The hotel’s ground floor was knee-deep in filthy water, with a fast flowing torrent running back towards the sea. Glass shards hung from every window frame, the electricity was out and Mrs Leung stood by the reception desk, her usually coiffured hair sprouting in a hundred directions and looking like she was about to collapse in shock.
After pushing through lightweight wicker furniture blocking the French doors leading out to the pool, Kyle waded on, fearful that the fast moving torrent would knock him down. The edge of the pool was invisible beneath the brown water and he arrived a step sooner than he’d guessed.
Kyle plunged forward, getting a mouthful of sand and filth. But he was a strong swimmer and the current pushed him quickly across the hidden pool towards the maid. Rather than fight his way back, he grabbed her gently around the neck and dragged her with the current until his feet found the opposite edge of the pool.
The maid was unconscious, nose broken and face bloody. A couple of the trainees had watched the rescue and waded against the current to help him. As Kyle grabbed the maid under her armpits, Dante grabbed her ankles and the pair lifted her up on to a brick barbecue, above the height of the receding water.
All CHERUB agents had to get an advanced lifesavers certificate, but while Kyle knew the theory there was a huge difference between a plastic dummy lying at the poolside on campus and a real, unconscious human with the knowledge that she’d die if he got it wrong.
Kyle thrust down on the maid’s chest with both palms. Nothing happened the first couple of times, then brown water dribbled down her chin. The next thrust brought up a deluge and the maid coughed.
‘You OK?’ Kyle asked.
She sat up suddenly, banging her skull against Kyle’s chin.
‘Jesus,’ Kyle shouted, and staggered back clutching his face.
He wasn’t concussed, but his vision blurred momentarily and Dante was forced to take over, thumping the maid on the back and making her take deep breaths to get the remaining water out of her lungs.
Once Kyle had his wits back, he looked around and was staggered by the view. The water had mostly drained off and the white beach had turned to a mud pool, covered with glass shards, broken hotel furniture, tree branches and hundreds of shimmering fish, dying or already dead.
Large had not only stayed upright, but the satellite phone in his top pocket had stayed dry enough to keep working. He was on to the control room on CHERUB campus, wanting to know why they’d given him the all-clear, only for them to be hit less than thirty minutes later.
‘What do you mean there’s no tsunami in this region?’ he shouted. ‘There bloody well is! It just hit us, took all my equipment and … No the kids are fine, well one minor injury. But I want you to find out who gave that all-clear. I demand an explanation. I want to know if we’re going to get any more waves in these parts and tell the meteorologist who gave us the all-clear that when I get back to Britain I’m gonna chop his balls off, put them on a big skewer and roast them on an open fire.’
12. SHADOW
Large squelched into the freshly deposited silt over the tennis courts and looked around forlornly. Two of the wooden-hulled canoes had disappeared, along with every piece of the trainees’ kits, which had been laid out ready for inspection.
The six youngsters began a search, picking up random items - water canteens, soggy clothes and firelighters - until Large ordered them to go back up to the roof because there was no way of knowing if another wave was coming.
As Kyle led the trainees upstairs, they seemed hopeful. Mac had refused permission to extend basic training beyond the hundred-day limit and now, with all of their equipment destroyed, there seemed a real possibility that their final exercise would have to be called off.
‘What do you think Kyle?’ Iona asked, as they sat at rooftop tables overlooking the devastated beach. ‘Is there any way we can run the exercise?’
Kyle smiled. ‘Knowing Large, I wouldn’t go getting your hopes up. He’ll find some way to make you suffer.’
As Kyle spoke, a car stopped at the rear of the hotel. Large’s burly training assistant Miss Speaks sat at the wheel. She’d been out in the jungle with two local guides, setting up equipment for the trainees’ final exercise. They’d been heading back along the coast road in a Land Cruiser when the wave hit. A front wheel had a slow puncture and the bodywork had been battered by debris thrown up by the giant wave.
