CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,21
driver of the Land Rover took his time strapping on an armoured suit and approaching the Graves’ home with a microphone-like probe held in a gloved hand.
Dante had spent more time with the package than anyone else, so a female corporal kept him on hand and asked questions about whether he’d moved the package roughly since receiving it, whether it seemed heavier or lighter than he thought it ought to be and if the packaging around the cars looked like it had been tampered with.
She seemed relaxed and let Dante ask questions back. ‘What does the thingy your friend’s holding do?’
‘Ricardo’s approaching the bomb with a sniffer,’ the woman explained. ‘It detects microscopic traces of explosives, rather like an airport security scanner. There’s also a video camera built into the tip. The lieutenant and sergeant are watching the video feed and telling him what to do.’
Whilst Dante was captivated by the technology, Linda and Donald were staggered that they’d spent ninety minutes sitting within a few metres of a package that was now being approached by a soldier wearing titanium anti-blast armour.
Ricardo moved slowly up the driveway. After two steps into the hallway, the soldier backed out as quickly as forty kilos of metal armour would allow. The sergeant came out the back of the van and yelled out: ‘Positive reading. Some kind of bonded plastic explosive. From the chemical signature I’d say C-4. We’ll need Mabel.’
Dante had hoped the present had been a gesture of loyalty from a friend of his father. Only now did he believe that Doods had been trying to kill him.
The female corporal who’d been speaking to Dante opened the back of the Land Rover and dragged out a ramp. Mabel was a compact bomb-disposal robot. She ran on four rubber tracks, each of which could pivot to enable the robot to climb stairs. Above the tracks were chemical sensors, a multiple jointed arm and a hose linked to four hundred litres of highly pressurised water.
Mabel sped down the empty street as the female corporal helped Ricardo out of his armour. The bony sergeant working in the van noticed Dante hovering like a lost sheep and called him inside.
Dante stepped warily into the van. It was filled with computer screens and keyboards. A handsome lieutenant sat in a padded chair manipulating the joystick that controlled Mabel’s tracks. Even with the back of the van open the heat from the electronics sucked all the moisture out of Dante’s mouth.
‘What do you think of our toy box then?’ the sergeant asked.
‘Aren’t you scared that the bomb will blow up?’ Dante replied.
‘If it does Mabel’s the only one that’ll get hurt,’ the sergeant explained casually. ‘I get nervous when I’m on a London building site, with some rusty old World War Two bomb in the middle of a waterlogged hole that’s too deep for Mabel. Or when I was in the desert, scratching at a piece of wire sticking out of the dirt and wondering if it was going to trigger a bomb, or if some Iraqi was going to shoot me up the arse when I bent over to take a look.’
‘So this is an easy bomb?’ Dante asked.
The lieutenant answered: ‘Nothing makes us happier than finding a bomb in a dry, easily accessible space.’
Dante managed to smile as he watched Mabel’s progress on the largest screen. The lieutenant positioned Mabel’s spindly arm above the handles of the shopping bag and looked at the nine-year-old.
‘Did you move this bag around much after you received it?’ the lieutenant asked.
‘Not that much,’ Dante explained. ‘My friend Ed wanted me to put them on charge so that we could race the cars as soon as we got home from school. So I took them into the play room at the front of the house, but before I got the box open the police came in and told me not to pull it about because Inspector Johnson might want to have it checked for fingerprints.’
‘In that case we’ll try to save Mrs Graves’ carpet,’ the Lieutenant said.
Dante looked confused and the sergeant explained for him. ‘Mabel has eight nozzles, like a shower head, except if you stood under those nozzles when the water came out the water would cut through your body like a knife. When we open the tank, four hundred litres will be blown out in a quarter second. The water flushes the bomb, literally blowing the components apart before there’s any chance of detonation.’