CHERUB: People's Republic (20 page)

As Ryan opened his mouth to reply, Amy noticed two black figures running purposefully across the beach outside. They were male, in black wetsuits and carrying rubberised backpacks.

‘Something’s up,’ Amy said, as she dashed towards the window to get a better look. Her voice turned from curious to urgent as she spotted a high-speed dinghy moored in the harbour. ‘They’re all kitted out like Special Forces and I think they’re heading for Gillian’s house.’

*

Plzen airport had a single runway and a modern terminal building, built in the hope of attracting budget airlines to the Czech Republic’s fourth largest town. Maks was allowed through a special fast security channel for airline staff and Ning half expected never to see him again as she followed arrows and stood in line with the passengers.

‘Purpose of stay?’ a customs officer with pink lipstick asked in English.

‘Two weeks’ holiday,’ Ning said, pointing to the Chinese girls waiting on the other side of the customs barrier. ‘I’m with the tour group.’

Ning’s heart skipped as the woman swiped her dodgy Kyrgyz passport through a scanner. But no cloud of burly customs officers came running. The woman stamped the passport and passed it back.

‘Enjoy your holiday.’

The men meeting the Chinese and North Korean girls in the arrivals hall held bright red banners marked
Clanair Holidays
but they wore sunglasses and leather jackets, looking more like nightclub bouncers than tour reps. One of these men eyed Ning suspiciously as she walked off, but Maks was waiting for her.

‘I got you some local currency,’ Maks said, as he handed Ning a small pile of Czech banknotes. ‘This should be enough to pay for some food and a taxi. This is where you need to go.’

Maks handed Ning a postcard with an address and phone number on the back.

‘Show that to the taxi driver. Chun Hei will meet you there at twelve-thirty.’

‘What time is it?’ Ning asked, as she looked around for a clock.

‘Just after eight a.m.,’ Maks said. ‘You don’t have a watch?’

‘Kuban took it from me.’

‘I’ll tell Dan you arrived safely,’ Maks said, as he unbuckled the cheap digital watch on his wrist. ‘Take this. It’s still on Kyrgyz time, you need to take off five hours.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ning said.

She wasn’t sure if Maks’ sudden outbreak of kindness was caused by genuine concern or by fear of what Dan might do if he found out that he’d reneged on his promise to travel with her in the taxi.

‘I buy for fifty som in the market,’ Maks said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Thank you,’ Ning said, as she found that the innermost hole just about held the man-sized watch on her wrist.

I hope you get to wherever you want to go. Now I must leave to prepare for return flight.’

Maks started walking and turned left at a sign marked
Private – Pilot Lounge
. Ning pocketed her fistful of Czech crowns as she looked around the arrivals hall. It was a desolate space, with a few shuttered shops and a coffee bar with airport cleaning crew as its only customers.

Ning had three hours to kill and considered getting a quick breakfast, but according to the arrivals board the next plane wasn’t due to land for over an hour, and she reckoned some bored cop or customs officer might stick their nose in if she wandered around on her own for too long.

She walked through electronic doors with a multilingual sign over them that read
Welcome to Czechia
and turned towards the taxi rank.

24. GRAPPLE

Gillian Kitsell was on a lounger by her rooftop pool, enjoying a warm evening with Scotch on the rocks and
Wired
magazine. A clunking sound made her peek over her Ray-Bans, but there was nothing to see and she blamed it on a gremlin with the pool filter.

‘Ms Kitsell,’ Yannis said politely, as he waddled out on to the roof terrace. ‘Ethan says he’s getting hungry. We were thinking about ordering some Chinese food, but we need your credit card.’

Gillian nodded as she reached around the back of her shorts to grab a wallet. ‘Not a bad idea, Yannis … Hang on a second. My cards are in my work trousers. I’ll come down with you. I’ll need to peek at the menu anyway.’

As Gillian drained her Scotch and got ready to stand up, a hooded man in a black wetsuit peered over the end of the glass-bottomed pool. The noise Gillian heard had been a grappling hook snagging the safety rail around the edge of her pool. The intruder had scaled the side of the building in under ten seconds.

