Pep Squad (20 page)

Lieutenant Parry noticed the tension in the cadets' faces. ‘I know you're nervous,' he said, ‘but you need your energy at that altitude and temperature, so order big.'

He'd just finished ordering from the waitress when Matt and Ben appeared in the doorway. Ben was supporting Matt whose face was contorted in pain. Ben was taking most of Matt's weight as he hobbled over to the table. Then Jess realised that, although Ben had been fashioning the prosthetic on Matt's right ankle, he was limping on his left.

‘Oh, no!' groaned Lieutenant Parry, who had also noticed. ‘Don't tell me you've hurt yourself for real?'

Matt's face broke into a grin.

‘Nope! Just wanted to make sure I could pull it off,' said Matt, doing a quick little jig to show off. ‘If I can fool you guys into thinking I'm in real pain, I can definitely fool a bunch of mad scien–'

Before he could get any further, Lieutenant Parry cleared his throat loudly and shook his head almost imperceptibly. ‘And just for the record,' he continued in an undertone, ‘rather than geeky scientists, they're probably burly armed mercenaries who wouldn't hesitate to shoot a wounded teenager to put him out of his misery.'

Matt sheepishly eased himself into the seat next to Emily.

Lieutenant Parry made an effort to keep the conversation upbeat through dinner, recounting imaginary snowboarding experiences, including crashing out of the half-pipe in the qualifying round of the Winter Olympics.

‘OK, suit up. It's time to hit the slopes,' said Lieutenant Parry when they'd all finished.

They went upstairs to change. Jess had to strip off almost completely to put her bullet-proof underwear under her ski outfit.

‘Ready?' asked Emily.

‘Ready,' said Jess, zipping up her jacket and shouldering her rucksack.

‘Don't forget your snowboard,' said Emily as Jess stepped out the door.

Jess went to take the board from Emily, but Emily held on to it for a moment. ‘You be careful out there, OK?' she said, giving Jess a hug.

‘You fly me there safe and I'll take care of the rest,' promised Jess.

They went downstairs to meet the others in the foyer, then all trooped out to the helicopter together. Lieutenant Parry rode up front with Emily while Jess and the boys piled into the back with their snowboards across their laps.

When they all had their seat belts and headsets on, the helicopter rose into the air. The weather conditions were perfect, so Emily flew along the route they had taken on the way home from their earlier flight. The view was again spectacular and Jess was just as excited seeing it for the second time.

A few minutes later they arrived at the starting point of the snowboard run and Emily touched down gently.

‘Go straight back to base and no detours to Venice,' said Lieutenant Parry to Emily as they piled out of the helicopter. ‘We might need you to come back for us in a hurry.'

‘Right on,' said Emily, waving at them as she took the chopper up.

‘OK, team, this is the real thing,' said Lieutenant Parry as they all strapped on their snowboards. ‘Off-piste riding on virgin snow. I'll go first. Try to follow my tracks as closely as possible. Ivan – you're the most experienced, so you take the rear. Let's do it.'

Lieutenant Parry sprang to his feet and carved out a path down the mountainside with Ben and Matt close behind him. With some difficulty, Jess got to her feet, then lost her balance straight away, crashing down, as always, on her bottom. Krivan scooted down beside her.

‘I'll give you a hand up this time,' he said, pulling Jess to her feet, ‘but if you're planning to fall lots, it's easier to roll onto your knees first and then get up facing into the mountain.'

Jess had barely made it a few metres down the slope when she toppled over again. Following Krivan's advice, she tried to roll onto her front but her board was stuck in the snow.

‘Lift your legs up, then roll,' said Krivan, flopping down on the snow and demonstrating.

Jess followed his lead and got to her feet easily.

‘Alright. Let's try this again …'

Jess took off slowly, Krivan following a short distance behind. Whenever she felt herself start to go off-balance, she steadied herself by throwing out an arm.

‘Stop laughing at me!' she yelled at Krivan, who was cackling loudly behind her.

