‘When will the “campaign” begin?’ he asked.
The adjacent booth was silent.
‘I said, when will you make a start?’
Still Harry got no answer. Warily, he rose from his seat and peeked over the divide. The booth was empty, except for a wireless loudspeaker on the table. His contact had never even been in the room with him.
Making his way past the cloakroom, Harry headed for the rear exit where a bald-headed bouncer in wrap-around shades opened the fire door for him. Sunlight burst into the darkened corridor, dazzling Harry as if a police spotlight had caught him in the act. His heart racing, he scuttled out of the building and into the alleyway. The door clanged shut behind him with a booming finality that signalled there was no going back.
Connor snatched for every breath as he sprinted headlong down the indoor track. His heart pounded in his chest and his muscles burned. Jason was neck-and-neck with him. Elsa from Bravo team was close on their tail, as was Sean from Delta. The other recruits followed up behind, some already struggling with the intense circuit.
‘Come on, AMIR! Don’t be the first to quit; a bodyguard needs to be fit!’ bellowed Steve as he ran alongside them with apparent ease.
A towering slab of honed muscle, his limbs seemingly hewn from black marble, the ex-British Special Forces soldier was their unarmed combat instructor and fitness coach. He’d summoned the three Buddyguard teams – Alpha, Bravo and Delta – to the sports hall for one of his infamous circuit training sessions. To ensure their full commitment, he’d pitted them against one another and, with group pride at stake, no team wanted to be last.
‘No pain, no gain,’ called out Steve, offering questionable incentive to the stragglers.
Connor reached the end of the shuttle sprint and dropped to the floor for fifty knuckle press-ups. Beside him, Jason pumped away like a jackhammer, clicking off reps every second. More students joined them, racing to catch up. Connor felt the burn in his triceps. But compared with the mental overload of an operational briefing the physical exercise was a relief.
Amir dropped down next to him, the last of Alpha team. ‘I think … I might … die,’ he gasped in between press-ups.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Steve, grinning a bright white smile at his student’s torment. ‘It means you’re putting in one hundred per cent effort.’
He stood sentry over the teams, ensuring no one skipped a rep.
‘An unfit bodyguard is a liability,’ he told them. ‘Not only to himself but also to other members of the team, and most of all to the Principal.’
Jason was first to finish his press-ups and went straight into the next exercise – fifty stomach crunches.
‘In an emergency, you’ll need such strength to get you and your Principal out of the danger zone,’ continued their instructor as his students sweated and groaned on the floor. ‘Fatigue, on the other hand, will hamper your ability to make quick decisions and choose the right course of action.’
‘But we did a … ten-mile run … only yesterday!’ panted Luciana, a dark-haired Brazilian girl from Delta team.
‘Your fitness isn’t about yesterday; it’s about today,’ Steve lectured. ‘You must treat your fitness like a tyre with a slow puncture – you have to keep topping it up.’
He strode over to a boy in Bravo team who’d given up halfway through his press-ups.
‘Would you trust your security to an overweight slob?’
Too out of breath to reply, the boy shook his head.
‘Nor would I. Now let’s see what you’re made of. Keep going!’
His arms trembling with the effort, the boy resumed his exercise. Meanwhile, his teammate Elsa had completed her stomach crunches and was running to beat Jason to the chin-up bars. Connor was only a few paces behind. Charley, who’d used a vertical chest press and played catch with a medicine ball in place of press-ups and stomach crunches, powered her adapted sportschair over to a lowered chin-up bar. She fired off twenty reps before anyone else had even managed ten. Then, dropping back into her chair, she sped off along the track for another shuttle run – now the leader in the race.
As soon as she reached the end of the track, Steve announced, ‘Piggyback sprint.’
This was met with groans of disbelief from the weary teams. But everyone dug in for what they prayed would be the final exercise. In Alpha team, Connor partnered Amir, Jason ran with Richie, while Charley pulled herself up on to Ling’s shoulders.
The teams raced in relay down the hall. Ling managed to hold Alpha’s lead, then Jason extended it. But Richie staggered under the weight of his brawny teammate.
