Thunderbolt Read online

  I sighed and shut my eyes: for Amelia to feel the need to lie to me she must have thought I was in an awful state.

  ‘You did brilliantly just to survive,’ Mum was saying. ‘The pirates, the camp; to make a run for it like that took guts. And it helped. With no armed resistance it made your rescue easier.’

  I pushed myself up in the bed again. ‘Rescue?’

  ‘Even if I hadn’t got your “no ransom” message I’d have done everything I could to avoid paying one. It’s a matter of principle. As soon as Pete confirmed what had happened, I swung into action.’

  Xander said, ‘Your mum sent that Leopard guy to get us out of there. Isn’t that right, Mrs Courtney?’

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘We were going to try and extract you from the camp itself, once we tracked you down to it, but obviously that would have been much riskier. You made the job a lot easier by breaking out.’

  What she was saying made little sense to me. I searched her face for an explanation. Was she lying, hoping to make me feel less guilty? That’s not Mum’s style, not her style at all. And yet. I realised I’d been holding my breath, and now let it out, literally deflating in front of her.

  ‘If you kids could give Jack and me a minute, I’d appreciate it,’ she said.

  ‘As in sixty seconds?’ said Amelia, only half joking.

  ‘Come on,’ said Xander, leading her out. ‘See you in a bit.’

  ‘Nobody paid a ransom,’ Mum repeated when they’d left. ‘I respected your wishes.’

  ‘Well, even if that’s true you still had to pay a damn mercenary,’ I muttered.

  ‘Jonny is no mercenary, Jack.’

  ‘Who’s Jonny? I’m talking about the Leopard.’

  ‘Leopard, Leopold, those are aliases. His name is Jonny Armfield. And he’s one of the good guys.’

  The world was still a bit fuzzy, but I knew one thing for sure. ‘Actually,’ I muttered, ‘you’re dead wrong about that.’

  ‘He found you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m grateful and everything. But that’s his specialty. Finding kids for money. Though mostly he sells them off as soldiers.’

  ‘No,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’ve seen him do it! He came to the camp and took a load away. And just yesterday he consigned my good friend Mo, together with all the rest of the kids who tried to escape with us, back to that hellhole. What do you think will happen to them now he’s done that?!’

  ‘Jack, you were my concern. You and Amelia and Xander.’

  Even as she insisted this, I knew she was thinking of the kids she’d not been able to help, and was wishing she’d been able to do more, so I let up. ‘Thanks for paying him to rescue us at least,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t pay him.’

  Now she was making no sense at all. ‘Mercenaries do stuff – bad stuff – for money. They’re not charities, Mum. Don’t expect me to believe he did it for free.’

  ‘Not for free, no. But for something more significant than money.’

  An electric pulse went through me as she said that. It connected the dots, just for a second, and I did not like the shape they made one bit. Mum, seeing the pained realisation in my face, started talking quickly, wanting to head it off no doubt, but in fact making everything worse.

  ‘Jonny and I go way back. He was in the army when we first met, Special Forces, and now he’s in Intelligence. He was out here working. In fact, he’s the real reason we came to Zanzibar. I wanted you to meet him. Not in the way you did, of course. We were trying to organise a simple face-to-face on neutral ground when you were abducted.’

  ‘The guy buys and sells child soldiers,’ I said. ‘Why would I want to meet somebody like that?’

  ‘It may have seemed that way, but trust me, he does the exact opposite. And I wanted you to meet him because of who he is. You asked the question. He is the answer.’

  I knew what she was going to say – that this Jonny guy was my actual father – but I managed to blot it out somehow, and here’s what I was thinking: Mum had been conned by a bad man before. No matter what she said now, she was wrong to think Jonny, Leopold, whoever, was a good person. I’d seen him be the opposite of good. I said nothing, just sat there as she went on.

