Operation Sting (7 page)

As the gang returned to their preparations, Williams sat in the shadows beside the Insider.

“Very impressive speech,” whispered the Insider. “You almost had me believing it myself. Do we really need to tell them all that rubbish
about a Phase Two?”

“We need them to work. We need to keep them on our side. If they knew that Phase Two isn’t going to happen, and that this entire operation is only a way of making money for you and me, do you really think they’d be here now? We need scientific experts to assemble and operate the machinery. They’re interested in helping the planet, not making a profit, so the deception is vital. By the time they realize they’ve been duped, we’ll be well away.”

“I’ve been talking with my people at Gylbut Gadgets,” whispered the Insider. “They’re nearly ready to start making Whiplash shielding. I’ll be able to switch the whole company over to shielding production once the Whiplash is fired. With the whole world terrified of another attack, we’ll be billionaires.”

“And in the meantime,” smiled Williams, watching the gang at work, “this bunch of gullible idiots will be left high and dry.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Bullman should be there by now.”

CHAPTER SIX

The grandfather clock in the hall ticked its way towards 11:30pm. The house was an old one, with low ceilings crossed by thick wooden beams, just outside a quiet little village, several miles from the nearest town.

In the downstairs study, Dr Madeleine Smith, lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of South Warwickshire, was working at a large antique desk. The study was lined with bookcases and filing cabinets. On the walls were paintings, photographs and academic certificates.

Dr Smith herself was elegantly dressed. Her
cascade of brown hair fell around delicate features and large eyes. She was noting a long series of mathematical formulae on a tablet computer.

She sat back, eyeing her work carefully. Her mouth twisted into an uncertain expression. Pushing her chair back, she yawned loudly, stood up and left the room.

The moment she was gone, one of the paintings on the study wall appeared to come to life. It was a picture of a summer meadow, dotted with butterflies. One of the butterflies suddenly flexed its wings and fluttered off the frame.

Sirena sent out a signal. “All clear. She’s in the room across the hall, boiling a kettle.”

Three more SWARM micro-robots emerged from their hiding places. Hercules the stag beetle crawled from under the desk. Nero the scorpion emerged from behind heavy, patterned curtains. Sabre the tiny mosquito had been absolutely still, attached to the ceiling in one corner of the room.

“We should go after her,” he transmitted to the others. “Stick closely to her every movement.”

“No, Sirena can monitor what she’s doing,” said Nero. “It’s very important that we remain
undetected. Our job here is to guard Dr Smith in case the people who’ve stolen Whiplash arrive.”

“It’s lucky those crooks don’t know about us,” said Hercules. “Nero could crack that code in minutes. They wouldn’t need Dr Smith’s help.”

“Speaking of help…” said Nero. He scuttled across the desk to where Dr Smith had left her tablet covered in calculations. With one of his pincers, he deleted a “3” in the middle of the screen and changed it to a “2”.

“There,” he said. “The formula works correctly now.”

“She’s coming back,” said Sirena.

The SWARM robots retreated to their hiding places.

Dr Smith came in, sipping from a steaming mug. Sitting down at the desk, she ran a finger along the lines of calculations she’d written.

“Ah!” she said to herself. “It does work. I was right all along.” She picked up the pen and went back to work, clicking open a fresh page and scribbling rapidly across it.

Moments later, Sirena’s ultra-sensitive antennae picked up movement outside the house.

“Perhaps it’s just a visitor,” transmitted Hercules.

“I don’t think so,” said Sirena. “There are … four life forms approaching from the east. That’s across the back garden. Ordinary visitors wouldn’t come that way.”

Dr Smith carried on working. She’d heard nothing outside, and the robots’ transmissions were imperceptible to the human ear.

“Let’s get out there,” said Sabre.

“Wait,” said Nero. “We mustn’t take action unless we’re sure they’re hostile. Our orders are clear.”

Sirena’s antennae waved slowly. The life forms had stopped moving. She was detecting tiny vibrations and sounds. “They’re at the back door now,” she said. “I think they may be picking the lock.”

“That’s enough for me,” said Sabre. “They’re hostile.”

He dropped down from the ceiling and headed for the kitchen.

“Attack mode,” said Nero. “Prepare to disable intruders.”

As they crept through the back door, Bullman
and his men switched on signal jammers sewn into their combat jackets.

Suddenly, the SWARM robots felt a slight smothering sensation.

