Like most cargo planes, this 737 had served a couple of decades as a passenger jet, before being converted for cargo. But although it had a few years under its belt, the beige plastics and efficient hum of the ventilation were a contrast to the brutal noise and vibration inside the big Ilyushin.
A single row of six seats had been preserved at the front of the cabin, with a sheet of dented aluminium separating them from a cargo hold behind.
Ryan had an aisle seat, with the two near-mute IDoJ men who’d been with them since they’d left Kyrgyzstan sat on the other side. Kazakov gave Ryan a reassuring look as he stepped over his legs to take the window seat, but Ryan didn’t see it because he was studying the action inside the cockpit.
Elbaz might have been co-pilot, but he was clearly the man in charge. Tracy looked comfortable going through her pre-flight routine, though Ryan could only see the top of her hair and her chubby arms reaching for overhead switches.
‘Tower, flight GD39, request permission for take-off. Over.’
The reply came through Tracy’s headphones, so Ryan didn’t hear.
‘Roger that, control. Following route B to runway south.’
As Tracy pushed the throttle forwards to begin taxiing, Elbaz looked back at his comrade in the aisle seat and gave a thumbs up.
‘Let’s go kill some bastard Americans,’ he shouted.
The flight would last around five hours, and Ryan pulled his iPhone from his jeans and untangled his headphone cord.
‘Try and get some sleep,’ Kazakov suggested. ‘You look like you need it.’
This was no major airport with queues of planes waiting to take off, and Ryan found himself being pushed into his seat by the force of take-off before he’d got his ear buds in.
CHERUB agents are supposed to blend in and act like ordinary kids. Ordinary kids don’t know how to drive cars, but in dangerous situations the ability to grab a set of car keys and drive fast had kept many young agents out of serious trouble.
James’ silver Volkswagen had dual controls, so that he could brake or accelerate if the driver did something stupid, and as it was a few years old the bodywork bore scrapes and dents, many of which had been crudely retouched with grey rustproofing to avoid the expense of respraying.
Ning almost added another dent as she came into a curve much too fast and put the tail out.
‘I told you last time,’ James shouted, as scenery whizzed by. ‘Take the corner from the left, turn in smoothly and put the power on when you hit the apex.’
‘Sorry,’ Ning said.
‘The engine’s roaring,’ James said. ‘Change up.’
As Ning went for fourth gear, the box made a horrendous crunch and the engine raced as she accidentally put it into second.
‘I’m glad it’s a long time since breakfast,’ Alfie shouted, as he sat in the rear passenger seat gripping the hand strap like his life depended upon it.
‘Marker,’ James shouted. ‘Brake!’
The front tyres locked up as the car went into the next corner, but suddenly the vehicle lurched to one side. They’d just turned on to the pit straight, which meant that the car hit a metal crash barrier before it had a chance to veer dangerously out of control.
Ning screamed as the car scraped the barrier. Sparks flew and the door mirror snapped off. Below the car there was a loud drumming sound. James’ heart was in his mouth, but he used the brake at his feet to gently push the car to a juddering halt.
‘Women drivers!’ Alfie shouted.
Ning would have punched him if hitting someone sat behind you in a car wasn’t so awkward. Instead, she looked at James in a state of confusion.
‘I don’t get what happened,’ she said. ‘What did I do?’
James was opening the front passenger-side door, and looked back along the side of the car.
‘Puncture,’ James explained. ‘Must have picked up some debris on the track and I can’t really blame you for that. So, who knows how to change a tyre?’
Ning and Alfie offered up blank stares.
‘Right,’ James said. ‘I guess that’s our next lesson then. Now go put out the warning triangle so that Bruce’s team don’t rear-end us next time they come around that corner.’
5. CAMP
Hayneville, Alabama had a population of less than a thousand, and a tiny airstrip used by Central Alabama aviation club. The town’s location at the intersection of three highways, with Interstate 65 a few kilometres east, made it a good spot for anyone wanting to land a plane and disappear with its cargo before anyone except the local two-car sheriff department could reach the scene.
