Thunder Raker

by Justin Richards

  There was a slight blur on the picture for a moment, but otherwise nothing changed.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Alfie said.

  “You wouldn’t,” Chloe said. But the others all agreed they had seen nothing either.

  Mrs Nuffink shook her head sadly. “You’ll never pass your SATS at this rate,” she said. “Special Agent Training Standards are very important, and you need to get Level 3 this year. Now—one frame at a time then.”

  This time, they did see it. On one frame there was nothing, then on the next a boy was clearly in view. He was only in three frames. In the first, he approached the front of the house. In the second he threw a letter towards

  the door. In the third, Alfie could see that the letter was attached to a tiny model helicopter that flew it straight into the open letterbox. He could also see that the boy was on a skateboard. Flames erupted from the rocket motors on the back of the board as the boy whizzed past.

  By the fourth frame he was gone.

  “You see?” Mrs Nuffink said. “You just have to pay attention. Now then—any questions about that?”

  Beth’s hand shot up. “Yes, Miss. Where did he get that skateboard?”

  “How was your first day, Alfie?” Miss Jones asked as she dismissed Class 3D at the end of the afternoon.

  “I like the other children in Class 3D,” Alfie said, though he was sure that Chloe didn’t like him very much. “But some of the lessons are a bit strange.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Miss Jones said. “Probably. See you tomorrow. Oh, and you have PE in the afternoon, so don’t forget to bring in your towel, your trainers, and your bullet-proof vest.”

  Chapter 6

  Mum wanted to know if Alfie needed any help with his homework. He told her he could manage, thanks, but he needed a bullet-proof vest for PE the next day.

  “Funny boy,” Mum said, and ruffled Alfie’s hair.

  “It’s an odd school,” Alfie told his parents as they sat down for tea.

  “You’ve only been there a day,” Dad said. “It’s bound to seem a bit strange.” “I suppose.” But Alfie wasn’t sure. “Do you think they have special schools where the children of secret agents and spies and people like that go?” he asked.

  “To keep them safe from the enemy?” Dad said. “And teach them all the secret stuff they might need to know to survive in the dangerous undercover world of international espionage?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Alfie’s dad paused. “I doubt it,” he said.

  “But if we hear of a school like that,” Mum said, “we’ll be sure to put your name down for it.” And she winked at Dad, thinking that Alfie couldn’t see her.

  “For my homework,” Alfie said slowly, “I have to draw up a plan for infiltrating a secret enemy military base, sabotaging the tracking system, stealing some vital plans and escaping through the minefield. Before the guard dogs get me.”

  “That’s nice,” Mum said.

  “Good morning, Mrs Prendergast,” Alfie called as he walked past the old lady’s cottage the next morning.

  Mrs Prendergast stood in the garden holding a tray with a teapot and milk jug on it. As she turned and waved to Alfie he just caught sight of a tall man in dark overalls and sunglasses disappearing into the bushes behind her. The man was holding a mug.

  If Mrs Prendergast called back to Alfie, he didn’t hear. It sounded like a rocket was fast approaching, as a swirl of smoke raced towards him. He hurried to the side of the road to let Beth shoot past.

  She skidded and screeched to a halt just past Alfie and he ran to catch her up. She wasn’t wearing roller skates today, but was on a skateboard like the boy had on the surveillance video.

  “I thought it looked neat, so I made this one last night,” she said.

  “Didn’t you do your homework?”

  Beth grinned. “Chips did it for me.”

  “Is he your brother?” Alfie wondered.

  “No, silly. He’s my computer. Do you have a computer?”

  Alfie shook his head. “Dad lets me use his if I need to. I don’t even have a games console.”

  “Don’t tell Chloe,” Beth said. “She has all the latest kit. She’s got a Playstation 7, a Z-Box, a Wii Mark 9, and the new Omni-Processing Decryptotron. Lucky thing.” Beth adjusted her helmet strap. “See you.” And in a blur of speed and a curl of smoke, she was gone.

  Alfie passed three more men in dark overalls hiding in the hedges outside the school. He pretended not to notice them as they whispered and murmured into radio handsets and drank tea. Sergeant Custer opened the gates for Alfie and snapped a neat salute.