When Jess was riding more smoothly, Krivan moved up beside her and began, ‘That thing I wanted to talk to you about …' but trailed off when they rounded a curve in the trail and saw Lieutenant Parry and the twins lying in the snow waiting for them.

Jess cruised to a perfect stop before overbalancing and landing hard on her bottom.

‘What was the hold-up?' asked Lieutenant Parry.

‘Jess has a somewhat unconventional riding style,' said Krivan.

‘I knew it was a risk bringing a girl on this trip,' said Lieutenant Parry, smiling broadly. Just as he'd finished his sentence, a snowball hit him smack on the nose.

‘Did you throw that, Leclair? If only you could snowboard as well as you throw …'

‘Just watch me,' said Jess, getting to her feet and taking off down the mountain shakily.

‘Hang on, sister,' said the lieutenant, cruising ahead of Jess to guide the team down the safest path. After another ten minutes the trail led into a copse of trees and he came to a stop. Moving to the far edge of the copse he took out his phone and scanned the castle, while the others took pretend holiday snaps. They then gathered in the centre of the copse.

‘There certainly seem to be plenty of people inside, but not too many for our gas to knock out.' He turned to the students. ‘OK, this is it. The final run. Once we're clear of these trees, we'll be in sight of the castle, so we should assume that we are being watched. Ivan, Jess and Ben, take the lead. Matt, I'll ride close to you, just in case that ankle gives you too much bother,' he said with a wink. ‘It's starting to get dark. Let's go!'

Krivan leapt to his feet and rode a few metres before crashing down. He rolled over, his face contorted with pain.

‘What did you do?' asked Lieutenant Parry.

‘I don't know, I was going fine, then I must have hit a patch of uneven snow or something. My board flipped and I think I twisted my knee,' said Krivan.

‘Take your board off and see if you can put any weight on it,' said Lieutenant Parry.

Krivan unclipped his board and tried to stand, but fell down in pain before he was even halfway up.

‘It's no use. My knee's totally screwed.'

‘Can we carry him down?' asked Jess.

‘You know it's against protocol to take an injured agent into an active operation,' said Lieutenant Parry.

‘That didn't stop you bringing Emily,' countered Jess.

‘Without completing work experience, she would have failed transition year,' said the lieutenant. ‘Besides, she's well away from any potential confrontations with gun-toting assassins.'

‘That's reassuring,' muttered Ben.

‘So does Ivan fail now?' Jess persisted.

‘No, I'll assess him up to the point of his injury.'

‘But we can't just leave him here,' said Jess.

‘Actually, we can,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘It'll only be for a short while. I'll text Emily to come and get him.'

‘It's against mountain protocol to leave someone injured alone,' said Krivan flicking his eyes at Jess.

‘I'll stay with him,' she volunteered.

Lieutenant Parry stared at Jess for a moment, before exhaling loudly. ‘You'll fail your work experience,' he said.

‘Isn't work experience all about rehearsing what we'd do in the field on a real mission? This is what I'd do,' replied Jess.

Ben looked at her incredulously.

‘Jess, he'll be fine,' stated Lieutenant Parry, clearly annoyed. ‘Are you coming or not?'

She shook her head.

‘Well I hope you enjoy being back at that snooty Dublin girls' school next year. Right, boys. Let's go,' said Lieutenant Parry, jumping to his feet and sliding down the trail without a backward glance. Ben and Matt followed, shaking their heads.

Once they were out of earshot, Jess turned to Krivan and said, ‘Now that I've totally screwed up my future career prospects, would you mind telling me what's really going on?'

‘And it better be good,' said Jess, standing over Krivan with her hands on her hips.

‘Something's not right here,' said Krivan, getting to his feet.

‘What do you mean?' asked Jess.

‘This whole work-experience mission. It's bogus. Parry knows it but for whatever reason he won't go against orders. You heard how doubtful he sounded during the briefing.'

‘Sure, but if he really thought there was something wrong–'

‘Plus, I've got some extra intel about the mission,' said Krivan, totally surprising Jess.

