He grabbed Nina and ran back. ‘Macy, cover your ears!’ he bellowed. They wouldn’t reach the door in time; all they could do was dive behind the consoles—
They hit the floor as the grenade exploded.
The blast shredded walls and shattered windows. Consoles toppled, chairs sent flying like tumbleweed. Eddie yelled as something stabbed into the back of his leg. Ears ringing, he groped to find a six-inch shard of wood jutting from his calf. ‘Shit, shit!’ he gasped, tugging it out.
Nina sat up. ‘Macy!’ she cried, looking towards the doorway — and finding it was no longer there. The explosion had not only ripped apart the wooden interior wall, but blown a hole in the building itself — and in the floodlit glare now cutting through the smoke, she saw that the bottom of the stairs had also been destroyed. ‘Macy, can you hear me? Macy!’
‘Mommy!’ her daughter wailed from above. ‘Mommy, I’m scared, I’m scared!’
‘Just stay there, honey, please! We’ll be there as soon as we can!’ She looked back at Eddie to see him grimacing as he stood. ‘Oh my God, are you hurt?’
‘Shrapnel in the leg,’ he said through his teeth. ‘I’m okay — won’t be sprinting anywhere, though.’ He took a couple of pained steps, then saw the remains of the stairs. ‘Buggeration!’
‘How’re we going to get up to her?’ Nina asked.
‘Might have to climb up outside.’ Eddie retrieved his gun and limped to the hole in the outer wall, checking that no more dummies were lurking nearby before stepping out into the snow. The explosion had revealed that the ‘concrete’ building was nothing more than a thin skim of painted plaster over plywood panels, like a film set—
A set. That was all the Funhouse was, an elaborate set. Everything was fake: the buildings, the snow, the sky, even the wilderness projected on the outer walls…
‘Macy, stay still!’ he shouted up to the tower’s top. ‘I’m coming to get you!’
‘How?’ Nina demanded.
‘By thinking outside the box — literally! Come on.’ He hobbled as quickly as he could back across the chamber to the dummy he had tackled. ‘Grab its gun.’
She picked up the AK-74 and followed him to the perimeter wall. Spots of light marked where the toppling guard’s fire had punched through it. Eddie poked a finger into one hole. ‘It’s just plasterboard.’
‘How does that help us get to Macy?’
‘This whole thing’s like a movie set — and movie sets need lots of lights.’ He pointed up at the even blue-grey glow of the fake sky. ‘They also need to be able to get to ’em to change the bulbs…’ He signalled for her to back away. ‘Okay, cover your ears.’
Nina hurriedly brought up her hands as Eddie raised his rifle — and emptied the magazine into the wall.
The wooden panelling shredded as bullets tore into it. He swept the gun upwards, carving a ragged line of holes. The AK ran out of ammo; he tossed it away and took the other weapon from Nina, another sustained burst tearing through the drywall before he released the trigger and backed up. ‘Okay, coming through!’
Eddie hurled himself at the wall — and smashed through, the bullet-perforated section tearing free to leave an almost cartoonish hole. He stumbled to a halt on the other side, raising the rifle.
He had emerged between the test area’s outer boundary and the Funhouse’s corrugated metal exterior wall. Dismantled sections of what he guessed were set pieces for other scenarios stood in large racks, crates and containers holding props. There was still no sign of Brice… and he was getting the feeling that the spy was not as close by as he had thought.
One of the snow machines was mounted on a scaffold nearby, large blocks of ice slowly being fed into it from a refrigerated hopper. But it was what stood beyond — and above — that caught his attention. The lighting grid did indeed resemble that of a movie soundstage, a complex latticework supporting thousands of LED clusters that could be set to any colour and brightness to simulate different conditions. A ladder ran up one of the supports to a narrow catwalk heading out over the enclosed set…
Nina came through the hole. ‘Okay, how do we get to Macy? We’ve got to reach her before Brice comes back.’
‘I don’t think he is coming back,’ Eddie said, limping to the ladder. ‘We almost get blown up, and he doesn’t even bother to gloat? He’s not watching any more.’
‘Then what’s he doing?’
‘I dunno. But he must have had a reason for bringing us here, and I don’t think it was about revenge. If we get killed, that’s just a bonus. He wants something else.’ He started to climb the ladder, grimacing each time his wounded leg took his weight.
‘But what’s here that he wants? He killed the staff, so he could have taken anything that was already here—’ A gasp as she realised Brice’s objective had come with them; had brought them. ‘Peter! Oh my God, he’s after Peter! That’s why he said he’d contact us through him — because he knew he was the person most likely to help us!’
‘Christ, yeah. Alderley’s an MI6 agent, and they always have an escape plan — so Brice probably wants to use his!’ Eddie dropped the Kalashnikov to her. ‘There’s a couple of rounds left. I’ll get Macy — you warn Alderley!’
He resumed his ascent, pace quickening despite the pain. A green sign on the wall pointed towards an emergency exit, but not knowing how far away it was or where it emerged, Nina hurried in the opposite direction to the main entrance.
Outside, Alderley was still in the car, watching the double doors with rising concern and frustration. The bursts of gunfire from within had been followed by an explosion, and a few minutes had now passed since the last exchange of fire.
He knew he had agreed to let Chase and Nina rescue their daughter, but he couldn’t allow Brice to escape. A moment of internal debate, then he took out his phone to call in backup—
The front passenger door opened.
Alderley looked around sharply — and saw a Glock pointed at him.
Brice was behind it, hunched down. ‘Evening, Peter.’ The spy had crept around the building from the emergency exit at its rear, keeping low to use the lie of the land and the bushes surrounding the car park to conceal himself from any distant observers.
‘John!’ Alderley replied. ‘Where are Chase and Nina? What have you done with their little girl?’
‘They were alive the last time I checked, but it has gone rather quiet, hasn’t it?’ He had a tablet computer in his other hand, which he placed on the passenger seat. ‘Let’s have a look, though. I want to make sure they’re occupied while we do our business.’
‘What business?’ Alderley snapped as Brice activated the tablet. ‘If you think I’m going to help you—’
‘You are going to help me, Peter, because I know you’d rather be alive than dead. Poor grieving Poppy would struggle to get by on the parsimonious SIS spousal death benefit, wouldn’t she?’ A grid of surveillance camera feeds from inside the Funhouse appeared on the screen. ‘Now, where are you, Chase?’
He tapped on one image, which expanded to fill the screen. Alderley felt a surge of fear at the sight of Macy, tied to a chair — and surrounded by armed animatronic dummies in Russian uniforms. There was no sound, but he could tell the young girl was in tears and extremely distressed. ‘You absolute shit,’ he snarled. ‘You’d use a child as a hostage?’