After fourteen years of successfully stealing American weapons, Jane had put distance between herself and the day-to-day operation of her organisation. Nobody knew who her deputies were, what country she lived in, if she’d married again or had children. Jane had made no contact with her parents since leaving home sixteen years earlier and the nearest thing to an up-to-date picture was the photograph found in the uncollected personal effects of the late Kurt Oxford. It had been taken in the Las Vegas wedding chapel in 1969 and to this day it remains the most recent photograph of Jane Oxford on FBI records. After numerous stings, surveillance operations, attempts at infiltration and twenty million hours of police work, Jane Oxford is still at large. The FBI task force chasing after Jane call her The Ghost.
CURRENT STATUS OF JANE OXFORD’S ORGANISATION
The world is now awash with cheap, illegal weapons produced in former communist countries. Consequently, it is impossible to turn a profit stealing everyday weapons from the American military. Nowadays, it is America’s high-tech weapons that are of interest to black-market weapons dealers.
Since 1998, it is believed Jane Oxford has orchestrated more than twenty carefully planned thefts of high-tech equipment from the US military. Stolen items have included night-vision sights for sniper rifles, unmanned miniature surveillance aircraft, radar-jamming equipment, plasma-injecting anti-tank shells and surfaceto-air missiles. These relatively compact loads are easily smuggled across the US/Mexican border and each one is worth millions of dollars to the right customer.
The latest and most serious act was the theft of 35 PGSLM Buddy missiles, which were crossing the Nevada desert en-route to a British military cargo aircraft. After this theft, Jane Oxford was promoted to second place on the FBI’s list of most wanted criminals.
AN UNEXPECTED BREAKTHROUGH
In May 2004 a troubled fourteen-year-old boy named Curtis Key escaped the night curfew at an Arizona military boarding school and ploughed through a set of locked gates in his commandant’s car. He parked up at a nearby liquor store, picked up a bottle of Coke and asked the clerk for vodka from behind the counter. When the clerk asked for proof of age, Curtis Key produced a handgun and shot the clerk through the heart. He calmly emptied half the bottle of Coke on to the floor, topped up the bottle with vodka and took a long drink. CCTV cameras inside the store filmed the entire event.
On the way out, Curtis spotted a man getting out of a Jaguar. After shooting the driver and his girlfriend dead, Curtis took the Jaguar and drove more than twenty miles at high speed, slugging the mixture of vodka and Coke the whole time. When he heard the sirens of three chasing police cars, Curtis – by now paralytically drunk – pulled up at the roadside. He picked his gun off the passenger seat, pushed the muzzle against his head and pulled the trigger. The bullet jammed in the chamber.
Under Arizona state law, anyone aged fourteen or over, charged with a serious offence such as murder, can be tried and sentenced to the same prison term as an adult. In October 2004, Curtis Key was deemed mentally fit and given life without parole. This sentence means Curtis will spend the rest of his life in prison. He is currently one of the 270 offenders serving time in the specially built young offenders unit at Arizona Maximum Security Prison, known by its staff and inmates as Arizona Max.
Bizarrely, Curtis’ parents did not come forward after his arrest. The home address registered at the military school turned out not to exist and Curtis’ school fees had been paid from an untraceable bank account in the Seychelles. Curtis claimed that he had lost his memory and remembered nothing about his mother and father.
Arizona police suspected Curtis was protecting a parent or parents who were wanted criminals and sent his DNA profile to the FBI. The profile showed there was a 99% chance that Curtis was a descendant of General Marcus Hammond, who had agreed to give a DNA sample to the FBI team trying to locate his daughter.
There was only one possible explanation: Curtis Key was the son of Jane Oxford.
WHAT USE IS CURTIS OXFORD?
The FBI were delighted. The unearthing of Curtis Key was the biggest breakthrough in the twenty-two-year hunt for Jane Oxford. The FBI didn’t let on that they’d uncovered Curtis’ true lineage and mounted close surveillance on him. They sent an officer into Arizona Max to work as a guard on Curtis’ young offender unit and carefully monitored all his communications, both with other prisoners and with the outside world in the form of letters and telephone calls.
