In case of what? wondered Foaly, but he didn’t comment. Save it for an I told you so later.
Root turned to Holly.
“Are you ready, Captain?”
Going back in. The idea of identifying three cadavers didn’t appeal to Holly. But she knew it was her duty. She was the only one with firsthand knowledge of the interior.
“Yessir. On my way.”
Holly selected a blackout suit from the rack, pulling it on over her jumpsuit. As per training, she checked the gauge before tugging the vulcanized cowl. A dip in pressure would indicate a rip, which could prove fatal in the long term.
Root lined up the insertion team at the perimeter. The remains of Retrieval One were about as eager to insert themselves into the manor as they would be to juggle Atlantean stink balloons.
“You’re certain the big one is gone?”
“Yes, Captain Kelp. He’s gone, one way or another.”
Trouble wasn’t convinced. “Because that’s one mean human. I think he has magic of his own.”
Corporal Grub giggled, and got an immediate clip on the ear for himself. He muttered something about telling Mommy and quickly strapped on his helmet.
Root felt his complexion redden. “Let’s move out. Your mission is to locate and recover the bullion. Watch for booby traps. I didn’t trust Fowl when he was alive, and I definitely don’t trust him now that he’s dead.”
The words “booby traps” got everyone’s attention. The idea of a Bouncing Betty anti-personnel mine exploding at head height was enough to dispel any nonchalance in the troops. No one built weapons of cruelty like the Mud Men.
As the junior Recon officer, Holly was on point. And even though there weren’t supposed to be any hostiles in the manor, she found her gun hand automatically straying to the Neutrino 2000.
The mansion was eerily quiet, with only the fizzle of the last few solinium flares to alleviate the stillness. Death was there too, in the silence. The manor was a cradle of death. Holly could smell it. Behind those medieval walls lay the bodies of a million insects, and under its floors the cooling corpses of spiders and mice.
They approached the doorway tentatively. Holly swept the area with an X-ray scanner. Nothing under the flagstones but dirt, and a nest of dead money-spiders.
“Clear,” she said into her microphone. “I’m going in. Foaly, have you got your ears on?”
“I’m right there with you, darlin’,” replied the centaur. “Unless you step on a land mine, in which case I’m way back in the Operations Room.”
“Are you getting any thermals?”
“Not after a blue-rinse. We have residual heat signatures all over the place. Mostly solinium flares. It won’t calm down for a couple of days.”
“But no radiation, right?”
“That’s right.”
Root snorted in disbelief. Over the headsets it sounded like an elephant sneezing.
“It looks like we’re going to have to sweep this house the old-fashioned way,” he grumbled.
“Make it quick,” advised Foaly. “I give it five minutes tops before Fowl Manor rejoins the world at large.”
Holly stepped through what used to be the doorway. The chandelier swung gently from the concussive force of the missile’s detonation, but otherwise everything was as she remembered it.
“The gold is downstairs. In my cell.”
Nobody answered. Not in words. Someone did manage a retch. Right into the microphone. Holly spun around. Trouble was doubled over, clutching his stomach.
“I don’ feel so good,” he groaned. A tad unnecessarily, considering the pool of vomit all over his boots.
Corporal Grub took a breath, possibly to utter a sentence containing the word Mommy. What came out was a jet of concentrated bile. Unfortunately Grub didn’t have the opportunity to open his visor before the illness struck. It was not a pretty sight.
“Ugh,” said Holly, pressing the corporal’s visor-release button. A tsunami of regurgitated rations flooded over Grub’s blackout suit.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Root, elbowing past the brothers. He didn’t get very far. One step over the threshold and he was throwing up with the rest of them.
Holly pointed her helmet-cam at the stricken officers.
“What the hell is going on here, Foaly?”
“I’m searching. Hold on.”
Holly could hear computer keys being punched furiously.
“Okay. Sudden vomiting. Spatial nausea . . . Oh no.”
“What?” asked Holly. But she already knew. Maybe she always had.
“It’s the magic,” blurted Foaly, words barely decipherable in his excitement. “They can’t enter the house until Fowl is dead. It’s like an extreme allergic reaction. That means, unbelievable, that means . . .”
“They made it,” completed Holly. “He’s alive. Artemis Fowl is alive.”
“D’Arvit,” groaned Root, and heaved another quart of vomit onto the terra-cotta tiles.
Holly went on alone. She had to see for herself. If Fowl’s corpse was here, it would be with the gold, of that she was certain.
The same family portraits glared down at her, but now they seemed smug rather than austere. Holly was tempted to loose a few blasts into them from the Neutrino 2000. But that would be against the rules. If Artemis Fowl had beaten them, then that was it. There would be no recriminations.
