CHERUB: The General (12 page)

‘Ronan’s a destructive little bugger,’ Lauren smiled, as she shone her torch around.

Rat climbed over the first vending machine blocking the hallway, before peeking out of a window. There was enough light coming from car headlights, flashing blue lamps and torch beams for him to get a good idea of what was occurring. More police were arriving, along with backup teams from the RAF base and even a local TV news van with a satellite dish on top.

‘Crap,’ Lauren said. ‘That’s something we could do without.’

‘Somebody must have tipped the press off,’ Rat nodded. ‘And we can say goodbye to missions for a couple of years if we land a starring role on the evening news …’

They moved down the corridor as fast as darkness and the need to keep quiet would allow. After passing above the reception area they opened a set of doors and found themselves on a gallery overlooking the huge control room where they’d crashed the engineers’ carts a few minutes earlier.

The emergency lights had been turned back on and a mixture of regular and military police officers swarmed around between the consoles on the floor below them.

‘Kids,’ a peak-capped RAF officer said, as her civilian counterpart took flash photographs of the destruction. ‘Planned it all out, tied up the guards … Unbelievable.’

The gallery was exposed, but luckily the flooring was still being laid. Lauren crawled along behind a giant roll of carpet with Rat directly behind her. She had to go up on her knees to open the door at the end of the gallery. The hinge had a squeak, but nobody down below seemed to notice and the pair passed into a bare office.

The narrow room had large square windows along one side and an emergency door leading on to metal fire-escape stairs at one end. The engineers were in the early stages of installing the wiring and reels of cable littered the floor.

‘Mind you don’t trip,’ Rat said, hopping over the cables.

When Lauren reached the fire exit, she stared out of the large window alongside it and cursed their luck. ‘Cops everywhere.’

‘It’s not our night tonight,’ Rat sighed.

They were in a bare room with no hiding places and it could only be a matter of minutes until the police teams sweeping through the building caught up with them. Rat ran to the opposite end of the room, looking out of the windows as he went.

‘I see the Fiat,’ he said. ‘I can’t see anyone down this end. Do you reckon we could jump down?’

Rat grabbed the handle on the side of the plastic window frame and pushed it open. Cold air blasted Lauren’s face as she peered down into the darkness.

‘I’ve dropped from twice that height in training,’ she nodded. ‘Bit of a squeeze-through though.’

Rat quickly closed the window and grabbed another handle on the side of the frame. This made the entire square of glass swivel on a central pivot designed to allow the outside of the glass to be cleaned from indoors.

‘Even
your
big butt should fit through there now,’ Rat said.

‘Smartarse,’ Lauren replied, as she swung her leg up on to the window ledge. Rat quickly flicked on his torch to make sure she wasn’t going to land on anything apart from an empty parking bay. It was a four-metre drop and Lauren couldn’t help groaning as she landed heavily on her ankle.

Rat came down a few seconds later and quickly found his feet. ‘You OK?’ he asked edgily.

‘Twisted,’ Lauren said as Rat helped her up.

Fortunately the little Fiat Punto belonging to one of the guards was parked in front of a hedge less than ten metres away.

‘I’ve got you,’ Rat said, taking the car keys from inside his jacket before grabbing Lauren under the arm and making a dash towards the car. As they got close Rat pressed the plipper to unlock the doors. The car emitted a double blip and all four indicator lights blinked in the darkness.

‘Visual,’ a policeman shouted. ‘The Fiat!’

Lauren moaned in pain, clambering in the back door as Rat fumbled with the ignition key up front. He fought to get the little car into reverse gear as three RAF police officers charged towards them. The swiftest officer grabbed the door handle as Rat lifted the clutch. The door flew open, but the car shot backwards, tearing the officer’s fingers away before the flapping door knocked him down.

Every car has a slightly different feel that takes time to get used to. Rat stalled the engine as he juddered off in the wrong gear.

‘Shite!’ he yelled, as he jangled the key to restart the engine.

‘I thought you knew how to drive,’ Lauren shouted frantically.

‘Your sarcasm
really
helps my concentration,’ Rat shouted back as he found the right gear and made a successful second attempt at driving away.

The front bumper shattered as the car hit the kerb at speed and reared up into the mud. Rat straightened up the steering wheel, floored the accelerator and aimed straight for the fence.

James lay face down on the floor of a speeding police van, plasticuffs tearing into his wrists and four officers sitting on the wooden benches alongside him. The female officer he’d knocked against the wall kept a boot on the back of his head, pressing his face against the floor and forcing him to breathe the smells of urine, dog and whatever else ends up stuck to the bottom of a police van.

‘Here driver,’ one of the cops said loutishly, as he leaned towards a grilled porthole and looked into the cab. ‘Can’t you find some nice bumpy roads for our boy on the floor here?’

The cops were breaking all sorts of rules on the handling of prisoners, but if you assault a police officer you can be sure they won’t treat you nice when they arrest you. Not that James needed any extra bumps: police vans have firm suspension designed for speed not comfort and every pothole or dink in the road sent a jarring pain through the spot on his back where he’d been whacked by the baton.

‘Conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism,’ one of the three male officers said cheerfully. ‘Possession of a deadly weapon, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. You’d better get yourself a good lawyer.’

‘Not to mention a criminal hairstyle,’ the woman added.

As a CHERUB agent James knew he’d never face any of those charges but the ribbing still riled him as laughter filled the steel box. More came when his body flew up and slammed the floor as they rode up over a speed bump at more than thirty miles an hour.

‘Ooopsie daisy!’ someone laughed.

The driver shouted through the grille between the cab and the rear compartment. ‘Was that too fast?’

‘I dunno,’ the female officer said, as she pressed the heel of her boot down a bit harder. ‘We’ll find out if you drive round the block and go over it again.’

