3: Debrief
The island survival exercise was part of a week-long training camp which was taking place in the Scottish Highlands. Nine navy shirts had boarded one of the CHERUB minibuses and made the long drive to somewhere called Lannadoch Castle, which looked like a stately home, with manicured grounds and an ornamental lake, but had been converted to provide training courses for the UK military. With the capacity for up to fifty residents, the nine CHERUBs, plus Instructor Yeboah, had plenty of room to spread out, and there was never a queue for the shared toilets. Apart from George, Jemima and Ralph, the second team was made up of George's best friend Rex and their other friends Beatrice and Ed. The third team was Rex's little sister Kimberley, plus two older navy shirt girls called Rhonda and Stacey, who were underperformers who should have been wearing black shirts. George was friendly with everyone except Stacey, who he'd once ambushed during an inter-floor water fight on campus and she'd never forgiven him.
After picking George, Jemima and Ralph up from the beach, Yeboah transferred from the quad bike to a truck which he strapped the bike to, leaving the three Cherubs to fight over the front seat. All three of them were damp, but Yeboah didn't say anything as they dripped on the seats, preferring to drive them an hour back to Lannadoch in total silence. George's mood, once jubilant at the thought of completing the exercise, rapidly went south, and wasn't helped by the fact that Jemima had won the front seat and his, in the back, smelt of wet dog.
When they pulled up at the top of the long gravel driveway of the castle, the whole team was looking glum and George exchanged a sympathetic look with Jemima.
"Looooooooosers!" a voice shouted from one of the castle's windows, which was thrown wide open. George looked up and saw Rex there, with a huge grin on his face, his fingers making an 'L' on his forehead and Ed peeking over his shoulder, cracking up.
"Reynolds!" Yeboah screamed up at him. "You just won the grand prize of a morning jog with me and a heavy pack tomorrow. Want to keep playing?"
This wiped the smile off Rex's face instantly and it was George's team's turn to laugh.
"You want to laugh?" Yeboah snarled at them, but he didn't follow through with a punishment and they heard the sound of the window closing.
Yeboah led them to a conference room on the ground floor, pointing to spartan plastic chairs as he tried to lower the blinds.
"Can't we shower first?" Jemima asked, pointing to her trousers.
After a few seconds' struggle, Yeboah couldn't work the controls for adjusting the blinds and lashed out, tearing a hole in them and leaving them hanging at an angle.
"You want a nice warm shower? Maybe a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine?" Yeboah growled, strolling to the front of the room. "Be my guest, but any Cherub who leaves this room before the debriefing is over will fail the course and repeat it instead of going to the summer hostel."
George could handle sitting in his wet clothes for a while longer to avoid repeating the course, so he settled himself in a plastic chair with an unpleasant wet noise.
There was an old-fashioned blackboard set up in one corner of the room, and Yeboah wheeled it into the middle so all the Cherubs could see it. He grabbed a piece of white chalk and drew a rough oval, labelling it 'Island', then put a cross in the top-left corner.
"Your camp was here," he said, then put a cross in the opposite corner. "Beach is here." Giving the three of them the evil eye, he held out the chalk delicately in the palm of his giant hand. "Who wants to talk me through what went wrong?"
There was an uncomfortable silence and George stared hard at the centre of the oval, refusing to make eye contact.
"Nobody?" Yeboah said, sounding disgusted. He tossed the chalk away, hitting the damaged blind. "Well, I am perfectly happy to tell you. Everyone ready?"
He grabbed another piece of chalk, and if George's stomach wasn't churning from the thought of getting into trouble, he would have laughed. Why throw away the first piece?
Yeboah jabbed it into cross marking the camp. "This is the high point of the island, which is also the most exposed. Why did you go there?"
Jemima found her voice. "Best place to observe the terrain," she said.
"Wrong," Yeboah said plainly, scribbling over the cross. "Why are you wrong? If you'd studied your map properly, you would have seen that the height of the island only varied by seven metres in total and mostly by less than two. Even at the highest point, you're not high enough to see the whole island."
