CHERUB: The General (10 page)

Bradford lowered his head and ground his palms against his temples. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting from you, Rich,’ he said. ‘But I’m not looking to rob banks and I’m certainly not looking for a partner.’

‘Fine,’ Rich said, in a tone that made it perfectly clear that it wasn’t. ‘Ain’t no point talking in circles. There’s no basis for us to work together.’

Rich glanced at his watch and looked over at the bodyguard slumped on the end of his bed.

‘Pack my things,’ he said contemptuously. ‘No reason to stay here.’

Bradford was a confident man who was used to running the show, but he now sat with his elbows on the table and his face gaunt. He’d put all of his hopes into the idea of turning SAG into a terrorist organisation and Rich represented his only realistic chance of doing so.

‘You can leave now, Mr Bradford,’ Rich said firmly. ‘I have to make a private call.’

James kept up a sombre appearance as he opened the door of Rich’s suite, but he was smiling on the inside: he’d planted the tracker, which would enable MI5 to track Rich’s movements until its tiny internal battery ran out of juice. He’d more than proved his loyalty to Bradford when he flattened the bouncer and the fact that negotiations broke down so quickly meant that SAG had no chance of building a terrorist arsenal any time soon.

As James’ boot hit the thick green carpet in the corridor, he glanced down the hallway and saw a policewoman in full protective gear lean out of a stairwell. She hid so quickly that James thought he might have imagined it, but he was on edge as he started down the corridor with Bradford alongside.

‘What went wrong?’ James asked edgily, as he cast an anxious glance over his shoulder.

‘I’m not a fool,’ Bradford stuttered. ‘I knew we’d need money, but I don’t think Rich was looking for a partner. I think he’d end up being the one that called all the shots.’

‘Reckon you’re right,’ James nodded, as the doors of two rooms on opposite sides of the corridor in front burst open.

‘Police, freeze!’

More cops started pouring off the fire stairs at the end of the corridor behind them.

‘Bollocks,’ Bradford shouted.

James couldn’t understand. This wasn’t part of any plan he’d seen and what could have changed in the two and a half hours since he’d last spoken to his mission controller?

The five boys were in high spirits as they raced towards the front entrance of the air traffic control centre. Rat led the way around the final corner and grabbed his slingshot as soon as he saw the fancy BMW parked in front of the main doors.

Slowing to walking pace, his first shot punched through the front windscreen, while the other lads followed up with shots that demolished all four side windows. A few that missed glass left huge dents in the metalwork and smashed one of the headlamps.

‘Yeeeeeah baby!’ Jake shouted, as he jumped on to the bonnet and ripped off the windscreen wiper.

Ronan and Kevin tore off door mirrors as Jake scratched up the paintwork along the side of the car with the wiper and Rat clambered up and stamped through the glass sunroof. The girls were waiting in the doorway as Rat jumped down.

‘Having fun?’ Bethany asked.

‘Hell yeah!’ Andy shouted, as he tried levering off the petrol filler cap. ‘If I can get in here, we’ll blow this baby sky high!’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Lauren yelled. ‘They’ll hear the explosion for miles and we’ll have the cops on our arses. Gather round, listen up.’

They formed a little huddle near the doorway, but Ronan, Jake and Kevin had enjoyed trashing the car and couldn’t stop giggling.

‘Remember,’ Lauren said firmly. ‘This has
got
to look like a bunch of kids went crazy, attacked the security guards and trashed the joint. You’ve got fifteen minutes. This is a state-of-the-art facility so make the vandalism look good, but
don’t
go burning the place down or start having a go at the government’s brand new thirty-million-pound computer system. Understood?’

‘We’ll try our best,’ Ronan laughed.

Lauren gave the eleven-year-old a shock, grabbing him by his muddy jacket and shoving him against a plate glass window. ‘I’ve had enough of you tonight,’ she growled. ‘So unless you fancy going head first down a flight of stairs, I suggest you shut your mouth and start doing
exactly
what I tell you.’

