‘You’re a girl,’ Bruce blurted.
‘Come on,’ Tovah shouted to Bruce. Then to Kyle on the com, ‘We’re clear to fly. Start launching.’
The girl looked tearful and started babbling in Arabic. ‘I don’t understand,’ Bruce said. ‘You’re no threat to us. You can leave.’
Tovah shook her head. ‘She’s saying she can’t be seen with her ripped shirt. She says if they find out she’s a girl, the religious police will torture her, and force her to marry a soldier.’
Bruce gawped. ‘How old are you? Who looks after you?’
Tovah looked emotional as she pointed towards the back of the garage. ‘She’s twelve. Her older brother looks out for her, but I think we just killed him.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Bruce shouted, as Kyle’s voice came back over the com.
‘Looks like more vehicles closing in,’ Kyle said. ‘You need to get back here. Repeat, back here now.’
‘We can give you a T-shirt,’ Tovah said in Arabic, grabbing the girl’s hand as Bruce started running towards the supermarket. James was out in the car park, clearing some debris from the fighting as Lauren drove her microlight out of the supermarket, with Sachs’ chunky frame squeezed in the back.
‘Good to go,’ James shouted, giving his sister a double thumbs-up.
As Lauren put her lightweight plane to full throttle and rattled off across the parking lot in one direction, Bruce, Tovah and the Syrian girl sprinted towards the shed. Before Lauren was even off the ground, Ryan rolled out of the supermarket, with Yuen as passenger. His heart thumped as he ran through checks he’d done fifty times before at the hostel. Fuel, navigation, flaps.
‘All set,’ Ryan said, taking a glance back at his nervous passenger and forward at Lauren leaving the ground, before going full throttle for take-off.
The next two planes were some way off being ready for take-off.
‘Who’s this?’ James asked, surprised to see Tovah with a raggedy Arab accomplice.
‘She needs a T-shirt,’ Bruce said. ‘Tovah’s probably closest to her size.’
‘No,’ Tovah said firmly. ‘We’ll fly her out. She’s not safe here without her brother looking after her.’
‘There’s no empty seat,’ Kyle said.
‘Three planes,’ Tovah said, pointing across the hall. ‘We brought a backup. I had to take some parts off to replace a faulty navigation unit on Ryan’s plane, but I can fly eighty clicks in daylight without one.’
The building shook as something hit the front wall.
‘That’s a twenty-millimetre shell,’ Tovah said, glancing at the screens. ‘I’d say they’re wary of coming close after we took the first wave out, but it looks like they’re gonna be shooting from a distance. James, you fly with Kyle. Bruce, you take the girl.’
‘Maybe she’d be more comfortable with you,’ Bruce suggested. ‘Being female and speaking good Arabic.’
‘I’ll be last out in case any of you have a problem on take-off,’ Tovah said. ‘And the faster she’s out, the safer she is.’
‘It’s too hairy out there for my tastes,’ James said, casting a wary glance back at the monitors, as two more 20mms shook the building.
As James and Kyle pushed their little plane towards the exit and clambered inside, Tovah spent a few seconds explaining to the girl that Bruce was going to fly her to a safe place and that they would find a good family to look after her.
‘What’s her name?’ Bruce asked, as he realised that nobody had thought to ask.
‘Zahra,’ the girl said.
Bruce smiled. ‘I’ll try and be a good pilot,’ he said warmly.
Zahra smiled, even though she didn’t understand much English. James powered up his engine as Kyle rolled their plane out into sunlight.
‘It’s cold up high,’ Tovah said, as she handed Zahra a sleeping bag they’d been planning to leave behind. Then she helped the girl fix her five-point harness.
Kyle was about to board James’ plane when he remembered the detonator in his shirt pocket.
‘If you’re leaving last,’ Kyle explained, as he handed it to Tovah.
As Kyle buckled up behind, James upped the throttle and trundled out on to the tarmac. More 20mm shells were thumping the far side of the supermarket and a vehicle had parked up, shielding behind the two fast-food restaurants at the lot’s far end.
‘Full throttle,’ James announced, deciding that the risk of staying on the ground for an extra minute was greater than the risk of not making final checks that Tovah was sure to have done at least twice already.