Jane Oxford was clearly working behind the scenes. Her connections within the biker community put out word inside Arizona Max that Curtis was untouchable. Anyone trying to bully, extort money, or otherwise harm Curtis could expect both themselves and their families on the outside to face savage retribution. Two prison officers on Curtis’ unit also reported to their superiors that they had been approached by a mysterious biker, offering them $1,500 a month if they agreed to look out for Curtis and occasionally smuggle items into his cell.
While Jane Oxford was doing all she could to look after her son, the FBI’s hopes that she would stick her neck out and try to visit Curtis were never realised. Apart from his lawyer, the only people on Curtis Key’s list of approved telephone contacts and visitors were two men from Las Vegas who claimed to be Curtis’ uncles. Covert DNA tests carried out on the men showed that they were not blood relatives of Curtis. Despite this, the men were put on the approved contacts list and the conversations that took place during their visits were bugged.
Curtis seemed to know his visitors well and they clearly had contacts with his mother. The men are still under FBI surveillance. Unfortunately, this surveillance has yet to yield any useful information on the activities or whereabouts of Jane Oxford.
As Curtis’ first months in prison passed by, the FBI became convinced that their big breakthrough had turned into a damp squib. To minimise the already slight chance that anyone would dare to harm Curtis, his visitors informed the prison authorities that his real name was Curtis Oxford, and told Curtis to reveal his true identity to fellow inmates. Once this secret was out, the FBI realised that the chances of Jane ever visiting her son had shrunk to zero.
ESCAPE & INFILTRATE
If Jane Oxford wasn’t planning to visit her son in prison, the next best thing would be if Curtis got out and someone could follow him back to his mother. The FBI studied a number of options for getting Curtis out of prison. They looked for legal loopholes that would get Curtis off the hook and considered a scheme where the Arizona police miraculously discovered new evidence that would make Curtis look innocent.
The problem was, clear video footage showed Curtis shooting the clerk in the off-licence; he had pleaded guilty in court and the feelings of the families of his three victims also had to be taken into consideration. Besides, Jane Oxford has spent the last thirty years sniffing out FBI stings. If her son was miraculously released from prison, she would undoubtedly smell a giant rat.
The FBI realised that Jane would be less suspicious if her son escaped from prison. They devised an elaborate plan that they called ‘Escape and Infiltrate’. It involved sending undercover agents into Arizona Max as prisoners. The agents would win Curtis’ trust and then announce that they had found an escape route. They would offer Curtis a chance of escape; in return, they would ask Curtis to get Jane Oxford to protect them and set them up with false identities in another country.
Jane Oxford might be suspicious, but the FBI reckoned that if every detail of Curtis’ escape was made to look absolutely real, including the faked murder of a prison guard and a full police alert to recapture the escapees, she might just buy it.
If the agents managed to pull off their escape and hold Jane and Curtis up to their end of the bargain, they would gain unprecedented access to Jane Oxford’s organisation and perhaps even make contact with Oxford herself.
The FBI agreed that it was a risky plan. They rated the chances of success at less than one half, and the undercover agents would be at serious risk of death or injury at the ha
nds of other law enforcement agencies that would be out trying to recapture them. But the biggest stumbling block was that under Arizona law, juveniles may be tried as adults and held inside adult prisons, but they cannot be held ‘within sight or sound’ of adult prisoners. If the FBI want to get undercover agents to befriend Curtis Oxford, they will have to wait until he turns eighteen and is moved into the adult population of Arizona Max. This is not due to happen until 2009.
THE ROLE OF BRITISH INTELLIGENCE & CHERUB
Although Jane Oxford was known to British intelligence, she had never stolen British military equipment and was regarded as an American problem until the theft of the thirty-five Buddy missiles in March 2005. The British began an investigation, to see if anyone on their side of the Atlantic had leaked details about the movement of the Royal Air Force cargo aircraft sent across the Atlantic to collect the missiles. They also sent a senior British intelligence officer to America to work alongside the FBI team investigating the theft.
