Counterstrike Read online

  Dedicated to my family

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jack Fenton crawled through an air duct on his hands and knees and wondered if there wasn’t an easier way to do this. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have questioned it because he’d squeezed through millions of tight spaces during his time as an Urban Outlaw – but he’d never been dressed the way he was now, in a pink and yellow rabbit costume . . . and, to make matters worse, he felt stupid.

  No, wait – that was an understatement. He felt beyond ridiculous.

  Jack reached an intersection and, with a lot of muttered swear words, he managed to turn right and jam himself down the next metal tunnel.

  It creaked under his weight.

  Jack froze, his heart hammering in his chest.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he muttered through a clenched jaw. ‘Please don’t break.’

  The duct swayed for a moment, then stopped.

  Cautiously, body tensed, Jack edged forward a centimetre at a time.

  If this thing collapsed, he’d be in deep trouble.

  Mercifully he reached the next intersection and turned left this time.

  Sweat soaked the clothes under his costume – only Jack’s face was open to the fresh air – and that’s when another horrifying thought struck him: What if I get stuck?

  He imagined an air-conditioning engineer opening the duct years later and finding a giant bunny reduced to fluff and bones.

  The guy would be scratching his head for months over that one.

  After a few more metres, and to his huge relief, Jack finally reached a vent and peered down.

  Below was a staff room.

  There were a couple of chairs, a table, shelves, and one wall was filled with lockers.

  Jack removed the oversized fluffy mittens he was wearing, slipped a screwdriver from his left sleeve and poked it through the grille, making a hole a centimetre in diameter. He then lay flat on his stomach and peered through it.

  On the other side of the staff room was another air vent.

  Charlie had already removed the grille of that one, and Jack could just make out her face staring back at him from the shadows.

  She whispered into her headset, ‘What took you so long?’

  Incredulous, Jack pressed a finger to his ear. ‘Are you kidding me? You’re not wearing a stupid rabbit costume.’

  ‘It was all I could get at such short notice,’ Charlie hissed.

  ‘Where did you find it?’ Jack said. The fur was dirty and the fabric was torn in places. ‘Let me guess – in a skip behind a fancy dress shop?’

  ‘Can we just get on with this, please?’ Charlie said. ‘You see it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  A few metres behind and below Charlie’s vent was a security camera mounted to the wall.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s do this.’

  Charlie pulled back and Wren appeared in her place.

  Under a climbing harness, Wren wore a pinstriped suit, white shirt, black tie and a fedora hat.

  ‘Say when, Jack,’ Charlie said into her headset.

  Jack reached into his right sleeve and pulled out a laser pointer. Then, bracing his arms against the sides of the air duct, he switched it on and aimed it directly at the camera’s lens, blinding it. ‘Go.’

  They only had a few seconds to get this done, otherwise the security guard would realise something was wrong and come to investigate.

  Charlie lowered Wren in front of the camera.

  Jack had seen some strange things in his life, but never a miniature, blonde-haired, old-fashioned gangster dangling from the end of a rope.

  He tensed. ‘Come on,’ he whispered, ‘hurry.’

  Wren leant over, clipped a u-shaped device to the camera cable, and then Charlie hauled her back into the air duct.

  As soon as Wren’s feet were clear, Jack turned off the laser and braced himself.

  But no alarms sounded.

  He wiped sweat from his brow and spoke into his headset. ‘Obi?’

  ‘Here.’ Obi was back at the Outlaws’ bunker, and the device Wren had just fitted would allow him to take control of the building’s CCTV system. ‘Give me a few minutes,’ he said. ‘I need to record and loop the playback without them knowing.’

  Jack wanted to get out of that air duct as soon as possible – he felt like he was boiling alive.

  He peered at Charlie, and now he got a better look at her he could see she was wearing torn and bloody clothes, her hair was matted and her face was a ghoulish pale green. ‘That’s just great,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Well, your zombie costume’s good. I look like a –’ He hesitated, trying to find the right words. ‘I look like the Easter bunny was hit by a car and left on the side of the road to rot.’ He lifted his arm, sniffed the costume and grimaced. ‘Smells like it, too.’

  Charlie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not my fault you planned this mission at the last minute.’

  Charlie was right – everything had been a mad rush recently, and that’s because Cloud – one of Hector’s cronies – had called the Outlaws a couple of days ago and defected to their side.

  Or so she said.

  Hector – aka Quentin Del Sarto – their enemy and all-round nasty piece of work, had a habit of playing games and trying to deceive them.

  They were in the hotel where Hector had brought Jack a few weeks ago to unlock a powerful computer virus. Jack had tricked Hector though, and the evening had ended in a huge gunfight with the police.

  Cloud explained that Hector had left behind a valuable painting in his old suite and was planning to send someone in to retrieve it.

  So the Urban Outlaws needed to get to the painting first. Only thing was, the hotel had upgraded its security since the shootout and Jack hadn’t had much time to plan the mission.

  He hated rushing because that was when mistakes happened.

  ‘Ready,’ Obi finally said. ‘All cameras apart from the entrance and ballroom have looped recordings. The security guards won’t see you.’

