CHERUB: The General

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘What we do here will save the lives of real Americans fighting against evil all around the world. It’s the patriotic duty of every insurgent to ready your weapons and prepare for the final assault on the army base. Are you ready to kick some butt?’

  A moderate cheer ripped through the crowd.

  ‘Let me also remind you,’ Kazakov went on, ‘you have all signed two-week contracts for this training exercise. If we win this final battle, the exercise will be over and you’ll all receive over eleven hundred dollars for two days’ work!’

  Patriotic pride had done its bit, but this appeal direct to the wallet had a much greater effect. Cheers and screams roared through the crowd.

  ‘Are we ready to attack the base?’ Kazakov shouted.

  A blast of yeses ripped through the crowd.

  ‘Are we ready to kick some butt?’ Kazakov repeated, followed by more cheers. ‘Let’s get up there and storm the base!’

  The frenzied crowd started surging out of the square.

  ‘Don’t forget to wear your goggles and god bless the United States of America!’ Kazakov shouted.

  One of the SAS men changed the music playing over the PA system to the US Marine Hymn. A Scotsman punched his fist in the air and started a chant of USA, USA as Kazakov’s Hummer crawled through the crowd towards the edge of the square.

  ‘Victory!’ Kazakov shouted. ‘Victory!’

  The crowd was moving out of the square in several different directions. Many were just here for the booze and headed for home, but the two hundred SAS men and insurgents were emboldened with drink and patriotism and began charging between the lines of huts.

  Lauren reached around to grab her rifle out of her pack. ‘Where have James and Bruce got to?’ she asked impatiently.

  ‘I’m right here,’ Bruce answered, hurrying towards the scene and grabbing his pack from Jake. ‘Ready to bust heads, Brucey style.’

  ‘So where the hell’s James?’ Gabrielle asked, glancing at her watch. ‘He went for a slash before you did.’

  ‘I saw him with a piece of tail,’ Bruce said. ‘Hand on her butt. Looked like they were heading off to some hut in the back streets for a bit of fun.’

  ‘You what?’ Lauren gasped. ‘It’s the final assault!’

  Rat grinned admiringly. ‘Can you believe that guy? Was she hot?’

  ‘Nice T and A,’ Bruce nodded. ‘Bit butch for my taste, but I wouldn’t say no.’

  Lauren was irritated at the way they were discussing women and scowled severely at Bruce. ‘I’ll be sure to mention your comments to Kerry when we meet up.’

  ‘I’m just saying that she was hot.’

  ‘I hate him,’ Rat said, smiling enviously. ‘I bet James is in some hut right now, bouncing around on top of some bimbo- OWW!’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Lauren growled. ‘I’m gonna have words with James. The way he carries on he’s gonna end up catching some disease and having his willy drop off…’

  *

  James was spread-eagled over the dining table, with his shorts and trousers around his ankles and his hands cuffed behind his back. He didn’t doubt that an army intelligence officer knew how to inflict severe pain if she wanted to. The question was, was Lieutenant Sahlin bluffing? Had General Shirley really got so desperate that he’d authorised his staff to use torture? There were now only two women in the room with him – Corporal Land had been sent out to investigate the loud civilian cheering.

  ‘Tell us exactly what you did inside the base.’

  James turned his head to one side and grinned. ‘Shouldn’t a nice girl like you be home baking cakes and having babies?’

  ‘Cute,’ Sahlin said, as she pressed James’ head against the table top and swept the tip of the probe across his cheek. There was a sharp hiss and James’ whole body shot into spasm. His nose filled with a burning smell from the singed stubble on his cheek.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ James yelled. ‘I’m sixteen years old. I’m here with a British cadet group—’

  ‘Shut your damn hole,’ Sahlin ordered. ‘I only touched your stubble. Now you start talking, because I’ve cracked tougher nuts than you, bucko. What did you do inside the base?’

  James tried to think. Maybe they were bluffing and wouldn’t hurt him badly, but he didn’t fancy finding out for the sake of a training exercise.

  ‘We put some drug in the water tank,’ James explained.

