‘Go after him!’ Lesh shouted, taking out his pair of high-power binoculars. ‘I’ll monitor him from here. Everybody stay in radio contact.’
So, as the stadium emptied, and the Americans continued to congratulate themselves, the four children raced across the AstroTurf of the pitch, then into knee-deep snow outside, on the trail of Frank Hawk.
The American’s footprints were clear. Only one track had been made in the half-metre of snow that blanketed the lower slopes of the hill. It led between two clusters of trees.
The Squad ran in single file, using the trail to speed their progress. A wind was whipping the surface of the snow into their eyes, obscuring their vision.
‘When we hit the trees,’ Kester ordered, ‘spread out.’
They carried on their pursuit. Lily first, then Adnan, then Kester, then Hatty, watched – four hundred metres away at the stadium – by Lesh, who had been waiting for Hawk to emerge above the first clusters of trees, using his binoculars.
‘No sign of Hawk above the trees,’ Lesh reported on the radio, anxious suddenly.
‘Roger,’ Kester retorted.
Now that they’d reached the trees, they fanned out, one track becoming four as they started to climb the steeper hill.
‘Take care,’ Kester said in a low voice. ‘He’s possibly hiding. And he’s probably armed.’
They moved on, through a deepening wood, the snow up to their hips now, the cold wind in their faces, scanning the hillside, desperate to find the American.
They all saw him at once and stopped, speechless.
He was standing on a rock that jutted out above the trees. He was holding a gun in one hand and a small device, about the same size as a SpyPhone.
‘Well, if it isn’t my friends from the mountain.’ Hawk looked genuinely surprised.
‘Hello again,’ Kester said, trying to sound confident.
‘And there was I thinking I’d filled you with enough lead to sink you to the bottom of that fjord.’
‘We’re tenacious,’ Kester replied, seeing a smile pass across his enemy’s face. But the smile was not about the mountainside hunting. It was about something else.
‘It’s empty,’ Hawk shouted.
‘What’s empty?’ Kester shouted back, trying to remain calm.
Hawk was armed and none of the children were: if he could get the American talking, it might buy them time.
‘The briefcase. In your hand.’ Frank Hawk was smiling.
Kester shook his head. The briefcase. It was still in his hand.
He tossed it to the side. It thwocked as it landed and sank slightly into the snow.
‘This is perhaps what you’re looking for?’ Hawk held up the small device.
‘What’s that?’ Kester asked, glad that the other three were remaining silent. The protocol for this kind of interaction was for one person to talk. They had to stick to that.
‘It’s the button. All I need to do is key in my memorized code and I detonate a nuclear device that will blow Tromsø and all its important politicians – and you – to your deaths.’
‘And you,’ Kester said. ‘It’ll kill you too.’
‘No. Not me,’ Frank Hawk said. ‘Once I’ve tapped the code in, I have an hour to get to the other side of the mountain, away from the blast. It’s not that big a bomb.’
‘What about the fallout?’ Kester asked. ‘The device you’re setting off is nuclear. It’ll cast fallout for hundreds of kilometres. It’ll be radioactive for decades. The first hours will kill everything within a hundred kilometres. Including you.’
He knew Hawk would have an answer for this. The American was hardly going to let off a nuclear bomb without having an exit strategy. Kester was asking so as to gather as much information as he could. Just in case there was a way out of this.
‘You’ve done your homework,’ Hawk smiled, glancing at his device and tapping its surface several times. ‘But I’ve got a radioactive suit and respirator in here. And a boat, a day’s walk away. Here …’
He tossed the device to Kester. And, for a second as it sailed through the air, Kester thought the American was surrendering. Adnan caught the device and handed it to his leader.
‘What is it?’ Kester asked Adnan.
‘It says “armed”,’ Adnan replied.
‘That’s because it is armed.’ Hawk laughed. ‘What do you think I was doing just then? Phoning a friend? It’ll go off in an hour. Unless …’
‘Unless what?’ Kester asked.
‘Unless you know the series of eighteen numbers that is the code to deactivate it – the same one I just used to activate it. Oh … and you can only key one set of numbers in. If you get it wrong, there are no second chances.’
The four children looked at each other. Then, hearing a click, they all hit the floor, knowing Hawk was about to fire. Hawk was pointing his gun at the tree behind them. The clatter of bullets blasted over their heads, snapping branches off the trees and dumping woodchips and snow on the Squad.
Then Hawk was gone, running at a medium pace up the hill.
‘Now what?’ Hatty asked. And Kester realized the other three were looking at him, expecting an answer.