Catch Your Death

He smiled and walked towards the door. ‘Since making fire is just about the most important skill you need, you better get practising.’

The trainees all followed Sam Colt outside and spent the rest of that day trying to make a spark. As Colt had warned, it was ‘easier said than done’. All in all, it took about a week to master fire.

Day fourteen, after school, and Ruby was sitting in the kitchen of Green-wood House, the Redforts’ stylish, modern Twinford home, making herself a little snack. The toaster pinged and up popped her two slices of toast: both were the bearers of unhappy news. Unlike most people’s toasters, Ruby Redfort’s doubled as a fax machine and was capable of delivering important messages from Spectrum when you had just sat down to eat a delicious snack.

Ruby picked up the toast. The message was grilled into one side.

The first piece said:

‘Foraging: one hour from now.’

The other said:

‘Don’t spoil your appetite.’

Ruby had been waiting for this day to arrive with a particular sort of dread. Having done some reading up on foraging, she couldn’t say it really appealed to her. She looked at the clock: she still had forty minutes before she needed to head off, still time to ask Mrs Digby’s expert advice on the subject.

Mrs Digby had been with the Redfort family since before Ruby was born and with Ruby’s mother’s family forever or thereabouts.

‘I know all there is to know about mushrooms and toadstools, which ones will kill you and which won’t,’ Mrs Digby said.

‘You know a whole lot about the wild Mrs Digby, that’s for darn sure.’

‘The Digbys have always lived off the land and have always had it hard. We had it hard when we sailed over with the Mayflower and we’ve had it hard ever since, years and years of hardship and years of living off the free stuff that nature provided, no matter how disgusting, which it’s not unreasonable to say since it certainly can be at times.’

‘Just how poor were you Mrs Digby?’ Ruby asked this question not because she didn’t know the answer, but because the housekeeper enjoyed telling her.

‘Not a bean to rub against another bean. Which is why we had to forage. Mostly it was a cornucopia of goodness, but occasionally it was enough to turn a sailor’s stomach.’

Mrs Digby was an excellent cook (though not a fashionable one) and she knew how to rustle up a supper fit for a president from ‘a dried-up onion and a pile of leaves’, if that’s all the ingredients there were.

‘Never turn your nose up at an edible mushroom. They might look like pixie furniture, but I’ve always told you Ruby: eat your mushrooms and you won’t go far wrong – full of protein is what they are. That’s why all these vegetarian types go cuckoo for ’em.’

Ruby checked her book. ‘You’re not wrong. It says here, mushrooms are rich in most vitamins, especially B and C, and they contain nearly all the major minerals, particularly potassium and phosphorus.’

Mrs Digby was a little surprised and, in her own words, tickled that Ruby was taking an interest in the theory of food and cookery, though she would have been more tickled if Ruby would take on the practical side too.

‘Since you’re so interested in cooking all of a sudden, how about you take over stirring this pot,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘while I read the funnies for five minutes?’

Ruby checked her watch. Still thirty-nine minutes before she had to be at the helipad. She rolled her eyes and got stirring.

Back at camp, some hours later, Ruby was busy trying to concoct a stew out of some unappealing roots and some ugly-looking fungi – Colt assured her none of it was poisonous; it was important to get this right since if you got it wrong you might wind up as extinct as the Blue Alaskan wolf.

‘I hope you all have understood the need to be getting au fait with roots and berries and wild growing things,’ said Colt. ‘Things you might not ordinarily want to put under your nose, let alone on your tongue.’

Ruby wriggled slightly in her seat; for all her research, one of her least favourite things about survival training was the whole eating deal. She wasn’t particularly crazy about chowing down on roots and foliage, nor did she like the idea of resorting to grubs when desperation struck. During the hours of training, she longed for her CheeseOs and her Slush-pops, but what she yearned for more than anything was her banana milk, hard to find in the wild.

Today she had spent several hours foraging and several more trying to work out what to do with this unappetising harvest. Now the meal was as cooked as it was ever going to be, she closed her eyes and raised her fork to her mouth.

