The General

by Robert Muchamore

  Four soldiers were hit by the flying paint. As two more stood dumbly and inspected their clothing to see whether they were alive or not, Lauren stood up behind the counter and took them out with well aimed blasts. Bethany spun around and shot the guard who’d come along the hallway.

  Upstairs, Rat took aim through a back window and shot one soldier, but narrowly missed the last man standing as he vaulted over a hedge and made a run for it. At the same instant, James poked his rifle between the banister rails and shot the soldier coming up the stairs.

  Back in the living-room, Jake made his move. He wailed like the blast had frightened him and wrapped his arms around the major’s leg. By the time the big man realised Jake’s real intentions, the eleven-year-old had already grabbed the major’s pistol and shot him from point blank range.

  At that kind of range simulated bullets pack a real punch. The major bawled a torrent of swear words as he crumpled to the floor, clutching at his thigh. Simultaneously, James jumped the entire staircase and shot through the front door, hitting a soldier standing on the front lawn.

  Bethany had continued down the hallway and covered Jake’s back, aiming through the living-room doorway and shooting the last of the four men who’d come through the front door.

  James was startled by the shot directly behind him and launched a vicious back kick that hit Bethany hard in the stomach. Before she could scream a warning, James spun around and shot her twice in the belly.

  ‘Ooops,’ James said, as Bethany writhed on the ground clutching her guts with the top half of her body streaming with chalky pink paint. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You idiot,’ Bethany groaned. ‘Do I look like a soldier to you?’

  ‘I think we got them all,’ Jake gasped, as he ran into the hallway. He saw his sister on the lawn and burst out laughing. ‘Oh dear!’

  ‘Was that deliberate, James?’ Bethany growled.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ James smirked. ‘Just a happy accident.’

  Bethany was tempted to shoot James back, but Mr Kazakov would have her running punishment laps if he found that she’d deliberately shot one of his team.

  ‘Dead girls can’t talk,’ Jake said, as he pointed at the paint-spattered soldier lying silently on the lawn. ‘See you in twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Jake, I just saved your butt in case you didn’t notice,’ Bethany growled.

  Lauren came out of the kitchen and Rat jogged down the hallway to see what was occurring.

  ‘Pretty impressive,’ Rat said. ‘Eleven to one kill-ratio against trained soldiers.’

  ‘Who got away?’ James asked.

  ‘One bloke scarpered away into the bushes,’ Rat explained. ‘I think he legged it, but we’d better not hang around ‘cos he’s bound to have called for backup.’

  James was the senior agent and he had to make some decisions. ‘Jake, Rat, booby trap the inside of the house and the Hummers with grenades,’ he ordered. ‘Lauren, go inside and pack up as many weapons as you can carry. I’ll update Kazakov on the radio, then I’ll be in to give you a hand.’

  30. TREASURE

  Bethany headed towards the processing facility to declare herself dead. The dead soldiers walked alongside and they were understandably curious about being taken down by a group of kids with British accents and expert marksmanship.

  Bethany stuck to their prescribed back story: ‘Our parents are military staff who live on a British cold-weather training facility in a remote region of Canada. There’s not much to do, so our parents set up a cadet group where we all learn self defence and go paintballing on weekends.’

  ‘No kidding,’ the major smiled. ‘That little brother of yours had me fooled. Almost shot me in the one place a man don’t wanna be shot…’

  As his comrades laughed, Bethany smiled and felt proud of Jake for probably the first time ever.

  ‘This man Kazakov,’ the major said. ‘Have you seen him? None of us knows what he looks like.’

  Bethany smiled coyly. ‘You’ve gotta work harder than that to wheedle information out of me.’

  One of the soldiers was dragging behind and the major looked back at him. ‘You OK, Martin?’

  ‘My stomach,’ the soldier answered grimly. ‘Feels like I’ve got a basketball lodged in my belly.’

  ‘Know what you’re saying,’ a colleague nodded. ‘I got the same. Must have eaten some bad chow in the mess hall last night.’

