The Artemis Fowl Files (Artemis Fowl 0.50)

“Artemis Fowl,” snapped Holly. “Start talking. You’re going to jail, dwarf. For how long depends on you.”

Mulch chewed it over for a moment. He could feel the Fei Fei tiara pricking his skin beneath the leotard. It had slipped around the side, below the armpit, most uncomfortable. He had a choice to make. Try to complete the job, or look after number one. Fowl or a reduced sentence. It took less than a second to decide.

“Artemis wants me to steal the Fei Fei tiara for him. My … ah … circus mates had already taken it, and he bribed me to pass it on to him.”

“Where is this tiara?”

Mulch reached inside his leotard.

“Slowly, dwarf.”

“Okay. Two fingers.”

Mulch drew the tiara from under his armpit.

“You don’t take bribes I suppose?”

“Correct. This tiara goes back near enough to wherever it came from. Police will get an anonymous tip and find it in a skip.”

Mulch sighed. “The old skip routine. Don’t the LEP ever get tired of that?”

Holly did not want to be drawn into conversation.

“Toss it on the ground,” she instructed. “Then get down there yourself. Lie on your back.”

One did not order a dwarf to lie on the ground on his belly. One click of the jaws, and the perpetrator would be gone in a cloud of dust.

“On my back? That’s really uncomfortable with this helmet.”

“On your back!”

Mulch obeyed, dropping the tiara and shifting the helmet to the front. The dwarf was thinking furiously. How much time had gone by? Surely the Significants would be back any second. They would come running to relieve Sergei.

“Officer, you really should get out of here.”

Holly searched him for weapons. She unstrapped the LEP helmet, rolling it across the floor.

“And why is that?”

“My teammates will be here any second. We’re on a tight schedule.”

Holly smiled grimly. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle dwarfs. My gun has a nuclear battery.”

Mulch swallowed, glancing through Holly’s legs toward the tent flaps. The Significants had arrived right on time, and three were sneaking through the tent flap, making less noise than ants in slippers. Each dwarf held a flint dagger in his stubby fingers. Mulch heard a rustling overhead, and looked up to see another Significant peering through a fresh rip in the tent seam. Still one unaccounted for.

“The battery isn’t important,” said Mulch. “It’s not how many bullets you have, it’s how fast you can shoot.”

Artemis was not enjoying the circus. Butler should have contacted him over a minute ago to confirm that Mulch had arrived at the rendezvous point. Something must be wrong. His instinct told him to take a look, but he ignored it. Stick to the plan. Give Mulch every possible second.

The last few seconds ran out moments later when the five dwarfs in the ring took their bows. They exited the ring with a series of elaborate tumbles, and headed for their own tent.

Artemis raised his right fist to his mouth. Strapped across his palm was a tiny microphone, of the type used by the U.S. secret service. A skin-tone earpiece was lodged in his right ear.

“Butler,” he said softly—the mike was whisper sensitive. “The Significants have left the building. We must execute plan B.”

“Roger,” said Butler’s voice in his ear.

Of course there was a plan B. Plan A may have been perfect, but the dwarf executing it certainly wasn’t. Plan B involved chaos and escape, hopefully with the Fei Fei tiara. Artemis hurried along his row while the second box was lowered into the center of the ring. All around him, children and their parents cooed at the melodrama unfolding before them, unaware of the very real drama that was being played out not twenty yards away.

Artemis approached the dwarfs’ tent, sticking to the shadows.

The Significants trotted ahead of him in a group. In seconds they would enter the tent and find that things were not as they should be. There would be delays and confusion, in which time the jewel merchants in the big top would probably come running, along with their armed security. This mission would have to be either completed or aborted in the next few seconds.

Artemis heard voices from inside the tent. The Significants heard them too and froze. There shouldn’t be voices. Sergei was alone, and if he was not, something was wrong. One dwarf crawled on his belly to the flap, peeking inside. Whatever he saw obviously upset him, because he crawled rapidly back to the group, and began issuing frantic instructions. Three dwarfs went in the front flap, one scaled the tent wall, and the other popped his bum flap and went subterranean.

Artemis waited a couple of heartbeats, then crept to the tent flap. If Mulch was still in there, something would have to be done to get him out, even if it meant sacrificing the diamond. He flattened his body against the tightly drawn canvas and peered inside. He was surprised by what he saw. Surprised, but not amazed: he should have expected it, really. Holly Short was standing over a fallen dwarf who may or may not have been Mulch Diggums. The Significants were closing in on her, daggers drawn.

Artemis raised the radio to his mouth.

“Butler, how far away are you, exactly?”

Butler answered immediately. “I’m on the circus perimeter. Forty seconds, no more.”

In forty seconds, Holly and Mulch would be dead. He could not allow that.

“I have to go in,” he said tersely. “When you get here, moderate plan B as necessary.”

Butler did not waste time arguing. “Roger. Keep them talking, Artemis. Promise them the world, and everything under it. Their greed will keep you alive.”

“Understood,” said Artemis, stepping into the tent.

“Well, well, well,” said Derph, Sergei’s second in command. “Looks like the law finally tracked us down.”

Holly planted a foot on Mulch’s chest, pinning him to the earth. She trained her weapon on Derph.

“That’s right, I’m with Recon. Retrieval are seconds away. So just accept it and lie on your backs.”

Derph casually tossed his dagger from hand to hand. “I don’t think so, elf. We’ve been living this life for five hundred years, and we don’t plan to stop now. You just let Sergei go, and we’ll be on our way. No need for anyone to get hurt.”

Mulch realized that the other dwarfs believed he was Sergei. Maybe there was still a way out.

“Just stay where you are,” Holly ordered with more bravado than she felt. “It’s guns against knives here, you can’t possibly win.”

Derph smiled through his beard. “We’ve already won,” he said.

With the kind of synchronization born of centuries of teamwork, the dwarfs attacked together. One dropped from the shadows in the tent’s upper regions, while another breached the earthen flooring, jaws wide, tunnel wind driving him a full three feet into the air. The vibration of Holly’s voice had drawn him to her, as a struggling swimmer’s kicks will draw a shark. “Look out!” screeched Mulch, unwilling to let the Significants deal with Holly, even at the price of his own freedom. He might be a thief, but he realized that that was as low as he was willing to go.

Holly looked up, squeezing off a shot that stunned the descending dwarf, but she did not have time to look down. The second attacker clamped his fingers around her gun, almost taking her hand with it, then wrapped his powerful arms around Holly’s shoulders, squeezing the air from her body. The others closed in.

Mulch hopped to his feet.

“Wait, brothers. We need to interrogate the elf, find out what the LEP know.”

Derph didn’t agree. “No, Sergei. We do as we always do. Bury the witness and move on. Nobody can catch us underground. We take the jewels and go.”

Mulch punched the bear-hugging dwarf under the arm, a nerve cluster for dwarfs. He released Holly, and she fell gasping to the earth.

“No,” he barked. “I am the pack leader here! This is an LEP officer. We kill her and a thou

sand more will be on our trail. We bind her and leave.”

Derph tensed suddenly, leveling the tip of his dagger at Mulch. “You are different, Sergei. All this talk of sparing elves. Let me see you without the mask.”

Mulch backed up a step. “What are you saying? You can see my face later.”

“The mask! Now! Or I’ll see your innards as well as your face.”

And suddenly Artemis was in the tent, striding across the floor as if he owned the space.