Artemis was horrified by this revelation. “Don’t you know that your tunnel could affect the temperature of the cellar? Not to mention the humidity? That wine is an investment.”
“Don’t worry about the wine, silly Mud Boy,” said Mulch in a very patronizing tone that he had developed and practiced simply to annoy Artemis. “I drank that months ago and replaced it. It was the only responsible thing to do—after all, the cellar’s integrity had been compromised.”
“Yes, by you!” Artemis frowned. “Replaced it with what?”
“Do you really want to know?” the dwarf asked, and Artemis shook his head, deciding that, given the dwarf’s history, in this particular case ignorance would be less disturbing than the truth.
“Wise decision,” said Mulch. “So, to continue. The tunnel runs to the back of the cellar, but the wall is plugged.”
“Plugged with what?” asked Artemis, who could be a bit slow in spite of his genius.
The dwarf finger-combed his beard. “I refer you to my last question: Do you really want to know?”
“Can we break through?” asked Butler, the pragmatist.
“Oh yes,” said Mulch. “A big strong human like you. No problem. I’d do it for you, but apparently I have this other mission.”
Holly looked up from her wrist computer, which still wasn’t picking up a signal. “We need you to get the weapons in the shuttle, Mulch. Butler has some kit in the house, but Juliet could already be leading the Berserkers there. We need to move fast and on two fronts. A pincer movement.”
Mulch sighed. “Pincer. I love crab. And lobster. Makes me a little gassy, but it’s worth it.”
Holly slapped her knees. “Time to go,” she said.
Neither of the humans argued.
Mulch watched his friends climb into the manor tunnel and then turned back the way they had come, toward the shuttle.
I don’t like retracing my steps, he thought. Because there’s usually someone chasing after me.
So now here they were, wriggling along a claustrophobic tunnel with the heavy smell of earth in their noses and the ever-present threat of untold tonnage looming above them like a giant anvil.
Holly knew what everyone was thinking. “This tunnel is sound. Mulch is the best digger in the business,” she said between grunts and breaths.
The tunnel meandered, and their only light was from a cell phone taped to Butler’s forehead. Artemis had this sudden vision of the three of them stuck in there forever, like rodents in the belly of a snake, being slowly digested until not a trace remained.
No one will ever know what happened to us.
This was a redundant thought, Artemis knew, because if they didn’t get out of this tunnel, then in all likelihood there would be no one left to wonder what had become of their small group. And he would never know if he had failed to save his parents or if they had already been killed somehow in London.
Nevertheless, Artemis could not shake the notion that they were about to die in this vast unmarked grave, and it grew stronger with every grasping reach of his hand that drew him farther into the earth.
Artemis reached forward once more in the blackness and his scrabbling fingers met Butler’s boot.
“I think we made it,” said the bodyguard. “We’ve reached the blockage.”
“Is the blockage solid?” called Holly from the rear.
There followed a series of noises that would not sound out of place in a jelly factory, and a smell that would be totally consistent with a burst sewage pipe.
Butler coughed several times, swore at length, then said a line heavy with dreadful implication. “Only the crust is solid.”
They tumbled through the hole onto a fallen rack of broken wine bottles, which had been knocked over by Butler’s hurried entry. Usually he would have inched his way through the entrance, moving the rack bit by bit, but in this case speed was more important than stealth, and so he simply crashed through Mulch’s tunnel plug and into the cellar beyond. The other two quickly followed, happy to escape the confines of the tunnel.
Artemis sniffed the liquid pooling in concave curves of broken bottle fragments. “That is most definitely not Château Margaux 1995,” he commented.
“It’s not even snake wine,” said Butler, brushing himself off. “Although I know a few mercenaries who would probably drink it.”
Holly hiked up the tall seventeenth-century stone cellar steps, then pressed her ear to the door.
“I can’t hear anything,” she said after a moment. “Wind from outside, that’s all.”
Butler pulled Artemis from the rack wreckage. “Let’s keep going, Artemis. We need to get to my weapons before it occurs to Juliet’s passenger.”
Holly opened the door a crack and peeped through. Halfway down a corridor was a bunch of pirates armed with automatic weapons. They stood absolutely still, probably in an attempt to stop their bones from rattling.
Butler crept up behind her.
“How are we doing?” he asked.
Holly held her breath as she closed the door.
“Not great,” she said.
They squatted behind a rack of 1990s California reds and spoke in urgent whispers.
“What do we have?” asked Artemis.
Butler held up his fists. “I’ve got these. That’s it.”
Holly searched the pockets of her jumpsuit. “Some plasti-cuffs. A couple of flares. Not much of an inventory.”
Artemis touched the tip of each finger against the pad of his thumb, one of his focusing exercises. “We have something else,” he said. “We have the house.”
Fowl Manor
Gobdaw and Bellico followed the hounds up Fowl Manor’s grand stairs and along the hallway to Artemis’s laboratory. Once through the door, the dogs leaped on Artemis’s white coat, which was hanging from a peg, using their teeth and claws to slash and chew the material.
“They smell the human,” said Gobdaw, disappointed not to
have an opportunity to use the baby Glock that fit so neatly in Myles’s little hand.
They had raided Butler’s arms room, which was hidden behind a false wall in his quarters. Only four people knew the location of and passcode to the keypad—five, now, if Bellico could be counted as a separate person from Juliet. Gobdaw helped himself to the small gun and several blades, while Bellico chose a machine pistol and a carbon graphite recurve bow with a quiver of aluminium arrows. The pirates took more or less everything else, dancing happy jigs as they clattered downstairs to lie in wait.
“We should keep looking,” said Gobdaw.
Bellico did not agree, as she had Juliet’s knowledge of the manor. “No. Artemis’s office adjoins this room, so they will come here. We have warriors in the basement and the safe room. Let the hounds and the pirates herd them toward us.”
Gobdaw had enough leader’s experience to know a good plan when he heard it.
“Very well. We wait here, but if I don’t get to fire this gun before sunrise, I shall be most disappointed.”
“Don’t worry. You will need every bullet for the big human.”
Bellico grabbed the hounds by their collars and yanked them from the coat.
“You two should be ashamed,” she said. “Do not lose yourselves inside those beasts.”
One hound butted the second, as though the mistake had been his alone.
“Go now,” said Bellico, kicking their rumps. “And find us some Mud People.”
Gobdaw and Bellico squatted behind the worktop, one nocking an arrow and the other disengaging the safety on his stolen handgun.
“The house is a virtual fortress,” explained Artemis. “Once the siege function has been engaged on the security panel, then it would take an army to penetrate the defenses, all of which were designed and installed before Opal jumped from her time line, so there is no chance any of the components will have exploded.”
“And where is this panel?” asked Holly.
Artemis tapped his watch. “Usually I can access it remotely on my watch or phone, but the Fowl network is down. I upgraded the router recently and perhaps a Koboi component crept in, so we will have to use the panel in my office.”