Artemis knew it too. It was most of the verbal detonation code for the fairy sonix grenade magnetized to the underside of the table. One of Butler’s little security devices. All they needed was one more word and
the grenade would explode, sending a solid wall of sound charging through the building, blowing out every window and eardrum. There would be no smoke or flame, but anyone within a ten meter radius not wearing earplugs had about five seconds before severe pain set in. One more word.
The old lady scratched her head with the revolver’s barrel. “Richard of York? I remember now, the nuns taught us that in school. Richard of York gave battle in vain. It’s one of those memory tricks. The colors of the rainbow.”
Rainbow. The final word. Artemis remembered, just in time, to slacken his jaw. If his teeth were clenched, the sonic waves would shatter them like sugar glass.
The grenade detonated in a blast of compressed sound, instantaneously hurling eleven people to the farthest extremities of the room until they came into contact with various walls. The lucky ones hit partitions and went straight through. The unlucky ones collided with solid cinderblock walls. Things broke. Not the cinderblocks.
Artemis was safe in Butler’s bear hug. The bodyguard had anchored himself against a solid door frame, folding the flying boy into his arms. They had several other advantages over Spiro’s assassins: their teeth were intact, they did not suffer from any compound fractures, and the sonic filter sponges had sealed, saving their eardrums from perforation.
Butler surveyed the room. The assassins were all down, clutching their ears. They wouldn’t be uncrossing their eyes for several days. The manservant drew his Sig Sauer pistol from a shoulder holster.
“Stay here,” he commanded. “I’m going to check the kitchen.”
Artemis settled back into his chair, drawing several shaky breaths. All around was a chaos of dust and moans. But once again, Butler had saved them. All was not lost. It was even possible that they could catch Spiro before he left the country. Butler had a contact in Heathrow security, Sid Commons, an ex-Green Beret he’d served with on bodyguard duty in Monte Carlo.
A large figure blocked the sunlight. It was Butler, returned from his reconnoitering. Artemis breathed deeply, feelingly uncharacteristically emotional.
“Butler,” he began. “We really must talk regarding your salary. . . .”
But it wasn’t Butler. It was Arno Blunt. He had something in both hands. On his left palm, two tiny cones of yellow foam.
“Earplugs,” he spat through broken teeth. “I always wear ’em before a fire fight. Good thing too, eh?”
In his right hand, Blunt held a silenced pistol.
“You first,” he said. “Then the ape.”
Arno Blunt cocked the gun, took aim briefly, and fired.
CHAPTER 2
LOCKDOWN
Haven City, the Lower Elements
Though Artemis did not intend it, the Cube’s scan for surveillance beams was to have far-reaching repercussions. The search parameters were so vague that the Cube sent probes into deep space, and of course, deep underground.
Below the surface, the Lower Elements Police were stretched to their limits following the recent Goblin upprising. Three months after the attempted goblin takeover, most of the major players were in custody. But there were still isolated pockets of the B’wa Kell triad loping around Haven’s tunnels with illegal Softnose lasers.
Every available LEP officer had been drafted to help with Operation Mop-Up before the tourist season got started. The last thing the city council wanted was tourists spending their leisure gold in Atlantis because Haven’s pedestrianized central plaza was not safe to wander through. Tourism, after all, accounted for eighteen percent of the capital’s revenue.
Captain Holly Short was on loan from the Reconnaissance Squad. Generally, her job was to fly to the surface on the trail of fairies who had ventured above-ground without a visa. If even one renegade fairy got himself captured by the Mud Men, then Haven would cease to be a haven. So until every gang goblin was licking his eyeballs in Howler’s Peak correctional facility, Holly’s duties were the same as every other LEP officer: rapid response to any B’wa Kell alert.
Today, she was escorting four rowdy goblin hoods to Police Plaza for processing. They had been found asleep in an insect delicatessen, stomachs distended by a night of gluttony. It was lucky for them that Holly had arrived when she did, because the deli’s dwarf owner was on the point of lowering the scaly foursome into the deep-fat fryer.
Holly’s ride along for Operation Mop-Up was Corporal Grub Kelp, little brother to the famous Captain Trouble Kelp, one of the LEP’s most decorated officers. Grub did not share his brother’s stoic personality.
“I got a hangnail cuffing that last goblin,” said the junior officer, chewing on his thumb.
“Painful,” said Holly, trying to sound interested.
They were driving along a magnastrip to Police Plaza, with the perpetrators manacled in the rear of their LEP wagon. It wasn’t actually a regulation wagon. The B’wa Kell had managed to burn out so many police vehicles during their short-lived revolution that the LEP had been forced to commandeer anything with an engine and room in the back for a few prisoners. In reality, Holly was piloting a fast-food van with the LEP acorn symbol spray painted on the side. The motor-pool gnomes had simply bolted the serving hatch and removed the ovens. A pity they couldn’t remove the grease smell.
