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Artemis noticed movement by the door. It was Mulch. He was grinning and waving. Waving good-bye, just in case Julius forgot about his two-day head start. The dwarf pointed to a blue canister mounted on a wall bracket, and he was gone.
“Butler,” rasped Artemis, with the absolute last ounce of his strength. “Could someone spray me down? And then could we please go to Murmansk?”
Butler was mystified. “Spray? What spray?”
Holly unhooked the antirad foam canister, flipping the safety catch.
“Allow me,” she grinned. “It would be my pleasure.”
She directed a jet of foul-smelling foam at Artemis. In seconds he resembled a half-melted snowman. Holly laughed. Who said there were no perks in law enforcement?
Police Plaza, Operations Booth
Once the cannon plasma had short-circuited Cudgeon’s remote control, power came rushing back to the Operations Booth. Foaly lost no time in activating the subcutaneous sleepers planted below goblin offenders’ skin. That put half of the B’wa Kell out of action right away. Then he reprogrammed Police Plaza’s own DNA cannons for nonlethal bursts. It was all over in seconds.
Captain Kelp’s first thought was for his subordinates.
“Sound off!” he shouted, his voice slicing through the chaos. “Did we lose anyone?”
The squadron leaders answered in sequence, confirming that there had been no fatalities.
“We were lucky,” remarked a warlock medic. “There’s not a drop of magic left in the building. Not even a medi-pac. The next officer to go down would have stayed down.”
Trouble turned his attention to the Ops Booth. He did not look amused.
Foaly depolarized the quartz window, and opened a channel. “Hey, guys. I wasn’t behind this. It was Cudgeon. I just saved everyone. I sent a sound recording to a cell phone; that wasn’t easy. You should be giving me a medal.”
Trouble clenched his fist. “Yeah, Foaly, come on out here and let me give you your medal.”
Foaly may not have had many social skills, but he knew thinly veiled threats when he heard them.
“Oh, no. Not me. I’m staying right here until Commander Root gets here. He can explain everything.”
The centaur blacked out the window and busied himself running a bug sweep. He would isolate every last trace of Opal Koboi and flush it out of the system. Paranoid, was he? Who was the paranoid one now, Holly? Who was the paranoid one now?
CHAPTER 14
FATHER’S DAY
Murmansk, Arctic Circle
The Arctic seascape between Murmansk and Severmorsk had become a submarine graveyard for Russia’s once mighty fleet. Easily a hundred nuclear submarines lay rusting among the coastline’s various inlets and fjords, with only the odd danger sign or roving patrol to warn off curious passersby. At night, you didn’t have to look too hard to see the glow, or listen too hard to hear the hum.
One such submarine was the Nikodim. A twenty-year-old Typhoon class with rusty pipes and a leaky reactor. Not a healthy combination. And it was here that the Mafiya kingpin, Britva, had instructed his lackeys to make the exchange for Artemis Fowl Senior.
Mikhael Vassikin and Kamar were none too happy with the situation. They had been bunked in the captain’s quarters for two days already, and were convinced their lives were growing shorter by the minute.
Vassikin coughed. “You hear that? My guts aren’t right. It’s the radiation, I’m telling you.”
“This whole thing is ridiculous,” snarled Kamar. “The Fowl boy is thirteen. Thirteen! He’s a baby. How can a child raise five million dollars? It’s crazy.”
Vassikin sat up on his bunk. “Maybe not. I’ve heard stories about this one. They say he has powers.”
Kamar snorted. “Powers? Magic? Oh, go stuff your head in the reactor, you old woman.”
“No, I have a contact in Interpol. They have an active file on this boy. Thirteen years old and with an active file? I am thirty-seven, and still no Interpol file.” The Russian sounded disappointed.
“An active file. What’s magic about that?”
“But my contact swears that this boy Fowl is sighted all over the world, on the same day. The same hour.”
Kamar was unimpressed. “Your contact is a bigger coward than you are.”
“Believe what you want. But I’ll be happy to get off this cursed boat alive. One way or the other.”
