CHERUB: Guardian Angel (23 page)

When Irena had mentioned that the playing fields were used as a landing strip, Ethan had imagined that the planes landed on the overgrown pitches. In reality long grass made for dangerous landings, so they’d been nuked with herbicides, leaving a barren dirt strip.

Ethan stepped outside through what had once been a fire door, and gave the rusted handrail a shake before deciding to trust the metal steps. A sign at the base of the stairs pointed to changing-rooms and a science block and as Ethan wanted to walk no further than he had to, he decided to head to the changing-rooms and wait there until he heard the plane.

He only made three steps before a shout came from the roof over the staffroom.

‘Ethan Kitsell?’ a man shouted.

He was silhouetted against the sunlight. Dressed in ragged shirt and shorts. Maybe thirty years old, with a Kalashnikov rifle and some ropes slung over his shoulder.

Ethan remembered seeing something on the Discovery Channel saying that Kalashnikovs weren’t very accurate. He thought about running, but at the same time he was curious because none of Kessie’s men would know his American name.

‘I am Brian,’ the man said, as he moved to the edge of the roof. ‘I’ve tried sending you SMS.’

From this angle, Ethan could see that the man had a satellite phone in his hand.

‘There’s not much signal out here,’ Ethan said.

‘I am in contact with your pilot,’ Brian explained. ‘I was hoping you’d be bigger because we need to clear the runway.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Ethan said, still not entirely sure that he should trust this stranger.

Brian made an athletic jump from the roof above the staffroom, hindered only by the loss of a flip-flop in midair.

‘You’ll see when you get closer,’ Brian said. ‘Your ankle is badly swollen.’

‘It’s agony,’ Ethan said.

‘But I may still need your help,’ Brian said. ‘If I’d known you were injured I would have brought a friend.’

Brian started walking at a brisk pace, with Ethan struggling to keep up. The problem became clear when they got past the changing-rooms: there were more than a dozen concrete blocks strewn across the runway, each one carefully camouflaged in paint that closely matched the earth.

‘If it lands here before the blocks are moved your plane will be destroyed,’ Brian explained.

‘So you know the people who maintain this runway?’

Brian shook his head. ‘My father is an old friend of your pilot. The people who control this strip won’t like it at all if they know we’re landing here.’

‘Kessie?’ Ethan asked.

Brian shook his head. ‘Kessie has his own strip. Much better than this one.’

‘Diamond smugglers?’

Brian smiled. ‘Let’s just say, I’ve been promised a
lot
of money for doing this and I’ve got no intention of sticking around long enough to meet any bad guys.’

Ethan was weedy and with his ankle all puffed up he was worse than useless. Veins bulged and sweat bristled as Brian hooked ropes through holes in the concrete blocks and used all his strength to drag them clear of the illicit runway.

Ethan sat on the changing-room steps. Brian’s satellite phone rested on the paving slab beside him as he stared with increasing alarm at an ankle that was double normal size and excruciating to move or touch.

The Samsung rang. He’d learned to screen calls for Amina, but the display flashed
international
so he answered.

‘Grandma?’ Ethan shouted. ‘The signal’s really weak out here. You’re breaking up.’

‘It’s me, Andre,’ the voice on the other end said. ‘I’m trying to upload my dad’s files to the FTP site, but it’s really slow and it keeps crashing.’

‘Shit,’ Ethan said, as Brian lost his footing in the dry earth. Brian had managed the first few blocks OK, but was now on the point of exhaustion.

‘So what can I do?’ Andre asked.

‘It’s probably the Kremlin’s shitty satellite connection,’ Ethan said. ‘You need a driver to take you into Bishkek. Go to a web café. Natalka knows the good ones.’

‘I don’t know where Natalka is.’

‘Just get a driver to take you to Dordoi Bazaar,’ Ethan said. ‘There’s loads of web cafés with fast connections. Even if you can upload stuff on that satellite link, it’s going to take hours.’

As Ethan said this the satellite phone started ringing. ‘I’ve got to go, Andre.’

Ethan ended the call and got a much clearer voice through the bulky satellite phone.

‘Brian?’ a man with a heavy South African accent said. There was an enormous jet engine roar in the background.

‘It’s Ethan Aramov. Are you my pilot?’

