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your plan for recovering the satellite?”
    Alfie was surprised. “ My plan?”
    â€œYou found the satellite, you know all about the SPUD agents and this collaboratorwoman, your homework was pretty good. You must have a plan. I’m turning this mission over to Class 3D at once.”
    There were cheers when Alfie told the class what had happened. Even Chloe looked pleased at the news. They decided to spend their morning break drawing up their plans.
    â€œThe first thing we must do,” Beth said, “is use my detector to find exactly where the satellite is.”
    â€œIt’s quite a big back garden,” Alfie agreed.
    â€œMaybe the SPUD agents have already found it,” Chloe said.
    â€œHave they?” Alice asked Alfie.
    He shook his head. “I don’t think so. They were still hiding and drinking tea this morning.”
    â€œDoesn’t sound like they know where to look then,” Sam said.
    â€œOr they were on a break,” Chloe said.
    â€œEither way,” Jack said, “we need to stop them finding the satellite before we can get to it.”
    â€œWe should take them out,” Harry decided.
    â€œWhere to?” Alfie asked. “Maybe a tea shop? With biscuits?”
    â€œNo,” Sam said, “Harry means shoot them.”
    â€œIs that a good idea?” Alice asked. “It might attract attention.”
    â€œI can make silencers for Sam’s built-inmachine guns,” Beth offered.
    â€œBut I was going to use the grenade launcher in the seat back and the rockets from between the wheels,” Sam said.
    â€œWhat do you think, Alfie?” Alice asked.
    â€œYes, come on Mr Clever Clogs,” Chloe said.
    â€œI think,” Alfie said slowly, “that we need to get them out of Mrs Prendagast’s garden. The best way to do that is to convince them that the satellite is really somewhere else.”
    â€œTerrific!” Jack exclaimed. “We stage a crash landing. Get another satellite to comedown somewhere else and make sure they see it. We can hide nearby and make satellite-crashing noises in case they miss it.” He demonstrated: “Neeeeeaaaaaooooow wwwww—booomph!”
    â€œOr,” said Alfie, “we could just dig a big hole and pretend we’ve already found it.”

Chapter 9
    By the end of the afternoon the older children from Upper School had dug a pit at the side of the playground well away from Mrs Prendergast’s garden. The spot had been carefully chosen by Sir Waverly Compass. Since the Major had been taken off the digging party the sides of the pit hadn’t collapsed and buried anyone at all.
    Sergeant Custer was on guard, making as much noise as he could to make sure theSPUD agents would realise there was something “going on”. He marched up and down, shouting, “Who goes there?” and “Can’t tell you, it’s a secret but it’s absolutely nothing at all whatsoever to do with any special satellites that might have crashed in this area recently, oh dear me no.” Which was completely true.
    To make the illusion as complete as possible, the Chaplain was organising a PE lesson with Class 11F on one side of the pit—a fairly routine session with skipping ropes, hoops, footballs and a savage Siberian tiger.
    On the other side of the pit, Miss Fortune was teaching what was left of 10A. There had been nine children in her group when she started but they were now down to only three, who all looked rather nervous.
    The men in black uniforms and dark glasses had been spotted hiding in the bushes at the edge of the playground. They watched closely, ready to move in as soon as they saw anything that looked like a secret satellite…
    In their classroom, Class 3D had a picture of Mrs Prendergast’s back garden projected onto the white board. It had been taken with a digital camera from a radio-controlled model plane that Beth had adapted to fly over the