bad,’ Barry said firmly. ‘But you’ve got to release the charge slowly. I heard that magnet thunk against the hull from up here. Remember, there might be people standing on deck twenty or thirty metres above your head. They would have heard a noise like that.’
People you’re happy to kill, Dana thought to herself, as she sighed and swept a strand of hair away from her face.
‘Let me catch my breath for a second.’
Barry shook his head. ‘Get back out there. You’ve got to make three dives in rapid succession tonight, so you’d better get used to it.’
32. CONTACTS
James, Ernie and Mike took half an hour loading the truck with household stuff and metal trunks containing heavy equipment from the outbuilding.
James was desperate to contact John and tell him what was going on, but even if there’d been a chance to get away from the two men, his tiny radio didn’t have enough transmission power to get picked up this far from the Ark.
It was noon when they arrived back. Ernie charged the truck through a broken section of fencing around Joel Regan Airport. The only aircraft in town was a small cargo jet. Ernie pulled up to a screeching halt beside it.
While the turbo fans whined above their heads, the co-pilot opened up the hold and lowered a power-assisted ramp. Loading up was a laborious process, hindered by the jet exhaust making the air even more unbelievably hot than it was already.
Every piece of cargo had to be weighed before they pushed it up the ramp. It then had to be manhandled across the shiny plastic floor inside the hold and strapped down. The co-pilot refused to muck in and stood with a clipboard and smug look, calculating the weight of the payload.
James had sweat pouring out of his hair by the time everything was packed securely inside. Ernie looked at his watch as the jet taxied towards the runway, with Mike Evans and the two pilots on board.
‘You might as well head through the terminal, catch a service and some lunch,’ Ernie said. ‘I’ll take the truck round the back to the compound and see you over there at one for the delivery route.’
‘Gotcha, boss,’ James said, faking enthusiasm.
As Ernie pulled away in the truck, a deafening roar erupted. The pilot had opened up the throttles for take-off and the jet powered past less than twenty metres away. James squeezed his palms against his ears as the grey haze choked him. Once the worst was past, he rubbed his stinging eyes and spat on the tarmac to get the acrid taste of jet exhaust out of his mouth. Then he jogged off towards the terminal.
By the time he’d made it inside, Ernie’s truck was out of sight and the jet was a grey dot on the narrow end of a plume in the sky. James had got over the initial shock of stumbling into Help Earth’s laboratory, but he couldn’t relax. There was still a chance that an encounter with Brian Evans would blow his cover and the contents of the weapons lab were currently heading away at several hundred kilometres an hour. He desperately needed to make contact with his mission controllers and tell them what was going on.
Although there was no one around, James couldn’t rule out the possibility of surveillance cameras inside the terminal building, so he cut into the first toilet he found. He figured he could spare a few seconds to splash cool water on his face, but he turned on a tap and found it was dead. So were the next two along.
Abandoning this idea, James locked himself into a toilet cubicle. There was no water in the bowl and a nasty funk rising out of the hole, but time was tight so he had to live with it. He flipped the toilet lid down to sit on, pulled off his trainer and reached under the soggy inner sole to retrieve the radio.
He pressed the on button and held the thin plastic strip up to his ear. It was warm and smelled like his feet.
‘John, are you out there?’
Chloe’s voice came back through the tiny loudspeaker. ‘Loud and clear, James.’
‘Where’s John?’
‘He had to fly up to monitor Dana in Darwin.’
‘What’s she doing up there?’
‘No idea yet,’ Chloe shrugged. ‘Ween sent her up there on some special mission.’
‘OK,’ James gasped, as he tried to digest this surprising piece of information. ‘Listen, I don’t have much time. The Help Earth laboratory was located in