No More Mr Nice Spy Page 2

  With one hand on the controls of the Dinosoarer, Spynosaur tore the watch off his wrist with his teeth and crunched it like a cracker.

  “Boring conversation anyway,” he huffed. From her seat in the cockpit, Amber watched her dad spit the mangled watch into the Dino-soarer’s dustbin.

  “So, we’re not spies any more?” Amber asked. Her dad didn’t reply. After a moment she added, “Do I have to go back to being normal?”

  Amber’s dad activated the autopilot and turned to her.

  “Amber, whatever you think you saw, I didn’t eat Pugsy Malone,” he said. “I don’t do that sort of thing any more.”

  “Oh, really?” replied Amber. “What about:

  “And you nearly ate my pet rabbit, like, three times,” Amber added. “It’s your dino-side, remember?”

  “I know I’ve had issues with my more ferocious facets in the past,” Spynosaur replied. “But my dino-side is under control now. You could put me in a roomful of pugs and I’d be cooler than a cucumber convention.”

  “But … I saw you eat him. Everyone did!” Amber said. “You swallowed Pugsy like he was a spytamin pill!”

  “I know that’s what it looked like, but a secret agent can’t always trust their spy-sight – sometimes they must trust their instincts,” said her dad. “What do your instincts tell you, Amber?”

  Amber closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, the sight of her dad swallowing the princess’s dog looping in her brain. She tried to look past it…

  “My instincts tell me … that we’re turning round?” she said.

  “We are?” said Spynosaur, checking the cockpit controls. Sure enough, the Dino-soarer had changed course.

  “M11, you crafty commander-in-chief…” said Spynosaur with an impressed raise of his eyebrow. “Doctor Newfangle, I presume?”

  A view screen suddenly extended from the control panel on an articulated metal arm and flashed into life. Moments later a man with an eruption of white hair and thick spectacles appeared on screen.

  “I’m so sorry, Spynosaur!” Newfangle declared. “M11 ordered me to take remote control of the Dino-soarer. She said after what you’d done to—Well, I couldn’t believe it! I said she must be barking up the wrong tree. Sorry! I shouldn’t have mentioned barking…”

  “But Dad probably didn’t eat the dog, maybe!” cried Amber – then immediately regretted not sounding more supportive.

  “I wouldn’t believe me either,” confessed Spynosaur, his dino-mighty muscles straining to turn the Dino-soarer’s control wheel. “But just give me a minute and I’ll have … everything … under … control…!”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do – the Dino-soarer is programmed to bring you back to HQ,” said Dr Newfangle. “Everything is under control … mine.”

  “What do we do? They’re going to put you in the Bin, Dad!” Amber cried as the remotely-controlled Dino-soarer conveyed them back to Department 6 headquarters.

  “Not before I’ve had time to crack this case, they’re not,” said Spynosaur, clenching his fist. “I think it’s time to knuckle down…”

  With a mighty punch, Spynosaur drove his fist into the Dino-soarer’s controls.

  “I had that control panel engraved!” Newfangle cried over the view screen. “To my greatest creation, Spynosaur. May all your dreams take flight. Hugs, Dr Newfangle. PS Please don’t break this one.”

  “Uh, Dad, why are you punching the Dinosoarer?” Amber asked as her dad wrenched out a handful of wires and circuitry from the shattered panel.

  “Wire not?” Spynosaur replied coolly. He tapped two wires together and they sparked with electricity. “Fix this to that, move that over there, give that a twiddle … yes! I should have manual control of the Dino-soarer in a few seconds.”

  “Spynosaur, please!” begged Dr Newfangle. “Don’t make me activate the Nanny State Protocol!”

  “Nanny State Protocol? Never heard of it,” noted Spynosaur, holding up a bright red wire. “There! All I need to do is connect this to the motherboard and I should have full control of—”

  Spynosaur’s para-shoes suddenly opened, engulfing him in several metres of thick cotton.

  “Dad!” cried Amber as her dad’s sharp claws tore through the material.

  “The Nanny State Protocol means I can remotely control your gadgets, Spynosaur!” Newfangle explained guiltily. “All of them…!”

