‘Loud and clear,’ Chloe answered.
‘We’ve drawn a blank up here,’ James said. ‘Brian Evans is on site and he’s about to ship out with Susie. Looks like they’ve been shagging behind Joel’s back. They’ve burned up a ton of paperwork and stripped the hard drive out of the computer.’
‘Pity,’ Chloe said. ‘I did notice a jet on the runway. I’ll have ASIS put a track on it. They can arrest Susie and Brian wherever they land.’
‘We’re about to set off for the rearmost turret. I’ll be driving out in Ernie’s truck. I’ll meet you on the road about five kilometres out towards where you’re staying, if that’s OK?’
‘Sounds perfect,’ Chloe said. ‘How long do you think it’ll take to get out there?’
‘Twenty minutes, half hour tops,’ James shrugged. ‘Just one spanner in the works. We’ll have Rathbone Regan along for company. He realised we were up to something and followed us.’
‘That’s not too clever,’ Chloe tutted. ‘Never mind, bring him along. We’ll have to untangle the mess afterwards.’
James pocketed the radio, wanting it handy in case the situation suddenly changed. ‘Chloe’ll be waiting for us,’ he said. ‘Rat, you know the way.’
Rat opened a door into a luxurious marble bathroom. The huge tub had gold taps sculpted like swan’s heads, there was a separate shower and his and hers toilets behind slatted wooden doors.
Lauren pointed towards Joel’s fancy-looking shaving brush and razor. ‘How much do you reckon I’d get for them on Ebay?’ she asked.
Rat looked mystified. ‘What’s Ebay?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ James said, giving Lauren a stiff look, as if to say stop messing about.
Rat was sure there was no one except his father inside the bedroom, but he opened the door cautiously just in case. As James and Lauren followed, Rat drew a gasp.
‘Dad!’
‘Sssssh,’ James said irritably. ‘Leave him be. What are you gawping for?’
‘He’s always pale, but not that pale,’ Rat explained anxiously. ‘And someone’s taken the oxygen tube out of his nose.’
Lauren stepped up to the bed and rested her hand on Joel’s forehead. ‘Stone cold,’ she said, shuddering at the thought of touching a dead person. ‘Must have died at least an hour ago.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Rat said weakly, stepping back from the bedside, not knowing how to react as James stepped in to confirm Lauren’s diagnosis.
‘Are you OK, Rat?’ Lauren asked gently.
‘He was totally dependent on the oxygen. I bet Susie waited for him to fall asleep and just pulled the tube out. I guess that solves the mystery of why they’re in such a big hurry to leave.’
‘Whatever,’ James said dismissively. ‘Susie might come back. Let’s get out of here.’
Lauren was furious, ‘For god’s sake James, give Rat a minute. He just found out his father died.’
Rat waved a hand in front of his face. ‘James is right,’ he said, close to tears. ‘He never gave a toss about me anyway. Let’s roll.’
Lauren put her arm around Rat’s back and rubbed it gently. ‘I’m sorry … I wish I could think of something to say.’
While Lauren comforted Rat, James radioed the news to Chloe. She pondered for a couple of seconds, trying to understand the murder.
‘I can only guess that it’s a deliberate distraction: people will concentrate on Susie stealing millions and murdering her husband, instead of making the link between the missing money and Help Earth. We might even have fallen for it if we didn’t already know the score.’
‘We’re setting off for the vehicle compound right now,’ James said, glancing at his watch. ‘We should be OK: we’ve got an hour until the choppers arrive.’
The three kids piled out of Joel’s bedroom and began running along the corridor towards the front of the residence.
‘This is so bad,’ Rat said anxiously. ‘The Spider’s a nutter. When she finds out that my dad’s dead and Susie’s legged it, those turrets are gonna be locked down tight. I wouldn’t be surprised if she flips out, says it’s the end of the world and starts handing out guns and ammo.’
‘Sensible,’ James said wryly, as they burst through a pair of maple doors. ‘A bunch of religious flakes versus Special Forces commandos. I know who my money’s on.’