  *

  Jake, Lauren, Rat and James dumped their rifles and equipment back at the apartments before heading off to buy burgers. James dozed through the early part of the afternoon. He woke to find the apartment crowded: Gabrielle and Bruce were back from a sabotage operation, along with Mac and the four SAS toughs who’d been keeping him on the move and guarding him since the beginning of the exercise.

  James headed into the kitchen. Everyone crowded around the breakfast bar, listening to a walkie-talkie.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked, opening the fridge and downing several mouthfuls from a four-pint carton of orange juice.

  ‘We’re monitoring the bug in the army command office,’ Mac explained. ‘Looks like your little experiment with the water supply is starting to have consequences.’

  James wasn’t sure about Kazakov’s most extreme tactic and was decidedly uncomfortable about sharing the blame. ‘I was following orders,’ he said defensively. ‘Sarge didn’t even tell me what was going on until we were inside the base.’

  ‘Remember history class? The Nazis on trial at Nuremburg,’ Lauren grinned, before adopting a German accent. ‘I was only following orders.’

  ‘And the Nazis all got hanged,’ Rat added.

  Dark laughter erupted around the breakfast bar. James looked to Mac for some reliable information. ‘So what’s going on right now?’

  ‘We’re arming sympathisers and making efforts to ambush the snatch squads. Over eighty American soldiers have reported sick already and men from all over are returning to base with stomach cramps.’

  ‘Sarge told me twenty hours,’ James said, glancing at his watch. ‘So it’s probably just the beginning.’

  ‘Kazakov’s chuffed to bits,’ Mac nodded. ‘He reckons up to ninety per cent of the American troops will be wiped out with diarrhoea and vomiting by six this evening. He’s got insurgent sympathisers posting fliers inviting the entire population to a free booze-up in the shanty town.’

  ‘That’s right next to the army base,’ James said, as the full ambition of Kazakov’s plan became clear in his head. ‘There’s a thousand American troops. But over a hundred and fifty have been shot and if ninety per cent of what’s left are sick that’s gonna leave less than a hundred in fighting condition …’

  ‘We’re talking about full-scale revolution,’ Jake grinned.

  A gruff-voiced Welsh SAS officer spoke admiringly. ‘I don’t think the Yanks knew what they were letting themselves in for when they invited Kazakov to do red teaming. He was our main tactical consultant for a decade and I don’t think anyone ever bested him, either in training or on a live operation.’

  The youngest of Mac’s guards nodded. ‘The guy’s been fighting wars since before I was born. It’s criminal that they didn’t make him our regimental commander.’

  ‘Why didn’t they?’ James asked.

  ‘Protocol,’ the Welshman explained. ‘Kazakov has only ever been a consultant. It would have ruffled a lot of feathers if they’d appointed an outsider. But the man’s a tactical genius.’

  As if on cue, Kazakov’s voice came through their walkie-talkies. ‘I need bodies,’ he announced. ‘Thirty-three beer kegs and two hundred bottles of vodka ain’t gonna shift themselves.’

  *

  General Shirley had started off trying to make friends, then attempted to clamp down with roadblocks after the aerodrome attack. But without the drones providing aerial surveillance the roadblocks were vulnerable to snipers and paint grenades so he’d been forced into using snatch squads.

  Casualties were lighter with this
tactic. Insurgents were arrested and weapons seized, but with no permanent presence on the streets Kazakov’s insurgents had freedom to move around setting ambushes, blockading roads and recruiting insurgent sympathisers.

  War zones in the real world suffer from high unemployment and are filled with bored youngsters. The young men and women inside Fort Reagan were the same, with one TV channel and dwindling reserves of booze.

  Most of those receiving the extra twenty dollars a day to support the insurgency were happy to take a rifle and receive basic military instruction from the teams of SAS officers, if for no other reason than that it was something to do. More than a hundred and fifty men and women had been armed and given basic tactical firearms training over the space of a day and a half.

  Spies in the shanty town spotted convoys of troops leaving the nearby army base and as the day wore on the SAS officers trained insurgents in more advanced techniques, such as burying paint grenades close to roads and rigging lengths of wire so they’re tripped when a vehicle passes over.

