The Squad

by Tom Palmer

  What is Jim doing here? Now? On this randomly distant shoreline in the snow. How is he involved?

  Kester and Lily’s silence drew a question from Jim. ‘You want to know why I’m here?’ he asked.

  But, before Kester could answer, one of Jim’s men returned from their reconnaissance.

  ‘The Americans headed back to the town,’ he said in Russian. Lily repeated it in English for Kester.

  ‘Good,’ Jim said, looking at Lily. ‘They think you’re dead. They think that you fell in the water after coming down the hill and that they put ten rounds into each of you. They’ve underestimated the two of you.’

  ‘And are we dead?’ Kester said, speaking at last, ignoring the compliment.

  Jim put his hand on Kester’s shoulder. But Kester shrugged it off. Jim frowned. ‘You think we’re here to kill you?’

  ‘I don’t know what to expect,’ Kester replied. ‘You’ve only ever lied to us.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Jim said.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I’ve come to help you.’

  ‘Help us. That’s a joke.’

  ‘Lily, I just saved your lives.’

  ‘You could save my life a thousand times before I say thank you, after what you did to Lesh. After all the lies.’

  ‘Lily? Can I ask you something?’

  ‘If you have to,’ Lily said, staring out across the fjord, a dark snow cloud scudding in, the water choppier now.

  ‘Are you comfortable lying to Johnny, Rio and the others? Because, if I remember correctly, you lie to them all the time …’

  ‘We lie!’ Lily sputtered. ‘Yes, we lie. But we lie because we’re trying to do good.’ She stood up and was shouting now. ‘Don’t try and say we’re like you. We’re not. You’re bad. We’re good.’

  ‘Why are you good?’

  ‘Because we try to stop people doing bad things to British people and you try to do bad things to British people.’

  ‘Maybe I do,’ Jim said. ‘But I try to do good things for Russian people. Why is it that the British are always right and the Russians wrong?’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Lily growled back. ‘We simply try to stop things like twenty-two young men, some of them fathers, getting murdered. Remember? That’s what you tried to do.’

  ‘It’s more complex than that,’ Jim said, deflecting Lily’s reference to their last mission. ‘I’ll explain it to you one day.’

  ‘Explain it now. I challenge you.’

  ‘Russia is like my home now,’ Jim said. ‘The people. Their way of life. In the past there was something good about it, although everyone else thought it was a bad place …’

  ‘Forget it,’ Lily said, putting her hands up. ‘We have better things to do than sit around listening to more of your lies. We’re trying to stop …’ She silenced herself, remembering the mission they were on now.

  ‘… trying to stop what?’ Jim laughed. ‘A third world war? A warhead going off. The Russians getting blamed for it all when it’s the Americans who are behind it?’

  ‘Forget it,’ Lily said, realizing that Jim knew exactly what their mission was and that he had just confirmed that everything they’d worked out was true, meaning that he was at least one step ahead of the Squad. ‘We’re leaving. If, that is, it’s true you’re not going to kill us.’

  ‘Do you want a lift?’ Jim asked.

  ‘In that?’ Lily gestured towards the submarine.

  ‘Yes.’ Jim grinned.

  Kester stepped forward. ‘No, thank you,’ he said.

  ‘So how are you going to get back to Tromsø by the morning?’ Jim asked. ‘You have only one option. Come with us. In this.’

  Lily looked at the submarine tower shifting slowly in the waters, then at Kester.

  ‘Maybe we should,’ Kester said, changing his mind. ‘It’s not like we have a choice.’

  ‘What?’ Lily said. ‘Accept a lift with him. He almost got us killed the last time he lied to us. What’s to say he’s not going to take us out there and kill us?’

  ‘Lily. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be at the bottom of that fjord already.’

  Underwater

  Kester slept for most of the journey.

  Lily looked at him lying there. How could he sleep at a time like this? She was shattered too, but there was no way she could sleep at such a key point in a mission. And – added to that – they were travelling underwater at sixty kilometres an hour in a Russian submarine with a man who once left them to die.

  Lily grimaced. She knew that as spies they had to concentrate on what their goal was – stopping the attack on Tromsø – and not how they went about reaching it. But she wasn’t happy. She gazed round the room she was in. Or was it a cabin? It was small with white walls, a table in the middle and six chairs around the table. A sofa at the side. She could have been in a normal staffroom in a normal building like a school, not a submarine at all.

  Being in this underwater ship – which is really what it was – was even stranger than Lily could have imagined. The insides were packed with pipes and wires strapped to the ceiling. At one end of the submarine there was a small room with three men in it, all looking at screens, headphones on. The doorways along the length of the submarine were the most unusual thing: they were round and had rubber around their edges. Lily knew what this meant. If one part of the submarine became flooded, they could close one of these doors and it would act as a seal.

  The most striking feeling about the submarine, though, was the claustrophobia, the sense of being in an enclosed space with no way out. This was caused by the small rooms, the lack of space and the low ceilings. Not to mention the fact that they were submerged under several metres of water.

  Lily heard footsteps behind her, breaking her train of thought about the submarine.

  Jim.

