CHERUB: Maximum Security

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘Crap,’ Lauren scowled. ‘The phone was in the pocket. I should have stuffed it down the sofa cushion, or something.’

  James looked around the floor, in case it had dropped out of the pocket. ‘If it’s gone it’s gone,’ James said. ‘You can act innocent and ask Margaret for it back, but I get the impression that she’s a lot more than Etienne’s secretary. She knows it might be used to track us and I bet she won’t let you have it.’

  *

  John Jones and Marvin Teller spent the afternoon sitting around in the FBI station at Los Angeles airport. Theo Monroe and Scott Warren – now going by his real name of Warren Reise and sporting cropped hair – had just arrived on a scheduled flight from Phoenix.

  John stood up and shook Warren’s hand, as he walked into the drab office. ‘Back from the dead, my friend. Your nose looks a mess. Is it broken?’

  Warren nodded. ‘James might only be thirteen, but that’s one of the hardest whacks I ever took.’

  ‘That’s how we train ’em,’ John grinned. ‘When I went to my job interview at CHERUB, I was shown the martial arts training area. You wouldn’t believe these eight-and nine-year-olds with their black belts, pulling off the most frightening moves … I tell you, I wouldn’t want to tangle with any of them.’

  Marvin nodded. ‘It certainly produces impressive results. When I was with Lauren the other day, I had to keep reminding myself that I was talking to a ten-year-old girl.’

  ‘Kids’ brains are like sponges,’ John explained. ‘They’re capable of way more than most adults give them credit for. When I worked for MI5, we sent agents on six-month courses to learn foreign languages. CHERUB can train a bright eleven-year-old to the same standard in two … Did you check in on Dave before you left Arizona?’

  Theo nodded, as he hung his jacket over a hook on the wall. ‘I purchased books for Dave to read in the hospital. He is fine physically, but still rather depressed about not being involved in the escape. Arizona State Police came in to interview him early this morning. He set them off on a few false lines of inquiry, as we discussed.’

  ‘And that doctor won’t declare Dave fit to return to Arizona Max?’ John asked.

  ‘Under any circumstances,’ Theo nodded. ‘The doctor knows the score and the hospital doesn’t much care as long as the bed is being paid for.’

  ‘I’d like to send Dave back to Britain,’ John said. ‘But Oxford has proved so good at sniffing out undercover operations over the years, we can’t pull him out of the Arizona prison system in case she finds out and smells a rat.’

  ‘How are the other two getting along?’ Warren asked.

  ‘They spent the afternoon at the headquarters of Etienne Defence Consultancy,’ Marvin explained. ‘We had two local agents outside the building all afternoon. The kids were picked up half an hour ago in a limousine. The limo company uses uncoded radio and according to their signals, the car is taking them to Orange County airport as we speak.’

  ‘Is Etienne on the radar?’ Theo asked.

  ‘No,’ Marvin said. ‘The FBI have no file on either Jean Etienne, or his company. There are hundreds of small, high-tech companies like EDC in Pasadena: the California Institute of Technology acts as a magnet for them. Etienne specialises in developing military hardware. They’ve done consultancy work for most of the big weapons manufacturers. Cutting edge stuff: unmanned aircraft, reactive body armour, electromagnetic pulse weapons.’

  ‘So is it a front for Jane Oxford?’

  ‘Too early to be sure, Theo. We can’t start any kind of investigation into Etienne right now without creating suspicion and endangering James and Lauren. But we will eventually and if I were a betting man, I’d have my dollars on Oxford and Etienne being in cahoots.’

  Theo smiled. ‘This is the best lead we’ve had since I joined this team three years ago.’

  ‘EDC is a nice juicy fish,’ Marvin nodded. ‘But that company won’t be going anywhere. Right now, we’ve got to stay focused on our little cherubs out in the field, trying to reel in the whale herself.’

  Warren picked up a ringing phone and took a short call.

  ‘That was FBI Orange County,’ he explained. ‘She says there are seventeen flights out of Orange this evening. Three are aircraft for hire, which are the ones I think we need to be looking at. One has filed a flight plan for Chicago, one for Philadelphia and one for Twin Elks, Idaho.’

