New Guard (CHERUB) - Robert Muchamore Page 0,75

were visible, their grey wings merging with the colour of clouds high above.

Tovah took one last glance back at the supermarket as she pulled the remote detonator, waited a few more seconds to be certain that the explosion vortex didn’t suck her in. Then she pressed a button and blew the whole place to hell.

39. TENTS

Cruising at eight hundred metres, cold air blasting from the east and the autopilot making corrections with the flaps. The world seemed beautiful from up here, but Lauren couldn’t get the bodies out of her head. She’d killed a man on her first mission, aged eleven, but that was a him-or-me. This had been like some weird one-sided video game.

All that CHERUB training, versus some grandpas. Lauren felt naive now, jumping at a chance to relive old times when James called her up. Now she wanted to get back to Texas. The little house she shared on the edge of a racetrack. Rat making scrambled eggs in his mechanic’s overall. Kissing her neck and saying how much he loved her.

Touchdown was seven hundred metres inside the Turkish border. An unfinished eight-lane highway, leading to a border crossing planned before Syria’s civil war. As Lauren flicked off autopilot for landing, the dirty white ground west of the road emerged as a neat grid of refugee tents. As Lauren took the plane down, Sachs looked down into the refugee’s world: standpipe queues, trash piles and street football.

Tovah had taken off last, but without the weight of a passenger she’d arrived first, pulling off a delicate landing on undamaged rear wheels. Bruce had touched down a minute before Lauren, though she didn’t understand why Zahra was climbing out the back.

‘All good?’ Tovah yelled, jogging alongside as Lauren locked her ground brake and ripped off her helmet.

‘Clear run, no bother,’ Lauren said, as she straddled out.

Sachs was a big man, and while gravity had helped him bed in, he tilted the little plane as he tried getting out. Lauren and Tovah tugged from either side, and Sachs burst out laughing as he popped out.

‘I was proper wedged,’ Sachs beamed, then moaned in pain as his knee gave way to cramp.

‘Whoa,’ Lauren said, grabbing the big man’s arm.

When Sachs’ helmet came free, Lauren saw red eyes and tears streaming down his face. Arms matted with thick hair pulled her into a sweaty hug.

‘Rescued by a beautiful young lady,’ Sachs sobbed. Then roared, ‘You little hero!’

‘It’s OK,’ Lauren said, smiling helplessly as Sachs thumped her on the back.

‘I thought they’d kill me,’ Sachs said. ‘Cannae wait to get a pie, a pint and a round of golf!’

The greater good, Lauren thought to herself. But she still pictured dead bodies as Ryan and Yuen made a bumpy touchdown. Yuen was another happy camper, making his own way out and getting into a triumphant man-hug with Sachs.

Ryan wasn’t doing so well. His right arm seemed paralysed and his hand was dark red from blood that had run down inside of his shirt and soaked his cuff. After removing his helmet one-handed, Ryan squatted down and Lauren saw that he was pale and breathless.

‘OK, pal?’ Lauren asked, as she rushed over.

‘Been better,’ he confessed.

Ryan had told everyone inside the supermarket that his arm was OK and they’d been too busy to do anything but take his word. Now, Lauren studied a gory mess around his upper arm and realised that the screwdriver he’d been stabbed with had snapped at the handle, leaving the metal shaft sticking out of his bicep. It hadn’t caught a vein or artery, but Ryan’s pallor suggested that he’d lost a lot of blood.

Lauren yelled at Bruce to find a medical kit, as she pulled a hunting knife holstered to her belt and slit Ryan’s shirt open, just above the wound.

‘Where’s your stab proofing?’ Lauren asked.

‘I took it off in the night,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s tight, I hate it.’

Bruce had found a first-aid kit and overheard as he closed in. ‘Lucky you quit CHERUB,’ he noted. ‘You’d get at least two hundred punishment laps for skimping on protective gear.’

Ryan winced as Lauren pulled the slashed shirt over Ryan’s hand, exposing a well-muscled but bloody arm.

‘I’m not pulling out the screwdriver in case it spurts,’ Lauren said. ‘He needs a proper doctor.’

James and Kyle were ten metres from touchdown as Bruce and Lauren carried Ryan towards a waiting minibus.

The refugee camp was separated from the abandoned highway by fifty metres and a wire fence. But the fence had breaks and curious