  Sahlin smiled. ‘What drug?’

  ‘Some really complicated name,’ James said nervously, having genuinely forgotten. ‘The packaging is probably still in the bin inside the services building. It’s pretty toxic stuff, so we sealed it all into a zip-lock bag with our masks and stuff.’

  ‘And this drug is what’s causing all the tummy trouble.’

  ‘That’s why we did it,’ James nodded.

  ‘Is there an antidote?’

  ‘Do I look like a pharmacist?’ James asked.

  Sahlin thought about this for a second before changing tack. ‘What are Kazakov’s plans?’

  ‘Can’t you work that out for yourself?’ James snorted.

  Sahlin used the probe to singe some of the hairs on James’ bare bum.

  ‘Chrrrrist,’ he shouted. ‘Cut that out! I’m cooperating aren’t I?’

  ‘I don’t like your attitude,’ Sahlin explained. ‘Kazakov’s plan: tell me everything you know, now!’

  ‘Steam through the front gates while you’re all doubled up on the toilet,’ James smiled. ‘That’s the plan and you can’t do squat about it.’

  Sahlin looked up at the sergeant. ‘Jones, call base. Get someone to go find that packaging in the services building and identify the contents. Make sure General Shirley knows we have confirmed intelligence of an all-out attack.’

  James overheard as Sergeant Jones spoke into her walkie-talkie. The reply came through the loudspeaker laden with sarcasm:

  ‘Good to hear Army Intelligence is keeping us informed. Tell Lieutenant Sahlin that if she wasn’t on the ball we might not have noticed the two-hundred-strong armed mob currently trying to smash through our front gates. If it’s not too much trouble, maybe you could get your butts up here and help us out.’

  ‘Insurgent pigs,’ Sahlin shouted. ‘Didn’t I send Land out to investigate all that cheering and shouting?’

  James couldn’t help laughing and earned a punch in the back for his trouble.

  ‘Maybe they shot her,’ Jones said anxiously.

  ‘This is just great!’ Sahlin sighed, before slapping James hard on his bare arse. ‘Looks like you’re not the only one who got caught with your pants down, bucko! We’d better shift out of here.’

  Sahlin and Jones grabbed their rifles and packs.

  ‘What about our handsome little captive?’ Jones asked.

  Sahlin smiled as she placed the handcuff key on the table in front of James’ mouth.

  ‘Ah come on,’ James complained. ‘How am I gonna get them off with my hands behind my back?’

  Sahlin smiled. ‘Bucko, do I look like a woman who gives a shit?’

  Jones had picked up James’ pack. ‘He’s better armed than us,’ Jones noted, as she clipped grenades from James’ pack to her belt. ‘You want any of this, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Pass me a paint grenade,’ Sahlin said, smiling nastily as she dangled the grenade in front of James’ eyes before pulling out the pin with her teeth. ‘You’re a real nasty piece of work, bucko. Putting that drug in the water supply. Some very good friends of mine are in a bad way.’

  With that, Sahlin wedged the grenade down the back of James’ T-shirt before snatching her pack off the floor.

  ‘Nighty night, Bucko,’ Sahlin smiled, flicking off the light switch and slamming the metal door of the hut. ‘Have a blast.’

  ‘Bitch,’ James shouted, as he jumped frantically to his feet in pitch darkness.

  His trousers were around his ankles, his hands were cuffed behind his back and no matter how much he wriggled the grenade wouldn’t budge.
It would go off in under ten seconds.

  32. ATTACK

  Sending a posse of two hundred insurgents to the militar y compound’s well defended front gates might seem suicidal, but Kazakov had already sent two pairs of SAS men into the base to soften things up.

  As Kazakov’s Hummer approached, the first team cut the power lines from the main generator, plunging the entire US base into darkness. Simultaneously, the second team triggered a sequence of jerry-rigged paint grenades taking out the three able-bodied guards on the gate.

  Kazakov’s Hummer charged through, smashing the gates apart before cruising on towards the front doors of the command and control building. The following pack of insurgents continued to chant USA, USA as they poured into the camp.

