Jet Skis, Swamps & Smugglers

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘This place is depressing,’ Robin said. ‘If nobody needs our help, we might as well get out of here.’

  ‘I wonder how long some of them were stuck here,’ Marion said.

  ‘The computer network was installed four years ago,’ Robin said, as he started up a flight of stairs. ‘So it could be as long as that.’

  There was a happier scene as Robin and Marion pushed through a fire door at the top of the stairs, exiting into a huge warehouse space with long rows of metal racking.

  Moonlight shone through open shutters at the far end and, considering their alcohol intake and dislike for rules, the Brigands were making a surprisingly efficient job of loading boxes of shoes into the trucks outside.

  A couple of them had warehouse experience and expertly used forklifts to pick pallets of shoes from the higher shelves. The rest of the Brigands worked the lower shelves and piled shoes onto trolleys and wheeled them to the trucks by hand.

  ‘I bet they haven’t got any in my size,’ Marion joked.

  ‘My trainers are all knackered, but I’ve got enough to carry,’ Robin said, as his eye caught a shelf stacked with rolls of fake clothing tabs and clear tubs filled with embroidered designer logos. ‘Didn’t realise they made these here.’

  Marion dropped three small pots into her bag. ‘I can sew these on everything,’ she joked. ‘Even my crustiest undies are gonna have designer labels.’

  Robin laughed. ‘Your brother Matt’s crew are into branded gear. You could probably sell them to them.’

  They almost got mown down by Diogo pushing a powered handcart as they headed between shelving stacks towards the open shutters up front.

  ‘Sorry! I can’t see over all the boxes,’ Diogo explained. ‘If you’re going to find Cut-Throat, tell him the last truck should be loaded in ten minutes.’

  One truck was already leaving as they stepped outside. Cut-Throat was ending a call and looked the happiest Robin had ever seen him as Marion relayed Diogo’s message.

  ‘There’s three times more gear than we can fit in the trucks,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And the quality is great. Only an expert could tell this stuff from originals.’

  ‘Any sign of cops or CIS?’ Robin asked.

  ‘Not a squeak so far,’ Cut-Throat said. ‘I’ve got lookouts all over.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere,’ Marion pointed out. ‘We wandered around for forty minutes before spotting this place.’

  ‘Six trucks, seven thousand pairs per truck,’ Cut-Throat calculated. ‘Fifteen pounds a pair from the wholesaler Diogo knows . . .’

  ‘Only fifteen?’ Marion said. ‘Aren’t these brands like a hundred in the shops?’

  ‘You’ll be lucky to get twenty per cent of retail price for stolen gear,’ Cut-Throat explained. ‘But it’s still six hundred thousand for the gang. As leader, my whack is over fifty.’

  ‘Did I mention you’re the best daddy in the whole wide world?’ Marion said, looking up with her huge blue eyes, trying not to smirk. ‘You’ll receive my list of gift suggestions shortly.’

  41. ROADSIDE LEAK

  Convoys are conspicuous, so each truck left as soon as it was full. With the New Survivor buses long gone and still no sign of cops, Cut-Throat told Robin and Marion to grab the passenger seats on the fourth truck.

  A silver-haired Brigand named Zoot plugged his phone in to play Johnny Cash tunes as he drove west through a drizzly night. Robin slumped against the passenger side door and watched the road markings blur as he nodded off. Marion was in the middle seat and fell asleep nestled against him.

  Neither of them saw the sign that said:

  You Are Now Leaving Delta Country

  Drive Safe & Come Back Soon

  But Robin and Marion knew they were back in Sherwood Forest when Zoot woke them up. It was pitch dark and the truck had stopped in the front courtyard of a storage unit off Old Road, the deserted highway that had been Sherwood’s main north–south route until Route 24 opened.

  Robin saw 02.33 on the truck’s dashboard clock as he blinked tired eyes. His mouth was dry and there was something weird on his tongue, which disappeared when Marion moved.

  ‘You chewed my hair!’ Marion complained. ‘Gross!’

  ‘You’re gross,’ Robin shot back. ‘Falling asleep with your grubby hair over my face.’

  ‘End of the line, kiddos,’ Zoot said.

  ‘Eh?’ Marion said, yawning.

