CHERUB: The Fall - Robert Muchamore Page 0,25
being looked after.’
‘I feel like a massive weight got lifted off,’ Lauren grinned.
‘Great,’ Zara said. ‘Now I’ve got some phone calls to make. Can I rely on you to tell Kerry and anyone else who might be worried?’
‘No problem,’ Lauren said cheerfully. ‘I’ll go right now.’
She snapped her phone shut and ran out into the corridor. ‘Rat!’ she screamed as she banged on his door, which was near the lifts at the far end of the eighth floor. ‘I got a call. He’s OK.’
Rat emerged and chased Lauren downstairs to the sixth floor, where Kerry and most of James’ mates lived.
‘Kerry, Kerry, Kerry,’ Lauren yelled as she ran on to the sixth floor and almost splattered James’ mate Bruce against the wall.
‘They found him?’ Bruce grinned.
‘Beaten up, but sounds like he’s OK,’ Rat explained, as Lauren charged into Kerry’s room.
She was surprised to find the room was empty, then noticed that the bathroom door was locked.
‘He’s all right,’ Lauren yelled, as she pounded on the door.
Kerry unbolted the door and pulled Lauren into a tight hug.
‘I don’t think I could have handled it if he’d been killed,’ Kerry sniffled.
Lauren wiped a tear from her face. ‘What’s the betting that we’ll both be back to yelling at him in a week’s time?’ *
A Nissan Almera pulled up at a striped barrier. It was close to midnight and Aero City’s power had failed for the second night running; but the corrugated metal hangar in front of the car was surrounded by security lights that were powered by a generator inside the airfield.
Ewart wound down the driver’s side window and spoke to the security guard in bad Russian. ‘I’m Mr Newman. They’re expecting me.’
The guard looked disinterested as he pressed the button to raise the gate. The front of the hangar was painted with the words Hilton Aerospace in three-metre-high letters. Ewart looked over on to the rear seat.
‘Don’t fall asleep back there,’ he said.
The clogged sinuses inside James’ broken nose were giving him the worst headache of his life and the clean shirt and tracksuit pants he’d taken from the CIA safe house were sticking to the partly formed scabs on his skin. He peeked out from under a blanket and spoke sourly. ‘I know; I’m not an idiot.’
As they drove up to the hangar, a shaft of light appeared between its giant doors, wide enough for Ewart to drive through. A huge man in an overall with a Hilton Aerospace logo on it shook Ewart’s hand as he stepped out.
‘Thanks for helping out at such short notice, Mr Edwards,’ Ewart said.
‘No problem – and call me Craig,’ the man smiled, as Ewart stared at the faded skull and crossbones tattoo on the back of Craig’s hand. ‘Always happy to help a fellow Brit out of a tight spot. That’s my missus, Irene, by the way.’
Irene wore an identical overall to her husband as she rolled a shabby wheelchair up to the rear of the car and opened the door beside James.
‘I can walk OK,’ James said, as he sat up.
The woman shook her head, before speaking with a London accent. ‘The jet is coming in to land on runway two. It’s over a kilometre along the taxiway, you’re all beat up and it’s an ice rink out there.’
‘So what’s our escape plan?’ James asked, as he lowered his aching body into the chair.
Craig explained. ‘We wheel you out to the edge of the runway as the plane comes in. You and Ewart climb aboard the second it stops moving, the pilot does a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, powers up and she’ll be back in the air within three minutes of touchdown.’
‘What about the flight plan?’ James asked. ‘Won’t Obidin’s people know the jet is coming?’
‘We’ve logged a flight plan for a Hilton Aerospace cargo plane to land at our regular airfield across town, but the pilot will divert here at the last minute. We’ve had cops sniffing around and searching our containers over there all day. We used to use this airfield when a big jet came in to have its engines serviced, but Obidin lost that contract and it’s all done in Britain now.’
‘And the outgoing flight?’ Ewart asked. ‘I assume we’re not gonna get shot down by a couple of MiGs.’
Craig shook his head. ‘The pilot will stay away from controlled airspace. If air traffic control does pick us up for any reason, she’ll just claim that our office forgot to file the flight plan. That’s no biggie: private jets and