The MI5 officer sent a top-secret briefing back to Britain. It included details of the FBI’s long-term plan to send undercover agents into Arizona Max and escape with Curtis Oxford. When the chairman of CHERUB read this briefing, he realised that the FBI’s ambitious ‘Escape and Infiltrate’ plan could be carried out immediately if underage CHERUB agents were sent into the juvenile unit at Arizona Max. An escape carried out by people too young to be employed by law enforcement agencies would also make it easier to convince Jane Oxford that the escape is genuine.
John Jones has been selected as Mission Controller and has begun working out exact details of a plan that will send two CHERUB agents into Arizona Max, with a third CHERUB agent aiding the escape on the outside.
NOTE: THE CHERUB ETHICS COMMITTEE PASSED THIS MISSION BRIEFING, ON CONDITION THAT ALL AGENTS UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING:
This mission has been classified HIGH RISK. All agents are reminded of their right to refuse to undertake this mission and to withdraw from it at any time. The mission will involve incarceration in a dangerous prison environment and pursuit by armed prison guards and police. For security reasons, only a tiny number of senior law enforcement officials will be aware that CHERUB and the FBI have set up the escape.
While every possible step will be taken to ensure your safety, the agents deployed on this mission are urged to consider the dangers carefully before accepting their role.
*
‘Wow,’ James said, when he put the briefing down on John Jones’ desk. ‘That whole breaking-out-of-prison deal sounds berserk.’
‘I’m not asking for an instant decision,’ John said. ‘But this is our only half-decent shot at getting hold of Jane Oxford and the Buddy missiles. How about you think it through and come and see me in the morning?’
James shook his head. ‘I’m not scared,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll do it.’
John smiled. ‘I’d be much happier if you slept on it before making a final decision. I’ll even allow you to discuss it with Meryl Spencer if you want.’
‘Whatever,’ James said dismissively. ‘I take it me and Dave are the two people going into Arizona Max?’
John nodded. ‘You’re only a few months younger than Curtis Oxford and roughly the same physical size. You’re a perfect candidate to make friends with him. For the purposes of the mission, Dave will be your older brother. We need a big guy like him to protect you on the inside and to dress up as a guard during the escape. He’s also got lots of high-speed driving experience.’
‘So who’s the third person on the mission?’ James asked. ‘The one who’s going to help our escape from outside the prison.’
‘We want someone who would pass as a sibling or cousin to you and Dave,’ John explained. ‘But we’re having a tricky time finding the right person.’
‘What about my sister, Lauren?’ James asked. ‘Today’s her last day of basic training. If she gets through she’d be eligible to come.’
John smiled. ‘Lauren’s a good kid, James. But I’m really looking for someone more experienced.’
8. WARMER
James caught a glimpse as the mini-bus driven by Mr Large passed the window of his classroom. He leapt noisily out of his chair, making his maths teacher turn away from the whiteboard in mid-sentence.
‘They’re back from training,’ James explained excitedly, grabbing the olive-coloured combat coat off the back of his chair. ‘Can I go meet my sister?’
Luckily, maths was James’ best subject and he was on good terms with Mrs Brennan. She handed James his homework assignment, which he stuffed inside his backpack as he jogged down the corridor between the classrooms and out through a set of double doors into the cold.
James stopped for a moment to zip up his coat and hook his backpack over both shoulders so it didn’t slide off as he ran. As James did this, Bethany’s eight-year-old brother burst out of the doors behind him. Jake was a cute kid, with big brown eyes and spiky hair.
‘You going over to meet them as they leave the training compound?’ Jake asked.
‘Course,’ James nodded.
‘I hope they passed training,’ Jake said.
