Behind him in the operations room Tom could hear a rising buzz of activity. Nobody was looking bored now; through the half-open door he could see boys hurrying to and fro with papers and clipboards, flicking switches on the long banks of camera controls, trying on headphones. “You’re not sending me inside now?” he asked. “Not right now?” He’d expected time to prepare himself; maybe some sort of briefing about whatever the Lost Boys had learned of the layout inside Rogues’ Roost. He hadn’t imagined being pushed into action as soon as he arrived.
But Wrasse had him by the arm again, and was propelling him back through the operations room, back along the tangle of passageways. “No time like the present,” he said.
An old metal stairway zigzagged down the cliffs on the western side of Rogues’ Roost, and at its foot an iron jetty jutted into the surf, sheltered by long spurs of rock. It had sometimes been used for supply boats to tie up at back in the pirate days, but no boat had come since the Green Storm took over, and already the jetty was looking tatty and unloved, eroded by rust and the unresting sea.
The Screw Worm surfaced in its shadow just as the sun sank into a thick bank of fog on the horizon. The wind had died almost to nothing, but there was still a heavy swell running, and surf crashed over the limpet’s carapace as its magnetic grapples made contact with the jetty.
Tom looked up through the wet windows at lights coming on in the buildings high above him, and felt as if he were about to be sick. All the way from Grimsby he had been telling himself it would be all right, but here in the swell beneath the jetty he could not believe that he would ever get inside this Green Storm stronghold, let alone escape again with Hester.
He wished that Caul were here, but Wrasse had piloted the Screw Worm himself, making Caul stay back aboard the Ghost of a Flea. “Good luck!” the boy had said, hugging him in the airlock, and Tom was beginning to realize just how much good luck he would need.
“The stairs lead to a door about a hundred feet up,” Wrasse said. “It’s not guarded: they don’t expect an attack from the sea. It’ll be locked, but nothing our tools can’t handle. Got the lock-pick?”
Tom patted the pocket of his coat. Another roller lifted and twisted the Screw Worm. “Well then,” he said nervously, wondering if it was too late to turn back.
“I’ll be waiting right here,” promised Wrasse, with that faint, suspicious smile. Tom wished he could trust him.
He climbed quickly up the ladder, trying to think only of Hester, because he knew that if he thought for one moment about all the soldiers and guns in that fortress above him he would lose his nerve. A wave sloshed over the Screw Worm as he sprang the hatch, drenching him in ice-cold water; then he was out on the hull, in the dark and the cold fresh air, the noise of the sea loud around him. He squeezed himself into the struts under the jetty as another wave heaved past, then groped his way up on to the top. He was soaked through and already beginning to shiver. As he ran towards the stairs the jetty bucked beneath him like an animal, straining at its tethers, trying to shrug him off.
He climbed fast, glad of a chance to get warm. Birds whirled above him in the twilight, the movement startling him. Just think of Hester, he kept reminding himself, but even remembering the best of his times with her could not quite blot out his growing fear. He tried to stop thinking altogether, told himself he had a job to do, but the thoughts kept slipping into his brain. This was a suicide mission. Uncle was just using him. That story about needing a spy inside the Roost hadn’t been the whole truth, he was sure of that now. And the listening post, with all its guns — he’d seen how shocked Caul looked when he caught a glimpse of those. He’d been set up. He was a pawn in a game whose rules he couldn’t fathom. Maybe he should just surrender himself to the Green Storm; shout for the sentries and give himself up. They might not be as bad as everyone said, and at least he’d have a chance of seeing Hester…
A black shape dropped out of the twilight. He flung his arms up and turned his face away, squeezing his eyes shut. There was a hoarse cry, and he felt a beak strike his head; a sharp, painful blow like a tap from a small hammer. Then a flapping and fluttering of wings, and nothing. He looked up and around. He’d heard about this; about sea-birds that attacked anyone who came near their nesting-grounds. High above him, thousands wheeled against the gathering dark. He started to hurry up the stairs, hoping that they didn’t all get the same idea.
He had made it up another flight before the bird came at him again, sweeping in from the side with a long, guttural squawk. He had a better look at it this time; wide, grubby wings like a raggedy cloak, and the eyes glinting green above the open beak. He struck at it with his fist and his forearm and flung it away. As he hurried on up he felt pain and looked down to see blood welling out of three long cuts on the side of his hand. What sort of bird was this? Its talons had gone straight through his best leather mittens!
Another shriek, shrill and close enough to be heard through the racket of the birds overhead. Wings flapped around his head, a confusion of feathers, batting at his face and his hair. He could smell a chemical smell, and this time he saw that the green glare in the bird’s eyes was not the reflection of the lights above. He pulled out the gun Wrasse had given him and struck at the thing. It whirled away to windward, but an instant later more claws raked his scalp; he was being attacked by two of the creatures.
He started to run, up and up, with the birds — if they were birds — squabbling and screeching around him, sometimes lunging in to strike at his head or his neck. There were only two of them — the other birds were minding their own business, circling the island’s summit. Only two, but two were more than enough. Little flashes of light rebounded from razor-blade claws and clacking metal beaks; wings stuttered and snapped like flags in a gale. “Help!” he shouted, pointlessly, and “Get off! Get off!” He thought of running back down to the safety of the waiting limpet, but the birds flung themselves at his face when he turned, and the door was close now, only one more flight of stairs to go.
He scrambled up, slithering on the icy steps, holding up his hands in his slashed mittens to try and protect his head. He could feel hot trickles of blood running down his face. In the last light of the dying day he saw the door ahead and flung himself at it, but he was too busy fending off the darting beaks and slicing claws to fumble with the lock-pick. In desperation, he raised the gun and aimed it upwards. A flat crack echoed from the cliffs, and one of the green-eyed birds dropped away, trailing a long plume of smoke behind it as it plunged towards the surf. The other drew back, then swept down again. Tom hid his face, and the gun slipped from his bloody hands and bounced off the handrails and fell away from him into the dark.
The white blade of a searchlight beam slashed across the cliff-face, stabbing at him through the whirlwind of wings and flapping shadow. He cowered against the door. A siren started to howl, then another and another, long echoes bounding from the cliffs. “Wrasse!” he shouted. “Caul! Help!”
It seemed impossible that everything had gone so wrong so quickly.
A voice crackled over the Screw Worm ’s radio. “They’ve got him.”
Wrasse nodded calmly. Uncle had told him that it would probably go this way. “Get those crabs moving,” he told the radio. “We’ve only got a few minutes before they realize he’s all on his own.”
He began pressing buttons, throwing switches. A hatch on the hull opened to release a battered old cargo balloon. As the balloon drifted up into the storm of birds and searchlight beams around the island’s summit, the Screw Worm ’s magnets came free of the jetty one by one, and it folded its legs and sank into the surf like a stone.