‘Yes I am, and it’s good to hear your voice, young man! I’ll be over Kanye in around ten minutes. What’s your situation?’

‘Brian’s hauling the blocks. He’s got three to go.’

The South African laughed. ‘Tell him to get his black arse moving. Your grandma wants you in Sharjah super-fast and our fuel situation is marginal.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Ethan said.

Brian had noticed Ethan on the phone and was running over.

‘The pilot will be here in ten minutes,’ Ethan shouted, flashing two sets of five fingers.

Brian looked dubious. ‘That’s cutting it close. Tell him to look for the all-clear signal.’

Ethan relayed the message and hung up. As soon as the phone was away from his ear, Ethan heard the distant roar of the approaching plane. As it grew louder, Brian crashed forward into the dirt as he tried moving the penultimate block.

‘Jesus,’ Brian shouted out furiously.

Ethan looked up and saw that the rope Brian had been using to pull the blocks had snapped.

‘I’ve got another piece in my car,’ Brian shouted. ‘I’ll go get it. Call your pilot and tell him there’s a delay. If that fails, get out on the runway and make a signal like this.’

Brian raised his hands above his head and crossed his arms. ‘If they land on the blocks it’ll rip off the undercarriage.’

As Brian sprinted back through the school towards his car, Ethan finally sighted his ride. The plane’s silhouette was pencil thin, with sharply raked wings. But the most extraordinary thing was the noise. Six months living at the Kremlin had acclimatised Ethan to the racket made by old Soviet jets, but this one was on a new level.

Ethan grabbed the sat phone. It was a chunky device, with a small black-on-grey LCD screen that seemed primitive compared to a modern touch phone. He didn’t have the number to call his pilot, but he expected to find a call log or last dialled setting. But the sat phone was set to Japanese, or Korean, or something and the menus were entirely made up of weird kanji characters. By the time Ethan realised he needed help Brian was out of sight.

The plane was getting bigger and the noise was almost beyond comprehension as Ethan levered himself up and began limping towards the landing strip. There was still no sign of Brian so he looked up and raised his hands over his head to make the
don’t land
signal.

Ethan felt like his eardrums were going to explode as the pilot aborted the landing and throttled up to gain height. The satellite phone rang moments later.

‘What are you dick heads playing at down there,’ the pilot shouted.

‘Brian’s rope broke,’ Ethan explained, as he looked around for any sign of Brian’s return. ‘There’s still two blocks on the runway.’

‘Christ!’ the pilot shouted. ‘I’m coming around for another approach. He’s got eight minutes.’

Ethan was relieved when he saw a guy coming down the steps out of the staffroom. But while he was black and dressed in shorts and a pale shirt, Ethan realised it wasn’t Brian when he got closer. And when he looked back he saw Michael from the ranch running across the landing strip towards him.

‘Hands up, you little shit,’ Michael shouted, as he pulled a pistol and closed Ethan down. ‘You killed Kessie’s cousin. He’s gonna torture you bad for that!’

Ethan could barely stand, let alone run, so he put his hands into the air. He guessed they’d already nabbed Brian, or maybe he’d seen them coming and run off. But this theory got proved spectacularly wrong when a bullet punched through Michael’s head.

As the gunshot echoed, Ethan backed away from a mist of blood. A second shot took out the other one of Kessie’s goons with a bullet between the shoulders. While the dead goon twitched in the dirt, Brian dropped from a ground-floor window, with his Kalashnikov poised and a new coil of rope around his shoulder.

‘There was another guy in the pick-up,’ Brian said, as he handed Ethan the rifle. ‘I’ve no idea where he is, so you cover my back. OK?’

‘I’ve never shot a gun before,’ Ethan said.

‘It’s on single shot,’ Brian said. ‘You’ve got eight rounds. Do your best.’

As Ethan limped back to the runway with the gun, Brian threaded the rope through the penultimate block and made a groaning sound as he started hauling it off the landing strip. The jet was getting really loud and coming back into view.

The last block was fifty metres further on and as Brian hooked up the rope, Ethan saw figures moving, at least one inside the school building and more coming around the side towards him.

‘Brian,’ Ethan shouted, as he moved to take cover behind the changing block. ‘There’s loads of them.’

As Brian finished dragging the last block, he sprinted back across the dirt runway towards the changing-rooms. The satellite phone rang as he snatched the gun from Ethan.