Bethany led the way inside. Jake and Kevin charged into a gents toilet off the reception area and stuffed the sink’s holes and overflows with toilet tissue before turning all the taps on full blast. While the basins flooded, they launched powerful Karate kicks at wall-mounted soap dispensers. They splintered open, spraying pink goo in all directions, including on to the boys’ already muddy clothes.

‘WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ Kevin chanted, skidding precariously on the soapy floor tiles as he chased Jake back into the reception.

Bethany was trashing the reception desk while Lauren was wading through indoor greenery, ripping up some plants and blasting others with white carbon dioxide powder from a fire extinguisher while singing
Let It Snow,
badly.

‘Where did Rat and them go?’ Jake asked.

Lauren pointed to the back of reception and hooked her hand to the right. ‘Main control room, I think.’

Kevin and Jake bolted down a thirty-metre corridor, passing a glass-sided room containing the enormous mainframe computer which controlled the entire centre. The pair gasped as they found themselves in a vast space with a wooden ceiling high above, a sloped floor leading down to a bank of massive display screens and rows of identical monitoring stations which would eventually be used by the controllers.

Some screens were already attached and had been left switched on overnight to bed in the new software. In other areas, the terminals were still being wired into the main computer and the floors were tangled with a mass of unfinished computer and electrical cabling.

‘Man, I wish we were allowed to trash this bit!’ Jake said, as he read a number off an active screen, grabbed one of the controller’s headsets and pressed the speak button. ‘Flight AQ71, descend to two hundred metres and do a barrel roll, over.’

Kevin burst out laughing, but they were both stunned by the reply coming out of the speaker alongside the screen. ‘AQ71 pilot to control. Please repeat instruction, has control switched to new frequency, over?’

‘Ooops!’ Jake said, as he threw down the headset and jolted backwards as if he’d been electrocuted. ‘I never knew the system was live.’

Kevin laughed. ‘You’ll never get your navy shirt if you bring down an airliner.’

‘Shut up,’ Jake said. ‘And don’t tell
anyone
about this.’

As he hurried away, there was a huge crash of glass in the conference room off to one side and they heard Rat screaming and yelling, ‘What a shot!’

‘What happened?’ Kevin shouted, as he raced into the room behind Jake.

But he didn’t need to ask, because he could see a long conference table showered with chunks of glass where an elaborate light fitting had crashed down on top of it.

‘You should have seen it,’ Andy gasped.

‘One shot at the base and the whole thing came down,’ Rat said proudly. ‘I’m the master of the slingshot!’

Jake saw a line of wheeled metal trolleys filled with tools which belonged to the engineers fitting out the control room. He pulled open one of the drawers and flung out a bunch of Allen keys and screwdrivers.

‘We could race these,’ Kevin noted. ‘You know the slope in the main control room?’

‘Yeah,’ Rat said excitedly. ‘We might kill ourselves, but what the hell.’

Kevin, Jake, Rat and Andy pulled the trolleys out of the conference room and lined them up at the top of the sloping pathway down the middle of the control room. It was covered with carpet tiles and led all the way to the front of the room, with rows of controllers’ screens branching off on either side.

‘Go!’ Rat shouted, as he leaned over his trolley and kicked against the back wall.

‘Cheat!’ Jake shouted. ‘I wasn’t ready, you Aussie butt licker.’

The trolleys were around waist height and packed with tools and equipment which rattled like crazy. The slope was steep and large rubber wheels enabled them to gather considerable speed as the four boys clattered towards the front wall.

Rat led the way, but his trolley snagged on the stuck-up corner of a carpet tile. It spun three hundred and sixty degrees before crashing into the side of a console. Andy rammed him from behind and crashed to the floor as his trolley tumbled over on top of him, but not before Jake and Kevin squeezed through the remaining gap at speed.

The two lads were determined to make it to the bottom first and the ride turned into a game of chicken as they picked up speed while getting ever closer to the bottom of the slope. Both lads dived clear, barely a second before the pair of trolleys smacked into the wall.

