Atlantis United

by Gerard Siggins

  Chapter 23

  Craig snorted. ‘5-0! You’ve got to be joking. Sure, Kalvin can’t run very quickly.’

  ‘Kalvin won’t need to run quickly. He will be playing in goal and I will be the outfield player. To give you a chance I will lower the crossbar on your goal by one metre too,’ signalling to Kalvin who made the adjustment on his console.

  ‘And we will play fifteen minutes each way,’ finished the Professor as he went through a series of pre-match exercises and stretches.

  Joe got the rest of the team together. ‘This has got to be a joke,’ sniffed Craig. ‘One old guy in golden boots and Frankenstein in goal. We’ll murder them.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Kim. ‘We’re not exactly world-beaters at football ourselves. And how do you think he got to be a soccer coach anyway?’

  ‘You play in goal, Craig,’ suggested Joe. ‘You’re the tallest and are used to diving in tennis.’

  Craig shrugged. ‘OK. But if I don’t get to touch the ball in the first half I want to come out for the second.’

  The teams lined up – Joe put himself at the back of a diamond formation, with Jess up front, and Ajit and Kim on the wings – before Luce, who had come back outside at the professor’s request, blew the whistle for the game to start.

  Jess first tapped the ball to Ajit who set off on a run. The professor seemed happy to let him do so and moved inside to mark Kim.

  Kalvin came out towards Ajit, reducing the area he had to shoot at, but Ajit responded by passing the ball to his left where he had spotted Joe running into space. With all he had learned from the Professor over the previous day running through his head, Joe gathered the ball, pushed it a little wide and forward, and lifted his left leg. He connected with the ball perfectly and watched as it sailed towards the top corner of the net.

  Joe had already half-turned to go back to half-way for the restart when Kalvin, previously a lumbering giant, executed a move that would have been hard even for whatever weird-looking creature would result from a cross between a cheetah and a salmon. The doorkeeper raced across the box, leaping high in the air and stretching his enormous arm out. He extended his fingers fully and arched his back in time to tip the ball just over the crossbar.

  Joe, and the rest of his team-mates, were stunned.

  ‘How did he…?’ gasped Kim.

  Kalvin unleashed an enormous grin. ‘So, who says I’m too slow?’ he laughed.

  Joe ran to collect the ball and take the corner kick. He checked which of his team was the best positioned to receive a pass.

  He was astonished to see the Professor was actually standing on the half-way line, not bothering to help out in defence.

  Joe swung the ball into the penalty area, where it fell nicely to Ajit, who took the ball right up to Kalvin before side-footing it to Jess.

  The little striker rushed in and placed it as far away from Kalvin as she could, but again the giant doorkeeper was able to up his pace and dive across the goal to collect the ball.

  ‘Hard luck, Jess,’ called Joe. ‘You’ll beat him next time.’

  Kalvin walked out to the end of his area with the ball at his feet before picking it up. He bounced the ball twice, all the while watching the professor, who was being marked closely by Joe and Ajit.

  He rolled the ball towards the group, and the Professor came out to meet it. Joe went across him to tackle, but was surprised when the ball disappeared from view and was next seen behind the Professor.

  ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Always watch my feet,’ laughed the professor.

  The aged academic skipped past Jess and zeroed in on the goal. Ajit tried to tackle him, but again was too slow for his tricky feet.

  The Professor paused for half a second, looking at Craig and the goal he was defending. He seemed to be making calculations in his head, before gently lifting his right foot and whipping it across the ball, which looped into the air over Craig before zipping down and past him into the net.

  ‘How did he do that?’ complained Craig. ‘That’s black magic, that is.’

  Joe winced at his team-mate’s childish behaviour and told him to get the ball back to Kim who was ready to kick-off.

  The Professor smiled and trotted back to half-way. Kim rolled the ball to Ajit, who was stunned to see that the Professor had suddenly accelerated into a sprint and stolen the ball off his toes.

