The quad was an easy target and James turned around in time to view the rapid succession of shots. The first hit the back wheel, but the rest punched the metal bodywork. The simulated rounds turned to powder on impact, but had enough power to give the quad a final nudge into the water.
James dived for cover as rubber and metal hit the surface of the lake. Ducks started quacking as a huge splash spilled up the embankment, giving James a soaking. Even if they could drag the quad out without getting shot to pieces, the engine would be flooded.
‘Why didn’t you grab it?’ Dana screamed, as the two red shirts sprinted up the hill.
James was half drowned and limping from where he’d been shot in the leg. ‘What do you think I was trying to do?’ he shouted bitterly.
The red shirts had made it back to the trees and the one who still had her gun took a shot. Dana ducked down and fired back, but James noticed a pair of quads coming towards them. Lauren’s fake radio announcement had only fooled the white shirts for a few minutes, and now they were all heading back to the lake.
‘Run,’ James shouted, as Dana fixed on Ryan’s night-vision goggles. ‘Where’s the other pair?’
‘McEwen’s goggles smashed,’ Dana explained. They started running along the edge of the lake. It was pretty open, but there were a few bushes to shield them.
‘We could try swimming across,’ James said. He realised it wasn’t his greatest ever idea, but he forgave himself when he recognised a pungent waft of exhaust fumes. ‘My buggy,’ he shouted.
But only Dana could see the cart charging downhill towards them, with two quads close behind.
‘I think it’s Lauren,’ she shouted.
James couldn’t believe it, but saw for himself when the headlights from one of the quads caught his sister’s face. Dana sprinted uphill with James behind, stopping only to take a couple of shots at the chasing quads.
‘Care for a ride, old bean?’ Lauren asked, skidding to a halt.
‘I bloody love you,’ James smiled. He grabbed the front passenger seat while Dana squatted down in the rear storage compartment and grabbed on to the poles holding up the roof.
The quads were almost on top of them and the little cart struggled to get any grip on the shaggy grass as Lauren tried steering back uphill.
‘Gimme a gun,’ James shouted.
Dana passed her rifle back, but she was out of ammo and it took another couple of desperate seconds for James to fit one of the spare clips from the red shirt’s backpack. Dana had to duck as he fired backwards at the chasing quads. Their riders were alone and it was impossible for them to shoot and drive at speed, but they continued to get closer and while you weren’t supposed to ram other vehicles on training exercises, everyone knew that rules get bent whenever a surge of adrenalin kicks in.
‘Right in the face,’ James howled, as a pellet smacked the rider of the closest quad in the goggles. She held on to the handlebars, but the quad wobbled and she couldn’t keep up the chase with the powdered remains of a simunition cartridge blocking her view.
The second quad had always been less of a threat, and as soon as they reached the concrete path, Lauren hit the accelerator and the buggy roared clear. The quad rider realised it was hopeless and gave up.
It was a violent ride, especially for Dana who was getting thrown all over the place in the back.
‘Don’t rev it so hard,’ James shouted over the engine noise. ‘There’s no safety cut-out. You could blow the head gasket and you don’t want to be on board when that happens.’
Lauren eased off, but she surprised James by taking a left off the path back to the main building.
‘What are you doing?’ James screamed. ‘It’s the Japanese garden. It’s a dead end.’
As Lauren slowed down, a volley of shots pelted the cart’s roof from a sniper position on the porch at the front of the dojo.
‘What’s going on?’ Dana yelled.
‘I just heard on the radio,’ Lauren replied, before yelling into the dark: ‘Do you want a ride? I can’t wait all night.’
Seconds later two crouching figures emerged from the side of the dojo. They seemed to be unarmed and bullets came from at least two firing positions as they ran. James recognised Gabrielle first as she clambered in the back and squeezed up to Dana. The other girl was James’ ex, Kerry Chang, but she hesitated because there was nowhere to sit.
‘Get on his lap,’ Lauren ordered.
