CHERUB: The Recruit (20 page)

James was awake to see dawn. Sun burst over the river and in minutes the dry ground was too hot to touch. James checked inside his boots for nasties before slipping them on his painful feet and walking to the river to check the traps. Two of the four traps had caught fish, but one fish had been ripped apart by a predator. James grabbed his catch and held it in the air until it stopped struggling. It was enough to make breakfast for the two of them.

Kerry built up the fire and began purifying river water. She boiled it for ten minutes, then dropped in chlorine tablets. James cooked the fish and picked a heap of mangoes. He saved one each for breakfast and loaded the rest into the boat.

The fish cooked quickly. He sliced one of the mangoes in half and called Kerry. ‘Breakfast’s ready.’

James couldn’t see Kerry either near the camp or at the riverside.

‘Kerry?’ he called, slightly worried.

He pulled the steaming fish off its skewer and split it on to two plastic plates. Kerry emerged from behind some trees.

‘I had to crap,’ Kerry said. ‘All that fruit I ate yesterday cleaned me right out.’

‘Thanks for the detail, Kerry. I’m just about to eat.’

‘Something occurred to me,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Remember we left
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
on the beach?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think we were supposed to use it as toilet paper.’

James and Kerry stood on either side of the outboard motor with their palms pressed against the back of the boat. It had taken a succession of almighty shoves to nudge the bow over the edge of the riverbank.

‘We should have emptied everything out first,’ Kerry said, wiping a gallon of sweat off her face.

‘Not worth it now,’ James puffed. ‘I think the next one will do the trick. Ready?’

They pushed the hull past its centre of gravity. It tipped forward and began sliding. A backwash ran up the shallow embankment, the muddy water swirling over the toes of their boots.

Water surged over the bow as the boat punched the water. For a second, they both thought it was going under. When the craft stopped rocking, the rim of the hull was only a couple of centimetres above the waterline. Each swell in the river splashed a drop more water over the side. The river wasn’t deep enough to put the boat beyond rescue if it sunk, but the engine and half their equipment would be wrecked, along with any chance they had of making the next checkpoint.

Kerry waded in up to her waist and grabbed a can of fuel out of the boat, being careful not to lean on the hull. James positioned himself nearer to shore, took the can off Kerry and hurled it towards dry ground.

Once they’d pulled out their sodden packs, fresh water and fuel cans, the boat sat higher in the water.

‘Phew,’ James gasped. ‘That was too close.’

‘Brilliant time-saving idea,’ Kerry said furiously. ‘I told you we should have taken the stuff out.’

‘You didn’t,’ James said.

James was nearly right. Leaving the stuff in the boat was his idea, but Kerry’s objection had been on the basis that they wouldn’t have the strength to push it, not that the extra weight might make the boat sink when it hit the water.

James grabbed a couple of cooking pots from the shore and they bailed out all the water. When the bottom of the boat was dry, they turned to the fuel and equipment scattered along the embankment.

‘I suppose it’s the same as yesterday,’ Kerry said. ‘What do we need? What can we leave behind?’

*

It made James queasy when he thought about how close they’d come to failing on the ninety-eighth day out of a hundred. Failing this close to the end of training would completely do your head in. The boat was now trundling upstream, against the current. Their sodden packs and equipment were spread over the deck, drying in the morning sun.

The river varied in size. Some places, shallow water stretched over thirty metres wide. They had to go slowly, with James leaning over the bow, shouting directions so that Kerry didn’t ground the hull. When things got desperate, James used a wooden oar to nudge them away from disaster. In the narrow sections, the river was deeper and the currents stronger. Trees and bushes loomed over the water and they had to duck under low branches.

When it was plain sailing, Kerry would open up the throttle and the gentle put-put of the engine turned into a whine, accompanied by thick blue exhaust fumes. She stayed on the wooden bench near the outboard motor, making gentle adjustments to their course and marking off progress on her chart. James’ job was more physically demanding; but even though the sun was fierce and working with the oar strained his shoulders, he preferred it to taking responsibility for navigating them safely through the dead ends and tributaries leading towards the lake.

*

It was the hottest part of the day when they broke on to open water. The lake ran further than you could see through the glaring sun. James abandoned his oar and sat on a fuel can in the middle of the boat, occasionally bailing out the water sloshing around the hull.

‘Can you see the trawler anywhere?’ Kerry asked. ‘If I’ve read the Japanese in my briefing right, it’s on a mud bank at the north end of the lake, marked by three red warning buoys.’

James stood up, squinting in a vain attempt to cut out the glare off the water. It was a pity they didn’t have sunglasses.

‘I can’t see squat,’ James said. ‘We’ll just have to keep cruising around the edge until we spot it.’

Kerry looked at her watch.

‘We’ve got two hours until the deadline, but the sooner we get to this checkpoint, the longer we have to reach the next one.’

There was no other traffic on the lake. The fishing wharves, shacks and warehouses along the shoreline were desolate. There were well maintained roads and even a couple of telephone boxes, but no people anywhere. Red warning posts were hammered into the mud every few hundred metres. The writing was in Sarawak, so James couldn’t read the words, but the yellow and black stripes and the bolts of lightning sent out a message that was clear in any language: stay the hell out of here.

‘This is freaky,’ James said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘According to this map, they’re building a giant dam upriver,’ Kerry said. ‘I guess this whole area is going to be flooded. Everyone’s had to leave, which makes this the ideal spot for us to train without any locals sticking their noses in.’

James toppled backwards as Kerry put on full rudder and opened up the throttle. For a couple of nervous seconds he thought he was going over the side.

‘For god’s sake,’ James shouted furiously. ‘Tell me before you do that next time.’