  Under Fort Reagan rules any vehicle hit with a spot of paint more than ten centimetres in diameter was deemed to be disabled and the crew inside had to get out on foot.

  By 6 p.m. the sun was dropping below distant sand bluffs and ambushed Hummers littered the streets. More than eighty additional troops had been shot for losses of less than half that number of insurgents.

  Kazakov sheltered inside a concrete hut in the shanty town, listening to the bug in General Shirley’s command post. The American was suffering stomach cramps and getting increasingly irate as more and more of his troops went down with diarrhoea. He’d even called base commander O’Halloran and asked that the exercise be abandoned because of a possible health scare, but the commander gave him short shrift: you can’t abandon a real war if there’s an outbreak of food poisoning, so why should you abandon an exercise?

  In the central square of the shanty town more than a thousand young men and women had gathered to party around a huge bonfire. The thirty kegs of beer hadn’t lasted long, but Kazakov had arranged a plentiful supply of wines and spirits. Rock music blasted, barbecued steaks were served in fresh baps and he’d even brought in a few fireworks.

  Almost half the crowd were either armed insurgents or unarmed sympathisers. Normally it would have been unacceptably risky to gather so many poorly trained men and women together less than half a kilometre from a US Army base, but there weren’t enough healthy troops left to take any action.

  The only sign of an army presence was an occasional rapid drive-by, with the driver circling the shanty town at his vehicle’s maximum 15 mph speed, while two men in the back surveyed the situation with night-vision binoculars.

  James and the rest of the cherubs hung out in a big group just off the main square. Young men were flirting, dancing and joining long queues for the rapidly diminishing supplies of alcohol. Many of them carried their weapons openly and a few of the drunkest even took aim at the fireworks.

  ‘Need a slash,’ James said, crushing a plastic beer cup and strolling away from the gang.

  After the restful afternoon he felt brighter than he’d done all day as he cut away from the square between rows of near-identical huts. The alleyways were crammed compared to the night before when he’d passed through in his stolen officer’s uniform.

  He found a staircase cut into the rock, which led up to an elevated area of the shanty town. Three men urinated against the stone sides and a huge lake of piss had collected behind a nearby hut. The residents wouldn’t be happy when they got home, but there was nowhere else to go so James unzipped and joined the fray.

  As James strolled back to the party an attractive blonde stepped in front of him and asked if he knew anywhere she could get more to drink.

  ‘Queues are a nightmare,’ James said, eyeing the girl with her tight fitting shorts and blue and white striped top. Her shoulders were broad and she had a big bust and nice legs; but she looked at least twenty so James figured she was out of his league.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ the girl said, stumbling forwards and grabbing James by his arm. ‘I’m horny.’

  ‘That’s an unusual name,’ James said.

  She smiled girlishly and tapped her varnished index finger on her chin. ‘You can call me that if you like, but my real name’s Cindi-Lou.’

  ‘I’m James.’

  ‘You’re pretty cute, young James,’ she said, stepping forwards so that her breasts almost touched James’ chest. ‘How about we go and do something your mommy wouldn’t approve of?’

  James cracked a huge involuntary smile as the girl put her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him into a kiss. After all the female-related trauma of the past few weeks it was exactly the tonic his damaged ego needed. Lust pulsed through his body as he imagined getting his hands on female flesh.

  ‘How far’s your hut?’ James asked excitably, reaching across and putting his hand on Cindi’s bum.

  ‘Not far at all,’ she smiled.

  James noticed Bruce heading by to take a pee as Cindi grabbed his hand and started leading him off. Bruce didn’t utter a word, but his expression clearly said you jammy bastard.

  ‘You remind me of a guy I dated in high school,’ Cindi said. ‘Cute face and a nice ass. I did stuff to that guy that would make your eyes pop out!’

  James had an ear-to-ear grin. His cold streak was over. He was still James Adams and there were at least three condoms in the back of his wallet. He could hardly believe his luck as he followed the attractive butt down a cobbled alleyway. Maybe her shoulders were a bit on the manly side, but you can’t have everything …

  They ducked through a low door into a gloomy one-room hut.