‘Thought we’d had our chips there,’ Speaks explained, as she walked towards Kyle and the trainees on the rooftop. Her deep voice sounded troubled as she described what had happened. ‘The waves lifted the whole car off the road. Almost toppled the Land Cruiser, but the road is overgrown and the dense undergrowth pushed us back. Then a huge backwash drained on to the road and started coming at us, more than two metres high. I thought we’d get washed out to sea. Luckily the rear end was heavy with all the equipment in the back and dug itself into the sand when we hit the beach.’
‘Mr Large tried calling but your phone wasn’t receiving,’ Kyle said. He liked Speaks no more than he liked Large, but he’d never seen her in such a state before. Her hands were visibly shaking, so he offered her a drink.
‘Something strong,’ Speaks nodded. ‘Scotch, vodka. Make it big whatever it is.’
Speaks continued her story as Kyle stepped behind the rooftop bar and poured Japanese whisky into a tall glass.
‘When the water receded, we were buried in half a metre of silt. The three of us dug out the back wheels and wedged planks under the tyres. The coast road is in a real state: deep silt, trees and debris blocking the carriageway. It’s a good job we had a four-wheel drive. No ordinary car would have got through - thank you Kyle.’
Miss Speaks downed half a tumbler of whisky in two gulps. ‘Calms the nerves,’ she said, before passing the glass back to Kyle. ‘Same again, barman.’
As Kyle walked back to the bar, Mr Large walked out on to the rooftop with his gargantuan moustache bristling furiously.
‘Shadow wave,’ he shouted. Then he saw Miss Speaks. ‘How you doing? Did you get caught up?’
‘Getting better,’ Speaks replied, as Kyle handed her a second whisky.
‘Shadow wave what?’ Kyle asked, as all the trainees turned to listen in.
‘I just spoke to the campus control room and they’ve been in contact with the meteorological service in London,’ Large explained. ‘Apparently, a tsunami works exactly like the ripples when you lob a big stone into a pond. The shockwaves radiate outwards and when they hit the side of the pond they reflect back in the opposite direction. What washed over us is known as a shadow wave, a reflection from the shockwave that hit the Thai coast. It may have looked scary, but it would have been less than a tenth as powerful as the direct hit on Thailand. Maybe a thousandth as powerful as what hit the coastline of Indonesia a few hours back.’
Kyle had just been through one of the scariest mornings of his life. He could barely comprehend what it must have been like for the people in Indonesia dealing with a wall of water a thousand times more powerful.
‘So what’s our situation?’ Speaks asked. ‘Supplies and equipment?’
Large tutted and shook his head. ‘Trainees had their kits laid out for inspection, so we lost the lot. But if it’s still clear up there in the jungle, I was thinking we could take the trainees in without kit for a rudimentary survival exercise.’
The trainees sitting nearby deflated visibly at this prospect.
Miss Speaks shook her head. ‘With the greatest respect, Norman, I think it would be irresponsible. With this disaster, all the emergency services are going to be at full stretch. We can’t risk taking kids into the jungle. What if something went wrong? There might be no rescue boats or helicopters available to pull them out after an accident, and if we made it to the hospital there’d be no beds available.’
Large thought about this for a couple of seconds. ‘I guess you’re right,’ he sighed. ‘We could give them shovels and make them run around digging hole
s in all this silt for two days.’
‘What’s in the silt though?’ Speaks asked. ‘I don’t want to give the trainees an easy ride any more than you do, but for all we know some of what’s on that beach was in a Thai sewage plant three hours ago, or an industrial facility pumping toxic chemicals, or Christ knows what else.’
‘And it’s more than likely full of broken glass,’ Kyle added. ‘And there’s still going to be no hospital beds or evacuation support if a trainee got injured or suffered heat stroke.’
The trainees looked at each other hopefully, but didn’t dare smile in case it sent Large into a rage. In the event it didn’t need anything more to set him off.
‘So what do you expect me to do?’ Large shouted, throwing his arms into the air as he scowled accusingly at Kyle and Miss Speaks. ‘Mac won’t let me extend training and from what you’re saying, we might as well give the six of them their grey T-shirts right now.’
The two giant whiskies were beginning to affect Miss Speaks. She’d stopped shaking and her beefy shoulders were noticeably relaxed as she shrugged. ‘We’re in the middle of a huge natural disaster, Norman. Thousands of people could be dead. CHERUB training has to take a back seat.’