  ‘Truck’s unloading here,’ Zoot explained. ‘Looks like it’ll be a while. Then I gotta take this lump back to the truck hire place and pick up my Harley.’

  Robin saw they were in a line of trucks waiting to get unloaded. As he picked up his bow and pack then jumped out, a van with Two Tu branding pulled up behind.

  ‘Looks like they blagged a couple of extras,’ Marion laughed.

  ‘I hope they killed the tracking devices,’ Robin said warily. ‘All big companies use them.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Marion answered. ‘Some of Dad’s crew have been thieving vehicles since before we were born.’

  The pair walked past the trucks to a line of motorbikes. Everyone was helping to unload, apart from Diogo, Cut-Throat and an elderly woman with lots of jewellery and frizzy hair.

  ‘I can only pay ten a pair,’ the woman was saying, as Robin realised they were haggling over the price of the extra shoes in the Two Tu vans. ‘With this kind of quantity, I can’t get the same price.’

  ‘How about we split the difference?’ Diogo said. ‘Twelve fifty?’

  The woman was mulling this when she saw Robin and Marion and turned into an over-attentive grandma.

  ‘I know this little guy!’ she announced warmly. ‘Are you cold, sweetie? Do you need the bathroom? There’s a machine for hot drinks and banana bread if you’re hungry.’

  ‘I could use the toilet,’ Marion said, stifling a yawn. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Old Road is flooded south of here,’ Cut-Throat told the kids. ‘But we contacted Will Scarlock. With the water so high from the rains, he’s sending a boat to pick you up.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Robin said, grinning because a boat ride was a million times better than a two-hour trek through the forest.

  ‘I can sleep in my own bed,’ Marion said happily, then looked at Diogo. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with the one at The Station.’

  Cut-Throat checked the time on his phone. ‘We’re only a ten-minute ride from the river, and your boat won’t get here for a couple of hours. You two can sit inside and chill.’

  Price negotiations resumed as Robin and Marion stepped into the warehouse, weaving between guys carrying shoeboxes.

  ‘There’s no other stock here,’ Marion noted, as they headed for a rest area at the back with plastic tables and a broken vending machine. ‘I guess the buyer will move the shoes straight on somewhere else.’

  Robin laughed. ‘Would you trust the Brigands not to steal them back after they get paid?’

  He liked the look of the banana cake sat under a flyproof dome on the table, but his hands were black from crawling around the factory roof, so he decided to wash them before eating. Marion followed the toilet sign into a corridor and Robin followed her.

  The bathroom was cramped, with one cubicle and a tiny sink. As Marion locked herself in the stall, Robin rested his bow and pack against the wall and turned on a tap that spat brown water before settling down.

  He had to pump several times to get soap, and as the lather on his hands turned grey, the main door swung open, hitting his bag.

  ‘We’ll be out in a tick,’ Robin said as a man edged in.

  It took Robin a second to realise who it was, by which time he’d been yanked powerfully into the hallway. A tattooed hand clamped over Robin’s mouth and a gun was pushed into his cheek.

  ‘Gotcha!’ Dino Bullcalf said.

  42. ONE GOES BANG

  The toilet flushed as Marion stepped out of the stall.

  Idiot left the tap running, she thought, but then saw
Robin’s backpack and bow on the floor.

  ‘Robin?’ Marion asked curiously.

  She leaned out of the door and said it louder, then saw that a fire door at the end of the corridor was ajar and thought maybe he’d gone outside to pee.

  ‘Robin?’

  It was dark and the area behind the building was a tangle, but Marion’s heart sped up as she saw a path trampled through the weeds.

  ‘I think someone got Robin,’ Marion shouted as she scrambled back into the warehouse. ‘Hello? Dad? They got Robin!’

  Marion decided she couldn’t waste time running to the front of the warehouse to raise the alarm. She stumbled back into the bathroom, grabbing Robin’s bow and the four arrows sticking out the top of his backpack.

  ‘I’m going after Robin,’ she shouted, but there were blokes bantering and boxes crashing so she had no idea if anyone heard.

  Following, or avoiding, tracks was a life-or-death skill in the forest and Marion had no problem following trampled plants. When she reached boggier ground there were drag marks and man-sized boot prints.