  Without warning, Spynosaur’s secret inflatable jetpack expanded on his back. The gleaming chrome rocket booster burst into life, launching Spynosaur upwards. He collided with the ceiling and bounced off the floor before jetting out of the cockpit and into the Dino-soarer’s docking bay.

  “Dad!” Amber cried again.

  “Conneeeeeect the wiiiiiiire!” Spynosaur shouted, helplessly ricocheting around the Dino-soarer like a prehistoric pinball. Amber spun round to see the red wire hanging loose from the control panel.

  “I’m on it!” she said, but as she leaped into action, Dr Newfangle remotely activated Spynosaur’s wrist-mounted spy-net. It shot out of a secret pocket on Spynosaur’s sleeve, ensnaring Amber and sending her tumbling to the cockpit floor.

  “Aaaambeeeeer!” Spynosaur roared, careening from wall to wall. Finally, he managed to reach behind him, driving both thumb claws into the pumped-up propulsion system on his back. The punctured jetpack let out a loud as it deflated. Spynosaur plummeted to the floor, bouncing and skidding back into the cockpit. He looked up and spied the loose wire dangling inches in front of his face. He reached out…

  “Spynosaur, please stop!” howled Newfangle over the view screen. In desperation, he activated every last gadget in Spynosaur’s spy-suit.

  The results were dramatic.

  Spynosaur’s savage roar filled the air as he tore his spy-suit from his body. Within seconds he’d shredded the hi-tech fabric with his claws.

  “Dad, are you OK …?” Amber muttered, still tangled in Spynosaur’s spy-net. For a moment, her dad seemed lost to his dino-side. But then Spynosaur blinked and shook his head, as if waking from a bad dream.

  “Cucumber cool,” he said, brushing the last torn fibres from his shoulders. He untangled Amber from his spy-net, before retrieving her school uniform from a nearby compartment and handing it to her. “Better lose the spy-suit, don’t you think?” he added.

  “I really am sorry, Spynosaur!” declared Newfangle. “As soon as you’re back at HQ I’m sure we can straighten this out…”

  “No, I’m sorry, Doctor,” said Spynosaur, grabbing the view screen in his clawed hands. “I’m afraid you’re breaking up…”

  Spynosaur yanked the view screen from its metal arm and threw it to the floor. With an angry grunt, he connected the dangling red wire to the motherboard.

  “You did it!” Amber said, pulling on her school sweater. “Turn us round, before we end up back at headquarters!”

  “Not an option, I’m afraid,” replied Spynosaur, clambering into the pilot seat. “Even in stealth mode, Newfangle will be able to track us in the Dino-soarer.”

  “So, what was the point of getting control back?” said Amber, leaping into the co-pilot’s seat. Spynosaur activated their harnesses to strap them in.

  “Oh, that was just so that I could do this,” he replied. He flicked a switch on his seat, and the Dino-soarer’s canopy ejected from the cockpit. Before Amber knew what was happening, rocket jets ignited beneath her seat and she was blasted out into the sky.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAA bit of warning next time!” Amber screamed as their jet-powered seats propelled her and Spynosaur clear of the Dinosoarer.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Spynosaur said with a grin as they zoomed through the clouds. “Now, pull that cord on your left, will you?”

  “This one?” Amber asked, tugging on the red cord fixed to her seat. “Why, what does it doooOOOOOOOO-OOOOOO-OOOOOOO!”

  Without warning, Amber was launched out of her ejector seat! As the seat jetted off into the sky, Amber plummeted, the ground getting closer with every second. Before she could work out what her dad had planned, she was closing her eyes and preparing for the end…

  “Got you.”

  Her dad’s voice was close and surprisingly calm. Amber opened her eyes and realized that she hadn’t hit the ground – her dad, still strapped into his ejector seat, had swooped down and caught her by the leg.

  “My ejector seat has its own ejector seat?” Amber shrieked as her dad hoisted her into his arms. “What was all that about?”

  “Department 6 will be able to trace these ejector seats, too,” Spynosaur explained, piloting the seat behind a nearby church and landing in the graveyard. “By splitting them up we stand a better chance of staying undetected.”