Rat sped towards the glass-walled lounge at the front of the residence. He unlocked one of the french doors and led them around an outdoor swimming pool and up to a set of high metal railings at the edge.
‘This is a tricky climb,’ Rat explained, as he clutched a metal rail with each hand and began shimmying up. ‘But it saves us a few minutes.’
Lauren and James followed, one on either side. As they swung their legs over the points at the top, they heard a jet engine going to full throttle on the runway less than a kilometre away.
After leaping down on to the baked earth and wading through a tangle of low shrubs, they headed along the paved path, towards the giant church at the centre of the Ark. It was a few degrees cooler than the middle of the day, but the low sun blasted them in the eyes and the insects were at their most annoying.
They didn’t run, but Rat led them at the typically brisk pace of Survivors with someplace to go. The paths were busy and their youth and school kit earned them a few odd glances: everyone knew that boarding-school kids were scheduled to be playing games in the exercise yard at this time in the evening.
‘Shouldn’t we use the tunnels?’ James asked, sure that they were about to be stopped and asked awkward questions.
‘Keep cool,’ Rat said, shaking his head. ‘If anything happens, we just say we’re running an errand for Susie.’
James knew he’d have to answer some awkward questions about Rat later, but at that moment he was happy to have him on the team.
After walking around the vast limestone walls of the Holy Church, they set off on the path towards the office and vehicle compound. The changeover between evening service and recreational activity was now complete and this area of the compound was eerily quiet.
The only other people on the path were coming towards them: two men and the unmistakably reedy figure of The Spider in a hurry. James expected a grilling, but instead he had to step off the edge of the path to let them steam by.
‘What do you reckon on that?’ James asked, looking backwards.
‘The Spider’s got eyeballs everywhere,’ Rat said. ‘She’ll have heard that Susie packed up a ton of luggage and took off in that jet.’
‘Remember in the hallway earlier?’ Lauren added. ‘She was going on about that bank account and Susie said, Why don’t you go and ask your father? I bet that’s where she’s heading right now.’
‘And she’s gonna find that Joel is dead,’ Rat concluded.
‘Tits,’ James said. ‘How fast can she lock this place down once she finds out?’
‘In the time it takes to make two phone calls to the guards inside the turrets.’
James felt a shot of adrenalin as he realised that their window for escaping the Ark had probably just shrunk from an hour to ten or fifteen minutes.
He exchanged a look with his sister and they spoke in unison. ‘Run?’
‘Definitely,’ Rat answered.
‘We need the keys to the truck,’ James yelled, as they all broke into a sprint. ‘I know Ernie hangs them up somewhere inside the office.’
Rat nodded. ‘There’s a key cabinet inside Rumble’s office.’
‘Who?’ James asked.
‘It’s my nickname for the evil cow that runs the office.’
‘Rat hates her,’ Lauren panted as she ran. ‘She makes him do filing in the basement whenever she catches him mucking about.’
It took two minutes to reach the door of the office building. James crashed into it breathlessly, only to find that it had been locked up for the night.
‘Might have known it,’ he shouted as he kicked the door.
‘Mail chute,’ Rat said.
<
br /> The three kids ran around the side of the building, beneath the canopy of the deserted vehicle compound. James was first to clamber through the strips of rubber and into the base of the chute. Ten metres of shiny metal stood between himself and the top.
He grabbed hold of the curved sides and made a run for it. After a couple of steps, his feet lost their grip and he slid back, catching Lauren in the mouth with his trainer as he clattered into her.
‘Careful,’ Lauren said angrily, tasting blood and grit as she wrapped a hand over her front teeth.
‘It wasn’t deliberate,’ James snapped.
While the siblings scowled at each other, Rat clambered around them and tried a different technique: he placed one leg over the edge of the metal chute and pulled himself up by grabbing the bolts that joined the metal sections together.
‘Wait here,’ James said to Lauren, as he followed Rat up; the rusty bolts tearing into his fingers.
