CHERUB: Guardian Angel

by Robert Muchamore

Forty minutes later he was still going. The sound of the hose slapping the concrete after each unsuccessful throw tormented him, and his arm hurt so bad that he had to take a break, lying on the mattress and moaning as he tried to ease the pain by massaging himself.

  After ten minutes on his mattress, dripping with sweat and wishing that he’d had the sense to run some water into the bucket before breaking the hose apart, he gave it another go.

  Cloud cover had moved away from the moon, giving him slightly better light. His third attempt made a tantalisingly different sound. Ethan realised that one edge of the loop was balancing on top of the lever, but when he pulled the hose it fell back to the floor.

  Despite increasing pain in his arm, Ethan’s throws were improving. The next time the loop caught the end of the lever he didn’t pull back. With his heart in what was now a very dry mouth, Ethan made a little upwards flick with his wrist. It was enough to send a ripple along the snagged hose and make it move forward.

  ‘Please, God,’ Ethan whispered, as he tugged the hose and felt it pulling against the lever.

  Success felt good, but there wasn’t time to wallow in it. If the handle had had to be pulled towards him he’d now be on easy street, but it had to travel at an angle near perpendicular to the hose and he had no idea if the lever would budge when he pulled.

  Ethan used the same brute force technique he’d devised when ripping the hose off the tap: stretching the hose back by winding the ends around his wrists and bracing his feet against the cell bars.

  It seemed far more likely that the piece of cloth holding the loop of hose together would break this time, rather than the hose itself. There was a terrifying ripping sound, followed by a sudden slip, but as Ethan thought the loop was about to break there was a metallic thunk.

  The sudden movement of the hose made him slip and as he lost his grip it lashed away through the bars, burning his right wrist before slithering across the concrete floor and out of reach. But Ethan was sure he’d reached the lever and he ignored the blood drizzling down his arm as he rolled on to his chest and crawled towards the cage door.

  His palm squished a cockroach, but that didn’t deter him as he reached his cell door. The door was designed to open automatically, but the spring that made this possible was furred up with dried-out animal waste, so Ethan still wasn’t sure whether he’d pulled the lever far enough to set himself free.

  The hose was out of reach, so there was no second chance. His heart banged as he tugged a bar and felt a shudder up his arm as the rusty mechanism moved freely. Ethan found his feet quickly and stepped out of the cage, half convinced that he was dreaming.

  The piece of hose still attached to the tap had created a big puddle at the opposite end of the block and he picked it up and splashed his face before drinking four big mouthfuls of water. Being free gave Ethan a huge rush, but he was also overwhelmed by his situation. His body shook with a mix of fear and exhaustion as he took a deep breath and mumbled to himself.

  ‘What now?’

  *

  After getting kicked off his first big mission, Ryan was keen to prove himself. Dan had confirmed that local kids occasionally dared one another to venture into the valley around the Aramovs’ airbase, and never received anything more than a few slaps, unless they’d been caught stealing or vandalising.

  But despite this reassurance, Ryan still felt well out of his comfort zone as he scrambled through the dark. Any kind of advanced equipment would make him seem like something other than a kid who’d stormed out of home to go hunting, so apart from his bag of traps and a water bottle he was relying on his BlackBerry for GPS navigation and the hidden ear-canal transceiver for communication.

  ‘You good?’ Brasker asked, through the earpiece.

  ‘Bit soggy,’ Ryan whispered as branches sprang back spraying water over his face.

  ‘Stable’s about four hundred metres ahead of you,’ Brasker told him. ‘Amy is in position and ready to pick you up at the top of the valley.’

  ‘Understood,’ Ryan whispered.

  There was no avoiding a stretch of open ground on the final approach to the stables. He could have sprinted across in less than twenty seconds, but he had to stay in character as a lost kid, so he bumbled through the tall grass at nothing more than a brisk walk.

  As he reached the cover of the trees he heard a horse moving slowly along the side of the stable block. The valley’s sides were too steep for wheeled vehicles, so Aramov security teams patrolled on horseback, dressed in police-style uniforms with rifles slung over their shoulders.

