New Guard

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘What about me?’ Alfie asked.

  ‘Your problem,’ Lauren said, flicking up one cheeky eyebrow. ‘My Grand Canyon ass is out of here.’

  Lauren hoped Alfie would end up having to run back and was disappointed when she arrived and found Ning close behind, with Alfie riding pillion. Everyone headed into the gym, expecting Capstick and McEwen to be waiting, for some kind of gruelling combat workout. Instead, chef had laid out tables with lasagne, and two ancient rear-projection TV sets had been wheeled in. One was rigged up to a PS4 ready to play FIFA16, but Lauren was seriously excited to see the second one, linked to an ancient Sega Megadrive.

  ‘Oh my god, it’s Ecco the Dolphin!’ Lauren blurted. ‘I bloody loved this game when I was little.’

  ‘The graphics are terrible,’ Alfie noted. ‘I didn’t even realise they had computer games back in your day.’

  Lauren turned sharply, hooked Alfie’s ankle and dumped his ass on the padded floor. ‘Too slow, young man,’ she teased.

  James clapped to seize attention before Alfie got his shot at revenge. ‘Shut the hell up, all of yous,’ he yelled. ‘I’ve just had a conference call and I can confirm that the drone strike is set for tonight.’

  A few cheers went up, but Bruce and Kyle looked more circumspect.

  ‘Since you’ve all worked hard for the last four weeks, we’re gonna spend the afternoon chilling out with food and video games. Enjoy, people!’

  The mood was jovial as Lauren took the controls for Ecco the Dolphin, while most of the others went for the buffet table. James was surprised to find himself confronted by a very serious-looking Ryan.

  ‘You OK, pal?’ James asked, as he bit into a sausage-stuffed pepper that he’d just picked off the table.

  ‘I was thinking about your mission,’ Ryan said. ‘I know you’ve got an empty seat now that Kerry’s hurt.’

  ‘Shit happens,’ James said, blowing on the hot sausage. ‘It’s the nature of any mission.’

  Ryan nodded. ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘Should that be cause for concern?’

  Ryan smiled, but was irritated by James’ interruption. ‘I was ranked second on the flight training, behind Lauren. I’m sixty-two kilos, so only slightly heavier than Kerry.’

  James shook his head. ‘I appreciate your enthusiasm, Ryan. But Ewart authorised you to come here and form a training team to help us five old farts get back into shape. The actual mission is off the books. Nobody with links to the British military or adult intelligence. No British-made equipment or identity documents. If we’re caught, we’ll say we’re mercenaries hired by Sachs and Yuen’s kidnap insurance. Not that it matters, because IS will scythe our heads off, whatever we say.’

  ‘Kerry was your best Arabic speaker,’ Ryan said. ‘I’m almost fluent.’

  ‘Tovah’s fluent.’

  ‘And if she gets hurt?’ Ryan asked. ‘And isn’t she supposed to stay back and prep the aircraft?’

  James seemed to take this on board. ‘True. But we’ll be packing up later and leaving for Turkey first thing. I’d have to write a mission proposal, get it by Ewart and get approval by the ethics committee. And even if I did all that, they’re never going to approve the mission.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘Because it can be done by adults,’ James said. ‘It’s an absolute rule. CHERUB agents are never put in danger unless the mission can’t be performed by an adult.’

  ‘Screw CHERUB then,’ Ryan said. ‘I’ll quit.’

  James laughed. ‘Ryan, give it up. We’re fine with the team we’ve got.’

  ‘James, listen,’ Ryan said firmly. ‘I want to help. I’ve got four months until I turn eighteen. Chances are, I’ll spend that time on campus twiddling my thumbs. This could be my last shot at doing something that matters.’

  ‘You might also get killed,’ James pointed out. ‘This isn’t a CHERUB mission. It’s a full-on commando raid and you’re seventeen years old.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ Ryan said. ‘People younger than me died in the trenches in World War One. You can still join the British Army at sixteen, so if there was a war today I’d still be old enough to go fight on the front lines.’

  James was torn. He’d worked with Ryan on the massive mission to bring down the Aramov clan. He had no doubt that Ryan was an outstanding agent, and while they could do the mission with five people, a sixth would make life easier and give more of a cushion if things went bad. But it stuck in James’ throat that Ryan was still so young.

