‘First, give me your coat’, ordered Dick.
‘Hold on. That’s not part of the plan’, protested Taylor as Hargreaves hurriedly removed his coat.
‘I know’, said Dick as he began to put it on. ‘It’s just that I’ve always wanted one of these and it seems right and just that I take this one – even if it is a bit snug’. Turning to Hargreaves Dick said, ‘We want you to open the door’.
‘Never’, said Dr. Hargreaves.
‘Shhhhhhhhhh!’, said Taylor.
‘Never’, repeated Dr. Hargreaves again, this time at a quieter level that wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. ‘If I let you in you’ll just destroy the bombs!’
‘Really Dr. Hargreaves’, said Taylor. ‘We thought you’d do better than that. Just think what will happen to you if you don’t do as we say’. Jack silently removed his knife and wiped some remaining blood on the jacket he was wearing.
‘If I don’t do what you say then you’ll kill me’, a defiant Hagreaves replied. ‘And if I do what you say, the Leader will kill me’. With a scientist’s natural logic Dr. Hargreaves summed up the situation perfectly, adding as his conclusion, ‘ Therefore it doesn’t really matter what you do to me’.
Taylor and Dick were slightly taken aback. ‘And if I’m dead how are you going to open the doors? Remember the retina scanner will only recognise myself or the Leader, and I can guarantee that the Leader will never listen to your demands! And here he comes now!’
Taylor, Dick and Jack suddenly looked down the corridor. At the same time Hargreaves decided to try and escape. Predictably, a scientist, even a chief one, was no match for an agile mechanical killing machine. Hargreaves barely reached the corner before Jack grappled him to the ground, then pinned him down by sitting on his chest. Hargreaves tried to scratch Jack’s face, throwing punches at him like a girl. He managed to shout for help just once before Jack stopped him in the quickest way he knew; severing his throat and simultaneously, his carotid artery. Blood shot up into the air and all over Jack, who fulfilled his programming by removing Hargreaves’ organs and stuffing them in his mouth, although the liver kept falling through the gaping hole in his throat and Jack had to keep putting it back. Taylor and Dick witnessed the whole disturbing scene with mixed emotions: horror, fascination and satisfaction. ‘OK Jack’, said Dick, ‘Finish the job’. Then to Taylor, ‘This is the part I just can’t watch’.
Moments later the three men were standing outside the door.
‘Open it please, Jack’. Jack held his hand up to the scanner, gently offering up Dr. Hargreaves’ recently removed eyeball. A few drops of blood splattered on the floor. A thin beam of white light began its scan, moving up and down behind the small screen but no familiar bleep followed.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Dick, with a slight panic in his voice. ‘Why isn’t it working? Try it again!’
Jack held the eyeball in front of the scanner once more, but with no success.
‘Perhaps a removed eyeball won’t work?’ offered Taylor in a slightly panicked voice. ‘Maybe it needs a blood supply’.
‘Great. Just great’, said Dick. ‘Here’s exhibit “a”, the eyeball and over there, ten feet away, is exhibit “b”, the eyeball’s former owner. Note the absence of a blood supply between “a” and “b”’.
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic!’, said Taylor, and just as he did so, the slippery eyeball fell through Jack’s fingers and on to the floor.
It bounced unpredictably a few times causing Taylor and Dick to hop around in an attempt to avoid it. In an unfortunate moment of mis-timing Dick put his left foot back on the ground just as the eyeball rolled under it. There was a squelching sound, the sound only a squashed eyeball could make.
‘Now we’re in trouble’, said Taylor.
Dick looked at the sole of his shoe and wished he hadn’t. He’d rather have stepped in dog shit with the viscosity of tar and the stickiness of superglue.
‘I’ve got an idea’, he said. ‘Jack, get me the other eyeball’.
Jack dutifully went to work and removed Hargreave’s other eyeball, offering it to the scanner exactly as before. The light beam moved up and down the eye, then stopped. After what seemed like an eternity, but which was, in reality, only about a second, there was a confirmatory bleep followed by the reassuring buzz and whirr of the lock.
‘How were we to know it only worked on the right eye?’, asked Dick. Taylor breathed a sigh of relief as he, Dick and Jack entered, Jack dragging Hargreaves’ lifeless and now eyeless body with him.
‘How long do you think it’ll be before Hargreaves is missed?’ asked Taylor.
‘Well’, said Dick. ‘Given Maxx’s probable severe state of anxiety, I’d say, about ten minutes ago. We’ve got to do this fast’.
While Jack used his jacket to try and clean the blood from the floor outside the room Taylor and Dick set to work behind the closed door. All the suitcases were locked so Taylor had to unpick them one by one adding considerable time to the exercise, time that was definitely not on their side.
CHAPTER 33
Insulated from the outside sounds by the heavy door they failed to hear loud shouts and a succession of guns being fired. What they did hear though was the familiar bleep, buzz and whirr of the lock.
‘Jack!’ shouted Dick as the door swung open. ‘What’s wrong?’
Maxx stepped in, closely followed by an entourage of armed security guards and technicians.
‘Jack is wrong’, he said, gesturing with his gun, ‘And you know what? I don’t think he’ll ever be right’.
Facing an assortment of gun barrels, Dick and Taylor decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valour. Holding their hands above their heads they stood up rather sheepishly as if they’d been caught doing something very bad (which is of course exactly what they’d been doing). The door was now wide open and Dick could see Jack lying in a pool of his own hydraulic fluid. There was a smouldering hole in his head and two more in his chest.
‘Arrest these men!’, shouted Maxx in the time-honoured tradition of the cliché. ‘And check for damage!’
Guards and technicians ran into the room all at the same time, which wasn’t really a good idea as there wasn’t enough room for everyone. In the confusion the guards handcuffed Taylor and a technician and dragged them out, while Dick found himself examining the bombs. The error was soon spotted however and the technician and Dick changed places.
‘Well?’ roared Maxx. ‘What have these traitors done?’
The head technician looked up from the bomb he was examining and nervously answered, ‘They’ve disabled the priming circuits’.
‘On all of them?’, asked Maxx angrily.
‘Possibly sir’, said the technician. ‘But it’s an easy repair to do. We can have them all checked and fixed in thirty minutes’.
‘You’ve got ten’, said Maxx. ‘Starting now!’.
He breathed in deeply and counted aloud. After a while he stopped. ‘I’m calmer now. You may have just noticed that I counted slowly up to twelve not ten. Do you know why I counted to twelve?’
‘To make you even calmer?’ Dick speculated.
Maxx kneed him in the balls and Dick doubled in agony. ‘No, you fuckwit! I was counting the number of Impotence Bombs that will be launched soon, fixed and on schedule’ he turned to Taylor, also being held by guards and kneed him squarely in the balls as well. ‘I don’t know who you are and I really don’t care. What I do know though, is that you’re both idiots thinking your amateur sabotage wouldn’t go unnoticed’. Chuckling to himself Maxx continued. ‘Disabling the priming circuits indeed!’