‘This is murder!’ Richie moaned, gritting his teeth as Delta team swiftly passed him by.
‘Winners train, losers complain,’ Steve growled. ‘When things go wrong and you need to run for cover while carrying your Principal, you’ll be thankful for this exercise.’
‘I’ll be thankful when it stops!’ he gasped.
By the time it was Connor and Amir’s turn, Alpha team had fallen into last place. Amir did his best to catch up, but had nothing left to give. It was a miracle he even managed to carry Connor over the line. Now they were almost ten seconds behind the leaders.
‘It’s all down to you,’ said Marc as a burnt-out Amir clambered on to Connor’s back.
Naturally fit from six years of martial arts training, Connor summoned up hidden reserves of energy and raced after the two rival teams. They quickly passed Bravo team as Elsa stumbled and went sprawling with her partner. But Delta still had the lead. And with only thirty metres left in the race, Connor had to dig deep.
‘Go! Go! Go!’ cried Amir, geeing him on as if he was a racehorse.
Connor could see that Luciana, with Sean on her back, was fading fast. He pumped his legs and charged after them.
‘Come on!’ Amir urged.
They began to draw level. With victory almost in sight, Connor raced for the finish line.
Suddenly aware she was about to be passed, Luciana leant forward like a jockey in the final few paces … and beat Alpha team by a nose.
Delta team cheered and high-fived Luciana in celebration of their slimmest of victories. Gutted at their loss, Connor collapsed to his hands and knees in an exhausted heap, Amir rolling off him on to the floor.
‘Good job, everyone,’ said Steve. ‘Take a break. I’ll be back in ten minutes for combat practice.’
As Steve passed Connor, he clapped a meaty hand on his shoulder. ‘You may have lost out this time, but that’s what I call fighting fit.’
Connor managed a weak smile. ‘Well, I’m fit for nothing now!’
Connor slumped on the bench and reached inside his training bag for his water bottle. Popping the cap, he almost drained it in one slug. Amir lay at his side, breathing hard, a weary arm draped across his forehead.
‘I shouldn’t have … made that joke … about hiring us too late,’ panted Amir.
Connor looked over at his friend, unable to believe Amir had the energy to dwell on the buddyguard assignment after such a gruelling circuit session. ‘The colonel’s choice had nothing to do with your joke. He’d have made up his mind before the briefing.’
Amir propped himself up on one elbow, sweat dripping from his brow. ‘Then why didn’t he choose me? I’m the only one in Alpha team who hasn’t yet been on an assignment.’
‘Must be because you’re so good with the tech stuff,’ said Marc, chucking Amir a towel. Amir wiped the sweat from his face but his dejected expression remained.
Connor nodded encouragingly. ‘That’s it! The colonel’s playing to your strengths. During the mission, you’ll be needed in HQ to maintain comms and run the IT. Remember last time, it was you and Bugsy who figured out the Cell-Finity bug.’
‘Great,’ said Amir without much enthusiasm. ‘So while you’re off sunning yourself in the Seychelles with “Miss Swimsuit”, I get stuck in wet Wales doing circuits!’
‘Look, Amir,’ said Connor, trying one last time to c
onsole his friend. ‘Ling was the most obvious choice.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she’s a girl.’
‘Just because I’m a girl!’ remarked Ling, shooting daggers at Connor as she leant against the ropes of the sports hall boxing ring.
‘No … I didn’t mean it like that,’ Connor stammered.
‘Whatever, Boss,’ she replied, her tone laced with sarcasm.
Connor sighed. This didn’t bode well for their forthcoming assignment. ‘Let me explain –’
‘Be my guest,’ she said, lifting the ropes of the boxing ring and inviting him to join her.
‘But we’ve just done circuits!’ exclaimed Connor.
‘Is that your excuse?’ Ling gave him a withering look, somehow still appearing as fresh as a daisy herself. ‘Or is it because I’m a girl you don’t want to fight?’