Pre-Thanksgiving traffic that had choked the highway corridor through the centre of Hayneville had subsided, and now it was mid-afternoon. All over America people were home cooking turkey and waiting for the NFL’s Thanksgiving Classic. But the holiday was cancelled for a forty-strong team of FBI officers, commanded by intelligence officer Dr Denise Huggan.
Huggan was an eccentric, who insisted everyone call her Dr D. She headed up a unit called TFU, which had targeted the Aramov Clan and now effectively controlled it. Despite a flowing purple dress and wooden beaded necklaces, this petite woman was as tough as the FBI officers under her command.
It was reasonable to assume that IDoJ were watching Hayneville Airport, so Dr D’s team had to tread lightly to avoid being noticed in such a small town. Nevertheless, over the past week she’d sent officers into the airfield, posing as mechanics and pilots, and now the tarmac, hangars and surrounding roads were rigged with tiny night vision cameras.
She had three screens on the little desk in her motel room, and one presently showed a trio of U-Haul hire trucks rolling up to the airfield’s only entrance. A camera near the main entrance followed a man jumping out of the lead truck and using a key to take a padlock off the main gate.
A female FBI agent came across the com system. ‘Eyeballing three trucks with my binoculars. Opening main gate, dark-skinned, beard. Looks like they’re here to meet our plane.’
‘Understood,’ Dr D said. ‘All units keep well out of sight. IDoJ are known to be skilled operators, Special Forces background.’
As Dr D said this, she clicked an icon on one of the screens, switching from a CCTV camera at the airport to an output from air traffic control. The black and amber graphic was alive with slow moving triangles, each with aircraft IDs flashing beneath them. So far the Globespan flight from Ecuador was keeping to its slot in the civilian flight corridor and had clearance through to Atlanta’s giant Hartsfield Airport.
The leader of the FBI assault team squinted at the display over Dr D’s shoulder, then checked his watch. His name was Schultz, and he was plated up with body armour, with a Taser and gun on his belt.
‘How long do you reckon?’ Schultz asked.
‘The plane will need to start losing height in about seventy minutes,’ Dr D replied. ‘I’d expect Tracy to deviate from course and make the mayday call shortly after, so I’d say we’re looking at a landing in ninety minutes.’
‘Well, my boys are all ready and waiting,’ Schultz said, as he cracked a slight smile.
‘Just be sure they don’t move until I say so,’ Dr D replied firmly.
Ning’s day had been tough. Fast driving required intense concentration, her butt was numb from the car seats and her calves ached from working foot pedals. But she was a fast learner and she was starting to feel like the bashed-up Volkswagen was an extension of her body rather than some weird alien device.
Ning put the car into third and hit the gas as they rounded one of the track’s sharpest corners. When you got speed and position right, the car was close to skidding off the track and the steering wheel felt light, as if the car was gliding over the tarmac.
When Ning hit the straight, she clicked the gearbox neatly into fourth and floored the gas pedal. It was dark, with the only light coming from the yellow cones produced by the headlamps and a misty orange glow from streetlamps on a nearby housing estate.
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sp; James was in the passenger seat and looked at his stopwatch. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Look for the cone, you’re four seconds up on Alfie’s time.’
As the speedo hit 110mph, Ning spotted the single orange cone in the middle of the broad tarmac straight. She braked hard and, once the nose was past, dropped down into second gear, reached for the handbrake and yanked the steering wheel hard left.
Ning had practised handbrake turns for an hour that afternoon, but her success rate was barely half and dread shot through her body as she grabbed the lever between the two front seats.
The combination of a tight turn and the handbrake threw the back of the car out violently. If Ning got braking and steering right and put power back on at the right moment, the Golf would pivot on its front wheels and change direction in under four seconds. But get the move wrong and she might veer off in any direction, or stall the engine and stop dead in a cloud of tyre smoke.