  The trail of prints continued away from the building, but Marion heard a shuffling noise to her right. It seemed unlikely that any large animal would come so close when there was light and noise coming from the warehouse, and since the guy must have tracked them here by following the truck, Marion figured he’d have to move away from the warehouse before circling back towards a car parked near the road.

  The branches were too dense to run, but Marion was confident in her shortcut as she walked fast. After a hundred metres she’d closed enough to sense movement among the branches ahead. Another fifty and she heard breathing as the trees thinned out.

  Marion wished she was wearing proper forest gear, as her trainers flooded and branches scraped her bare arms and legs. She kept low as she neared a dark clearing with the outline of a parked car. There was a flash of orange indicator lamps as Bullcalf used a plipper to open the doors of a tiddly Honda hatchback.

  Robin groaned in pain as the elderly man opened the passenger door and shoved him inside.

  ‘Don’t move a muscle, brat.’

  Bullcalf kept the gun aimed at Robin as he marched around the front of the vehicle to the driver’s side.

  Marion was relieved to hear footsteps running behind her, but Bullcalf was already in the driver’s seat. She kept low as she moved to the edge of the clearing and notched an arrow.

  Marion shot as Bullcalf started the Honda’s engine. The carbon arrow passed clean through the front driver’s side tyre and wedged in the noise-insulating foam packed around the wheel arch.

  Bullcalf didn’t get what had happened, as he tried to drive but just heard the arrow shatter inside the wheel arch as the front bumper ploughed into the gravel.

  ‘I’m over here,’ Marion shouted behind her, as the footsteps got closer.

  ‘Marion,’ Cut-Throat shouted, ‘is Robin with you?’

  Bullcalf knew he was a sitting duck in a car that wouldn’t go. He opened his door, rolled out holding a handgun and glanced about.

  ‘Bullcalf has Robin in the car,’ Marion explained, as her dad and Diogo arrived, both carrying rifles.

  But the sound of two men arriving gave Marion’s location away. Now Bullcalf knew where they were, he used the car as a shield while dragging Robin out of the passenger side.

  ‘If anything moves, I’ll blow Hood’s brains out,’ he shouted, as he backed up towards the trees.

  Marion looked at her dad and whispered, ‘Robin looked floppy when he put him in the car. His hands are tied and I think he’s drugged or hurt.’

  ‘I’ll flank around the side,’ Diogo said, then tapped Marion. ‘Maybe you should back up.’

  ‘The hell I will,’ Marion said furiously as Diogo began creeping around the edge of the clearing.

  ‘Let Robin go,’ Cut-Throat said, half standing up. ‘It’s a big forest – you can move faster on your own.’

  ‘Biker scum!’ Bullcalf shouted, then bobbed from behind the car and took a shot that almost parted Cut-Throat’s hair.

  ‘Jesus!’ Cut-Throat blurted, firing a wild shot into treetops as he fell backwards and squashed Marion in the mud beneath his enormous back.

  Marion was soggy and her arm covered in the insides of a massive squashed bug as she crawled out from under her dad. She notched another arrow as Bullcalf kept backing out of the clearing with his gun to Robin’s head.

  Bullcalf sighted Diogo moving around the edge of the clearing and took a shot at him.

  ‘I was the top marksman in my unit,’ he warned.

  Before Bullcalf could point the gun back at his head, Robin scooped a mix of gravel and mud with his tied hands and flicked it into the elderly Italian’s face. Then he braced both feet against the side of the car and used it as a lever to push free.

  Robin’s right arm hung uselessly as he stumbled through the dirt. He kicked out at the car door behind him, hoping it would knock Bullcalf. But the old man was swift and did a backwards roll before springing up, martial-arts style.

  Diogo was still stumbling after being shot at and Cut-Throat’s gun was waterlogged from landing in the puddle, so it was down to Marion as Bullcalf took aim at Robin’s back.

  ‘You’re worth more alive, but I’m not a greedy man,’ he warned, as Robin scrambled.

  Hitting a man’s chest from ten metres was an easy shot, so Marion was horrified to see her arrow pitch down and wedge in the dirt between Bullcalf’s feet.

  She worked out what had happened a microsecond before the explosive in the arrow’s tip went off. Robin was moving fast and low. He felt a searing heat up the back of his shirt and screamed in pain as the blast knocked him forward into bushes, landing on his injured arm.