Iona caught Dante’s eye and the training partners couldn’t help smiling at each other. Then Reece, who’d been struggling on the tennis courts earlier, punched the air and shouted, ‘Yes!’ triumphantly.
Within a few seconds the trainees were all standing up and hugging each other. Dante crashed back to the floor tiles with his feet in the air.
‘Think you’re smart, do you?’ Large shouted as he eyeballed his trainees. ‘Think you’ve got away with it? But you’re all young. I can’t train you here, but I’ll have plenty up my sleeve next time one of you lot reports for a training exercise.’
But whatever threats Large threw around, he’d never have the power to take away their status as grey shirts. Kyle remembered the massive relief he’d felt when he’d passed basic training and couldn’t resist teasing the jubilant trainees.
‘You never really went a hundred days though,’ Kyle grinned. ‘You’re not real grey shirts.’
‘Shove it up your bum,’ Dante said, as he gave Kyle a two-fingered salute.
‘Can we have our grey shirts now?’ Iona asked pleadingly.
Kyle thought Large was going to explode at this suggestion, but instead he crashed out in a dining chair and turned to Miss Speaks. ‘Sod it,’ he said, with a wave of his hand. ‘I could do with a rest after all that’s happened this morning.’
Miss Speaks looked at Iona. ‘The grey shirts are in my room, in the blue equipment bag. You’ll have to get my room key from reception. Don’t just rip everything out and make a mess.’
Iona put her hands on her cheeks and squealed, ‘Thank you so much, Miss!’
None of the other trainees were prepared to wait for Iona to fetch their shirts back up to the rooftop, so they charged after her towards the staircase.
‘It’s good to see them happy like that,’ Kyle said, grinning as he momentarily forgot that he was sitting with the two meanest training instructors on campus.
‘They were a good bunch,’ Speaks agreed. ‘They’ll all do well when they start missions.’
Large wasn’t so charitable, and he pointed at Miss Speaks’ empty glass. ‘Get me a bloody drink, Kyle.’
‘Keep ‘em coming,’ Speaks agreed. ‘But try to find some ice.’
As Kyle stood up, he spotted a small figure running desperately through the silt towards the hotel. Exhaustion made her steps clumsy and she’d fallen over at least once, spattering her body with mud.
‘Are you OK?’ Kyle shouted from the rooftop, but he could tell from the way she was waving her arms that she wasn’t.
‘Help!’ the girl shouted, as Kyle realised that it was Aizat’s sister Wati. ‘Come quickly.’
13. ROOF
It was the middle of the day and the high sun reflected off puddles in the newly deposited silt, blinding Kyle as he drove the Land Cruiser towards the village. Speaks sat next to him. She hadn’t taken the wheel because she’d just downed three large measures of spirits.
In the back seats, hotel owner Mrs Leung sat with the mud-spattered Wati on her lap. Squeezed alongside were Iona, Dante and two other trainees, while the cargo area behind had been hastily packed with first-aid kits and emergency medical equipment from supplies meant for the aborted canoeing exercise.
The three-kilometre drive took them on a slight curve. The wave that Kyle saw hitting the Starfish Hotel head-on had swept towards Aizat’s village at an oblique angle, having first hit the adjacent construction site.
The village’s traditionally designed houses were elevated on wooden poles and their lightweight flexible structures withstood storms and tidal waves better than western influenced designs made from brick and metal. But they’d been less able to cope with debris and construction equipment washed off the building site, including a four-storey scaffold carried across in the rush of water.
Of the eleven huts in the village, the four closest to the construction site had been seriously damaged. The rest had all suffered some degree of damage from floating boards and sheets of corrugated metal.
‘What’s the situation?’ Kyle asked urgently, as he pulled up in front of Aizat’s hut.
Aizat’s boat lay broken between two distant palm trees, while a cement mixing machine had damaged several of the hut’s main supports and lay wedged deep under the building.
Aizat’s legs were spattered in mud. He’d dragged two elderly women from a damaged hut and laid them out on a metal sheet from the hotel site. Both were cut and one had an obviously broken arm. The lads who’d been playing football earlier stood about with no sense of direction and stared hopefully at the new arrivals.
Aizat pointed at the four severely damaged huts. ‘I haven’t even walked over that side yet. Are we expecting more waves?’
‘We don’t think so,’ Kyle said. ‘We’re listening to the radio and we’ve got satellite phones working. But nobody warned us about the last wave, so you can’t be sure.’
A jolt of adrenaline had sobered Speaks up and she quickly checked out the two elderly casualties. Once she saw there was nothing life-threatening about their injuries she turned towards the trainees.
‘Use your first-aid training,’ Speaks ordered. ‘Clean the cuts. Seal any that are bleeding badly with compression plasters, splint and wrap the broken arm. Give her pain relief if you think she needs it.’
As the four trainees grabbed kit from the back of the car and became medics, Kyle and Speaks followed two teenage villagers who were particularly anxious to show them one of the wrecked huts. They barely spoke English and Kyle and Speaks knew no Malay, but it didn’t take much to work out that the girls thought there were people trapped under the collapsed roof.
The scaffold had hit the hut at speed, ripping off the veranda and knocking the entire structure backwards on its supporting stilts. The wooden frame had caved in, leaving a tangle of planks topped off by the remains of the metal roof. The only reason the structure hadn’t collapsed entirely was that the front of the house now balanced precariously on part of the buckled scaffold tower.
Kyle pushed against the side of the building to see if it was stable. The entire structure creaked alarmingly, making one of the girls scream in panic.
‘Just checking it out,’ Kyle said, backing away and raising his arms to calm the girls down.
Miss Speaks held up her fingers like she was counting. ‘How many people?’
The taller of the two girls held up two fingers, but then she linked hands and rocked them from side to side indicating that one or both was a baby.
Kyle looked at Speaks. ‘It’s too unstable to clamber under that roof. We’ve either got to brace the structure or knock it down.’
He’d hoped that Speaks had a better plan, but she stayed quiet.
‘Knocking it down is easier, but if it shifts it could crush anyone tr
apped inside,’ Kyle added.
Speaks leaned under the structure and made a thoughtful inspection of the steeply angled rear posts. ‘The scaffolding at the front is wedged at an angle. If it collapses, it’s going backwards. So, what if we get the Land Cruiser up here and back it up against the building, so that it can’t topple?’
‘Will that hold it?’ Kyle asked.
Speaks nodded. ‘It’s a heavy car. It’ll hold for a while if you’re gentle on the throttle.’
‘Me?’ Kyle gulped.
Speaks inflated her huge chest and bulky arms. ‘Unless you want to get up there and try lifting up that roof. But I reckon that’s my department, don’t you?’
Speaks wasn’t just muscular, she’d been a champion weight-lifter which made her pretty much the ideal person to have around under the circumstances.
Kyle hurriedly explained the plan to Aizat as he jogged back to the Land Cruiser.
‘They’re twins,’ Aizat explained. ‘Two boys, eleven months old.’
‘It scares me that we can’t hear them yelling inside,’ Kyle said. ‘We’ll try, but I’m not optimistic.’
It was tricky driving the Land Cruiser up the beach and reversing over debris, down a narrow alleyway between the wreckage of the two most seriously damaged huts. Fortunately the families that owned them worked on the mainland and both had been empty when the wave struck.
By the time Kyle parked with the back of the Land Cruiser aligned to the rear of the teetering house a gaggle of villagers was watching, along with two painters from the construction site who’d come by to help.
Kyle leaned out of the car window. ‘Ready?’ he shouted.
Miss Speaks looked around at Dante, who’d donned a yellow safety helmet with a powerful rescue lamp fitted around it.
‘I’m fine,’ Dante said, before smiling nervously.
‘Roll her back,’ Speaks ordered.
Kyle switched on the Land Cruiser’s low-ratio gearbox, giving it the kind of torque required for climbing muddy hills, or hopefully supporting the weight of a teetering pole house. He let out the handbrake and gave the accelerator the lightest of touches.
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