  ‘I want this,’ Ryan said. ‘Think back to when you were my age. You weren’t stupid, were you? You were capable of making your own decisions.’

  James felt a tear well in his eye as he remembered his own last days at CHERUB. The sense of going back to being an ordinary person. The feeling that the most exciting part of your life was probably over.

  ‘You’d be an asset to the mission,’ James admitted, pulling out his phone as Ryan broke into a smile. ‘So, as far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome on my team if you quit CHERUB. But while this mission is off the books, the chairman of CHERUB is still my boss when I get back to campus. So you’ve got to speak to Ewart and make sure this is all OK.’

  Ryan smiled as he took out his mobile and dialled CHERUB campus.

  33. BEST

  Instructors Capstick and McEwen were happy to let everyone chill out and play video games, but training had started in the water on day one, and after a PS4 FIFA tournament resulted in comprehensive victory for the Currents, consensus grew that the only proper way to finish training was to tip a hundred coloured balls in the swimming pool.

  In Kerry’s absence, Tovah joined Bruce, Kyle, Lauren and James on the Crusty team. And James laid down the rules.

  ‘I don’t want anyone else getting injured,’ he yelled. ‘So it’s one twenty-minute round only and keep the physical stuff sensible.’

  When the whistle sounded, Bruce and Alfie formed a new definition of sensible that involved getting into a massive ruck in the middle of the pool. It had to be broken up by Capstick diving in and, when it erupted for a second time, Capstick yelled, ‘That’s your lot,’ and had both players red-carded from the game.

  The eight remaining players duked it for the full twenty minutes. James was in his best shape since leaving CHERUB six years earlier. Kyle had tanned and was now fit enough to keep the pace until the final whistle blew, with a few nice moves along the way.

  Bodies dripped as James put his neck collar back on and exhausted players watched the training assistants counting up balls at opposite ends of the pool. Shouts went back and forth as both scores passed 190, with just a few left in each dumpster.

  ‘One-ninety-six, to the Crustys,’ an assistant shouted.

  At the other end, Leon and Daniel jumped for joy as the assistant counted one-ninety-nine, before adding a final five-point blue ball to make two hundred and four for the Currents.

  ‘Still best,’ Leon shouted, as he high-fived his brother.

  Alfie couldn’t resist getting right in Lauren’s face. ‘You still lose, Grand Canyon butt.’

  As Lauren shoved Alfie in the pool, James grabbed his phone off a sunlounger and saw a message from Chairman Ewart Asker.

  ‘Bad news, guys,’ James announced, after he’d read the message. ‘I’m gonna have to disqualify the Current team for fielding an ineligible player. Apparently Ryan Sharma is no longer a CHERUB agent.’

  Ryan looked shocked, as Ning burst out laughing and told James to get stuffed.

  Kyle put a friendly arm around Ryan’s wet back. ‘You OK there, pal?’

  ‘Nervous,’ Ryan admitted, as the twins scrambled out of the pool and approached. ‘But I guess I got what I wanted.’

  The twins hugged their older brother.

  ‘So, I guess you two won’t get kicked out of CHERUB before me after all,’ Ryan said.

  ‘Just don’t go getting yourself killed,’ Daniel said.

  Leon nodded and grinned. ‘I don’t pers
onally give a crap, but Theo will be devastated if you’re not around to protect him from me and Daniel.’

  Ryan’s brain froze, as he realised he’d been wrapped in his own thoughts and hadn’t given any consideration to the effect on his youngest brother if something bad happened.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Ryan said unconvincingly.

  ‘All right, people,’ James shouted. ‘We need to pack and clean up ready for tomorrow. If you’re interested, we should have live video from Tovah’s Israeli Air Force buddies shortly after eleven.’

  The PS4 had been swapped for the video output on Tovah’s laptop and all the gym lights switched off, intensifying the blurry night-vision image on the big telly. It was close to midnight and the Currents, Crustys, instructors and their assistants all sat on plastic pool chairs or sprawled across the padded gym floor in their nightwear.

