the chances?' grin, and turned back to watching the game of pool. It was still horrible. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Mike took his beer and made his way to the back of the pub, to sit at a table with another man. Possibly Manny, Ben thought.
From his position at the bar, it would be impossible for him to hear them talking. The low chatter of people talking throughout the room made it impossible to make out a single conversation. But luckily for him, Mike and Manny had taken a table close to the pool game.
Ben made his way to the game, arriving just as one player managed to sink the black eight. "How's it going, fellas?" he asked companionably.
"Not too bad," one said, rather optimistically in Ben's opinion. "Want a game?"
"That'd be great," Ben said with a grin, pulling out the triangle and fishing the balls out of the pockets. "You want to break?" The man nodded and Ben moved away from the table, conveniently placing himself closer to Mike.
"… guy's a bloody psycho," he heard Mike say. "Killed Jimmy the other day. He was thieving, but still…"
Manny made a grunt of agreement. "Didn't deserve that."
"Look," Mike said. "I know that us Hands and the Sharks haven't ever got along…" Ben's ears perked at the mention of the Sharks. Kensington Sharks was the main rival gang of the Black Hand. Was this 'Manny' a Shark?
The click of the breaking shot of the pool game obscured the next few words. The man he was playing grimaced as none of the balls went into the pockets. Ben could see four possible shots that he could make. He took the hardest and wasn't surprised when he missed.
"… not skag, something else." Mike was saying behind him. "Some new drug. Old Johnston calls it cat. He says we'll have total control over it. That's why he went and found Gregorovich."
"When's it coming in?" Ben could almost hear the greed in Manny's voice.
"Don't know," Mike said. "It's hush hush. Stevens got shot just for asking."
The man Ben was playing made his shot. He sunk the three and turned to make another shot. It went wild and hit a set that hadn't broken apart during the break. The sound meant that Ben didn't hear the next few lines of the conversation.
Rapidly, he sunk three in a row, then purposefully missed, turning his attention back to the conversation behind him.
"So you'll do it?" Mike was asking. Ben cursed in his head. What had he missed?
Manny grunted an affirmative. "How many will jump ship?" he asked.
"Most of the newbies. A couple of the old guard. Most of them will stick by Johnston, but nobody has any loyalty to Gregorovich," Mike answered. "So you'll do it?" he asked again, a tad nervously.
Manny grunted again. "Half the cat. We'll tag Gregorovich and you and yours will be home safe inside the Sharks."
There was a rustle and a thunk, as though Manny had just drained his beer and set the glass down hard. "Tell us the time. We'll be waiting. And if this is a cross…" He left the threat hanging.
"It ain't, Manny, I swear it," Mike said. Manny got up and left. Ben went on playing the game of pool, purposefully missing shots, playing down to the level of his opponent, and was still there when Mike left about ten minutes later.
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Alex spent the next day going over school work with Miss Treat, again. Jack, frustrated with the situation and not being under house-arrest like Alex, went again. She was gone all day but when she came back that evening, she looked pale and drawn.
"Are you okay?" Alex asked anxiously. He'd long since finished his schoolwork for the day and was mindlessly watching some reality TV show in the living room. The show wasn't that interesting but the expressions on the faces of Snake and Wolf whenever they looked at it kept him from changing the channel. They looked so disgusted.
She smiled tiredly at him, running a hand through her red hair. "I'm okay. Just got a bit of a headache. You don't know if there's any painkillers in this place, do you?"
There probably was, but Alex didn't know where. "I think I've got my first aid kit," he said. "Take a seat. I'll go get it."
Jack sunk gratefully into the sofa. Alex disappeared into his room and came back almost immediately with it.
"Here," he said, handing her the packet of Tylenol. He threw the rest of the first aid kit onto the coffee table. Snake poked it with interest, eyes scanning the contents.
"Nice kit you've got here," he approved. Then he frowned and plucked a bottle from the kit. "Where'd you get this, Cub? This is prescription only."
"What?" Alex looked at the bottle with a frown. "Oh, those must have been from when I got shot. I never used them. I guess they just got put in there with all the other stuff."
"When'd you get shot?" Wolf asked aggressively. "Why'd we never hear about this?" He glared at them all as if they had purposefully been keeping it from him.
"It was, I dunno, two months ago? It's not important anymore." He shrugged. He frowned, thinking about it. "I thought you did know. You sent me a card."
