Timmo was always scared at this point. ‘I dunno if them bats are still here? What do you think bro?’
‘I told you not come!’ His brother was harsh.
‘But I really hate bats Jack. I don’t mind snakes and spiders but bats remind me of vampires and I’m too young to die.’
Jack softened his tone. ‘Stop worrying dimmo, bats don’t move in the daylight and if they did, they would miss us as they fly around using radar or something.’
‘Sonic radar, that’s what they have. An amazing piece of genetic engineering.’ Roger would have continued if encouraged but the darkness of the cellar kept them all quiet now. Creeping across the floor on tiptoe, the children placed their left hands on the damp slimy wall and edged to where they knew the stairs were hidden. A sudden scream ripped through the dank air.
It was Kit Kat who shouted shrilly. ‘Jackkkkkkkkkkkk...a rat just ran up my leg! Oh my god, a flipping rat.’ Kate never swore and flipping was the worse word she ever used. Roger stifled a laugh. ‘Roger! Was that your hand and not a real rat?’ She was mortified as all three boys laughed out loud. ‘I promise you Ponsonby-Smythe, that one day I will get my revenge.’ The boys laughed louder at the girlie girl. ‘Be scared Roger, no matter how long, I promise you.’ Now her panic was over, she was more worried by the fact a boy had run his hand up her leg to her bum. Kate had been more aware of boys since the biology lessons at school.
‘Whatever girlie girl, I thought you were tough like Wonder Woman?’ She stayed silent after Roger’s taunt. A rat or a hand, both were equally as frightening. Timmo took heart from her fear, if she was scared it was okay for him to be scared. He still couldn’t see much as they neared the old wooden stairs and so he clung to his brother’s T-shirt in the darkness in front of him.
He whispered. ‘Yeah you great girlie girl, I’m four years younger than you lot and I’m not scared because I’m a boy.’ As he finished his sentence, a squeak came from immediately above him and a rat fell off a roof beam and landed firmly on his head. Another even louder scream penetrated every room in the house as they all bumped into each other in a blind panic to reach the stairs and safety. They clambered up as quickly as possible and slammed the cellar door shut. Quaking, they stood in a group in the welcome light of the old kitchens with their giant Victorian windows.
‘Flippin flip, and flip again’ said Timmo but one of the words was ruder.
‘Stop swearing dimmo, you know only dad is allowed to swear and then only an occasional bad word.’
His brother calmed down as he listened to his younger brother air his fears. ‘I felt its claws on my neck. It was horrible and its whiskers were tickling me as it crawled off.’ The group examined the back of Timmo’s neck and finding there were no injuries, they headed for the main staircase and the top floor where they had made their camp.
The view out of the windows towards the playing fields and Welsh hills in the distance was magnificent. They had discovered their secret entrance a year before and therefore had experienced every season from Mr Jones bedroom window. The best time had been after the big snows, when they had taken snowballs up to the top floor from outside and thrown them at passers-by from their high vantage point. It had been a delight, listening to people wondering how a snowball had hit them and watching them run behind the nearest hedge to search for the young culprits. Jack’s wasn’t a bad gang but they were certainly full of mischievous fun.
Timmo lit the Gaz stove purloined from his dad’s shed and admired the single blue flame as he started to make the tea. He opened the cardboard packet of dried skimmed milk and noticed the mouse droppings. Timmo flicked them out with his middle finger and placed the packet next to the bottle of Evian taken from Kate’s house the week before. There was no sugar but Roger always told them it was bad for their teeth. They sat perched on the old brass bedstead, forlorn without its mattress. Four children line abreast, facing the windows and watching the grounds man rolling the cricket square 300 metres away. Jack was still too young for the village cricket team but he and Roger played with the juniors every Tuesday evening during the holidays.
Roger commented on the work. ‘A nice sward mate.’
‘Yeah.’ Replied Jack and after a minute’s silence. ‘Where’s the sword, I can only see the roller mate.’
‘Sward, you know the green, the turf, a nice English sward.’
‘Whatever. I wish I was playing today. Dad said he is going to be there.’
‘So’s my dad. He says your dad is rubbish and never scores any runs.’ Roger was gloating.
‘My dad scored two last week,’ proclaimed Jack before realising it was a poor score.