  The guard looked relaxed, giving no guidance as the horse made its own way along the gravel path. Ryan waited for the animal and rider to trot past, then circled around to the side of the stable block and the adjoining admin shed which contained Leonid’s office.

  ‘OK?’ Brasker asked.

  ‘Patrol,’ Ryan said. ‘Looks routine. I’m squatting against a tree, getting a wet bum.’

  ‘Hot chocolate and cookies when you get home,’ Ted joked.

  Ryan watched the horse and guard come back into view as they headed uphill on the opposite side of the stable.

  ‘Going in,’ Ryan said.

  As he got close to the admin block, Ryan noticed a four-wheeled equipment trolley standing outside a stable, illuminated by a clip-on lamp inside. There was a smallish woman in the stable, and a slender man wearing a blood-smeared apron.

  ‘Looks like a vet,’ Ryan said. ‘I think one of the horses is giving birth.’

  ‘OK,’ Ted said. ‘Withdraw by the quickest available route.’

  ‘Negative,’ Ryan said. ‘They’re at the far end of the stable. They’ll never see me.’

  ‘Ryan, your mission parameters are clear,’ Ted said firmly. ‘We’re in hostile territory and your little-boy-lost cover story doesn’t work once you start rummaging inside.’

  ‘You’re breaking up,’ Ryan lied, as he took a few more cautious steps along the side of the building. ‘Can you repeat your last message?’

  Ryan looked through the office’s small square window, glimpsing Leonid’s desk and some wall-mounted hunting trophies through slats in a wonky Venetian blind.

  ‘Ryan, don’t you bullshit me,’ Ted said. ‘We agreed, if there’s anyone at the stables you back out. That is a direct order, do you hear?’

  Ryan tipped his head back to look up at the sky and exhaled with frustration. If it hadn’t been discovered, the USB stick that might have information on Ethan’s location was on the other side of the wall, less than four metres away. But CHERUB agents who disobey their mission controllers don’t last long, and with one black mark already on his record, Ryan was out of options.

  ‘Understood,’ Ryan said reluctantly. ‘Heading up the valley.’

  He gave a quick glance left and right before setting off, but after less than ten metres he heard a horse moving right behind, closely followed by a shout in Kyrgyz which he didn’t understand. The bullet that whizzed over his head when he’d taken two more steps needed no translation.

  As Ryan jolted, then dived at the ground, the mounted guard shone torchlight on Ryan’s back and said more stuff he didn’t understand.

  ‘Russian!’ Ryan said, as he rolled on to his back with his hands in the air.

  The guard switched from Kyrgyz to Russian. ‘Get on your feet, turn to face me.’

  Ryan realised what he’d done wrong. The guard on the path and the light in the stable had distracted him and he’d failed to follow basic procedure and check out all sides of the building.

  Ryan wasn’t sure if the guard now pointing a gun at him was the same guy who’d ridden past on the hill, but he had no trouble identifying the well-built youth who strode up beside the horse armed with the long rubber cosh that Leonid had used to beat Ethan one month earlier.

  ‘You’re in a lot of trouble, kiddo,’ Boris Aramov said, as he swooshed the cosh through the air.

  ‘I’m just lost, sir,’ Ryan said.

  Boris shrugge
d. ‘Don’t really care why you’re here, kiddo. There’s no girls in town and nothing decent on TV, so I’ll be putting some stripes on your back before we send you back to Mummy and Daddy.’

  22. SUNGLASSES

  After guzzling from the hose Ethan turned off the tap and walked over the puddled concrete to the cell at the back that was used to store farm equipment. Most of it was heavy stuff, like a sprayer unit and sacks filled with chemicals, but he found a hand fork with three nice sharp prongs and decided that it made a better weapon than his sharpened lamb chop.

  Kessie’s workers had retreated to their dorms after he’d beaten the young boy for leaving the cage block lights on, so Ethan stepped out into cool night air and a deserted landscape. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and the little fork.

  The only things Ethan knew about his location were that he was in a country that bordered South Africa and that he’d seen a sizeable town out of the plane window on his final approach to Kessie’s landing strip.

