3: Tussle
In the end, although they had almost the perfect location defensively, eleven hours was a long time to wait with nothing except each other for company. Too much time left with their thoughts meant they started to overthink everything.
"What if we get marked down for not going after any other flags?" Elaine asked, a touch nervously.
"Hopefully another team will try and attack us here and we'll be able to take theirs," Debbie replied, exasperated. "That's the whole plan, remember?"
June held up a hand to tell Debbie to calm down. "We're in an obvious position with smoke giving our location away. If another team was going to attack, the earlier the better."
"We've been here almost two hours," Elaine added, glaring at Debbie.
Katherine piped up. "When I last did one of these exercises, before basic training, there was extra equipment scattered around which gave some teams an advantage."
June shook her head. "With all these snowdrifts shifting around, where could they leave any equipment without it getting buried?"
"Nobody's left the control tower," Elaine said, firmly. "We could ambush them there, take at least one flag, then at least we've tried."
"We've got no idea who's in there," June snapped back. "Could be an entire team, could be one girl. Even then, if I was sending out a lookout separately to my main team, I'd take their flag from them so they couldn't get ambushed."
All the bickering was getting on Debbie's nerves. "Look, we could be discussing this for the rest of the exercise," she said, raising her voice slightly. "We need to make a decision."
"I'm team leader," June said, looking at Debbie and daring her to defy her. "I have the final say."
Debbie wanted to answer back, but just kept her mouth shut. Unexpectedly, it was Elaine who came to her defence.
"You can't make us follow your orders," Elaine pointed out. "All I'm saying is, I'd probably prefer PT with Bivott on Sunday to shivering here for the rest of the day and not at least trying to get some flags."
There were a few seconds of silence as June stared at their little fire, thinking.
"Okay," she finally concluded. "I don't want to give up the position we've got here, though. Katherine, you and Elaine will stay here, keep the fires going and keep a lookout. If you get ambushed and overwhelmed, head for the woods and try to disappear. Debbie, you and I will assault the control tower and see what trouble we can cause."
Debbie had wanted to stay with Elaine, but she could see the logic in this plan. "Okay, I'm in," she said.
"Sounds good," Elaine added.
Katherine looked around at the older girls before answering. "Okay," she said, nodding. "I like it."
"Should we give our flags over in case we get attacked?" Debbie asked. "They'll be safer here."
June shook her head. "No, I don't like our entire stock of flags all being in one place. Everyone is responsible for their own flag. Katherine, Elaine, if you need to split up to avoid capture, do it. I don't want to lose an extra flag just because you don't want to be cold on your own."
Reluctantly, Debbie pulled on her damp outerwear again, particularly resenting the itchy woollen balaclava. Not for the first time that day she envied the life of a normal fourteen year old, sitting in school learning normal school things instead of freezing in a disused hangar. She stood as close to the fire as she could to try and get every degree of warmth she could, before June roughly grabbed her arm.
"Time to go," the older girl said, expressionless behind her balaclava.
If anything, the wind was stronger than before as they stepped out from behind the shelter of the hangar wall and took stock of the situation. There was nothing in sight except for pure, unbroken expanses of snow, and no matter how long she looked, Debbie couldn't see any signs of life coming from the control tower.
"I can't see how we can possibly surprise them in there," June shouted at her over the noise of the wind. "Which means we just need to storm straight over there and catch them unprepared."
June was taller and stronger than Debbie, which gave her a distinct advantage when it came to moving quickly over the snow. Debbie tried to stick to her footsteps, where the snow was partially packed down, but it was hopeless. Her faith in the plan was ebbing with each step and quietly she cursed Elaine for ever suggesting they should move from their nice warm hideout.
June reached the door of the control tower first, then paused for a few seconds to let Debbie catch up. The footsteps they'd seen earlier hadn't been added too, and were softened around the edges by the effect of the wind. This was a good sign: at least no reinforcements had arrived.
"Go go go," June shouted, bundling Debbie through the open doorway of the control tower. Some snow had blown in from outside, but as Debbie looked at the steep stairs leading to the top, she stopped dead.
"Snowshoes," she said urgently, bending down to take her off. "We'll never get up the stairs with these on."
June looked like she wanted to get angry, but when she looked at the stairs, she understood and joined Debbie in pulling the wide shoes off. It was a ridiculous way to start an ambush, but they would never have got across the snow without them.
"Good to go?" June asked, shoving both pairs of snowshoes into the top of her pack, still covered in snow.
"Lead the way," Debbie said, putting all of her energy into matching June's pace as she climbed the stairs two at a time.
According to CHERUB rules, the control tower was off-limits as it was derelict and falling apart. Lots of the metal fixtures were rusted through and the whole place smelt of rats and mould, not to mention the fact that birds nested in it and left bird crap everywhere. But despite the rules, it was a favourite location for dares, like taking younger Cherubs on Guy Fawkes' night to give them a scare. The previous summer, Alan Jameson had climbed onto the roof completely naked to win a bet, then been caught by Boo and given twenty lashes by Instructor Bivott. The campus rumour mill said that he'd been let off after ten, but Alan always said he'd had the full twenty.