‘Precisely.’
Jack needed some revenge. ‘Well my dad says that your dad only bowls people out because he throws the ball and his action is totally illegal but missed by the poor umpires of the village league.’
‘My dad doesn’t throw Jack. He has a unique action like Muttiah Muralitharan.’
‘Who is Mutt Murlitheran?’ It was an impossible name to pronounce. ‘He can’t be English with a name like that.’
‘He plays for Sri Lanka’, pronounced Roger for everyone’s benefit.
‘There you go then, a whole team of throwers.’ Jack imitated the action and grabbed his mate around the neck to drag him onto the bed for a mock scrap. As they wrestled, Timmo joined in by jumping on the top and finally, unable to resist the rough and tumble, Kate jumped on the mound of three writhing boys and started tickling all of them, a typical girlie girl. As the pile collapsed she found her face an inch from Jack’s. Her mouth was within kissing distance, he paused and thought about it, and then he smelt the garlic she had eaten with her pasta the night before and he pulled away.
‘Oh my god, dog’s breath, how disgusting. Didn’t you clean your teeth this morning?’ He could be very rude at times. She blushed bright red, rejected by her adventurer and rushed out of the room and downstairs to escape to the safety of home and grandma. In her embarrassment, she even forgot about the rats as she raced through the cellar and out onto the road.
‘You should be less hard on her Jack. You know she fancies you.’ Roger stated the obvious but Jack’s reply was meant to cover his own hard embarrassment.
‘Whatever.’ As he muttered his reply, there was a woosh of flame as it leapt up the curtains at the rear of the room. Kate’s hasty departure had rocked the old floorboards and unseen by the children the gaz flame had ignited the old cotton curtains. Now they were burning fiercely. Jack leaped into action. He dragged a cushion off an old chair and started to hit the flames with it, but the harder he tried to extinguish them, the higher they reached. Within half a minute the curtain pelmets were also on fire and the old lime plaster on the ceiling started to glow and then crumble, allowing the flames to ignite the slatted timber beneath.
Jack turned to the two immobile boys. ‘Don’t just stand there. Shout out of the window for help.’ He valiantly turned back to the fire and realised their escape was now cut off. He joined the other two, who were yelling out of a window facing the road.
Licko was one of the first to hear their call. He had accompanied Kate as she stomped off, homeward bound but she had slowed to a walk and then stopped to sit on the bench under the ancient Chestnut tree. Whilst wondering how good the conkers would be this year, she had decided she would go back to be with the brainless boys, after all they didn’t know any better. Licko growled and pricked up his ears at the distant cries. Then the dog stood and faced back up the road and lifting his large head he loudly howled. The hair on the nape of his head stood to attention as he howled again, a demented, deep howl that reverberated through her heart. Licko turned to Kate and barked ‘let’s go.’ She understood immediately as she heard the faint cries.
‘Help! Fire!’ She heard Roger first and then Jack. Immediately, she jumped to her feet and started to run as fast as possible back to The Place. As she approached, she could see three heads hanging out of the upstairs window, th
rough which smoke poured into the clear summer air. Immediately beneath them was the grounds man who was already talking to the emergency services on his mobile phone.
She called upwards. ‘Get out you three, get out now!’
Jack shouted back, the other two were too terrified to speak as the heat built behind them and the smoke made them choke. ‘We’re trapped Kate! The doorway at the back is blocked by the flames.’ A billow of smoke enveloped him and the other boys making them choke again. The grounds man leaned towards her. ‘I don’t know what we can do miss. I telephoned the fire brigade but it will take 15 minutes to get here from Chester. I think they are doomed by god.’
She hit him across the chest with her right arm. ‘You snivelling coward, we have to save them!’ Immediately she jumped down the hatchway and entered the cellar. It was writhing with rats, hundreds of rats disturbed by the fire that they smelt and feared. ‘Oh god no.’ She lurched upwards, screwed up her eyes and took all the courage she had into her heart and stepped back down into the wriggling darkness. The rats crawled across her feet as she walked across the rat filled floor. Two or three scampered up her bare legs and she wacked them away, but more came and reached her pants, nestling under the safety of her short dress.