  ‘Wish we had popcorn,’ Leon said.

  A pilot’s voiceover came out of the screen in Hebrew.

  ‘He says the drone is one kilometre from target,’ Tovah translated.

  Controlled remotely from Israel and travelling at sixty kilometres per hour, the metre-long quadcopter drone skimmed over a village at two hundred metres, then tilted forwards and lost height as the outline of an oil derrick came into view.

  ‘Here comes a shit storm,’ Alfie predicted, blurting over something from the screen and earning an angry shush from Tovah.

  James had sent detailed US satellite photos to the Israeli Air Force team controlling the drone. Blowing the well to pieces with a missile would be easy, but no repair team would visit a well that was obviously beyond repair. The trick was to cause minor damage, and to do so in such a way that it didn’t raise suspicion of sabotage.

  At fifty metres the well’s control room came into view. It was a regular prefab site cabin, mounted on a metre-high steel platform in case of flooding. There was a light on inside and a man in the cabin seemed to glance around, as if he’d heard something.

  The drone shot up slightly and hovered over the shed’s fibreglass roof. The image on the big screen split and Tovah pointed to the right-hand side to explain.

  ‘That’s a high-resolution camera, underneath the body of the drone,’ Tovah explained.

  The right of the screen showed a metal arm sliding out of the drone. There was a slight rocking of the image as the arm dropped a coin-sized listening device on to the cabin roof. Then the drone skimmed a couple of metres along the rooftop, dropping another, as Tovah translated more commentary.

  ‘They’re testing the audio. Apparently they’re getting a good signal from both devices.’

  Ryan looked at James and spoke in a whisper. ‘Will we get that audio while we’re in the field?’

  ‘That’s the plan,’ James said.

  As the arm retreated inside the body of the drone, its remote pilot steered gently towards an electrical supply box at the side of the hut. It fed from a chunky mains cable and there was a backup diesel generator to compensate for erratic local electricity.

  The drone pilot flew as close to the box as he dared and lowered a metal probe, the size and width of a man’s lower arm. It was an electromagnetic pulse generator (EMP), capable of creating a super-intense magnetic field that would fry any electrical equipment within a ten-metre radius.

  The sabotage would be obvious if the generator got left behind, but the drone’s own sensitive electronics were also susceptible to being fried. So the EMP had been jerry-rigged with seventy metres of strong fishing line, which reeled out as the pilot took off.

  After stabilising at seventy metres, the pilot activated the pulse. The image on screen flickered for several seconds. Everyone looked anxiously towards Tovah as the two remote pilots babbled frantically in Hebrew.

  ‘What’s happened?’ James yelled anxiously. ‘Did it just crash?’

  ‘The pulse wasn’t supposed to damage the drone, but it looks like it did,’ Tovah explained. ‘They’re getting no signal from the drone. They’re trying a backup frequency …’

  Suddenly the image on the left side of the screen came back, showing the view from a healthy drone, hovering several hundred metres off the ground with the oil derrick visible below.

  Tovah continued to translate the stream of Hebrew. ‘They seem to think the drone defaulted to an automatic self-protection routine when the pulse interrupted their signal. All systems normal, but they’re not sure if the cable linked to the EMP snapped.’

  The right side of the screen came back to life, showing a length of cable getting wound around a motorised fishing reel. A half minute went by before the silver EMP probe came into view and the pilots started yelling triumphantly.

  ‘They’ve got it,’ Tovah translated unnecessarily, as the probe disappeared back into the drone’s belly. ‘Now they’re going to do surveillance.’

  The drone backed up and dropped down to around a hundred metres. From this range it was clear that several lights around the derrick had blown out. When the co-pilot zoomed his night vision on the hut, it showed smoke pouring out the door, while the man who’d been inside was around the back using a fire extinguisher to fight a small blaze in the supply box. A couple of guys in hard hats were running across from the main pumping station, desperate to find out what had gone wrong.

  ‘They’re elevating to fifteen hundred metres and switching the drone to autopilot for the ride home,’ Tovah said, as she smiled at James.

