CHERUB: The Sleepwalker - Robert Muchamore Page 0,28
was. There was no moon and the nearest source of artificial light was downhill, behind half a kilometre of trees.
‘Base, this is SP,’ Siobhan whispered as she flipped the switch to activate her mouthpiece. ‘I’m two hundred metres from the rear of the basic training compound but I think I’ve lost Lauren Adams. Have you got any sensors or cameras around here that can help me out?’
Kazakov’s voice came straight back in her earpiece. ‘I’ve got your location on satellite tracking. I’ll see what we’ve got and get right back.’
Siobhan flipped her night vision down again as she waited, but before the response came she heard a squelching sound like someone dropping into a ditch less than twenty metres in front of her. She suspected that Lauren was long gone, but another black shirt could have wandered into the area.
Dead leaves and branches crackled underfoot, but even with the infra-red on its highest setting there was no sign of recent soil disturbance around the mouth of the ditch.
She kept her rifle poised as she swung left and right, seeking a target. It hadn’t rained for a few days and the water in the ditch had been stagnant long enough for insect larvae to hatch. One landed on her nose and she squished it, before flicking it away from her finger.
Siobhan didn’t like the insects or the dank smell. Pursuing Lauren through the least pleasant part of campus wasn’t nearly as good an idea as it had seemed fifteen minutes earlier. As she was about to back off, Kazakov’s voice crackled in her earpiece.
‘I just checked the sensor logs and the motion-detection system triangulated someone up close to your position less than a minute ago. You’d better go take a look.’
‘OK,’ Siobhan said reluctantly. ‘Will do.’
Now she was spooked, because it’s almost impossible to move without disturbing the earth and leaving a thermal trace. The ghostly presence sent a shiver down her back.
Siobhan crushed another midge crawling over the back of her hand as she moved right up to the edge of the ditch. As she crouched over the water, she heard a splash and before she knew it, something had gripped her ankle and her boot was sliding down the embankment.
She kicked and wriggled and clawed at the mud, but her opponent was too heavy and she found herself plunging into the ice-cold water. Icy hands moved on to the back of Siobhan’s neck and thrust her head under the swirls of mud, then held it there for several seconds.
‘There’s a reason not to mess with me,’ Lauren snarled, as she dragged Siobhan’s head out of the water. ‘I’m a black shirt, you’re a red. You should have stuck to picking your nose and finger painting.’
With that, Lauren bundled Siobhan against the embankment and smeared her face through the stinking mud before turning her around.
‘You like that, red shirt?’ Lauren sneered.
Lauren had spent three months ditch-digging as punishment and she’d got immune to the smell, but this was Siobhan’s first experience and she sobbed as the filthy water dribbled out of her mouth.
‘Poor little red shirt. Is you crying for your teddy, Siobhan? You’re almost ten. If this makes you cry you won’t stick one day of basic training.’
Siobhan sobbed again and Lauren started to feel guilty. She was in a mood because she’d been dragged out of bed, dumped on the far side of campus and shot at. None of this was Siobhan’s fault, but it felt damned good having someone to take out her anger on.
She ripped the headset from Siobhan’s ear. The set hadn’t responded well to its excursion underwater which disappointed Lauren, who’d hoped to gain valuable intelligence by listening in to the radio traffic between the instructors and the white shirts.
Siobhan rubbed her eyes. When she managed to open them up she was surprised to find Lauren stripped to her boots and underwear, with mud smeared thickly over her face. Lauren had been lucky enough to find a discarded gardener’s sack in which to keep her clothes dry. The mud on her face made her skin harder to see and lowered her skin temperature, making her harder to spot with the infra-red.
Lauren stuffed her dry clothes into Siobhan’s backpack on top of the spare simunition, then checked her rifle and night-vision goggles, both of which had survived their encounter with the muddy water.