Lauren and Bethany had arrived at the back of the control room, both covered in powder from fire extinguishers.

‘What the hell,’ Lauren laughed, as she saw the metal trolleys with their drawers hanging open and bits of rogue computer equipment scattered all along the slope.

The four boys were quiet for a few seconds as they stood up and inspected their injuries, but they were all OK.

‘Good job we jumped off,’ Kevin said, as he inspected a huge dent in the wooden panelling where his trolley had hit the front wall. ‘That could have been my head.’

‘Wouldn’t have made much difference,’ Jake snorted.

As Kevin flicked Jake off, Rat looked along the aisle between two rows of consoles and noticed an engineer’s open tool case and one of the display screens with the access panel underneath left open. This wouldn’t have grabbed his attention, but for the steam rising off the cup of coffee standing on the desktop above it.

‘Lauren,’ Rat shouted. ‘I think we’ve got a problem.’

‘What?’ Lauren asked curiously as she strode briskly down the slope towards the scene.

Rat dabbed his fingertip in the cardboard cup. ‘Black coffee still almost boiling. One of the engineers must have been working late.’

‘I
thought
that BMW you boys trashed was a bit flash for a security guard,’ Bethany noted.

Jake groaned. ‘Well why didn’t you say so at the time?’

‘We’d better hunt him down,’ Andy said.

‘What’s the point?’ Lauren said, shaking her head. ‘There’s got to be two hundred rooms in this building and he’ll have called the cops already.’

‘Great,’ Kevin moaned. ‘We’ve got no transport and we’re five kilometres from where Dennis is picking us up.’

‘Ronan,’ Rat shouted into his phone. ‘Where are you, mate? You what? Right … Right, I understand. You’d better get your butt down here sharpish.’

‘What’s up with him?’ Lauren asked anxiously, as Rat snapped his phone shut.

‘Ronan went up to the first floor and started trashing a refreshment area, but he saw a woman running along a hallway.’

‘A woman as well,’ Jake gasped. ‘What was she, a cleaning lady or something?’

‘The engineer was a woman,’ Rat said, shaking his head.

Bethany glowered at her brother. ‘You’re
such
a sexist pig.’

Lauren gave Bethany a little shove, as if to say
don’t you two start arguing now,
then she looked at Rat. ‘So why didn’t Ronan tell us?’

‘It’s just happened,’ Rat explained. ‘He tackled the woman, but she got away and now she’s barricaded herself into an office. But she dropped her handbag, so Ronan checked the call log on her phone. She called an emergency number, eleven minutes ago.’

‘Must have heard us smashing up the car,’ Lauren sighed. ‘They could be here any second. We’ve got to get out of here.’

As Lauren said this, all the lights and screens in the giant room flickered before going out. The control room was below ground level with no windows and the dark space turned eerily silent as the air conditioning system and the whirring fans inside hundreds of computers came to a stop.

‘Someone pulled the electricity
and
the backup generator,’ Rat said, his voice echoing around the room.

‘OK,’ Lauren said, trying to sound calmer than she was. ‘They’re probably going to be military police, which means they’re tough and they’re gonna know what they’re doing. I’d say our best chance is if we split up.’

‘Agreed,’ Rat said, and the others all murmured as they heard Ronan running down the hallway and bursting through the doors.

‘I just ran through reception and saw them,’ Ronan gasped, in a state of complete panic. ‘There’s two vanloads of soldiers, plus coppers, and they’re unloading dogs from the back of their vans. We have got to get the
hell
out of here.’

*

James had been arrested a few times. It was never pleasant: the cops shoved you around, then you’d spend for ever stuck in an evil-smelling cell with nothing to eat or drink and a toilet that was invariably busted.

So he didn’t fancy getting pulled and the cops bursting out of the hotel rooms in front of him would take a few seconds to get into position, so he sprinted forwards with no idea whether Bradford would have the presence of mind to go with him.