Bruce throttled up before James was even off the ground and there was now small ammunition coming towards the planes from behind the garage.
‘Tovah, don’t hang around,’ Bruce warned over the com, as he pulled up the flaps, following James and Kyle into the air.
Tovah was out on the concrete within seconds of Bruce taking off. As she hit the throttle she heard shots coming from all sides and tried not to think about the frailty of her air-filled wing. As she neared take-off speed, she felt something hit the runway in front, then bounce up and smash the front wheel. As an instructor-level pilot, she instinctively raised the flaps slightly, so that the nose lifted and the plane continued its take-off balanced on two rear wheels.
Another half-dozen shots ripped off as she finally got up to speed and since she was flying solo and manual, she put the little plane into the steepest climb that she dared. James and Bruce’s craft were visible, their grey wings merging with the colour of clouds high above.
Tovah took one last glance back at the supermarket as she pulled the remote detonator, waited a few more seconds to be certain that the explosion vortex didn’t suck her in. Then she pressed a button and blew the whole place to hell.
39. TENTS
Cruising at eight hundred metres, cold air blasting from the east and the autopilot making corrections with the flaps. The world seemed beautiful from up here, but Lauren couldn’t get the bodies out of her head. She’d killed a man on her first mission, aged eleven, but that was a him-or-me. This had been like some weird one-sided video game.
All that CHERUB training, versus some grandpas. Lauren felt naive now, jumping at a chance to relive old times when James called her up. Now she wanted to get back to Texas. The little house she shared on the edge of a racetrack. Rat making scrambled eggs in his mechanic’s overall. Kissing her neck and saying how much he loved her.
Touchdown was seven hundred metres inside the Turkish border. An unfinished eight-lane highway, leading to a border crossing planned before Syria’s civil war. As Lauren flicked off autopilot for landing, the dirty white ground west of the road emerged as a neat grid of refugee tents. As Lauren took the plane down, Sachs looked down into the refugee’s world: standpipe queues, trash piles and street football.
Tovah had taken off last, but without the weight of a passenger she’d arrived first, pulling off a delicate landing on undamaged rear wheels. Bruce had touched down a minute before Lauren, though she didn’t understand why Zahra was climbing out the back.
‘All good?’ Tovah yelled, jogging alongside as Lauren locked her ground brake and ripped off her helmet.
‘Clear run, no bother,’ Lauren said, as she straddled out.
Sachs was a big man, and while gravity had helped him bed in, he tilted the little plane as he tried getting out. Lauren and Tovah tugged from either side, and Sachs burst out laughing as he popped out.
‘I was proper wedged,’ Sachs beamed, then moaned in pain as his knee gave way to cramp.
‘Whoa,’ Lauren said, grabbing the big man’s arm.
When Sachs’ helmet came free, Lauren saw red eyes and tears streaming down his face. Arms matted with thick hair pulled her into a sweaty hug.
‘Rescued by a beautiful young lady,’ Sachs sobbed. Then roared, ‘You little hero!’
‘It’s OK,’ Lauren said, smiling helplessly as Sachs thumped her on the back.
‘I thought they’d kill me,’ Sachs said.
‘Cannae wait to get a pie, a pint and a round of golf!’
The greater good, Lauren thought to herself. But she still pictured dead bodies as Ryan and Yuen made a bumpy touchdown. Yuen was another happy camper, making his own way out and getting into a triumphant man-hug with Sachs.
Ryan wasn’t doing so well. His right arm seemed paralysed and his hand was dark red from blood that had run down inside of his shirt and soaked his cuff. After removing his helmet one-handed, Ryan squatted down and Lauren saw that he was pale and breathless.
‘OK, pal?’ Lauren asked, as she rushed over.
‘Been better,’ he confessed.
Ryan had told everyone inside the supermarket that his arm was OK and they’d been too busy to do anything but take his word. Now, Lauren studied a gory mess around his upper arm and realised that the screwdriver he’d been stabbed with had snapped at the handle, leaving the metal shaft sticking out of his bicep. It hadn’t caught a vein or artery, but Ryan’s pallor suggested that he’d lost a lot of blood.