‘Redfort, I’m guessing you don’t know the difference between a toadstool and a mushroom. . . or perhaps you’re done with surviving?’ The voice was one Ruby recognised from her dive training in Hawaii.

‘Holbrook, if you’re trying to get your hands on my chow, you’re outta luck buster.’

‘You call that supper Redfort? I’d sooner boil up my socks than chow down on what you’ve cooked up.’

‘I’m sure they’d taste good ’n’ cheesy,’ said Ruby.

Despite the way they spoke to each other, they actually got on like a forest fire.

Ruby didn’t poison herself with her stew, though she couldn’t help feeling that Holbrook’s socks indeed might have been less disgusting. Even the cube of Hubble-Yum she spent the next hour chewing on couldn’t quite eradicate the taste of that stew.

She was relieved when the helicopter dropped her home late that night and she could raid Mrs Digby’s larder. She found a tray of fresh-baked cookies with a note from the housekeeper that read: hands off kid.

The following day’s challenge was to build a shelter. Colt spent the morning trying to impress upon his recruits just how important it was to keep warm and dry when out in the wilderness.

‘You get yourself soaked to the skin, and cold as an iced-up river, and you’re exposing yourself to all kinds of trouble. You need to build a shelter and get dry. The act of building the shelter will keep you warm. You don’t get warm and dry and you’re nigh on likely to get sick, and if you get sick in the wilds that makes you vulnerable and when you’re vulnerable you have a pretty fair chance of dying.’

His manner was gruff, no frills, which didn’t matter because survival didn’t require frills.

‘Knives, flashlights, matches, waterproofs, they’re all frills,’ was something Colt might say.

Holbrook and Ruby teamed up for the shelter building; they also worked together on the canoe hollowing: both disciplines took a lot of concentration, not just energy but skill. Once they were done, they took the new canoe out on the lake to see if it would float; it did.

‘You know what Redfort? I take my hat off to you – you’re not the sap I thought you were gonna be,’ laughed Holbrook.

‘I guess that’s lucky Holbrook, because you’re a deal more feeble than I’d expected and I hadn’t expected much.’

This was when Holbrook decided to roll the canoe and dunk them both in the lake. It rolled without any trouble and though Ruby was kind of mad at him for getting the better of her she couldn’t help being sort of proud that this incredible boat had been created with her own two hands – with the help of Holbrook of course; she had to concede that.

Ruby Redfort had always been sure of her mental abilities, but had not realised she could turn her hand to other more practical skills. Right now, sitting soaked through in her hand-carved canoe, she felt like the world was her oyster.

It was a good feeling. But not one that was going to last.

Chapter 3.

RUBY HAD BEEN OUT AT MOUNTAIN RANCH CAMP on and off, travelling back and forth, for approximately a month and her survival skills were coming along. She and Holbrook passed all their practical tests without a hint of trouble.

Ruby was determined to excel and in a few short weeks had got as knowledgeable as Holbrook ever was, and Holbrook was no slouch. She felt satisfied that she knew the theory of survival, back to front and top to bottom; she was competitive and she was a hard worker, but no matter how much work she put in, Sam Colt would always say the same thing: ‘Redfort, you’re getting stuck on detail and it’s making you miss the whole big picture.’

Skills that involved patience were not a problem for Ruby Redfort: patience was a virtue she had been born with. She could contentedly sit and wait for single drips of rainwater to fill a drinking glass if this was what it took. She could build a shelter that was really pretty comfortable and light a fire within about ten minutes. With all these tasks, she understood the need for patience and perseverance. This determined attitude was of great benefit to her since patience and perseverance were pretty essential virtues when it came to the tasks of survival.

Strength wasn’t a big problem either; sure, she wasn’t as strong as some of her co-trainees – she was, after all, only thirteen – but what she might have lacked in sheer brute strength she made up for with her technique, learning how to move heavy logs and branches, rocks and earth by rolling, balancing, pivoting. All this theory she stored in her head, confident she had the information squirrelled away for that time when it might save her life.

However, as good as Ruby was at these practical tasks, and although she had read and stored about as much knowledge as any survivalist, she couldn’t seem to convince Sam Colt that she was able to tune herself into the wild itself.

