“We’re not.” Sherman smiled. His expression seemed sincere. “We’re on a special mission.”
“Yer Maw! You just killed the guys that were on a special mission.” Dave still clutched the knife in his hand. “Whit? You on a special, special mission?”
Sherman’s smile flickered. Madrid stepped in front of him. “I’m an operative working for British Army Counter Intelligence,” she said. “You don’t need to be told that the situation on this base has turned into a bit of a mess.”
“You can say that again, doll.” Dave cocked his head to one side. “You here tae fix it?”
“We are.”
“How did you get here so fast?” Realising he wasn’t about to die, Simon’s natural curiosity kicked in. “This base is in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s classified,” Nulce broke in sharply. Sherman held up his hand for silence.
“Boys. We don’t have time to sit around chewing the fat. We’ve got a limited window to complete our mission. We’ve got to get down to the lowest level of Pinewood and retrieve sensitive data. If you help us, we’ll take you with us when we leave.”
“Shouldn’t that be if you leave?” Jimmy asked.
Nulce gave him a cold stare. “What do you mean by that?”
“Half the base is trying to kill the other half. There’s a genius in the basement who’s probably turned Bunker 10 into a fortress until she can figure a way to escape. The perimeter lasers will shoot anyone who gets near the fence and the whole place is set to blow up in just over an hour.” Jimmy lowered his baseball bat. “There are four of you. Sorry, but I don’t rate your chances.”
“Then it’s a pity we’re all you’ve got.” Sherman replied pleasantly.
“We have the element of surprise,” Madrid joined in. “We have the latest technology, better than the most advanced stuff here. And if you help, we have four geniuses who’ve tapped into base security and can get us anywhere undetected.”
The children looked astonished.
“How could you know that?”
Nulce smirked “You’d be surprised the things we know and you don’t.”
“You’re all smart kids and the situation is simple.” Sherman unzipped his leather jacket, revealing twin holsters◦– one strapped under each arm. “We need you to help us retrieve the data we came for. You need us to get you off this base before it blows up. End of story.”
“How do we know you won’t kill us once you’ve got what you want?”
“Because we don’t kill kids,” Darren said, glancing sideways at Nulce. “And because you’re too valuable to the army.”
“So?” Sherman asked. “Do we have a deal?”
The children looked at each other.
“We have a deal,” Jimmy replied.
-PART 5-
19.00 hours – 20.00 hours
If that machine can do what you say it can do, destroy it, George! Destroy it before it destroys you!
19.00
The teens had spent the last ten minutes getting a crash course in espionage. Nulce demonstrated how to load and fire his automatic weapon, though he insisted his team had no arms to spare.
“Where are we going to get guns from anyway?” Barn asked.
“From the guys I kill,” Nulce answered simply.
Each of Sherman’s team carried miniature handcoms, which Darren showed the children how to operate. The devices were more advanced than anything they’d ever seen but, in minutes, they had achieved an understanding of the workings that a normal person would have taken weeks to learn.
“You guys really are smart,” Darren said approvingly.
In return, Dave and Simon tried to teach Sherman’s team how the base personnel’s locations could be entered into the handcoms and identified on the screens. The adults weren’t nearly so fast at picking things up.
“We don’t have time for this,” Sherman announced, after mistaking himself for a security camera twice in a row. “You kids can operate the handcoms. We’ll do the shooting.” He scratched his chin in exasperation and looked at Jimmy. “Now what’s the best way to proceed, in your expert opinion?”
“We should pair up,” Jimmy said without hesitation. “One kid one adult. How are you getting on with the Special Forces walkie talkies Simon?”
Simon looked up from the radio he was taking apart. Madrid had removed it from the body of Private Kruger.
“Each of Dunwoody’s men has one of these. I’ve identified the frequency and I’ll be able to use that to plot the whereabouts of them all. I’ll feed their positions into the handcoms and they’ll show up as black dots on the schematic of the base.” He stroked the handcom reverently. “God, this is a fine piece of hardware.”
“What about you Dave?”
“The base soldiers all have electronic identity tags, know? So we can track them too. I’ll make them green dots.”
Darren looked even more impressed. Jimmy nodded at the little earpieces that Sherman’s team were wearing.
“And you’ve got these nifty communication devices, so I can use them to mark our positions. White dots, I think.” He smiled winningly at Nulce. “After all, we’re the good guys, aren’t we?”
Nulce rolled his eyes.
“It’s like a complicated game of chess, isn’t it?” Jimmy continued. “I say we play it that way, with us directing where the other two sides should go.”
“And I suppose, you’ll be the one doing the directing?” Sherman put his hands on his hips. “You’re probably a chess grand master or something.”
“Not me. I haven’t got the patience.” Jimmy pointed to Barn, who was sitting on the floor drumming his knees. “But he’s the best chess player I’ve ever seen. Can’t be beat on the X-Box or PlayStation either.”
“There are 318,979,564,000 possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess,” Barn said solemnly.
“Wait. Wait! You want the fat kid to come up with a strategy?” Nulce looked incredulously at Sherman. “What kind of commander are you?”
Barn went bright red and stared at the ground. Sherman looked pained.
“You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid, Nulce,” he said sadly. “Except I had looks and a personality.”
Darren coughed, hiding a smirk with his hand. Jimmy sat down next to Barn and gave him a handcom.
“Here’s a cross section map of the base and the positions of the different groups. What would you think would be the best course of action?”
“The place is laid out to best defend against attack, so there’s only one stairway leading down to the lowest levels,” Barn said. “But that means the base soldiers are finding it equally hard to break out.”
He studied the mass of dots on the screen.
“There’s a concentration of them at the bottom of the stairs on level three. But they can’t get any further up because Dunwoody’s men are at the top of those stairs. The black dots are totally outnumbered but only a handful green dots can fit on such a narrow passage at one time, so the black pieces are able to hold their position. And they’ve got a dozen men in level one too. They’ll be a backup just in case May-Rose’s forces do break through.”
“What about the three elevators?” Sherman asked
“Dunwoody’s men have disabled them,” Jimmy broke in. “Even if the base soldiers climbed up the shaft, they’d hit the floor of the elevator and be stuck. There’s a trapdoor on the top but not the bottom. No point in them trying to cut their way through, cause one man could hold off an army by firing into the shaft.”