‘Get off, get off get off!’ She screamed at them but couldn’t move any faster, as no way did she want to trip and fall in the dark. After what seemed an eternity, she reached the stairs and quickly climbed up. By the time she reached the floor below the bedroom, the smoke was so thick, the boys couldn’t shout anymore. They were suffocating. They coughed on the floor above her and she knew she had to act quickly or it was the end for them. The fear spurred her on as she searched around the room. Near the window and immediately beneath the boys was a tall set of steps which were sat on rollers. It was obvious! The Jones’s library had moveable steps that reached right up to the floor above. She searched around for anything that she could use to prise open a hole in the ceiling and then she spotted an old wooden box in the corner. On the outside was a faded advert, it said “Croquet set – fit for The Queen.” Wrenching open the box she grabbed a mallet with a long handle and started up the steps. They creaked as she went up, they were full of woodworm and each step bowed downwards as they were so weak. On reaching the summit, she started to hammer at the plaster above and immediately exposed the floorboards of the bedroom.
‘Jack! Help me! Can you hear me? I am hitting the floor below you!’ There was no reply. She hit harder and aimed for the end of a floorboard. Immediately, she saw two nails appear as the board lifted higher. Suddenly, the floorboard opened further and a smudged face appeared behind the grimy hands that clasped it. It was Jack, her lovely Jack. ‘I’ll hit the one next door, make the boys help lift the boards.’
He choked as he answered and spat dirty saliva to one side. ‘Can’t. Not moving.’ He struggled manfully to help as she thrashed each board into submission. His strength of will was overcoming the physical danger as the adrenaline surged through his young body. Within twenty seconds there was an opening big enough for an escape. The fire wooshed behind her, it was spreading down the stairs and within a few minutes, she too would be trapped.
‘Quick Jack, it’s now or never.’ A pair of legs appeared through the hole. They were Timmo’s. Carefully she placed them on the rungs and supporting him as he climbed down she left him gasping at the foot of the steps. Roger came next, but after a few steps he fell, nearly taking Kate with him and collapsed unconscious on the floor. Timmo crept close and started slapping Roger’s face to wake him up. Finally, Jack’s legs appeared and he moved next to her on the steps. He smiled, a white, brilliant smile through the black grime on his face.
‘Thought you’d come back,’ he kissed her on her cheek and together they dismounted and grabbed the others. Dragging and pushing each other, the four friends went down the stairs to the kitchen as the roof collapsed into the library. Ten seconds earlier and they would all have been fried.
The four friends sat on a bench adjacent to the cricket pavilion and stared in silence at the inferno in front of them. Old houses certainly burned well. Licko had run off home, flames were the scariest thing in his doggy life. Even an autumn bonfire made of a few handfuls of leaves scared him when lit by Roger’s dad in the garden at the mansion. Chester Fire Brigade had sent two normal fire engines and also ‘a snorkel’, much to Timmo’s delight but even Timmo felt too guilty to talk about the fascinating machines. The Fire Chief had given up on the house, it was too far gone. A column of smoke rose a kilometre into the perfectly blue sky and then dissipated to the south, making a large grey cloud that drifted over Beeston Castle. Jack took another swig of the water provided by the firemen before he spoke. ‘You saved our lives Kit Kat. We can never forget that. You are so cool.’
She squirmed in her seat. ‘I would always save my friends’ lives’ she said modestly. In her heart she wanted to say ‘and especially yours Jack,’ but it was an unrequited teenage crush that he hadn’t recognised yet.
Jennifer and Jonathan stood talking to Maria and Rupert behind the ambulances. The paramedics were assuring them that their children were fine. It gave time for grandma to wander over to the bench. She stopped in front of the children and looked down her glasses with her piercing eyes.
She spoke gently with her arms crossed over her chest. ‘We had a comedian in my day. He always said “that’s another fine mess you have got me into”. Hardy was his name, part of Laurel and Hardy if you have ever heard of them?’ They kept their heads down. They knew the duo as they had seen some of the old movies at Roger’s house. ‘But in each film, he always forgave his friend Laurel because it was never really Laurel’s fault.’ She leaned forward and pulled all four children into a massive hug. ‘Come on, let’s go and face your parents.’ They sheepishly moved towards their mums and dads, more scared by the retributions than by the fire.
