New Guard (CHERUB) - Robert Muchamore Page 0,69

birds spewed into the air.

‘Who’s on guard?’ Tovah asked, as she shot up and reached for her rifle.

‘Bruce?’ James hissed.

‘I’m round here, I think I shot someone.’

Tovah was first to join Bruce in the next aisle. She shone a torch, lighting up Bruce’s back and the body of a wildcat. Similar to a domestic cat, but half as big again, the shoulder Bruce had seen had actually been the back of a creature that had strolled in looking to catch an unwary bird.

‘Great smell,’ Tovah noted, as she looked at strands of brown and pink goo splattered up the back of the shelf. ‘Bullet must have ruptured the bowel.’

‘Nice shooting, buddy,’ Kyle noted, pulling down the front of his trousers as he walked towards a bucket to take a pee. ‘Everybody back to bed.’

‘No,’ James said firmly. ‘Hopefully nobody was close enough to hear the shot, but we’ll need at least a couple of extra people on alert just in case.’

‘Agreed,’ Tovah said, as she glanced at her watch. ‘I’m game. I’ll not get back to sleep now anyway.’

‘Too tense to sleep much in the first place,’ James noted, as he checked their cameras and motion sensor readouts. First light had just breached the horizon. ‘I have to say I envy Sleeping Beauty here.’

There were a few smiles as James shone his torch on Ryan, who remained blissfully unaware, with his head buried deep inside quilted nylon.

‘Bloody hell,’ Tovah moaned, as she joined James looking at the screens. ‘Bruce got the last chocolate and banana.’

‘Tea or coffee?’ Kyle asked, as he came back from peeing and wiped hands with a disinfectant wipe.

Lauren nodded as she wriggled off her shelf and sat up, rubbing her eyes. ‘Who shot who?’

‘Bruce murdered a cat,’ Kyle explained. ‘Easily mistaken for an armed assassin.’

‘Explains the smell of cat mess,’ Lauren noted, as she stood up.

James nodded in agreement. ‘Bruce, you’d better throw that thing outside, before it turns all our stomachs.’

As Kyle made instant coffee, Lauren cooked up porridge and a big powdered egg omelette on a two-burner butane stove. Ryan kept snoozing as the others propped on bread crates and ate breakfast.

‘UHF pick-up,’ James noted, as he crouched over a screen. ‘Sounds like someone’s in the office.’

The laptop was set to record any voices picked up in the control room. Since the bugs were only producing a crackly backup signal and in Arabic, Tovah shuffled across and replaced the tinny laptop speaker with a set of headphones.

‘Two guys bitching about their wives,’ Tovah explained. ‘Their accents are rough.’

‘Meaning what?’ Kyle asked.

‘Workers, I’d guess,’ Tovah replied. ‘Waiting for their boss to arrive and give instructions … They’re bitching about how they were told to be here super early, but there’s nobody else there yet.’

‘So something’s happening today,’ James said brightly.

Ryan opened one eye, then sat up when he saw Lauren, Bruce and Kyle looking at him. ‘What?’ he said, stifling a yawn. ‘What I do?’

‘Nothing,’ James said, smirking. ‘As someone who tossed and turned all night, worrying about this shit, I envy your ability to switch off and sleep for ten hours.’

‘It’s called being a teenager,’ Ryan said, giving up on the stifling and going full yawn. ‘Besides, what’s to worry about? We’re just camped out eighty kilometres inside the territory of a dangerous terrorist group who’ll torture and chop our heads off if they capture us. Have all the eggs gone?’

Ryan felt pampered as Lauren dished him eggs and Kyle brought coffee. Tovah made him jump by slapping her thighs and yelling, ‘We got tha shit, dudes!’

‘What you got?’ James asked.

‘Boss man just arrived. Told the workers to get all the burned control consoles out of the hut, because they have to be cleared out before replacements arrive.’

‘When?’

‘There’s a local electrician coming in to replace the burned-out supply box at 0800. Replacement consoles and the repair team are due in by lunchtime. Then the guy asked when they expected the well to be fixed. Boss guy said it depends on the engineers but hopefully they’ll be pumping oil again by tomorrow.’

‘Nice,’ Bruce said. ‘Looks like we timed our arrival just right.’

‘Don’t want to stick around any longer than we have to,’ James noted. ‘Be good to have a couple of cameras in the area before it gets too light.’

‘We can land a pair of micro-drones on the oil derrick,’ Tovah suggested.

‘Won’t they give the game away if they’re spotted?’ Ryan asked.

James got up and pulled a boxed micro-drone out of his backpack.

‘Three centimetres, weighs