George had noticed this at the time, but didn't say anything because he'd agreed with Jemima's plan in the first place.
"Even so, why would you be stupid enough to take all your equipment there? The highest point also means the hardest to reach. I even told you this after we landed and you ignored me." There were veins standing out on Yeboah's face and George fervently wished this debriefing would be over soon.
"Then, you made your camp there, instead of moving to a more sheltered spot," Yeboah said, shaking his head. "Stupid again. If you'd tried that in a real extreme weather situation, you'd all be dead."
An island in Scotland in June was hardly extreme weather, but George stopped himself from saying anything. Yeboah had a temper and loved being antagonised.
"Next," Yeboah went on, drawing a big line down the right hand side of the board. "Mainland is here. How far is it from the island to the mainland?"
"I reckoned two hundred metres," George said, his throat dry.
Yeboah seemed momentarily impressed. "One hundred and ninety-eight," he said, drawing a line from the beach to the mainland. "That's less than four lengths of the swimming pool on campus. Why didn't you swim it?"
Ralph got in first. "I did suggest it, but Jemima said she was afraid of the current," he said, and Jemima glared at him.
"I never said I was afraid," she countered. "I just said it would be a lot harder than swimming in a pool."
"Did you even read the briefing?" Yeboah asked, interrupting. "You had a tide table. By checking that and watching the tide at the beach, you could have worked out the current, which, by the way, is very weak."
Jemima and Ralph were silent again.
"You're supposed to use your initiative to achieve the objective, not just follow instructions like a blind bat," Yeboah said, crossing out his last line. "But, okay, you decide to be good worker bees and make the engine. But I only saw a huge cloud of smoke, not an outboard motor."
"My fault," George said quickly. "I must've assembled something wrong, but we didn't have time to test."
Yeboah tutted. "Didn't even test the engine. Could you have been more incompetent?"
"There wasn't much petrol," Ralph ventured. "We didn't want to waste it on a test."
For a moment, Yeboah stared at him. "There was enough petrol for the engine to run for an hour at least," he barked.
George didn't say anything, since he was the one who'd said there wasn't enough petrol, but inside he was burning with embarrassment.
"We ran out of petrol on the way across," Jemima pointed out, defensively. "There can't have been that much."
Yeboah chuckled. "That's because you were turning most of it into a huge cloud of smoke," he smirked, shaking his head.
"Then, you didn't even have a proper landing location," Yeboah went on. "Sailing around like lost puppies, waiting for your mummy dog to help." He sniffed contemptuously. "If you'd gone the other way, you would have found a nice wide beach a few hundred metres away." He put a big cross on his blackboard map, in the opposite direction to where George had steered the board. "Lazy, incompetent, stupid. Completely unfit to be Cherubs. Give me one reason why I shouldn't fail you?"
All three Cherubs sat there in silence, glowering, but nobody said anything.
Yeboah groaned, now scribbling all over his diagram. "None of you will even stand up for yourselves! Here's a reason why: you achieved the objective, didn't you?"
George nodded. "Yeah."
"So you deserve to pass. Nothing in the briefing said you would fail for being useless, just for not achieving the objective."
Ralph laughed nervously. "True."
"So it's the lowest pass I can give, but still a pass." Yeboah ran his chalky hand down his shirt to wipe it. "Now you may go, but you three will definitely be on my list for extra training back on campus."
Despite how hungry he was, the first place George went was the showers. At this time of day, there was nobody there, so George had first pick of a shower, which he turned up to maximum temperature and stood in, fully clothed, watching the water swirling around his feet turning brown and feeling sweet relief.
"At least we passed," Ralph yelled as he came into the shower block. "So long as we pass, he can't suspend us from missions, right?"
"Yeah," George shouted back as Ralph switched on his own shower. "Plus, Yeboah's still relatively new, so he doesn't hand out punishments like Kazakov used to."
George left his sodden clothes lying on the bench for someone else to pick up, and after towelling himself dry, wrapped himself in a giant towel to walk back to his room. He could hear voices coming from the rec room and didn't see anyone as he climbed the stairs, which he was pleased about. Barely passing a training exercise practically guaranteed some mickey-taking from the other Cherubs and he wasn't in the mood for it until he'd had something proper to eat.