“What’s that weird feeling in my sensors?” said Hercules.

“They’re blocking all outgoing transmissions,” said Nero. “They must be jamming all signals in case Dr Smith has got a personal alarm system. Sirena, try to alert the human SWARM agents waiting as backup in the village!”

“Too late,” said Sirena. “Contact lost.”

“We’re on our own,” said Nero.

“But we are still managing to communicate with each other,” said Hercules.

“We’re close enough to each other for our high-band frequencies to get through,” said Nero.

Suddenly, the study door flew open. Bullman rushed in, followed by Fraser and two others.

Dr Smith swung around, her eyes wide with fright. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

Sabre immediately darted across the study. Nero and Hercules paused for a moment, their programming confused by the signal jammers.
Then they also sped towards the intruders.

Sirena had already made a positive identification of both Bullman and Fraser. She fluttered rapidly, taking sensor readings.

Bullman grabbed hold of Dr Smith, one of his arms gripped tightly around her throat. With a sharp cry, she jabbed him hard in the ribs with her elbow. He let go with a yelp of pain. She spun around and punched him across the jaw. He flew back into the nearest bookcase, toppling books on to him.

“Get out my house, the lot of you!” she cried.

The SWARM robots held off for a few seconds, surprised by Dr Smith’s fierce response. But the four intruders recovered quickly and overpowered her.

“Contact with HQ lost,” said Nero. “Proceed without orders. Calculation of probabilities indicates we should repel the intruders but not disable them. If we can follow them, we can find Whiplash.”

“Logged,” said the others. “We’re live!”

Sabre swooped down on Bullman. The
mosquito loaded shock pellets into his needle-sharp stinger and jabbed through the hair at the back of Bullman’s neck.

“OW!” screamed Bullman, jerking as he received a sharp electric shock. “What the—” He swatted madly at the mosquito buzzing around his head.

With a flick of his body, Nero launched himself at Fraser and scuttled up the man’s trouser leg.

Fraser yelled, “Something’s crawling on me!” just before Nero delivered a series of stings from ankle to knee. Fraser buckled over in pain, smacking at the back of his trousers. Nero emerged at Fraser’s belt line and scurried for his neck. Fraser squealed in a high-pitched voice.

Meanwhile, one of the other intruders had trodden on Hercules. The man’s boot was sliced apart with a quick movement of Hercules’s saw-like claw. The stag beetle’s super-tough exoskeleton wasn’t even scratched, but the intruder leaped back with a cry of pain.

Dr Smith hadn’t spotted the SWARM robots, and she couldn’t understand what was happening. She was about to reach for her phone, which had
been knocked off the desk, when Bullman reared up in front of her.

His face was red with concentration and pain. Sabre shocked him twice more, once in the back and once on the top of the head, but the stocky, scowling man somehow managed to shrug it off. With a snarl, he grasped Dr Smith by her arms and dragged her out of the study.

“Come on, you lot!” he shouted at the other three. “Let’s get out of this fleapit!”

Dr Smith kicked her legs wildly, but Bullman lifted her off the floor and carried her out.

Meanwhile, Sirena was keeping track of the other SWARM robots. Now it was clear that the intruders wouldn’t simply be scared off, Sabre was flying close behind Bullman and Nero was on Bullman’s shoulder. Both of them quickly slipped into the side pocket of Dr Smith’s jacket. Hercules appeared, flying low to the ground, then he swung upwards in a smooth arc and also tucked himself away in that pocket.

“Sirena,” signalled Nero, “the three of us will stay with Dr Smith, and find out where she’s being taken. We’ll report back as soon as we can. Get
clear of the jammers and inform SWARM HQ.”

“I’m live,” said Sirena.

Fraser and the other two kidnappers staggered after Bullman, limping and rubbing their sore limbs.

“Move it!” Bullman shouted as he carted Dr Smith out to their car, which was parked along a dirt track to one side of the house. Dr Smith kicked and cursed angrily all the way.

Sirena hovered high above them all. She kept testing her connection to headquarters, and to the human SWARM agents in the nearby village, but still could not get through. She turned and flew in the opposite direction. With those jammers switched on, she was the only one who could get news to SWARM about what had happened. Just as soon as she was out of range of the interference that was blocking her signals!

As the car sped away into the distance, Sirena found she could finally sense the outside world again. She flew on into the darkness of the night.

