Chapter 10
Will brushed a speck of rain off his cheek. It had been five minutes since James had told him the 'master plan' and Will wished that he'd hurry up and give him the go because he really didn't want to get soaked. "You know what we're doing right?" he checked with Jayson, for the thousandth time.
"Yeah, stop worrying, your usually the one who wants to get in there and kill someone," Jayson said.
"I don't want to kill anyone," Will say tersely.
"Chill," Jayson raising his hands in mock surrender.
"I am!" Will said, a little too loudly. A few seconds later Will's phone buzzed. He unlocked the screen and opened a message from James.
Do you guys wanna make any more noise? 3 more mins & we'll go. Set ur watch from my next text
"That was James," Will said, typing a quick ok and sending the message.
"What did he say?" Jayson asked.
"To set our watches to 3 minutes from his next text and then we're moving in," Will replied, readying his watch. About thirty seconds later his phone vibrated and he whispered "Go!" to Jayson, simultaneously pressing the button on his watch to start the timer.
As the seconds ticked by, Will prepared himself more and more. He wasn't worried about himself so much, but to whether Hannah would be alright. She'd only just got over her break down, and he still worried that it could happen again.
Suddenly there were only 30 seconds left on Wills watch. He turned to Jayson, "All ready?" he asked.
"Yeah, is your gun loaded?" Jayson asked back.
"Yeah, got the cuffs?" Will said.
"In my pocket," he replied.
The boys crept up to the fire escape door leading onto the gallery that ran all around the inside of the warehouse. It was five metre jump from the gallery down to the floor but that was nothing for the two CHERUBS – they'd faced the height obstacle with its ten metre jump enough times, this was nothing. As the timer ticked down to ten Will took a reassuring pat on the handgun in his waistband. The boys got up close to the door and were both subconsciously counting down the seconds under they're breath.
The next few seconds went by in a blur for will; Jayson kicked the door in and Will rushed in pulling the gun out of his waistband and pointing it directly at Kent. "Don't move!" he shouted, keeping his voice steady.
Jayson jumped down first and landed a surprise attack on Kent, knocking the gun out of his hands and picking it up himself. Will then jumped down, throwing a well aimed punch at Kent's shoulder, and then a swift kick in the guts. As Kent tried to shout for help Jayson knocked him onto the floor by slamming the barrel of his gun into Kent's temples. Will grabbed the cuffs, snapping them onto the man's wrists.
Kent struggled and it took both the boys full power to hold him still – but he soon stopped struggling when Jayson aimed the gun at his chest.
Meanwhile, James and Kyle were busily cutting through three layers of rope that held the girls in place on their chairs. They cut Molly free first, but instead of enjoying her first few minutes of freedom again, she rushed to help the boys cut out Hannah and Gabrielle. The two girls winced as the rope burnt the skin on their wrists in the attempt to get everyone out as quickly as possible.
Just as they were freed, the armed response team rushed in, firing a few warning shots into the ceiling and ordering everyone to get down on the ground.
"Do they not know who we are?" Kyle whispered to James.
"I don't think—" James began, but he stopped when a H&K PSG1 was waved about threateningly under his nose.
"Shut it kid," said the officer, "Your in deep enough trouble as it is,"
"Agent 20638" James tried, hoping the officer would believe him, and realise that he was on their side.
"Look," the officer said, crouching down and pushing his face right up against James' so their noses were squashed up together. "I'm not playing games kid. Do you know what this is?" he pointed to the PSG1. "This is a high accuracy, semi automatic rifle, for police and military use only. It would rip your skull apart in two seconds flat. Now, do you really want me to do that?"
James shook his head, not doubting for one second that the officer didn't mean his words. But unfortunately for him, James had been through CHERUB basic training, so the lecture was lost on him, filtering through his head like information on a database.
Realising that James had nothing left to say the officer hitched him up off the floor, and in the blink of an eye had him in cuffs and taken off to vans waiting outside. Everyone was cuffed and taken outside, before being searched and loaded into the vans.
The boys had been put into one van, the girls in another and Kent in the back of a police car. As the convoy headed out towards the main road, Kyle spoke. "James, they took all the things that are letting Zara and John track us."
Zara rubbed her eyes wearily struggling to focus on the screens she was monitoring in the back of the van her and john had been sitting in for almost two hours now. The minute she saw that the ART had driven in through the front gates of the estate, she let out a long sigh of relief. Turning away from the monitors she removed the headphones from around her ears and let them dangle loosely around her neck.
"ART are here," she said to John, who was still staring passively at his screen. He turned round, rubbing his eyes and taking off his headphones too. "Great," he said, "Do you wanna go get some coffees or something? I'm craving a caffeine boost."
"Sure," Zara said. She felt herself relax a little as she walked out into the dim early morning light. ART were here now, she would no doubt get a call from MI5 some time later on, telling her where to pick up the kids. She'd arranged for Jennifer, the CHERUB counsellor, to come down to the house and go through everything with the agents – to check they were ok, especially the girls. She'd specifically asked for an ART unit qualified to deal with CHERUB, and with the size of this mission, she had no doubt they wouldn't deliver.
There was a coffee machine outside the station that was directly next to the car park Zara and John were parked in. She took polystyrene up from the top of the machine and slipped it into a holder, before slotting the money into the machine and pressing the 'latte' option. Three minutes later she was holding two steaming cups of coffee and heading back to the van, shivering in the cool morning air.
But when she stepped into the Van John was all but calm. 'Zara, we have a problem,' he said in a distracted tone, hap-hazardly pressing buttons and staring into flickering monitors.
'What's wrong?' she said, placing one of the cups on a coaster next to John.
'All the kids tracking devices have stopped moving,'
'What do you mean?' she said, confused.
'Well when I say stopped moving, they are moving but as one. And they're going in a completely different direction to the way that the ART vans with kids in are going.' John explained.
A switch clicked in Zara's brain, and she immediately understood what happened. 'I asked for an ART unit qualified to work with CHERUB, but they obviously didn't understand the importance of that,'
'Yes, but there's something more important than that,'
'what?'
'The fact that they don't know about CHERUB concerns me, but way more importantly is the fact that they then won't know why Kent is here. They were just told to pick up everyone in that building and put them all in separate cars. The thing I'm worried about is what they might say to Kent, or what he might say to them.'