‘There are some things that ain’t in any book Redfort.’ He paused. ‘It’s like my pal, Bradley Baker, used to say: “Sometimes the best way to think about a problem is not to think about it.”’

Talking to any outsider about Spectrum was strictly forbidden, but despite this hard and fast rule there was one person who did know about Ruby’s double life and his name was Clancy Crew. Clancy was Ruby’s closest friend and most loyal ally; he could sniff out a secret at a hundred paces and it had taken him no time at all to discover something was up and even less time to get Ruby to spill the beans.

Ruby had broken a pretty big Spectrum rule here, Spectrum rule number one being keep it zipped, but on the other hand, telling Clancy Crew she was an undercover agent was like confessing to a priest or a doctor: the information would go no further. Clancy Crew never, ever told: he was like a human vault. Dangle Clancy over a river full of piranha and he would never say a single word; every last finger would have disappeared before he even began to open his mouth.

Ruby wished she could talk to Clancy at length about what her trainer considered a gap in her ability, but Clancy was away with his father on some lengthy ambassadorial tour and so they had only managed a few snatched phone conversations. It wasn’t enough time to go into any detail, to really explain to Clancy how she felt, how puzzled she was that her trainer thought she was in some way lacking in understanding. In any case, it wasn’t easy to explain anything on the phone and they mainly ended up discussing how mad Clancy was at his ambassador dad for getting him all dressed up in stupid blazers and ridiculous polished loafers.

‘What next?’ Clancy would whine. ‘Little tartan bow ties?’

On this, the final week of training, Ruby dialled Clancy’s number and hoped he would be there to pick up. She had just got home from school and was expected to dine with her parents and their friends the Humberts, before being helicoptered back out to the training camp: it made for a long day.

‘So how’s it going Rube?’ Clancy asked from his hotel room in Washington.

‘OK. I think I’m doing pretty well. I mean I know stuff, it’s just I don’t seem to know stuff,’ she replied.

‘I think I know what you mean,’ said Clancy, who did know what she meant: he was sharp at picking up on things that weren’t clear.

‘I just don’t know how to fix it,’ she said. ‘I mean my instructor says things to me like, “You need to throw away the handbook Redfort.” But why? Why do I wanna throw away the handbook?’

‘I think he’s talking about instinct Rube. You got a know the rules and then you got a forget the rules, you know?’

‘No,’ said Ruby.

It didn’t make any sense: she had spent thirteen years assembling a little book of life rules, a sort of guide to navigate her way through each and every day, so why would she ignore them now, just when her very survival was being put to the test?

Ruby thought about this as she travelled back to camp that evening.

It was true. She really didn’t understand what Clancy was trying to explain or what Samuel Colt was trying to tell her. The previous day Colt had sat her down and tried again to make her understand.

‘You got a learn to use your instincts,’ he said.

‘I use my instincts,’ countered Ruby.

‘No you don’t. You approach things like you’re reading a book of rules, like there’s one way, but out in the wild stuff changes a lot and everything can’t always be fixed the way you wanna fix it.’ Sam Colt looked at her, his eyes barely visible under the wide brim of his hat. ‘I’ve been around a long time and, if there’s one thing that nature’s taught me, it’s to never kid yourself that you’re in charge.’

Again she stared at him like this made no sense at all.

‘Don’t meet nature head on, walk alongside. Don’t try and control stuff, just go with what you got. It’s all about adapting to circumstances. Circumstances change, you change with ’em.’ He looked at her hard, trying to discern whether she had the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘You can have your plans B, C and D, but they ain’t no good to you if nature decides otherwise.’

Colt wasn’t wrong about this; in fact, just six months ago, two Spectrum agents had perished after their tent had blown away in a blizzard and Colt couldn’t help wondering why two highly trained professionals had relied on something so flimsy out in such dangerous terrain where the elements ruled.

He lived day by day, hour to hour. ‘You can try and predict what might happen next, but don’t imagine it’s gonna come out that way just because you thought you’d like it to.’ The only certainty is there is no certainty was a sort of Samuel Colt mantra and his rule one, two and three: the rule he lived by.