She descended the stairway to her cell. The door was still swinging slightly from the bio-bomb concussion. A solinium flare ricocheted around the room like a trapped bolt of blue lightning. Holly stepped inside, half-afraid of what she might or might not see.
There was nothing. Nothing dead at any rate. Just gold. Two hundred ingots approximately. Piled on the mattress of her cot. Nice neat military rows. Good old Butler, the only human ever to take on a troll and win.
“Commander? Are you receiving? Over.”
“Affirmative, Captain. Body count?”
“Negative on the bodies, sir. I found the rest of the ransom.”
There was along silence.
“Leave it, Holly. You know the rules. We’re pulling out.”
“But, sir. There must be a way. . . .”
Foaly broke in on the conversation. “But nothing, Captain. I’m counting down the seconds until daylight here, and I don’t like our odds if we have to exit at high noon.”
Holly sighed. It made sense. The People could chose their exit time, as long as they left before the field disintegrated. It just galled her to think they’d been beaten by a human. An adolescent human at that.
She took a last look around the cell. A big ball of hatred had been born here, she realized, and it would have to be dealt with sooner or later. Holly jammed her pistol back into its holster. Preferably sooner. Fowl was the winner this time, but someone like him wouldn’t be able to rest on his laurels. He would be back with some other moneymaking scheme. And when he arrived, he would find Holly Short waiting for him. Waiting with a big gun and a smile.
The ground was soft by the time-stop perimeter. Half a millennium’s bad drainage from the medieval walls had transformed the foundations into a virtual bog. So that was where Mulch surfaced.
The soft ground wasn’t the only reason for choosing that exact spot. The other reason was the smell. A good tunnel dwarf can pick up the scent of gold through half a mile of granite bedrock. Mulch Diggums had one of the best noses in the business.
The hovertrolley floated virtually unguarded. Two of Retrieval’s finest were stationed beside the recovered ransom, but at the moment they were having a little giggle at their stricken commander.
“’E can’t half chuck it, can’t’e, Chix?”
Chix nodded, mimicking Root’s spewing technique.
Chix Verbil’s pantomime antics provided the perfect cover for a spot of pilfering. Mulch gave his tubes a clearing before clambering from the tunnel. The last thing he needed was for a sudden burst of gas to alert the LEP to his presence. He needn’t have worri
ed. He could have slapped Chix Verbil in the face with a wet stink worm, and the sprite wouldn’t have noticed.
In a matter of seconds, he had transferred two dozen ingots into the tunnel. It was the easiest job he had ever pulled. Mulch had to stifle a giggle as he dropped the last two bars down the hole. Julius had really done him a favor, getting him involved in this whole affair. Things couldn’t have worked out much better. He was free as a bird, rich, and best of all presumed dead. By the time the LEP realized that the gold was missing, Mulch Diggums would be half a continent away. If they realized at all.
The dwarf lowered himself into the ground. It would take several trips to move his treasure trove, but it would be worth the delay. With this kind of money, he could take early retirement. He would have to completely disappear of course, but a plan was already forming in his devious mind.
He would live above ground for a spell. Masquerade as a human dwarf, with an aversion to light. Perhaps buy a penthouse with thick blinds. In Manhattan perhaps, or Monte Carlo. It might seem odd, of course, a dwarf shutting himself away from the sun. But then again, he would be an obscenely rich dwarf. And humans will accept any story, however outlandish, when there’s something in it for them. Preferably something green that folds.
Artemis could hear a voice calling his name. There was a face behind the voice, but it was blurred, hard to make out. His father, perhaps?
“Father?” The word was strange in his mouth. Unused. Rusty. Artemis opened his eyes.
Butler was leaning over him. “Artemis. You’re awake.”
“Ah, Butler. It’s you.”
Artemis got to his feet, head spinning with the effort. He expected Butler’s hand at his elbow to steady him. It didn’t come. Juliet was lying on a chaise longue, dribbling onto the cushions. Obviously the draft hadn’t worn off yet.
“It was just sleeping pills, Butler. Harmless.”
The manservant’s eyes had a dangerous glint. “Explain yourself.”
Artemis rubbed his eyes. “Later, Butler. I’m feeling a bit—”
Butler stepped into his path. “Artemis, my sister is lying drugged on that couch. She was almost killed. So explain yourself now!”
Artemis realized that he’d been given an order. He considered being offended, then decided that perhaps Butler was right. He had gone too far.
“I didn’t tell you about the sleeping pills because you’d fight them. It’s only natural. And it was imperative to the plan that we all go to sleep immediately.”
“The plan?”
Artemis lowered himself into a comfortable chair.