  ‘What about regular passenger flights?’ John asked.

  Warren shook his head. ‘There’s a seven o’clock curfew on large jets out of Orange. Check-in closed on the final flight fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘Has Lauren called in on her mobile?’ Theo asked. ‘I diverted the Phoenix number through to here.’

  John shook his head. ‘The last call we got was an adult female, probably pressing the last number redial to see what she got.’

  ‘Was she suspicious?’ Theo asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. I pretended I was Lauren’s uncle. When the kids left, the cop said Lauren was wearing a white dress. I’ve lived with her for the last couple of weeks and it’s not her style.’

  ‘The change of clothes makes sense,’ Theo nodded. ‘It looks like they’re being looked after by someone who knows how to play the game.’

  ‘OK,’ Marvin said, clapping his hands together. ‘We can’t afford to lose these kids. I’m gonna call downstairs and have an FBI jet fuelled up and put on standby. As soon as we know which airplane the kids are getting on, we’ll set off after them.’

  ‘Can we hold them up?’ John asked.

  Marvin nodded. ‘Sure, I’ll get air traffic control at Orange to delay their takeoff clearance, so we arrive before them.’

  *

  The flight to Idaho in the north-west of the United States took three and a half hours. The small turboprop aircraft had seen better days, with the logo of a previous owner clumsily over-painted and the six passenger seats ripped up. The foam inside crumbled to dust when you brushed against it. The three youngsters were alone, apart from the pilot’s cigarette smoke creeping through the top of the cockpit door.

  It was dark when they landed at Twin Elks aerodrome, a tiny facility used primarily by amateur pilots. James and Curtis ignored the freezing air and sprinted to the side of the runway to pee in the grass. Lauren looked around forlornly, until she spotted a grubby toilet block beside the control tower. Halfway through peeing, she heard a muffled ring from a telephone in the next stall.

  It rang three times before stopping. Lauren stood up and poked her head into the next stall, noticing that a flip-phone had been abandoned on the plastic cistern lid. She picked it up and looked at the display:

  1 MISSED CALL

  RING BACK?

  Lauren leaned outside to make sure nobody was around before hitting the redial key.

  ‘Hello?’ It was John Jones’ voice.

  ‘You got here quick,’ Lauren said.

  ‘Our jet was faster than your turboprop. The only trouble was, with so few flight movements out here in the wilderness, we thought it best to go to another airport. We had to hire a car and race over here.’

  ‘How did you know I’d come over to the toilet?’

  John laughed. ‘Three hours on a plane without facilities, it was a fair guess. I’m in the trees about thirty metres away from you. Now listen up, we’ve only got a minute. It’s too risky tracking you by cellphone. It would be suspicious after they confiscated the other one and I doubt you’ll get a reliable cellphone signal out here in the back of beyond anyway. I’ve taped a packet of short-range tracking devices under the cistern lid. They go on your body, like a sticking plaster. Put one on whenever you’re about to move and press down hard for about three seconds to activate it. It’ll send a tracking signal every thirty seconds until the battery runs out— Look out, someone’s heading towards you.’

  Lauren quickly bolted the stall door. A strange man’s voice boomed out.

  ‘Lauren honey, we’re waitin’ in the car. We need to get out
of here as fast as we can. The local sheriff likes to come and poke around if someone lands out here at this time of night.’

  ‘Oh, um … I’m doing number twos,’ Lauren said, turning red with embarrassment. ‘Just a minute.’

  She waited until she heard the man step back outside, then prised the lid off the toilet cistern. She peeled away a small plastic bag and tucked it into her jacket. After quickly washing her hands, Lauren stepped outside and was greeted by a bearded man dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt.

  ‘Name’s Vaughn Little,’ the man explained as they jogged towards a black Toyota four-wheel drive that already had James and Curtis sitting in the back.

  *

  It was an hour’s drive through dense forest, winding up hillsides, past huge trees silhouetted against the moonlight. James kept the window beside his head open and found the blast of cool air a thrill, after all the sweat-glazed hours inside Arizona Max.

