The Killing (4 page)

The girls all groaned.

‘You will be wearing tracking devices fitted with emergency buttons. That means I know where you are at all times and I can come into the compound and pluck you out if you break the rules, or if there’s an accident. There are also surveillance cameras throughout the compound. A siren will go off to signal the end of the exercise, or if we need to suspend the exercise while we deal with an emergency.

‘You will all be armed with the latest in combat simulation technology. It’s a system of synthetic ammunition that was designed for training the United States Marines. In order to demonstrate the difference between this system and conventional paintballing, I’m going to use my un-beautiful assistant, Miss Puke.’

Mr Large handed Lauren a wooden tile thirty centimetres square and two thick.

‘Hold it in front of your chest and move across to the opposite side of the room.’

When Lauren was in place, Mr Large grabbed a paintball gun off a desk and fired a shot. It hit the wood with a loud crack and Lauren felt a mist of lilac paint spatter her bare arms.

‘Almost no power, short range and limited accuracy,’ Large explained, throwing the gun down with contempt. ‘Now we’ll try one of these.’

He picked an assault rifle off the desk.

‘This is a proper weapon. A Hungarian-made AK-M assault rifle. There hasn’t been a war fought in the last fifty years where soldiers on one side or both haven’t used some variant of the Kalashnikov. That’s because they are compact, lightweight and extraordinarily robust.’

Mr Large picked a banana-shaped magazine off the table, clipped it into the underside of the gun and set it to fire single shots.

‘As much as I’d enjoy using live ammunition on Puke, this AK is loaded with a training and simulation round. This ammunition has been designed to provide the most realistic combat training you can get, short of actually letting you fire live bullets at one another.’

Mr Large took aim at the square of wood. The noise was similar to that made by the paintball gun, but when the round hit and the paint exploded, Lauren stumbled backwards and the plank erupted into a mass of splinters. When she regained her composure, Lauren noticed that the bullet had torn a huge hunk from the centre of the paint-splattered wood.

‘Because of the power of these simulated rounds, you’ll each have to wear helmets and full body armour,’ Mr Large explained. ‘Do
 
not
 
remove them unless you absolutely have to. You will be provided with special water canisters with straws that can pass through your visors. If you need to urinate, make sure you’re in a safe position and get one of your team-mates to cover you. There is a serious risk of being blinded, so you must keep your helmets and visors in place at all times.’

Kerry raised her hand.

‘Yes,
Kerrykins
.’

‘Sir, what are the rules if we get hit? Do we have to lie dead for ten minutes or something?’

The gerbil bristled as Mr Large grinned one of his most evil grins. ‘The underlying principle behind this new generation of simulated ammunition is simple: if trainees are scared of getting shot by something painful, they will act in a fashion similar to how they would act in a live combat zone. There are no fancy electronics telling you where you’ve been shot, or regulations saying how long you’ve got to lie down on the ground. The rules are very simple: if you get shot, it hurts like hell.’

James and
Shak
broke outside on to the concrete ramp, with the PE teacher hurtling after them. The front gates of the school were less than fifty metres away, but the lock was controlled from indoors via an intercom and there was no way they’d be able to clamber over before the teacher grabbed hold of them. Their only option was the flap in the wire fence they’d arrived through, but that was on the opposite side of the school grounds.

James took a glance over his shoulder as they charged back into the main school building. The PE teacher was over two metres tall with a rugby player’s build, and he was closing up rapidly. To make matters worse, the boys wore flat-soled shoes that skidded hopelessly on the polished floor.

By the time James and
Shak
made it to the flight of stairs leading down to the playing fields, the PE teacher was almost within touching distance. The boys gained ground by sliding down the metal banister in the middle of the staircase, but this trick nearly backfired: James picked up so much speed that he couldn’t stop himself when he slid off at the bottom and he ended up crashing painfully through the doors.

It took a second for James’ eyes to adjust to the afternoon sunlight. His heart sank as he looked out on to two pitches covered with Year Eleven kids. They were playing soccer and he got a nasty feeling that they’d try and bundle him if he charged into the middle of their game with an angry teacher in hot pursuit.

While James hesitated,
Shak
had sprinted onwards, displaying an impressive turn of speed. James jerked violently and stumbled forwards as the PE teacher ploughed into his back and wrapped a hairy arm around his chest.

‘You lot, get that other one,’ the teacher shouted, his mouth almost in James’ ear as he pointed towards
Shak
.

The teacher thought he’d captured James the moment he got an arm around him. But he’d assumed he was chasing after a pupil of Trinity Day, not a CHERUB agent who’d done advanced self-defence training. James ducked down and used a simple Judo throw; taking advantage of their forward momentum to roll his much heavier opponent over his back and slam him against the sun-baked grass.

There was a chance the throw had injured the teacher, but James reckoned he looked tougher than that. It had probably just made him extremely angry and James didn’t want him getting up and coming after him again, so he drove a hard punch into the base of his nose.

While the PE teacher wrapped his hands over his face and yelled out in pain, James looked up and rapidly tried to assess his chances of escape.
Shak
had nearly made it across the pitch. He had an entire football team on his tail, but it looked like he was going to make it to the hole in the fence and out of the school. The trouble was, once
Shak
had revealed the location of the flap, the kids chasing him would easily be able to block it off. James realised his only way out now was over the fence, barbed wire and all.

