With no atlas, James figured that he’d head south for a hundred miles or so and then buy a map and work out the finer points of his route somewhere along the motorway.
35. HERO
Kyle stepped out of the van and wandered across to Chase.
‘What’s up?’ the stocky woman asked.
‘Jo sent me over,’ Kyle lied. ‘She told me to take over so you could go back to the house for a cup of tea and a bite.’
‘Thanks,’ Chase grinned. ‘I’m busting for a pee, actually. It’s undignified having to squat in the bushes.’
Kyle cleared his throat as she started walking away. ‘Sorry Chase, but I don’t reckon I’ll make much of a guard if I’m left to fend off the enemy with my bare hands.’
Chase burst out laughing. ‘God I’m daft.’ she giggled, as she unhitched the strap from her shoulder and passed the rifle to Kyle. ‘Do you know how it works?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ Kyle said, expertly clicking off the safety and raising the heavy rifle so that the muzzle pointed at Chase’s head. ‘Start walking back towards the house, quickly and quietly. Be a good girl or I’ll have to shoot you.’
Chase’s eyelids fluttered like she’d heard a tasteless joke, until Kyle’s grim expression made it clear that he wasn’t joking.
It was two hundred metres to the house and Kyle gave his hostage a couple of shoves in the back to make her pick up the pace: he had no cover and it would only take someone looking out of a window to turn the whole show into a shoot-out.
Keeping his finger on the trigger, Kyle cut behind the house, hoping to find Tom in the courtyard; but it looked like he’d gone searching for keys. He did find a four-wheeled trolley with pneumatic tyres that had been used to shift some of the heavier studio equipment the day before.
Kyle looked at Chase. ‘Take it.’
‘You’re off your skull,’ she sneered.
‘You might well be right,’ Kyle said, too nervous even to force a grin, as part of him wished he’d taken the simple option of driving out of the gate and leaving the tricky stuff to the cops.
Rifle poised, Kyle led into the house through the chunky back door, with Chase and the squeaking trolley wheels behind him. He leaned into the kitchen and was relieved to find it empty, then cut across the hallway and peeked inside the giant dining-hall before looking back at Chase.
‘Leave the trolley. You go in first.’
Kyle counted eight AFA members in the room: Chase, Viv, Jay, Jo, plus the two teenage lads who’d been working as stage hands and the women who worked the cameras. Tom was the only absentee.
Apart from Chase, they were all standing close to the cage. Kyle clicked the gun into single-shot mode and fired a round at the wall to grab everyone’s attention.
‘Hands up everyone,’ he shouted.
Kyle reckoned that Jo, who had a gun, and Viv, who didn’t, were the most likely to give him trouble. He closed Jo down with the gun aimed at her head and tried to sound as friendly as his nerves would let him.
‘I think we’ve made our point, Jo,’ Kyle said. ‘Let Cobb out of the cage and I’ll take him to hospital. You’ll be long gone by the time the cops get here.’
‘You haven’t got the guts to shoot us,’ Jo hissed. ‘And don’t you care about the animals?’
CHERUB training teaches you to study the dynamics of the group you’re trying to infiltrate. The AFA’s were simple: Jo was the boss and the others were all scared of her. Kyle reckoned he’d have everyone except Viv under his thumb once Jo submitted.
‘Jo, if I back off now you’ll either pull your gun and kill me on the spot, or stick me in the cage with Cobb. So I might not be a cold-blooded killer, but I’m smart enough to know that shooting you may be my only option at this stage.’
Jo mulled over Kyle’s words, before slowly pulling her gun and handing it to him backwards.
‘Thank you,’ Kyle nodded, managing a brief smile before looking around at Chase. ‘Wheel the trolley up to the cage.’ Then he looked back at Jo. ‘Open it up and get the boys to lift Cobb on to the trolley.’
Kyle was fairly certain that Jo was the only one with a gun, but kept his eyes open, looking for any sudden movements.
The cage clanked open and Cobb made a low moan as the two stage hands lifted him on to the trolley. His hair glistened with sweat and his giant T-shirt was a mass of puke and bloodstains.