He whispered into a headset. ‘I have Gillian and Ethan on the roof terrace. I’m moving in.’

The intruder swung his leg on to the end of the terrace, partially obscured by a planter. As Gillian rose up from the sunlounger and Yannis padded back towards the French windows, the intruder slid the small pack from his back, unzipped a pocket and pulled out a silenced pistol fitted with a laser sight.

The red dot flickered on Gillian’s shirt between her shoulder blades. The bullet barely made a sound as it left the gun, but there was a thud as it hit Kitsell’s spine with enough force to shatter two vertebrae. Fragments of these bones punctured Gillian’s heart and lungs before exploding out the front of her chest.

The hit knocked Gillian forward towards the pool and Yannis spun around in time to see his best friend’s mum plunge face first into the water. He thought Gillian had tripped until he saw the intruder jogging across the terrace towards him. Then he saw the jiggling red dot on his T-shirt.

‘No,’ Yannis gasped.

As Yannis started to turn, the first bullet hit him in the side. The effect was like the ultimate dig-in-the-ribs. His whole body spasmed as he stumbled through an open section of the French windows and fell into a leather lounge chair. The gunman finished Yannis off with a shot in the back and a bullet through the temple.

‘Mother and son dead,’ the intruder told his headset. ‘Meet you by the front door.’

But Gillian’s son was actually down in the kitchen, holding a menu and struggling to decide between king prawn chow mein and barbecue pork with cashews. The splash was unusual, but Ethan walked through to the living-room expecting to see his mum taking a rare swim. Instead he saw her face down on the surface. Coins from her pockets were spiralling towards the pool’s glass bottom as she bobbed in a growing cloud of blood.

Ethan’s first instinct was to run up and see what was going on, but he saw a black silhouette running beside the pool and then heard footsteps on the stairs that were way too fast for Yannis.

Escape was Ethan’s only option. He made a dash for the front door, but his bruised legs didn’t have much speed. He was less than three metres from the hallway as the intruder rounded the bottom of the stairs and opened the front door. The second figure wore an identical black wetsuit, but carried an equipment pack that was much heavier.

‘Nice one,’ the new arrival said, patting the gunman on the back as Ethan backed into the living-room. ‘I’ll handle downstairs. You might as well take a look around for a little bonus: see if she’s got jewellery or something.’

‘How long will it take you to set up?’

‘Four to six minutes.’

As the intruders spoke, Ethan backed up into the kitchen, grabbed a telephone off the wall and dialled triple zero. This should have alerted the armed guard on the front gate, but the phone was dead. He thought about his cell phone, but it was upstairs in his school bag and the intruder was blocking his path to the front door and the staircases.

Ethan’s heart thudded as he tried to think. The only way out that didn’t involve getting past the intruder was the small rectangular window above the dryer in the laundry room. But it was up near the ceiling and it would be tough getting through with his arm in a heavy cast.

*

While the intruder clambered up the side of house five, Amy had vaulted down the stairs in house eight and found Ted in the basement fiddling with the air conditioning.

‘Where’s your guns?’ she asked. ‘There’s some guys running up the beach towards the Kitsells’ place.’

Ryan was behind Amy in the amount of time it takes to pull on shorts and a T-shirt. ‘I’ve got my mobile,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna stroll out on the beach and take a peek.’

‘Could it be innocent?’ Ted asked. ‘Couple of divers low on fuel, pulled into the nearest harbour.’

Amy shook her head. ‘That’s not what it looked like. The body language was all wrong. They looked like guys on a mission.’

‘Guns are up in my room,’ Ted said. ‘Let’s go get.’

‘Stay close to the house, Ryan,’ Amy shouted.

An adrenalin rush muted Ryan’s cold as he walked through the beach shower. He tucked a boogie board under his arm as he stepped outside, hoping to look like a regular kid heading for the surf.

The tide was going out and the sun dazzled off the wet sand as he peered down towards the harbour and ocean. The dinghy had been lashed to the underside of the harbour jetty. It was black, with a pair of chunky outboard motors. A woman knelt at the rear of the boat and she kept looking up the beach towards the Kitsells’ house. Everything Ryan saw confirmed Amy’s opinion of a professional crew up to no good.

