Jet Skis, Swamps & Smugglers

by Robert Muchamore

  The scrolling news ticker read:

  MARJORIE KOVACEVIC CONFIRMS INTENTION TO STAND AS CANDIDATE IN NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – WILL STEP DOWN AS SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM NEXT YEAR AFTER SIXTEEN YEARS IN OFFICE . . .

  ‘President Marjorie,’ Robin moaned. ‘Just what the country needs.’

  It had stopped raining, so the pair headed out of the shop and sat with feet dangling off the sea wall, watching waves and dog walkers as they ate.

  ‘I still can’t believe you found that set of false teeth,’ Marion said, as she flung a chip down onto the sand so the gulls could fight over it.

  Robin grinned. ‘Yeah, I should put them on Diogo’s pillow or something.’

  Marion laughed. ‘You have got to do that!’

  ‘Diogo is so loved up with Napua right now, he probably wouldn’t notice.’

  Marion nodded as she tossed another chip for the gulls. ‘At least you’re not in the next room. All that stands between my bed and their sex life is a thin partition.’

  Robin laughed so hard he inhaled fish flakes and wound up in a coughing fit.

  ‘Old people shagging is gross,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But I’m glad Diogo’s found someone. He’s a decent bloke and he seems lonely.’

  As Marion nodded, a black Labrador started barking and straining on its leash. Robin looked up and realised it had been triggered by a police surveillance drone skimming across the waterfront.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for one of those,’ he said, as he put his chip packet on the wall and dived into his backpack.

  Marion looked baffled as Robin pulled a contraption out of his bag. It was a circuit board taped into the bottom of a plastic sandwich box, with a bunch of soldered wires and a battery pack hanging loose.

  ‘Making bombs now?’ she asked, as he fumbled around trying to slot in a battery.

  ‘Remember that police drone I recovered?’ Robin answered. ‘And the one that chased our bikes?’

  Robin’s electronics skills hadn’t extended to fitting an on/off switch, so his contraption came alive when the battery went in.

  The instant the connection was made, the speeding drone’s motors cut out. After a silent dive, it clipped the top of a wave and its propeller arms broke off as it bounced like a skimming stone before sinking.

  ‘Was that you?’ Marion gasped.

  ‘Yep.’ Robin said, looking pleased with himself as he removed the battery and dropped the gadget back in his bag before anyone saw.

  ‘How?’ Marion whispered.

  ‘I wasn’t even sure it would work,’ Robin said, as he broke off a big piece of fish.

  ‘You made it last week?’

  Robin nodded. ‘When you were out on the boat with Diogo, I read everything I could find about sabotaging drones.’

  ‘Emma brought our phones and laptops back yesterday,’ Marion said.

  Robin grinned. ‘Diogo’s laptop password is Di0g0. He basically deserved to be hacked . . .’

  ‘In non-geek language, how does it work?’

  ‘Military drones are hardened,’ Robin explained. ‘They use multiple radio frequencies and special tech so their signals can’t be blocked. But that police drone I found was a regular photography drone fitted with extra sensors.

  ‘I found the instructions on how to make a jamming circuit using the transmitter from the crashed drone. It locks onto the drone’s control signal. If you’re close enough, it blocks the signal coming from the drone pilot and . . .’

  ‘Ka-boom!’ Marion said.

  Robin nodded and smirked.

  ‘One thing I don’t get, Robin,’ Marion said, stroking her chin thoughtfully.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How is it you’re smart enough to figure out something like that, but your socks never match, you drop toothpaste all over the sink every night and half the time you forget to put on deodorant?’

  ‘Eccentric genius?’ Robin suggested, as he tipped the tiny chips from the bottom of the packet in his mouth, then took an experimental sniff under his arm.

  20. AFTERNOON SULK

  Emma Scarlock was in her tiny office when Robin and Marion got back from the seafront. Just after three she came to the storage room to check up.

  ‘Decent day’s work!’ Emma said, as she eyed a room with bags still stacked up one side, but neat piles of clothes, toys and other random stuff on the other. ‘You might get finished if you put in a good shift tomorrow.’

