Jet Skis, Swamps & Smugglers

by Robert Muchamore

  Bullcalf shook his head. ‘I can take one guard.’

  Zev yelped again. ‘Wasp up my trouser leg! Why am I the only one getting stung?’

  ‘Stop whining, Zev,’ Venables hissed.

  ‘Venables, I’ll text you when the guard is dealt with,’ Bullcalf said. ‘I’ll be waiting to grab Robin if he runs for the exit.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Denton said, as Bullcalf headed out of the projection booth and started back down the stairs.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Bullcalf responded.

  But when he got to the staff break room, Bullcalf didn’t head for the front of screen five. He went back the way they came, through the fire door propped with a chair and upstairs towards the roof.

  4. WASPS ARE GITS

  Venables’s phone pinged.

  ‘Bullcalf?’ Denton asked.

  Venables nodded as he read the message. ‘He’s disabled the guard. Let’s move.’

  There was a grating sound as Denton opened a wooden panel at the base of screen five’s projector. As he dropped into the last row of cinema seats, he watched the kid stand up and stride quickly with the laptop tucked under his arm.

  By the time Venables landed, Denton had a bad feeling. When people hear an unexpected noise, they glance about to see where it came from. But the kid darted off like he was expecting something.

  Hughes landed next.

  ‘Bullcalf, we’re in!’ Venables shouted cheerfully.

  ‘Zev, don’t jump – it’s a trap!’ Hughes shouted.

  Venables hadn’t figured it out. ‘What are you talking about?’

  The boy dived through a grille beneath the cinema screen, and before Hughes could explain his suspicions to the others there was a clattering sound, followed by the deafening flash of a stun grenade.

  The three men were deaf and blind as all the auditorium lights came on. Two women in body armour stormed through the main door as Will Scarlock and Mr Khan came through a fire exit at the side, wearing combat helmets and holding assault rifles.

  ‘KHAAAAAN!’ Venables raged.

  A smart person might reason that that someone who’d betrayed him wouldn’t have supplied a working gun. But Venables found out the hard way when he shot wildly into the grenade smoke and the exploding weapon blew the tips off of two fingers.

  Denton gasped in horror as Venables’s blood misted his face. An instant later the two women pointed their guns at point-blank range.

  One shouted: ‘Kneel or die! Hands in the air!’

  ‘Now, turds!’ the other one added.

  As Mr Khan stepped behind and started fitting Venables, Hughes and Denton with plastic zip cuffs, Will peered through the hatch from the projector room and was surprised to hear masses of fizzing wasps.

  ‘Sam, are you up there?’

  Will’s nineteen-year-old son, Sam Scarlock, sounded alarmed. ‘Dad, there’s a wasps’ nest,’ he shouted back. ‘They went berserk when the grenade went off.’

  ‘Have you been stung?’

  ‘I’m staying well back,’ Sam said. ‘But we dragged one guy out. He’s stung bad and not breathing right. We’re gonna carry him straight to the clinic.’

  ‘You be careful – wasps get nasty when the nest is threatened,’ Will warned. ‘What about the other guy?’

  ‘It’s just him,’ Sam said.

  Will thought of the five people he’d watched on surveillance footage from his command tent.

  ‘I’m missing the dark-skinned dude and the old man,’ he shouted up.

  ‘The guy we carried out is black,’ Sam answered.

  ‘You’re certain the old man’s not up there?’

  ‘I’m sure, Dad, and I’m outta here before these wasps get me.’

  Will sighed as he turned to Mr Khan and the two women. ‘The old guy went missing.’

  He took his radio and called his head of security. ‘Azeem, do you copy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she answered, sounding stressed.

  ‘I want a mall-wide security alert. Get everybody you can on search duty.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘I’m on the roof with smouldering wreckage and a dozen injured.’

  ‘We mounted a sting operation to catch the posse Gisborne sent after Robin,’ Will explained. ‘One of them got away. I’ll send you his picture in a second . . . OWW!’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Wasp stung my wrist,’ Will gasped.

  ‘I’m your head of security,’ Azeem said, aghast. ‘How can you mount a sting operation without telling me?

  ‘You had enough on your plate running the market,’ Will explained.

