Scott Andrews - Children's Crusade

"Jesus, Pat," said Wilkes.

"If I'd tried to hang around making sketches and stuff, I'd have been caught," Ferguson explained. "The only chance was to get in and out as quickly as possible. So I went straight to the brothel and told the guard on the door that I was a new recruit and I'd been waiting all week for some loving. He let me in, no problem."

"You sick…" began Caroline.

"Let him finish," said Tariq.

"There's about twenty women in there. Well, women and girls. They have these kind of bunks set up on the benches. Some of them got up and came over to me, but most just lay there hoping I wouldn't pick them out. I pushed the eager ones aside and picked out the youngest and most frightened girl there. I figured maybe the confident ones may not have been exactly trustworthy. The girl led me to a little nook behind the speaker's chair where there was a mattress.

"Her name was Tara.

"And there, in total privacy, where no-one would disturb us, I got her to tell me everything she knew about the snatchers' operation. Layout, routines, names — everything. I got lucky picking her; she paid attention.

"When she'd told me all she could, I went out the main doors again. I found an office overlooking the river — luckily it was low tide, so I climbed out and down to the shore."

He noted my look of disbelief.

"I used to be a rock climber, okay?"

I hold up my hands. "Ok."

"I was inside for forty minutes at the most. Then I waited 'til nightfall, found an eyrie in one of the buildings on Parliament Square, and spent a day mapping the external defences and noting their patrols.

"Big Ben still chimes, you know. All their scheduling hangs off it.

"Happy?"

I nodded. "Sorry. Force of habit."

"Don't worry about it," he said, and went back to giving us the lowdown.

It was sundown again before we all agreed a plan of action. After that there was nothing to do until morning. Tariq came and found me as I lay on a hospital bed, failing to sleep.

"So what do you think?" he asked as he sat on the next bed.

"I think it's a crazy plan, but it just might work!"

"Ha, yeah, reckon that's about it."

"What do you think, Tariq?"

He bit his lower lip and held my gaze. "I think it's the best we can do in the circumstances."

"But…?"

"But I wish John was here. What do you think can have happened to him?"

I shrugged. "God knows. Caroline says he never reached them, so somewhere between Thetford and Hammersmith something went wrong. As soon as we're done with the snatchers, I'm going to retrace his route. For all we know, he could be lying in a ditch with a broken leg or something."

"Why not go now?" asked Tariq. "We can handle the assault. You go find your dad."

I regarded him coolly. "Still don't trust me in a fight, huh? Still trying to get rid of me."

He hesitated a moment, choosing his words carefully. Then he said: "Do you remember when we rescued Jane back at Groombridge, the day John was shot?"

I nodded.

"You were… I don't know what you were like. Those Yanks were shooting at you and just walked towards them like you were bulletproof."

"So?"

"You're not bulletproof, Lee. And neither am I. I stood with you, followed your lead because I had no choice — it was either that or leave you to die. But I was sure we were dead men."

I shook my head, unsure exactly what he was getting at. "We weren't though," I said. "We won that fight."

"God alone knows how. We should have been killed a dozen times over that day. Luck like that doesn't hold, Lee. Sooner or later it runs out. You acted like a mad man. That's fine if it's only your life you're risking. But it was mine too."

"What's your point, Tariq?"

"My point is that tomorrow you're going to lead a team of children into battle against the fucking SAS and I want you to realise that you're not invincible. If you go wading in there like the Terminator, it's not just your life you'll be throwing away."

"Did I ever tell you about Heathcote?" I asked. Tariq shook his head. "He was one of my school mates. The Blood Hunters held him captive during the siege. I took a knife and slit his throat just for a chance to get close to one of the bad guys. Sacrificed him in cold blood. I'd do that a hundred times over if it meant winning."

Tariq stared at me, his face a mask. I couldn't tell if he pitied me or feared what I might do. Then he stood up and walked away without a word.

I lay back down on the bed and closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep.

But the sound of Heathcote's screams, and the hot slick feel of blood between my fingers, kept me awake 'til dawn.

It began to snow heavily as they split their group into three.

The younger kids who had escaped Hammersmith with Caroline were taken back to St Mark's in the removal van, driven by one of the Rangers. They had no place in a battle, and they'd be safe back at the school.

Lee, Jack and Ferguson had taken off on horseback at first light, heading for the Thames, their saddlebags heavy with ordnance.

Everyone else had piled into the three school minibuses Tariq had used to bring the team from St Mark's. They headed west, to Heathrow.

The ranks of Caroline's little army had been swollen by a bunch of the older kids from the convoy they'd attacked. There were nearly fifty of them now. Wilkes, who was in joint charge of this part of the operation alongside Tariq and Green, had insisted that there be an age limit. They'd fought over that for an hour until they'd agreed that any child under thirteen was not to be involved in the fight.

The other bone of contention had been firearms. The team from St Mark's had brought crates of various types of gun with them, and plenty of ammunition. Caroline felt strongly that every child should be given a gun, but no-one agreed with her. Too risky, they said. More chance of them shooting each other than the bad guys.

In the end they'd compromised. Only those kids who'd been trained would carry machine guns and grenades, which meant all the St Mark's lot. Her lot would be allowed handguns if they were sixteen or over. The younger teenagers could have knives, clubs, bats or that kind of thing, and they were to stay behind the kids with guns, as a second wave to mop up stragglers. Wilkes was unhappy with this compromise, but Lee and Jack insisted that the children be allowed to fight. It was, Lee said, their fight in the first place.

Caroline was relieved when Lee left. There was something behind his eyes that she didn't trust. Right up to the moment she met him again she had been unsure what she would say.

"Hi Lee, long time no see. By the way, I executed your dad the other day."

"Wow what a co-incidence bumping into you! 'Cause, you see, I bumped into your dad a few days back. Yeah. Blew his brains out."

"Lee, I don't know how to tell you this, but your dad's dead. The churchies got him."

That last one had been her favourite. Blame it on Spider, get Lee fired up for the attack, make it personal. But it turned out he and Matron were together now (and by the way, euw, she was like, ten years older than him) so he had a personal stake in the attack already. Anyway, if she told him that, he'd press her for details and she was sure he'd have worked out she was lying sooner or later. Being caught in a lie like that would be worse than just staying silent.

She told herself that she was being silly, that he was an ally and a friend. But she looked into his eyes and was absolutely certain that if he knew what she'd done, he'd kill her on the spot.

So she'd played dumb, denied all knowledge.

"No, no-one approached us. We left 'cause Matron told us where the school is now and we decided to risk the journey."