"For appendicitis," Wolf pointed out. "Which is completely different to having been shot."
"Not important anymore, he says," Snake repeated with a shake of his head. "Cub, an injury like that could severely affect your ability to perform. We need to know about things like that."
Alex shrugged, uncomfortable with the attention. "It hasn't. I've been fine with it."
Snake blinked at that. "You've been on missions since?"
"Well, yeah," Alex said puzzled. "I've been on two since. Look, I think you guys are over reacting. Ben was shot too and I don't see you guys harassing him."
"Where'd you get shot?" Wolf interrupted gruffly.
"It was a sniper out front of the MI6 building," Alex replied, confused.
"No," Wolf frowned at him. "I meant, where'd you get hit? Arm? Leg?"
"Oh," Alex said, embarrassed at having misunderstood. "Yeah, er, in the chest."
Snake looked at him for a long time. "Cub, we really need to work on your definition of what's important. For the record, being shot in the chest is important."
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Ben knew he had been lucky so far. He also knew that to rely on luck alone was a surefire way to get killed because luck would, and did, run out.
His ran out that evening.
Desperate to find more information on the shipment of 'cat' before time ran out, he'd chanced to break into Gregorovich's office while the man was occupied downstairs with the outgoing drugs. He'd thought that in the chaotic atmosphere of the warehouse, with the boxes being moved to and fro, the trucks being loaded outside and men scurrying everywhere in a hurry that he would not be missed. That it would be impossible to know if he was within the crowd or not.
But Yassen Gregorovich missed very little.
Ben had searched the office thoroughly. There was nothing there. He had expected coded information or seemingly irrelevant files. What he found was nothing. There was no computer. The drawers were empty. The cabinet had nothing. There were no scraps of paper floating around. The empty pad of paper had no depressions that he could glean information from.
Dejected, he turned back to the door that lead down a staircase into the main body of the warehouse. He picked his moment carefully, listening to the noise and moving only when the protection offered by the distractions downstairs was at its highest. He shut the door and went down the staircase.
And found himself face to face with Yassen Gregorovich.
"And what were you doing?" Gregorovich asked icily. Ben scrambled for a moment, trying to come up with an explanation. Then he looked at Gregorovich and realized that no excuse would save him. Gregorovich knew what he had been doing. He had to get out now.
Yassen was as furious as he could ever remember being. Not just with the MI6 agent that had slipped into the gang, but at himself for allowing it. He had become too distracted by Alex Rider and he had made mistakes. It could not be allowed to happen again.
"Boss?" came a voice from behind him. One of the men dealing with the shipment who had obviously not realized just what was happening. Yassen took out his gun and shot the spy before turning around. Ben's eyes bulged. He choked out a gasp and collapsed onto the floor.
The man who had interrupted him went white. "B… boss. Papers?" He stammered, waving a handful of papers vaguely about. He looked rather ill.
Yassen took the papers calmly. The man fled.
And when Yassen looked back, Ben was gone, leaving only a smear of red blood on the concrete where he had fallen.
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Alex woke suddenly. The reason for it didn't become apparent immediately. Nothing in his room was out of place. Still, he rose quietly and padded out into the hallway. He wasn't wearing pajamas, merely track pants and a t-shirt, in case he needed to move quickly during the night. If something happened, he doubted K-unit would allow him time to get dressed and he didn't particularly want to be escorted across London wearing pajamas.
It didn't look like this was that time, though. There was no one coming to rush him out of bed. In fact, it seemed like K-unit was clustered in the living room.
Curiously, Alex looked in the room. He was surprised to see not just three members of K-unit but also another face that, despite its blandness, he knew well.
"Crawley," he said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
Crawley turned and looked at him. Alex was surprised to see that he looked tired. "Alex. I'm afraid there is some bad news."
Alex looked at him uneasily. He didn't like the sound of that. He looked at the soldiers for support. They looked grim.
It was Snake who spoke. "Fox has been shot."
"Is he okay?" Alex asked hurriedly. His gaze flickered between their faces.
Crawley shook his head. "It's touch and go at the moment, Alex. We're not sure."
Alex sat down on the couch heavily. "Oh."
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So how'd you like chapter 6? Think its great? Think it sucks? Think you spotted tonnes of grammatical errors that I should fix? Let me know, please!