The nearest stretch of perimeter backed on to the gardens of some houses. It was less than fifty metres away, but there were three kids closing him down. James picked the smallest one – who was still bigger than he was – and charged straight at him. The kid dropped low and spread out wide to make a tackle. James dummied, before spinning out to the right and avoiding him. He stumbled a couple of paces, before clattering into another kid who shoved him flat on to the grass. Using a technique learned in Karate training, James managed to roll head over heels and spring explosively back to his feet. He now had a clear path to the fence.

Ideally, James would have had time to throw his blazer over the barbed wire topping the fence, but the heavy pack hooked around his shoulders made it impossible to get the jacket off quickly. He launched himself at the fence at full speed. The gaps in the wire mesh were too narrow to get a toehold, so he had to rely on upper body strength to haul himself up four metres. By the time he was within reach of the barbed wire, his shoulders were in agony and his fingers felt like they were set to pop out of their sockets.

James swung his leg up on to the top of a concrete fence post, narrowly missing the grasping hand of a footballer trying to get hold of his ankle. He had second thoughts about the four-metre leap awaiting him as he tried to position a hand on the barbed wire without getting spiked; but the prospect of giving up and getting on the wrong end of a group of angry sixteen-year-olds was hardly more attractive.

As he tried to perch atop the wire to make his jump, the kids down below gave up trying to grab him and adopted a new tactic: violently rocking the wire mesh in an attempt to knock him down.

As James swayed precariously back and forth, the teacher who’d been taking the football lesson was practically foaming at the mouth, still convinced that he was looking at a genuine Trinity Day pupil. ‘Come down this instant, boy. You
 
will
 
be expelled for this.’

James gasped in pain as one of the barbs tore into his thigh. He took a quick breath before hurling himself clumsily off the fence. He’d hoped to jump clear of the shrubs edging the garden and collapse sideways on to the lawn, paratrooper style, but the violent swaying of the fence made the jump impossible to judge. He ended up landing on his side, with his feet tangled in a hydrangea bush. Only the heavily padded backpack saved him from injury.

After scrambling up, James couldn’t resist an opportunity to triumphantly flick off the Trinity boys.

He kept low as he jogged across the lawn towards the house. The TV was on and there were some little kids running around inside. Fortunately there was a wooden gate at the side of the house that opened with a simple latch.

He crunched down a gravel driveway between two houses, inhaling the stench of overflowing plastic rubbish bags as he caught his breath. When James stepped out on to the pavement, he leaned against a low wall and burrowed into the mobile phone pocket on the side of his backpack, trying not to think about the growing circle of blood soaking into his trousers.

He flipped the phone open and frantically dialled his mission controller.

‘
Ewart
,’ James gasped into the handset. ‘I’m outside number thirty-four Pollack Street. I think we might have screwed up. You’ve got to get me out of here fast.’

‘I’m on my way to get
Shak
,’
Ewart
answered. ‘I’ll meet you by the post-box at the top of the road.’

James’ heart thumped as a police siren wailed in the distance. ‘You’d better hurry up about it,’ he gasped, feeling a sharp pain in his injured thigh as he broke into a jog.

*

Ewart Asker jammed down the brake pedal of a black Mercedes.
Shak
threw the back door open before it came to a full halt, then scooted across to the other side of the rear seat, allowing James to dive into the car.

James looked at
Shak
as
Ewart
accelerated away from the kerb. ‘How far did those guys chase you?’

‘Only two followed me through the fence,’
Shak
said. ‘I belted one over the head with a garden gnome and the other one backed off.’

James smiled, rubbing streaks of sweat on to his cuff as he took his first breath of the chilled air inside the car.

‘So what went wrong?’
Ewart
asked sharply.

James was worried how
Ewart
would react. Despite having the air of a laid-back guy with his baggy cargos, tongue stud and bleached hair,
Ewart
had a reputation as one of CHERUB’s strictest mission controllers.

‘We set off an alarm, passing through a fire door leading out to the back of the gym,’ James explained.

‘
You
 
set it off,’
Shak
said, as he threw down his tie and started unbuttoning his shirt.

‘Yeah,’ James said irritably, as he wriggled out of his blazer. ‘But
 
you
 
looked out the window and said we should go that way.’

The two boys exchanged scowls. Now the car was a couple of streets away from Trinity school,
Ewart
cooled down his driving to blend in with the ordinary traffic.

‘Fire doors are often linked to alarms,’
Ewart
said. ‘Didn’t either of you remember that from your infiltration and surveillance training?’

‘Actually, now you mention it …’ James said, nodding sheepishly.

‘I suppose it
 
is
 
mostly my fault,’
Shak
admitted.

‘We can play the blame game later,’
Ewart
said, as he took a sharp turn into a main road. ‘Right now I need to know
 
exactly
what
happened and see if we’ve got a mess that needs cleaning up. Did you get the bugs into position?’

James nodded. ‘Both of them; that bit of the plan worked fine.’

‘Nobody saw you in Stein’s car or office?’

‘No,’
Shak
said. ‘We only got rumbled after we came upstairs from the car park.’

‘And you didn’t leave any equipment behind?’

Both boys shook their heads. ‘Nope.’

‘Good,’
Ewart
said. ‘So the bugs are in place and there’s nothing linking you to Stein.’

‘But they still saw us,’
Shak
said.

‘Use your loaf,’
Ewart
replied. ‘They saw two boys dressed in Trinity uniform. They’ll assume you’re a couple of local kids playing a prank, or trying to break in and steal stuff.’

‘They found us around the changing area,’ James said. ‘And there’s a wallet in the back pocket of these trousers I nicked.’

‘Bonus,’
Ewart
nodded enthusiastically. ‘In that case they’ll think you were thieves trying to rob the changing rooms.’