‘Are we clear?’ the pilot asked.

‘Blocks are clear,’ Brian told the phone. ‘We’ve got hostiles on the ground, but I’ll cover them.’

Brian interrupted the call and spun around. He fired a shot that went through the open changing-room door, out of a shattered window and into the chest of a man closing in from about thirty metres. After that Brian rolled around the side of the building and took a couple of seemingly wild shots at the school.

‘When the plane stops moving, you jump on my back,’ Brian told Ethan.

Ethan was shaking and Brian put a hand on his shoulder.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ Brian told him. ‘There’s four or five of them left, but I’m a soldier and they’re farm boys.’

To prove his point, Brian leaned around the side of the building and took a shot up through one of the school’s shattered windows. Ethan didn’t even understand how Brian had seen the movement, but a scream indicated that he’d scored a good hit.

As the plane came out of the shadows, Ethan was staggered by the noise, and impressed by an all-silver TU-22 supersonic bomber. It was a fifty-year-old Cold War relic, and even though Ethan didn’t know exactly what it was, he loved the fact that he had the only grandma in the world who could dispatch one of these babies out on a rescue mission.

Ethan was convinced he’d be suffering some permanent hearing damage if he made it out of here alive because it felt like someone was trying to drill inside his ears. The bomber had thrown up a curtain of warm dust and in the confusion Ethan missed Brian’s signal to jump on to his back and found himself being thrown over instead.

Brian wasn’t big, but he was driven by some Herculean force as he ran through the hot dust, with a gun around his waist and Ethan over his back. The noise of the old bomber made it impossible to know if anyone was shooting at them.

Thirty seconds after leaving cover, Ethan found himself being carried through clearer air. A chain ladder had been thrown over the side of the plane, but Ethan’s ankle would have been too weak to climb it so Brian raised him as high as he could and someone inside the cockpit grabbed him under the arms.

Ethan wanted to thank Brian, but as soon as he’d been relieved of Ethan’s weight, Brian ducked under the aircraft’s fuselage and scrambled out the other side into the surrounding bush. At least Ethan felt confident that he’d be able to get away from Kessie’s farm workers.

As the clear plastic cockpit slid shut around his head, Ethan found himself being pushed into the third of the aircraft’s three single-file seats.

As the bomber started a slow turn, the helmeted co-pilot pulled elastic straps of a breathing mask over Ethan’s face and spoke in frantic Russian, pointing to a five-point harness. The cockpit shook as the co-pilot fitted the harness, and as Ethan buckled his he realised he could hear the pilot and co-pilot’s voices through built-in speakers.

‘Engines, fuel, check. Position check. Short take-off, alignment check. Full thrust on my mark.’

Ethan had been on enough flights to know the difference between the lumbering take-off of a heavy passenger jet and a smaller plane, but this was more like being launched off the top of a rollercoaster.

His neck snapped backwards as the pilot opened the throttles. All kinds of lights and warnings started to flash as the plane shot forward and then up into a near-vertical climb. A big red light with a picture of a two aeroplanes colliding was blinking right in front of Ethan’s face.

‘Are we OK?’ Ethan shouted anxiously. ‘It’s lit up like Vegas back here.’

The co-pilot laughed. ‘Nothing back there has worked for at least fifteen years. Just don’t touch
anything
.’

As suddenly as the aircraft had taken off, they burst through cotton wool clouds. Unlike any other plane he’d been in, the cockpit surrounded Ethan on all sides and he felt like he could almost reach out and touch them.

‘Sorry if that was a little bumpy,’ the pilot said. ‘Some of the smugglers in these parts have rocket-propelled grenades, so it’s best not to stay on the ground for any longer than you have to.’

Ethan’s ears hurt and his ankle was completely buggered, but he was off the ground and hopefully back in control of his own destiny.

He laughed as he looked sideways out of his visor. ‘It’s absolutely damned beautiful up here.’

Ryan enjoyed a chance to chill out as the CIA jet swept over the Kyrgyz mountains. The stewardess served up warm baguettes and plates of nibbly stuff like crab cakes and spring rolls. There was chocolate mousse and mini donuts for desert and after the stewardess swept crumbs off Ryan’s lap he reclined the seat and watched
Fast Five
on the seatback entertainment system.