Hit Squad (19 page)

It was an amazing transformation – even better than in the kitchen earlier. Tall and male, with her suit trousers now rolled down, she looked at us with cold grey eyes. It was impossible
to tell that she wasn’t Foster.

‘Okay,’ Avery said briskly. ‘Team A into the first car.’ He pulled on a leather jacket that was supposed to make him look like one of Foster’s men. Having met some
of them, I knew that Avery was simply too groomed to be really convincing – but hopefully the security checkpoint guards would only give him a cursory glance. Avery got into the
driver’s seat and opened the door for Amy – as Foster – to sit beside him. Fergus bound my hands loosely behind my back while Nico did the same for Harry. It would be easy enough
to slip off these ropes when we needed to. The point was to get us through the checkpoint looking like Foster’s prisoners.

As I scrambled into the back seat after Harry, Fergus gave my shoulder an anxious squeeze.

‘Be careful,’ he said.

‘We’ll be fine,’ I said. I guess losing Ketty must have really shaken him up, but surely Fergus realised we’d been going on challenging missions just like this for the
past six months. I had my Medusa power back. I could extend my force field around everyone in seconds if the need arose.

Avery drove off. He took the bumpy track slowly, coming to a stop at the security gate. Close to, we could all see there were two men inside the checkpoint hut, both dressed in smart blue
uniforms. Neither were visibly armed, but knowing Foster I was sure both were carrying guns.

Ed appeared in my head.
How many guards?
he thought-spoke.

Two guards. Concealed weapons
, I replied.

Thanks.
Ed broke the connection. He was waiting with the others around the corner. He, Nico and the rest of the second team would distract and capture the men at the checkpoint . . .
after Amy – in disguise as Foster – had got Avery, Harry and me inside the building.

One of the checkpoint guards sauntered over as Avery wound down his window. The guard peered into the car.

‘Evening, sir,’ he said to Amy. He glanced over his shoulder at me and Harry in the back seat. ‘Do you want me to take the new kids in for you?’

‘Er . . . no thanks,’ Amy said.

I froze. Her voice wasn’t low enough. And she sounded too hesitant and polite. The real Foster would have barked out his refusal.

The man seemed to sense something wasn’t quite right too.

‘Are you sure, sir?’ he said, an ingratiating tone to his voice. ‘I took the last lot inside. I know where they go.’

Amy was now turning red in the face. For goodness’ sake. I dug my knee into the back of her seat. She needed to get a grip.

Unfortunately the checkpoint guard spotted what I was doing.

‘Need me to teach this one a lesson, sir?’ he asked, jerking his head in my direction.

‘There’s nothing you could teach me except how to be an idiot,’ I snapped, the words flying out of me before I could bite them back.

Amy said nothing.
No.
Now the guard looked really startled, not just at my outburst but at Foster’s lack of reaction.

I caught Harry’s eye.
No, no, no.
Everything was going wrong, even before we’d begun.

There was a moment of tense silence. Amy was still silent – and bright red in the face. Any second now the guard was going to guess this wasn’t really Foster. I had to do something
to make him believe it was. And fast.

‘You’re all a bunch of losers,’ I snarled. ‘Especially
you
, Foster
.’
I prodded my elbow into the back of Amy’s seat again. Hopefully she would
realise I was deliberately trying to provoke her – to give her a reason to get angry and to show her – or, rather, Foster’s – temper in action.

Another second passed, then Amy took the bait.

‘Shut up!’ She made her hand a fist and swiped it across my face.

I engaged my force field just in time, so the blow brushed over me like a breeze. I pretended to reel away, howling in pain.

‘Stop it!’ Harry’s yell sounded completely authentic.

I held my breath. Had Amy’s display of violence convinced the guard she was Foster?

‘Get out of the way!’ Amy shouted at the guard. ‘Your job is to stay here, not chaperone kids into the complex.’

I looked up. Chastened, the guard was backing away from the car, waving us through. Avery revved the engine and we drove off. As he wound up the window again, Amy gave a sigh of relief.