Kerry was quite small, but her head was still pressed against the roof of the buggy. James locked his arms around her waist as her sweaty back pressed against his face. It had been ages since he’d been so close to his first proper girlfriend, and her smell brought back memories.
‘All safe?’ Lauren said, as she turned the cart and sped away.
The five bodies made the cart heavy and Lauren almost tipped it as they went around a corner. Now she was back where she’d been ten minutes earlier, on the main path through campus heading towards the tennis courts.
They were picking up speed, but when she squeezed the brakes nothing happened.
‘Slow down,’ James shouted. ‘Are you nuts?’
‘I’m trying,’ Lauren screamed. ‘Why did you design such crappy brakes?’
James couldn’t see because Kerry was in his lap, but the golf buggy’s speedo topped out at fifty kilometres an hour and the needle had gone beyond that.
‘We’re overloaded and the brake discs must have overheated,’ James said. ‘Pump the pedal hard and keep pumping.’
The wire fencing around the tennis courts passed in a blur as they headed for the rear of the main building. Lauren kept stamping until something happened. At first she thought it was the brakes, but Dana and Gabrielle started screaming. The back axle had buckled and the rear of the cart was scraping the path, throwing up showers of orange sparks and making a grinding noise that woke up half of campus.
Then Lauren screamed as hot sparks sprayed up her bare legs. She looked down and saw a hole beneath her feet where the pedals had been. It was a dramatic failure, but the disintegrated chassis came to a halt less than five metres from the back wall of the main building and the only casualties were a selection of rose bushes.
The traumatised black shirts jumped out, straightened their goggles and grabbed their guns, except for James who stayed in the passenger seat, horrified at the disintegration of his buggy.
Dana cracked him around the head. ‘Come on, dickhead. You can mourn later.’
By the time James was out of his seat, Lauren, Gabrielle and Kerry had already run half of the fifty metres towards the nearest entrance. Dana heard the roar of a quad-bike engine. It was way off in the distance, but it still gave James a jolt and they went sprinting after the others.
A blast of warm air hit James as he stepped into a darkened hallway. Kerry and Gabrielle wore massive grins and took turns hugging Lauren. When they let go, James couldn’t help smiling at her.
‘You’re totally the best sister,’ James said, as he pulled Lauren into a tight hug.
Lauren smiled back. ‘And just you bloody well remember it next time you feel like booting a football at me.’
16. PRETEND
Fahim had barely slept, but sunlight blasted through the crack between his bedroom curtains. The huge house felt like a mausoleum. He’d heard Sylvia the cleaning lady arrive at eight and she was vacuuming downstairs, but there’d been no sign of his parents and he was afraid to leave his room.
When his bedroom door finally clicked, Fahim was delighted by the rattle of cutlery on a breakfast tray, but he was alarmed to find his father holding it. Even when he worked from home Hassam usually wore a suit, but today he was dressed in jeans and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt.
‘How’s my boy?’ Hassam said cheerily.
‘Not too bad,’ Fahim replied, as his heart started to drum. ‘Is Mum around?’
Hassam straddled the question. ‘I made you breakfast. You must eat well to recover.’
He rested the tray on
the edge of the mattress and Fahim couldn’t fail to be impressed. There were two soft boiled eggs, a small fruit salad, orange juice, iced water and toast.
‘Thank you,’ he said politely.
‘All my own work,’ Hassam said. ‘I think it’s the way your mother would do it, but if something isn’t right, just tell me …’
‘I’m sure it’s fine, Dad.’
Hassam’s presence felt creepy, but his father’s outbursts were often followed by guilt-fuelled attempts at reconciliation. Over the years it had taken many forms: from expensive toys and fancy trainers through to theme parks and family weekends in Paris. When he was younger, Fahim got excited by all this. In a perverse way he’d even look forward to family rows because of the gifts and attention lavished by both parents afterwards. But at eleven years old he was past the stage where Lego compensated for watching his mother get slapped around, and there were items in his room that he never touched because they reminded him of something awful.
Hassam hovered anxiously as his son cracked the top off a boiled egg and dunked a finger of toast into the runny yolk.