Twenty miles per hour was a little fast, and Ning didn’t get the steering exactly right. She had to correct the steering to avoid hitting the cone as she straightened up, and there was a nasty moment as the engine choked, but she was gentle on the accelerator and nursed the car back up to cruising speed.
Alfie was in the back and didn’t much mind that Ning was inside his time. After a tough day’s practice the pair had bonded and Alfie screamed and pounded his seat.
‘Nailed it, Ningo!’
The final part of the run took the car off the track, down a single lane, past a line of run-down pit garages and into a car park behind the trashed main grandstand. Cones marked out a winding course, but in focusing on where she was going, Ning failed to see an old lady on the apex of the turn in.
She swerved, but not soon enough to avoid demolishing the dummy and sending a hail of polystyrene clumps against the windscreen. A large white chunk squealed as it got trapped under the car, followed by a loss of traction as it went beneath one of the rear wheels.
After clipping a couple of cones, Ning cut her speed for the final weave across the car park. She stopped at a white line, then threw the car into reverse, looked behind and reverse-parked into a rectangle marked out with bales of hay.
As soon as she’d stopped, Ning cut the engine and gasped as she tugged at her crash helmet. Sweat was running into her eyes as she put the helmet in her lap and looked across at James.
‘Good news, bad news,’ James said, smiling as he showed Ning the face of his stopwatch. ‘The good news is that you were five point three seconds faster than Alfie. The bad news is there’s a ten-second penalty for killing Polystyrene Pauline.’
‘I wasn’t expecting her there,’ Ning explained, sounding a touch indignant. ‘She was in a much harder position than when Alfie did it.’
James showed no sympathy as he took off his six-point racing seatbelt. ‘That’s kind of the point. Pedestrians can crop up anywhere. And don’t worry about it. The competition element is only a bit of fun. You both did good today.’
Ning smiled as she pushed a mound of sweaty hair off her face. ‘You’re a good teacher.’
James had never done anything like this before and was flattered and intrigued by the comment. ‘What makes you say that?’
Ning shrugged, but Alfie answered for her. ‘You get the balance right. Pushing us when we need it, but not so hard that we get pissed off.’
‘And you’re good at breaking things down to explain them,’ Ning said.
The other Golf with Bruce, Leon and Grace inside had finished its final run a couple of minutes earlier. James, Ning and Alfie walked towards them, while fifteen-year-old black shirt Kevin Sumner dashed about collecting the cones.
‘All good?’ Bruce asked. ‘Ready to take us on tomorrow?’
James laughed. ‘We’ll crush you.’
‘Got a people carrier waiting to take you back to campus,’ Bruce said, looking at the trainees. ‘Any volunteers for driving duty?’
All four kids looked at their feet.
‘Now that’s enthusiasm,’ James said, smiling at Bruce.
‘I’m knackered,’ Leon said defensively.
‘It’s not physically as hard as normal training,’ Grace explained. ‘But mentally! Like, you lose concentration for one second and you smash a car into the wall and die.’
‘Guess I’ll have to drive you tired little bunnies home then,’ James said sarcastically. ‘And don’t stay up too late because we’re out here again all day tomorrow and things won’t be getting any easier.’
6. BORDER
The racetrack was twenty minutes’ drive from CHERUB campus, or fifteen if you were James Adams and you’d decided to show off. The four pupils belted off to the dining-room for some hot food as soon as they arrived, while James and Bruce cracked smiles as they stepped into reception and recognised the hot-blondein-short-denim-skirt coming out of Chairman Zara Asker’s office.
‘Amy Collins, bloody hell,’ James said.
‘Hey!’ Bruce added. ‘What are you doing? I haven’t seen you in yonks.’
Amy grinned. ‘Could ask you guys the same question.’
James pointed at Bruce. ‘He’s just back from uni for a few days. Zara found out I was at a loose end. Mr Kazakov is on some mission and another instructor’s on long-term sick with a dodgy back, so she asked if I’d like to come back for two or three months and help out in the training department.’
‘So you dropped out of uni?’
James shook his head. ‘Graduated this summer. Applied for some jobs around Silicon Valley, but the job market’s dead right now.’
