CHERUB: Black Friday

by Robert Muchamore

  It was dark and he fumbled with the controls, wasting seconds as he studied the automatic transmission, trying to find the override switch you needed to press to engage reverse. More guys were charging out of the house with guns and a couple of them looked Ryan’s way as he rolled back.

  All kinds of shouts were going up. As Ryan reversed there was a blast of gunfire. He thought they were aiming at him, but the muzzle flashes were down by the mobile home.

  Once he’d cleared the parking space, Ryan put the transmission in drive and squeezed the gas pedal. His only experience behind the wheel was a few short practice drives during a beginners’ course on CHERUB campus and the top of the mini-van clattered overhanging branches as he turned on to the path.

  He fumbled for the headlight switch as he drove past a couple of armed guys, who fortunately assumed that Ryan was one of them. When the beams came on, Ryan had to swerve immediately to avoid two machine-gunned bodies and Mumin writhing about clutching a bloody stomach. Kazakov had apparently pulled some fancy move, grabbing one of the machine guns and taking three guys out.

  Ryan shouted. ‘Where are you? Are you hit?’

  Kazakov came back through the com. ‘Pull up beside the mobile home. I’ve got our stuff and I’m ready to jump in.’

  Ryan was a nervous driver and turned too fast, almost tipping the mini-van over. He stopped sharp, making a cloud of dust as more shots rang out, then jumped with fright when Kazakov ripped open the passenger door. The big instructor placed a machine gun on the dashboard before hurriedly lobbing Ryan’s backpack and his own luggage over on to the back seats.

  As the dust cleared, some of the guys running towards them opened fire. A bullet slammed the back of the car and Ryan gasped as a wet thud sounded in his ear.

  ‘Christ,’ Kazakov moaned.

  The only light came from headlamps and through two little windows down the side of the mobile home. Kazakov had been knocked down and was slumped outside the car with blood pumping out of a huge wound in his shoulder.

  Ryan reached across and tried pulling Kazakov in, but he was much too heavy and Kazakov batted the arm away.

  ‘Get the message out,’ Kazakov screamed, as he rolled on to the dirt and gave the passenger door a kick to close it. ‘I’ll cover you.’

  Ryan hated leaving Kazakov, but another bullet slammed the car and a guy with a pistol was running from the other direction. He floored the gas pedal and swung the steering wheel full right. Kazakov was flat on the ground taking shots at the men coming towards him as Ryan accelerated. A terrorist smashed into the bonnet as he steered on to the path towards the ranch’s main gate.

  James struggled to get back to sleep after being disturbed by Amy’s phone, and Bruce struggled because James kept getting up to use the toilet, or run a glass of water. Just after 5 a.m., rain started pelting the windows and James peeked behind the roller blind next to his bed.

  ‘They need to drive in the dark, in the rain and when they’re tired,’ James reasoned. ‘Seeing as conditions are ideal and we can’t get back to sleep, what say we go disturb our little driving students?’

  Bruce grunted. ‘I’d sleep fine if you shut up. Have you even got their room numbers?’

  ‘No, but I can look ’em up,’ James said. ‘Plus it’s Friday. And I’m thinking if we start early, we can finish early then cab it into town for a night of action.’

  ‘I’ve heard worse ideas,’ Bruce said. ‘We are supposed to take them out in the wet if we can and I’m never getting back to sleep with you fidget-arsing.’

  Ten minutes later, James and Bruce were dressed and heading up in the lift. Bruce got out on six to grab Ning, Alfie and Grace, while James went to the seventh floor for Leon.

  When he’d taken the short-term instructor job, James promised himself that he’d be a decent instructor like Mr Pike or Kazakov, not one of the mean ones like Miss Speaks, or former head instructor Norman Large, who’d got more enjoyment out of making trainees suffer than he should have and ended up being sacked. But on the other hand, James couldn’t resist the idea of charging into some poor trainee’s room and scaring the hell out of them.

  ‘Rise and shine!’ James shouted, as he booted the door of room 707, flipped on the light switch and whipped a Manchester City duvet off the bed.

  The kid looked suitably horrified as he shielded his eyes. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he shouted.