‘Your mother left last night,’ Hassam said awkwardly.
Fahim was startled. He’d often urged his mum to leave or get a divorce, but he’d always assumed he’d go with her if she did.
‘Forever?’
Hassam gave an eerie smile. ‘Your mother needs time alone. She’s packed some things and booked into a spa.’
This didn’t seem so bad and Fahim nodded. ‘She deserves it,’ was all he could think to say.
‘You with the trophy cabinets and me with … with what happened last night. We both see the red mist and shoot off like fireworks, don’t we?’
Fahim resented his father’s attempt to shift blame on to him, but he swallowed his indignation and forced a weak smile. ‘We should both learn to hold our breath and count to ten,’ he said.
Hassam roared with laughter and gave the big toe poking from the duvet a friendly squeeze. ‘You and I can go into town. Remember that leather jacket you saw? And wasn’t there some radio-controlled car you were after? I bet it would run well on the big patio out back.’
‘My head’s killing me.’
‘Not today, obviously,’ Hassam said. ‘But tomorrow … Actually I have a meeting, but definitely the weekend.’
Fahim turned to straighten his pillows, giving his father a glimpse of red where his shoulder had bled in the night.
‘I’ll get Sylvia to put fresh sheets on,’ Hassam said, his tone firming slightly. ‘If she asks tell her you had a nosebleed. OK, sport?’
Fahim almost choked on his egg. His father only ever called him sport when he was papering over cracks.
‘I guess,’ Fahim said. The blood had made his father feel guilty and he decided it was a good time to ask a bold question. ‘What about my school? I don’t want to live in the Middle East.’
Hassam raised an eyebrow and was clearly a touch irritated, but his words came softly. ‘Your mother and I don’t agree on this, but I won’t force you to go abroad if you don’t want to.’
‘Thank you,’ Fahim said.
‘Your friend from before you went to Warrender Prep. The one who came here to play sometimes in the holidays. I forget his name.’
‘Louis.’
‘Yes,’ Hassam smiled. ‘Louis just moved to Burleigh Arts and Media. Maybe we can get you in there and we’ll see how things go.’
Fahim had never wanted to go to Warrender Prep, with its compulsory sport on a Saturday and outrageous amounts of homework. He broke into a genuine smile at the idea of going back to an ordinary school with his closest friend.
‘Really?’ Fahim said, but he immediately felt cross with himself for letting his father see that he could be bought off.
‘Burleigh got a decent OFSTED report. I’ll give them a call later this morning and ask about admissions.’
*
Lauren wasn’t sure why she’d been summoned to the chairwoman’s office, so it was a relief when Zara opened her office door with a smile.
‘Come in, Lauren,’ she said. ‘Take a pew.’
The office was fitted with modern furniture. An LCD picture frame had pride of place on Zara’s glass-topped desk, running a slideshow of Ewart, Joshua and Tiffany.
‘Did you enjoy the training exercise last night?’
Lauren shrugged as she rolled her chair closer to the desk. ‘I wouldn’t exactly describe getting dragged out of bed at midnight and being handcuffed and thrown out in the cold as my idea of fun. I guess it went OK though, but I’ve got a couple of little burns on my legs.’
Zara smiled. ‘We vary all our training programmes to ensure the element of surprise, but last night’s exercise was designed from scratch by Mr Kazakov. Overall I think it worked well, although it sounds like the balance of power tilted too heavily towards the red and white shirts.’
Lauren nodded. ‘You can’t run across the open part of campus with quad bikes chasing after you. You haven’t got a chance. Maybe if you kept the golf buggies working or something.’
‘I think Mr Pike has already decided that if we run a similar exercise again we’ll ban the use of powered vehicles and issue bicycles instead. It’s fairer; it cuts down the risk of accidents and the chances of a three-thousand-pound quad bike ending up at the bottom of the lake.’
‘That’s my brother’s fault,’ Lauren laughed. ‘I didn’t much like having to duff up the red shirts either. I mean, some of them were only eight and Siobhan burst into tears on me. It was horrible.’