‘Try getting me some tissues,’ Lauren said, as she wiped her bloody chin on her shirt.
When Rat reached the top of the chute, he swung his legs out in front and booted the flap open with a double-footed kick that made James’ ears ring.
‘Make some noise, why don’t you?’ James muttered, as he clambered out into the dark post room and fired a dusty mouthful of spit at the carpet.
Rat opened the door and charged into the gloomy open-plan office, cutting between desks on a fifty-metre dash to the manager’s office. James ran a few steps behind. They found the door open, but the key cabinet hanging behind the desk was locked.
‘Stand back!’ James grabbed a fire extinguisher and took a run up.
It smashed against the clear plastic. The cabinet tore off the wall, hit the floor and the keys inside jangled off their little hooks, but the lock was still on and the cover only had a tiny crack in it.
‘Dammit,’ Rat snarled, stamping his heel against the plastic to make the crack bigger.
James joined in, and after about five stamps each, the cabinet’s hinges sheared away and Rat stripped off the sheet of plastic.
‘I need light,’ James said.
As fluorescent tubes plinked to life over his head, James crouched down and rummaged through the loose keys, looking for the key ring with the little Toyota oval on it. Like always when you’re panicking, it seemed to take ages.
‘Got it,’ he said finally. ‘Rat, get the tissues for Lauren.’
Rat grabbed a tissue box off the manager’s desk, as James started back towards the post room. As the two boys ran, a great wave of light began flickering across the ceiling. Someone must have been working late or cleaning downstairs and they’d come up to investigate the noise.
James looked backwards, but there was no one in sight. The office was large enough that it would take a few minutes for someone to work out what had happened and where they’d gone. Rat went down the chute first. James followed, catching his shorts on one of the joints. It squeezed his balls as it snagged and tore up a corner of his back pocket.
‘Lauren?’ James gasped, straightening out his bits as he scrambled through the rubber strips and stood up.
She sat against the side of the building with blood trickling out the corner of her mouth. Rat handed her a bunch of tissues.
‘You OK?’ James asked guiltily.
‘Shit happens,’ Lauren said, mopping her face as she stood up.
James cut between a couple of Ford pickups and stepped across the open tarmac to the dusty Toyota truck. As Lauren and Rat climbed into the passenger side, James felt intimidated by the half-metre of steering wheel and broad expanse of dashboard in front of him. With power steering, power brakes and an automatic gearbox it was no more difficult than driving a car, but it was double the length of any vehicle he’d taken on before and the ground seemed a hell of a long way down.
He turned the ignition key, dropped the handbrake and dabbed the accelerator to roll out of the parking spot.
‘Could you drive any slower, James?’ Lauren sniped, slurring because she had tissues packed in her mouth to stop the bleeding.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ James said, picking up speed as he pulled out from under the canopy and turned on to the three-hundred-metre slip road that led up to the turret.
It was starting to turn dark, so it took a second to realise that the drawbridge on the outside of the turret was being winched up by its thick chain.
‘No way,’ Rat yelled, kicking the dashboard with both feet.
James thought about hitting the gas, but the dropdown gate had been built to withstand an apocalypse and the truck wouldn’t even make a dent in it.
James looked at his bloody sister in the middle seat. ‘What do you reckon now?’
‘I dunno,’ Lauren shrugged. ‘Leg it out of this truck and find a safe place to hide, I guess.’
37. SURPRISE
The sky was black as the small plane headed for a beach landing on the Wessel Islands, a two-hundred-kilometre chain that stretched out from Australia’s northern coast. Dana had found herself a single seat at the back, two rows clear of Eve and Nina.
She knew there was a chance ASIS had successfully tracked the flight and had a team waiting to ambush them when they landed, but she doubted it. Most likely, everyone would assume that Barry Cox had cancelled the attack and gone to ground after discovering that his team was under surveillance.