Kamar pulled a fur cap down over his ears.
“Okay. Let’s go. It’s time.”
“Finally,” sighed Vassikin.
The two men collected the prisoner from the next cabin. They were not worried about an escape attempt. Not by a prisoner who had one leg missing and a hood secured over his head. Vassikin slung Fowl Senior over his shoulder and climbed the rungs to the conning tower.
Kamar used a radio to check in with the backup. There were more than a hundred criminals hiding among the petrified bushes and snowdrifts. Cigarette tips lit the night like fireflies.
“Put them out, idiots,” he hissed over an open frequency. “It’s almost midnight. Fowl could be here any second. Remember, no one shoots until I give the order. Then everybody shoots.”
You could almost hear the hiss as a hundred cigarette butts were flicked into the snow. A hundred men. It was a costly operation. But a mere drop in the ocean compared to the twenty percent promised them by Britva.
Wherever this boy Fowl came from, he would be trapped in a deadly crossfire. There was no way out for him or his father, while they were safe behind the steel conning tower. Kamar grinned. Let’s see how much magic you have then, Irlandskii.
Holly surveyed the scene through the hi-res night-sight filter in her helmet with the eyes of a seasoned Recon officer. Butler was stuck with plain old binoculars.
“How many cigarettes did you count?”
“More than eighty,” replied the captain. “Could be up to a hundred men. You walk in there, and you’ll be carried out.”
Root nodded in agreement. It was a tactical nightmare.
They were bivouacked on the opposite side of the fjord, high on a sloped hill. The Council had even approved wings, on account of Artemis’s recent services.
Foaly had done a mail retrieval from Artemis’s computer and found a message: Five million U.S. The Nikodim. Murmansk. Midnight on the fourteenth. It was short and to the point. What else was there to say? They had missed their opportunity to snatch Artemis Senior before he was moved to the drop point, and now the Mafiya were in control.
They gathered around while Butler sketched a diagram in the snow with a laser pointer.
“I would guess that the target is being held here, in the conning tower. To get there, you’ve got to walk all the way along the sub. They’ve got a hundred men hiding out around the perimeter. We have no air support. No satellite information and minimal weaponry.” Butler sighed. “I’m sorry, Artemis. I just don’t see it.”
Holly knelt to study the diagram. “A time-stop would take days to set up. We can’t shield either, because of the radiation, and there’s no way to get close enough to mesmerize.”
“What about LEP weaponry?” asked Artemis, though he knew the answer.
Root chewed an unlit cigar. “We discussed this, Artemis. We have as much firepower as you like, but if we start blasting, your father will be their first target. Standard kidnapping rules.”
Artemis pulled an LEP field parka closer to his throat, staring at the rough diagram. “And if we give them the money?”
Foaly had run them up five million in small bills on one of his old printers. He even had a squad of sprites crumple it up a bit.
Butler shook his head. “That’s not the way these people do business. Alive, Mister Fowl is a potential enemy. He has to die.”
Artemis nodded slowly. There was absolutely no other way. He would have to implement the plan he had concocted in the Arctic shuttleport.
“Very well, everyone,” he said. “I have a plan. But it’s going to sound a bit extreme.?
??
Mikhael Vassikin’s cell phone rang, shattering the Arctic silence. Vassikin almost fell down the tower hatch.
“Da? What is it? I’m busy.”
“This is Fowl,” said a voice in flawless Russian, colder than Arctic pack ice. “It’s midnight. I’m here.”
Mikhael swung around, scanning the surroundings through his binoculars.
“Here? Where? I don’t see anything?”
“Close enough.”
“How did you get this number?”
A chuckle rattled through the speakers. The sound set Vassikin’s fillings on edge.
“I know someone. He has all the numbers.”
Mikhael took deep breaths, settling himself. “Do you have the money?”
“Of course. Do you have the package?”
“Right here.”
Again the cold chuckle. “All I see is a fat imbecile, a little rat, and someone with a hood over his head. It could be anyone. I’m not paying five million for your cousin Yuri.”