‘What sort of intel?'

‘Well, you know how Herr Klug gave Ben a ROACH 2001 to test? He gave me one too. But mine kind of went AWOL,' said Krivan, pulling his phone out of his pocket. ‘I lost track of it in the abbey somewhere and, although I couldn't get it to come back, I could still pick up its transmissions. I uploaded them all onto a USB flash drive and just before we left I received this.'

Krivan plugged the flash drive into his phone and angled the screen so Jess could watch the recording. The ROACH was somewhere very dark, with a faint, eerie light. Even though she couldn't see much, what Jess heard chilled her more deeply than the sub-zero Alpine air.

‘
Our guests are due to arrive at Altganz on Sunday. Then it will only be a matter of days until the project is complete
,' said a male voice Jess didn't recognise.

‘
Excellent. This will be the true dawn of the bioweapon age
,' said a second voice.

The men laughed.

‘
Once we go public, there will be copycat attempts
.'

‘
With P.E.P. Squad's resources at our fingertips, they won't be hard to neutralise
.'

‘That's it,' said Krivan as the recording stopped.

‘You're saying that's a recording of two people talking to each other in Theruse Abbey?' exclaimed Jess, horrified.

‘That's one possibility. Another is that it recorded a phone conversation on loud speaker,' said Krivan.

‘So, at a minimum, at least one person from P.E.P. Squad knows that Altganz is the real location of Hess's lab!'

‘And Lieutenant Parry and the twins are heading straight into a trap.'

‘Why didn't you play them the recording?' asked Jess.

Krivan hesitated.

‘I wanted to. Believe me. But I kept quiet because I can't be sure that Lieutenant Parry's not in on it.'

‘What? That's ridiculous!' Jess exploded. ‘Lieutenant Parry's one of the most decent adults I know! And what about Matt and Ben?'

‘Stop yelling so loudly,' said Krivan calmly. ‘You'll cause an avalanche. The lieutenant is a professional spy and, if he is one of the good guys, then I'm sure he'll be able to deal with whatever the Altganz people throw at them and keep your friends safe. Plus, I've got a Plan B of my own.'

‘Let's hear it,' said Jess.

‘Whoever is behind this knows we're coming, right?'

‘Right.'

‘So when Parry turns up with only two teenagers, instead of four, they'll most likely send someone back up the trail to look for us. Presumably on a snowmobile, as they're faster than skis, particularly uphill.'

‘Well that's a comforting thought,' said Jess, not liking the idea of an armed terrorist, who was far more proficient at moving on snow than she was, pursuing her over the mountain.

‘Actually, it is,' said Krivan, taking off his rucksack and drawing out the piping. ‘We have the element of surprise. Help me string this up between these trees.'

Jess helped Krivan stretch the piping across the trail in the middle of the copse and secure it to trees either side.

‘That should stop anyone who's coming for us, at least long enough for us to get a couple of punches in. Or, in your case, a couple of well-aimed snowballs.'

‘What? And give away my position so they know where to shoot? I'm not liking Plan B much so far.'

‘It's highly unlikely they would fire a weapon with all this snow,' reasoned Krivan. ‘It could start an avalanche. My guess is they'll rely on using brute strength to subdue us. If we can catch them off-guard then we have a better chance of winning the fight.'

‘I hope you're right,' said Jess, crouching down and beginning to make a stockpile of snowballs. ‘What happens after we catch them off-guard?' she asked.

‘Depends on how many there are,' said Krivan, helping Jess make the snowballs. ‘We could probably take down three between us. But any more and we'll be stuck. On the plus side, if they bother to interrogate Parry and the Sykes boys about our whereabouts they'll find out I'm injured. And because we're only teenagers they'll probably underestimate the threat we pose. That should keep the numbers down.'

‘Then what?'

‘We immobilise them. We can tie them up with the rucksack piping, steal the uniform of the one closest to my height, then I'll return to the castle with you as my prisoner.'

