CHERUB: The Recruit (19 page)

‘I think you’re both beautiful.’

‘Arse kisser,’ Connor said.

James looked at Connor. ‘You want to stay out here all night?’

‘Very beautiful,’ Connor agreed.

‘Supermodels,’ Mo added.

The girls looked at Shakeel.

‘Well?’

Shakeel shrugged, ‘You’re two radiant beams of golden sunshine. Come on, let us in.’

‘Shall we?’ Kerry asked Gabrielle, enjoying her sense of power.

Gabrielle put a finger on her mouth and acted puzzled.

‘If they kiss the glass to show how much they love us,’ she decided.

Kerry laughed. ‘You heard her, boys. Nice big smooch on the glass.’

The four boys looked at each other.

‘Oh, for god’s sake,’ Connor muttered.

Connor kissed the glass first. The other three did the same.

Someone knocked at the door. Kerry answered. It was Large and Smoke. Gabrielle unlocked the French doors. The boys rushed inside, hoping they hadn’t been spotted peeing on the plants.

Large sounded drunk. ‘It’s gone eleven. I want you all in bed in five minutes.’

The others filed out. James and Kerry got into bed.

A military helicopter picked them up from the hotel roof before dawn. The trainees sat on their packs in the dusty cargo area behind the pilots. Their tropical uniform had lightweight trousers, long-sleeved blue tops without numbers or CHERUB logos, and hats with pull-down flaps to protect their necks and ears from the sun.

Large crawled around fitting each trainee with an electronic wristband. The plastic strap locked on so it could only be cut off with a knife.

‘Don’t remove the bracelet under any circumstances,’ Large shouted over the noise of the rotor. ‘In an emergency, unscrew the button on the side and press it down firmly. The helicopter is on standby and will reach you within fifteen minutes. If you get bitten by a snake press it right away.

‘We’ll be at the first drop point soon. Everything you could possibly need is in the backpacks. It’s now 1000 hours. Each team has four checkpoints to reach within the next seventy-two hours. If you don’t reach all the checkpoints before the target time, you have failed training and you’ll have to start again at day one. Remember, this is not a training area. Mistakes down there will not get you punished, but they might get you killed. There are about a thousand things in the jungle that will kill you or make you so sick you’ll wish you were dead.’

The helicopter stopped moving about ten metres off the ground. The side door slid open, filling the cargo area with sunlight.

‘One and two, get out there,’ Large shouted.

Mo and Shakeel dangled their feet over the side of the helicopter. Large threw out their backpacks. James saw the boys disappear, but couldn’t see if they’d landed OK because of the dust blown up by the rotor. Large gave the pilot a thumbs-up and the helicopter moved on to the next drop. Kerry looked unhappy. Jumps put a strain on her weak knee. Gabrielle and Connor dropped, then they moved to the final position.

James looked down. There was wet sand covered with a few centimetres of seawater beneath him. He watched his pack splash down, summoned his courage and slid off the platform. They’d been trained how to jump safely. The trick was to collapse on to your side so the impact was absorbed by the whole body. If you landed too straight you risked smashing your hips or ankles. Too flat and your whole body smacked down hard, often breaking an arm or shoulder. James got the landing spot on. He scrambled up, splattered in wet sand but unhurt.

Kerry screamed as she hit the ground. James rushed over.

‘You OK?’ he asked.

Kerry got up slowly and took a few nervous steps on her weak knee.

‘No worse than usual,’ she said.

The helicopter flew off. James shielded his eyes from the swirls of sand. They dragged their backpacks out of the wash and up the beach. The sun made the white sand dazzle.

‘Let’s get into the shade,’ James said.

They settled under a palm. James rubbed wet sand off his hands on to his trousers. Kerry found the mission briefing in her pack.

‘Oh crap,’ Kerry said.

‘What?’

Kerry showed James a page of her briefing. It was in Japanese. James quickly found his own copy. His heart sank.

‘Great, all in Russian,’ James said. ‘If I’d known my life would depend on it I probably would have paid more attention in class.’

They realised the two briefings were identical. James could understand half the Russian, Kerry was a bit better with the Japanese. By comparing the two versions and making a few assumptions they worked out almost everything.

There were a couple of sketchy maps, marked with the position of the first checkpoint, but no indication of where they had been dropped, or where they had to go after that. They had to reach the first checkpoint by 1800 and sleep there overnight.

‘I suppose there’ll be another briefing when we get there,’ Kerry said.

James went through his backpack. There was tons more than they could carry. What was worth taking? Some stuff was obvious: machete, compass, plastic pool for collecting rainwater, emergency rations, empty water canteen, first-aid kit and medicine, water purification tablets, sunscreen, mosquito nets, matches, Swiss army knife. A roll of plastic bin-liners weighed next to nothing and had a dozen potential uses. There was also a tent with metal poles.

‘Leave it,’ Kerry said. ‘It weighs a ton and we can make a shelter out of palms.’

They threw out a lot of heavy items: spare boots, umbrellas, cutlery, thick jackets. Some items were bizarre. They couldn’t think of any use for a rugby ball or a table tennis bat. The paperback edition of
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
might have helped start a fire, but they decided it was too bulky. The packs were manageable once they were stripped out. James kicked through the stuff in the sand, hoping they hadn’t left anything that would turn out useful.

‘What now?’ James asked.

Kerry held out the map and pointed to a mountain in the distance.

‘The checkpoint is on the bank of the river,’ Kerry said. ‘That mountain over there is marked on the far side of the river so we walk towards it.’

‘How far?’

‘Impossible to tell. There’s no scale on the map. We’d better move fast though, we’ll never find the checkpoint once it gets dark.’

The plan was to follow the coastline until they hit the river mouth, then walk upstream to the checkpoint. Walking inland was more direct, but there would be no way to tell which direction to turn when they reached the river.

