The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) by Eoin McNamee Page A

found that he had snapped the ties around his hands. He grabbed the battered revolver from one of his hidden pockets and trained it on the squad as they got slowly to their feet. Les, recovering quickly, hovered five feet above the ground, a gun in each hand pointed at the soldiers.
    “Don’t move,” he said slowly. “Danny, you nearly burst my eardrums.”
    Without a word, Nala ran to tie up the squad members. Dixie helped.
    “Where did you two come from?” Danny gasped, amazed.
    “Followed you,” Les said cheerfully. “I carried Dixie. I’ve been practicing my flying. You want to work on your navigation, Danny. Couldn’t believe it when you flew into that storm. We just went around it.”
    “We thought you’d try to rescue your … the other agent who brought you up,” Dixie said.
    “Sometimes for a spy you’re pretty transparent,” Les said.
    “And there are other people around here not transparent at all,” Danny said. “Nala, I saw them shoot you in the chest!”
    Nala reached inside his jerkin and brought out the steel tray that Danny had given him with food on it. “When I hear them come in, I do this,” the Cherb explained. Danny looked at the tray. It was pocked with bullet marks, but none had penetrated.
    “What are we going to do with this lot?” Dixie said.
    “Bullet here,” Nala said, pointing to the back of his neck.
    “Cut it out, Nala,” Danny said. “First of all, Dixie and Les, you have to go back. This is not your fight. You’re needed at Wilsons.”
    “Forget about it, Danny, that’s not going to happen. We’re here for good.”
    “I’ve lost too … too many people.”
    “Think about it,” Dixie said, serious for once. “You reckon it’s any less dangerous in Wilsons? If and when the Cherbs invade, the place is finished.”
    “I’m betting that whatever happens in the end, you’ll be involved with it,” Les added. “Besides, things happen when you’re around. This is what I think.… You were lured here to a trap. They let Stone go—because I can’t see any other way he got out of that place. He was the bait. And the trap would have worked if we hadn’t helped. You need us, Danny.”
    Danny looked at his friends, a plan forming in his mind.
    “Okay,” he said, “but here’s what we have to do. They were expecting two prisoners, so that’s what we’ll give them. Dixie, come here.”

    P earl lay awake in the darkness. The men had left her alone for two days now. Her body was racked with pain and sleep was difficult. She drifted in and out of consciousness. Sometimes a dream brought her back to the time when Danny was small. She would remember bathing him, reading him stories and chatting when he came home from school, and would smile in her sleep. But waking always brought pain and fear. The men would come again.
    And indeed her cell door did clang open that morning. Two men entered and she shrank against the wall. It had always been two men in the days of torture. But this time they laughed at her feeble protests. They made her stand against the wall and measured her. Then they weighed her on a portable scale. Finally they put a tape around her neck, recording the results carefully in a notebook. When they went away, she lay down again. She had no illusions about the place she was in. She would never see the sun again, but she longed to see Danny’s face one more time. She tried to find a comfortable space for her broken body in the hope that sleep would bring perhaps one more sweet memory.
    A t Wilsons Academy for the Devious Arts, Master Brunholm yelled into Vandra’s face.
    “You will tell what you know, or I’ll bring that so-called assassin friend of yours in and get it out of him.”
    “He doesn’t know anything,” Vandra said.
    “A few days locked in the Butts and we’ll soon find out if you’re telling the truth! Where are they?”
    “I told you a thousand times, I don’t know!”
    “Has Danny gone over to the other