  Jack waited as Charlie slipped out of her air vent, helped Wren, then removed the grille from his.

  With a lot of effort, Jack awkwardly climbed down a set of shelves and turned to face them.

  Wren had slipped out of her harness and was now holding a box wrapped in blue paper topped with a bow. ‘He’s gonna like this.’

  Jack couldn’t help but smile at her. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Where’s your nose?’ Charlie asked Jack.

  With extreme annoyance, he pulled the rubber nose – with whiskers attached – from his sleeve.

  Charlie snatched it from him and fixed it to his face with elastic. ‘That’s better.’ She winked.

  The three of them hurried to the door and peered into the hallway. The coast was clear, so they jogged left and stepped into a ballroom.

  Jack gauged there must have been at least two hundred kids, all in costumes. To his right was an octopus, a witch and some kind of a robot. Or was it was an alien? It was hard to tell.

  Some kids were dancing like lunatics to loud music, while others stood in small groups, chatting and comparing outfits.

  Jack sighed. One thing was for sure – every one of them had a better costume than he did.

  On the left-hand wall was a long tab
le, stacked head high with birthday presents.

  At the end of the table stood a lanky sixteen-year-old boy with pale skin and blond hair. When he laughed, his lips pulled back to reveal a set of vampire teeth.

  Wren skipped over to the table, put the Outlaws’ present on top of the pile, then skipped back.

  The boy glared at her, then at Jack and Charlie.

  Charlie looked away. ‘That’s Ryan,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth. ‘It’s his party we’re crashing.’

  Ryan muttered something to his friends, and several more pairs of eyes flashed in their direction.

  ‘Let’s get on with it.’ Jack nodded at Wren and she disappeared into the crowd.

  Jack marched to the main door with Charlie, and into the lobby.

  He tensed as he remembered the last time they’d been there and he glanced over at the concierge standing behind the desk. He didn’t look happy to see hundreds of excited kids in fancy-dress costumes streaming in and out of the main ballroom of his hotel.

  At the main entrance, a bouncer checked tickets. He seemed to be examining every atom of the paper, and Jack was glad they hadn’t needed to try to forge them.

  He turned away and pressed a finger to his ear. His real ear, that is, and not the stupid yellow-and-pink thing that was dangling from his head like a chewed dog toy. ‘Obi?’

  Obi snickered. ‘I-I can see you on the n-nearest c-camera.’ There was a crackling sound as he covered his microphone and Jack could hear muffled laughter.

  Jack squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Obi?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m here.’ Obi cleared his throat. ‘All looking, erm, good. The path is clear for you.’

  Jack turned back as three kids dressed as musketeers started having a sword fight. ‘Come on,’ he said to Charlie.

  With the concierge distracted, they kept close to the wall, snuck through a door to the stairwell and sprinted up the stairs.

  After several flights they stepped into a hallway, and further down they found the hotel room they were after.

  It had a seal covering an electronic lock.

  Charlie knelt, peeled off the tape and set to work.

  First she unscrewed the cover, revealing a circuit board. Then she took out a black cube two centimetres on each side.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jack whispered.

  ‘A powerful magnet. It’ll mess with the circuit.’ Charlie fixed the cube to the side of the lock, then used a pair of cutters to disconnect several wires.

  Jack glanced nervously up and down the hallway. This was the crucial part of the mission – if anyone came by –

  To his horror, a door to their left opened.

  Charlie leapt to her feet and together they stood in front of the door, hiding the lock from view.

  An elderly woman stepped into the hallway. She walked with a stoop and it wasn’t until she drew near that she noticed Jack and Charlie.

  She frowned as she walked past them.

  Jack forced a smile at her.

  But to his relief the old woman shuffled off down the corridor.

  When she was finally gone, Jack spun to Charlie. ‘We need to hurry up.’

  Charlie knelt in front of the lock, twisted several wires together and it clicked. She silently opened the door and the two of them crept into a large hotel suite filled with antiques.

  There was hand-carved furniture, delicate-looking vases, even a two-metre-high bronze figure of a Roman gladiator in a corner of the room.

  Noble would’ve loved this place.

  Charlie stood rooted to the spot, mesmerised by it all. ‘You weren’t kidding. We should’ve brought a van.’

  Jack wasn’t interested in stealing any of this stuff. There was only one thing he had eyes for – and Hector was going to flip out once he realised someone had taken it from him.

  Jack strode into an office and his attention was instantly drawn to the dark oil painting under a brass picture light. ‘Well?’

  ‘This is the same painting that was stolen from that museum in America?’ Charlie asked, standing next to him.

  Jack nodded. ‘I checked the internet. It was nicked with a load of others in 1990.’

  ‘It’s bigger than I thought.’

  The painting was of a wooden sailboat, filled with thirteen men, in a storm. The boat was rising up a huge wave and a few of the men seemed to be hanging on for dear life – one was being sick over the side.

  Charlie hurried to the painting and carefully peered behind it. ‘It’s just like Cloud said – alarmed. No way to remove it.’ She stepped back and sighed. ‘This is gonna be interesting.’