Walking on the beach was impossible because of the bright sun and heat. Instead they stuck to the jungle a hundred metres or so inland. The trees here formed a shady canopy filled with screeching birds. The only plants beneath the canopy were a few mosses and fungi. Apart from giant tree roots and the odd detour around a fallen trunk, the terrain was level and they made a steady pace.

It was a battle keeping insects off. Kerry had a screaming fit when a ten-centimetre-long millipede tickled up her leg. Its bite swelled into a red lump. Kerry reckoned it hurt worse than a wasp sting. After that they tucked their trousers into their socks.

Once an hour James and Kerry moved on to the beach. Trees nearer the beach were smaller and more spread out. They knocked down coconuts and, once they got the knack of opening them, gorged on the sweet milk. There were fruit trees everywhere, but they only ate fruits they recognised in case any were poisonous. After drinking they would put down their packs, kick off their boots and run fully clothed into the sea.

The biggest risk in the jungle doesn’t come from predators but mosquitoes. The tiny flying insects stick their proboscis under the skin to drink your blood. The bite only leaves an itchy red mark, but the microscopic malaria parasites they spread from one victim to the next can make you sick or even kill you. The kids hadn’t been given malaria tablets, so all they could do was cover up their skin, try to keep dry and wear insect repellent.

Mosquitoes are attracted to the smell of sweat, so after each dip James and Kerry put on dry clothes. They wrung out the sea-drenched clothes and draped them over their backpacks, knowing the heat would dry them before the next stop. After changing they smeared on mosquito repellent and sunscreen before heading back into the shade under the dense trees.

The coconuts and fruit juice were too rich to keep drinking in large quantities. The fruit acid gave James a sickly burn in the back of his dry mouth. By early afternoon thirst was slowing them down.

Sea water is too salty to drink and all they could find in the jungle were stagnant pools, swarming with mosquitoes and probably contaminated by animal urine. There was no chance of finding a spring unless they diverted towards higher ground inland. They wouldn’t get fresh water until it rained. A storm was a certainty. The tropical heat evaporated so much water that by afternoon the skies were bursting with clouds. James and Kerry watched the sky gradually darken. When the first lightning cracked they ran to the nearest stretch of beach, inflated a plastic paddling pool and waited.

The rain was like nothing they’d ever seen. The first spots were the size of ping-pong balls. James tipped his head back to drink. When the sky opened properly it was like being under Large’s fire hose. The water blasted holes in the smooth sand. James wrapped one arm over his face and struggled to hold the pool as it filled up.

Kerry sheltered their packs under a tree. They stuck their faces in the pool and gulped. When the shower finished there was enough in the pool to fill both canteens. Rather than risk going thirsty again they tipped the rest into a plastic sack and took it with them.

Once they reached the river mouth the going was easier. The river was bordered by an unmade path, chewed up with tyre tracks. Kerry counted the bends in the river to find the checkpoint. They arrived an hour inside the deadline, feet killing them after walking for nearly seven hours.

The checkpoint was marked by a flag. A three-metre-long wooden boat with an outboard motor stood at the edge of the river under a tarpaulin. James lifted back the cover and was pleased to discover junk food, cooking pots and cans of fuel inside the hull. Then something moved. At first James thought it was just a trick of the light, but it moved again and hissed. James dropped the tarp and scrambled backwards.

‘Snake,’ he screamed.

Kerry rushed across from the riverbank.

‘What?’

‘There’s a bloody enormous snake in that boat.’

‘Are you sure?’ Kerry asked. ‘The manual says snakes are very rare out here.’

‘The instructors must have put it there,’ James said. ‘I suppose if we pull off the cover it will slide away.’

‘How big did you say it was?’ Kerry asked.

‘Huge,’ James said, making a twenty-centimetre circle with his hands.

‘There’s no snake in Malaysia that big,’ Kerry said, puzzled.

‘You’re welcome to stick your head in there if you don’t believe me.’

‘I believe you, James. But I don’t think we should let it go, I think it was put there for our dinner.’

‘What? That thing could be poisonous. How are we going to kill it?’

‘James, were you listening during survival training? The only snakes that size are constrictors: snakes that crush you by wrapping themselves around you. It’s not poisonous, but if we let it go what’s to stop it coming into our shelter and squishing us in the night?’

‘OK,’ James said. ‘You want snake for dinner. How do you plan to kill it?’

‘Pull back the cover, poke it till sticks its head out then hack it off with the machete.’

‘Sounds like fun,’ James said. ‘This is your idea, so I’m poking it and you’re doing the hacking.’

‘Fine,’ Kerry said. ‘But if I kill it,
you’re
cutting all the guts out and cooking it.’

*

There was loads to do before dark. Kerry made a clearing near the river. James built a fire and butchered the snake, throwing the remains into the river to keep scavengers away.

Kerry put the finishing touches to a shelter made with giant palms as the sky blacked out. She protected the floor with the tarpaulin and lined the inside with mosquito nets.

They ate the snake meat with coconut and instant noodles. James made wire traps baited with leftover meat and pressed them into the river bed by torchlight, hoping they would have fish in them by morning. Well-fed but exhausted, they climbed into the shelter. They tried to translate the briefing while pricking the blisters on their feet with a sterile needle.

Reaching the second checkpoint involved a twenty-five kilometre cruise upstream, navigating a complicated network of channels and tributaries, until they reached a giant lake. The checkpoint was located aboard an abandoned fishing trawler on a mud bank near the far side of the lake. They had to get there by 1400. It would be an early start.

*

The temperature hardly dropped in the night. It was boiling in the shelter, hard to sleep. The wailing birds were harmless, but served as an eerie reminder that civilisation was a long way off. They kept a small fire burning to deter animals and insects.