Rat-Catcher (7 page)

'Two hours,' groaned Li in the back of the van. 'The general could do anything to them in that time. What if he . . .?' Li swallowed, then tried again. 'What if he kills them?'

'Don't think about that,' said Alex firmly. 'The general doesn't know he's got us on his tail. We'll get to Paulo and Eliza in time.'

'But what about the radio?' said Amber. 'What if it wasn't smashed by accident?'

Hex shook his head. 'If the general had found the radio, he would have found the tracker device too. But the tracker device is still working. I think Alex is right. The general doesn't know about us.'

Li looked at each of the others in turn, then she bit her lip and gazed down at the floor, trying not to cry. Amber reached out and rested her hand on Li's arm. They lapsed into silence, each struggling with their own thoughts about what the general might be doing to funny, gentle Paulo. Alex clenched his fists in frustration. There was nothing Alpha Force could do until the satellite images came in. He stared out through the windscreen of the van and his eyes widened as he suddenly recognized where they were. Perhaps there was something Alpha Force could do, after all.

'Can you let us out here?' he said, with elaborate casualness. 'I need to stretch my legs a bit after being cooped up in this van all night.'

'Good idea,' said John Middleton as he brought the big van to the side of the road. 'I'll call Amber when the satellite pictures are in.'

'So. What are we really going to do?' asked Amber as they watched the white van speed off down the road.

'A bit of breaking and entering,' said Alex.

T
WELVE

The street was deserted when Alex peered around the corner. He was counting on it staying that way. It was the last Saturday before Christmas. Most people would be out shopping.

'Which house is it?' whispered Amber, peering over his shoulder.

'Third one along on the left,' said Alex. 'The one with the garage on the side of the house.'

'Are you sure it's the general's house?' asked Hex.

'I'm sure. My dad and I picked him up from here just two nights ago. He was actually talking to those two adoption men when we arrived -- paying them off, as cool as you like, and telling my dad they were his "ears on the street".' Alex let out an exasperated sigh as he remembered. 'I knew they looked familiar! That guy is so sure of himself.'

'Too sure, if you ask me,' said Hex. 'Someone's going to catch him out one of these days.'

'How are we going to reach the house?' asked Li.

'We walk up to it, of course,' said Alex.

'What? In full view?'

'We're just kids, remember,' said Amber. 'Who's going to take any notice of a bunch of kids?'

'Blinds are down,' muttered Li as they headed up the road towards the house. 'How do we know he hasn't come back here?'

'We don't know for sure,' said Alex. 'But we have to try to get in. We might find something in there that leads us to Paulo.'

'The house is alarmed,' said Hex, assessing the security. 'But I'll bet the garage isn't - and there might be a connecting door. I think we should go in through the garage. Those trees and bushes are going to give us a fair amount of cover.'

When they reached the top of the driveway, Hex took one look at the garage doors and sneered. 'See what I mean?' he whispered. 'Too sure of himself.'

They were a pair of old-fashioned wooden doors and the only thing holding them shut was a wrought-iron drop-latch. Hex gripped the latch and eased it up, then he gently tugged one of the doors. The rusting metal hinges squealed loudly and a whole flock of small birds exploded from the garden trees. Amber grabbed Alex's arm, digging her fingernails into his skin.

Hex took a quick look down the driveway to the street, then he slipped into the dark garage. Li followed, then Alex, with Amber crowding in behind him.

'There's a car in here,' said Hex.

Amber gave a squeak of panic. 'He must be in the house!'

'No, I don't think so,' said Li, running her finger over the tarpaulin that covered the car. 'Look. Dust. This has been here for quite a while.'

Alex lifted a corner of the tarpaulin and pulled it back. A shiny black bonnet came into view, then a dark windscreen. Amber peered at the windscreen and gasped in shock as she saw a face staring back at her.

Someone was sitting in the car.

She took a step back, preparing to run, but Alex reached out and squeezed her wrist reassuringly. 'It's all right,' he said calmly. 'It's mirrored glass.'

Alex pulled the tarpaulin further back, flicking it up and over the halogen lamps on the top of the 4x4. He nodded grimly. Eliza was right. The general was the Rat-catcher, and they had just found his hunting machine.

'Over here!' called Li softly.

The other three edged round the big car to join her. She was standing in front of a door in the side wall.

'Told you,' said Hex smugly.

The door had a pull-down handle, with a simple, keyhole lock. Hex peered into the keyhole and grunted in satisfaction. 'Key's in there,' he said. 'On the other side.'