  ‘You boys are back on CNN,’ Vaughn said, in a honeyed voice that gave the impression of a man about to break into a song about his lonesome cattle. ‘Seems your cellblock tilted off the edge when they heard you bunked out. Half a million dollars’ worth of damage. Took the riot squad six hours to get the inmates back under control.’

  ‘Hope they busted up some hacks,’ Curtis grinned.

  ‘Anybody injured?’ James asked.

  ‘A few got hurt bad,’ Vaughn said. ‘But nobody dead.’

  James could see how the news of the escape would have played on the minds of the other inmates and turned the already tense situation into a full-scale riot. He hoped that guys like Abe and Mark had come out OK. On the upside, he couldn’t help feeling the riot was another detail that would make the escape more believable to Jane Oxford.

  ‘Have you heard from my mom?’ Curtis asked.

  Vaughn nodded slowly. ‘You’re gonna be staying up in the mountains with us for a few weeks. She’s out of the country and she wants the heat to die down before meeting up with you.’

  ‘What did she say about James and Lauren?’

  ‘Says she’ll fix them up with a good family. Get false ID. Cross the border into Canada, maybe.’

  ‘Good,’ Curtis smiled. ‘You ever been to Canada, James?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ Curtis nodded. ‘Clean, safe, you’ll like it … Can I call Mom tonight?’

  Vaughn shook his head. ‘You know what she’s like. Won’t even say hello unless she has the call scrambled and bounced off five different satellites.’

  The car pulled on to a track and Vaughn sent Curtis out to open a metal gate. Two women emerged in a shaft of light on the doorstep of a large timber-framed house, as the car slipped around on a muddy path, heading towards them. One was Vaughn’s wife, Lisa; the other his fourteen-year-old daughter, Becky. When they piled out of the car, Lisa stepped barefoot on to the cold gravel and squeezed Curtis into a hug.

  ‘Good to see youuuuuu,’ Lisa said, as she pushed a handful of hair away from her face. ‘You remember Becky, don’t you? When we lived at the old place down the hill, you two used to act so cute together. I’ve got stacks of pictures of you in the albums.’

  ‘I remember,’ Curtis said vaguely, sounding like he wished he didn’t.

  James stepped up to the house and glanced at the cute teenager standing on the doorstep in her socks. She wore jeans and a plaid shirt, like a clone of her parents.

  ‘Hey,’ Becky said sweetly. ‘You must be James.’

  Becky led James and Lauren to the kitchen, where something smelled good.

  ‘You want hot soup?’ Becky asked, reaching into the cupboard and pulling out a stack of bowls. ‘It’s homemade and we got coffee in the jug if you want a warm-up.’

  The smell of vegetable soup made James and Lauren realise they were hungry. They pulled out chairs and sat at the dining table.

  28. HOBBIES

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  Crime wasn’t supposed to pay, but Lisa and Vaughn Little seemed to have done well enough out of it. Vaughn had been a heavy-duty weapons smuggler in the 1970s. He’d served six years in a New Mexico prison. When his parole was up, he moved north to Idaho, bought a small ranch and spawned four daughters. Only Becky, the youngest, still lived at home.

  Lisa bred Arabian horses and Vaughn earned money customising and restoring motorcycles, but these businesses were more like hobbies. The Little family’s comfortable lifestyle was mostly funded by the well-invested proceeds of thirty-year-old weapons deals.

  Everyone fell into a daily routine. Lauren hung out with Lisa and learned to ride and groom the horses. She’d never shown any interest in riding before, but took a shine to the animals and a bigger one to Lisa.

  Most days, Curtis disappeared off on long walks into the woods with a sketchbook. Sometimes he’d come back with a drawing of a leaf or rusted-up car, others a whole landscape sketched in impossibly tiny pencil strokes. He was more than a kid who was good at drawing; it could easily have passed as the work of a professional artist. When it rained too hard to go out, Curtis lay on a rug in front of the Discovery Channel and sulked.