The cause was obvious. Rickety floorboards meant a gaz stove would easily topple over, whether it was Kate’s fault or whether it would have been one of the boys. The Fire Chief said they were lucky to be alive. The local newspaper shots showed a mournful set of children and parents with a smouldering house behind. The headline was a trifle unfair. “School holidays encourage arson attacks by bored school kids.” It was an accident. They never meant it to happen, but boy did they get the biggest roasting of their lives off their parents. Kate got off lightly with grandma, nothing more was said, but Kate was extra good for the next two weeks. All the boys were punished. No seeing their friends for a week. No PC’s, TV or music and they were all made to read books for six hours a day – unbelievable, they were in total shock...after all, six f...flippin hours each and every day!
Chapter 5
A cunning plan
The monstrous woman leaned on the parapet of the gallery that her engineers had cut into the rock above level two. She was breathing heavily after the short walk from her bedchamber, hidden deep in the rock 200 metres above her head. The gallery was wide enough to take a Landrover and could be accessed at three points from the training floor set below her. Once on the gallery there was a single exit for vehicles, which led out onto the barren mountainside. It was the fastest way for her teams of ninjas to pour onto the slopes and take up defensive positions.
Below her were parked 200 Landrovers. None were conventional above the axles and drive trains as her engineers had been given specific instructions on how to modify each one to make them mean fighting machines. Twenty contained the pointed missiles of the Chinese SAM’s, the latest Surface to Air Missiles. Although lightweight, they packed a real punch and were effective against slower moving aircraft or helicopters and absolutely deadly if anything was travelling at less than a 1000 kilometres per hour. This met the anticipated scenario of any force attacking the massive volcano. The Russian SAM’s had been bought for longer range use on the fastest jets but were extremely heavy in comparison to the Chinese versions. Therefore, they were in camouflaged bunkers at stra
tegic points on the exterior of the mountain. Teams of ninja manned these hideouts 24 hours a day and seven days a week in case any governments got wind of MM’s headquarters location. Between the Russian Sam sites were rows of landmines, carefully located to protect the terrorists within, from an advancing army. The mines were the latest American design, bought on the black market in Serbia and could only be disarmed by an ultrasonic sound, beamed on a specific frequency. As the ninjas knew the frequency, it would allow them either to attack down the hill across the mines, or to sit behind their defensive shield and watch their enemies die crossing the lethal lattice.
Other Landrovers contained RPG heavy machine guns or mini-rocket launchers. Both were incredibly effective at up to 3 kilometres and the abundance of ammunition stored in the volcano allowed the ninjas to practice twice a month on the animals roaming the savannah of Northern Tanzania. The local tribesmen were always permitted to follow behind the mini-army and to collect “the kill” to feed their families. As they preferred the taste of the fast moving and leaping Gazelle it suited the ninjas too, as they were harder to hit and therefore better practice. The Maasai had learned to be careful when eating the meat as too many teeth had been broken on bullets lodged deep within the carcasses.
The remaining Landrovers were an assortment of service vehicles. They carried spare ammunition, canisters of napalm which would be illegally used in the flame throwers as the governments of the world had banned the lethal substance. Ilegality to a terrorist was like eating icecream 7 days a week. Wrong and right at the same time. Diesel for the vehicles, food and water, full engineering toolkits and also spares for most repairs. All the 4 x 4’s were painted in camouflage colours, dull browns and greens and all had a single antenna in the roof that spun through 360 degrees every ten seconds. This was another one of Techno’s pieces of wizardry called RNT – Radar Networking Technology. Not only could an attack team see the other terrorist vehicles on their screens in the drivers’ cabs, they could link all of the 200 RNT’s to form a vast array that could be used in two different ways. Firstly, to detect any incoming land or air forces up to 1000 kilometres distance, and secondly, under MM’s sole control, the RNT’s could send a pulse of high energy from each Landrover to her control vehicle in the centre of any deployment. When the pulses reached MM’s giant antenna mounted on the back of her truck, they were combined into a supersonic beam that could scorch an area of 10 kilometres in diameter, burning everything within. That was called the land setting but the weapon also had an air setting. The same beam could be directed skywards and create a vertical force field that nothing, absolutely nothing could fly through. Any aircraft attempting to fly through this powerful force field would simply implode and collapse into a lump of molten aluminium.