‘Quite a pretty boy too,’ one of the men joked. ‘The gays in prison will
love
you.’

James was close to blowing up, but sensible enough to realise that it would be all the excuse they’d need to lash out with their batons and maybe throw in a few volts from their stun guns for good measure.

After a slam from another speed bump the van slowed right down, and while James couldn’t see where they were going it was obvious they were pulling into some kind of parking compound.

‘On your feet, toss-pot,’ the biggest officer ordered, before opening the back doors and jumping out.

James rolled on to his back, but with his hands cuffed behind him it was tricky getting off the floor and jumping out. He looked around and saw that he was in the well lit parking lot at the rear of a police station.

‘Getcha butt inside,’ an officer barked nastily. He poked James in the back, but his body language changed when he saw a superintendent accompanied by another man walking across the tarmac towards them. James was relieved by the sight of Mission Controller, John Jones.

‘Is this your boy?’ the superintendent asked John.

John nodded and looked at the giant officer. ‘Slice his cuffs and return his belongings.’

The female officer looked pissed. ‘What’s going on, boss? The little shit was in the meeting with Bradford. Then he body-checked me and damned nigh threw me down a flight of stairs.’

‘Ours is not to reason why, Catherine,’ the superintendent said firmly. ‘The green-haired boy got away. Anyone who says otherwise can expect the remainder of their police career to be brief and unpleasant. Is that
clear
?’

‘Crystal, boss,’ the woman sighed, shaking her head as another officer sliced the plasticuffs off James’ wrists.

‘Have a nice life, officers,’ James chirped.

‘I don’t care who you are, boy,’ the woman growled. ‘I wouldn’t recommend showing your face around these parts ever again.’

James waved his hand contemptuously. ‘Why don’t you go home and shove a broom handle up your—’

‘Hey, hey,
hey,’
the superintendent interrupted.

‘Don’t make a bloody scene,’ John growled, as he grabbed James by his arm and shoved him towards a Jaguar parked on the opposite side of the car park.

‘My back’s
killing
me,’ James moaned, as he lowered himself into the front passenger seat. ‘Bitch slammed me in the back with her baton.’

‘Sounds fair enough,’ John said sarcastically as he started the engine. ‘Pushing that
nice
lady officer down the stairs.’

James shook his head. ‘She might be small but she certainly paid attention the day they did baton training at the academy.’

‘Oh yeah,’ John smiled. ‘I knew some seriously vicious WPCs when I was on the force and the titchy ones always compensate for their size by acting like hard arses.’

‘What the hell happened back there anyway? Who was running that surveillance? Who made the arrests?’

John waited until he’d negotiated the tightly packed police parking lot and pulled into the street before starting his explanation.

‘I haven’t heard all the details yet, but it comes down to a freak coincidence. Apparently Rich lost a bank card under his Richard Kline alias. He went into the branch to order a replacement, kicked up a bit of a fuss for some reason and it turned out that one of the tellers was a Belfast boy who recognised him as Rich Davis, ex-IRA. He called Special Branch anti-terrorist unit and they put him under surveillance at the address where they sent the replacement card.’

‘When did that happen?’ James asked.

‘Over the last two or three weeks,’ John said, as they stopped at a red light. ‘Pure coincidence: MI5 and the anti-terrorist squad working the same case from different ends.’

‘Have they got enough evidence to nail Davis and Bradford?’

John nodded. ‘They wouldn’t have moved in if they hadn’t. We couldn’t bug the meeting because we had no idea where it was going to be. They obviously did, and as soon as they got the pair of them talking about a terrorist conspiracy they swooped.’

‘Oh well,’ James sighed. ‘Can’t win ‘em all.’

‘And it’s still a result,’ John said. ‘The bad guys will be going down for a long time.’

‘Yeah …’ James huffed. ‘But that would have happened whether I’d been there or not, and I just spent six weeks walking around with this stupid
bloody
hairstyle.’

*

Bethany and Andy stretched the tarpaulin out between them and wrapped it over their shoulders before starting to climb the fence. It was hard to get hold of anything with cold fingers and trainers slippery with mud, but fear drove them upwards.

‘Don’t seem to have seen us,’ Andy said, as he looked back over his shoulder at the guards and torch beams.

‘Won’t take long once they see the giant orange tarp,’ Bethany said.

Smaller feet gave Bethany better purchase on the fence and she reached the point below the razor wire first.

‘OK, ready to drop,’ Andy said.

This was the trickiest part of Andy’s escape plan: holding on to the fence with one hand, while unfurling the tarp and then somehow throwing it over the strands and coils of wire.

‘Ready?’ Andy said. ‘Go.’

They both swung the thick tarp, trying to get it to flick upwards and cover the barbs, but the wind was blowing the wrong way and the tarp tangled hopelessly before a gust blew it on to Bethany. She couldn’t hold the tarp’s weight with her free hand and it knocked her feet out of the rungs, leaving her suspended by two fingers.

Andy tried moving across to grab her, but Bethany was in agony and let go, falling from four metres and grateful for the muddy ground. Andy jumped down and helped pull the crumpled tarpaulin off her head.

‘It’s never gonna work,’ Bethany said, as Andy hauled her up. ‘We’ll never get the tarp over the wires and hold on at the same time.’

‘We could tie the corners to the fence, then go under the tarp and push it up as we climb.’

‘Might work,’ Bethany nodded. ‘There’s holes in the corners. Have you got string?’

‘I hoped you might have some,’ Andy said uneasily.

‘We’re screwed,’ Bethany said, stamping furiously. ‘My clothes are wrecked, I’m completely knackered and my knickers are
soaked
in freezing cold water.’

‘Unless we try and find one of the original holes in the wire,’ Andy suggested. ‘I know roughly where they are.’