  Half were untrained insurgents who’d only been given guns within the last few hours. The remainder comprised crack teams led by SAS officers and each was tasked with securing a strategic location within the base, such as the communications centre, or the hospital.

  Bruce, Jake, Rat and Gabrielle moved with a small team of insurgents led by the Welsh SAS officer they’d chatted to back at the apartment earlier that afternoon. Their target was the main weapons-storage locker, which was expected to be one of the toughest buildings on the base to secure. But a different picture emerged as the group raced through the darkness over the wooden boards between the accommodation tents.

  Men could be heard groaning desperately in their beds. Others stooped in the canvas doorways looking like sweaty ghosts. None of them cared about the base being under attack and a nauseating acidic stench hung in the air.

  The base’s sewers had been unable to cope with more than six hundred cases of diarrhoea. Toilets had backed up and men had resorted to using everything from buckets to hastily dug holes in the sand and even their own helmets. Once used the articles were thrown outside.

  ‘I’m gonna spew,’ Gabrielle complained, zipping her combat jacket and burying her nose under the fabric.

  ‘This is beyond nasty,’ Rat said, fighting back the urge to gag.

  At the rear of their group a college girl who’d never shot a gun until the previous day grabbed hold of a tent pole and retched into the sand.

  ‘Keep moving,’ the Welshman said determinedly. ‘It’s in your heads, black it out.’

  Beyond the accommodation tents the base was desolate and the air mercifully clear. Weapons storage would normally be the most secure area on a military base, but all they found was a single private sitting by the front door. He looked so pitiful that nobody even had the heart to shoot him.

  *

  The grenade wouldn’t kill James, but the paint inside was compressed at high pressure and triggered by an explosive chemical reaction that would scorch his back.

  James jumped in the air, grabbed handfuls of his T-shirt and madly wriggled his shoulders to free the grenade. With less than five seconds left the grenade’s handle finally unsnagged from the collar of his shirt and it dropped to the ground, but instead of hitting the concrete floor with a thunk, it landed softly in the seat of the trousers gathered around his feet.

  ‘Shitting shit!’ James panicked.

  He now had horrible visions of the paint exploding upwards and plastic casing shooting up and whacking him in the nuts. He stepped on the heel of one trainer and banged his knee on the dining table as he freed one foot. Once the foot was clear he put his sock down on the floor and kicked hard with his other leg, which still had his trousers and shorts bundled up around them.

  This flung the grenade up high. There was a white flash as it exploded in midair two metres across the cabin. The grenade contained a highly compressed liquid that expanded into several litres of pink foam the instant it hit the atmosphere.

  Doors and windows rattled with the force of the blast and James crashed into the wall as the warm, hissing foam hit him at more than fifty miles an hour. It trickled down his legs, out of his hair into his eyes as he tripped over a chair leg and felt himself tumbling through the blackness towards the floor.

  His temple grazed the wall, but it wasn’t serious and he stayed down for a couple of seconds, catching his breath as the foam hissed.

  James was less seriously hurt than he would have been if the grenade had exploded next to his skin, but he still faced the reality of being half naked in the dark with his hands cuffed behind his back. He stood cautiously and realised that he needed the light on if he was to have any hope of finding the handcuff key.

  With only a vague idea of the furniture layout, James felt his way towards the door. He’d come in face first and been slammed down on the table, so he’d not seen the light switch. But he knew roughly where it was because Sahlin had turned the light off an instant before she’d headed outside.

  He felt around with his back to the wall, but you can’t raise your hands very high when they’re cuffed behind your back so he ended up turning to face the wall and eventually felt out the light switch and turned it on using the squishy tip of his nose.

  The pink dye had saturated the room, including the surface of a bare bulb mounted on the ceiling. James got his trousers up before hobbling through the pinkish-hued light and sitting on a dining chair.

  He shuffled the handcuffs under his bum, straining painfully at the wrists as he squeezed his butt cheeks together and wriggled until the cuffs were around the back of his thighs. Once this was done he fed his legs through and brought his hands around to the front.

  Now he just needed to find the key under the pools of foam so that he could get the cuffs off.