  ‘Are these the guys that blew up a gas cylinder?’ Azeem asked.

  ‘Khan agreed to meet them and lead them to Robin,’ Will said sheepishly. ‘We didn’t anticipate they’d set off a bomb to cause a distraction.’

  ‘It’s a miracle nobody got killed,’ Azeem said furiously.

  ‘Look, Azeem, I’m sorry I didn’t involve you in the plan. But let’s find the fifth man now and you can tell me what an idiot I am later.’

  Mr Khan interrupted. ‘Will, Venables is spitting mad. But he moaned something about Bullcalf betraying them.’

  Will nodded. ‘Azeem, we think the guy we’re looking for is called Bullcalf. His last known position was exiting the projector booth at the back of Sherwood Screens.’

  ‘We’re stretched thin up here,’ Azeem sighed. ‘But I’ll get some people on it.’

  PART II

  5. FINALLY, OUR HERO

  While four-fifths of a posse got lured into a trap by Mr Khan and a ten-year-old in a wig, the real Robin Hood was a hundred and seventy kilometres away in the swampy Eastern Delta. More specifically, Robin was listening to deafeningly loud grime music, while hanging upside down from a chin-up bar doing stomach crunches.

  ‘Forty-six, forty-seven . . .’

  After fifty Robin pulled his torso up, grasping the bar and letting his legs drop. The sweat running down his bare chest changed direction and he had to dangle from one arm to swipe at the drips trickling off his brow into his eyes.

  Muscle-ups came next. The brutal exercise started with a chin-up, then you had to keep pushing until your whole torso was above the bar with your arms straight.

  Robin hadn’t been able to do muscle-ups when he arrived in the delta six weeks earlier, but the guy he was staying with, Diogo, had taught him the proper technique and, after working out most days, Robin’s personal best was sixteen.

  ‘Thirteen, fourteen . . .’

  Robin tried to continue but his arms became jelly. His right hand slipped and he dropped off the bar, moaning loudly because he’d wanted to break his record.

  The space Robin used for working out and practising archery was a roller-skating rink inside an abandoned holiday village. He rubbed aching shoulder muscles and caught his breath as he admired himself in a wall lined with tarnished bronze mirrors.

  Robin needed a haircut, and the thirteen-year-old wished he was taller. The workouts had bulked his arms and chest, though his appetite for junk food meant he was some way off a six-pack.

  After drinking from his water bottle and squirting the dregs over his head, Robin straightened up Diogo’s dumbbells, gathered arrows he’d shot into targets at the far side of the rink, then switched off the music and headed out, with his bow in one hand and Diogo’s boom box in the other.

  Home was a few hundred metres’ walk. Crickets chattered and sun toasted Robin’s bare back as he passed the abandoned resort’s kiddie playground and ducked through a rusted wire fence onto a sliver of gravelly beach littered with dumped air conditioners and fishing net.

  Diogo called his battered wooden house The Station. At low tide you could reach the embankment on which it stood by crossing mushy sand, but Robin hated his Nikes getting flooded and reached The Station via a creaking wooden jetty.

  The building’s name came from its original use as an emergency lifeboat station. Diogo had bought it in w
recked condition, added an extra storey and turned it into an eccentric home a kilometre from his nearest neighbour.

  ‘Anybody home?’ Robin yelled.

  The sliding door was locked, so he took a key from under a flowerpot, then stepped in and switched off Diogo’s home-made security system by disconnecting a metal bulldog clip from a car battery.

  Robin checked an orange 1970s-style wall clock and worried when he saw it was past three. His best friend, Marion, had gone out with Diogo on his boat before breakfast and they were normally back by lunchtime.

  But Diogo was a smart guy, so Robin wasn’t too worried as he rummaged in the fridge and scoffed egg salad and a giant turkey drumstick left from last night’s dinner.

  Next came a shower, which wasn’t like in any normal house. First, the shower was a piece of copper pipe with a head made from a perforated beer can and was outside the building. Second, Diogo’s solar water heating had a busted thermostat and ran dangerously hot when the sun came out.