  ‘You’ve got ten minutes, Leon,’ James said. ‘Get your rear in gear! Put some clothes on. Grab something to eat in the van on the way to the track.’

  The kid looked furious. ‘I’m not Leon.’

  ‘Don’t piss me about,’ James said.

  ‘We’re identical twins,’ Daniel Sharma shouted. To prove his point he picked a framed photo off the bedside shelf and waggled it in the air. It showed Ryan in the middle holding youngest brother Theo, with Leon and Daniel standing on either side pulling stupid faces.

  ‘Ahh,’ James said sheepishly. ‘I looked up Sharma on the system and this room came up. I didn’t realise there were four of you.’

  Daniel pointed along the hallway. ‘You’ll find my brother two doors along.’

  James charged down the hallway and hit room 711 shouting, ‘Right, Sharma!’

  There was a piercing scream as a fifteen-year-old girl pulled her duvet up around her neck.

  ‘Jesus Harold Christ!’ the girl yelled. ‘Haven’t you heard of knocking?’

  ‘Shit! I’m sorry,’ James said, backing out into the corridor where Daniel Sharma stood grinning at him.

  ‘Oops,’ Daniel said, unable to hide his smirk. ‘Did I say my brother was two doors that way? I meant two doors the other way.’

  Meanwhile a stern-faced carer named May was storming down the hallway. ‘Who’s screaming … ? Well well, if it isn’t James Adams, causing a rumpus in my hallway. Just like old times!’

  The girl had put on a dressing gown and now stood in her doorway giving James evils. ‘This pervo burst in on me!’

  Daniel was killing himself laughing and James wagged a finger at him. ‘You’d better hope you don’t get a training exercise with me. I’ll nuke your skinny hide!’

  ‘You should stick to what you’re good at,’ Daniel teased. ‘Having sex in the campus fountain, that sort of thing … ’

  James tutted. ‘Who started that stupid rumour?’

  A couple of other sleepy kids now stood in their doorways, peering out to see what all the fuss was about.

  ‘You looking for me?’ Leon asked.

  Before James could answer, he was the one getting a finger-wagging off May. ‘You wake up half the kids in my corridor again and I’ll have your guts for garters, Mr Adams. Training instructor or no training instructor.’

  ‘Sorry,’ James said, feeling like he was twelve again.

  ‘Show’s over, back to bed,’ May said wearily. But she gave Daniel an extra hard scowl. ‘I’ve got my eye on you, stirring it as usual.’

  James eventually found himself in Leon’s room.

  ‘What did you do?’ Leon asked. ‘Everyone mixes me and my brother up.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ James mumbled. ‘It’s raining out, so we’re taking you on the road while it’s dark and wet. See you downstairs in fifteen. If you plan on eating before this evening, grab something you can nosh in the van.’

  13. PETROL

  The mini-van wasn’t built to go fast on a dirt road. Ryan hadn’t put on his seatbelt and had to lean his head to one side to stop hitting the roof, while the steering wheel tried to jerk out of his hands. There was nobody in pursuit, but the walkie-talkie was alive with panicked voices until Elbaz came on.

  ‘We don’t know if they’ve communicated,’ he said calmly. ‘We have to assume that they have. So we move out everything that’s ready to go and blow the base.’

  The short-range walkie-talkie traffic started breaking up as Ryan took a left on to an unlit two-lane highway. Tarmac made driving easier, but there were vehicles faster than thi
s mini-van in the fleet up by the ranch house and it seemed weird that nobody was chasing.

  Keeping one hand on the wheel as the speedo touched ninety, Ryan buckled his seatbelt, then pulled out his iPhone. He’d have given his left nut for a couple of signal bars, but all he had were the words, No Network.

  He looked up in time to see a monstrous Cadillac Escalade pick-up crash through the undergrowth at the roadside less than fifty metres ahead. Apparently, the cross-country route was more direct than the dirt track and huge front tyres spun in the air as the 4x4 broke on to the highway.

  Ryan swerved into the opposite lane, but the Escalade still clipped the rear of the mini-van and sent him into a tailspin. The steering wheel ripped out of Ryan’s hands and his body slammed the door.