Connor shook his head, wondering how he was going to avoid the sparring challenge. Although he was a black belt in jujitsu and kickboxing, that didn’t mean he took a match with Ling lightly. At their very first encounter, she’d demonstrated she was a supremely tough combatant. In Amir’s words, ‘Ling always wins her fights.’
It was as if she had something to prove. And Ling wasn’t to be dissuaded now. She bounced nimbly on her feet and pulled on the sparring gloves Jason offered.
‘I don’t think Connor’s up for it,’ Jason remarked, handing Ling her gumshield while eyeballing Connor. ‘I hope he’s not going to be a liability on your mission.’
Members of Bravo and Delta teams were soon drawn to the ring by the excitement of a challenge fight.
‘I thought you were Battle of Britain Kickboxing Champion,’ remarked Luciana, still gloating over her victory. ‘Let’s see you prove it.’
‘Go on, Connor,’ urged Sean. ‘You know how “Lightning Ling” only sees sense in the ring!’
Connor looked to Amir for a way out. But his friend just shrugged his shoulders. ‘You don’t seem to have much choice,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to play to your strengths.’
Despite his exhausted state, Connor ducked under the rope, entered the ring, put on a pair of sparring gloves and turned to face his opponent –
An explosive jab almost took his head off. Only blind instinct enabled him to spin away in time. A right hook came flying in and Connor had to weave sharply aside again. Ling certainly wasn’t waiting around to start the fight officially.
‘So the colonel’s choice,’ said Ling, launching a roundhouse kick to his thigh, ‘has nothing to do with my previous experience?’
‘Of course it does!’ Connor grunted, blocking the kick with his shin and countering with a front-kick.
Ling skipped out of range, then came back in with a body hook punch to his ribs. ‘Or my surveillance skills –?’
Connor grimaced as the strike hit home. Ling might be small, but she was lightning fast.
‘Or my fighting ability?’ she demanded.
Like a whirling dervish, Ling came at him with a flurry of kicks and punches. Connor fought hard to defend himself. He ducked her spinning backfist, blocked her cross and evaded her crescent kick. As he retreated from Ling’s relentless onslaught, Luciana goaded him from the ringside, ‘Some champion you are, Connor!’
Needled by the taunt and wanting to get a word in edgeways with Ling, Connor now went on the attack.
‘Ling, I meant you got the job,’ he replied with a blistering combination of jab, cross and upper cut, ‘because … our two Principals … are girls. It therefore makes sense –’ he almost floored Ling with a back fist – ‘to have a female buddyguard.’
Ling was driven into the corner by a pounding side-kick to the chest. She tried to fight her way out, but Connor kept her trapped with a series of punishing body blows.
‘You can go places I can’t,’ he said. Ling, taking the hits, fought hard to escape, but Connor maintained the pressure. He still had more to say. ‘And their protection is supposed to be low profile, so a girl bodyguard will be even less noticeable than a boy.’
Connor grunted as Ling thrust a front-kick into his gut, forcing him backwards.
‘Is that low profile enough for you?’ grinned Ling, relishing the buzz of the fight.
Connor ignored her and retaliated with a front-kick of his own that propelled Ling back into the ring’s corner pad.
‘So, apart from your core skills, being a girl makes you the obvious choice,’ explained Connor, moving to finish her off with a couple of head shots.
But Ling displayed some nifty footwork and escaped the corner. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, with a disarming smile. ‘My mistake, please accept my apology.’
She backed off from the fight and Connor dropped his guard. Finally he’d got through to Ling. ‘Of course I do. We’re teammates. I didn’t mean any offence –’
Ling spun on her heel, shot out a leg and caught him bang on the jaw with a spinning hook-kick. ‘There’s my apology.’
Connor went down like a sack of potatoes, his last conscious thought: Ling always wins her fights.
Harry Gibb hurried through the deserted government office. He knew even his most eager civil servants wouldn’t show their faces until at least 8 a.m. That gave him two hours of solitude. Still, he glanced nervously around before unlocking the main archive room and ducking inside.