  Robin stuck with cold water, since he liked the idea of his skin remaining attached to his body. His phone rang as he hopped back inside, trailing drips and doing an alarming skid on the wooden floor as he answered. He hoped it was Marion, Diogo or maybe Robin’s brother, Little John, but Will Scarlock was the name on-screen.

  ‘’Sup, boss?’ Robin gasped.

  ‘You OK?’ Will asked, surprised by Robin’s startled tone.

  ‘Ran from the shower, almost sprawled on my face. Everything OK?’

  Will laughed as Robin squatted on the arm of a cracked leather armchair.

  ‘It’s complicated . . .’ Will began.

  Robin put the phone on speaker and towelled his hair as Will told the whole story: how Mr Khan heard that Gisborne’s posse was looking for an informant inside Designer Outlets. Then luring them to the mall on market day and isolating them in a remote location so they could be taken down without endangering shoppers.

  ‘Who was my stand-in?’ Robin asked.

  ‘Marion’s brother Matt. We gave him a fright wig from a Halloween costume.’

  ‘My hair’s not that scruffy,’ Robin objected. ‘Good on Matt for helping out though!’

  ‘The bad news is, one guy got away,’ Will said gravely. ‘We got his escape on CCTV. He abseiled down from the roof and got swallowed by the forest before we’d even started searching for him.’

  ‘Still,’ Robin said brightly, ‘five guys looking for me this morning, now there’s only one.’

  ‘Mr Khan was a Locksley cop before Gisborne’s goons drummed him off the force for being honest,’ Will explained. ‘He used an old police contact to pull up the guy’s record. His name is Dino Bullcalf and his only convictions are for speeding and driving without insurance, but his name crops up in several investigations into suspicious deaths, either because they were police informants, or they owed money to very bad people.’

  Robin shivered. ‘Sounds like the kind of guy you don’t want coming after you.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Will agreed. ‘But only Diogo, my wife and Marion’s parents know where you are. I’ll message Bullcalf’s picture, so you know who to look out for.’

  ‘What about the other guys you caught?’ Robin asked.

  ‘One’s dead . . .’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Wasps,’ Will explained. ‘Unai took a look after it happened. He found a massive nest, going two metres deep into a ventilation shaft. Zev got stung dozens of times. By the time they got him down to the clinic his airway had closed up. There was nothing Dr Gladys could do.’

  Robin winced. ‘Nasty way to die . . .’

  ‘I like to think I’m a caring person,’ Will snorted, ‘but forgive me if I lack sympathy for a man who tried to make money by capturing a kid so that a gangster could torture him.’

  ‘Good point,’ Robin said.

  ‘Their leader – Venables – is wanted by cops in Capital City,’ Will continued. ‘Mr Khan is going to escort him down south and drop him at a police station. The other two don’t pose much of a threat on their own, so we’ll dump ’em up in bear country in their underwear.’

  ‘You’re sure they won’t come after me?’ Robin asked.

  ‘They’re soldiers, not leaders,’ Will said. ‘Bullcalf had his escape route set up, so he must have realised we were setting a trap. But instead of warning his comrades, he used us as an opportunity to get rid of them.’

  ‘So this old fart’s gonna try to find me and nab the whole bounty for himself?’ Robin asked.

  ‘Seems that way,’ Will agreed. ‘And Dino Bullcalf has spent most of his life tracking down people who don’t want to be found, so we can’t take the threat lightly.’

  6. BUILT FOR SMUGGLING

  Dried, deodorised and dressed in shorts, Robin still felt hungry as he padded down spiral steps from his little upstairs bedroom. As he crossed The Station’s sloping ground floor, which was cluttered with books and retro furnishings, he remembered not to bash his toes on the wooden rails that had been put there to launch a lifeboat.

  Fresh air hit as Robin rolled up a clattering garage door, opening the room to a sunny waterfront balcony with a sofa swing and gas barbecue. Although The Station jutted from a trashed beach with a dead holiday village behind, the view out over the delta was spectacular.

  The Macondo River ran almost the entire width of the country. Starting at Lake Victoria and growing broader until it became the Eastern Delta. This marshland stretched to forty kilometres wide where it met the sea.