  Again, the elderly gentleman ran like someone a quarter of his age, dropping his shoulder and swerving past Joe before firing a ball along the ground at such a speed that Craig had no chance of getting down to stop it.

  ‘That’s 2-0 and we’re only playing three minutes,’ complained Jess as she met Joe at half-way. ‘The old man is unbelievable.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not as old as he looks, or maybe he just eats a lot of that beetroot and hummus that Luce is always pushing on us.’

  The rest of the first half followed a similar pattern, with the youngsters struggling to catch the sprightly soccer coach, and whenever they got a chance to shoot there was the giant doorkeeper barring their way to goal.

  As half-time approached, and Craig was collecting the ball from his net for the fifth time, he asked the Professor a question about something that had been bugging him all through the half.

  ‘Hey, Professor,’ he called. ‘Why is there a long net to stop the ball at your end, and nothing at this end.’

  Professor Kossuth looked puzzled at first, but then smiled.

  ‘Why, of course we don’t need a net behind that goal. Sure, I have never once had a shot off-target in almost twenty years…’

  Chapter 24

  The five students sat on the grass for the half-time break, guzzling bottles of water that Kelly had thoughtfully brought out to them.

  ‘That was unbelievable,’ said Kim. ‘He’s so fit, and so fast.’

  They stared across at the Professor, who was spending the interval doing push-ups and stretches.

  ‘His shots are amazing,’ said Joe. ‘He seems to line them up for a split-second and has it all worked out to the nearest centimetre. I don’t think there’s any way we can stop him scoring if he gets to shoot. So, we should try to stop him shooting.’

  ‘That’s easier said than done, Joe,’ said Ajit. ‘He’s stronger than you’d think and once he has the ball at his feet it’s like it’s stuck there on the end of a piece of string.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I have a plan,’ replied Joe.

  ‘Would you like to change ends for the second half?’ asked Luce. ‘Obviously we should do it, but if you guys are kicking into the sea-end goal there may be some “balls overboard”.’

  Craig frowned. ‘We’ll play into the sea goal, thank you. And we won’t need any nets.’

  ‘All right,’ said Luce, ‘but remember the rule. If you kick it into the ocean you swim after it.’

  The Professor kicked off the second half, although he didn’t have anyone to kick it to, so he was – strictly speaking – breaking the rules.

  The four student outfield players had decided their best chance was to surround the Professor and prevent him going anywhere with the ball. They each took a position on the compass and refused to let him past, with the two nearest also ready to cover.

  The Professor was intrigued by their tactics and found it quite a challenge. He tried everything – flicking the ball in the air to try to distract them, pushing the ball through a gap, back-heeling the ball and trying to recover it by running backwards – but each time the children recovered and again locked him in their trap.

  ‘Bravo,’ he called out, after three or four minutes of play going around in circles. ‘This is a very shrewd manoeuvre and may even work in a short game such as we are playing. But remember it is a very warm day and you will tire yourselves out very quickly playing such tactics. But, for now, you have mastered me.’

  And with that, the Professor passed the ball straight to Jess, who needed no encouragement to hare away towards the goal. The youn
g striker moved to fire the ball to Kalvin’s right, but shifted at the last second and rammed it hard to his left.

  Jess knew Kalvin was a lot faster than he had seemed at first, but this time he was just late enough reacting to her switch to give her a chance. The ball thundered off the inside of the post and bounced into the net.

  Jess was swamped by her team-mates, even Craig, who had run the length of the pitch to add his congratulations.

  ‘OK, OK, let’s get back playing,’ she urged. ‘We’re still 5-1 down.’

  The Professor was itching to restart the game, but waited for his young opponents to get back in position. He tipped off, immediately making a run in on goal, and was about to unleash a kick when Joe came in from the side, flicked the ball off the Professor’s toe and side-footed it up-field.

  This time it was the turn of Ajit to collect the ball, but the youngster this time hared off in the direction of the corner flag with his yellow shirt blazing in the sun. Kalvin was puzzled by this and made to follow the attacker.