“Sirena to SWARM! Sirena to SWARM! Come in, SWARM!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hours later, Bullman’s car turned off the main road into a secluded lay-by. It slowed to a crawl while he checked that there were no other cars about. With the coast clear, the car revved up and bumped on to a narrow track, which led down to a sloping patch of land. To each side of the muddy track, reed-like grasses grew tall and wild. It was still dark, but the first red streaks of dawn were showing on the horizon.

They were in East London, in an area beside the Thames that had once been a stretch of small factories and industrial units, but was
closed down and abandoned years ago. Now, the decaying shells of small office blocks and warehouses rose up out of the grass as far as the eye could see, like dead whales surfacing on a pale green ocean.

The car was long out of sight of the road. Its headlights were switched off. It descended the slope towards what had once been a busy dockside.

On the back seats, Dr Madeleine Smith was squashed between two of her kidnappers. Bullman and Fraser had managed to tie her wrists and her ankles with rope, but nothing stopped her fighting back.

She headbutted the thug to her left and he howled. The one to her right was pressed against the car door. She wriggled down, pulled up her legs and gave Fraser, sitting in the front passenger seat, a hard kick.

“Stop doing that!” whined Fraser. “Bullman, are we nearly there yet?”

“Nearly,” said Bullman, concentrating on his driving. He was as keen to get away from Dr Smith’s continued onslaught as the rest of them.

Still inside the darkness of Dr Smith’s pocket were the three SWARM micro-robots.

“Can either of you link to SWARM HQ yet?” signalled Nero.

“No. The kidnappers must still have those signal jammers switched on,” said Hercules.

“We should attack again,” said Sabre. “Disable the kidnappers and transmit our data back to headquarters.”

“No, we wait,” said Nero. “Logic says they’ll be taking Dr Smith back to whoever is in charge, who will probably be at their hideout. We need to find out more. If we attack now, we may lose that chance.”

“Agreed,” said Hercules.

“Our motion is slowing. I think the car has stopped,” said Sabre.

Bullman parked the car in the entrance to an old warehouse so it wouldn’t be visible from the air. The four kidnappers cautiously manoeuvred Dr Smith out of the back seat. She scowled at them, her eyes ablaze with fury.

Hazy daylight was just beginning to filter across the sky. The kidnappers carried Dr Smith
across a short patch of grass to what looked like a little hut. It was a squat grey structure, built of concrete. Its entrance had a large metal wheel to seal the door.

Dr Smith was carried, struggling and cursing, into the strange structure and Bullman sealed the entrance behind them. “You can turn off your signal jammers now,” he said. “We’re inside the bunker.”

The SWARM robots felt their sensors suddenly return to action.

“At last. Contacting SWARM HQ!” said Sabre. “Wait. The transmission is bouncing back. We’re still cut off.”

“Wherever we are now,” said Nero, “it must have some sort of shielding of its own.”

The kidnappers carried Dr Smith the length of a narrow concrete corridor that sloped sharply downwards. Dim lights shone behind metal cages in the roof. The air felt cold and damp.

“What is this place?” said Dr Smith.

“This?” said Bullman, his voice echoing along the corridor. “This is our base of operations. A place where nobody will ever find us. Or you.”

Dr Smith felt a stab of fear and her anger dissolved into nervousness. She stopped struggling, and looked around for some clue as to where she had been taken.

At the same moment, Sirena was back in the laboratory at headquarters. She flew down on to the workbench in front of Simon Turing, landing gently on a large, rectangular shape. At the point where her thin metal legs touched the surface a series of red circles began to spin outwards, like ripples from a stone dropped in water.

“I’ve finally got the download pads up and running,” said Simon to Queen Bee. “It makes retrieving data from the robots much easier.”

Queen Bee wasn’t in any mood for pleasantries. She turned to Sirena, who was closing up her wings into their standby position, forming a large colourful triangle above her back. “Sirena, you say Nero, Sabre and Hercules are shadowing Dr Smith?”

“Affirmative, Queen Bee,” said Sirena, her voice
coming from a speaker set into the workbench. “They’re live, but out of contact.” She sent her last sensor readings up to the laboratory’s 3D display.

Queen Bee and Simon watched Bullman’s car vanishing into the night. “No word from them at all?” said Queen Bee. She tried not to let her concern show in her voice.

