he chirped.
‘You bloody wait,’ James growled.
‘Temper temper,’ Ronan grinned as he stuffed the remainder of the Snickers bar into his own mouth, before rolling the wrapper into a ball and flicking it in James’ face.
7. POLITICS
It had been twenty-five years since a CHERUB agent had died on a mission. Zara Asker had only been the organisation’s chairwoman for ten months and she’d learned about the worst crisis of her career while sitting in a hospital ward, comforting her three-year-old son Joshua, who’d broken his arm after deciding to jump from the top of the slide at his nursery school.
It was a complex break and Joshua had been kept in overnight, following a minor operation to insert a metal pin. He was tearful and restless, and Zara felt guilty abandoning her own child to go and look after someone else’s. But Joshua had his father Ewart for comfort, and while Joshua would undoubtedly cry for his mum when he got tired, his arm would heal and his cast would be off in a month or so. Gabrielle’s fate was nowhere near as certain.
Zara was flashed by a dozen speed cameras as she took the family Lexus from the car park of the hospital nearest to CHERUB campus to another hospital on the outskirts of Luton. At one point she got pulled over by police while cutting through the crowded traffic, but a glimpse of her high-level security pass earned her an escort of flashing blue lights along the fast lane of the M1.
On top of being worried about Gabrielle, she was dreading the political consequences of what had happened. Only the Prime Minister and the Intelligence Minister know that CHERUB exists. Both had been reassured that cherubs are well trained, closely monitored by mission controllers and that the chances of a cherub being seriously injured or killed are slight.
Zara was going to be in for a grilling when they found out that one of her agents was on life support following a knife fight between rival drug gangs. But she was confronted with a more basic drama when she stepped past the two police officers stationed at the entrance to the intensive care unit in case of trouble between the rival gangs.
Mission controller Chloe Blake and her assistant Maureen Evans stood up and hugged Zara as she entered a waiting area between two intensive-care rooms. Chloe had been a full mission controller for less than a year and Maureen was a Trinidadian ex-cherub who’d only been appointed as Chloe’s assistant after leaving university the previous October.
Zara respected them both, but knew questions would be raised about whether two of CHERUB’s least experienced mission controllers should have been allowed to handle a high-risk mission.
Michael stood at the end of the room, staring out of a dirty window and trying his best not to cry. A tear broke free as Zara kissed him on the cheek and rubbed his back. Michael was much younger than his big sisters and to avoid splitting his family he’d joined CHERUB at just three years of age. Zara could remember him riding around campus on a tiny pushbike with stabilisers, back when she’d first been appointed as an assistant mission controller.
‘What’s the medical situation?’ Zara asked, as she let Michael go.
Chloe answered. ‘Gabrielle’s in a sterile room to prevent infection. She’s under sedation and her breathing is being supported mechanically. They’ve given her clotting agents to stem the bleeding.’
‘How are they describing her condition?’
‘Critical but stable. The doctor has been checking in every half an hour and the surgeon came by forty minutes ago. She said they’ve stemmed most of the external bleeding, but that the knife went in deep and is still lodged in Gabrielle’s back.
‘Five Runts were also seriously injured. At the moment a boy who took a shotgun blast in the back is in surgery, but as soon as he’s out of theatre they’re going to wheel in Gabrielle and try removing the knife. The trauma surgeon said they won’t know how severe her injuries are until they open her up.’
‘Sounds grim,’ Zara said, as she swept her hand through her hair and looked around anxiously. ‘Is it safe to speak here?’
‘As long as you’re quiet,’ Chloe nodded. ‘There’s tight security around the hospital. The police think that some of Major Dee’s men could come by the hospital and try to finish the job.’
‘Major Dee has previous on that score,’ Maureen explained. ‘In 2005 a witness who’d agreed to testify against him on an