  ‘But listen. Why don’t you let him explain what he actually does in person? He wants to talk to you. Now that you’re out of that hellhole, as you put it, he can drop the cover persona and be himself. Not today, but soon, when you’ve got more of your strength back, talk to him. Let me arrange that.’

  I’d seen the guy hand over money for child recruits; I’d watched him condemn Mo and his friends to near certain death. Now, as I lay back against the cool hospital pillow and shut my eyes, I saw the hopeless fear etched on poor Mo’s face as he was led away. With my eyes still closed I answered Mum in a whisper. ‘I’m pleased we’re safe. I’m sorry I put us in danger in the first place. Thank you for getting us out, for organising a rescue. I’m grateful for that guy’s help. But whoever he is he’s not my father and no, I don’t want to meet him today, tomorrow, or next week. In fact, I never want to see his face again for as long as I live.’

  Epilogue

  A few months later, after what passed for a return to normality – or the drudgery of school, at least – Xander, Amelia and I met up during the autumn half term to go mountain biking. It was a crisp day with a bright blue sky full of contrails. The bracken had already turned brown but most of the trees still had their leaves. We were close to where I live in the Surrey Hills, about to drop into Captain Clunk, one of my favourite trails, and Xander had paused to let some air out of his front tyre. He’d pumped it up too hard that morning before we started. Or at least that was his excuse for washing out in a flat corner on the last run.

  Amelia was looking at her phone. I checked mine too and discovered I had a voicemail from a number I didn’t recognise. I reckoned it was probably spam, but Xander was still fiddling with his tyre so I pressed play and held the phone to my ear.

  ‘Hey,’ said an instantly familiar voice. ‘It’s me, Mo.’

  ‘No way!’ I shouted, hitting pause.

  ‘No way what?’ asked Amelia. ‘We’re going to need some context.’

  Xander had stood up from his bike and was looking at me closely. I put the phone on speaker and started the message again. Even the birds seemed to quieten down as it played.

  ‘Hey, it’s me, Mo. I hope you guys are safely home. I thought you might want to know I made it out too, thanks to you. A few of us did. Your treasure worked. Remember that very tall guard the Leopard turned us over to? Well, he saw the sense in trading: a boy for a ring was his best offer. For all seven pieces he’d let seven of us run for it, while he took the rest back to General Sir. We made it to the river and across the border eventually; it wasn’t actually that far but our pace was very slow. In Kenya we split up. Long story short, I reached the capital and found work as a fixer for a travel agent. It doesn’t pay much but I’m allowed to sleep in the storeroom behind the shop and the owner’s wife makes great fried chicken. So, I have a roof over my head and enough to eat and that’s a start. Without those rings I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Thanks again. Who knows what’s coming next? When I find out I’ll let you know!’

  The three of us looked at one another. I bit my lip, a lump in my throat. To buy time for it to pass I played the message again, but Mo’s voice – it was definitely him – sounding so cheerful made the lump bigger, not smaller. Luckily Amelia cut in with, ‘I always thought someone as resourceful as Mo would find a way out sooner or later. The rings just expedited his self-extraction, in my opinion.’

  ‘You mean sped up his escape,’ said Xander.

  ‘That’s what the words mean, yes,’ said Amelia.

  They were jousting but smiling at one another. We’d all been gutted after the Leopard split us up from Mo and the others. To hear that some of them at least, and Mo in particular, had made it to safety, was the best news possible. When Xander finally s
orted his bike, I rode that trail flat out with the biggest grin on my face.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Mum, so I headed straight home after that. She was in the study poring over maps of the Arctic tundra. Apparently a consortium of oil companies was planning on digging up a load of pristine wilderness to get at the gas beneath it, and Mum’s latest thing was coordinating efforts to stop them.

  Since we got back from Kenya, I’d filled her in on the full story with Mo, and I knew she’d been feeling guilty that the Leopard hung him and the others out to dry, so I hoped this news would mean a lot to her too.

  It did. She beamed at me and said, ‘I knew all that treasure-hunting was for a purpose.’

