CHERUB: The General (36 page)

‘Rebel,’ James grinned. ‘Somehow I get the impression that they won’t be inviting us back to Fort Reagan any time soon.’

‘They kicked us all out four days early,’ Lauren said. ‘And that was the best bit, because rather than coming back, we all stayed on in Vegas and hung out for a few days. Meryl still has friends out there and she got us tickets for Spamalot and a couple of other shows.’

‘Shame I missed that,’ James said.

Lauren’s eyes were drawn towards a brightly striped shirt hanging on James’ wardrobe. ‘Paul Smith,’ she smiled. ‘That’s gotta be a hundred quid, which is pretty good going for someone who’s supposed to be paying off Jake Parker’s phone.’

‘I got lucky,’ James lied. ‘Me and Kazakov went to this outlet mall. It was only thirty bucks. I think they put the wrong price tag on it.’

‘The day you flew home, Rat tripped on a staircase and did his ankle in,’ Lauren said, continuing to turn her chair from side to side. ‘They thought it might be broken, so they helicoptered him to Vegas to have it properly X-rayed.’

‘Was he OK?’

‘No problemo,’ Lauren smirked. ‘They don’t let newspapers into Fort Reagan and they only have that one TV channel to make it seem more like a developing-world place. So when I ended up in a waiting room I picked up a Las Vegas paper to see what was happening in the world.’

James watched as Lauren pulled a half-page of the
Las Vegas Sun
out of her pocket and started to read. ‘
A teenager staged a daring escape from a monorail car after being chased out of the Vancouver casino. The boy was believed to be the accomplice of a Russian man running a card-counting scam at the high-stakes area of the Strip’s newest mega-resort.’

Lauren held up the picture of the monorail car with the smashed window. Below it were grainy surveillance photos of the two suspects. James had seen the pictures before when he’d looked up the story on the Internet to see how much the police knew.

‘So what?’ James said, trying not to smile.

‘Aww, come on,’ Lauren said. ‘Credit me with
some
intelligence. If that’s the best shot they got, you two made a good job of disguising yourselves and not looking up for the security cameras, but I know you. You’ve had that same dopey Nike Air cap since before Mum died.’

James eyed Lauren nervously. ‘You didn’t mention this to anyone else, did you?’

‘And risk you getting kicked out of CHERUB? Of course not. I may think you’re a tosser, but you’re still my brother.’

‘I made a lot of money,’ James smiled. ‘Thirty grand in one day. Once I’m twenty-one I won’t need Kazakov or surveillance equipment, I can do it legally. I’ve ordered a couple of books from Amazon with the most advanced card-counting strategies that give you an even bigger—’

Lauren cut her brother dead and read some more from the article.
‘Louisiana trawler-man, Dan Williams, intervened to prevent the teenager’s escape and was floored by the powerfully-built youth in what police described as a
vicious
assault. Williams sustained two cracked ribs and was kept in hospital overnight after complaining of chest pains.’

James looked down at his lap. ‘I feel bad about
that,
obviously. But I warned the guy not to stick his nose in.’

Lauren snorted with contempt. ‘You must be so proud of yourself.’

‘We could go up to London next weekend,’ James said, desperate to win Lauren around. ‘Covent Garden, all the designer clothes shops, my treat.’

‘No thanks,’ Lauren said acidly. ‘It leaves a bitter taste. I thought you’d grown up over the last couple of years but right now I’m back to thinking that I’m gonna end up visiting you in prison some day.’

‘I know it was dumb,’ James admitted. ‘Very dumb, to be honest, but it happened. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t exactly regret it either and you know, the money’s in a shoebox behind my bath surround, if you ever need some help. Fifteen thousand quid, all in twenties.’

‘Maybe you should donate it to charity or something.’

James shook his head resolutely. ‘I risked my CHERUB career and my life to make that money. Besides, what’s thirty thousand bucks to a ten-billion-dollar casino corporation?’

Lauren gulped air and broke into a big yawn. ‘Jetlag,’ she moaned. ‘I’m gonna try staying awake until after dinner, then I’m going straight off to sleep.’

‘I’ll probably see you down there,’ James said. ‘I’ve got this essay to write on sonnets … What the bloody hell are sonnets anyway?’

‘More top marks coming your way then,’ Lauren smirked as she headed for the door. She turned back when the door was half-way open. ‘Oh, there’s one other thing you might be pleased to hear.’

‘What’s that?’ James asked.

‘Day before yesterday,’ Lauren said, rubbing an eye as she stifled another yawn, ‘Bruce and Kerry had a
massive
ruck at the hotel. It looks like they’ve split up.’

After a seven-week trial the leader of the Street Action Group (SAG), CHRIS BRADFORD, and former paramilitary, RICH DAVIS (AKA RICH KLINE), were both convicted of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.

Bradford was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In the light of his previous terrorist convictions Davis was sentenced to life, with a judge’s recommendation that he should not be released for at least thirty-five years.

An independent review concluded that the CHERUB security check team led by LAUREN ADAMS had done valuable work in uncovering slack procedures, bad training and poor design at Britain’s newest air traffic control centre.

The opening of the centre was delayed by three months while the perimeter fencing was replaced with a five-metre-high wall and improved surveillance technology. The private security company was dismissed, although several staff, including JOE PRINCE, were taken on by a new contractor and redeployed to the site after extensive retraining.

Following his unimpressive performance during the training exercise at Fort Reagan, GENERAL NORMAN SHIRLEY was reassigned to duties with a non-combat unit. After three months in his new post the general took early retirement.

Each two-week mission at Fort Reagan costs over $25 million to mount and the tactics used by red team leaders are studied carefully by military planners. Although General Shirley was outraged and GENERAL SEAN O’HALLORAN was highly concerned by the destruction of his aerodrome, the US military strategic planning unit described the unorthodox and highly aggressive tactics employed by YOSYP KAZAKOV as an outstanding example of guerrilla warfare.

Kazakov was offered a highly-paid position as a full-time advisor to the US Military at The Pentagon, Washington DC, but he declined on the grounds that he enjoys his job at CHERUB and couldn’t stand the idea of living in America.

The security office at the Vancouver Hotel and Casino only had the evidence of one receptionist to show for their investigation into possible fraudulent gaming by a Russian suspect. None of their electronic jamming devices or signal-detection equipment had picked up any kind of video transmission.

The casino’s security boss concluded that the Vancouver’s state-of-the-art revenue protection systems could only be defrauded by the kind of high-tech surveillance equipment used by security services such as MI5 or the CIA and that the chances of any such equipment being used by ordinary members of the public was negligible.

The Vancouver hotel did file a complaint about a teenage boy causing $3,200 worth of damage to a video surveillance pod and a window on one of their monorail carriages.

Trawler-man DAN WILLIAMS sued the owners of the Vancouver hotel for damages, claiming that by stopping the monorail car with a criminal suspect on board they had negligently imprisoned him with a dangerous and potentially violent criminal, with no regard for his safety or that of the other passengers.

Williams settled out of court for $373,000. Two fellow passengers, including Williams’ wife, each received payouts of $114,000.

DANA SMITH and MICHAEL HENDRY broke up after four weeks. Michael begged GABRIELLE O’BRIEN to take him back, but she told him to stick it.

JAMES ADAMS has continued to hone his blackjack skills and has told his closest friends that his ambition in life is to ride around America on a Harley-Davidson and make millions by counting cards in casinos. James points out that while using surveillance equipment to cheat casinos is illegal, counting cards in your head is not.

READ ON FOR THE FIRST CHAPTER
OF THE NEXT CHERUB BOOK,
BRIGANDS M.C.

The Brigands Motorcycle Club began in California in 1966, founded by an armed robber named Kurt Oxford. There were dozens of clubs just like it: mean dudes on big bikes, oozing menace and scaring regular citizens.

The Brigands weren’t the largest biker gang, nor the toughest or most notorious. Many thought Kurt Oxford’s death in a 1969 prison shooting would be their end. But instead of breaking up or being absorbed by a larger club – ‘patched over’ in biker speak – the Brigands expanded.

As
he cruised Los Angeles freeways on his Harley Davidson, Kurt Oxford never could have imagined that his motorcycle club would one day have seventy chapters spanning the United States and a hundred more, from Sydney to Scandinavia. In 1985, Brigands membership was estimated at more than three thousand full-patch members, and ten times that number of associates and hangers-on.

Only a full-patch member of the Brigands is entitled to wear the club’s colours: an embroidered logo depicting a caped highwayman brandishing a sawn-off shotgun.

Excerpt from
Riding with Kurt and the Brigands
by Jane Oxford

*

Out of eleven British chapters, the South Devon Brigands ranked second only to London in power and seniority. Their clubhouse was a creaky affair, converted out of a pair of barns on fifteen acres close to the wealthy enclave of Salcombe. On a clear day the video cameras mounted around its corrugated metal fence could peer over the barbed wire at millionaires’ yachts moored in the marina below.

Dante Scott was eight years old, son of Scotty, the vice-president of South Devon Brigands. Dante was a tough kid who’d swing at anyone who took the mickey out of his tangled red hair. He liked hanging out with his dad at the Brigands clubhouse, which was usually on Wednesday and Friday nights when his mum drove to Plymouth for evening classes.

Bikers played pool, drank, smoked dope, swore and didn’t want kids under their feet. Nobody ever cleaned the compound outside and Dante’s mum told him never to play out because of broken glass and jagged metal, but he’d never been hurt and his dad didn’t mind if it kept him occupied.

Dante would get behind the wheel of a wrecked Ford and pretend to drive, or make a ramp with bits of rotting wood and send empty beer kegs crashing down the hill. Mostly there were other kids around. The ground was too sloped for football, so they’d play hide-and-seek or tag, which was most enjoyable in the dark with torches. Best of all was when Teeth came and coached kids in the boxing ring.

None of the Brigands were exactly teddy bears, but Teeth looked scary even by their standards. Huge and muscular, he wore sharp spurs on the back of his boots and greasy jeans held up with a length of bike chain that could be ripped out and used to beat the shit out of anyone who messed with him.

Biker names were usually ironic. Little George was the size of a house, Fats as thin as a rake and Teeth had nothing but squishy gums and a couple of brown molars at the back. He’d never say how he lost them. Dante asked one time and Teeth just said,
you should have seen the state of the other guy.

Teeth was a nightclub bouncer with a sideline in drug dealing, but he wanted to be a pro wrestler. Sometimes he’d get a few weeks’ work at a holiday camp in the summer and he’d wrestled on TV a couple of times, though he wasn’t one of the big stars who got in the wrestling magazines stacked up in Dante’s bedroom.

Teeth would take Dante and any other boys who were interested into the big room at the back of the main barn which contained an ancient boxing ring with frayed ropes and a warped floor. He’d taught Dante how to box properly, how to do Karate kicks and headlocks and all kinds of other stuff that he wasn’t supposed to tell his mum because his dad said she’d go spare.

Every Brigand in the world has to attend a Wednesday-night clubhouse meeting known as church. Church night was Dante’s favourite. Wives and girlfriends of the chapter’s sixteen full-patch members would make food and get drunk at the bar while the men had their meeting in a little outbuilding known as the chapel. There were always other kids around.

Joe was always there. He was the son of the Führer, the chapter president. Dante and Joe were in Year Four at the same school and they were good mates. On this particular Wednesday the pair had stuffed themselves with chicken wings, cocktail sausages, oven chips and cola before each getting a hard smack and a threat of worse to come after dumping an older girl called Isobel into a puddle by the line of motorbikes out front.

After some loud belching to stop Joe’s geeky eleven-year-old brother Martin from concentrating on his book, the pair ended up wrestling each other and chasing around the outside of the boxing ring. When they got breathless they’d run back to the bar and fuel up on cup cakes and Fanta.