  James hung out with Vaughn each day and it was like the two of them had been missing each other their whole lives. Vaughn had always wanted a son and James would have settled for a dad just like him. Vaughn had a million stories and a way of telling them that always made James smile. Everything from punching out his high school principal, his wild exploits as a member of the Brigands bike gang, shady weapons deals and stories from his time in prison.

  Vaughn took James out on little jobs around the ranch, mending broken fences and old guttering. They’d usually spend a couple of hours in the afternoon working on the motorbikes and Vaughn was patient, explaining to James the way a bike worked and how the different parts fitted together.

  Usually when adults ask a kid to help, the kid ends up standing around holding a spanner like a gherkin for three hours, but Vaughn kept James busy and actually trusted him to do stuff. He even let James blast around the muddy ranch tracks on a little Kawasaki dirt bike, though his pleas to have a go on one of the Harley Davidsons got short shrift.

  *

  James and Lauren slept in the guest room, which had a double bed. They acted as if sharing a bed was some kind of hellish punishment, while both secretly quite liking it. Lauren had been asleep for an hour and had managed to wind most of the king-sized duvet around herself.

  James undressed quietly and brushed his teeth in the en-suite bathroom, then pulled the cover back and tried to slip under without waking his sister. He enjoyed the first few moments of warmth, looking at Lauren’s long hair spread out over the pillow and listening to her breathe.

  Before his mum died, James had never given a moment’s thought to how much he loved his little sister. But ever since, he had tortured himself with the idea that something unexpected could happen to her as well. Lauren could get run over, or get cancer, or get hurt on a mission, or … A couple of times James made himself cry just thinking about it, although he’d never admitted that to anyone, even the counsellor he occasionally saw on campus.

  James closed his eyes and started thinking about a cool Japanese bike he’d read about in one of Vaughn’s magazines. All the time he’d spent hanging around the workshop listening to Vaughn’s biker stories had convinced James that he wanted his own motorcycle more than anything in the world.

  James wasn’t sure how old you had to be to ride a motorbike in Britain, but if it was seventeen like a car, he realised he’d be able to get one in three and a half years. He could use some of the money his mum left him when she died, maybe get some kind of job to pay for insurance and petrol …

  James was doing a hundred miles an hour down the motorway, with a fit girl hugging his waist, when Lauren jabbed him in the ribs.

  ‘You awake?’ she asked acidly.

  ‘Just about,’ James said, opening his eyes and letting out a big yawn.

  ‘How’s Becky?’ Lauren asked.

 
‘Fine. Why?’

  ‘I put my head around her bedroom door to say goodnight.’

  ‘Oh,’ James said anxiously. ‘We just started talking and one thing led to another … you know. Besides, there’s no law against snogging. I’m nearly fourteen, I know guys my age who get up to a lot worse.’

  ‘But what’s Kerry gonna say when she finds out you cheated on her?’

  ‘She’s ten thousand miles away,’ James said.

  ‘Was that the first time you snogged her?’

  ‘Yes,’ James lied, knowing that eighth or ninth was probably nearer to the truth. ‘And one snog is hardly cheating.’

  ‘I doubt Kerry would see it that way,’ Lauren snapped. ‘Swear you’ll break it off with Becky and I won’t say anything, but I’m not gonna sit back and let you cheat on Kerry. She’s my friend too.’

  ‘OK, I swear,’ James said, trying to sound extra sincere.

  ‘On our mum’s grave,’ Lauren added.

  ‘On our … No,’ James gasped. ‘Can’t you just stay out of this? You’re ten. You’re too young to understand.’

  ‘I might not be into boys yet, but I still know Kerry would be really upset.’

  ‘Why don’t you keep your voice down and your snout out of my business?’

  Lauren turned away and buried her face in the duvet. ‘You’re a total pig, James. Goodnight.’

  29. OINK

  James’ conscience kept him awake half the night and Lauren’s evil eye across the breakfast table made him feel worse. Lisa asked if something was up, but they both said it was nothing.

  James knew cheating on Kerry was shitty, but he hadn’t seen her for months and he fancied Becky like mad. He couldn’t see what harm a little fling would do, but Lauren finding out made everything more complicated.

  James rushed up to Becky’s room when she got home from school.