  ‘Cosy,’ James smiled.

  But Cindi didn’t smile back. A dark figure slammed the door shut as Cindi snatched James’ wrist and twisted it hard behind his back. He struggled but she’d taken him by surprise and pulled his arm into an excruciating lock.

  ‘You kick me and I’ll break it,’ Cindi screamed.

  As the light came on, James’ legs were kicked away and his body slammed face down on to a laminate-topped dining table. He saw two women in army uniform. The oldest one moved in swiftly and locked a set of handcuffs behind his back.

  Cindi smiled as she turned James on to his back. ‘I left something out,’ she smiled, suddenly neither horny nor drunk. ‘I’m Sergeant Cindi-Lou Jones, United States Army Intelligence Corps. These other two fine ladies are Corporal Land and Lieutenant Sahlin.’

  James smiled and tried to sound cool. ‘So I suppose a shag’s now totally out of the question?’

  Sahlin was the oldest and meanest looking of the three soldiers: olive skinned, with a hairy chin. She moved in and punched James in the kidneys. ‘A smart mouth can land a boy in a lot of trouble.’

  ‘We’ve got rules here!’ James shouted indignantly. ‘You can arrest and interrogate me, but you can’t use force.’

  Jones tugged James’ trousers and boxers down with a single violent movement. ‘If you don’t cooperate, boy, we might just be spilling a nice hot cup of coffee down there on your intimate parts.’

  ‘You let the mask over your face slip and we identified you from the surveillance cams on base,’ Jones explained, as she pulled off her striped top, revealing a sweaty green combat vest underneath it. ‘General Shirley’s looking at a career nosedive if this operation doesn’t start going his way. He’s authorised us to bend the rules if we feel it necessary.’

  ‘You’d better start talking,’ Sahlin added. ‘Intel-ops officers like me are trained in about a million different ways to hurt little boys like you without leaving a mark.’

  ‘How come you’re not on the toilet with the rest of the Yanks?’ James asked.

  ‘The intelligence officers live and eat in a separate building on the far side of the base,’ Sahlin smiled. ‘Seems your Mr Kazakov missed a trick for once.’

  Corporal Land was the smallest of the three women. She spoke with a sweet
voice like a country and western singer. ‘Ya know what, girlfriends? How about we take James back to all them soldiers, release him in the middle of our base and tell our boys that he’s the one what made ‘em so sick.’

  ‘For god’s sake,’ James shouted. ‘This is a training exercise. You’re not allowed to do this!’

  ‘Yosyp Kazakov is making a lot of important people look real bad,’ Land smiled. ‘We don’t like that one little bit.’

  James watched as Lieutenant Sahlin pulled a sinister-looking metal probe out of her shirt pocket.

  ‘Honey,’ Corporal Land said sweetly, moving in close and dabbing James’ sweating brow with a tissue. ‘You’d better start telling us some things we want to hear. ‘Cos when the lieutenant’s little probe heats up and gets shoved where the sun don’t shine, you’re gonna know all about it.’

  31. PATRIOTS

  Lauren, Jake, Kevin, Rat and Gabrielle all charged forward into the packed square as Kazakov drove through the crowd, standing in the back of a captured Hummer.

  ‘The enemy is weakened,’ Kazakov bellowed. ‘Soon the final attack will be upon us. Victory is in sight!’

  The crowd didn’t know what to make of this burly man with a weird accent and two days’ worth of stubble.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Kazakov said. ‘You are all Americans. You love America because it’s the greatest country in the world!’

  The young and drunk crowd around the Hummer loved this. There were some cheers and rifle shots fired into the air.

  Twenty metres back, Lauren turned to Rat and smiled. ‘Now we can add “world-class bullshitter” to “tactical genius” on Kazakov’s résumé.’

  ‘I know some of you aren’t comfortable with the idea of fighting American troops,’ Kazakov continued, ‘but what we do here this evening will help our army to fight better in future. When the bullets are metal instead of compressed chalk, when the grenades are high explosive not fluorescent paint, American troops will be better prepared.