No sooner had George got back to his room and put on a clean pair of boxers when the door burst open and Rex stood there, grinning.
"You're in a good mood for someone who's doing an early jog with Yeboah," George taunted, getting in the first jab while he could.
Rex shrugged, stepping into the room. "I don't mind," he said, suppressing a laugh. "You know how we're not supposed to share details of the training exercise until everyone's done it?"
George nodded. "Kimberley's team still hasn't been yet," he reminded Rex, remembering that the punishment for blabbing was an automatic three-month suspension from missions.
Looking over his shoulder, Rex checked that nobody else was around before grinning evilly. "Well, you wanna know how long it took our team to complete the exercise?" he asked.
"No," George told him, flatly. "I don't want to deal with your wind-ups, I haven't eaten properly all day."
Rex laughed. "An hour," he announced. "We all met up at the beach and swam straight across. We knew Yeboah would need a decent place to land his boat so we just followed him."
George ground his teeth. "Doesn't matter," he said. "We still passed."
Rex tutted contemptuously. "I knew a team with you and Jemima on it would be crap," he went on. "I bet Beatrice that you'd fail the exercise, too."
Rolling his eyes, George flung his wet towel onto the floor. "Very supportive, thanks mate," he replied sarcastically.
But Rex was triumphant that he'd beaten his best friend and he was finally getting a rise out of George, so he kept digging.
"In fact, wait until Instructor Capstick hears about this," Rex said, gleefully. "I bet he'll overrule Yeboah and make you redo it all." As he said this, he picked up George's wet towel off the floor.
"Don't even think about it," George said, eyeing the wet towel. "I'm serious, I'm not in the mood."
Rex laughed, twirling the towel around so it would be easier to flick. "What, are you scared?" he said, looking at George.
"Seriously, just leave it," George complained. "I've only just got dry."
Rex flicked his wrist suddenly and George leapt backwards to get out of the way, but instead of trying to snap the towel at George, Rex just threw it instead, hitting George in the face. The towel wrapped itself around his neck and he had to claw desperately at it to get it off while Rex howled with laughter.
"Scumbag," George growled, his face, neck and most of his chest wet from the towel again. Seeing Rex clutching his chest and laughing was too much, so George stepped forwards into a combat pose and launched a kick. Rex was completely unprepared and it hit him squarely in the kidney, causing him to reel backwards, howling in pain now.
"What the-" Rex yelled, but George stepped in again and launched a punch, aimed at Rex's face. This time, Rex parried it and spun away.
"You want a fight?" Rex said, dropping into a combat pose too and squaring off against George, but George was out for blood and launched another hard kick, hitting Rex in the thigh and sending him backwards again.
George was dimly aware that people were standing in the doorway, but he was knackered from the exercise, he was starving, he wanted to wipe the smile off Rex's face. Rex was a tough opponent and his next two attacks were dodged, but George didn't want to get his arse kicked while he was in a rage, so he followed up by rugby tackling Rex around the waist, getting a hard punch in the back in return, but successfully toppling Rex over onto the bedside table, which splintered under his weight with a resounding crack. Rex yowled again, struggling to get away from George, but George took advantage and landed two nasty punches on the soft part of Rex's thigh. He suddenly felt something wrap around his neck and shoulders and in an instant he was jerked backwards, losing his grip on Rex as Instructor Yeboah threw him effortlessly across the room.
"Stop," Yeboah warned as Rex tried to get up and go after George. He looked over at the gaggle of Cherubs standing in the doorway. "You lot, take George away, I want to see if Rex is injured."
George's whole body was pounding with adrenaline, but when Ed grabbed him around the chest and started dragging him to the door, he shook his head and relaxed his fists.
"At least let me put some trousers on," George complained, but Yeboah fixed him with a look.
"If I hear another word from you you'll be digging trenches until you puke," Yeboah snarled. "Get out."