  ‘It’ll be Robin on his own tomorrow,’ Marion said. ‘I’m out on Water Rat with Diogo, delivering supplies.’

  Robin groaned, but cheered up when Emma said they should go. ‘I checked the weather,’ she explained. ‘They’re forecasting big storms in an hour, so you two’d better head straight home.’

  The days when they could zip from Boston to The Station on motorbikes felt golden as Marion and Robin headed outside to a beaten-up pedal bike with a squeaky back wheel and Christmas tinsel woven through the basket on the front.

  ‘My turn to drive,’ Robin said, as Marion took off the bike lock.

  ‘Nah,’ Marion said, as she waggled her club foot. ‘It’s my bike.’

  Robin shook his head and tutted. He’d seen Marion hike twenty kilometres of Sherwood Forest with no problem, but when Diogo confiscated the motorbikes she claimed she couldn’t walk far with her club foot and guilt-tripped him into finding her a bike.

  ‘You know what?’ Robin said irritably. ‘I’d rather walk.’

  They’d spent most of the day in the same room. Marion had sack-whacked him, made him pay for lunch because her allowance was cut off, told him she was off doing something more exciting the next day, and now she wanted him to be propped on the back of the saddle for an uncomfortable ride home.

  Marion was Robin’s best friend, but you can have too much of anyone and she was getting on his nerves.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Marion asked. ‘You can pedal if it’s that important to you . . .’

  ‘I’ll run,’ Robin said cutting her off. ‘I need the exercise.’

  ‘Why are you so grumpy all of a sudden?’ she asked.

  She got no answer, so she rolled her eyes and pedalled for home.

  Robin liked running fast because it tires you out and you don’t think about stuff when you’re knackered. But he started a slow walk with his shoulders hunched and felt moody.

  He thought about stopping to buy an ice cream but couldn’t be bothered. He thought about Marion being annoying, about how crummy it was that his dirt bike had been confiscated. When he reached the edge of Boston and started walking down Sunshine Road to cut through the holiday village, he thought about seeing his brother on TV earlier. They used to bicker all the time, but Robin missed Little John. He also missed hanging with his schoolfriend Alan Adale and most of all he missed his dad.

  Robin went blurry-eyed as his thoughts went further back, remembering his mum. He imagined an alternative life where she was still alive. She wasn’t from Locksley like his dad, so they probably would have moved somewhere else before any trouble started.

  Someone as smart as his dad could have got a good job working for a tech company in the capital. He imagined a nice house with an indoor shower and a washing machine that worked. He’d go to regular school. And his mum would . . .

  Robin stopped walking and hurt all over.

  He was six when his mum died and he realised he only knew things a little kid knows about someone. When he tried to think about the kind of music his mum liked, or what job she’d have done in his imaginary life, or the type of gift she’d have liked for her birthday, he had no clue.

  The rain Emma warned about began as Robin entered the holiday village. It started with raspberry-sized splats, then erupted into a deluge that blew into his face.

  He could have sheltered under the awning of an alpine chalet, but he was already soaked so he kept up his sulky walk and found himself wondering which version of Robin Hood he’d be if he had the choice: Robin the hero, who robbed ca
sh machines and started riots. Or the imaginary Robin with a cosy posh house and school, homework and all that regular kid stuff.

  He cheered up when he realised how boring that would be.

  Then, since nobody was around to hear, Robin howled like a lunatic, pounded his chest and set off in a flat-out sprint towards The Station with the rain driving into his face.

  21. RISING DAMP

  Robin was breathless as he stepped inside The Station. The shutter that opened onto the balcony was wide open and stuff was blowing everywhere.

  ‘Extra hands!’ Diogo yelled urgently from the far end of the room. ‘Come help.’

  Robin left a trail of drips as he crossed the sloping floor. As he ran the narrow jetty between the beach and the embankment on which The Station was built, he’d noticed the water was high. But he hadn’t realised it was enough to be lapping over the balcony and into the kitchen.

  ‘High tide and all this rain washing downriver,’ Diogo explained, as he used a power saw on a wooden sheet. ‘If I don’t get this barrier up the water will get into the electrics.’