Lauren yelled at Bruce to find a medical kit, as she pulled a hunting knife holstered to her belt and slit Ryan’s shirt open, just above the wound.
‘Where’s your stab proofing?’ Lauren asked.
‘I took it off in the night,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s tight, I hate it.’
Bruce had found a first-aid kit and overheard as he closed in. ‘Lucky you quit CHERUB,’ he noted. ‘You’d get at least two hundred punishment laps for skimping on protective gear.’
Ryan winced as Lauren pulled the slashed shirt over Ryan’s hand, exposing a well-muscled but bloody arm.
‘I’m not pulling out the screwdriver in case it spurts,’ Lauren said. ‘He needs a proper doctor.’
James and Kyle were ten metres from touchdown as Bruce and Lauren carried Ryan towards a waiting minibus.
The refugee camp was separated from the abandoned highway by fifty metres and a wire fence. But the fence had breaks and curious kids who’d spotted the gliders landing were edging closer.
‘We have to ship out,’ Tovah shouted, as James and Kyle hopped up. ‘The last thing we need is a brat with a camera phone. Get your wings deflated and your planes in the back of my truck.’
‘You heard the lady,’ James shouted, as Kyle opened the valve to start deflating their wing.
Sachs and Yuen helped out, collapsing the carbon fibre strut work of Lauren’s plane, then lifting it into the back of an unmarked truck. Kyle and James lifted their plane in last, giving some of the others a noisy shove to make room.
‘That’s the lot,’ James told Tovah, as he glanced back along the road to be certain. ‘Not a bad result.’
‘I guess it’s goodbye,’ Tovah said, as Kyle grabbed a swinging handle and pulled down the metal shutter on the back of the truck.
James hugged Tovah and cheekily whispered, ‘Free Palestine,’ in the Israeli agent’s ear.
‘Screw you,’ Tovah said, smirking. ‘Keep safe and give Kerry my love.’
Bruce was attending to Ryan in the back of a waiting minibus. Sachs and Yuen were climbing in through the little bus’s side door, but Zahra stood awkwardly in the middle of the tarmac.
‘Are you taking her?’ James asked Tovah, as she climbed into the driver’s side of the unmarked truck.
‘What am I gonna do with her?’ Tovah asked, as she pointed towards the increasing gathering of kids. ‘There’s a refugee camp right there.’
James considered this as Tovah started the engine and pulled off. He wasn’t an expert on Syrian ethnicity, but knew that most of the refugees camped in northern Turkey were Kurds, and since Zahra and her brother had been with Islamic State, she most definitely wasn’t.
‘We can’t leave her here,’ James told Kyle, before dashing across and grabbing Zahra’s arm.
The girl looked back, frightened and uncertain. Two strange men with assault rifles and body armour, marching her towards a waiting minibus, as Tovah roared off in the truck. She seemed better when she got inside and sat next to Bruce. Ryan was the only one who spoke good Arabic, but he was sprawled out in the rear, babbling.
‘I should have worn the stabby vest,’ Ryan said, grinning. ‘I’m sorry, James Adams. Mr Mission Controller … Sir, yes sir!’
‘Gave him a morphine shot for the pain,’ Lauren explained, clambering into the driver’s seat, as James pulled shut the sliding side door. ‘I’ll drive, if we’re all in?’
‘Sure you’re a good enough driver?’ James teased, as he took the front passenger seat.
‘Oh you’re witty,’ Lauren said, feeling more like herself now that she was among friends and had stuff to do. ‘According to the mission plan, there’s a private clinic five kilometres from here. Twenty-four hours, with doctors that speak English.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ James said, looking behind as Lauren hit the gas pedal. ‘Everyone else OK?’
Sachs and Yuen nodded happily. Bruce and Kyle were stripping off weapons and body armour. Zahra didn’t look too bad for a kid who was in a strange country, with strange people, including the one who’d shot her only living relative two hours earlier.
James opened the glove box and was pleased to find British diplomatic passports, for everyone except Zahra. Plus a plastic wallet containing a selection of mobile phones and personal effects that they’d abandoned before setting off the day before.
After taking his phone and passport and passing the wallet back to the next row, James dialled the control room on campus. John Jones answered.
