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The explosions continued but there was no blast, no burning rain of debris falling around them. Alex took his hands away from his head. The explosions sounded vaguely familiar to him. They sounded just like . . .
    'Fireworks,' said Alex. 'Are they fireworks?'
    Cautiously they raised their heads and peered at the complex, then they sat up and stared in open astonishment. Rockets of all shapes, colours and sizes were shooting up into the night sky, but the centrepiece was a length of metal gridwork which was bracketed to the rooftop. Hundreds of fireworks had been wired to the gridwork and they spelled out a series of words in bright, neon colours.
WELL DONE , ALPHA FORCE. YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED THE EXERCISE. MERRY CHRISTMAS !
    'Oh, for crying out loud,' groaned Alex, putting a hand over his thumping heart as a tall black man hurried out of one of the buildings and walked over to the fence.
    'Hello, Uncle,' said Amber weakly, as John Middleton grinned through the fence at her. 'Very funny. Ha ha.'
    John Middleton drove them out through the main gates of the complex and turned onto the highway, heading south to McCarran International Airport on the edge of Las Vegas. Now that Alpha Force had completed the exercise, they were all flying off to different locations for the Christmas break. Hex was going to stay with Amber and her uncle in New York, Li was spending the holiday with Paulo and his family in Argentina, and Alex was flying out to join his father in Ecuador.
    John Middleton gave the guards a friendly wave as he passed them and they replied with a salute. Alex noticed that they were wearing American military uniforms. He turned to look at Amber's uncle.
    'Did we just break into an actual military base?'
    'Only a little one,' smiled John Middleton. 'It's a security facility on the edge of the Nevada Test Site. You know, where they used to test nuclear weapons.'
    'Yeah, we caught a glimpse of that as we flew over this afternoon,' said Hex, remembering the lunar landscape of craters and huge pits in the middle of nowhere.
    'Are they friends of yours?' asked Li, nodding back at the soldiers.
    'Let's just say they owed me one,' said John Middleton. He grinned at Amber. 'They're not too pleased to have been outsmarted by a bunch of kids. And, yes, I admit it - I'm impressed. I had most of my security concentrated at the front of the complex. We thought it was impossible for anyone to creep up on us from behind. There's nothing but hundreds of miles of desert back there. How did you do it?'
    Amber smirked. 'We picked the most run-down, hole-in-the-wall helicopter tour company we could find and offered the guy double his normal fee to take us as far into the desert as he could. Then we hiked the rest of the way. I navigated.'
    John Middleton shook his head and tutted. 'You mean this pilot dumped a group of kids in the middle of the desert without a second thought? Some people.'
    'We were very persuasive,' smiled Paulo.
    'So, Uncle,' prompted Amber. 'We passed the final test.'
    'Hmm,' was John Middleton's only reply.
    'You said when we passed the test, we could go on our first mission. Remember?'
    'We'll see,' said John Middleton vaguely.
    As soon as John Middleton had left them alone in the airport departure-lounge, Amber turned to the others. 'He's not going to do it,' she said bluntly. 'He's not going to find us a mission.'
    'Are you sure?' asked Hex.
    'I know my uncle. When he says, "We'll see," like that, it means he's not going to do it. When it comes down to it, he's too scared to send us anywhere that might be dangerous. So listen, here's what we're gonna do. Everyone keep your eyes open over the next few weeks, OK? We're going to have to find our own mission.'
    'American Airways flight to Quito now boarding at Gate Three,' announced the loudspeaker system.
    'That's me,' said Alex, getting to his feet and grabbing his bags. 'Have a good Christmas, everyone.'
    They all shouted their goodbyes as Alex moved off