‘Enthusiastic as I am to enter the castle as your prisoner,' said Jess, ‘won't they notice they're short a couple of guards and a prisoner?'

‘Not if I tell them that the other two are off pursuing … me,' said Krivan. ‘Or that things got ugly and the death score is 2:1.'

‘What about the minor point that you don't look or sound like any of the guards?'

Krivan smiled.

‘That's why I have this,' he said, reaching into his rucksack and pulling out an oval-shaped piece of latex. ‘Prototype from P.E.P. Labs. Instapros. You smooth it over someone's face, let it cool for thirty seconds to set it, then remove, turn inside out and, voilà, it's the perfect prosthetic.'

‘Where did you get that?' asked Jess.

‘My parents are – well, now just my dad is actually a P.E.P. Squad operative,' said Krivan. ‘Sometimes he brings cool stuff home from work. I thought it might come in handy to bring it along.'

‘What about the voice thing?' asked Jess.

‘You know I can impersonate anyone,' said Krivan, mimicking Jess's voice perfectly.

‘So let me get this straight,' said Jess. ‘We engage one of these homicidal maniacs in polite conversation and then ask him to keep still while we make an impression of his face, then knock him unconscious?' The muted sound of a chopper interrupted their conversation. ‘That'll be Emily. Should we call her off?'

But before Krivan could reply the helicopter flew over their heads. Jess and Krivan ran to the edge of the copse where they had a clear view of the castle from the safety of the trees. The helicopter landed on a helipad on the roof of the castle. They used their ski-goggle binoculars to watch what happened next. A man they didn't recognise, dressed in a red-and-black uniform, got out of the chopper, then turned and yanked Emily out. Her hands were bound behind her back and her face was so pale that her freckles stood out in stark contrast. The man led Emily inside.

‘Horseradish root!' said Krivan. ‘That means they'll be coming for us any second.'

‘And to think I was worried about failing work experience,' said Jess, pointing to the base of the castle where a lone man on a snowmobile, also dressed in red and black, was heading up the mountain towards them. ‘At least there's only one of them. Looks like you were right about them underestimating us.'

‘Quick, into position,' said Krivan.

Jess ran back and hid beside her cache of snowballs while Krivan ran across to the other side of the trail, jabbing furiously at his mobile phone.

The whine of the snowmobile's motor drew closer. Jess grabbed a snowball. Krivan put his phone away and held up a finger to signal
not yet
.

The snowmobile zoomed into the trees and the wire caught the rider under the chin. He was flung several metres backward through the air and landed head first in the snow with a sickening crunch, his body twisted in an awkward position. The snowmobile cruised to a stop a few metres up the mountain.

‘Go!' cried Krivan.

He and Jess sprinted towards the snowmobile driver, who wasn't moving. When they were a few feet away, Krivan put out an arm to stop Jess.

‘He might be faking it. Throw one of those at him,' he whispered, gesturing to the snowballs Jess had in each hand. ‘See if he reacts.'

Jess aimed for the only patch of skin she could see between the man's collar and hairline and made the perfect hit. The man didn't flinch.

‘Is he even breathing?' asked Jess.

Krivan walked slowly towards the fallen man, Jess two paces behind him, ready to jump in to help if the guy put up a fight. Krivan reached down and felt for a pulse at his neck, then shook his head.

‘Oh God,' said Jess, horrified. ‘We killed him.'

Krivan gingerly turned the body over. The man flopped onto his back lifelessly, his head tilted at a very odd angle to his body, an ugly red gash across his throat, his still-open eyes staring blankly into space. Krivan turned away quickly and retched.

Jess waited until he'd finished vomiting, then whispered, ‘At least his eyes are the same colour as yours. Are you really up for this?'

‘There's no going back now,' said Krivan, wiping his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. ‘We need to hurry before they send out more men to look for this guy.'

He took out the Instapros and put it over the man's face but his hands were shaking so much that Jess took over. She piled snow on top of the latex.