‘Is Kerry with you?’
‘Nah,’ James said. ‘She’s in her final year at Stanford. Says having me bumming around our apartment was putting her off studying.’
Amy laughed. ‘So you must be twenty-one now! We’re all getting old.’
‘So why are you here?’ Bruce asked.
‘I was doing the classic post-CHERUB thing,’ Amy said. ‘You know, you leave and can’t find anything else that really lives up to it. Then I got headhunted by a little American intelligence unit called Transnational Facilitator Unit – TFU.
‘It’s mainly anti-smuggling operations. The big stuff: people trafficking, weapons, drugs. The money’s decent, and it’s a small team so you’re always close to the action. Plus, my two bosses Ted and Dr D are close to retirement, so there’s a lot of potential to step up career-wise.’
‘So you live in the States?’ James asked.
‘Dallas,’ Amy said. ‘Though I think I’ve spent ten nights in my apartment since January.’
‘And what’s with the Chairman?’ James asked.
‘There’s a CHERUB agent working on TFU’s biggest project. So I’m here briefing Zara on the operation, and discussing a few other situations where CHERUB agents might be useful.’
‘Sounds like it’s all working out for you,’ James said.
‘It’s manic, but I’m loving every second,’ Amy said. ‘I’m on a flight to Dubai tomorrow lunchtime, but if you’re on campus tonight us three should have dinner together.’
‘Sure,’ James said, glancing at his watch. ‘It’s six now and I’ve hardly eaten all day. How about I scrub up and meet you both at seven?’
Amy was fine with this, but Bruce shook his head. ‘I’m going out for a drink with Bethany Parker.’
James laughed. ‘Your old flame!’
Bruce acted defensive. ‘You and Bethany always rubbed each other up the wrong way, but she’s cool once you get to know her.’
James took a step back towards the lift and gave Amy a smile. ‘See you at seven.’
When James got in the lift, he pressed six to go up to his old room, but then realised he was all grown up now, and hit number two to go to the staff quarters.
‘Is it true you’re James Adams?’ a puffed-out little grey shirt holding a tennis racket asked. ‘The guy who started the food fight and had sex in the campus fountain?’
Ryan had been awake for twenty-four hours, but sleep d
oesn’t come easy when you’re ten thousand metres above the United States in a plane packed with high-energy explosive, piloted by a terrorist and a woman whose family is being held at gunpoint.
His mouth felt dry as he stepped out of the cramped toilet cubicle, shaking drips off his hands, tiredness making everything blurry. Before heading back to his seat, Ryan looked through the open cockpit door. Tracy and Elbaz looked serene, lit by the clean gold sunlight that you get when you’re above the clouds.
‘Hey,’ Elbaz said, looking back as Ryan’s shadow sent a flicker across the cockpit glass. Ryan expected a rebuke, but Elbaz sounded friendly for once. ‘We’ll put the mayday call out in three minutes. Should be on the ground five after that, so jazz them all up back there.’
‘Right, boss,’ Ryan said.
Tracy looked around and seemed like she was going to say something too, but nothing came out and Ryan tried not to think about her torment as he walked back to the single row of passenger seats.
‘Hey,’ Ryan said, tapping the arm of the terrorist dude, who had a cheapo iPod rip-off plugged into his earholes. ‘Elbaz says eight minutes. Be ready to move as soon as we touch down.’
The other IDoJ terrorist was studiously reading a Koran and gave Ryan a nod as he tucked the little blue hardback into the pocket of his linen shirt, then started feeling around the cabin floor for his trainers.
Kazakov was the only person who’d slept, same as he’d done on board the IL-76. After two tours of duty during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Kazakov claimed he could sleep anywhere provided nobody was shooting directly at him.
‘Get up, Dad,’ Ryan said.
He put emphasis on Dad, because it’s easy to forget a cover story in the first seconds after waking up.
‘Where are we?’ Kazakov asked, before opening wide into a yawn.
‘A few minutes from landing,’ Ryan said.