  ‘Originally I was going to put what we found towards your coral conservation project,’ I said.

  ‘I know, and I’d have been so grateful. But this makes more sense given what happened.’

  And that would have been that. Mum had known better than to bring up the Leopard – or Jonny, if that’s what he was really called – since our return, and although she could now say his actions hadn’t cost Mo his life after all, she didn’t.

  I left her to her work and went down to the kitchen to fix myself some lunch. While I was stuffing a bagel full of pickle, ham, cheese and mayonnaise the doorbell rang. It was just the postman; he’d rung because he needed a signature for a recorded delivery. I did the honours, thanked him, and went back inside.

  It turned out the padded envelope I’d signed for was addressed to me. I hadn’t ordered anything online and wasn’t expecting a delivery of any sort. With the bagel clamped between my teeth I ripped open the envelope, mildly curious to see what was inside. When the contents spilled out I opened my mouth in surprise, dropping the bagel in among the seven gold rings rolling around on the countertop.

  What the …?

  I checked the envelope and fished out a note. It was handwritten in black ink on a square of thick cream paper.

  Dear J, I understand your reluctance to meet with me. Nevertheless, I hope that by returning these rings, which I have retrieved on your behalf, I can prove that all was not as it seemed in Somalia. My actions, which you witnessed there, were part of an ongoing operation. Had I revealed my true identity I would have jeopardised that operation’s goal, which included shutting down camps such as General Sir’s permanently. I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to explain myself in person one day. For now, you should know your friend Mo is safe. Though I was unable to liberate him and the others when I caught up with you, for fear of blowing my own cover, I assure you that freeing all the children in the camp was always my intention. With these rings you – and he – beat me to it. They served their purpose. I have great pleasure in returning them to their rightful owner. Yours, J.

  The rings were unmistakably the ones we’d found with our detectors. The little earring was even among them. Amelia had smuggled the lot through our ordeal, and I had last seen them as I pressed them into Mo’s hand. How had this man hunted them down? I had no idea, yet here they were, indisputably, on the kitchen work surface.

  I gathered them up. In a minute I’d show them to Mum. Maybe they’d help fund her new tundra preservation initiative. She’d offered to take me up there – somewhere cold for a change! – to look at what was at stake. This would be a way of showing a bit of enthusiasm for the cause.

  I’d talk to her about all that in a bit, just as soon as I’d finished my lunch. I read the note over and over as I ate that bagel. Like all the food I’d eaten since our return, it tasted magnificent. I smiled when I finished it.

  The note was written in solid, regular handwriting.

  Dear J, it began. And Yours, J, it ended.

  Despite myself, I liked that.

  Look out for the next Jack Courtney Adventure, Shockwave, coming in 2022

  Wilbur Smith is an international bestselling author, having sold over 130 million copies of his incredible adventure novels. His Courtney family saga is the longest running series in publishing history, and with the Jack Courtney Adventures he brings the series to a new generation.

  Chris Wakling read his first Wilbur Smith book when he was Jack’s age: fourteen. He writes novels and travel journalism, and is available for events and interviews.

  For all the latest information about Wilbur, visit: www.wilbursmithbooks.com facebook.com/WilburSmith www.wilbur-niso-smithfoundation.org

  Wilbur Smith donates twenty per cent of profits received from the sale of this copy to The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation. The Foundation’s focus is to encourage adventure writing and literacy and find new talent.

  For more information, please visit www.wilbur-niso-smithfoundation.org

  Thank you for choosing a Piccadilly Press book.

  If you would like to know more about our authors, our books or if you’d just like to know what we’re up to, you can find us online.

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  And you can also find us on:

  We hope to see you soon!

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

  PICCADILLY PRESS

  80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Copyright © Orion Mintaka (UK) Ltd, 2021

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Wilbur Smith to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-84812-856-9

  This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher

  Piccadilly Press is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk