CHERUB: The Sleepwalker - Robert Muchamore Page 0,27

the top.

As James fought hopelessly, Dana’s situation was more precarious. She was outside the net, but her boot was snagged and she was being dragged into the air.

‘Pull it higher,’ a young voice shouted from somewhere in the trees.

There was a pulley in the trees above which lessened the burden, but the red shirts still struggled to raise the weight of two teenagers.

James realised that he didn’t have a hope, but Dana did and he twisted around so that he could get his hands on her boot. Her arms were within touching distance of the ground, but her entire bodyweight dangled from one twisted ankle and she moaned in pain each time the red shirts dragged her higher.

‘Hang on,’ James gasped as he tugged at the ropes, trying to free Dana’s boot.

He jolted as one of the red shirts who’d been in the clearing shot him in the arse from close range.

‘Undo my lace,’ Dana shouted, before yelping as the other red shirt shot her in the left tit.

James unknotted Dana’s lace and began loosening her boot. The swinging net lurched another metre into the air as a second shot hit him in the thigh.

Certain basic rules applied to all CHERUB training, and one of them was that you weren’t allowed to hurt someone after they were caught.

‘I’m captured,’ James shouted indignantly. ‘Stop shooting me.’

Another bullet hit him in the arse. ‘You’re assisting another participant,’ one of the red shirts pointed out. ‘You’ve not properly surrendered.’

James was irritated by the red shirt throwing the rule book back in his face, but he finally got the laces of Dana’s boot loose enough for her foot to slide out through the net.

Dana fell from two metres up. Her muscular arms and shoulders absorbed most of the impact, but her head still hit the dirt with some force and her goggles grazed the skin above her eye socket.

She rolled head over heels and sprang to her feet as the two red-shirt boys who’d led them into the trap fired a dozen rounds at her. Luckily her powerful presence spooked them, and most of their shots disintegrated harmlessly into the ground or the undergrowth.

A third red shirt shooting from behind had no such problems, and slammed four agonising shots between Dana’s shoulder blades in under two seconds.

‘Jesus,’ Dana screamed, stumbling forward as she looked up at James’ outline balled in the net more than four metres off the ground.

She considered a rescue, but with a twisted ankle, a missing boot and shots coming at her from all directions there wasn’t any realistic chance.

‘There’s at least five of them,’ James shouted, thinking of the three red shirts shooting plus at least two more who were somewhere in the bushes hoisting up the net.

Dana was injured and the three red shirts probably could have overpowered her, but they were happy enough to have one victim and didn’t fancy their chances against the heavily built teenager.

As Dana ran away through the bushes, the red shirts all stopped shouting and shooting and James found himself high off the ground, with a sharp stinging pain in his arse and a gentle creaking of the net as it swung from the branches.

The girl who’d done such a good job shooting Dana in the back moved directly under the net and spoke into her headset. ‘This is LW calling any white shirts. Our honey trap just caught a fairly dim-witted bee and we’d appreciate it if someone came down and took him off our hands.’

James was pretty furious at being up in the net and having a nine-year-old girl insulting him didn’t improve his mood.

‘Hey little girl,’ he shouted. ‘I happen to have a privileged position helping out the training instructors. So you watch that mouth, because some day soon you might find yourself on a training exercise where your arse belongs to me.’

‘Did I ask for your opinion?’ the girl laughed, as she aimed the gun up and shot James in the arse again.

‘Hey,’ James screamed. ‘Stop that. It’s not allowed and you know it.’

The girl tutted. ‘Why don’t you write a letter to the United Nations?’

12. TREK

Siobhan was only a few weeks shy of her tenth birthday, and if everything went to plan she’d be a qualified CHERUB agent before Christmas. She was confident and fit, but she was also three years younger than Lauren and inevitably that made her slower.

She flipped up the night-vision attachment on her goggles and was surprised by the reminder of how black it