The car, with the Kojima twins inside, spun its wheels and raced away. Mr Kojima and the bodyguards ran down the road after it, in a pointless attempt to catch up.
On the back seat of the car, Master and Miss Kojima struggled to open the doors and windows.
A smartly dressed man in the passenger seat turned to a driver the twins didn’t recognize and laughed. He then leaned towards the twins with his hand inside his suit jacket.
‘I suggest you both sit quietly and listen carefully,’ said the middle-aged Japanese man calmly. ‘You have a choice. You can both take a pill I have prepared that will render you harmlessly unconscious for the duration of our journey, or I can knock you both unconscious.’ He slid a pistol out of his inside pocket then spun it round so he was holding it butt forward, like a hammer.
The man’s mouth arched into a broad smirk before he coughed loudly.
As Master Kojima held his trembling sister close to him, he could just make out a neatly stitched scar on the man’s right cheek, most of which was covered by the long wisps of jet-black hair that framed his face.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Claire and my children who yet again had to lose me from their adventures during the writing of Atomic Storm. And to Rich23 who is my only friend with a number in his name. Thanks to the real Atticus – who I met over tea in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and who ended up showing me every inch of MIT.
I must also thank all the cafe owners who didn’t charge for laptop juice while I sat writing for days on end – principally everyone at Zoran’s Deli.
I am enormously grateful to my agents, Luigi and Debbie, for believing me when I said I was a children’s author. And my heartfelt thanks, plus a big high-five, go to the Puffin gang. I feel privileged to work with such a dedicated and talented group of people – especially my editor, Lindsey Heaven, who is as divine as her really cool surname suggests.
Most of all, thanks to everyone who has read the first Dot.Robot book and eagerly awaits the second in the series – that means all of you who have been to the Dot.Robot Roadshow events in schools and festivals and my followers on Twitter – you make it all worthwhile.
I would also like to acknowledge a website called www.firstpeople.us where I found a quote from the real Eagle Chief (Letakos-Lesa) Pawnee that inspired the fictional American Indian in this book and the words Jackson reads in his book.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Atomic Swarm
Prologue
Paraguay
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
Epilogue
Japan
Acknowledgements