  “Dad says you can come and play after school one day if you want,” Jack told Alfie as soon as he got into the classroom. “Once you’ve been positively vetted, of course. There’s a form you need to fill in.”

  Miss Jones arrived before Alfie could reply. “There’s a special assembly this morning,” she announced. “Mr Trenchard has some important information.”

  They went to the school hall but Mr Trenchard Agent Alfie 19/6/08 14:09 Page 81 told them he didn’t know who they were or why they were there, and could they all please go away and leave him in peace.

  “Ah, no, hang on a minute,” Mr Trenchard’s voice boomed down the main corridor as they left.

  No one seemed at all surprised by this, but simply turned round and trooped back into the hall.

  “Right, good,” Mr Trenchard said. He was holding a piece of paper and staring at it over the top of his spectacles. He stood at a lectern on the stage at the end of the hall. The other teachers sat on chairs behind him. “Important information here. Everyone pay attention.”

  “We’re lucky he can remember how to read,” Sam said as he edged his wheelchair into the gap between Alfie and Harry.

  “Now,” Mr Trenchard was saying, “we all know that SPUD has been trying to infiltrate the Service and get hold of our advanced technology.” He paused and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Do we know that? Yes, I suppose we do. Might have slipped our minds but yes, indeed.” He cleared his throat and went on: “Now, those boffins at the Government Inventing Taskforce…”

  “GIT!” someone shouted from halfway down the hall.

  “Absolutely,” Mr Trenchard agreed. “Those boffins at GIT have got a spy satellite in a spot of bother up in orbit. Or rather, out of orbit.” He paused to check his sheet of notes. “That is to say, it crashed to earth. Yesterday. And SPUD would

  like nothing better than to get their hands on it.”

  “Why is that?” the Major asked.

  “Because it’s secret, that’s why.”

  The Major nodded. “I see.” His chair lurched precariously to the side as one of its legs fell off.

  “Now the GIT chappies did manage to arrange for their satellite to crash just about…

  here.” Mr Trenchard frowned and re-checked his notes. “Well, not here exactly, in this hall, but somewhere in the local area. So it’s up to us to recover it before SPUD agents move in and find it.”

  “Terrific,” Jack whispered. “A real mission at last.”

  “Could be dangerous,” Harry said quietly.

  Jack nodded excitedly. “I know!”

  “Each class will be given a different area to search,” Mr Trenchard said. “If the satellite turns out to be in your area, your task is to recover it and bring it back here at once. Now, any questions?”

  “What’s it called?” a tall boy near the front asked.

  “Apparently it’s called Nigel,” Mr Trenchard said. “Oh, no, hang on—that’s the man who sent me this email. Who’d call a satellite by a person’s name? What a silly idea.” He inspected the sheet more closely. “Ah, here we are. It’s actually our new Remote Orbital Satellite Information Equipment. Or ROSIE, for short. Any more questions?”

  Mr Cryption cleared his throat, and asked: “Flammable geography rewind heart-shaped cashflow butter antelopes?”

  Mr Trenchard nodded. “Very good qu
estion. The answer, without a shadow of doubt, is Wednesday. Now then, everyone back to your classrooms where your teachers will handle your mission briefings.”

  He had almost finished speaking when Miss Fortune leaped from her chair, clenched her fists, and with a cry of “Geronimo!” threw herself off the stage into the unsuspecting audience. The hall cleared very quickly.

  Chapter 7

  There were groans of disappointment when Miss Jones told Class 3D that the Upper School would be doing most of the work to find the satellite.

  “But we’ve got PE this afternoon,” Harry complained. “Can’t we look for it then?”

  “Well, there’s nothing to stop you, although the Chaplain would have to agree.” Miss Jones clapped her hands together. “But first we have double Science. I’d like you to carry on with your projects, please. Alfie—you can help Beth.”

  The other children in Class 3D were attaching wires to light bulbs and batteries and buzzers. The lights lit and the buzzers buzzed. But Beth was working on something rather more complicated.

