CHERUB: The Fall (6 page)

The hair pulled tight and the dude’s neck crunched. He went down so fast that James barely managed to let go before going down on top of him.

After a panicked breath, James ran forward to finish off the man who was trying to untangle himself from the coffee table. There was enough light from the abandoned torch for James to see him reach for his gun. James grabbed his wrist, twisted the pistol out of his grasp and pulped the man’s face by repeatedly smashing the barrel against the bridge of his nose.

Three down, one to go
, James thought, backing up to the wall as he inspected the automatic pistol in his bloody left hand. He wasn’t familiar with the type, but it looked like it was ready to shoot.

Vladimir Obidin shouted from the kitchen. ‘Mikhail, what’s going on? Cuff the boy and start searching.’

James only had seconds before the lack of a reply made Vladimir suspicious. He used them to shut off the torch and creep out into the hallway.

‘Mikhail?’ Vladimir repeated, sounding a touch uneasy now. ‘Did he get away?’

James crouched down low. A flickering light came through the kitchen doorway, suggesting that Vladimir was nosing around with a torch.

‘Have you got the boy or not?’

James was tempted to throw a smartass line back at Vladimir. But he thought he’d leave the comebacks to Hollywood and let Vladimir stay confused.

‘Guys?’ Obidin said, with something in his voice that James had never heard before: fear.

Buoyed by Obidin’s discomfort, James crept right up to the kitchen door as Obidin turned off his torch. James would have happily made a run for the front door, but he’d have to pass the kitchen to get there and that would give Vladimir an easy shot at him.

James considered backing up and jumping off the living-room balcony, but they were two storeys up and even if he landed without injuring himself, he’d probably be spotted by the rentacops who stood guard at the front of the building.

As James crept closer to the kitchen door, he heard Vladimir whispering into his police radio. ‘This is VO1. Requesting
urgent
assistance. All nearby units come to Brezhnev Apartments, flat two stroke seventeen. Searching for a boy aged fourteen or fifteen. Blond hair, stocky build. Looks like he’s taken out three officers already.’

James realised that he had to deal with Obidin and get out of the building before he had half of Aero City’s police force on his back. Judging by Obidin’s voice, James reckoned he was near the washing machine at the back of the room.

He poked his arm through the doorway and fired three shots into the darkness. If Obidin had kept still, James would have shot him in the chest, but Obidin had also decided to take the offensive and was walking towards the door. As James’ bullets ripped through the metal shell of the washing machine, he sensed Obidin standing less than a metre away from him.

James practically swallowed his tongue with fright, but he had his finger on the trigger and realised that whoever got the first shot in would win the duel. While Obidin took aim, James fired, shooting Obidin in the thigh from point-blank range.

The force of the bullet knocked Obidin backwards. James bundled on top and snatched Obidin’s gun, before racing back to the living-room.

After checking that the other three men were still unconscious, James grabbed his trainers from in front of the couch and slipped them on. With the gun poised, he walked back into the hallway, trying to ignore Vladimir’s moans as he put on his jacket and stepped through what remained of the front door.

The corridor was pitch black, but as James reached the stairwell he spotted torch beams and heard men with equipment jangling up the stairs: backup. Returning to the apartment seemed like a bad idea and James couldn’t go down, so he took an instant decision and raced up the musty staircase to the top floor. The unlit third-floor corridor bought him time, but if Obidin was still conscious and told the cops that he’d only just run out, they’d be on to him in seconds.

James considered his options, none of which looked good: he could stay where he was and get caught; going up on the roof would only buy an extra half minute; and if he knocked on any of the apartment doors, it was unlikely that anyone would let him in. His only realistic option was to run down the metal fire escape at the back of the building, but wouldn’t the cops have it covered?

However improbable escape seemed, James wasn’t giving up. He’d just shot the chief of police and the cops around here weren’t big on human rights. If they got him in a cell, they’d torture him until they got answers.

A blast of cold air hit James as he broke open the fire door. His haste almost cost him as his trainer glided across icy metal. There was a flurry of snow and a touch of light coming from the headlamps of the police cars parked at the front of the building. James looked down and couldn’t see anyone about, but it was impossible to be sure: the night was as black as the cops’ uniforms.

The steps were in a tight spiral and James moved as fast as he could, trying to keep his footsteps silent, with one freezing hand on the snowy railing and the other clutching his gun. He took another look when he got near the bottom, but there was still no sign of life and he made it safely to the tarmac.

James was in a parking lot, surrounded by cheap cars owned by the residents. Whilst little money had been spent on the upkeep of the Brezhnev Apartments, the perimeter was well defended and James realised that he’d have as much difficulty climbing out over the four-metre-high spiked railings as kidnappers and thieves were supposed to have climbing in.

But at least it was safer than being trapped in a corridor: there was plenty of space and plenty of cars to dive between if someone came after him. James felt nauseous as he crouched between a Nissan and a Volkswagen, trying to gather his thoughts. He glanced at his wrist and realised that his watch was still on the table back in the flat.

There was one thought that he couldn’t get out of his head:
What could possibly have gone wrong at the meeting?
Maybe Boris and Isla had blown their cover, or maybe Denis Obidin had known they were MI5 all along. Maybe they’d unearthed one of the bugs he’d placed inside the house …

But none of this quite rang true. Denis was a smart man: he was used to the attentions of the world’s intelligence agencies and would have dealt with the situation clinically. Vladimir turning up and kicking down doors in the middle of the night suggested that the Obidins were angry about something that had taken them by surprise.

James could mull over theories all night long and he’d still be trapped inside this car park. He needed to escape first and think later.

Although the adrenalin made it feel as if an age had passed since he’d woken up, James knew it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes; and it was less than half that time since Vladimir had called for backup. The cops who guarded the gate had run up the stairs and nobody had been covering the fire escape because there were no other cops in the area.

At least, not
yet
.

In a few minutes there would be cops all over the joint, but James reckoned he had a decent chance of making it through the front gates if he didn’t hang about. As he sprang up, he heard a cop emerge at the top of the third-floor fire exit. He slipped over like James had almost done and yelled as he clonked down seven steps.

James ducked behind the parked cars as he raced towards the entrance gates. As usual there were two ancient Russian-built cop cars parked outside the entrance, but Vladimir Obidin’s bulletproof Mercedes had been parked across the road to stop any vehicles from escaping.

He emerged close to the headlamps of one police car and was relieved to find it empty, but a thuggish-looking driver was propped on the bonnet of the Merc, with a compact machine gun around his neck and a cigarette between his lips.

It wasn’t ideal, but James figured that one against one with surprise on his side was about as good as the odds were likely to get. Aware that the cop who’d slipped down the steps would soon be on his tail, he crept around to the back of the police car and poked his head up over the boot.

The driver looked spaced out and James considered shooting him, grabbing his machine gun and making off in the limo. But it would take time; his gun wasn’t silenced and with more police on the way, it could turn into a full-blown chase. Besides, there’s a big difference between shooting your way out of a corner and going on the offensive, and James wasn’t sure he had the heart to sneak up and shoot a man in the back.

So while the driver dropped his cigarette and ground it under a highly polished shoe, James ducked behind his car, crossed the deserted street and jogged stealthily into the blackness with only a trace of moonlight giving his position away.

He crossed a stretch of paving that ran between two high-rise housing blocks. By the time he’d reached a stairwell at the rear, three police cars and an ambulance had parked outside the Brezhnev Apartments, their flashing blue lights making quite a show in the powerless town.

James decided to run towards the derelict area near the edge of Aero City. He could hide in one of the thousands of abandoned apartments that had once housed the city’s factory workers. But first he had to get in touch with the CHERUB emergency desk and tell them what had happened.

He reached inside his jacket, then padded down his jeans and came to a horrible realisation.

His phone was still inside his school backpack and his backpack was still inside flat 2-17.

The boys’ gymnasium was one of the oldest buildings on CHERUB campus. It had recently been refurbished with the latest exercise machines and weight-training equipment. A small extension had been built to provide changing rooms and showers for girls and the derelict basement cinema where cherubs had watched newsreels and movies in the fifties and sixties had been stripped out and turned into a lounge, complete with pool, snooker and air hockey tables. Big-screen TVs showed sports channels, there were oversized sofas and the glass-fronted fridges and cupboards along one side of the room were stocked with snacks and soft drinks.

The lounge had been completed less than a month earlier and the novelty had yet to wear off. It was packed with cherubs whenever it was open and a rota restricted access to certain age groups to prevent overcrowding.

Cherubs usually had lessons on Saturday morning, but the lounge had been specially opened for the twenty-six kids who’d returned from the aborted training exercise in the Yorkshire Dales. After making grave threats to a bunch of younger kids who’d been hogging one of the full-sized snooker tables for more than an hour, Lauren, Rat, Bethany and Andy managed to get a game.

None of them was very good. Rat was the most naturally gifted player, but he’d spent the first eleven years of his life inside a religious cult and was struggling to master the rules.

‘So I’ve knocked in the red. Now what colour do I have to pot first?’

Lauren tutted. ‘Whatever colour you nominate, for the
third
time.’

‘But I thought you had to do yellow, green, brown, or whatever,’ Rat said.

‘That’s only after all the reds have been potted at the end.’

‘Right,’ Rat said. ‘Blue ball, corner pocket.’

Lauren, Andy and Bethany all went quiet as Rat lined up his shot.

‘AWWWOOOOOOOOOO,’ Andy howled, trying to sound like a wolf as he made Rat totally miscue his shot.

‘No
way
,’ Rat said, as he grabbed the white ball off the table. ‘I’m retaking that.’

‘Cheater,’ Bethany grinned.

‘Well it
was
out of order,’ Lauren said.

‘Oh there’s a shock,’ Bethany said, before making a smoochy sound. ‘Lauren defends her secret love.’

‘Bite me,’ Lauren said, as she flicked Bethany off.

Rat took the shot for the second time and the blue rattled in the jaws of the pocket, but didn’t drop.

‘Righty ho,’ Andy said, as he grabbed his cue. ‘One-four-seven break, here I come.’

Rat sucked a mouthful of orange juice from his carton before moving to stand alongside Lauren. ‘I’m glad we told everyone,’ he smiled.

Bethany huffed, ‘Oh yeah, it was such a
big
secret. We all knew what was going on anyway.’

Bethany was starting to wind Lauren up. Lauren had put up with several of Bethany’s stupid crushes, but now that
she
had a boyfriend, Bethany was acting all jealous.

Bethany’s brother Jake and some of his mates were sitting on a sofa waiting for the next game. Jake started singing: ‘Rat and Lauren sitting in a tree, B-O-N-K-I-N-G.’

Lauren turned her head sharply and glowered at him. ‘Unless you want this cue rammed up your arse, I’d suggest that you
shut
it.’

‘Ooooh, tetchy,’ Jake giggled.

‘Do you want me to make you cry again, baby brother?’ Bethany threatened, suddenly on Lauren’s side again.

Andy missed an easy red. ‘Your shot, Lauren.’

Lauren knew she was hopeless and decided on a radical strategy. There was an unbroken cluster of red balls in the middle of the table and she clattered them as hard as she could.

‘Skill,’ Lauren howled, punching the air as a red ball dropped into a pocket.

‘You are
soooo
jammy,’ Andy tutted.

Even better, one of the flying reds had knocked the pink ball into the jaws of a corner pocket.

‘Come on, baby,’ Rat grinned, as Lauren lined up her next shot. ‘That’s six easy points.’

She smiled as the pink rolled in, but the white ball followed it.

‘Stupid girl,’ Jake yelled gleefully. ‘You should have put some backspin on it.’

Lauren gave a
couldn’t care less
shrug. ‘I’ve only played snooker three times. I don’t understand how to do all that stuff.’

Lauren was sharing a cue with Bethany and as she handed it across, the room went oddly quiet. A bunch of lads who were fighting with Pepperamis, throwing crisps and making light sabre noises all settled back into their seats and tried looking innocent.

Lauren had to look over her shoulder to find the reason: Zara Asker, CHERUB’s newly appointed chairwoman, was walking down the spiral staircase that led into the lounge. Zara spotted Lauren and headed straight towards her.