In this kind of weather, though, the concrete was icy cold and water dripped off every surface. The stairway had no windows and was gloomy, making it easy to slip and lose your footing, but June kept charging onwards. As she reached the top, she kept going, leaving Debbie to trail after her, but the slight delay before she got to the top of the stairs meant she had time to spot a dark shape crouched in a shadowy corner.
Debbie launched a kick with her momentum behind it, surprising the person hiding there. They blocked the kick with an arm, but Debbie's kick was stronger and it knocked them back against the concrete wall, hard. Possibly outnumbered, and with the advantage briefly on her side, Debbie didn't want to take any chances, and followed up with another powerful kick. This time she had time to swing her leg fully, putting her whole thigh muscle behind it. She'd expected another block, but apparently her first kick had done more than she'd thought, and her boot didn't meet any resistance before crashing into their chest, leaving her opponent slumped on the floor, wheezing.
With one person incapacitated, Debbie pivoted on her standing leg and moved into the main room of the control tower. It was hard to see for a moment as her eye adjusted to the brightness, but she quickly ascertained that there was only one other person there, and June had just overpowered them.
"Anyone else?" June screamed into their face, her fists bunched up. "Answer now or I'll break your nose."
"I just took one down," Debbie answered, and June relaxed her grip. She took two giant strides over to the doorway and grinned as she looked at the girl spluttering on the floor.
"I'll drag her in here where we can keep an eye on both of them," June said, grabbing the girl's ankle and dragging her roughly across the bird-crap-encrusted floor until she was sprawling in a heap beside her teammate, who was nursing a bleeding lip.
As ambushes go, it had been highly successful, and Debbie allowed herself a moment's triumph as June reached down to pull the balaclavas off their opponents. Her triumph was heightened when she realised the girl with the bleeding lip was Jennifer, the girl who ran hut four.
"Hand over flags, now," June commanded, resting her boot on Jennifer's gloved hand. "I'm not above crunching some bones, here."
"Which team are you?" Jennifer asked bitterly, using her free hand to pull off her pack and toss it over to Debbie.
"That's for us to know and you to find out," Debbie crowed, rifling through the pack and pulling out the yellow square.
"I know it's you, Debbie," Jennifer spat back.
The other girl was in no state to free her pack, so June rolled her onto her front and ripped the yellow flag out herself. As she did so, the girl started coughing and spat a lump of bright red bloody phlegm onto the floor.
"Christ, what did you do to her?" June asked, momentarily concerned.
"Two kicks," Debbie said. "Both to the chest."
"You, see what's wrong with her," June said to Jennifer, pointing.
Jennifer was also concerned and rolled her teammate onto her side, easing her breathing. "Lorraine, can you hear me?" she asked, and the girl nodded. "Can you breathe okay?" Another nod, followed by a bout of wheezing and another dribble of blood from the corner of Lorraine's mouth.
Jennifer pulled off her gloves and prised open Lorraine's mouth, angling her head to make the most of the light.
"Looks like she's bitten her tongue, it's bleeding quite a lot," Jennifer told them. "I think we should take her to the infirmary."
June shifted uncomfortably. "Can you take her?" she asked Jennifer.
"No way can I support her weight on my own," Jennifer said, looking annoyed.
"Alright, fine, Debbie you go with her," June conceded. "I'll hold the fort here. Give me your flag, just in case this is a trick."
"She's coughing up blood, how can this be a trick?" Jennifer replied angrily, but Debbie handed her flags over to June.
"Come on, let's get moving," Debbie said, acting sympathetic as June gave them a hand lifting Lorraine's dead weight off the floor and looping her arms around Debbie and Jennifer's shoulders.
"These stairs are going to be a nightmare," Jennifer said, groaning as they started shuffling towards the stairs.
"I'll carry her legs until you reach the bottom," June said. "Then, you're on your own."
Debbie didn't really want to go back out in the cold, but she figured she might be able to pass some time in the heated infirmary before returning to her team, and now they had two extra flags. So long as they could avoid getting attacked themselves, she reckoned they had a decent chance of at least not coming last in the exercise. She felt bad for hurting Lorraine, a shy girl who was a year younger than her, but she also knew that, given the chance, Lorraine would have done the same in return.
"I can't believe you got June on your team," Jennifer complained as they stepped out into the snow, Lorraine's legs dragging behind them. "You're so lucky. I reckon I could've beaten practically anyone else."
Trying to carry an extra person's weight across the snow made progress slow and, to make matters worse, Debbie was on the side which wasn't shielded from the wind, so each gust sent an icy blast straight through her. She wasn't in the mood for joking around.
"We also got Katherine Field the baby on our team, so it evens out," she replied quickly, raising her voice over the howl of the wind. "Now stop talking, it's too cold."