‘Who has the keys to the blue van?’ Kyle asked.
‘I always knew you were a soft prick, Kyle,’ Viv shouted angrily. ‘Your kid brother James has more balls than you.’
‘Soft prick with an SA80 pointing at your head,’ Kyle grinned, feeling much more confident now that he had Jo under control. ‘Someone give me the keys.’
‘Your boyfriend took them away,’ Viv sneered.
Kyle cursed his luck. Tom must have been cutting around the front of the house towards the courtyard as he’d come in the back with Chase.
‘I need your phone, Jo,’ Kyle said, trying not to let on that he wasn’t sure what to do next.
Jo handed it to Kyle without any fuss. He stuffed it inside his trousers and started backing up towards the door.
‘I want you all to stay in this room and keep calm. Once you hear me drive away, you can do whatever the hell you like. Chase, you pull the trolley. Jay, come with us to help lift Cobb into the back of the van.’
Kyle thought about ordering Chase to wheel the trolley up to the white van parked near the gate, but even if the trolley made it up the rutted path, the bumpy ride would knock the stuffing out of Cobb.
Kyle couldn’t fetch the van back himself, because he wouldn’t be able to control the others from two hundred metres away and he reckoned Jo had more weapons stashed upstairs. If he asked someone else to go get the van, they’d most likely use it to escape.
With hindsight, Kyle realised that the best plan would have been to put Chase in the van and reverse it back towards the house. Now he was left with no choice but to go out the back and hope that Tom would hand over the keys to one of the other vans.
‘Roll him out,’ Kyle ordered.
Kyle checked that Tom wasn’t waiting outside, before Chase pulled the trolley with Cobb on it along the hallway and out into the sun.
‘You out here, Tom?’ Kyle yelled, trying to sound casual, as he wondered what might be going through his boyfriend’s mind, or if Tom even realised that he’d taken the others hostage.
As Chase and the trolley squeaked across the lawn towards the courtyard, Kyle kept his finger on the trigger and Jay walked alongside him. It took half a minute to reach the two parked vans.
Kyle shouted again, ‘Tom?’
He walked away from the trolley and looked around and under the two vans. He shook with fear as he tore open the back doors of the blue van and pointed his rifle at the cushions and junk inside.
‘Tom, what’s the matter, mate?’ Kyle asked as he crept around the side of the van.
As he walked parallel to the open window on the passenger side, Tom popped up out of the footwell and aimed a revolver through the window frame, fifty centimetres behind Kyle’s head.
‘Drop the rifle,’ Tom ordered.
Kyle turned slightly, so that he could see Tom’s shaking hands reflected in the door mirror.
‘I did this for you, Tom,’ Kyle lied. ‘You said it isn’t right. We can leave together, dump Cobb at the local hospital and get the hell out of here.’
‘I told you that the only way we’d get away with this is if we went through with it,’ Tom said angrily. ‘You’ve just made a bloody enormous mess.’
‘I thought …’ Kyle said, wondering how he could talk his way around Tom as he shifted the gun across his chest.
‘Hold still.’
‘I thought you and me had something special,’ Kyle said, trying to sound needy.
‘Kyle, I don’t …’ Tom faltered. ‘I can’t believe you did this, dude. I don’t want to shoot you, but I don’t want to get nicked eit
her.’
‘I guess I’m an idiot,’ Kyle said, looking down submissively, like he’d given up hope. ‘If you’re not coming with me, I can’t see any point.’
Kyle reached across his chest to unhook the shoulder strap holding up the gun. He could see how scared Tom was and guessed that he’d fly up like a jelly if it went off.
Keeping one eye on Tom’s reflection in the door mirror and with the dangerous end of the rifle pointing harmlessly towards the ground, Kyle pushed the strap off his shoulder, but grabbed the trigger with his opposite hand as the rifle fell.
The round punched harmlessly into the dirt, but it made Tom jolt, exactly as Kyle had hoped. As Tom’s revolver pointed at the sky, Kyle plunged his hand inside the van. He pushed Tom’s hands against the roof and twisted the gun from his grasp, as Chase dived for the rifle.