  “And there was no way you could have mentioned that before I FELL OUT OF THE SKY?” Amber howled as her dad deposited her on terra firma.

  “As of now, the whole Department is on my tail,” her dad replied, clambering out of his ejector seat. “If we’re going to stay one step ahead, we need to be unpredictable … unbelievable … in short, no more Mr Nice Spy.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” Amber asked as she and Spynosaur crept through the tree-lined streets of Little Wallop.

  “The plan is, there is no plan,” her dad replied. “The rules of rule-breaking are about to be broken. I’m going to break rules that haven’t even been invented yet. I’m going to break the rules, repair them, then break them again.”

  “That’s super confusing,” confessed Amber.

  “I’ll need some clothes,” Spynosaur continued, darting between two trees. “All my disguises were concealed in my spy-suit – and without a disguise it turns out I look a lot like a dinosaur.”

  “Well, I think Mum still has some of your old clothes from when you
were, y’know, human … but I’m not sure they’ll fit any more,” said Amber, feeling altogether overwhelmed by the fact they were fugitives from Department 6. “Wait, what about Sergei?”

  “I’ll deal with your double-in-disguise – no doubt M11’s got to him already,” said Spynosaur, whipping round a corner into Diggle Drive and ducking behind a postbox. “The important thing is making sure your mum is none the wiser. We can’t have her discovering the truth about your double life – or that I live on as this prehistoric … person.”

  “But now you’re sort of not a secret agent any more,” began Amber, “couldn’t you tell Mum the truth?”

  “You mean, admit that I’m a secret agent who, on an ill-fated mission, was tied to a space rocket by criminal mastermind Ergo Ego and fired into the moon but then, through the mysterious power of spy-ence, had my human brainwaves transferred into the body of a dinosaur?” said Spynosaur, tiptoeing down the drive to Amber’s house. “Out of the question. Your mum hates surprises.”

  “But—” huffed Amber as they crouched behind her mum’s car.

  “No buts, Amber – not this time,” said her dad. He rested his clawed hands on her shoulders. “Look, as soon as this whole thing is straightened out, life can go back to normal – fighting villains, blowing things up … all the good stuff. But the only way we can do that is if I clear my name and that means we have to disappear, like ghosts or spectres or that one sock you can never find … but not in the way Department 6 expects, because they’ll expect the unexpected! Do you understand?”

  “Not really,” Amber replied.

  “Perfect! I must follow my instincts … do the opposite of what’s expected … no, the opposite of the opposite of what’s expected. I must surprise everyone, especially myself,” replied Amber’s dad. He clenched his fists. “Let’s go!”

  Spynosaur and Amber raced over to the house and peered in through the front window. A short, craggy-faced old man, no taller than Amber, was sitting on the sofa, watching television. He was dressed in Amber’s school uniform and wearing a red wig that looked just like her own hair.

  As silently as a self-portrait, Spynosaur popped the window’s latch with the tip of his tail and nudged it open. In a matter of seconds he poured himself inside, deftly avoiding a small army of windowsill ornaments as he slid into the front room. But, as he ducked behind an armchair, his long tail brushed past a china cat, knocking it off the windowsill.

  Amber was barely halfway through the window. She reached in and grabbed the cat a split second before it hit the floor.

  Spynosaur and Amber both glanced over at Sergei. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the TV. He let out a deep, gravelly chuckle as he watched a cartoon elephant have a sneezing fit in a library.

  The spies breathed a silent sigh of relief, and Amber began to climb inside…

  “Amber!” called Amber’s mum from the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready!”

  Amber froze, hanging half in and half out of the window. By the time she dared to look at the sofa, Sergei was no longer on it.

  “Sergei has eyes in back of head. Not literally, obviously,” said a voice like rocks being scraped together. Amber turned to see Sergei standing right in front of her. “But no one can sneak up on Sergei – Sergei is unsneakupable,” added Sergei, pulling out a Department 6-issue pistol from his skirt. “Now tell me, where is traitor to Department 6? Where is Spynosaur?”