  Fifty different noises were going on as the mini-van nosedived off the road, and one of them might have been a gunshot. The front bumper ripped off as it caught the side of a drainage channel and Ryan thought he was about to roll, but the wheels on his side slammed back down and the shallow ditch began guiding the tyres on the passenger’s side like a rail.

  As he pulled back on to the road, the Escalade accelerated towards his rear end. Ryan’s body jerked as the pick-up slammed in and he corrected violently to stay on tarmac. At this point the road went into a slight arc. With only basic driving skills and an inferior vehicle, Ryan didn’t fancy his chances in a long chase, so he kept going straight, bouncing across the roadside ditch hard and crashing through tangled undergrowth.

  The headlamps lit up a low wooden fence and he turned the wheel so that he glanced it, rather than hitting it head on. But he wanted his pursuers to think he’d lost control, so he allowed the car to roll to a halt in the hope that this would make his off-road trip seem like an accident.

  An instant before the vehicle stopped, Ryan popped his seatbelt then leaned across and grabbed Kazakov’s machine gun, which had dropped off the dashboard into the footwell in front of the passenger seat.

  When he popped his head up, Ryan was pleased to see the Escalade stopped on the road more than fifty metres away. He’d fired an M16 in basic training, and he checked the machine gun expertly, seeing that he had half a dozen shots in the magazine and clicking the weapon from automatic to a far more accurate single-shot mode.

  After hooking the gun over his shoulder and making sure the Beretta was still tucked into the back of his jeans, Ryan pocketed the mini-van’s ignition keys and slid out into the gap between car and fence.

  He’d seen two guys in the pick-up, though it was dark so Ryan doubted he’d have known if anyone was in the back. One guy had stepped out of the passenger’s side and held a handgun like someone who didn’t know what to do with it.

  ‘We won’t hurt your dad if you come back to the ranch with us,’ the guy shouted.

  Ryan recognised the voice as one of the blokes who’d travelled from Kyrgyzstan with him. On the road he’d felt outmatched, but Ryan felt more confident as he crept through tall grass back towards the road. His two opponents only seemed to have handguns to his machine gun, and clearly thought they were hunting a regular kid dumb enough to fall for a we’ll help your daddy if you’re a good boy gambit.

  ‘What you gonna do out here all on your own, Ryan?’ the guy shouted.

  While one guy moved warily towards the bashed-up mini-van, half expecting to find Ryan unconscious at the wheel, Ryan had made it to the road and crouched between bushes, less than five metres from the front of the Escalade.

  A shout went up from down by the mini-van. ‘Kid’s got out, but he can’t have got far.’

  The second man stood beside the Cadillac and spoke into a walkie-talkie that was apparently out of signal range. ‘Base, do you copy? Anyone else out here?’

  The other guy thought up a new way to lure Ryan out. ‘You’re ten miles from anywhere, Ryan, and there’s a lot of rattlesnakes out there.’

  The shout gave Ryan a chance to cover up some noise. He scooted over dirt to the rear of the Escalade, rolled into a firing stance and took a single shot that blew a hole in the chest of the dude by the car.

  ‘What are you shooting, Mike?’ the guy down by the car shouted, as Ryan stepped over his victim and planted his bum on the luxurious Cadillac’s leather driving seat.

  It felt massive compared to the mini-van and had loads of gadgets including a glowing sat-nav screen in the centre console. The driver’s door shut with a solid clunk and Ryan pushed a chromed start button to get a six-litre V8 growling.

  The burst of speed was a shock as Ryan took off, while the high driving position and sheer scale of this new ride gave him a sense of invincibility. The pleas of the guy he’d shot into the walkie-talkie made him fairly sure that no second vehicle was on his tail, and he had the mini-van keys so the other guy wouldn’t be on his back.

  But there was still a No Network symbol on Ryan’s iPhone. He was no sat-nav expert, but he kept the car at a sensible fifty mph and gave the touchscreen an experimental tap. The map only showed a single line of road until he zoomed out to reveal an intersection at a small town a few miles ahead. The screen had a little petrol pump icon. Touching it revealed the town’s gas station and a tap on the route button set off a calming female voice.

  ‘Petrol in six point two miles. Left turn, one point seven miles. Current range before refuelling, one hundred and fifty-seven miles.’