‘That was close,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I, Dylan?’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘And don’t relax just yet. There’s still a long way to go.’

We reached the front of the complex. Amy drew herself up and rapped on the door. Another guard in a blue uniform opened it.

‘Take these two to join the other kids,’ Amy ordered. She sounded cold and hard, just like Foster.

‘Yes, sir.’ The guard nodded and led me and Harry away, along a bleak concrete corridor. Everything was in motion. Amy and Avery were going to try and get to the communications nerve
centre of the building while Nico and the others dealt with the checkpoint. My job – and Harry’s – was to rescue the hit squad children. I gripped the ends of the rope that was
still wound loosely around my wrists. I had to hope that the guards didn’t spot it wasn’t properly tied.

The guard ushered us down a narrow flight of steps and into a basement room. It was as bleak and cold as the rest of the building – empty apart from another guard who sat in front of a row
of computers.

I peered at the screens. There were four computers altogether, all showing pictures from webcams trained on different rooms. One revealed the room we were in now. The next two showed
bleak-looking cells, both containing two low camp beds and a child of about ten or eleven sitting on each one. These must be the kids Foster had conned into his hit squad. I exchanged a look with
Harry. Now all we had to do was work out exactly where those rooms were – and somehow get to the kids inside them.

The guard prodded my shoulder. ‘This way,’ he said.

As I turned to follow Harry, I caught sight of the fourth computer on the end of the row. I stopped, stunned by what I was looking at. The guard prodded me. I had to walk on, but my head was
spinning.

Surely what I’d seen wasn’t –
couldn’t
be – true.

Could it?

We waited around the corner, under cover of some trees. Ed had just made contact with Dylan and we knew there were two guards at the checkpoint, each armed with a concealed
weapon. I turned to Fergus. My stepdad was wearing an anxious frown. It struck me, not for the first time, that Fergus really wasn’t cut out for this kind of mission. He belonged in a school,
where the biggest conflicts he’d ever get involved in would be arguments with rebellious students over doing homework on time or the proper wearing of their school uniforms.

Military-style rescue operations weren’t his thing. And yet here he was, trying to help us do what we needed to do in order to save the children Foster had recruited to his hit squad and
prevent him from developing the Medusix drug.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.

Fergus looked at me, startled. ‘Yes, er . . .’ He turned to Ed. ‘Shouldn’t you be attempting to contact Dylan or Amy yet?’

I knew he was worrying about not having a more traditional way of keeping in touch, anxious about relying on Ed’s ability to communicate through remote telepathy.

‘We agreed five minutes,’ Ed said patiently. ‘I have to give them time to get past the checkpoint. If they find me in their heads while they’re in the middle of dealing
with Foster’s guards, it might put them off their stride.’ He paused. ‘Especially Amy.’

I sighed. Ed was still really unhappy that the rest of us had insisted Amy be allowed to join us on this mission. I could understand why he was protective of her, but the truth was Amy had an
amazing Medusa skill. Her ability to appear identical to Foster himself was the single biggest advantage over Foster’s men we had – and the best option for getting her, Avery, Harry and
Dylan inside the complex without anyone suspecting our plan to rescue Foster’s latest hit squad recruits and blow up the lab.

We stood in silence for a few more minutes. Cal was hovering above the ground. I’d noticed he deployed his ability to fly like that whenever he was nervous. Not that Cal would admit he was
scared.

As I glanced again at Ed, his expression took on that faraway look he gets when he’s communicating telepathically with someone.

He blinked, presumably breaking the connection.

‘Ed?’

‘It’s Amy,’ he said. ‘She says everything’s going to plan. Dylan and Harry have been taken off to the hit squad kids and she and Avery are heading for the comms
centre now. The guards were completely convinced she was Foster.’

He turned away, making remote contact again.

‘Goodness, that’s such a lot for Amy to deal with,’ Fergus said, a fretful edge to his voice.

‘She’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Once she’s got to the communications centre and ordered the alarm system to be disabled, we’ll be able to get through no
problem.’

‘I still don’t see why I can’t just fly us in,’ Cal grunted.

