Pep Squad (18 page)

‘Sure.'

‘Matt?'

‘I've got no problem,' said Matt.

‘Ben?'

Ben scowled at Lieutenant Parry, then looked over at Jess.

‘Fine,' he said.

‘Great,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘Anything you guys want to discuss?'

The cadets shook their heads.

‘You'd better get back to studying then, while I sort out the paperwork for our visit to Emily. We've just finished drafting the Espionage 101 final paper and it's a doozie.'

With no Fieldwork Fundamentals class, the following Saturday Jess and the twins were enjoying a leisurely breakfast when they were joined by a familiar face.

‘Emily!' said Jess, leaping up so quickly that she bumped the table and made everyone's breakfast slop off their plates.

‘Easy,' said Emily, her crutches almost slipping out from under her due to Jess's bear hug. ‘My knee's not that strong yet.'

‘Why didn't you tell us you were coming?'

‘I wanted to make a grand entrance, which I'm regretting now,' said Emily, wincing slightly as she sat down.

‘So how was it in the real world?' asked Matt.

‘Not so relaxing,' said Emily. ‘Lieutenant Parry came to visit every day with a mountain of homework. I still had to do all the assignments and I'll have to do the labs I missed when you guys are doing Fitness Training classes.'

‘Speak of the devil,' said Ben as Lieutenant Parry strode over to their table.

‘Don't you four have somewhere to be?' he asked.

‘Don't think so,' said Matt.

‘Seriously?' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘I can't believe a single one of you hasn't remembered.'

Jess, Emily and the twins frowned at each other, but then Ben's expression cleared. ‘Work-experience week!' he said.

‘Great to see you all so well prepared for your first mission,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘Meet me out front in ten. If you're late, you'll miss out and fail the year.'

Jess and the twins sprang out of their chairs.

‘That goes for you, too, Harris.'

‘Seriously? With this knee?'

‘The doctors discharged you, didn't they? That tells me you're good to go. Now get going.'

Emily swung after the others on her crutches as they went upstairs to pack their rucksacks.

‘What do you think our mission's going to be?' asked Matt.

‘I hope it doesn't have anything to do with pushing us out of a helicopter into the sea,' said Ben.

‘That's only for sophisters,' said Jess, slowing down for Emily. ‘If hoppity here's tagging along it can't be anything too strenuous.'

‘See you out front,' said Emily as she and Jess went into their room.

A few minutes later they were walking through the foyer to the meeting point when Ben stopped short.

‘You've got to be kidding me,' he said.

Krivan was waiting right where Lieutenant Parry had told them to gather, a hold-all at his feet. His expression soured when he saw the four of them approaching.

Lieutenant Parry drove up in a plain white minivan.

‘What are you waiting for? Hop in.'

‘All of us?' said Ben, as Krivan slid the back door open and climbed inside.

‘You must be desperate to fail, Sykes. Yes, all of you,' said Lieutenant Parry.

Ben sat in the seat furthest away from Krivan as the others piled in. Lieutenant Parry hit the accelerator the second they were all belted in.

‘What's our mission?' asked Emily, rubbing her palms together eagerly.

The lieutenant pressed a button in the middle of the steering wheel and some screens in the back of the headrests flickered into life, displaying the face of a man in his late fifties. He had white hair, piercing blue eyes and a slightly dishevelled appearance.

‘We're doing reconnaissance in the Bavarian Alps, looking for this guy,' said Lieutenant Parry.

‘Who is he?' asked Krivan.

‘Cameron Hess. He's an ecotechnologist. He has designed several closed, self-sustaining ecological systems,' said Lieutenant Parry, as the picture on screen changed to an aerial photograph of what looked like the top half of a giant glass soccer ball. ‘His most recent experiment, Biosphere 3, was the prototype for a Martian spaceport scheduled for construction in 2030.'

‘
Was
the prototype? What happened to it?' asked Jess.

‘Just one month short of its two-year anniversary the Science Foundation pulled the plug on funding. Biosphere 3 staff had started asking serious questions when all the plants started dying mysteriously. Many of the animals weren't looking too great either and one of the human workers had to be hospitalised. It's believed that Hess had been using the biosphere as a laboratory to develop a virus that would be so deadly its release into the atmosphere would cause a mass extinction event.'