  It made an easy ten-minute drive and the brightly lit Texaco station was part of a little strip-mall that also had a Denny’s diner, a Burger King and a Dunkin Donuts. Ryan didn’t get his speed right turning off the road and scraped a metal post.

  After turning at the Burger King arrow, Ryan rolled around to the back of the near-empty lot so that the Escalade couldn’t be seen from the road. He picked his phone off the dashboard, saw three beautiful signal bars and found Dr D on his contacts list. As the phone rang in his ear, a tap on the side window made him jolt.

  ‘Hidey-ho!’ Dr D screeched. ‘Afraid you got my voicemail, but leave a message and I’ll be on your case before you know it.’

  At the same time, Ryan turned his head and saw a gun up against the glass pointing towards him. His first thought was that he’d been tracked from the ranch, but it was a woman cop and there was another huge officer aiming a shotgun across the bonnet.

  ‘Outta the car, hands where I can see ’em,’ the woman screamed.

  Someone might have called in the shooting out on the highway, but Ryan thought it more likely that the cops’ suspicions had been raised by his clumsy scrape of the metal post when he’d turned in.

  The female cop grabbed the driver’s door and pulled it open.

  ‘Move out,’ the big guy shouted.

  As Ryan stepped out of the car, the guy moved around, keeping the gun trained on him. British cops only shoot when someone’s life is in danger so Ryan might have made a dash, but he doubted the same rules applied at the Alabama sheriff’s department.

  ‘Face the car, hands on the hood.’

  As Ryan did what he was told, the male officer ripped away the handgun tucked in the back of Ryan’s jeans, and noted spots of blood on his Converse.

  ‘Wrists,’ the woman said.

  ‘You’ve got to speak to Dr Denise Huggan of the FBI,’ Ryan said. ‘There’s a major terrorist organisation at a ranch house ten miles from here.’

  ‘Is that right?’ the woman said disbelievingly.

  ‘Please listen,’ Ryan said.

  ‘We’ll listen to everything you’ve got to say at the station.’

  ‘It’ll take two minutes to clear this up,’ Ryan said urgently.

  As the female officer zipped on a set of plasticuffs, the male cop seemed more interested in what Ryan had said.

  ‘Terrorists,’ Ryan repeated. ‘They’re about to send out a bunch of trucks to blow up shopping malls. And the guy I was with got shot in the shoulder.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’ the officer asked.

  But the woman interrupted. ‘Check out his eyes, before you
believe too much of what he says.’

  The male officer dropped the Beretta into a zip-lock evidence bag then stared into Ryan’s bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Kid’s as high as a kite, ain’t you?’ the woman said.

  ‘I’ve just been awake a long time,’ Ryan said. ‘Please listen. You’ve got to listen. You must have heard about the plane blowing up by the stadium, it’s all linked to that.’

  The male officer laughed. ‘Oh, was that you? Is this your daddy’s car?’

  Ryan was so frustrated that he gave the female officer a little shove. ‘Please, just make one phone call. It’ll take twenty seconds.’

  The big dude didn’t like seeing his partner get pushed. He grabbed Ryan under the arms, pulled him a step backwards, then slammed him over the bonnet of the truck before shooting a blast of pepper spray in his face.

  ‘You wanna mess with us?’ the man shouted. ‘Well now you can add assaulting an officer to grand theft auto, firearms and drugs. You got a long stretch in juvenile hall coming your way, boy!’

  ‘Listen,’ Ryan gasped, as the pepper spray burned his eyes and throat.

  ‘I’ve heard enough out of you,’ the officer said, as he grabbed Ryan’s cuffs and yanked him towards a cop car parked in a disabled space outside the Denny’s. ‘Now you sit in the car and behave while I go buy a box of bear claws for the station.’

  14. KAZAKOV

  They’d dragged Kazakov back to the ranch house. Someone had made a half-arsed attempt to stop the bleeding by tying a coat around his shoulder, but all it had done was ruin the coat.

  ‘Who did you speak to?’ someone shouted.

  Even if Kazakov had wanted to answer he’d lost control of his mouth. The people bustling around the kitchen kept doing a little leap to avoid stepping in his blood. His vision was blurring, but the lack of oxygen had brought his mind to a mildly euphoric state that made the pain seem distant.