“Nothing, Queen Bee,” said Simon. “Professor Miller is trying to boost our communication systems right now, but no luck so far. They dropped off our detection grid at Dr Smith’s house, and since then, nothing.”

“So they’re totally on their own,” said Queen Bee. “This whole operation now rests on how those three agents perform.”

“Let’s hope they’re as good as we think they are,” replied Simon.

Queen Bee stood gazing at the 3D display for a moment, lost in thought. She hadn’t told anyone that she’d just been on the phone to the Home Secretary again. The Home Secretary had reminded her that SWARM only had a few hours to recover Whiplash before they placed
the mission in the hands of MI5 and shut the department down forever. Queen Bee was not about to tell the rest of the team that she had lied to the Home Secretary in order to play for time. She’d claimed that the micro-robots were closing in on the thieves, that SWARM HQ was in full control of the situation, and that the targets would be arrested very soon.

If the robots failed in their mission, not only would SWARM be shut down, but Queen Bee would be in very serious trouble.

She suddenly seemed to snap back to life. “I’ll check on how the Professor’s doing,” she said, and marched out of the laboratory.

“Good morning, Dr Smith. My name is Williams.”

Williams smiled down at her. She recoiled slightly. They were in a small, bare room inside the Operation New Age bunker. Dr Smith was seated at a battered wooden table, her ankles tied tightly to the legs of her chair. On the table in front of her were a laptop, a writing pad and a biro. The only
light came from a desk lamp poised above the laptop.

“May I call you Madeleine?” said Williams.

Dr Smith glared up at him, trying not to let her terror show. “No, you may not! Whatever you want, I won’t cooperate. Who were those scum who dragged me from my home?”

“Just some friends of mine. They’re having all their cuts and bruises attended to. You put up quite a fight,” said Williams, clearly amused.

“Let me out of here! Please!”

“That’s not going to happen,” Williams replied.

Dr Smith looked at her grim surroundings. She tried not to feel nervous, but that was easier said than done. “What is this place?” she said.

Williams slowly walked around her. “It was built in the early 1980s,” he said, “during the Cold War, when Russia and America were threatening each other with nuclear weapons, and the prospect of a ruined planet was frighteningly close. This is a bunker. A shelter from atomic warfare. Now it’s our base of operations. It was designed to keep about fifty people safe from the bomb blasts and radiation. It’s got its own
air-filtering pumps, everything.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that it was just abandoned?” said Dr Smith.

“Along with the industrial complex around it, yes. The businesses went bust. This bunker was supposed to be top secret, even when it was built. It extends underground beneath the River Thames.” He pointed up at the concrete roof. “Above where you’re sitting are millions of tonnes of water. There’s only one way in and out. Put any thought of escape right out of your mind.”

Dr Smith felt more nervous than ever now. “You’ve wasted your time kidnapping me,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “Nobody I know has got any money. You won’t get much of a ransom for me!”

“We don’t want your money, Dr Smith, we want your mind. The computer in front of you shows details of a coded electronic locking system. Your job is to tell us what that code is. You have everything here you need, I think. Computer, pen, paper, brain.”

“I won’t do it!”

Williams loomed over the table. The light of
the desk lamp threw twisted shadows across his face. “Aww, you disappoint me,” he sighed. “I thought you’d be a sensible girl. Oh well, you’ll still be able to work with a broken leg. Or even two broken legs.”

“It’ll take more than your threats to frighten me!” cried Dr Smith. “I’ll never crack that code! I don’t care what you want it for, or how much you try to scare me, it’s not happening. OK? Do you hear me? Never!”

Williams tutted quietly and shook his head. Then he pulled an envelope from his pocket. “Have I got to resort to this? Huh? Have I?”

He opened the envelope and pulled out a handful of papers. One by one, he dropped them on to the table in front of Dr Smith. There were photos, addresses and phone numbers.

“Here we are, then,” said Williams cheerily. “It’s amazing what you can find online. We know where your parents live, and your three best friends. We have details of the vet where your lovely dog Sam is recovering from his operation. Do you need more? Do you need me to spell out what will happen if we don’t get our code? Ah,
I can see from your face that you understand. Excellent.”

Williams gathered up the papers and slipped them back into the envelope. Dr Smith began to tap at the keys of the laptop in front of her. Her face was a battle between steaming anger and terror.

“I’ll leave you in peace, then,” said Williams. “Someone will be back soon to check on your progress.”

The door clicked shut behind him.