  Vast reed beds were packed with wading birds and turtles, while the waterways formed more islands than you could count, from little mud embankments to Skegness Island, with its lavish homes and mega-yachts.

  The central delta had shipping lanes deep enough for oil tankers, but The Station was on the southern bank, where shallow water trickled and, in the current hot weather, slimy algae bloomed on the surface.

  Robin looked out from the balcony past the reeds at dazzling water stretching to the horizon, broken by the hazy outlines of a lush green island and the hulk of a pleasure boat that ran aground years earlier.

  He had rinsed his sweaty workout gear while showering and he pegged socks and shorts to a line before flicking on the barbecue.

  While the grill got hot, he grabbed a set of binoculars and wondered again where Marion and Diogo had got to. There was no sign of Diogo’s boat, but he saw an anchored pleasure launch with people riding jet skis launched from its rear platform. Further out was the sinister grey outline of a prowler, a type of fast patrol boat used by the Customs & Immigration Service (CIS).

  Robin took two burger patties from the fridge, along with cheese slices and some stale baps that he hoped would be OK if he toasted them. As his afternoon snack sputtered, Robin heard the buzz of a drone. It was impossible to patrol the delta’s maze of islands and waterways by boat, so customs and police routinely used them for surveillance.

  Robin guessed this drone had been launched from the CIS boat he’d spotted through the binoculars. But while the flight wasn’t unusual, law-enforcement drones had powerful zoom lenses and facial recognition, so he edged around the barbecue so that it would only see his back.

  The burgers were slightly charred when Robin flipped them, so he lowered the heat as the drone buzzed inland, skimming the holiday village. But as it flew back over The Station the sound seemed off, and Robin risked a backward glance. Drones fly fast and smooth, but this one was shuddering and Robin guessed it had clipped a bird or treetop.

  After dropping low the drone jerked up a hundred metres, as if an automatic protection system had kicked in. Then it made a loud popping sound and plunged, trailing dense grey smoke. Robin couldn’t see as it plummeted behind The Station, but he heard a crash beyond the treeline and dozens of spooked birds launched into the air.

  Robin imagined something dramatic like the drone getting shot down, but with one eye on his burgers he picked up his phone and searched exploding drone. The first result took him
to an article on how drones use lightweight but unstable lithium-polymer batteries which can fail dramatically. There was even a link to a video of a mid-air blast, with a popping sound matching what he’d just heard.

  He flipped the burgers again and was pleased they hadn’t burned on the lower heat. Then he put cheese slices on to melt and started toasting two halves of stale bap.

  Robin had never used a barbecue before he’d arrived in the delta and was chuffed with his giant double cheeseburger as he stacked it up, then squashed it so all the parts stuck together. He hated the midges that fizzed about near the water, so he took the plate inside. But as Robin sat to eat, he heard Diogo’s boat, Water Rat, puttering out of a gap between the reeds.

  ‘Ahoy, matey!’ a mud-caked Marion shouted, as Robin rushed back onto the balcony. ‘Throw us a rope.’

  Diogo’s boat was as quirky as his home. Water Rat had triple outboard motors for speed, but if you lifted them out of the water there was also a huge fan that enabled its flat-bottomed hull to skim over water a few centimetres deep. It was finished in shades of grey that made it hard to see, and the only protection from the elements was a plastic windscreen and roll-up cloth roof.

  As Robin threw Marion a rope, he saw chunks of jagged fibreglass where the side of the boat had scraped rocks, while the flat-bottomed hull was filled with plastic drums caked in mud.

  ‘Did something go wrong?’ Robin asked.

  Marion looked down at her filthy clothes as she hopped onto the balcony. ‘How’d you figure that out, genius?’

  Diogo emerged from under the canvas roof as Robin tied Water Rat to one of the thick wooden pilings supporting the balcony. The Portuguese was a biker, though not a member of any gang. He was in his late thirties, with a shaggy black beard and fading tattoos stretched over a bodybuilder physique, though as a concession to life on water, he mostly wore waterproof trousers and rubber boots rather than denim and bike leathers.

  ‘Hell of an afternoon!’ Diogo told Robin as he stepped ashore, reeking of sweat and with his bottom half almost as muddy as Marion.