Cherub: the training exercise
Chapter 3
The two buses left at 7am the next morning, each packed up with a different team. James, Lauren, Gabrielle and Jack were at the front discussing tactics and each member of the teams' strengths and weaknesses. Jack was going through his plan for the group to split up into four groups each with one of the black shirts in each group and he suggested one of the teams finding higher ground and acting as a sort of sniper group. James liked the idea and agreed with it.
Jack was an incredible agent. He had come to Cherub when he was only four years old and so with all the previous red-shirts he had a natural advantage over the more recently recruited people like James who went into basic training straight away.
Despite this Jack had excelled even more than expected and by basic training was already fluent in two other languages than English and well on his way in two more as well as having already passed his advanced combat course and was even rumouredly able to defeat Kerry Chang despite being much younger. Obviously he had been quite a special ten year old and now at thirteen he had become the second youngest black shirt (having done so in two missions before his eleventh birthday gaining his black shirt by pretty much single handedly taking down a very large south American drug cartel.
He was now fluent in four languages not including English and had taken five GCSEs already. He was popular throughout campus and managed to do everything without being regarded as a suck up or a swat. So overall James was very happy with his team, as he knew Gabrielle to be extremely reliable and tactically clever. Lauren he considered to be like him as levelheaded, smart and able. He saw Lauren eyeing Jack from a few seats away and he smiled to himself, he knew Lauren had a mad crush on Jack as did many other girls but she would only admit it to Bethany and himself afraid that she would get rejected.
Jack saw Lauren smiling at him and he winked. He liked Lauren and he had become good friends with her during basic training before she hit Mr. Large with a spade. He smiled at the memory, remembering how all the trainees had cheered after he was knocked out before falling silent as Lauren ran out of the compound crying, obviously afraid of her career as a Cherub agent being prevented. She winked back laughing slightly but he noticed that the laughter seemed slightly nervous.
He got back to talking to Gabrielle about who should take who. He thought that Lauren should take Jake, Bethany and Jade to higher ground as together the two girls could control Jake and it was widely known around campus that Jake was the best shot around despite only just being out of basic training. Also everyone thought he fancied Jade so hopefully he wouldn't do anything stupid in front of her and she could guard Jake well. Gabrielle then suggested that Jack go through the middle while James and Gabrielle would go round the sides of the area after they thought they had enough equipment.
Gabrielle fervently agreed and they both stuck their heads over to see whether James would accept this plan.
James was all too happy to accept this plan (he imagined the middle would be under the heaviest fire) and he knew as long as the agents with Jack were younger he would get unwavering loyalty (and he had a young team). He knew that he and Jack were some of the coolest kids on campus but they had both gone a different way about. Jack was always calm and collected and everyone wanted to be his friends while James had become a top dog through a slightly less respected method. This meant that Jack was a great asset and James really believed with this type of core in his team, they had a serious chance of winning. Absentmindedly James scratched his body, the almost invisible, expensive and very high tech layer over his skin itching like mad. The bus had arrived and he saw the other team was already huddled together. James stole the idea and called the whole team together and relayed the plan, while he quickly chose who was to go with him or Jack or Gabrielle as they had already decided on Lauren.