  She tipped a mass of wires and cables and circuits and electrical components out of a shoebox and started to plug them all together.

  “What are we making?” Alfie asked as he held a wire for her.

  “It was going to be a machine to tell you when your toast is done,” Beth said. “When it’s ready, a buzzer sounds and a light comes on. Miss Jones said we had to build something with buzzers and lights.”

  “Why not just use a toaster?” Alfie asked. “The toast pops up when it’s done.”

  “Because it doesn’t flash and buzz,” Beth pointed out. “Anyway, I’m changing it. It’s not going to be anything to do with toast.”

  “Then what is it?” Alfie asked. But when he saw Beth’s wide grin, he guessed: “It’s a satellite detector, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t tell Miss Jones,” Beth said quietly. “Or the Chaplain. We’ll test it in PE.”

  “Won’t the Chaplain notice?” Alfie asked.

  “We’ll have to hide it. Though it will be a bit big. And it will only detect the satellite when it’s very close, so we need to make it portable.”

  “Too big and heavy to carry?”

  Beth nodded.

  Looking at the device that was starting to take shape, Alfie had an idea. “Why don’t we build it into Sam’s wheelchair?”

  If the Chaplain noticed that Sam’s wheelchair now had various wires and attachments added, along with a tall radio aerial, he didn’t mention it. He was probably too busy talking about how children today had it easy and it was never like this in Bomber Command.

  “I thought you were a fighter pilot not a bomber, sir?” Harry said.

  “That too,” the Chaplain barked. “Intrepid pilot. Went on a hundred and three sorties in one month alone. Survived 97 of them. Jerry never knew what was going to happen to him next, I can tell you.”

  “Jerry?” Alfie said.

  “My co-pilot, Jerry Atkins,” the Chaplain explained. “Right then, today I’ve arranged a short assault course for you.”

  Several people groaned.

  “It won’t be difficult,” the Chaplain went on. “Just twice round the field, then climb over those bales of hay over there. It’ll make men of you.”

  “I don’t want to be a man,” Alice said.

  The Chaplain peered at her. “Ah, yes. People then. Oh,” he remembered, “and you’ll have to crawl under that wire mesh over there.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad,” Alfie whispered to Jack.

  “Avoiding the machine gun fire,” the Chaplain continued. “Then it’s a quick swing over the pond on the rope I’ve attached to that overhanging branch.”

  “Well, at least that should be all right,” Jack said.

  “Being careful not to fall in and get eaten by the hundred or so piranha fish I’ve put in the pond.”

  As Alfie and the others watched, a duck flew down towards the pond. It hovered just above the water before landing, and gave out a contented quack. Then a blue lightning bolt of electricity zapped up and hit the duck, which fell lifeless into the water.

  “And the electric eel,” the Chaplain went on. He hesitated as he saw Class 3D was looking past him, their mouths open. “Problem?”

  The skeleton of a dead duck was tossed out of the pond and landed on the grass nearby.

  “Good,” said the Chaplain. “Right—off you go then.”

  Sam was allowed to whiz round the course in his wheelchair, since he couldn’t crawl under the mesh or swing on the rope.

  Beth’s satellite detector bleeped and booped as he moved.

  Alfie and Beth kept close to Sam. “Any sign of it yet?” asked Alfie.

  “Nothing so far.” Sam waited while Beth and Alfie ducked under the mesh and crawled quickly through. The ground exploded round them.

  “See if you can move out a bit,” Alfie suggested. “Cover a bigger area.”

  After they’d swung successfully over the pond, Alfie turned to Beth. “How close does the detector need to be to find the satellite?”

  Beth sighed. “It’s not easy to get long range with a portable, battery-powered detector you know.”

  “How close?”

  “About a metre.”

  Alfie frowned. “But that means Sam will have to run over it.”

  “Maybe.” Beth looked a bit embarrassed.

  “Wouldn’t he see it first?”

  “Maybe,” she said again.

  As he watched Sam whizzing back and forth across the playground at twenty miles an hour, Alfie wasn’t sure that Beth’s detector was going to be the best way to find the satellite after all.