  *

  The US forces put every able-bodied man behind the defence of the command building. General Shirley and several of his most senior staff had dosed themselves up with scant supplies of anti-diarrhoea medicine and stationed half a dozen healthy guards in well defended positions around the building’s perimeter.

  The insurgent mob tried getting close, but more than a dozen were expertly picked off by soldiers barricaded behind sandbags. Kazakov’s Hummer took a hit from a well-aimed paint grenade, but the man himself dived out in the nick of time.

  Kazakov ducked behind the paint-spattered vehicle, surveying the building with binoculars while seven SAS men stood around waiting for his orders. These were some of the most able soldiers in the British Army yet they doted on Kazakov like pilgrims awaiting orders from their guru.

  ‘We aim everything at one spot,’ Kazakov decided. ‘Lots of smoke, lots of paint grenades. Find planks of wood, bed sheets, anything that will shield the paint.’

  ‘Maybe we could wait it out?’ an SAS man suggested. ‘No water, no electricity. They can’t do anything.’

  ‘No,’ Kazakov said firmly. ‘This is our time. Most of the poisoned water will have drained through the pipes when the diarrhoea broke out and the toilets were repeatedly flushed. As soon as the soldiers get clear fluid into their systems they’ll start feeling better. The balance of power could swing back in their favour in less than an hour.’

  It took a few minutes for everyone to prepare for the assault. A dozen smoke grenades were already starting to fume when two of the biggest SAS men approached Lauren and Kevin.

  ‘Kazakov just had a bright idea,’ one of them said. ‘You two are riding piggyback.’

  ‘You what?’ Lauren asked.

  ‘It’s a single storey, we’ll rush up to the side and when we get close we fling you two up on the roof. There’s bound to be a skylight or a service hatch which you can climb through and cause some mischief.’

  Lauren was knackered and would have settled for an early night, but Kevin was keen to prove his worth after being left out of the raid on the aerodrome.

  The two soldiers gave it a few seconds for the smoke to build up before crouching down to let the kids sit on their shoulders. Kevin was no problem, but Lauren was a pretty chunky thirteen-year-old, especially with a rifle and a heavy equipment pack.

  ‘You’re a lump,’ her ride groaned, as he lifted her into the air.

  The insur
gents came under heavy sniper fire as more than a hundred bodies rushed the command centre. The tactics of fighting with paint were different to killing with real bullets: mattresses and wood worked as shields, but the snipers aimed at the ground or aimed shots at walls knowing that there was no distinction between a direct hit and a ricochet of chalk dust.

  Even in this final battle there was little sign of cheating, probably because the soldiers would be reprimanded and the civilians would lose all their pay if they were caught out.

  It had been a few years since anyone had carried Kevin on their back and he couldn’t help laughing as he was borne piggyback through the chaos. Shots cut holes through the curling smoke, but the SAS man reached the side of the command centre without being hit. Kevin grabbed the guttering before standing up on the man’s shoulders and pulling himself up on to the roof.

  ‘Where’s Lauren?’ he shouted.

  The soldier looked around, but there was no sign either of Lauren or the soldier who’d been carrying her.

  ‘Looks like you’re on your own, kid.’

  The smoke made it hard to see more than a couple of metres and the flat plastic roof flexed ominously under Kevin’s trainers. The building was rectangular, fifteen metres wide and thirty long. It had no windows along the sides, so the only light entered through skylights which also opened up for ventilation. Most of these were partially covered with sand and Kevin was forced to crawl over the rooftop, sweeping away the sand with his elbow before peeking down inside. The main power grid was out, but he could see emergency lighting and computer screens running off backup power inside.

  Fighting spread to all sides as the insurgents closed in and the odd stray shot skimmed the rooftop as Kevin crawled cautiously. Ten metres in from the gutters, he encountered a raised aluminium dome with a ring of angled skylights around the edge.

  He peered down into a large room filled with torchlight. There was a giant map of Fort Reagan on the table and desks for several dozen men, but there were only three men present. Kevin recognised General Shirley. He looked stressed, with an elbow resting on the map table and a phone in his hand.