  “Amber!” called Amber’s mum again. “It’s getting cold!”

  “Coming!” shouted Amber and Sergei together. In her panic, Amber felt her eyes dart to the armchair. Sergei spun round but it was too late – Spynosaur leaped out from behind the chair and swatted the gun from Sergei’s hand. Spynosaur, Amber and Sergei watched the pistol spin through the air as if in slow motion, until:

  The gun collided with a bookshelf.

  “What was that? Amber!” cried Amber’s mum, her voice getting closer.

  “Nothing, Mum! Stay there!” Amber yelled, dropping through the window and racing into the kitchen. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sergei duck under Spynosaur’s legs and leap on to his back, before wrapping his school tie round her dad’s throat in an attempt to throttle him.

  Ten seconds later, Amber was tucking into fish fingers and chips.

  After hastily shovelling down her fish fingers and chips (and a bowl and a half of ice cream) Amber made her excuses to her mum and hurried back into the living room.

  No sign of her dad. No sign of Sergei.

  Amber raced up to her room.

  “Dad…?” Amber whispered, poking her head round the door. The first thing she saw was the unconscious Sergei lying on her bed, defeated in silent combat by Spynosaur. She pushed open the door to find her dad squeezed into a black polo-neck sweater and a pair of grey trousers, the seat of which he’d punctured so he could poke out his tail.

  “You found your old clothes?” Amber said.

  “You were right – everything’s a bit snug now I’m a dinosaur,” replied Spynosaur, straining the sweater’s seams with a flex of his prehistoric pectorals. “Of course, even with my achingly impressive spy skills I won’t fool anyone into thinking I’m human – not without this…”

  Spynosaur whipped off Sergei’s wig and popped it on top of his own head, flattening it into a neat side-parting.

  “Riiiight,” said Amber with an eye roll. As she watched Spynosaur put one of her woolly hats on to Sergei’s head, she started to feel less and less sure about his plan not to have a plan … but since the alternative was her dad being locked away forever, she kept her doubts to herself – including the possibility that he really did eat Pugsy Malone. “So, now what?” she asked.

  “Sergei’s too much of a pro to blow his cover,” said Spynosaur. “When he wakes up he’ll be sure to keep your mum in the dark about all of this.”

  “And you’re sure Department 6 won’t be able to find us?” Amber added.

  “There’s only one spy who might have had the skills necessary to track me down – Agent A55,” mused Spynosaur, opening the bedroom window. “But since an ill-fated mission involving a pit of secret-agent-eating snakes, A55’s tracking days are over … as are her days of being alive.”

  “OK, so now what?” said Amber with a shrug.

  “Now,” replied Spynosaur. “We disappear.”

  “NEWFANGLE!”

  M11 burst into the bustling Department 6 control centre, her cries echoing around the wide, brightly lit room. Black-clad agents fled for cover as M11 strode past them, with Danger Monkey following close behind.

  “Clear a path!” the monkey cried. “Angry boss comin’ through!”

  M11 swept into Dr Newfangle’s laboratory and glanced around. Every corner of the lab was piled high with hi-tech gadgets and equipment, but the middle of the room was empty … except for Dr Newfangle crouching on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chin.

  “Do get up, Doctor,” M11 said stiffly. “It’s no use hiding behind an invisible car.”

  “Ah,” Dr Newfangle muttered. He pressed a button on his Super Secret Spy Watch™ and a black sports car materialized in front of them. Newfangle sidled out from behind it, looking sheepish. “H-hello, M11,” he squeaked. “May I say your moustache is looking particularly well-combed today…?”

  “Blast it to smithereens, Newfangle, I gave you the Nanny State Protocol!” M11 roared. “Full access to Spynosaur’s Dino-soarer, his gadgets … his underwear, for goodness’ sake! And by the time I get back from Canada, he’s evaded capture and disappeared off the face of the Earth!”

  “Disappeared?” Newfangle repeated.

  “Sergei just reported in – Spynosaur showed up at the Gambit house,” M11 explained, her moustache twitching angrily. “He took a disguise and Sergei’s best wig! He’s gone deep cover!”