So it was all down to Dana. At first, the idea scared her. She didn’t know anything about tankers or LNG facilities, but guessed that there had to be at least fifty lives at stake. The longer she sat at the back of the plane in her trademark position – arms folded, legs outstretched – thinking about it, the more confident she got.
CHERUB training teaches you that surprise is everything. Barry had thrown her off-stride with the double murder and the sudden revelation that the attack was going to take place in a different country, a thousand kilometres from where everyone was expecting it. But she’d have surprise on her side during the four-hour ride to Indonesia.
Once the boat was underway, people would let their guard down; maybe even try getting some sleep if things weren’t too tense. Dana didn’t have any weapons, but reckoned she’d find plenty on a boat: fishing hooks, ropes, kitchen utensils in the galley.
Dana was fifteen and had lived on CHERUB campus since she was seven. She’d been baked, frozen, half drowned and shot at during training exercises, she’d read eight-hundred-page computer hacking textbooks, learned to speak Russian and had her nose rubbed in puke by a sadistic training instructor; but all she had to show for it were a string of missions that had fizzled out or only been partially successful.
Now Dana had a chance to prove it had all been worthwhile. She felt like the last eight years of her life had all been building up to what was going to happen in the next few hours.
*
Chloe sat in a car at the roadside, with the Ark glowing serenely two kilometres ahead. There was no hint of the brewing trouble. The helicopter attack was due in nine minutes. She had a satellite phone at her ear and could barely hear the man talking to her, because his voice was being patched through from a helicopter that was thirty kilometres off, but closing in rapidly.
‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ Chloe shouted. ‘There are more than a hundred children inside the Ark. I have two undercover operatives who have positively identified an array of heavy weaponry.’
‘We’re aware of their capability, Miss,’ the TAG unit commander shouted back patronisingly. ‘This raid has been planned carefully. We’ve been in training for two months.’
‘You’re not listening to me,’ Chloe yelled, growing increasingly exasperated. ‘I have reason to believe that Joel Regan is dead. You’re attacking at the worst possible time. The Ark has been locked down tight and the Survivors are in an emergency state of readiness.’
‘Well, I haven’t received any such intelligence …’
‘Yes you have. I just told you.’
‘… from credible so
urces,’ the commando added sourly. ‘We’ve trained for this raid. We’re an elite unit. Now I know you’re worried about your undercover operatives, but this plan has been authorised at Prime Ministerial level.’
Chloe groaned. ‘Is there anyone from ASIS up there in the chopper with you?’
The TAG commander seemed only too pleased to get Chloe off his back and handed the radio across without another word.
‘Who are you exactly?’ the ASIS officer asked stiffly.
Chloe wasn’t about to reveal the existence of CHERUB to a helicopter full of commandos. ‘I’m on attachment from British intelligence,’ she explained. ‘I have two agents inside the Ark and they’re telling me that Eleanor Regan has issued weapons to every able-bodied adult. If you go into that Ark tonight, you’re going to face a significantly – I repeat significantly – more hostile reaction than the one you’re expecting.’
‘Miss Blake,’ the ASIS officer said bluntly. ‘I’m not even aware of any undercover operation inside the Ark and there’s no way we can pull out at this stage. If you’re still in contact with your undercover officers, I suggest you tell them to find refuge. The raid will commence in five minutes. If you feel we’re behaving inappropriately, you can file an official complaint after the event.’
‘Arsehole,’ Chloe gasped, losing her temper. ‘I just hope you live that long.’
Chloe ended the call and threw the satellite phone down on the passenger seat in frustration. After a groan, she grabbed another radio that was resting on the glovebox flap.
‘James, do you copy?’
‘Loud and clear. What’s going on, are they still coming?’
‘Looks that way,’ Chloe said. ‘Eight on the dot. What’s your situation?’
‘Same as,’ James said. ‘Eleanor put out an announcement over the Tannoy that Joel died and told everyone to protect themselves from a possible attack by devils. Everyone here is tooled up and running around dressed like Action Man. When they hear those choppers they’re gonna think it’s the bloody apocalypse.’