The boat bounced over tiny waves towards the silhouette Kerry had spotted in the distance. The rusting trawler was about fifteen metres long, leaning on its side in the mud. Another boat, identical to their own, was tied to the metal deck rail.

Kerry bumped the boat into the mud bank. James hopped over the bow and tied it off.

‘Anybody in there?’ James shouted.

Connor stuck his head through a window.

‘What took you two so long?’ Connor asked.

The exterior of the boat was crusted in bird crap. They tried not to touch it as they crawled through a lopsided doorway into the bridge. There were masses of holes and hanging wires. Everything of value had been stripped for salvage, including the navigational equipment, the glass in the windows and even the seat cushion off the captain’s chair. Connor and Gabrielle looked muddy and tired. They had maps and briefing papers spread out over the floor.

‘How long have you been here?’ Kerry asked.

‘Twenty minutes or so,’ Gabrielle said

‘Any sign of Shakeel and Mo?’

‘They’d been and gone before us,’ Gabrielle said. ‘They left the envelope from their dossier on the floor. Yours is over there as well.’

Kerry grabbed the padded envelope, tore it open and handed James the half written in Russian.

‘So we’re running last,’ James said.

‘We’ve already worked out most of ours,’ Connor said. ‘Maybe we can help you two catch up.’

James thought it was a kind offer, but Kerry took it the wrong way.

‘We’re quite capable of working it out for ourselves,’ she said indignantly. ‘We’ve all come from different camps and we’re all going to different places. Maybe we had a longer first stint and a shorter second stint. I don’t see how anyone could have done the journey much faster than we did.’

‘We wasted a good half hour when we nearly sank the boat,’ James said.

Connor laughed, ‘How did you manage that?’

‘It was loaded up when we pushed it off the embankment.’

‘God,’ Gabrielle gasped. ‘You never would have got up the river if you’d flooded the engine.’

‘I know you guys are on a different route to the final checkpoint,’ Connor said. ‘But if your briefing is the same as ours, it tells you to take a different route back towards the sea and get to the third checkpoint, less than fifteen kilometres away, by 2200.’

Kerry had done a quick skim through her briefing and nodded. ‘Different route … Fifteen kilometres by 2200 … That’s more or less what it says here.’

James broke into a grin. ‘Fifteen kilometres in nine hours. That’s easy.’

Connor, Gabrielle and Kerry all stared at him like he was a total idiot.

‘Oh,’ James said, when it clicked into place how dumb he was being. ‘There’s going to be some kind of catch, isn’t there?’

‘We could play I spy,’ James grinned, trying to break the tension as they headed downstream.

Kerry didn’t appreciate his stab at humour.

‘Shut your face, and keep your eyes open.’

‘It’d better not be rapids,’ James said anxiously. ‘I couldn’t handle that.’

‘For the hundredth time, James, they won’t send us down rapids. This is the wrong type of boat, we’d disintegrate in two seconds.’

James could cope with swimming in a pool, or a fairly still section of river, but the idea of a getting thrown into raging water without a life-jacket scared him like mad.

Things were easier for Kerry. She had the map spread over her lap and the boat to steer. All James had was twitchy fingers and a brain packed with unpleasant thoughts about whatever awaited them.

‘Maybe nothing will happen,’ James said. ‘Maybe the trick is to make us think something horrible is going to happen when nothing really is.’

‘A few seconds’ warning could make all the difference,’ Kerry said sharply. ‘Be quiet and concentrate.’

When the skies darkened for the afternoon rains, James stretched the tarp over their stuff and lashed the paddling pool on top, to capture a fresh supply of drinking water. The violent rain made it impossible to navigate safely. As soon as it started, Kerry pulled into the embankment. James tied the boat to a branch and they snuggled under the tarp until it stopped.

Before setting off again, they quickly changed into dry clothes and put on more insect repellent. James’ body was a mass of angry red bites.

‘This is getting out of hand,’ James said. ‘Even my bites have got bites on them. Do you think we could get malaria?’

‘Maybe,’ Kerry shrugged. ‘But there’s nothing we can do, so what’s the point dwelling on it?’

*

An hour after the rain, they spotted a light pulsing in the trees up ahead.

‘Did someone just take our photo?’ James asked.

Before Kerry could answer, an electronic squeal broke out under the top of the outboard motor. She cut the throttle and reached into her pocket for her utility knife.

‘Is that some kind of warning buzzer?’ James asked.

Kerry shrugged. ‘I’ll have a look under the engine cover, but I’m no mechanic.’

She undid two plastic catches with the blade of her knife and lifted off the plastic faring.

‘Jesus,’ Kerry gasped. ‘I think we’ve got a bomb on board.’

Not quite believing his ears, James scrambled down the boat and looked at the metal cylinder duct-taped to the engine block. James recognised the timing switch from Mr Large’s weapons and explosives class. Unlike the ones you see in the movies, it didn’t have a clock saying how long you had until the bomb exploded.

A wire ran from the timer and out of the engine, alongside the rubber hose linking the outboard motor to the auxiliary fuel tank. James had noticed the wire before, but he’d never given it a thought.

‘Did the flashing light set off the timer?’ James asked.

‘It must have a photo trigger,’ Kerry said. ‘Remember when Mr Large showed us how you could set up a motion detector and a photographic flashgun to set off a bomb? It’s ideal if you want something to explode when it reaches a certain position.’

‘We could die,’ James said.

‘Don’t be dopey,’ Kerry said. ‘They’re not gonna kill us. It’s probably just a tiny bit of explosive that will blow a hole somewhere in the …’

The centre of the boat suddenly ruptured upwards. James got the first whiff of burning as the shockwave threw him into the water.