  At that moment Marion came through the front door, straining as she pushed a wheelbarrow full of gritty sand she’d shovelled off the beach.

  ‘Hold them open,’ she said, as she threw Robin a roll of garden sacks.

  Robin held the first sack open while Marion shovelled in sand, but Robin was fitter so he took over shovelling duty for the next two. Then they ran back across the jetty for more sand.

  When they came back a blast of wind had blown water into the lowest part of the sloping floor and Diogo was kneeling on the balcony. The board he’d cut made a half-metre high barrier and he was getting soaked by the spray hitting the balcony as he bashed nails to fix it in place.

  ‘Water is heavy,’ Diogo explained. ‘The board needs reinforcement, so put the first sandbag against the middle and build outwards.’

  When Napua arrived forty minutes later, Diogo had waterproofed the wooden barrier using urethane foam designed for emergency boat repairs, while Robin and Marion had worked themselves into a sandy, straggly-haired mess wheeling barrows from the beach and making a knee-height sandbag wall.

  ‘You missed all the fun!’ Diogo said, giving Napua a kiss as she put bags of groceries on the dining table.

  ‘Will that hold?’ Napua asked, poking her head over the barricade to see the balcony beyond lapping with ankle-deep water.

  ‘It better,’ Robin said, as he crashed backwards onto a floor cushion. ‘I’ve never been so knackered in my life.’

  ‘High tide just passed,’ Diogo said, as he read the time on his microwave. ‘We’ll be OK tonight. But I’ll have to get to a hardware store so I can make a proper slot-in barrier.’

  ‘I thought I’d do a chicken tagine with almond couscous, then strawberries and cream,’ Napua said, as she unpacked groceries.

  ‘Perfect,’ Diogo said, then kissed her again.

  ‘I had the radio on while I was driving here,’ Napua said. ‘Weather lady said it’s the first time in six years that the Macondo River is deep enough to navigate a boat the whole way from Lake Victoria to the mouth of the delta.’

  ‘Water level is way up at Designer Outlets too,’ Marion said. ‘Last time I spoke to my mums, there was deep water in the southern end of the mall. Instead of wading across, anyone coming to the market from the south has to use a raft, or divert over the bridge, way upstream.’

  ‘Food will take an hour,’ Napua said, making a clanking noise as she pulled a cast-iron casserole dish out of a messy cupboard.

  ‘You two sand monsters had better scrub up,’ Diogo said, while mopping grit and sawdust. ‘But no faffing – I need one too.’

  The outdoor shower was even weirder than usual, with waves washing over the side balcony and sploshing Robin’s feet. It was warm despite the rain, so he came down shirtless after towelling off in his bedroom.

  Marion had showered first and was chatting to her little brothers Matt and Otto on her laptop, while Diogo was outside in the shower, noisily warbling traditional fado music in his native Portuguese.

  ‘That chicken smells fantastic,’ Robin told Napua. ‘Do you want the table laid or anything? Because Marion’s just lazing about on her useless butt.’

  Robin grinned as Marion gave him the finger. She’d annoyed him earlier, but emergency sand shovelling had reminded him that they made a great team.

  ‘You two are awful to each other!’ Napua said, shaking her head. ‘Did you see Emma at the church hall today?’

  ‘Briefly,’ Robin said.

  ‘Did she say anything more about those poor women?’

  ‘She mentioned that Srihari was OK.’

  ‘And showed us a cute picture of Bejo in a bubble bath,’ Marion added, as she closed her laptop.

  ‘But are they investigating what happened to the rest of them?’ Napua asked as she chopped spring onions.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll try,’ Robin answered. ‘But Delta Rescue run four boats and a welcome centre for refugees. They’re not some big organisation with detectives who go round searching for people.’

  Napua nodded. ‘Emma said the video clips on your phone were too grainy to prove anything conclusively. But I’ve lived in the delta all my life and the only place you see big pleasure boats like the one that took those women away is the harbour on Skegness Island.’

  Marion nodded in agreement. ‘When I’m out with Diogo, we see massive boats like container ships and tankers in the central channel. But for pleasure boats, that was easily the biggest I’ve seen.’