  He left just enough space for Ajit to thunder the ball past him into the penalty area where Kim came rushing in to control the ball and place it, with the side of her foot, in the empty net.

  ‘Two,’ screamed Craig. ‘Come on now, Atlantis United, we have these old guys on the run.’

  But try as they might, the young fivesome just couldn’t create any more chances to score. Luce told Craig that there was less than half a minute left to play when he gathered the ball and shaped to kick it up the field.

  The goalkeeper spotted that his opposite man had come up to the edge of his penalty box to call some instruction out to the Professor, so Craig decided to take advantage.

  He dropped the ball on to his right foot and kicked it as hard as he could. The ball landed about five metres in front of Kalvin and bounced over his head. The giant goalie realised what was happening and worked out that the ball wasn’t moving fast enough. He raced back three or four strides before diving straight at the ball. It was just a metre or two from the goal when he connected with his huge, clenched fist.

  ‘Oh no,’ called Joe, as the ball flew up in the air. The players all watched as it climbed into the sky, eight, nine, ten metres up, and started to descend.

  Kalvin got back on to his line in case the ball dropped back into play, but he needn’t have worried. The ball finally landed on the crossbar, took another bounce into the air, and fell into the Caribbean Sea.

  ‘Tee hee, that’s Craig going for a swim so,’ chuckled the Professor.

  ‘No way!’ replied the goalkeeper. ‘My shot was on target – it was Kalvin who knocked it into the ocean.’

  Luce strode to the edge of the island and looked out to sea, where the ball was bobbing slowly away.

  ‘I think Craig is right, Kalvin, it was your fault, so you must retrieve the ball,’ she said.

  Craig had a huge grin on his face.

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing that big lad getting his feet wet,’ he chuckled as his exhausted team-mates sat around on the grass, delighted that the game was over.

  But Kalvin had the last laugh. Out of the pocket of his enormous overcoat he lifted the console and twisted one of the knobs as he pointed at the ball, bobbing in the sea. The ball shot up in the air and flew, as if it had wings, all the way back to the island. It dropped at the feet of Kalvin who, with a flick, passed it to Craig.

  ‘No way,’ complained Craig. ‘I hope you would have told him to use that controller if I had kicked it out.’

  ‘Maybe,’ smiled Luce. ‘Maybe not.’

  Chapter 25

  The students enjoyed their afternoon off, lazing around in the sun and taking dips in the warm sea. Jess and Craig were the strongest swimmers and had races out to a football that Kalvin had helpfully kicked into the water.

  Swimming off Atlantis was a bit different to a normal island as there was no beach, and no shallows to paddle in. It was like jumping into a giant swimming pool that only had a deep end, so the other three, being less confident swimmers, stayed close to shore.

  Joe got bored splashing around after a while and decided to explore the island that he had only seen briefly on that first morning in Clew Bay. Jess and Craig were still twenty metres out to sea, and Ajit and Kim were playing water-polo with another of the footballs, so he wandered off on his own.

  ‘Be careful if you go up near the cliffs, Joe,’ called Kalvin, who seemed to be acting as their life guard-cum-babysitter for the afternoon.

  ‘I will,’ called Joe, as he set off at a trot up the slope which gradually steepened as it neared the top. He turned and looked back down at the island and marvelled at the idea of creating an occasionally-submarine artificial island that could have a football pitch on its roof.

  ‘Victor’s obviously a genius, and a brilliant businessman, but he’s also a bit mad,’ he chuckled to himself.

  He walked the last few steps to the top of the island, taking Kalvin’s advice and steering clear of the cliff edge. He sat down and gazed out at the ocean and pinched himself, as he had done several times since he had come to Atlantis Island.

  ‘The lads back in Woodstock are probably hugging themselves to keep warm, training out in the wind and the rain while I’m lazing around in the Caribbean,’ he thought. ‘They probably don’t miss me at all – on the pitch anyway – and Robbie’s still wondering when he’s going to get a call from that scout.’