‘Interesting point,’ Zara said, as she jotted it down on a notepad. ‘I’ll pass that along, although all of the red shirts were volunteers and they were all told they could go back to bed whenever they chose. They knew it would be a challenging night going up against black shirts, and the red shirts I’ve spoken to seem to have enjoyed themselves, despite a few cuts and bruises.
‘Anyway Lauren, I appreciate your feedback on the exercise, but the outstanding thing that came out of last night was your performance. You were the youngest on your team, but you had the savvy to use the ditches and go after James’ buggy. Then you took a risk and rescued several of your team-mates. Mr Pike and I were hugely impressed.’
Lauren broke into a giant smile, but made a point not to tell the chairwoman that getting James’ buggy was more an accident of geography than part of any grand plan.
‘Thank you, boss,’ she beamed.
‘It also goes to show that you can shine, even when you’re with a group of the best agents on campus. You seem to have behaved yourself over the last couple of months and I’ve heard good things about your work helping out in the junior block. I spoke to little Coral this morning and she’s settling in brilliantly now.’
‘Cool,’ Lauren said. ‘She’s such a little sweetie and really clever too.’
‘Taking all facts into consideration, I’ve decided to notify the mission controllers that your suspension from undercover operations has been lifted. You’re now free to go on any job they pick you for.’
Zara stood up and offered her hand. Lauren grinned helplessly as she shook it.
‘Thanks, boss!’
A more serious look came across Zara’s face as she held on to Lauren’s hand. ‘Don’t let it go to your head. I’ll be keeping a close watch on your behaviour on campus. If I hear of any more scheming, plotting or stirring, I’ll be left with no option but to boot you out.’
Lauren’s smile had disappeared by the time Zara let go.
‘I know I can’t risk it,’ Lauren said seriously. ‘No more scheming on campus, I swear.’
*
Rather than use the shower in his en-suite, Fahim went down to the health studio on the ground floor and took a soak in the giant Jacuzzi. A quarter of an hour dunking his head underwater and mucking about with the water jets soothed him and he came out of the steamy bathroom dressed in a luxurious robe with a pink glow to his shrivelled skin.
Hassam was in his offic
e and the cleaning lady was upstairs, so Fahim felt lonely as he padded barefoot down the marble hallway. A glance into the living-room surprised him. His father had righted the coffee table and replaced the magazines, but the rug was gone and when he stepped through on to the carpet he was surprised to find it damp underfoot.
Fahim curled his toes and a creamy foam of carpet shampoo squeezed up through the gaps between them. He enjoyed the novelty of this and did it again with his other foot. Remembering his mother’s bleeding nose, he figured his father had scrubbed the blood off the carpet and probably rolled up the rug so that it could be taken away and cleaned professionally.
As he turned to go back to his room, he noticed a white lump on the carpet next to the chunky base of a floor-standing lamp. He crouched forward, but recoiled when he saw that it was a tooth.
All Fahim’s life his mother had smiled at him with the same slightly crooked front tooth with three distinctive chips in the enamel. Now she was gone and she’d left part of her smile behind. It disgusted him at the same time as he felt an odd compulsion to examine it.
‘Are you doing something in here?’ Sylvia the cleaning lady asked.
Fahim was startled. He slipped the tooth into the pocket of his gown before spinning around. ‘Nothing much,’ he said.
‘I’ve changed your bedclothes. Now I’ve got to set to and clean up your father’s mess in here. If I leave that shampoo to dry in without diluting it, it’ll dry up as stiff as a board.’
‘Right,’ Fahim said awkwardly. ‘I suppose he doesn’t clean carpets very often. I was going back to my room anyway.’
The tooth was still a shock. Fahim desperately wanted to speak to his mum and check that she was OK. He dashed to his room, taking two stairs at a time, then sat on the clean bed and took his mobile from the shelf above.
After dialling his mum’s number he waited a few seconds. To his surprise he thought he could hear her distinctive ringtone. He stepped back on to the balcony overlooking the entrance where the ringing grew louder.