‘Didn’t Bethany call you or anything?’ James asked, surprised. ‘I was out at a mission briefing, but there was a voicemail on my mobile when I got back. Lauren was in the terminal at Toronto airport, waiting for a flight to London. She said she’d hurt her foot, but everyone had made it through.’
‘Safe,’ Jake grinned. ‘I’ll race you.’
Jake belted off across the grass with his backpack rattling up and down. James jogged after him at a steady pace. There was no reason to run flat out; Mr Large would make the trainees pack up all their stuff and tidy the training compound before he let them go.
When Jake got a hundred metres ahead, he stopped running and turned back towards James with a wounded look. ‘Are you racing or not?’ he shouted.
James was looking forward to seeing his sister and Jake’s enthusiasm was contagious. ‘I’m just giving you a start,’ he jeered, as he broke into a full sprint. ‘You’ll need it.’
Jake squealed and started running again. It took James a couple of hundred metres to close the gap, by which time the two boys were running across a couple of muddy football pitches. The wire fence around the training compound was visible in the distance.
Instead of sprinting past, James decided it would be funny if he ran up behind Jake and gave him a friendly shove in the back. Jake stumbled forwards and ploughed into the soft ground.
‘Enjoy the mud, El-Squirto,’ James hooted.
He started to think he’d overdone it when Jake made no attempt to get back up. He stopped running and walked back towards the little ball rolled up on the grass.
James leaned over nervously. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I think you broke my arm,’ Jake whimpered.
James felt a queasy sensation rise up from his guts. There’d be no easy way to talk himself out of hurting an eight-year-old, even though it was an accident. Jake might end up in hospital, he’d be in trouble and it would ruin Lauren and Bethany’s return from training.
‘I’m sorry,’ James said, gently rubbing Jake’s shoulder. ‘Can you move your arm at all? Do you really think it’s broken?’
Jake’s expression changed to a grin as his muddy hand tightened around James’ wrist. The eight-year-old yanked James’ arm forward, while simultaneously hooking his foot around James’ ankle and sweeping his boot from under him.
James overbalanced, ending up sprawled out on the soggy ground alongside Jake. The younger boy quickly scooped up a clod of mud, splatted it against James’ cheek and then combed his mucky fingers upwards through James’ blond hair.
While James lay on the floor, stunned by the icy brown water trickling down his neck, Jake exuberantly sprang to his feet.
‘I’m in so much pain,’ Jake sneered. ‘Suck-ahhh.’
Jake jogged the last stretch towards the gates of the training compound, flailing his arms in the air and bowing to a
n imaginary crowd. James staggered to his feet and did the best he could to wipe the water out of his ear with a crinkled-up tissue.
‘Cheating little git,’ James shouted bitterly, as it occurred to him that he should have known better: every kid at CHERUB did Karate and judo training and even little guys like Jake knew some smart moves.
James saw the funny side once the shock wore off. When he got up to the gate of the training compound, joining siblings and close friends of the other trainees, he pulled out the chocolate bar he’d been saving for morning break and gave Jake two squares to make it clear there were no hard feelings.
‘I’ll have to get you back for that,’ James said.
‘Can try if you like,’ Jake shrugged confidently, as he crammed the rectangle of chocolate into his mouth with his grubby fingers.
James got excited as soon as he saw the trainees in their grey T-shirts. The first four jogged down the concrete path from the compound, but Lauren was limping slightly. She had her bandaged foot in an unlaced trainer and Bethany loyally at her side.
James didn’t like Bethany much. He was happy that Lauren had found a close friend, but when the two girls were together they drove him mad with their girlie talk and half-hour giggling fits over the lamest jokes.
Jake got scooped into his big sister’s arms, as James wrapped Lauren in a tight hug and kissed her cheek. Lauren looked taller and her shoulders seemed more muscular than before. James felt a twinge of sadness at the passing of the chubby-faced little sister he’d had when their mum died eighteen months earlier.
‘You look so grown up,’ James sniffled happily. ‘Congratulations … I’m so proud of you.’
Maximum Security Page 6