With the woman looking up the beach and most likely in radio contact with her two colleagues, Ryan realised they couldn’t approach Ethan’s house from the beach. As he threw the board back into the beach shower Amy yanked him back inside.

‘We’ll go up and out the front door,’ Amy said. ‘Ted’s gonna circle around the outside of the harbour. Dr D is calling the local cops for backup, but whatever’s going on is likely to be over by the time they get here.’

‘What about the guards on the main gate?’ Ryan asked.

‘Rent-a-cops,’ Amy said contemptuously as she handed Ryan an automatic pistol. ‘More likely to hinder than help, so hopefully they’re oblivious.’

‘Walther P99,’ Ryan said. ‘Like James Bond.’

‘It’s loaded, but if you use it, our cover is blown. So last resort only, OK?’

Ryan tucked the P99 into the waistband of his shorts as Amy led him out of the front door. The land at the rear of the eight houses was mostly lawn, with a stretch of road leading from each house’s garages towards the security gates.

Amy’s phone bleeped as they walked barefoot in front of house seven. Her voice rose an octave as she read the text to Ryan. ‘Ted’s made it over the dunes to the jetty. Says there’s a body floating in the pool.’

‘Rope,’ Ryan said, as he got close enough to see into the gap between houses five and six. ‘Threw up a grappling hook and climbed up.’

Amy backed up to the garages of house six and waved Ryan back. ‘No further,’ she ordered. ‘They’re pros. They’ll be wearing body armour. Most likely carrying sniper rifles or machine guns. I’m not going up against that with handheld pistols in our beach shorts.’

But as Ryan took his first steps back, Amy yelled, ‘Wait up.’

A small window just above ground level had swung open and they both heard a frustrated moan.

‘That’s Ethan,’ Ryan said, ‘cover me.’

Without waiting for Amy’s permission, Ryan bolted across the gap between houses, keeping low until he reached the small window. Ethan was red with frustration as he stood on top of a dryer, frantically trying to pull himself through the window with one weedy arm.

‘I’ve got you,’ Ryan said, as he reached inside and grabbed Ethan by his wrist.

The cast on Ethan’s arm split as Ryan dragged him through the narrow opening, making him groan with pain.

‘He’s in the kitchen now,’ Ethan said. ‘He’s got a gun. I thought he was gonna kill me.’

Ryan helped Ethan to his feet and they sprinted back towards the garages in front of house six.

‘Yannis and my mom are dead,’ Ethan said. ‘But I think I was their target.’

‘Is it just two bad guys in the house?’ Amy asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ethan said, clutching his broken plaster cast as his face twisted in pain.

‘Ryan, get him inside,’ Amy said.

‘What are you gonna do?’ Ryan asked.

Amy looked annoyed. Ryan realised she didn’t want to say anything that might compromise their cover story around Ethan. As the two boys jogged back towards house eight, Amy called Ted on his mobile.

‘Two hostiles in the house,’ she told him. ‘We’ve got Ethan. Yannis and Gillian are dead.’

‘Right,’ Ted said. ‘I’m in the sand dunes. I’ve got my rifle and clear sight of the boat.’

‘You a good shot?’

‘I can kill ’em for sure,’ Ted said. ‘But Dr D’s instructions are not to shoot unless they’re an immediate threat to someone. She’s trying to get a chopper up to see where that dinghy goes and what it leads us to. Our priority is to seal off the murder scene, then get down in that basement room and see what Gillian’s been hiding.’

25. SECRETS

Ryan led Ethan through the front door and kicked it shut.

‘You’re safe,’ Ryan said urgently. ‘Just gotta do something.’

He rushed through to the kitchen where Dr D was on her mobile. He stuck his gun in a cupboard beside the cereal boxes and told Dr D to keep her voice down because Ethan was in the house. When he got back to the hallway, Ethan was leaning against a table. Tears streaked down his face and he was clutching his broken cast.