  Lily glanced at him and back at Kester, who was still sleeping.

  ‘I need to tell you something about Frank Hawk,’ Jim said.

  ‘Forget it,’ Lily said.

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Why should I trust anything you say?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I’m sure you won’t,’ Jim said. ‘But I’ll tell you anyway.’ Lily shrugged, still looking away from Jim.

  Jim sat down at the table. ‘Spying isn’t black and white,’ he said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s complicated, that’s all. One minute someone can seem to have betrayed you and have caused your friend to be crippled. The next minute he can go out of his way to save your life and give you a piece in a jigsaw that can help you stop a major war.’

  Finally, Lily looked at Jim. ‘So, if you know what the piece in the jigsaw is, why don’t you save the world?’

  ‘Just listen, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I don’t know all the details about your mission.’ Jim paused. ‘And I don’t expect you to tell me them. But we do know something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We know that Hawk is planning something.’ Jim’s face clouded over, serious. ‘But we also know that he has a weakness.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘He wants the USA to win the football.’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘We’ve been listening to his conversations.’

  ‘His conversations with who?’

  ‘With his grandchildren. Just like you’ve been listening. And he’s been boasting to them about how the USA team is going to beat England. He wants the USA to win the football. He wants you to lose tomorrow. Only after that has happened is he going to do whatever it is you think he’s going to do.’

  After Lily had remained silent for a few seconds, she finally spoke. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That could be useful.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Jim smiled.

  Lily couldn’t think of anything to say after that, so she said nothing.

  Then Jim cleared his throat. ‘Even though I did what I did, Lily,’ he said, ‘I alw
ays thought the world of you.’

  Lily turned and stared straight into Jim’s face. ‘I thought the world of you too – up until you did what you did,’ she replied, feeling her eyes go red and hot. She swallowed and gritted her teeth. Jim nodded in response to what she’d said. And Lily could see that she had – at last – wounded him.

  But it didn’t make her feel any better.

  They stayed together in silence. Lily sitting. Jim standing. Until Jim walked down the corridor of the submarine without adding anything more.

  Lily sat at the table with her eyes closed as the submarine cut on through the water, speeding towards Tromsø.

  Thinking.

  Thinking for what seemed like hours.

  Thinking about Jim, about the Squad and about her mum and dad.

  What was she doing on this submarine, trusting someone who had so utterly betrayed them, heading to a city where a nuclear bomb might be about to go off? Why was it down to her and her friends to stop it?

  She thought of the mission in the desert where Rob had been killed.

  Why had that happened?

  She thought of finding Lesh at the foot of a tower after they’d stopped the England football team being attacked.

  Why had they been involved in that?

  She thought of looking over her shoulder on the lake that day, seeing her parents – all their parents – murdered.

  Then she had her answer. It always came back to that.

  She had lost her mum and dad.

  She had lost everything.

  Therefore, she had nothing.

  So she was going to make sure no other children had to suffer that. She and the Squad. In memory of their parents. Because doing something about that was better than just feeling sorry for yourself.

  Frank Hawk was back in Tromsø within two hours of leaving the mountain top. He’d called in a helicopter and made swift progress back to the scene of his planned crime.

  As he descended to Tromsø airport, he smiled to see a small fishing boat edging up the fjord.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said to his sidekick.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The warhead, you idiot. By morning I’ll have it armed and primed. Ready to go off at the push of a button. But, before we fly out of here, there’s the little matter of seeing the USA beat England at soccer. Should be easier now two of their players are at the bottom of that fjord.’

  FRIDAY

  Jigsaw Pieces

  Lily and Kester walked, crunching through the snow, towards the TUIL Arena’s main stand. It was dusk now. Quiet. A mist hanging on the white mountains. A skein of large black birds emerging then disappearing in the white.

  Once they’d joined the rest of the Squad, Julia led them, unspeaking, into a heated room.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot to talk about. We’ve got half an hour to cover everything. We need all the details. Ready?’ Everyone nodded.

  ‘Hatty. Tell the others about Georgia.’

  Hatty sighed before she started. ‘Georgia sussed us,’ she confessed. ‘And she … and she … well, she … she … helped us rule out Esenin. The Russian.’

  ‘How?’ Lily asked.

  Hatty told them the whole story. Finding Georgia with Esenin. Challenging her. Then, in the end, using her to quiz the Russian.

  ‘So Esenin has been definitely ruled out?’ Kester asked.

  ‘He has,’ Julia said. ‘There’s no evidence to suggest he knows anything about the warhead and the threat. Unless you have any more information?’

  ‘We’ve ruled him out too,’ Kester said. ‘It’s Hawk we need to worry about.’

  ‘Is it?’ Julia said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘We listened in to him,’ Lily said. ‘He was in a mountain hut, in a storm. For once, I don’t think he knew we were there. He was talking about a warhead. He plans to set it off today. After the game.’

  ‘Where it is?’ Julia asked, her voice deep and serious.

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘But you’re sure he’s planning this after the game?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lily said.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘Absolutely sure.’

  ‘How?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Jim told us.’

  ‘JIM?’ Hatty, Lesh and Adnan’s voices echoed round the room. Julia’s face was calm, but interested. So Lily explained about the rescue. The hiding. The conversations.