  Chapter 8

  “That was very good, Alfie,” Miss Jones said as she handed back his homework the next morning. “In fact, yours was the only plan that the Homework Analysis Team gave a 90% chance of success.”

  “What did you do?” Jack wanted to know. “I only got a 45% chance of success. I never heard of anyone getting 90%.”

  “Did you pole vault over the electric fences?” Sam wanted to know.

  “Stun the guard dogs with an electric shock gun you invented yourself?” Beth asked.

  “Maybe he dug a tunnel,” Alice suggested. “I did.”

  “No,” Chloe told them, “a powered hangglider with sat-nav is best. My dad bought me one the other week. Bet you didn’t think of that,” she told Alfie.

  “I just shot all the guards and blew up the place,” Harry said glumly. “HAT said that didn’t fulfil the Mission Brief because I didn’t get hold of the vital plans. Only gave me 10%.”

  “So come on,” Jack said, “how did you do it?”

  Alfie shrugged, embarrassed by all the attention. “I pretended to be a postman bringing the letters. Special delivery to be signed for by the chief scientist. That way they’d send me to the lab where I could sabotage the systems.”

  “And the plans?” Harry asked. “They’d search you on the way out.”

  “Put them in an envelope addressed to myself and left it in the letter tray to be sent out.”

  There was a long silence. Then Beth said: “That’s brilliant!” and Sam laughed and clapped.

  Everyone else agreed, except Chloe who told them that the HAT assessors must have muddled up the papers and got Alfie’s confused with hers.

  “I still think my plan would have worked too,” Jack muttered.

  “It must have taken you all evening,” Miss Jones said as she tried to settle Class 3D down again.

  “Not really,” Alfie said. “I still had time to find out where the missing satellite landed.”

  Mr Trenchard regarded Alfie through his spectacles. For once he didn’t seem to need reminding of what was going on.

  “Alfie,” he said. “Settled in OK, I hope?”

  “Yes, thank you, sir.”

  “Excellent. Wouldn’t want any complaints getting back to…” Mr Trenchard leaned meaningfully across the table. “You-Know-Who,” he whispered.


  “No, I don’t, actually,” Alfie said.

  But Mr Trenchard ignored this. “Now, Miss Smith—or is it Jones? Well, whoever it was has told me you know where this satellite thingy is.”

  “That’s right. You see, my dad was talking to Mr Rogers in Willow Lane, and he said that Mrs Sykes had heard from the Oyanbanji boys that Mrs Green in the shop said old Mr Phillips got a dreadful fright the other night when something fell out of the sky.”

  Alfie had said all this in a rush and he didn’t expect Mr Trenchard to follow, but to his surprise the Head Teacher nodded. “And did this Willow Lane character say what it was that fell from the sky?”

  “Er, well,” Alfie explained, “Dad spoke to old Mr Phillips and he said that yes he’d had a fright because a shooting star almost fell on him, and his dog ran off, and talking to Edward Hogsmouth he thought—

  Mr Hogsmouth, not the dog—that it landed somewhere in Mrs Prendergast’s back garden.”

  “I see.” Mr Trenchard took off his glasses and polished them furiously on a grubby handkerchief. “Your dad’s got quite a network of informers.”

  “They’re just people who live nearby.”

  Mr Trenchard winked. “Course they are. So we reckon this satellite is in Mrs Prendergast’s garden?”

  “Yes,” said Alfie.

  “Thank goodness no one knows about it.”

  “Apart from old Mr Phillips,” said Alfie.

  “Well, yes, obviously.”

  “And Mrs Hogsmouth,” Alfie added. “Oh and Mrs Green and the Oyanbanji boys and Mr Rogers and Mrs Sykes. And Dad of course. And the dog.”

  “And this Willow fellow. But thank goodness no one else knows it’s in this lady’s garden. Where is the garden, by the way?”

  “It’s the one where the men in black overalls and dark glasses hide to keep watch on the school,” said Alfie.

  Mr Trenchard leaped to his feet. “Spies? Keeping watch on the school? They must be SPUD agents!”

  “I don’t know. Mrs Prendergast takes them cups of tea.”