‘We’re all out, one moderate injury and we picked up a stray,’ James said. ‘We’ll take Ryan to the clinic. How’s our ride out looking?’
‘RAF have a jet on standby in Cyprus which can be with you in ninety minutes,’ John said. ‘Now Sachs and Yuen are safe, I’ll contact MI5. Hopefully Uncle and his associates will be behind bars before he hears about the rescue.’
‘Nice,’ James said, as Lauren turned the minibus off of the unfinished highway, pulling into a tight gap on a busy local road. ‘You might as well get that plane dispatched from Cyprus. I’ll stay back here if Ryan needs to stay in hospital, but there’s no reason everyone else can’t head straight home.’
‘Roger that,’ John said. ‘It’s a pity this is an off-theradar mission you know, James. This could have done your career a lot of good.’
James cracked a wry smile. ‘I’ll still have your job in two years, boss,’ he joked. ‘Chairman of CHERUB before I turn thirty-five.’
‘You can have my job,’ John grunted. ‘Ning’s here with me in the control room, she’s got a call to patch through.’
There was a bit of fiddling at the other end, before James reached behind and handed his phone to Kam Yuen.
‘It’s for you, buddy.’
‘Hello?’ Kam said curiously, then burst into tears when he heard his daughter’s voice. ‘I’m so happy, baby,’ he blubbed. ‘I thought I was never going to speak to you again.’
40. BROMANCE
Six weeks later
Zahra pulled a plastic chair up to a desk, bruised and slightly breathless. The twelve-year-old wore muddy boots, combat trousers and an orange CHERUB T-shirt splattered with chicken blood. CHERUB’s chairman Ewart Asker sat across the desk, half smiling.
‘You did very well on the recruitment tests,’ Ewart began. ‘Your English is improving, but we’ll need to work some more on that, along with your upper body strength and swimming before you’d be able to commence basic training.’
Zahra smiled at the news. ‘How far to then?’ she asked.
‘Basic training lasts one hundred days. If you progress well, I would like to think that you’ll be more than capable of joining the trainee group that commences at the beginning of April.’
‘OK,’ Zahra said. ‘I will try. And to work very hard.’
‘But I must ask one more thing,’ Ewart said. ‘Your father died fighting to free Syria from the Assad regime. Your brother died fighting for Islamic State, and was killed by a former CHERUB
agent. How does that make you feel?’
Zahra’s face was a puzzle, as she struggled to answer in a language she’d been learning for less than two months.
‘I like to learn,’ Zahra said. ‘Learn science and math. Police stop all girls learning my home. Brother make me boy. He stop me from being forced to marry or get raped. He was not a real Islamic fighter. But no jobs. He only make money as fighter.’
Ewart nodded and smiled. ‘I understand.’
‘I like campus very much and not frightened of work hard,’ Zahra continued. ‘Theo, who showed me around, was very nice. I might make world better if I am live here.’
‘I think that’s exactly what you’re going to do,’ Ewart said, as he reached across the desk to shake hands. ‘Congratulations and welcome to CHERUB.’
CHERUB campus was January cold as Ryan Sharma waited outside the mission control building. The entry system was having a hissy fit until James Adams came and let him in.
‘Good to see you, buddy,’ James said. ‘Come on through. How’s the arm?’
Dressed in a white CHERUB T-shirt, Ryan waved to a couple of familiar faces in the control room as they set off for James’ office.
‘It’s healed,’ Ryan said. ‘Two more sessions with the physiotherapist.’
‘See this?’ James said, as he pointed to the door of one of the small offices along the hallway. The sign read Kerry Chang, Junior Mission Controller.
‘So you’re her boss,’ Ryan said, smiling.
‘I’m a full mission controller,’ James said. ‘So I’m senior to her, but I’m not her line manager or anything, thank god.’
‘Is she in?’
James shook his head. ‘Still in a leg brace. Had to go down to London to see her surgeon today.’
‘Ning said you set a date.’
James laughed. ‘Ning has a big mouth, it’s supposed to be on the QT … But yeah, I’ve got some leave booked for Easter time. So we’re getting hitched in Vegas, then we’re driving up Route 66 to Chicago for our honeymoon.’