  With the explosion erupting between his boots, Dino Bullcalf took the full force of the blast. As the car crumpled, he got thrown eight metres into a tree, then crashed down through branches as his clothes burned and clumps of hot debris pounded him.

  When Marion dared to look up, she saw the car on its side and Diogo racing across to check on Robin.

  ‘Are you OK, pal?’

  ‘It’s just my arm,’ Robin moaned, as Diogo sliced the parachute cord around his wrists with a little pocket knife. ‘I think he broke it when he yanked me out of the bathroom.’

  ‘Is Bullcalf dead?’ Marion asked, as she stumbled towards the smouldering, mangled Honda behind her dad.

  ‘His legs are over by the car and the rest of him’s stuck in a tree,’ Cut-Throat said, as he peered up through clearing smoke. ‘So if he ain’t dead, he’ll be sore in the morning . . .’

  43. NURSE DIOGO

  The explosion brought twenty Brigands charging from the warehouse. Cut-Throat was already happy after pulling off the biggest score of his life, but Marion’s stunt had sent him into ecstasy.

  ‘My little girl is ruthless!’ Cut-Throat boasted to anyone who’d listen. ‘Barely thirteen years old and she blew the guy to smithereens!’

  ‘Dad,’ Marion said, scowling and batting his arm. ‘Killing someone isn’t something to be proud of.’

  ‘Depends who you kill, in my book,’ Cut-Throat roared. ‘Hunting a kid for bounty money? I say death is too good for him.’

  ‘We helped rescue two hundred slaves,’ Marion said. ‘That is something I’m proud of.’

  ‘I wish someone had recorded it,’ Cut-Throat said deliriously. ‘Life is too good right now.’

  Marion tutted as she backed away. ‘I’m gonna go see how Robin is.’

  While the leader of the Sherwood chapter of the Brigands Motorcycle Club enjoyed himself, Robin was in agony as Diogo carried him back to the warehouse.

  ‘I need painkillers,’ he said, trying not to cry. ‘It hurts so much.’

  A small crowd gathered as Diogo entered the little break area at the back of the warehouse, kicked two plastic dining tables together and laid Robin on top.

  ‘Can you clench your fingers, open and closed like this?’ Di
ogo asked, as he demonstrated the action.

  Robin opened and closed his fingers as Marion dashed in.

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘Better than Bullcalf,’ a Brigand in the audience joked.

  ‘Can you raise your arm above your head?’ Diogo asked.

  ‘I can’t lift it at all,’ Robin said, as Diogo felt along his arm. ‘Stop prodding me.’

  ‘We won’t get his shirt off over his head, and my pocket knife is blunt,’ Diogo said. ‘Does anyone have a sharp knife?’

  Several Brigands pulled out massive zombie knives and machetes. Diogo went for a medium-sized cleaver.

  Robin shuddered as Diogo used the cleaver to slice up the front of his Robin Hood Lives T-shirt, then cut away both sleeves.

  ‘Maybe I should wait and see Dr Gladys back at Designer Outlets,’ Robin suggested.

  Diogo looked at Robin’s shoulder joint now it was bare. ‘Does this hurt?’

  ‘OWWWWWWWWWWWW!’ Robin bawled. ‘I already told you it hurts.’

  ‘Nothing’s broken,’ Diogo announced.

  ‘How do you know?’ Robin asked angrily. ‘And do we need eight people watching like I’m a freak show?’

  Most of the Brigands went back to unloading shoes but Diogo asked Luke to stay.

  ‘Your shoulder popped out of its joint when Bullcalf yanked you,’ Diogo explained. ‘It’s less serious than a broken arm, but way more painful.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Marion asked.

  ‘I did two years of nursing school before I took to bikes and smuggling. It takes strength to pop a shoulder back, so they always got me to do them.’

  Marion grimaced. ‘So you can fix it?’

  ‘Will it hurt?’ Robin added.

  ‘Your choice,’ Diogo explained. ‘Put up with this pain on a bumpy two-hour boat ride back to Designer Outlets, where they’ll dose you up with painkillers before fixing it. If I pop it back now, it’ll hurt bad, but you’ll feel better straight away.’

  Robin sighed, then nodded. ‘Do it.’

  Diogo looked at Marion. ‘Wedge something in his mouth so he can’t bite through his tongue.’