He hurried over to a workbench against the wall and grabbed an old newspaper and a length of thick wire. He opened up a sheet of the newspaper and slid it under the door, leaving a small edge remaining on the garage side, then he eased the wire into the keyhole and slowly pushed the key out of the lock. The key dropped onto the newspaper sheet on the other side of the door.

'Now for the tricky bit,' said Hex. 'I just hope the gap's big enough.' Slowly he pulled the newspaper sheet back through into the garage. The key came with it, sliding under the bottom edge of the door with less than a millimetre to spare.

'Yes!' smiled Hex, snatching up the key. He slipped it into the keyhole, unlocked the door and pulled down the handle. The door opened silently outwards, into the garage. The blinds were down in the room beyond the door, but there was enough light to see that it was a kitchen. There was a cooker, a fridge and fitted cupboards with wooden, latticework doors. Hex looked over at the bench opposite the door and his eyes lit up as he spotted an expensive laptop plugged into the phone socket.

'Bingo,' he said.

Li sprang for the step but Hex grabbed her round the waist and pulled her back. 'What now?' hissed Li impatiently.

'The house is alarmed, remember?' said Hex.

'All right, Hex,' said Alex. 'You're our security expert. What do we do?'

Hex scanned the garage until he spotted what he wanted. Grabbing a large chisel from the workbench, he walked over to the exposed side of the 4x4. He rammed the chisel in behind the wing mirror and levered it until the whole thing came away from the side of the big car. Hex turned back to the other three with the wing mirror in his hand and raised an eyebrow at their shocked faces. 'Hey. This is war, remember,' he reminded them.

He angled the wing mirror in the kitchen doorway until he could see the hidden, near corner of the room. 'There it is,' he muttered. 'Motion-detector, above the bench.'

'Is there a way to beat it?' asked Alex.

'In theory, yes.' Hex went back to the workbench, picked up an aerosol can of car polish and shook it. 'We use this.'

'Oh, right,' mocked Amber. 'Give it a good polish. That'll do it every time.'

'It's a foam polish,' said Hex. 'If you spray any sort of foam over a motion-detector it blocks the beam and puts it out of action.'

'But how do we get near enough to spray it?'

'That's the dodgy bit,' admitted Hex. 'The trick is to move really, really smoothly and slowly. Less than a couple of centimetres a minute. If you move slowly enough, it'll fool the detector.'

'That's not so hard,' said Amber.

'It's a lot more difficult than it sounds,' said Hex. 'See how high on the wall the motion-detector is? There's no way to reach it except by climbing up onto the bench. Think about it, Amber. Could you haul yourself up onto the bench, making sure you don't move any part of your body more than two centimetres a minute? I couldn't.'

'I could, though,' said Li.

Alex, Hex and Amber watched in the angled wing mirror as Li glided towards the motion-detector, sliding her bare feet across the kitchen floor a millimetre at a time. She had pushed her long hair down the back of her T-shirt and the can of foam polish was tied securely to her belt. Li reached the bench and slowly, slowly tipped her head up, then down, judging the best way to climb up to the motion detector. She made her decision. Placing her hands on the bench, she lifted her left leg out to the side, slowly raising it higher and higher. The strain showed on her face, but her leg rose smoothly through the air without a single muscle tremor.

'How does she do that?' breathed Hex.

'The muscle strength comes from years of free climbing,' whispered Alex, watching Li in the mirror admiringly. 'And the balance--'

'That'll be the martial arts,' finished Amber.

Li eased her left leg onto the bench top and slid her knee forward until it was in the position she wanted. She rested for a few seconds, then braced herself on her arms and lifted herself slowly upwards until she could slide her left hip onto the bench. Then she began the long task of easing her right leg up behind her. Her arms were quivering with muscle tremors and her face was screwed up in pain by the time she was finally able to lie belly-down on the bench and take the weight off her hands.

Out in the garage, Amber, Hex and Alex breathed a collective sigh of relief. The most difficult part was over. Minutes later, Li was standing on the bench with her back against the kitchen wall. The motion-detector was just above her head.

'Am I out of the beam, Hex?' she asked softly.

Hex studied her position in the mirror. 'You should be.'

Li took a deep breath and yanked the aerosol from her belt. In one smooth movement she reached above her head, pointed the nozzle at the little white box on the wall and pressed down on the top. A stream of creamy white foam smothered the motion-detector.

For a few seconds they all held their breath, but the alarm system stayed quiet. Li reached out and waved her arm up and down in front of the foam-covered detector.

'She did it!' hissed Amber.

Li jumped down from the bench and the other three ran into the kitchen. Alex switched the key to the kitchen side of the connecting door, then softly closed and locked it, just to make sure no-one could walk in on them unannounced. Hex went straight for the laptop while Alex and Amber began to search the drawers and cupboards.