‘You mean …?'

‘If that thing got out, we'd all be deader than the dinosaurs,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘No plants, no animals, no humans.'

‘What a psycho!' said Emily.

Lieutenant Parry made a non-committal noise.

‘What happened to Hess?' asked Matt.

‘He disappeared. The intelligence community thinks he's continuing work on the virus in a secret laboratory.'

Something about the tone of his voice prompted Jess to say, ‘But you don't think so.'

He met her eyes briefly in the rear-view mirror. ‘I know Hess – or at least I did several years ago. This all seems completely out of character for the man I knew. But people change. So, at the moment I'm reserving judgement and following orders.'

‘Wait a minute,' said Matt. ‘This guy sounds like he's really dangerous. Why assign the mission to a group of work-experience students instead of real agents?'

‘Don't worry,' said Lieutenant Parry, smiling. But Jess noticed the usual twinkle in his eye was absent. ‘We're not going after Hess himself. We're just investigating one of the suspected laboratory sites. Recent intelligence suggests that Hess plans to release the virus imminently so we need to locate him asap. If our reconnaissance proves this site to be Hess's lab, we may have to confiscate the virus and take it back to P.E.P. Squad research labs for analysis.'

‘That still sounds like pretty heavy-duty stuff for transition-year work experience,' commented Ben. ‘Wouldn't it be safer if we just did the reconnaissance and then some real agents did all the … um … dangerous stuff?'

‘I only said we
may
have to steal the virus. As I said, there are several other possible sites where it could be. Anyway, I'll be with you every step of the way. If my assessment is that the situation is too dangerous, then I'll get you out of there and call in the big boys. Besides, four of you got awards for topping your year. The fifth one of you can pilot a helicopter. The powers that be seem to think that this is the perfect work-experience assignment for you,' said Lieutenant Parry, pulling a face like Emily eating her first rhubarb and custard.

‘But you don't,' murmured Jess.

Lieutenant Parry glanced at her again.

‘Hang on,' said Emily, breaking the silence. ‘Did you say helicopter?'

‘Those helicopter lessons weren't just for fun, you know,' smiled Lieutenant Parry.

‘Cool!' said Emily, leaning back in her seat and brightening up considerably, while Matt turned a delicate shade of green.

Lieutenant Parry tapped on the steering wheel to bring up a picture of a Bavarian castle set against a snowy backdrop. ‘This is our target, Altganz Castle, one of several suspected locations of Hess's secret laboratory and hideout.'

‘It doesn't look very secret,' commented Jess, looking at the picture of the grandiose castle.

‘The safest place to hide something is in plain sight,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘What else do you notice about this picture?'

‘It's covered in snow,' said Krivan. ‘Is it a file photo?'

‘It was taken yesterday, in fact,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘In that part of the Alps there's always snow cover.'

‘So what's the plan?' asked Matt.

‘From the intel that I have, it looks like Altganz has extremely tight security – motion-sensitive cameras, laser-web window nets and armed guards posted at every entrance.'

‘Breaking in sounds impossible,' said Jess.

‘It is. So we get in the same way we've taught you to approach heavily guarded premises. Through the front door,' said Lieutenant Parry, grinning.

‘Hang on. Are you saying we're just going to knock on the portcullis and the armed guards will simply let us walk in?' said Matt.

‘If we stick to our cover, they can't refuse,' said Lieutenant Parry.

‘What is our cover?' asked Krivan.

‘All of us, bar pilot Emily, will be taking a little snowboarding holiday. You four will be normal, slightly spoiled teenagers. I'll be your guide, a career snowboarder,' said Lieutenant Parry.

‘I think we can pull that off,' said Ben. ‘But how do we convince them to let us in?'

‘We'll say that one of you has been injured and we need somewhere to stay for the night.'

‘I'm confused,' said Emily. ‘I thought I was flying the chopper?'

‘You are. I didn't mean you would be the injured person. In fact, it would be foolish to take someone actually injured into such a dangerous situation in case we need to make a quick getaway. We'll just make up someone's leg to look like they've sprained their ankle or twisted their knee or something. Whatever you feel most comfortable with, Ben, since Miss Kwan tells me that you're the most artistic one in the group. It'll just look like a heliboarding holiday gone wrong.'