Flicking on the switch, he waited for the fluorescent strip lights to cast their stark white glare over the rows and rows of grey filing cabinets. Each one was a carbon copy of the next, impossible to tell apart, but Harry knew exactly what he was looking for. Heading straight over to the sixth cabinet in the third row, he pulled out a thick binder of documents marked MINING RIGHTS, GOLDFIELDS, WA.
Despite everything being stored digitally nowadays, there was always a paper trail in government. While he’d been careful to remove any evidence from his computer, these damning documents were the remaining crumbs that could lead to him and his under-the-table dealings.
Yet he wouldn’t destroy the files. The contents of this folder, detailing his co-conspirators, were his insurance policy. Harry Gibb knew that those who had profited from the shady deals also had a vested interest in protecting his reputation. If he went down, so would they.
Smiling to himself, Harry closed the filing cabinet, switched off the light and locked the archive room. Clutching the files to his chest, he scurried across to his office and bolted inside. Only when he’d secured the door behind him did he feel safe in his domain.
Turning to his desk, Harry almost jumped out of his skin when he discovered a man in a grey suit sitting in his chair.
‘M-my secretary didn’t mention any meetings this morning,’ he blustered.
‘She doesn’t know of this meeting,’ replied the man. ‘No one does.’
The uninvited guest did not get up or introduce himself. He just studied Harry with unblinking eyes that seemed chiselled from ice.
‘Who are you?’ Harry demanded, gathering his wits and now becoming angry. ‘Are you a reporter? Get out of my chair!’
The man was indifferent to Harry’s outrage. ‘I represent a certain investor.’
‘And who might that be?’ Harry challenged.
‘Your primary investor.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Harry. He felt himself becoming flustered. There was something deeply unsettling about this man. Like a spider crawling across his skin, Harry wanted him gone. ‘If you don’t leave right now, I’ll call security.’
‘I’d advise against that.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
The man sat as still as a block of stone, his silence more unnerving than any reply. Then he said, ‘Equilibrium.’
‘What?’ snapped Harry, frowning in disbelief.
‘You heard me.’
‘Ahh,’ said Harry, relaxing slightly. This man had to be from his key investor. There could be no other way he’d have known of the organization’s name. It had taken Harry weeks to discover it for himself �
�� Equilibrium, the parent investor behind all those false ‘shell’ companies who’d invested in the mining rights.
Feeling once more in charge of the situation, Harry strode over and dropped the thick binder on to his desk.
‘I’m dealing with the problem,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand in the man’s direction. ‘Equilibrium need not be concerned. Neither their existence nor their involvement will be revealed. Plans are in place to handle Mr Sterling and his prying newspaper.’
‘But you’re familiar with Equilibrium.’
‘Of course,’ said Harry. ‘I was thorough in selecting my investors.’
‘And are they fully protected from the current crisis?’
‘Oh yes,’ Harry assured. ‘I’ve erased all evidence from my computer records.’
‘So have I,’ said the man, pulling a tiny USB drive from the back of Harry’s computer. ‘A malware virus has just wiped your hard drive.’
‘You can’t do that!’ exclaimed Harry.
‘And what about those files there?’ asked the man, ignoring Harry’s protest and nodding at the thick wad of documents on his desk.
‘These? They’re just an insurance policy.’
‘Hmm, that’s the problem,’ said the man, adjusting the crisp white cuffs of his shirt. ‘Not only do you know Equilibrium’s name but you possess evidence of its existence.’
‘I … I’m not going to expose Equilibrium’s involvement in this. The file is just for my own protection from the other parties. They know nothing about Equilibrium,’ said Harry, suddenly feeling a chill run down his spine from the man’s sinister casualness. ‘Trust me. I’m a man of my word.’
‘You’re a politician,’ the other corrected sharply, his ice-pick eyes fixing him with a contemptuous look. ‘But I’ll take your word … for what it’s worth.’
Without further discussion, the man stood and left. Once the door closed on him, the room seemed to breathe again.
Bodyguard: Ransom (Book 2) Page 4