Kyle launched a savage backwards kick, hitting Chase in the guts and knocking her into the dirt. With Tom’s pistol in one hand, he spun a hundred and eighty degrees and pressed his shoe against Chase’s ribs as he tore the rifle away.
Kyle screamed at Tom, ‘Get out of there and help Jay load Cobb into the back.’
As the two young men lifted Cobb from the trolley on to the cushions inside the van, Kyle looked in the front and was relieved to see keys dangling out of the steering column. Once Cobb was laid out and the back doors had slammed, Kyle threw the rifle across the passenger seat and started the engine.
The van juddered, almost stalling as he headed for the road. He left the engine running as he jumped out and swung open the gate at the top of the drive, all the while keeping a wary eye on the house in case someone had found a gun and decided to come after him.
Once he was safely back inside the van, Kyle pulled out into a country lane and worked his way up through the gears before grabbing Jo’s mobile out of his pocket. He dialled the CHERUB campus emergency line.
‘I’m coming out of Hummingbird Farm,’ Kyle screamed. ‘I need urgent directions to the nearest hospital.’
Kyle recognised the voice of Chloe Blake, a recently promoted mission controller. ‘Are you badly injured?’
‘I’ve survived worse,’ Kyle said, as he checked in the mirror to make sure nobody was following him. ‘But I’ve got Nick Cobb in the back and I have absolutely no idea if he’s gonna make it.’
36. TRANSIT
Things had calmed down at the cottage in Corbyn Copse: James’s situation had been sorted and Kyle was dealing directly with the control room on campus.
Lauren had settled on the living-room couch next to Ryan and marvelled at the way twenty-four-hour news channels manage to keep waffling on about a story without ever actually saying anything new. She was in half a mind to go out the back and throw a couple of balls around for Meatball, when Zara came charging in.
‘Kyle’s safe,’ Zara grinned. ‘Cobb is with him, but he’s haemorrhaging blood. As soon as the police know Cobb has been released, they’ll send all their units into the area around Hummingbird Farm to sweep up the terrorists. James and Kyle are both going to be identified and the police will trace them back to this cottage. We’d better disappear before that happens.’
‘Now?’ Lauren asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Zara nodded. ‘We’ll pack our own stuff, then we’ll go into the boys’ room and do theirs.’
‘What about me?’ Ryan asked.
‘I want you out too,’ Zara said. ‘I’ll book you into a hotel until we sort you out a flat, unless you’ve got a friend you want to stay with.’
‘What about my parole?’ Ryan asked anxiously. ‘This is my registered address, I’m not supposed to stay anywhere else.’
‘Don’t make any contact with your parole officer. Call me at campus tomorrow and tell me where you are. I’ll square your parole situation and transfer a few thousand into your bank account to keep you ticking over for a couple of months.’
Lauren looked warily at Zara. ‘What about Meatball? I’m not allowed pets on campus.’
‘I guess we’ll have to take him with us. You’ll have to give him to one of the red shirts, unless Ryan wants him.’
Lauren’s heart fluttered as she imagined Meatball disappearing with Ryan and never being able to see him again.
‘I can’t see that working,’ Ryan said, to Lauren’s massive relief. ‘I expect I’ll be moving around on Zebra Alliance campaigns and I can’t keep arranging a dog sitter.’
Zara looked down at Lauren with a smile. ‘Why are you still standing there? Come on, get packing.’
*
‘Right,’ Kyle yelled into the phone, as the blue van steamed through a red light at the end of a street of terraced houses. ‘This one is definitely King Edward Place. Now what am I looking for?’
Chloe’s reassuringly calm voice came back down the phone: ‘It should be the second turning on your right.’
Kyle got a horn blast as he slowed sharply to make the turn, then had to slam the brakes on as he spotted the no entry sign.
‘It’s a one way,’ Kyle yelled, as he heard Cobb moaning with pain in the back. ‘Hang in there Nick. Not far to go.’
‘According to the map on my screen, any of the next three turnings will get you there,’ Chloe said. ‘Take another right when you reach the bottom and you should be able to see the hospital.’