I rolled my eyes. ‘We’ve been over this,’ I said. ‘If anyone spots us in the air, we’ll be open targets. Even though we know Foster and the Lovistov guards
aren’t here right now, his other men are bound to be fully aware of our Medusa skills. They’ll be on alert as it is.’

‘Not long now,’ Ed said. ‘Amy says they’re almost at the comms centre. She’s going to give me the directions to the lab as soon as she and Avery can work out where
it is.’

Another silence fell. I tried to keep my focus on the job in hand. The rest of the mission was a huge challenge: while Amy and Avery disabled the alarms and Harry and Dylan found Foster’s
hit squad recruits, the rest of us had to try and reach the lab area. This was bound to be the most thoroughly guarded part of the complex and I was going to need all my strength and nerve to get
us there and destroy it, especially as things stood – with Cal feeling disgruntled about us not making more use of his flying ability, Fergus looking downright terrified and Ed all distracted
with worry over Amy.

However, even as I tried to force myself to go over the plan again, my thoughts – as they had done so often in the past couple of days – went to Ketty. It was the same thing as usual
. . . I’d manage not to think about her for maybe a minute or two at a time. Then the memories – and the pain – came flooding back, worse than ever. The same three questions kept
circling my head like vultures.

How could she be dead?

How could the world carry on without her in it?

How would I survive?

There were no answers to these questions. Just a horrible dark hollow feeling in my head and my guts when I asked them.

‘Okay.’ Ed’s voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘Amy says that they can’t turn off the communication link to the checkpoint from inside the complex.’

‘Oh no.’ Fergus’s eyes widened with alarm. ‘But we
have
to get past those guards. And . . . and Avery said they were armed . . .’

I glanced at Cal. It was kind of funny hearing an adult get so worked up about something that really wasn’t going to be a problem. Cal grinned back at me.

‘It’s cool,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

We crept through the trees until we were directly behind the checkpoint hut. Cal took hold of Ed’s wrist on one side and Fergus’s on the other. He caught my eye.

‘Just in case,’ he said.

I nodded. The last thing we wanted was to draw attention to ourselves but it was good that Cal could get the others away from the scene in seconds, if need be.

‘Okay.’ Ed broke his mind-reading connection. ‘Amy says the CCTV showing the checkpoint is down. You can go, Nico.’

I darted away from the others, running right up to the edge of the checkpoint hut. I focused on the barbed wire fence that stretched along the boundary of the complex. Then I used my telekinesis
to raise a large branch from the ground opposite and hurled it against the fence. It crashed against the wire mesh, then thudded to the ground.

‘What was that?’ said one of the guards inside the hut.

As he spoke, more noises sounded from behind the hut – created, I knew, by Cal, Fergus and Ed. Our plan was to divide the two guards, to make it easier for us to deal with them.

I raised the branch telekinetically and flung it against the fence again.

Footsteps from inside. Both guards appeared. One immediately sped round to the back of the hut investigating the sound that had come from that direction. The other stood where he was, staring at
the branch I’d thrown. There was no wind in the air – it was a still, calm evening – and he was obviously wondering how the branch had travelled to the fence. He reached inside
his jacket and drew out a gun.

Gotcha.

With a swift flick of my wrist, I tugged the gun out of his hand. It was simple, mostly because he wasn’t expecting it.

I tossed the gun high in the sky, then flung it far out into the woods beyond the complex. The guard spun round, his eyes wide with panic. He reached for his radio. With another firm flick, I
wrenched both the handset and the receiver off his belt and flung them in the opposite direction. The guard staggered backwards. He opened his mouth to yell out. Before he could make a sound, I
picked him telekinetically off the ground and sent him round to the back of the hut. He whirled through the air. I followed after. The others were running towards us. I could just see the second
guard, bound and gagged, behind them. I smiled as I ran. Ed had obviously managed to hold the man’s mind long enough for Cal and Fergus to tie him up. I set my guard down in front of them.
Immediately Ed made eye contact and the guard froze. Fergus whipped out a pair of handcuffs, while Cal bound the man’s ankles.