'Empty, empty, empty,' said Amber, moving along the line of drawers.

'Same here,' frowned Alex, opening one cupboard door after another. 'Look, there aren't even any shelves in them. And the fridge isn't plugged in. What's going on?'

There was a serving hatch in the wall. Li gripped the handle at the top of the hatch and slowly eased it open enough for her to peer through to the next room. 'There's nothing in there either,' she whispered. 'Not even a carpet. The place is completely bare.'

Amber was bending down and peering through the keyhole of the door which led from the kitchen to the rest of the house. 'Empty hallway,' she reported. 'Front door at the other end. Staircase . . .' She straightened. 'Perhaps we might find something upstairs.'

'I don't think so,' murmured Alex, remembering something his father had said. 'Not exactly the house of a general, is it?'

'What do you mean?' asked Li.

'This is not his house,' said Alex.

'We broke into the wrong house?' hissed Amber, looking nervously about her.

'No. This house belongs to him,' said Alex. 'But what I mean is, he doesn't live here. It's just a front. Part of the pretence. My guess is that the general has a much grander place somewhere else.'

Li groaned as she rubbed her aching arms. 'Then this has all been a waste of time.'

'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Hex, staring at the laptop screen. 'Come and look.'

They crowded around Hex, peering at the screen over his hunched shoulders. Hex had opened the favourites list on the general's internet explorer utility.

'What are we looking at?' asked Alex.

In answer, Hex moved the mouse pointer to one of the sites on the list. 'It's a Swiss bank,' he said. 'I think that's where he's storing all his funds.'

'Can we get into it?' asked Li.

'First we have to get online, and it's password protected,' explained Hex.

'Can you crack it?' asked Amber.

'Probably,' said Hex. 'He may be a general in the military sense, but in my world he's only a civilian.'

'If a hacker calls you a civilian, it's like an insult,' explained Amber. 'Civilian is the hacker name for ordinary computer-users.'

'You mean idiots,' muttered Hex. 'Most civilians are idiots - and they have stupid passwords. They're usually only eight characters long, without a single number, only letters.' Hex laughed. 'The stupidest even have an actual word! Can you believe that?'

Alex, Li and Amber laughed with Hex, but shared an embarrassed glance behind his back. They were thinking of their computer passwords - all three of them used real words.

'Real words are easy to remember,' continued Hex, 'but they're also easy to guess.' He laced his fingers together and bent them until the joints cracked, then held his hands poised over the keys. 'All his sites are in English, so I'm guessing his internet access password is in English too.'

Alex nodded, thinking back to his dinner with the general. 'That makes sense. He's very Americanized - and proud of how well he speaks the language.'

Hex typed in
PASSWORD
. The system rejected it. He grunted in disappointment. 'You'd be surprised how many civilians use that one,' he explained.

Next, he tried
GENERAL
. The system rejected it. Hex frowned and tried
QUITOLUIS
. Again, it was rejected. 'Trouble is, I don't know much about the guy,' sighed Hex. Then he sat up straighter as another idea came to him. He typed in
RAT-CATCHER
and clicked
CONNECT
. This time, the system whirred into life. Hex grinned. 'Told you,' he said. 'Computer-users are stupid.'

Less than a minute later the Swiss bank was inviting him to enter his password. 'People tend to use the same password for everything,' muttered Hex. 'I'll try
RAT-CATCHER
again.' He typed in the word, then cursed as the bank rejected it.

'Well, just keep trying different words,' said Amber.

'Can't,' muttered Hex. 'The bank's security system only allows for three tries, then it gets suspicious. I need to get a tool.'

'From the garage?' asked Amber.

Hex smiled. 'Not that sort of tool,' he said as he began typing furiously. 'I need one of my own software programs. I wrote it to crack passwords.'

'How are you going to get hold of that?' asked Alex.

'I'm downloading it now. I've got stuff stored on other computers all over the place,' explained Hex. 'Most hackers do it. It's safer than keeping everything on your own computer.'

'But don't the other people mind you using their computers?'

Hex grinned. 'They don't know about it. I access big computers with lots of space and lots of users. University computers are the best because their security is so low.'

'Sheesh!' said Amber. 'So you just hack in, dump your stuff and leave?'

'Until I need it. Then I nip back and download it,' said Hex. He pressed a final key and then leaned against the bench, watching the screen. 'There. My program's working on cracking the password now.'

'How long will it take?'

Hex shrugged. 'If it's another proper word, in English, then not long.'