  He wasn’t sure what direction the town was in, but he did remember the sewage flowing downriver when he’d been taken to the showers. It seemed logical that he’d find the source of the filth if he went in the direction it came from.

  Ethan had spent some of his lonely hours inside the cage considering what he might do if he did somehow escape. No disguise would hide the fact that he was a white kid in a black country and he’d concluded that his only realistic strategy was to find somewhere with a phone and call Irena, or anyone else he could get hold of inside the Kremlin who wasn’t loyal to Leonid.

  Ethan had no watch, but he reckoned it was about 1 a.m. Provided nobody sighted him leaving the ranch, that gave him two hours before anyone came looking for him, and maybe four and a half before it started getting light.

  He moved quickly towards the river, then jogged along the bank until he could hear voices inside the dormitory blocks. No bridge spanned this part of the river, but there were a couple of spots where Kessie’s men crossed using a combo of stepping stones and planks resting precariously on boulders.

  The stench of the churning brown water made Ethan heave and the slippery rocks and planks were tricky in darkness, but he felt safer once he reached the quieter side of the river, and he found himself walking between the huge barrels in which animal pelts were being cured.

  A bashed-up Mitsubishi pick-up offered some temptation, but Ethan had no idea how to jump start a car and his only driving experience was when his mum gifted him a track session in a single-seat race car with automatic transmission.

  The ground Ethan crossed now was open, but nobody worked at night so he felt safe until he got close to the steel posts and barbed wire that ringed the whole of Kessie’s ranch. The yellow and black signs were written in a language Ethan didn’t understand, but the symbols of thunderbolts and stick figures getting zapped made it obvious the fence was electrified.

  Ethan studied the point where the fence crossed the river. The foul water had been neatly boxed in with concrete so that the perimeter fence could go along the top. Luckily the water flowing at the edge beneath the bridge looked shallow and Ethan decided to risk it.

  Fighting the urge to puke, he crouched under the bridge and sploshed through shallow water as his trainers flooded. The smooth concrete below his Nikes was slippery with algae, and he had to keep his head down because the water went over the concrete bridge at peak flow and maggots were hatching in the brown scum deposited on the ceiling.

  As Ethan straightened up and climbed the overgrown embankment on the outside of Kessie’s land he could see the manned security gate at the ranch’s main entrance about three hundred metres to his left. The road out of the ranch went for about four hundred metres before joining a four-lane highway running parallel to the river.

  Ethan decided it would be best to set off towards town by going along the overgrown stretch of land between the highway and the river, although it was really dark and he worried that he’d lumber into a snake, crocodile, or whatever it was that lived in this part of the world and liked biting lumps out of humans.

  Ethan had to avoid being seen as he crossed the well-lit road out of Kessie’s ranch, so he kept low and headed for the highway. As he got closer, he saw a kind of informal terminus in a dirt patch where the ranch’s access road met the highway.

  A few motor rickshaws stood with their drivers hoping to pick up a ride, but at this time of night the traffic was mostly men being dropped off after a night in town. Some were alone, some in twos and threes. All looked wasted and most dived into the bushes to urinate as soon as they’d paid their drivers.

  Ethan had to avoid the terminus, and as he didn’t dare cross the access road either, he’d have to back up a couple of hundred metres and cross to the other side of the highway. Perhaps he’d even stay over there, because the more he thought about the riverbank, the less appetite he had for walking it.

  The four-lane highway was a mere back road compared to the freeways Ethan rode every day in California, but although the traffic was light most drivers went as fast as their vehicles allowed and many didn’t bother with headlights.

  Ethan squatted in reeds close to the road and watched the speeding traffic, trying to decide whether he should cross two lanes and stop in the median, or wait longer for a gap in all four lanes and run straight to the far side. He was about to sprint to the middle when he was startled by a retching sound in the reeds nearby.

  When a set of headlamps flashed the scene, Ethan saw a young woman, standing with her legs far apart, spewing her guts up. When she straightened up, she mopped her face with a tissue but only managed a couple of drunken steps before sitting down and making a low sob.