  ‘Hawk has some sort of device that he’ll put a code into and that will set off the bomb,’ she said. ‘But not until after the game. And that gives us our chance.’

  ‘So you’ve got a plan?’ Julia frowned.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Lily looked at Kester. It was his job to explain the plan.

  ‘Hawk will come to watch the game. He’ll leave afterwards, setting the bomb off once he’s clear. He has it on a timer. We need to separate Hawk and his assistant during the game. Then we might have a chance.’

  ‘How?’ Julia pressed.

  ‘We lose the game,’ Lily said.

  ‘Lose the game?’ Adnan asked, exasperated.

  ‘We lose the game,’ Lily repeated. ‘We find a way of getting Hawk involved in the celebrations. Then we take out his assistant.’

  ‘OK,’ Julia said. ‘It sounds like a plan. Now let’s have some detail.’

  Hatty saw Georgia in the hotel cafe an hour later. The other girl looked up at her uneasily from her drink and Hatty knew that she understood they had to talk.

  Five minutes later, they were standing on the edge of the fjord together.

  ‘We need another favour from you,’ Hatty explained.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what favour is that?’

  ‘The game against the USA.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘We need you to help us lose it.’

  The look on Georgia’s face was a picture. And Hatty couldn’t decide whether the other girl would go along with the plan or not.

  England v. USA

  The England team that took to the pitch for the tournament final was depleted. There was no Lily or Kester, who had, everyone thought, disappeared off the face of the earth, meaning a major reshuffle at the back.

  The small stadium was packed with 2,000 supporters. The place seemed even stranger now that it was full: this tiny field of football fans underneath steep wooded mountainside and bare rock, all covered in a magnificent blanket of snow. The only area that was not white was the pitch.

  In the executive boxes towards the back of the main stand, most of the politicians who were involved in the conference were dining, all in dresses and black suits with white shirts. Feeding themselves up before the final evening of the conference. They’d been invited to the dinner to encourage them to come to the final. And to give them a chance of an international photo opportunity.

  Among them, as well as the British Prime Minister, was Frank Hawk. But Hawk wasn’t dressed smartly like the other politicians. He was wearing a USA football shirt.

  ‘U-S-A!’ he shouted as the teams came on to the pitch. ‘U-S-A!’ All the Squad could hear him above the general noise of the crowd.

  ‘Is that him?’ Georgia asked Hatty as they lined up. Hatty nodded.

  ‘This is going to be hard,’ Georgia said. ‘Losing on purpose, I mean.’

  ‘It is,’ Hatty agreed, her voice muted. ‘But it needs doing.’

  And Georgia had been right: it was hard to lose on purpose.

  The England team were – mostly – good. The attack and midfield players were making mincemeat out of the USA team, who had no defence against the crisp passing that Rio and the others were delivering.

  The first goal came from Finn and Rio. As well as being best friends off the pitch, they were close on the pitch too. A one-two from the pair cut the USA team in half and Finn was able to slot the ball home.

  1–0
.

  This was not the plan. Not for the Squad anyway.

  As the defence took their positions after the goal, Georgia frowned at Hatty. ‘What do we do?’ she asked.

  ‘Give away penalties,’ Hatty said. ‘I’ll do one and you do one.’

  ‘OK,’ Georgia sighed.

  But at half-time it was still 1–0 to England. And the England dressing room was bubbling.

  ‘This is easy,’ Rio said. ‘We are so going to win this tournament. We’re clearly the best.’

  ‘So easy,’ Finn echoed.

  ‘Let’s just play it safe,’ Rio went on. ‘Everyone? No rash tackles.’

  The team nodded, drank their sports drinks, rubbed their tired muscles. They were confident – most of them – but not Hatty, Adnan or Georgia. They needed to find a way of losing this match. They had to lose it. If they won, the consequences were terrifying.

  When the referee knocked on their door, they went back out on to the pitch for the second half.

  Ten minutes into the second half, Hatty chopped an American girl in the penalty area. Adnan made it easy for her by staying on his goal line to create confusion in the box.

  From the stand a huge shout went up. ‘PENALTY!’

  Hawk.

  The referee blew his whistle and pointed at the spot. Hatty, who’d fallen over while making the tackle, was helped to her feet by Rio.

  ‘Hard luck, Hatty. You couldn’t do much else.’

  Hatty smiled sheepishly. But then she noticed the referee was facing her, standing by the penalty spot, a red card in his hand, raised high. The USA fans cheered again. Hatty was off, England down to ten players.

  Hatty stormed off the pitch, purposely walking past Georgia. ‘It’s up to you,’ Hatty muttered.

  ‘I know,’ the other girl snapped.

  ‘You need to make us lose this,’ Hatty pushed. ‘You and Adnan.’

  ‘I know. I told you.’

  And for the first time Hatty saw that Georgia looked vulnerable. She knew she had to make her feel strong, so that she could deliver.

  ‘Look, Georgia,’ she said. ‘I never thought much of you. But what you’ve done for us has been amazing. I’m … I’m really impressed with you.’