  He closed his eyes and thought back to home, and all the things he missed. He didn’t want to feel too homesick, but he enjoyed thinking about his mum’s shepherd’s pie, and what might be happening on his favourite TV zombie show.

  Being tired from his efforts in the football match, and nice and warm from the sun, Joe soon dozed off, where he continued to dream of undead monsters who devoured meat and potato pies.

  ‘Joe! Are you all right,’ came the call that woke him up. It was Kalvin at the bottom of the hill. The other four kids were out of the water, wrapped in towels, and standing next to the cottage. It was also quite a bit darker, and he saw the blazing sun had turned bright red and was hovering just above the horizon.

  ‘It gets dark very quickly here,’ called Kalvin, ‘Get down here and we’ll head inside for food.’

  Joe stood up and took one last look over the top of the cliffs where he was astonished to see the same flickering lights he had seen the week before.

  ‘Kalvin,’ he called out, ‘Those lights are here again, can you get Luce to come up here quickly?’

  The giant pushed a button on his pager and Luce and two other Atlantis crew emerged out through the door of the cottage within thirty seconds.

  ‘It’s Joe – he’s seen it again,’ Kalvin told them as they rushed up the slope.

  The youngster pointed out to where he had seen the strange flickering in the dusk sky.

  ‘Yes, I see it too,’ said Luce. ‘OK, Joe, you go straight down below please. Now.’

  The Atlantis manager stared at the sky before taking a small pair of binoculars out of her pocket and peering closely at the lights.

  ‘Right, Kalvin, we need to submerge, and quickly. Can you tidy away those goals and let’s get the show on the road. I’ll go straight to the bridge but we need to be under water in five minutes – max.’

  Chapter 26

  Atlantis sank beneath the waves four minutes and twenty-three seconds later, by which time Joe, Craig and Ajit were back in their quarters. They were all a bit rattled by what had happened and Craig and Ajit renewed their squabble about whose turn it was to have a shower.

  Joe decided to leave them to it and lay back on his pillow. Something was annoying him about the last few moments on the cliff-top, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He flicked through a magazine and tried to ignore Craig and Ajit.

  Ajit came out of the shower first and sat on the edge of his bed, towelling his hair.

  ‘So, it was those funny lights again, Joe? What do you think they are?’

  ‘I don’t know,
Aj, I haven’t a clue but Luce seems to be worried about them…’

  Joe stopped. He had called the lights ‘them,’ but Kalvin and Luce had called them ‘it’. They must know what it is. He explained this to Ajit.

  ‘Do you think it is some sort of plane following us?’ wondered Joe. ‘It’s a bit low in the sky to be a satellite, and too high to be a ship.’

  ‘It could be something like a drone,’ suggested Ajit. ‘Though it must have some powerful battery to follow us across the Atlantic.’

  ‘Maybe there’s a ship following it and recharging the batteries,’ wondered Joe. ‘Or two drones taking turns.’

  ‘Or maybe it’s like the whole island and has a little solar panel?’ added Ajit.

  Once Joe had finished his shower he dressed quickly in his black tracksuit and went to find Luce. She was on the bridge with the captain, so Joe knocked and waited for her to open the door.

  He could hear raised voices, angry voices, before Luce finally came to answer Joe’s knock.

  ‘What is it?’ she snapped.

  ‘Do you know what the lights are?’ he replied.

  Luce paused before answering. ‘We have an idea.’

  ‘Is it a drone?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Why do you suspect that?’ asked Luce, who had turned away from Joe.

  ‘Because you called the lights “it”, not “them”,’ he told her.

  Luce stared back at Joe and shrugged.

  ‘That’s very clever of you. And yes, we do think it is a drone. However, some sort of electronic masking has been used that stops our radar seeing it. It’s very worrying because it shows whoever is following us has some very slick technology, and therefore plenty of money.

  ‘Can you keep this from your classmates, please, I don’t want them to panic and think they are in danger.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know…’ started Joe, carefully, ‘are we in danger? Ajit was the one who came up with the idea that it might be a drone, and I think they all deserve to be told what’s going on. No one will panic.’