Eagle Day - Robert Muchamore Page 0,15

back. ‘You did the right thing, but now we need to get out of here. Did you see anyone else?’exactly

‘Just him,’ Jeannot said.

Leon thought for a second. ‘Cops work in pairs. I’ll go look for the other one. You jump down the hole and do the emergency ring on the bell. You know how that goes?’

Jeannot nodded. ‘Three rings, stop, three rings. Repeat after ten seconds if they don’t respond.’

As Jeannot raced into the storeroom, Leon stalked his way around the side of the truck, clutching the shotgun and moving slow with his back close to the wall. At the top of the ramp he saw the outline of a fat man looking through the open gates.

‘Perky, watcha got down there?’ Officer Vernon shouted.

Leon made a dash from the top of the ramp to the rear of the ticket booth and crouched down low. The fat man heard but didn’t see.

‘That you, Perkins?’

Leon poked his head out and watched as the fat cop took a couple of steps. The cop was limping badly and clearly in no state to go far; he backed up to the car. As he leaned inside to radio for backup, Leon came out of hiding and rushed him.

‘Officer Vernon requesting assistance, I’m at Unicorn Tyre on the corner of—

The radio operator back at the precinct heard the bang. Vernon felt a shower of pellets hitting his back and thighs, but Leon had shot from too far away and most of the pellets chinked against the car. As Leon pulled down the shotgun barrel to reload, Officer Vernon got his hand on his service revolver and shot back blindly.

The first shot went wild, but the bang made Leon jump, giving Vernon time to take aim second time around. The bullet exploded inside Leon’s chest, blowing his lungs apart as he crashed backwards into the gates of the Unicorn parking lot.

A burst of adrenaline had kept Vernon upright while he was under attack, but once Leon was down Vernon succumbed to the pain of the hot pellets buried under his skin and collapsed into the snow beside the car.

Vernon tried reaching inside to grab the microphone, but gave up when he realised he didn’t need to. The operator at the precinct had heard the shotgun blast at the end of his last transmission.

‘Code one,’ the operator yelled through the radio static. ‘Possible officer shooting. All units head for Unicorn Tyre and Parking. Priority one!’

*

PT ran out of cage two and jumped into the hole as soon as his father yelled.

‘They rung a three and three,’ Miles explained. ‘Time to get outta here.’

PT was startled. ‘Half the money’s still in there. Isn’t Leon bringing us back on the train?’

Miles sounded impatient. ‘If your brother was sending the train he’d have given us a four and a two. It’s probably water building up in the tunnel again, but you know the rules: three and three signal means we’re coming out.’

The tunnel was a thirty-second ride when you were being pulled. When you powered yourself, you lay on your back instead of your belly and propelled yourself by kicking against the ground or pulling on the ceiling props. The journey took two minutes, longer if there was a lot of standing water.

PT lay on a trolley and his father tucked a stray bag of money between his legs.

‘Just in case we don’t get back down here,’ he smiled, before giving his son a push start.

As PT rolled head first through the blackness he hoped it really was the last time he’d have to do it. They’d pulled out two million dollars, and that was enough to be getting along with. Leon had stopped pumping water when they started running the money on the train and a waterlogged section of tunnel apparently confirmed his dad’s theory that they’d have to halt operations and do a pump-out. This was a pain, but it was something they’d done a hundred times before.

But everything seemed wrong as PT sighted the end of the tunnel. Instead of Leon’s muddy arms he saw Jeannot crouching tearfully in the mouth of the tunnel.

‘What’s the matter, squirt?’ PT asked, grabbing his cart off the tracks because he could hear his father rolling up a few metres behind him.

‘Cops came. I shot one, but Leon went up after and they shot each other.’

The news hit PT like a fist in the balls. ‘Is Leon OK? Where is he?’

‘By the gate,’ Jeannot sobbed. ‘He’s dead.’

By this time Miles was out