  Jack walked around the desk, pulled back the curtains and opened the window.

  He leant out and peered up at the roof of the building across the street.

  ‘Slink?’

  A deafening blast of dubstep came through the headset, but Jack had already anticipated this and pulled it from his ear. ‘Nice try.’

  A silhouette ran along the rooftop, leapt over a wall into a forward roll and sprang to his feet.

  The music died down and Slink waved at Jack.

  Jack returned the headset to his ears. ‘You could’ve taken the stairs up. There’s minimal security in that building.’

  ‘I could have, yeah,’ Slink said. ‘But that’s really freakin boring, Jack.’

  ‘He has a point,’ Charlie said, removing tools from her bag and setting them down on the floor.

  ‘Besides,’ Slink said, ‘I know you love my music a whole heap.’

  ‘Not even a tiny bit.’ Jack glanced at Charlie, then back up at Slink. ‘Right. We’re ready.’

  Slink slipped off his bag and pulled out a miniature crossbow. He loaded a bolt and took aim at Jack. ‘You’d better get out the way.’

  Jack didn’t need telling twice.

  The bolt shot across the road, through the open window and thudded into the desk.

  There was a thin cable attached to it, and Jack checked it was still secure while Slink fixed the other end to a wall.

  ‘Ready?’ The line juddered as Slink attached something to it.

  ‘Ready,’ Jack said.

  ‘Releasing.’

  A cardboard tube, a couple of metres long, slid down the zip line and Jack grabbed it as it flew through the window.

  He unclipped the tube and turned to Charlie. ‘OK.’

  ‘Come and help me,’ she said.

  They stood either side of the painting.

  ‘Obi?’ Jack said into his headset.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Get ready to count. As soon as we remove the painting, we’ll only have two minutes before a security guard gets here.’ Jack nodded at Charlie.

  She took a breath. ‘Three. Two. One.’

  They lifted the painting from the wall, pulling the wires free, and set it face down on the carpet. Then, with the steady hand that only Charlie possessed, she used a knife to cut around the edge of the frame.

  ‘Twenty-five seconds gone,’ Obi said.

  Charlie started running the knife around the frame for a second time.

  ‘Charlie?’ Jack said. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve got to make sure it’s a clean cut.’

  ‘Forty seconds, guys.’

  When she’d finally finished, Charlie lifted the canvas from the frame.

  ‘Sixty seconds.’

  Meanwhile, Jack had unscrewed the end of the cardboard tube and pulled out a roll of paper. He exchanged it for the canvas, slid it into the tube, along with a letter, and screwed the end back on.

  Charlie flattened the sheet of paper and started fixing it into the frame.

  Jack pulled the crossbow bolt out of the desk and tied the tube to it. ‘Ready, Slink?’

  Slink ran to the corner of the building, drew in the slack on the line and braced himself. ‘Do it.’

  Jack threw the cardboard tube out of the window.

  It swung between the buildings and Slink made sure it didn’t hit any of them as
he quickly hauled it in.

  Ten seconds later, he had hold of the tube.

  Jack let out a relieved sigh. ‘He’s got it.’

  Slink clipped the cardboard tube with the painting to his back.

  ‘Don’t forget to put the stamps on it,’ Jack said.

  ‘I know.’ Slink spun on his heels and disappeared.

  ‘One minute, fifty seconds,’ Obi said in their ears.

  ‘We’re too slow.’ Jack closed the window, hurried back across the office and helped Charlie return the picture frame to the wall.

  They stepped back and quickly admired the new art.

  It was one of Slink’s masterpieces – a cartoon of the five of them – Jack, Charlie, Slink, Obi and Wren. Jack and Charlie were at the front, while Obi and Wren huddled over a laptop. Slink had drawn himself leaping across the background.

  ‘Two minutes, guys.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Jack said.

  As they rushed from the office, Charlie whispered, ‘You think Hector will like the new painting better than the other one?’

  ‘He’s bound to.’ Jack peered into the hallway. ‘He’s an idiot if he doesn’t.’

  They heard footfalls in the stairwell.

  Jack and Charlie sprinted to a maintenance cupboard and slipped inside. Jack pulled the door closed just as the guard burst into the hallway.

  They waited for him to go into the hotel suite, then left the cupboard and ran to the glowing exit sign.

  When they were about halfway down the stairs, a door above them banged open and they heard the guard shout, ‘Hey, stop!’

  ‘Quick,’ Jack said, vaulting several steps at a time.

  They reached the lobby just in time to see two police officers enter the building. ‘No one move.’

  ‘OK, Wren,’ Jack whispered into his microphone. ‘You’re up. Bring on the mayhem.’

  There was a faint popping sound, followed by screams and then the wailing of an alarm.

  The policemen stopped dead in their tracks as more screams filled the air.

  Jack peered into the ballroom.

  The scene was complete pandemonium – panicked kids were scrambling and shoving their way towards the lobby.

  He caught a glimpse of Wren. She was grinning as she skipped after them.

  The present she’d picked up from their friend Raze had done an excellent job – the room was now filled with smoke.