‘Thirty seconds,' Krivan reminded her.

‘I know,' said Jess, going to the man's feet and undoing his boots. ‘You'd better start stripping off too.'

When the thirty seconds were up, Jess peeled the mask off the man's face, then stripped the red and black uniform off his body, trying not to think about what she was doing.

Krivan put the clothes on quickly, still shaking.

‘They're a good fit but you need to get control of yourself,' observed Jess.

‘I'll be all right in a minute,' said Krivan, strapping on the man's gun holster. ‘It's just the cold.'

He felt inside the pockets of his new uniform and found a mobile phone. ‘Sweet. His phone's in Russian so let's hope the working language at the castle is Russian.'

‘What about your voice?' said Jess. ‘We don't know what he sounds like.'

Krivan looked back at the phone and then pressed a button. Holding it up to his ear he listened for a moment and smiled. ‘Excellent. He's personalised the outgoing voicemail message,' said Krivan in a voice half an octave deeper with a heavy Russian lilt. ‘Give me your rucksack.'

‘Is that what he really sounded like?' asked Jess.

‘Absolutely,' said Krivan. ‘Now give me your rucksack.'

‘What for?' asked Jess, passing it over.

‘Seriously, Irish girl?' continued Krivan in his impression of the guard's voice. ‘I'd hardly take you prisoner without confiscating all your spy gadgets.'

‘Then give me yours,' said Jess. ‘Or at least let me keep my phone and the ROACH.'

‘Good thinking,' said Krivan, undoing his own ROACH wristband and stowing it in the rucksack. ‘You keep your phone. I'll chuck mine in, but first I'll set up call-forwarding from my phone to the guard's phone,' he continued, keying numbers into his P.E.P. Squad mobile.

‘While you're at it, can you shoot me a copy of that ROACH transmission? We'll need it for evidence and the more copies we have of it on the more devices the better.' As Krivan was sending her the media file, Jess looked back at the semi-naked corpse lying in the snow. ‘Should we bury him?'

‘We don't have time for that but we should definitely hide him,' said Krivan, dropping his mobile in Jess's rucksack. ‘I'll take the head.'

Before lifting the body, he picked up the prosthetic mask from the snow. He flipped it inside out and then, pulling a switchblade from his pocket, cut spaces for his eyes, nostrils, mouth and eyebrows. He pulled it over his face, pressing it down tightly at the edges and around the spaces so there was no indication that it wasn't his real face.

Jess found it freaky to say the least to be looking at two identical versions of the same face, one on a live human and one on the corpse they were carrying. They dumped the body in the trees, where they also stashed Krivan's clothes and rucksack.

‘Now to make this look authentic,' said Krivan, tying Jess's arms behind her with some plastic cable tie he'd found in the guard's pockets.

Krivan drove the snowmobile down to the same castle gate from which it had emerged and revved the engine until a guard opened the gate from inside.

‘Where's the other one?' the guard demanded in Russian.

‘Dead on the mountainside,' answered Krivan in the same language, using the deep voice he had rehearsed.

The guard nodded and waved them through.

Krivan drove inside, parking the snowmobile next to another one in the courtyard, then pulled Jess off the back in the same manner as the helicopter pilot had dragged Emily out of the helicopter.

Another guard emerged from the castle and went to frisk Jess.

‘I've already done that,' said Krivan, stepping between Jess and the guard and tossing Jess's rucksack at him. ‘She was carrying this.'

‘Put her downstairs with the others,' said the guard, turning and heading for a door on the other side of the yard.

‘Looks like you got the voice thing right,' Jess murmured.

Krivan pushed her ahead of him, muttering, ‘Let's just hope Parry didn't make any mistakes with that floor plan.'

They walked through a door to their left and found themselves in the kitchen from which, according to the plan, they should find access to the dungeon level. A staircase at the rear of the kitchen led down to a T-junction at the bottom. A long, dark corridor headed off to the right, while a locked steel door only accessible via a card reader blocked the way to the left.