The commander frowned. ‘You’re going to have to cut him loose, Holly. We have bigger snails to pop.’
Holly placed her boot on Doodah’s midriff. She was reluctant to jump through LEP hoops, even for an undercover wing commander.
‘What kind of snails?’
Vinyáya’s frown deepened, cutting a slash between her brows.
‘Can we talk in the car, Captain? The regulars are on the way.’
Captain? Vinyáya had referred to her by her old rank. What was going on here? If the regulars were LEP, who were these fairies?
‘I don’t trust the force as much as I used to, Commander. You need to give me something before we go anywhere.’
Vinyáya sighed. ‘Firstly, Captain, we’re not the force. Not the one you think, anyway. Secondly, you want me to give you something? I’ll give you two words. Care to hazard a guess what they are?’
Holly knew at once. She felt it.
‘Artemis Fowl,’ she whispered.
‘That’s right,’ confirmed Vinyáya. ‘Artemis Fowl. Now, are you and your partner prepared to come with us?’
‘Where are you parked?’ asked Holly.
Vinyáya and her mysterious unit obviously had a serious budget. Not only were their weapons state of the art, but their transportation was way out of the usual LEP league. Within seconds of scraping Doodah Day and slipping a tracker into his boot, Holly and Mulch were strapped into lounger seats in the back of a stretch armoured vehicle. They weren’t prisoners exactly, but Holly couldn’t help feeling that she wasn’t in control of her destiny any more.
Vinyáya took off her helmet, shaking out long silver hair. Holly was surprised.
The commander smiled. ‘You like the colour? I got fed up dyeing it.’
‘Yes. It suits you.’
Mulch raised a finger. ‘Sorry to interrupt the salon chat, but who are you people? You’re not LEP; I’ll bet my bum-flap on it.’
Vinyáya swivelled to face the dwarf. ‘How much do you know about demons?’
Mulch checked the vehicle’s cooler and was delighted to find sim-chicken and nettle beer. He liberated both.
‘Demons. Not a lot. Never seen one myself.’
‘What about you, Holly? Remember anything from school?’
Holly was intrigued. Where could this conversation be going? Was this a test of some kind? She thought back to her history classes in Police Academy.
‘Demons. The eighth family of the fairy People. Ten thousand years ago, after the Battle of Taillte, they refused to move underground, opting instead to lift their island out of time and live there in isolation.’
Vinyáya nodded. ‘Very good. So they assembled their circle of warlocks and cast a time spell over the island of Hybras.’
‘They disappeared off the face of the Earth,’ recited Mulch. ‘And no one’s seen a demon since.’
‘Not quite true. A few have popped up over the centuries. One quite recently in fact. And guess who was there to meet him?’
‘Artemis,’ said Holly and Mulch simultaneously.
‘Exactly. Somehow he was able to predict what we couldn’t. We knew when, but our where was off by several metres.’
Holly sat forward. Interested. Back in the game.
‘Did we get Artemis on film?’
‘Not exactly,’ replied Vinyáya cryptically. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll leave the explaining to someone more qualified than me. He’s back at base.’ And she would say no more on the subject. Most infuriating.
Mulch wasn’t one for patience.
‘What? You’re just going to take a nap? Come on, Vinyáya, tell us what little Arty is up to.’
Vinyáya would not be drawn. ‘Relax, Mister Diggums. Have another nettle beer, or some spring water.’ The commander took two bottles from the cooler, offering one to Mulch.
Mulch studied the label. ‘Derrier? No thanks. You know how they put the bubbles in this stuff?’
Vinyáya’s mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile. ‘I thought it was naturally carbonated.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought until I got a prison job at the Derrier plant. They employ every dwarf in the Deeps. They made us sign confidentiality contracts.’
Vinyáya was hooked. ‘So go on, tell me. How do they get the bubbles in?’
Mulch tapped his nose. ‘Can’t say. Breach of contract. All I can say is it involves a huge vat of water and several dwarfs using our… er,’ Mulch pointed to his rear end ‘… natural talents.’
Vinyáya replaced her bottle gingerly.
As Holly sat back in her comfortable gel chair, enjoying yet another of Mulch’s tall tales, a niggling thought nudged through. She realized that Commander Vinyáya had avoided answering the dwarf’s initial question. Who are these people?
Ten minutes later, that question was answered.
‘Welcome to Section Eight Headquarters,’ said Vinyáya. ‘Forgive my theatrics; it’s not often we get to wow people.’
Holly didn’t feel very wowed. They had pulled into a multi-storey car park several blocks down from Police Plaza. The stretch armoured vehicle followed the curved arrows up to the seventh floor, which was stuffed below the craggy roof ceiling. The driver parked in the least accessible, darkest space, then switched off the engine.
They sat for several seconds in the damp darkness, listening to rock-water drip from stalactites on to the roof.
‘Wow,’ said Mulch. ‘This is something. I guess you people spent all your money on the car.’
Vinyáya smiled. ‘Just wait.’
The driver ran a quick proximity scan on the dashboard scanner and came up clean. He then took an infrared remote from the dash and clicked it through the transparent plastic roof at the rock face overhead.
‘Remote-controlled rocks,’ said Mulch drily, delighted at the opportunity to exercise his sarcasm muscle.
Vinyáya did not respond – she didn’t have to. What happened next shut Mulch up all on its own. The parking space rose hydraulically, sending the car catapulting towards the rock face above. The rocks did not move out of the way. There was no doubt in Holly’s mind that when rock went up against metal, the rock would win. It made no sense, of course, that Vinyáya would bring them here only to crush the entire party. But there was no time to consider this in the half a second that it took the stretch vehicle to reach the hard, unforgiving rock.
In truth, the rock wasn’t hard or unforgiving. It was digital. They passed right through to a smaller carport, built into the rock.
‘Hologram,’ breathed Holly.
Vinyáya winked at Mulch. ‘Remote-controlled rocks,’ she said. She flipped open the rear door, stepping out into an air-conditioned corridor.
‘The entire headquarters has been hewn from the rock. Actually, most of the cave was already here. We just lasered off a corner here and there. Forgive all the cloak-and-dagger, but it’s vital that what we do here at Section Eight remains secret.’
Holly followed the commander through a set of automatic doors and down a slick corridor. There were sensors and cameras every few paces and Holly knew that her identity had been verified at least a dozen times before they reached the steel door at the end of the corridor.