Black Friday (CHERUB) - Robert Muchamore Page 0,22

for you to pick up,’ Ryan said, before doing a double tap on his earlobe. ‘Com check?’

‘Check,’ Kazakov said.

While Kazakov pulled up sofa cushions and laid them over the muck beneath the access hatch, Ryan discreetly moved around the mobile home looking for their guard.

‘He’s not trying too hard,’ Ryan said. ‘I see him sitting on a tree stump across the path. No sign of a gun, but he could be packing heat under his clothes.’

‘He’s probably got a walkie-talkie,’ Kazakov said. ‘You’ll have to take him out before he gets to it.’

As Ryan nodded, Kazakov popped another caffeine pill and offered one to Ryan. Ryan baulked, but Kazakov was insistent.

‘You’ve been awake over thirty hours. The risk from a couple of pep pills is a lot less than going into battle with your brain half numb.’

Ryan swallowed a little yellow pill reluctantly, then took a deep breath and tried blocking the stench out of his mind as he pushed his body through the hole in the ground.

12. BIRDS

The guard was only a few years older than Ryan, face lit by Angry Birds running on his mobile and apparently sulking because his co-conspirators were up at the ranch house socialising while he was out in the dark squatting on a tree stump.

IDoJ was a professional set-up, but Ryan reckoned this guy was a misguided college kid. He’d been drawn in for a big operation and probably didn’t realise that a smooth talker like Elbaz regarded him as expendable.

Ryan didn’t fancy killing him. A truly ruthless operator would have ripped out the kid’s throat, or snapped his head around hard enough to break his neck, but Ryan didn’t want a murder on his conscience, even if incapacitating him involved greater time and risk.

After crawling out from under the mobile home relatively unscathed by sewage, Ryan circled around and picked a couple of pine cones and some willowy branches off the ground. Not only was the young guard playing Angry Birds, he was dumb enough to have left the sound on and the game’s upbeat music made a wildly inappropriate soundtrack as Ryan crept up behind.

‘Gah!’

The phone landed in mulch as Ryan got an arm around the guard’s neck. The guy was bigger, but Ryan was strong from pumping weights at the Kremlin and had no trouble yanking his victim backwards off the log and clamping his jaw to muffle a scream. Once the guard’s back was in the dirt, Ryan pressed his knee on his throat and choked him out.

As soon as his body went limp, Ryan forced a pine cone into the guy’s mouth, then rolled him on his back and dragged him deeper into the trees so that he couldn’t be seen from the path. He tied the cone gag in place using a section of the flexible branch, then used two more bendy switches to bind wrists and ankles.

After testing all his knots, Ryan started on the guy’s pockets. As Kazakov predicted there was a walkie-talkie clipped to the guy’s belt. Ryan took it so that he could listen in to anything IDoJ was saying. He also took the guard’s wallet and was pleased by a jangle of keys in his jeans pocket.

Ryan dumped a big bunch that seemed to be house keys and stuff, but there was a second ring with a key, a plipper and an enamel fob with a car rental company logo on. Finally, Ryan pulled out a semi-automatic pistol tucked down the back of the guard’s boxers. He checked the chamber and found a full clip.

Ryan double-tapped to activate his com. ‘Dad, you hearing?’

Kazakov’s voice came back inside Ryan’s ear canal. ‘What’s up?’

‘I circled around, there’s only one guard. He’s out cold. I’ve got a Beretta and keys to a hire car.’

‘Nice,’ Kazakov said. ‘Go up to the house and try identifying the car. I’ll grab our stuff and be right up behind you.’

Ryan kept off the path and stayed low as he walked towards a dirt patch beside the ranch house where most of the bad guys had parked their cars. The garage doors had been shuttered, but the sliding glass at the rear of the kitchen was open and the gathering inside had turned more solemn, with a single voice speaking in Arabic.

There were a dozen cars parked on gravel alongside the house: dreary Chrysler saloons and Hyundai mini-vans, all with car rental company stickers on the rear screens. Ryan was about to press the plipper to see which car he