  Ethan crept closer, and the next set of headlights showed him a badly swollen right eye and fresh claw marks across the girl’s face. He felt pity and wondered why she’d been beaten, but the girl had put her clutch bag down beside her and it offered the tantalising possibility of cash and maybe even a mobile phone.

  Fear, time pressure and a mass of critical decisions made Ethan desperate. It was like a maths problem that he didn’t have the brainpower to solve and in the end he acted on impulse, setting off fast and reaching down to make a running grab at her bag.

  To Ethan’s surprise, the drunken woman sprang at him. She got one arm around his waist and flipped him. Ethan slammed down hard and the puke soaked into his back as the growling woman put an arm across his throat.

  ‘You should join a gym, white boy,’ the woman snorted, speaking decent English as she thumped Ethan in the gut. ‘Weakling, grow some muscles!’

  Ethan gasped for air as the woman smirked. She’d drunk so much that her sweat smelled like booze and for the first time Ethan studied her properly. Her long nails meant she was no farm girl and based on the way she was dressed he thought that she might be a prostitute.

  ‘What you doing out here, white boy?’ the girl asked.

  Ethan couldn’t answer until she took the arm off his throat. ‘I need to get into town,’ he croaked.

  ‘White boy? Out here?’ the girl said suspiciously.

  Her eyes were like dark glass balls and Ethan was starting to think there was something stronger than alcohol in her system.

  ‘I saw you were sick,’ Ethan croaked. ‘I thought you might need help.’

  The girl snorted as she increased the pressure on Ethan’s neck. ‘You tried to steal my bag, you piece of shit. Not that I’d be stuck out here if there was any money in it.’

  ‘Hey, Amina!’ a man shouted.

  ‘Shit,’ the girl said, as she rolled off of Ethan. ‘One move and I’ll kick your arse.’

  ‘Amina,’ the shadowy figure wading through the tall grass shouted again. Then he said a bunch of stuff in his own language and whatever it was made the girl hiss.

  ‘Is he the guy who beat you?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Wow, you must be a detective,’ the girl said as she reached across Ethan’s body and picked the three-pronged fork out of the d
irt. ‘Yeah, I’m Amina.’

  Amina still looked hopelessly drunk as she stumbled to her feet. The man coming their way was no taller than Ethan, but he packed a ton of muscle. He was dressed for a night out, in a purple shirt with ruffled front and uber-bling gold-framed sunglasses with mirrored lenses.

  He held tattooed arms out wide as if to apologise and Amina staggered forward into his arms.

  ‘Baby,’ she said warmly.

  The man closed in for an embrace, but an instant before they touched Amina took the fork out from behind her back and rammed it sideways under the man’s ribcage. As she burst into a crazy spitting rant, the man crumpled. He clutched his guts as Amina stamped down, puncturing his thigh with the point of her high-heeled shoe.

  As the man wailed, Amina menaced him with the fork as she took a wallet from the back of his trousers and a pack of cigarettes and a mobile telephone from his shirt pocket. Amina roared one final threat, before turning back towards Ethan with a bunch of local currency flapping in her hand and speaking in English.

  ‘I’m riding back into town, white boy. Might need a little help with my balance though.’

  Ethan thought for half a second before stepping up to the girl. She was heavier than him and he near-buckled as she put her arm around a shoulder that was already knackered from using the hose as a whip.

  With arms around each other’s backs, Ethan and Amina started a clumsy walk towards the waiting rickshaws a couple of hundred metres away.

  ‘These will suit you,’ Amina said, smiling as she reached across and almost poked Ethan’s eye out with the man’s mirrored sunglasses.

  ‘He your boyfriend, or what?’ Ethan asked, as the glasses settled on his nose.

  ‘Cousin,’ Amina said. ‘Dragged me out of a club in town and started beating on me cos I was dancing with some guy he has beef with.’

  Amina was all over the place and Ethan started getting nervous as they reached the line-up of motor rickshaws. There were no farm workers within fifty metres, but if any of Kessie’s men pulled off the highway he’d be screwed.