‘I hate to put a dampener on this whole leaping out of a helicopter thing, but just say one of us
does
get injured?' asked Matt.

‘Pilot Emily will be on stand-by to fly anybody out while the rest of us proceed with the mission,' said Lieutenant Parry.

He drove the van off-road through a thicket of trees, stopping at the edge of a flat, grassy field. At first glance it looked completely empty apart from an orange windsock. The field was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. ‘Everybody out,' he said.

The cadets grabbed their packs and followed the lieutenant along the fence until they reached a padlocked gate with a sign saying ‘Private Property. No Unauthorised Access'. Lieutenant Parry unlocked the padlock and held the gate open for the cadets before closing it after them and re-padlocking it.

‘This way,' he said, striding over to a large shed completely hidden in the trees on the edge of one end of the field. The cadets had to jog to keep up with him, Emily bringing up the rear. A strange box hung on the outside of the shed, next to a huge roller door that took up almost the entire side facing the field. Lieutenant Parry put his face directly in front of the box. A faint laser shone out and fanned across his face. Then the roller door slid open.

‘No way,' said Matt when he saw what was inside the shed. ‘This is an airfield?'

‘I thought that the big orange windsock might have given it away,' said Lieutenant Parry over his shoulder as he walked towards the eight-seater plane sitting in the middle of the hangar. He climbed the steps and looked at the cadets. ‘What are you waiting for?'

The cadets hurried up the steps behind him and took their seats in the back as he closed the door.

‘You're here with me, Emily,' said Lieutenant Parry, patting the co-pilot's seat. ‘Your in-flight training starts right now.'

‘
Cool
!' said Emily, changing seats and running her fingers lightly over the aircraft controls.

‘Has everyone got their seat backs upright and tray tables stowed?' joked Lieutenant Parry as he flicked some switches.

The aeroplane's propellers roared into life and they taxied out of the hangar.

‘Where's the runway?' asked Ben, looking at the expanse of grass in front of them.

‘We're light enough that we just need a grass landing strip,' explained Lieutenant Parry, gunning the engines and shooting the plane forward.

Jess thought the trees at the far end of the field were approaching more quickly than she'd like, but the plane lifted off with metres to spare. They took off to the north and Jess craned her neck to look down on Theruse Abbey. Cadets were dotted all over the lawns, making the most of the sunny Saturday morning despite the fact that the exams were only weeks away. Then the plane banked east, heading for the continent.

Lieutenant Parry levelled the plane out, explaining to Emily what he was doing. When he was happy that she knew enough, he said, ‘Keep her on this bearing at this altitude.'

Emily grabbed the wheel in front of her and watched the dials diligently.

‘It is now safe to access your in-flight entertainment units,' said Lieutenant Parry to the others, pressing a button to activate a screen in the middle of the instrument panel and the individual screens in the headrests in front of each cadet. A single word flashed up:
Equipment
.

‘What gadgets do we get?' asked Ben, practically bouncing in his seat with enthusiasm.

‘Glad you asked,' said Lieutenant Parry, displaying a photo of a pair of snow boots on the cadets' screens. ‘Gear's in the back. We've got state-of-the-art P.E.P. Squad first-issue avalanche assault gear. The soles of your snowboard boots are hollow and filled with special P.E.P. Squad plastic explosive: Peptex. Nine times more powerful than Semtex. There's enough Peptex in a pair of boots to blast the entire castle off the top of the hill. Hence the term avalanche assault.'

‘Um, I don't want to sound dumb or anything, but what happens if we slam our boots really hard, like when we're jumping out of a helicopter for instance? Won't our feet explode?' asked Matt.

‘No,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘Peptex only goes off when a five-thousand-volt charge is applied to it. For that purpose, we have remote detonators, which I'm sure you're all familiar with.' He brought up a picture of the ROACH armband console on the screens.

Krivan clucked his tongue impatiently.

‘This is the ROACH 2002. As I'm sure Ben could tell you, it has a remote destruct mechanism that causes it to short circuit, producing a five-thousand-volt charge. The components liquefy, making the ROACH undetectable and coincidentally igniting any Peptex it's in contact with.