Kyle heard a police siren coming up behind him as he pulled away. Plain clothes police had been scouting the area around Hummingbird Farm. It looked like they’d seen him leave and sent their colleagues after him.
‘I’ve got a blue and white on my tail,’ Kyle yelled. ‘But I’m not pulling over before Cobb is in the hospital.’
‘Roger that,’ Chloe said. ‘I’ll try getting a message through to the local police telling them not to stop you before you arrive.’
The next street was one way as well, but there was no traffic and it looked wide enough to pass even if there was. Kyle made the turn and hit fifty-five mph, but the police cruiser still closed in his mirrors. As he neared the bottom of the road, a set of lights changed and he found a line of cars turning towards him.
The lead car pulled up as Kyle blasted the horn. He swerved on to the pavement, but still tore the front bumper off a little Toyota as he turned into a busy main road, with the police siren blaring directly behind him.
He slowed up to pull on to the slip road of something that looked uncannily like a hospital, but it turned out to be an adjoining retirement home. By the time he’d realised, the police car had swung into the opposite lane and attempted to cut him off by turning into his path. But Kyle knew that trick from his advanced driving course and managed to get on the accelerator and use the weight of the van to barge the nose of the police car out of his way.
Kyle spotted a couple of ambulances parked up under a canopy at the entrance to an accident and emergency unit. He warned a couple of pedestrians with the horn as he pulled on to the lot. The police car was directly behind and Kyle screamed to the hospital staff for help as he jumped out.
An ambulance crew and a couple of hospital orderlies ran towards the van.
‘Patient’s in the back,’ Kyle shouted.
By the time the medical staff had the doors open, the two policemen were out of their car and steaming angrily towards Kyle. They weren’t armed, but he had nowhere to run to and he was completely exhausted, so he raised his arms to surrender.
‘Up against the van,’ the cop said, drawing his baton.
A couple of metres away, an ambulance woman stepped inside the van as a trolley was wheeled up to the back doors.
‘It’s Nick Cobb!’ the woman shouted.
‘Turn to face the van,’ the cop said nervously. ‘What’s that you’ve got sticking out of your pockets?’
‘A Smith and Wesson revolver and an automatic pistol.’
The policeman looked shocked as he stepped forward and pulled the guns out of Kyle’s pockets. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’
‘There’s an assault rifle on the passenger seat.’
As the other cop walked around to check the front of the van, a message burst out of his radio. ‘Units six-two and one-eight-eight. One of you stay and look after the van. The other officer to escort the van driver to Newcastle airport.’
*
It took half an hour to load up the people carrier. Lauren felt sad as she did a final check under the beds and in all the wardrobes and drawers. As she came out of the loo, she bumped into Ryan at the top of the stairs.
‘Hey,’ she said, looking up and feeling her eyes start to moisten.
‘What’s the sour face for?’ Ryan grinned. ‘I wouldn’t be upset if I was you. Wherever this CHERUB campus is, it sounds pretty fantastic from what I’ve heard.’
‘It’s cool,’ Lauren nodded. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing my mates and that, just … Do you remember the first time I saw you? You said how you were never going to have a family and how you’d probably end up dying in prison, well …’ Lauren paused to rub her nose on a tissue. ‘Well, I really hope you win against Malarek and that you live until you’re ninety-nine and die with about twenty kids and grandkids sitting around your bed.’
Ryan was touched. ‘I didn’t know you cared,’ he smiled, giving Lauren a hug and rubbing her back as his own eyes misted over.
‘If I’ve made a few kids like you think about what they put in their mouths and get them to stop eating meat and wearing bits of dead animals on their feet, maybe it will have been worth it,’ Lauren quoted.
‘Blimey,’ Ryan sniffed. ‘Well remembered.’
Lauren grinned. ‘I’m not eating meat ever again. Well, I might have to if I’m working undercover, but apart from that I’m staying vegetarian.’
Ryan leaned forwards and gave Lauren a bristly kiss on the cheek. ‘You’re a cool kid, Lauren. I really hope you stick to it.’
‘I will, I swear. And I’m gonna download all those leaflets about factory farming off the Internet, make photocopies and try persuading all my mates to go veggie as well.’