  ‘Godspeed, Mr Drone,’ James said, as he strolled to a wall behind the TV and switched the gym lights on. ‘We’ve got two planes booked for tomorrow,’ he yelled. ‘Folks going to Turkey for mission mayhem need to be on the tarmac at 0600 ready to load planes and equipment. Take-off is scheduled for 0700. The RAF plane taking the rest of you back to the UK is due at eleven. Chef and the training instructors will need help packing up, so the four remaining Currents need to eat breakfast and have bags packed and asses down by the pool by 0900.’

  ‘Once James is out of here I’m in charge,’ Capstick added. ‘And I haven’t handed out a punishment lap in almost a month, so you’d better not muck me around.’

  34. BLACK

  It had always been an off-the-books black mission, but up to this point James had been comforted by familiar surroundings: the hostel, old friends, CHERUB agents, training instructors. Now it felt real, strapped into an unmarked thirty-five-year-old Antonov freighter, complete with red-faced Slav pilot and patched-up bullet holes.

  They were making a second pass at a dirt landing strip, five kilometres from the southern Turkish town of Viransehir. The first run had been abandoned after the front landing gear failed to drop, and seeing the co-pilot opening a floor plate and winding it down with a manual crank didn’t inspire confidence.

  Lauren had never had a problem flying, but she grasped Bruce’s hand and grimaced as the deafening jet touched down, blasting great trails of grey dust over surrounding fields.

  ‘I’ll never complain about Ryanair again,’ Kyle joked, as rusted landing wheels squealed to a halt.

  After a flight that was windowless, unpressurised and unheated, James, Ryan, Lauren, Tovah, Kyle and Bruce threw off grotty blankets and undid safety harnesses as a rear cargo ramp lowered to the dirt. First sight was a pair of Turkish customs officers jumping out of a Toyota pick-up, while an airport maintenance truck ploughed through the jet dust.

  ‘They hate Israelis,’ Tovah told James.

  ‘I don’t speak Turkish,’ James said, as he unzipped a document pouch and pulled a dozen-sheet cargo manifest.

  ‘Me neither,’ Tovah said.

  The two officers strolled up the cargo ramp, stubbly beards and guns on hips. False passports were inspected and stamped. James passed a pre-agreed seven thousand euros with the manifest and earned a broad smile.

  ‘Automobile parts,’ the officer said in broken English, smiling at his colleague as he stamped and initialled each page of the manifest.

  ‘Get your gear out of here fast,’ the officer said. ‘Use the si
de gate.’

  Five microlight planes, along with weapons, micro-drones, body armour and everything else needed for the commando-style raid, had been packed into cardboard crates marked with Audi and Citroen logos, before getting vacuum sealed in thick plastic.

  The team worked up a sweat, wheeling the crates down the ramp and lifting them in the back of the truck. James rode with the cargo, while the others crammed into a ratty Mercedes taxi, getting a dust shower as the unmarked plane throttled up to leave.

  The drivers deliberately steered clear of Viransehir’s centre, speeding past streets of tiny homes and cutting through recently harvested fields. Their destination was an isolated, modern farm building, tall enough to house a giant cotton harvester and equipment used to pack raw cotton into truck-sized bales.

  ‘You won’t be disturbed here while you prepare,’ the truck driver told James. ‘The rest of your equipment arrived last night. I’ve also brought food and cooking equipment, as instructed.’

  After getting everything inside, a scrum over the only toilet and a light lunch of yoghurt, bread and local soft cheese, the team began to unpack and make final preparations. Tovah checked all five microlights for transit damage. The package that had been waiting for them contained new grey inflatable wings, replacing brightly coloured ones designed to maximise safety during flight training.

  While the olive-skinned and dark-haired Ryan and Tovah fitted and test-inflated the new grey wings, James and Lauren had to make themselves look more like Syrians. The pair had an uncomfortable – if amusing – experience dying their blond hair, with no hot water and a pressure hose designed to clean agricultural equipment. Then they stripped down to underwear and Kyle gave them a once-over with a spray tan, designed to darken subtly rather than turn them sunbed orange. The final step was disposable contacts, designed to make blue eyes brown.

  Ryan didn’t have much growth, but James, Kyle and Bruce hadn’t shaved and the trio posed for selfies with four-week beards and James’ dye job.