Stormbreaker: Chapters 4–6

The bed was modern, but the room was old with beams running across the ceiling, a stone fireplace, and narrow windows in an ornate wooden frame.

Presumably he would have made up some story to explain Alex’s sudden disappearance.

“Oh, you’re awake. And dressed. How are you feeling? Not too groggy, I hope. Please come this way. Mr. Blunt is expecting you for lunch.”

Alex thought about the dead man, what he had known of him. His privacy. His long absences abroad. And the times he had come home injured. A bandaged arm one time. A bruised face another.

“Just people we use. We have budget restraints. We have to contract some of our work out. We hired them to clean things up. Mrs. Jones here is our head of operations. It was she who gave your uncle his last assignment.”

“Of course, the tourists were enormously grateful to the young Egyptian waif and it now turned out that they were very rich...."

They made inquiries about him and discovered how poor he was...the very clothes he was wearing had been passed down by all nine of his brothers.

“I’ll move quickly forward. After school, Sayle went to Cambridge, where he got a degree in economics. He then set out on a career that went from success to success. His own radio station, computer software...and, yes, he even found time to buy a string of racehorses, although I believe they seldom win. But what drew him to our attention was his most recent invention. A quite revolutionary computer that he calls the Stormbreaker.”

“It’s an integrated circuit on a sphere of silicon about one millimeter in diameter,” Alex said.

“Well,” Blunt continued, “the point is, later today, Sayle Enterprises are going to make a quite remarkable announcement. They are planning to give away tens of thousands of these computers. In fact, it is their intention to ensure that every secondary school in England gets its own Stormbreaker. It’s an unparalleled act of generosity, Sayle’s way of thanking the country that gave him a home.”

The letter went on to describe the gift and was signed, ‘Yours humbly,’ by the man himself.

Alex smiled queasily. “I hope you’re not looking at me.”

“You’ve already shown yourself to be extraordinarily brave and resourceful,” Blunt said. “First at the junkyard...that was a karate kick, wasn’t it? How long have you been learning karate?”

Mrs. Jones was unwrapping yet another peppermint, her black eyes seemingly fixed on the twist of paper in her hands.

The whole thing was so preposterous he almost wanted to laugh.

“You’re blackmailing me!” Alex exclaimed.

The rain was still falling, a thin drizzle that traveled horizontally in the wind, soaking through his supposedly waterproof clothing, mixing with his sweat and his dirt, chilling him to the bone.

He had to be close to the last RV of the day—the last rendezvous point—but he could see nothing.

After his lunch with Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones, he had been moved out of the manor house and into a crude wooden hut a few miles away.

There were nine huts in total, each equipped with four metal beds and four metal lockers. A fifth had been squeezed into one of them to accommodate Alex.

Some of them may resent you being here.

The Killing House was a fake—a mock-up of an embassy used to train the SAS in the art of hostage release.

Inside the Killing House, mannequins had been arranged as terrorists and hostages.

For Alex it was an eerie experience, tiptoeing behind the other four men, watching as they dismantled the two devices, using cigarette smoke to expose the otherwise invisible beam.

While Snake dealt with the alarm, Fox and Eagle prepared to neutralize the trip wire, unclipping an electronic circuit board and a variety of tools from their belts.

Taken by surprise, he lost his balance and fell, remembered the trip wire, and tried to twist his body to avoid it. But it was hopeless. His flailing left hand caught the wire.

The trip wire activated a stun grenade—a small device filled with a mixture of magnesium powder and mercury fulminate.

“You think it’s so funny, Wolf? You can go clean up in there. And tonight you’d better get some rest. All of you. Because tomorrow you’ve got a thirty-mile hike. No rations. No lighters. No fire. This is a survival course. And if you do survive, then maybe you’ll have a reason to smile.”

Seeing him there brought back the shame and the anger of the day before and at the same time sapped the last of his strength.

Wolf struck at the stones again and again. The others watched, their faces glum.

A pigeon was strutting back and forth along the ledge outside as if it were keeping guard.

“The prime minister sees the Stormbreakers as a major coup...for himself and for his government. But there’s still something about Herod Sayle that I don’t like. Did you tell the boy about Yassen Gregorovich?”

A single bulb glowed red behind a wire mesh, adding to the heat in the cramped cabin.

The voice of the pilot came over the speaker system, distant and metallic. Alex gritted his teeth. Five minutes until the jump.

It was hard to believe, but there he was, frozen in the doorway, his arms rigid, staring out.

Mrs. Jones was waiting for him when he walked into the hangar.

“Certainly not. It’s a yo-yo.” Smithers pulled out the string, holding it between a pudgy finger and thumb.

He wiped his finger, smearing the cream onto the surface of the table. For a moment nothing happened. Then a wisp of acrid smoke twisted upward in the air, the metal sizzled, and a jagged hole appeared.

He wiped his finger, smearing the cream onto the surface of the table. For a moment nothing happened. Then a wisp of acrid smoke twisted upward in the air, the metal sizzled, and a jagged hole appeared.

“You can play all four of them. They all have a built-in games function. But as the name might suggest, this is actually a smoke bomb. This time the cartridge doesn’t go into the machine. You leave it somewhere in a room and press START three times on the console, and the bomb will be set off by remote control. Useful camouflage if you need to escape in a hurry.”