Agent 21 by Chris Ryan Page A

the others – was pulling him into the aircraft.
    ‘
What’s happening?
’ Zak screamed in terror. ‘
Who are you?
’
    No answer. One of the black figures unclipped his harness and pushed him towards the other side of the chopper. ‘Put your hands behind your head and kneel down,’ he shouted. Zak did as he was told.
    He turned his head to look through the side window. The chopper’s searchlight was spinning now, lighting up the ground below like a prison searchlight trying to find an escaped convict. ‘
Raf!
’ Zak shouted. ‘
Gabs! Help me!
’ It didn’t take more than a few seconds to illuminate two figures on the ground. Raf and Gabs were both on one knee, weapons in each hand pointed up to the chopper. But it was obvious they couldn’t fire on the aircraft – bring it down and Zak would go down with it . . .
    He looked back to the other side of the helicopter. The three masked men who had abducted him hadbeen winched back in. The aircraft made a sudden tilt, then veered off away from the house.
    Zak’s limbs were weak with fear. He counted the men in the aircraft – six in all, not counting the pilot up ahead, who was the only one without a balaclava, but the night vision goggles he wore obscured his features just as effectively. Three of the others had assault rifles pointed in Zak’s direction. ‘Where are you taking me?’ Zak whispered.
    No one spoke.
    Zak tried to think clearly through the horror. What were his options? What were his escape routes? He remembered something Raf had told him.
If somebody wants to kill you – and chances are that at some stage they will – they’ll just do it. There won’t be any of that James Bond stuff
. He wasn’t dead, which was something. It meant that whoever these people were, they wanted him alive. The guns pointing in his direction were just a threat, but even so, he wasn’t going to risk anything stupid . . .
    The side door of the chopper was still open. Through it, Zak could see moonlight on the sea. It meant they had left the island but his bearings were shot and he couldn’t tell in which direction they were travelling. He raised his hands. ‘You won’t shoot me,’ he shouted over the noise of the chopper, doing what he could to sound confident.‘So you might as well tell me where we’re going.’
    There was no hesitation. No warning. One of the armed men stepped towards him and for a sickening moment Zak thought the guy
was
going to shoot him. He raised his gun, though, and with a sudden, sharp crack brought it down on the back of Zak’s shoulder.
    Zak felt himself go dizzy. By the time he hit the floor, he was already unconscious.
    The first thing Zak noticed when he awoke was the pain – a throbbing at the top of his back where the masked man had hit him, and a splitting headache.
    The second thing he noticed was that he couldn’t move.
    The third thing was that he was cold.
    Zak opened his eyes. He was tied to a chair with a thick rope, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and T-shirt. He shuffled to see if he could move the chair, but he couldn’t: it was fixed to the ground. The room he was in was big – about twenty metres by twenty. The floor and walls were made of concrete and it was empty except for a big searchlight mounted on a tripod, with a long flex leading to a power point in the wall. It was set up about five metres from where Zak was sitting; beyond that there was a single door. Closed.
    He shivered.
    The back of his mouth was dry. After sitting there for fifteen nervous minutes he called out: ‘
Hello?
’ The word felt like it scraped his throat, and his hoarse voice echoed against the concrete walls.
    Silence surrounded him once again.
    Time passed. He didn’t know how long. He heard Gabs’s voice in his mind.
If you can admit you’re scared, that’s the first step to controlling it
. No worries there, then. He was terrified. He tried to work out why he was here; who had taken him. Michael had said there were