The rule Ruby lived by was not unrelated. RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT. So why did she find this all so difficult? For the first time in her life, Ruby was failing. And she didn’t like it one bit.

Chapter 4.

AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS OF INTENSIVE TRAINING, camp was finally at an end; next would come the test. Sam Colt spent the last day preparing the recruits.

‘You’ll all be on your own here and you’ll have to navigate the terrain and take on the environmental challenges alone – that’s alongside any challenges set by Spectrum. Base camp is in woodland, but where exactly is your problem. You reach there, you clock in, mission over. Your task is to make it by sun-up three days from now.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m not looking to scare anyone here, quite the contrary, but the law of survival is pretty basic: you got a believe in your ability to stay alive.’ Samuel Colt had a pared-down approach to life and he was tough as winter earth. He firmly believed that all you need to survive is a positive mental attitude.

He looked at all their faces, some a little wary, even anxious, some confident, others like poker players, betraying nothing.

‘Unpredictable encounters with wild animals aside, your chances are good so long as you hold onto this.’ He tapped his head. ‘And I don’t mean physically, though course that helps. You got a believe death ain’t an option. Survival means getting out alive. And getting out alive means that on the most basic level you succeeded.’

Everyone went home that night and tried to get as much sleep as they could, aware that for the next few days sleep might not be found so easily.

The next day the trainees were each issued their mission briefing, handed their survival packs and offered a last chance to back out.

No one backed out.

A Spectrum agent, one Ruby didn’t recognise, had appeared from nowhere and was now handing out brown envelopes containing their instructions. Ruby pulled the tag which ran down the side of the envelope and pulled out the brown paper contained inside.

On it was written a code.

Ruby looked at it, frowning, for a few seconds. Then she smiled. Whoever had created the code had divided the message into six-letter chunks to make it seem more complicated than it was, but she soon saw what she was dealing with.

The clue was the frequency of certain letters.

In English Es and Ts appear a great deal more often than most other letters and Zs and Qs are in comparison pretty rare. Ruby surmised this was a substitution cipher, therefore whatever symbol was taking the place of E would come up most often, followed by T, then O, then A. The clumps of Xs she figured were just there to confuse so she ignored them.

She began substituting the most common letters, and soon saw familiar groups, like E, H and T and U, Y and O. She paused for a moment; the substitution gave her the right letters, but no recognisable words:

UYOLWI LEBDPR DPEOYB OILHET RCEPNI KOUNWN NARTRN IEXXXX.

NOEHTO ERHTDS IEFOEH TTAMIO NUNOUY LIWLEE SANCRA HXXXXX.

KMAEYU ROYAWO TEHTNC RAHUES NENNAD LRTSUE ARHOSE ORFMEH TARRCO LXXXXX.

ISWMEH TRHOSE SOASCR EHTVRE IRNADE ETHTRT IOTASP OTXXXX.*

KMEAUY ORYAWO TEHTON SEDCVR EIRNAD SCROST IXXXXX.

LWKADN WOEASM TRIULN TUYORE ANBDEY OEHTAE AWLRTL FXXXXX.

NFDIAD IDHNEN ACEONA DPLADD ETIIUL NTUYOR CAEHEH TNOLWD OADGEE DXXXXX.

OTNCEI NUNOOF TOOTSB AEMCAP.

OCCKLN IXXXXX; IOMNIS SELCDT MOPEXX.

ARWGIN NXXXXX: FIUYOE ARPTSD TEOIUR GLTNSEH TRHOSE UYOLWI LVHAEA FDEILN IUYORI OMNISS.

* EHTRHO SELWIL EBRTRD EENUOT EHTNCR AHYBTE AROHNN ATEGXX.

Then she looked again. The clue now was the repeating strings, like ‘NCRAH’, which had to mean ‘RANCH’, and ‘RHOSE’, which had to be ‘HORSE’.

Conclusion:

What she had in front of her was an anagram.

Ruby smiled as she decoded the mission instructions in less than one easy minute.