  The conversation was halted as the side door that led from the shower crashed open.

  ‘Damned wind blew my towel away!’ Diogo said, as he charged in, cupping his privates.

  Marion laughed and Robin mucked about shielding her eyes as Diogo ran naked up the spiral stairs.

  ‘So much body hair!’ Robin laughed.

  ‘Chewbacca!’ Napua yelled, making Robin and Marion laugh even more.

  ‘I heard that!’ Diogo shouted down.

  ‘Maybe now you’ll build an indoor shower!’ Napua shouted back. ‘And fix the bloody thermostat while you’re at it.’

  After Diogo’s comic interlude, Napua returned to her thoughts on the boat.

  ‘I asked the concierge at the casino I work at,’ Napua said. ‘He knows boats because he organises trips for guests. He said big pleasure cruisers get bought by people who are incredibly rich. But they always want the latest model, so they get sold on to companies that rent them out, for parties, fishing trips, stuff like that.’

  ‘Using someone else’s boat would make sense,’ Robin agreed. ‘I mean, I’ve never seen a heist movie where the bad guys rob the bank in their own car.’

  Napua nodded as she scraped shallots and garlic into a sizzling pan.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ Napua said. ‘My concierge friend said there are a few hire boats of that size on Skegness. I would guess if you strolled around the island with your eyes peeled, you might well find the boat you’re looking for.’

  ‘That’s a great idea,’ Robin said brightly. ‘The cruiser had its name covered up, but I took photos and I’d recognise it for sure.’

  Marion seemed less certain. ‘But where does that get us?’ she asked. ‘Finding a boat doesn’t tell us where it took a bunch of people two weeks ago.’

  ‘But it’s a lead,’ Robin said. ‘If we find the boat, maybe we watch it and discover that the bad guys use it regularly. Maybe we can track where it goes, or someone on the crew will give us info if we slip them some money.’

  ‘I smell delicious chicken,’ Diogo said suspiciously, as he came downstairs in shorts and one of the smart shirts he wore when Napua was around. ‘But I also smell trouble.’

  ‘I guess it’s worth going up there to try,’ Marion said. ‘Reuniting little Bejo with his mum would be the best thing ever.’

  ‘I’ll call Emma to see what she thinks,’ Robin said, taking his phone out eagerly. ‘If she
lets us go tomorrow, I might get out of sorting the rest of that junk at the church hall.’

  22. NEO-SKEGNESS

  Emma liked Napua’s idea of someone taking a look around Skegness Island to try and identify the cruiser. She was less keen on Robin and Marion getting into more mischief, so Marion stuck to delivering medical supplies with Diogo, while Robin took a forty-minute taxi ride with Emma’s eighteen-year-old son, Neo.

  While Sherwood Forest and most of the delta had suffered economic decline, Skegness Island, and particularly the three-kilometre stretch of seafront known as South Strip, was still a popular hangout for the kinds of people who flew first class and paid two hundred bucks for lunch.

  Besides hundreds of yachts packing the harbour, the island had five-star hotels, golf courses, the provincial branch of Capital City’s biggest modern art gallery, casinos, upscale nightclubs and the best seafood restaurants in the country.

  The waterfront was pedestrianised, so the taxi dropped Robin and Neo at the back of the five-star Durley Grange resort. To fit with the upscale crowd, Robin had slicked back his tangled hair and wore chino shorts and his only designer-brand polo shirt with Diogo’s best sunglasses hooked over the front pocket.

  Neo was a goth, and he’d kept his spiky dyed hair and piercings but went for similar rich-kid-on-holiday clothes to Robin.

  It was holiday season, so they passed through a restaurant with people eating a late breakfast, then crossed the hotel’s grand lobby and exited through revolving doors into a sunny courtyard filled with the sound of crashing water from giant fountains.

  Neo had picked the Durley Grange as their drop-off point because it was at one end of strip. Their search seemed daunting as they exited the courtyard and got a clear view along the harbour at more than a thousand moored boats.

  But by the time their eyes had adjusted to the sunlight reflecting off the water, the hunt felt less overwhelming because few boats were anything like the one they were looking for.