Murray McDonald - Kidnap

However Lela had pulled an ace in the hole, she had made up her team numbers with Elena and Madeleine from their class and one of Madeleine’s friends, Erika. It appeared Tristan’s theory was correct, all Scandinavian women were gorgeous whether they were blonde or brunette. Tristan had been useless, Tom not much better, only Ahmad had bowled anything like normal, unaffected by the Scandinavian beauties.

It was the most crushing defeat Tom had ever suffered at Lela’s hands.

“See you in the morning loser,” shouted Lela as she went to her room. She was loving it, Tom always had been a bad loser and she loved winding him up about it.

Tom didn’t respond, he just slammed his door loudly. It had been a very bad day.

Reaper answered the phone the second it rang.

“You’re late,” he barked.

Ling was not impressed.

“We were bowling,” she answered glibly. She was tired, she had just spent a week doing homework and was not in the mood.

Reaper stifled a laugh, he hadn’t thought about the classwork Ling would have to do. She had to protect her cover.

“Did you win?” he smirked.

“That’s not important,” she snapped. “Are we a go for my mission?” she asked impatiently.

“Yes, my men will be in place and if you pull this off, you’re looking at a bonus $1 million!”

“Thank you, I’ll keep you updated,” she said coolly, trying to hide her excitement.

They ended the call, although using very secure and encrypted transmissions, Reaper did not want to risk it. The island may have a few surprises his client wasn’t aware of but he doubted it.

One of the twins watched the student sneak outside their targets’ block and make a quick call. He couldn’t make out who it was but thought it was strange. He’d speak to his brother, maybe he’d know what was going on.

Tristan and Tom still hadn’t cheered up. The thought of Sunday lunch with Ms Anderson just stuck in their minds. It didn’t help that the girls were still revelling about the previous evening’s overwhelming victory, over breakfast.

It was 9.50 a.m. when they left the restaurant and walked across to the sports stadium. Tom had clicked on the Sports button on the timetable to see what was in store for them, hoping it would be something nice and easy to break them in gently.. However all that popped up on the screen, was ‘Sports, Sport Stadium 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.’, no further detail.

As they walked into the stadium, it appeared they were not the only class who had been given the same instructions. The stadium was full, Miss Sullivan was there and ushered them to the seating block labelled H.

“What’s going on?” whispered Lela to their Class Principal.

“Just take a seat, we’re about to start,” she replied avoiding the question.

At exactly 10.00 a.m., Mr Sakamoto walked into the middle of the stadium and looked around him at the stands full of students.

“Welcome,” he announced through the tannoy system. “I hope you’ve all had a good first week,” he shouted enthusiastically.

From the response around him, Tom realised that it wasn’t just his class who had found it hard going as Mr Sakamoto’s question was met with a chorus of moans and groans.

“Well, we never said it would be easy,” he responded to his lacklustre audience. “So that’s why when we came to the sports’ curriculum, we thought we might spice things up a little.”

The groaning died as everybody became intrigued by the reference to spicing things up.

“As you’ll see, you are all sitting in separate sections, A thru J. You are sitting in the section that corresponds to your class that is 3C and 7C and all years class C’s are in section C. These are your teams.” Mr Sakamoto stopped talking as the students all confirmed what he had just said.

“It’s a competitive world out there and to succeed you need to be competitive and that is exactly what we are going to be Sports at The Academy is going to be a competition. Everything you do will gain points for your team. At the end of the year, one team will emerge the winner and one the loser. It is up to you to do all you can to make sure your team does as well as it can. I’m sure no one here wants to finish tenth or do they?” he shouted.

“NO!” the stadium lifted as the students got into the spirit of the event.

“Excellent! Your Class Principals will select a captain for each class and explain how the events will work. Good luck and let the games begin!”

A huge cheer echoed around the stadium before manic conversations erupted as the impact of the sports competition sank in.

“OK, OK, quiet down everybody,” shouted Miss Sullivan over the noise around the stadium. She then explained, along with the other the class principals, how it would work. A captain would be selected for the class and would represent 1H at the Team H Captains’ Committee. Each week would see a different sport. One hour’s practice would precede selection for the competition against classes in their year. On that day, Judo was the Year 1 sport. The following week would be a yacht race and the week after, tennis. Everybody in the class must take part, the practice allowing the captain to select their strongest contenders and use them strategically to maximise their points.

After she had finished explaining, she asked for volunteers for team captain. Tom and Tristan’s hands both shot up along with Chen. Nobody else had even had a chance to think before the three hands had gone up. With no other takers, it seemed a popularity vote would decide the winner.

“Hmm, we have a slight problem I’m afraid,” said Miss Sullivan awkwardly. Everybody turned to look at her.

“The captains’ meetings are to be held on Sundays at noon. They won’t last long but I believe from a note I received yesterday evening, two of our candidates will be unavailable to attend.”

Tom and Tristan’s hands fell, they knew straight away that Ms Anderson had not selected Sunday lunch by coincidence. Bitch!

“OK, so we still have Chen, to make it fair, does anyone else want to do it…” she paused to allow other hands to go up, nobody’s did, it wouldn’t have seemed right after not putting their hands up at first.

“OK, well Chen it is then. Congratulations Chen.”

A small round of applause welcomed Chen as the 1H captain.

“Our first competition is Judo. We have a one hour training session before the competition begins. Anyone have any experience?” asked Miss Sullivan hopefully, it seemed she was as keen as anybody to do well.

A few hands went up. Tom raising his proudly, following his experience with the Ned. Chen raised his, as did Mingmei, Mia and Dev. Lela however did not. Tom nudged her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m not going to parade myself in front of the school, what are you doing?”

“You showed me a few moves and look what I did!” he said proudly.”

“Oh for God’s sake Tom, you were just lucky! Put your hand down and don’t be silly, Chen, Mingmei and Mia are all black belts, I’m not sure about Dev.”

At the mention of black belts, Tom’s hand slunk back down for the second time in five minutes.

They made their way across to the Dojo area to start training for the competition. An hour later, Chen had an excellent idea of his squad’s capabilities although despite Lela’s average performance, he knew she was his secret weapon. He just had to find out how to get her to fight properly, like she had with Yuri and his gang.

At 11.15 a.m., the competitions began. The first years in their judo contest while the other years tackled other sports.

Chen, Mingmei, Dev and Mia were superb and Chen had played an excellent strategic game, using his weaker team mates very well and had taken class 1H to the final, having beaten a number of other classes. Each student had to take part in at least one bout and as they moved into their final three bouts against class 1C, the other finalists, Chen was left with Tom and Lela who had still had not had a fight. The other team had already played each of their team at least once and could use anybody.