You will be blindfolded and dropped by helicopter in unknown terrain.

On the other side of the mountain you will see a ranch.

Make your way to the ranch unseen and rustle a horse from the corral.

Swim the horse across the river and tether it to a post.*

Make your way to the second river and cross it.

Walk downstream until you are beyond the waterfall.

Find a hidden canoe and paddle it until you reach the woodland edge.

Continue on foot to base camp.

Clock in; mission completed.

Warning: if you are spotted rustling the horse, you will have failed in your mission.

* The horse will be returned to the ranch by another agent.

Ruby was the first to decode her message and as a result had gained time credit before she had even begun. Once everyone was ready to go, one hour and forty-five minutes later (Trainee Lowe sucked at codes), she lined up with the others and was handed her rucksack.

‘Check your kit,’ shouted the agent as a general instruction to the group, ‘and make sure you take care of it. One: it’s all you got and two: it contains some pretty costly Spectrum equipment.’

The rucksack contained:

Socks, one pair

Thermals

Gloves

Scarf

Waterproof overtrousers and coat

Penknife

Small cooking can

Energy bars x five

One canteen of water

Binoculars

Basic map

Home–made compass

A micro–parachute

Once she had checked through her kit and was all set, Ruby walked over to Sam Colt.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll remember everything you taught me. I got it all here in my head.’

Colt looked at her, his eyes full of concern.

‘In your head is no good,’ he said. ‘Your gut is where you got a keep it.’

Chapter 5.

THE PLANE HAD BEEN FLYING FOR SOME TIME NOW and what with the blindfold, the noise of the engine and the overpowering smell of plane fuel, Ruby felt she had lost all sense of time and place. She had no idea how many other agents were in the plane with her, or at what point they had parachuted out. She just waited until it was her turn. She felt a hand press on her shoulder.

‘You’re up Redfort,’ said a voice she didn’t recognise. She got to her feet, a little wobbly from sitting so long and the plane’s angle. With the help of the anonymous hand, she shuffled from the row of benches until she reached the place where the doors must be.

‘You ready?’

She nodded.

‘Sure you’re sure?’ said another voice she immediately recognised – it came from the cockpit.

Hitch’s voice.

As far as secret agents went, Hitch was considered the best. He was Ruby’s immediate boss, though some would doubt it to listen to her. If there was one thing that Hitch might want to change about Ruby Redfort, it was her mouth, or rather her inability to keep it shut when it might be a good idea to keep it shut. ‘Kid, we have a rule here at Spectrum, rule number one in fact. Did anyone ever fill you in on it?’

When faced with this bothersome question, Ruby would widen her eyes and say, ‘I’m not sure. Does it have something to do with not talking with your mouth full? Or is it no strappy sandals in the workplace?’

Hitch would mutter, ‘Why me?’ and remind himself that she wouldn’t always be thirteen and a total pain in the butt.

But, despite the banter and the occasional run-in, they got on very well and Ruby knew rule number one better than anyone.

SPECTRUM RULE 1: KEEP IT ZIPPED.

‘Hitch?’ she called from the back of the plane. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Someone’s got to fly this thing,’ he replied. ‘You OK kid?’ ‘Sure,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m looking forward to a little alone time.’ ‘Something goes wrong out there – you know I’ll find you.’

The merest hint of anxiety in his voice.

‘What could possibly go wrong?’ said Ruby. She felt the huge force of the wind as the doors were wrenched open.

‘Any last wishes?’ said the guy in charge of the jump.

‘You got a pair of earmuffs I could borrow?’ she replied.

He removed the blindfold from her eyes and she looked down into the moonlit dark.

‘Ah, stop whining Redfort and get outta here.’

And so she did.

As she tumbled through the night sky, thoughts unravelled and joined and twisted themselves together, and all the time she fell and fell until, with a jerk, her parachute shot open and now she was drifting jellyfish-like through the dark.

She strained to make out any part of the landscape. Then, all in a rush, she touched earth, a textbook landing. She detached herself from her micro-chute, folded it and neatly repacked it into the rucksack. It weighed very little.