Grub studied his wounded finger. “Those cuffs have sharp edges. I should lodge a complaint.”
Holly concentrated on the road, though the magnastrip did the steering for her. If Grub did lodge a complaint, it wouldn’t be his first or even his twentieth. Trouble’s little brother found fault with everything, except himself. In this instance he was completely wrong: there were no sharp edges on Plexiglas vacuum cuffs. If there were, a goblin might think to poke a hole in the other mitt and allow oxygen to reach his hand, and nobody wanted goblins hurling fireballs in the back of their vehicles.
“I know it sounds petty, to lodge a complaint over hangnails, but no one could accuse me of being petty.”
“You! Petty! Perish the thought.”
Grub puffed up his chest. “After all, I am the only member of LEPretrieval One to have faced down the human Butler.”
Holly groaned loudly. This, she fervently hoped, would dissuade Grub from telling his Artemis Fowl war story yet again. It grew longer and more fantastical each time. In reality, Butler had let him go, as a fisherman would a minnow.
But Grub was not about to take a hint.
“I remember it well,” he began melodramatically. “It was a dark night.”
And, as though his very words carried immeasurable magic, every light in the city went out.
Not only that but the magnastrip’s power failed, leaving them stranded in the middle lane of a frozen highway.
“I didn’t do that, did I?” whispered Grub.
Holly didn’t answer, already halfway out of the wagon door. Overhead, the sun strips that replicated surface light were fading to black. In the last moments of half-light Holly squinted toward the Northern Tunnel, and sure enough, the door was sliding down, emergency lights revolving along its lower edge. Two hundred feet of solid steel separating Haven from the outside world. Similar doors were dropping at strategic arches all over the city. Lockdown. There were only three reasons that the Council would initiate a citywide lockdown. Flood, quarantine, or discovery by the humans.
Holly looked around her. Nobody was drowning, nobody was sick. So the Mud Men were coming. Finally, every fairy’s worst nightmare was coming true.
Emergency lights flickered on overhead. The sunstrips’ soft white glow was replaced by an eerie orange. Official vehicles received a burst of power from the magnastrip, enough to get them to the nearest depot. Ordinary citizens were not so lucky. They would have to walk. Hundreds stumbled from their automobiles, too scared to protest. That would come later.
“Captain Short! Holly!”
It was Grub. No doubt he would be lodging a complaint with someone.
“Corporal,” she said, turning back to the vehicle. “This is no time for panic. We need to show an example. . . .”
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The lecture petered out in her throat, because of what was happening to the wagon. All LEP vehicles would have received the regulation ten-minute burst of power from the magnastrip, to get them and their cargo to safety. This power would also keep the Plexiglas cuffs vacuumed. Of course, they weren’t using an official LEP vehicle and so it hadn’t been cleared for emergency power. Something the goblins had obviously realized, because they were trying to burn their way out of the wagon.
Grub stumbled from the cab, his helmet blackened by soot.
“They melted the cuffs off and started blasting the doors,” he panted, retreating to a safe distance.
Goblins. Evolution’s little joke. Pick the dumbest creatures on the planet and give them the ability to conjure fire. If the goblins didn’t stop blasting the wagon’s reinforced interior, they would be encased by molten metal. Not a nice way to go, even if you were fireproof.
Holly activated the amplifier in her LEP helmet. “You there, in the wagon. Cease fire. The vehicle will collapse and you will be trapped.”
For several moments smoke billowed from the vents, then the vehicle settled on its axles. A face appeared at the grille, forked tongue slithering through the mesh.
“You think we’re stupid, elf? We’re gonna burn clean through this pile of junk.”
Holly stepped closer, turning up the speakers.
“Listen to me, goblin. You are stupid, let’s just accept that and move on. If you continue to fireball that vehicle, the roof will melt and fall on you like shells from a human gun. You may be fireproof, but are you bulletproof?”
The goblin licked his lidless eyes, thinking it over. “You lie, elf! We will blow a hole right through this prison. You will be next.”
The wagon’s panels began to lurch and buckle as the goblins renewed their attack.
“Not to worry,” said Grub, from a safe distance. “The fire extinguishers will get them.”
“They would,” corrected Holly, “if the fire extinguishers weren’t connected to the main power grid, which is shut down.”
A mobile food preparation wagon such as this one would have to adhere to the strictest fire regulations before setting one magna wheel on the strip. In this case, several foam-packed extinguishers that could submerge the entire interior in flame retardant foam in a matter of seconds. The nice thing about the flame foam was that it hardened on contact with air, but the not-so-nice thing about flame foam was that the trip switch was connected to the magnastrip. No power, no foam.