DP and The Fang

By Chris Mitchell

Time is running out for DP and The Fang. A secret formula and the world cocoa supply have gone missing and only they can solve the case – with the help of their mystery boss, D. 

Using their unique special powers and incredible ingenuity, DP and The Fang track down mastermind Chocolate Icing to a beautiful, remote Whitsunday island off the world-famous Great Barrier Reef. But, unbeknownst to the boys, a mysterious dark figure is monitoring their every move.

Can the boys stop mastermind Chocolate Icing in time or will their constant bickering and her unbridled passion and ambition get the better of them this time?

Chris Mitchell's debut novel drops you into a world of mystery and suspense, with enough twists and turns to keep you on your toes.  
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Mitchell
• Release date: Jul 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645472714

Chris Mitchell

After completing a Bachelor of International Business and Bachelor of Business (Honours), Chris Mitchell was looking for a break from academic writing. He was given a dad’s memory book to capture the unique idiosyncrasies of his two teenage sons as they grew up. Like most parents with good intentions, his enthusiasm and attention span waned after just six months. However, Chris was keen not to let the memories of enjoyable times spent with his sons slide into obscurity so he started writing a series of short stories via email as an alternative to the memory book. To ensure his emails would be read, Chris crafted the boys’ shared travels and activities with their dad, together with their individual personalities and behaviours, into a tale of secret agent alter egos with special powers. The story gained momentum as his sons waited eagerly each fortnight to find out what their respective characters – DP and The Fang – had got up to.  Chris Mitchell lives in Ipswich, Queensland with his two sons, Aidan and Nathan.

Book preview

Chapter 1

A dark-coloured, mid-sized car emerged from a side street and headed west along the boulevard. The beam from the headlights reflected off the wet road as the car splashed quietly through the surface water that pooled from the recent rains. Usually, this car would be one of many traversing along this road, drawing little or no attention during the day. Indeed, even at 1:00 am, the vehicle drew little attention, as security cameras later showed.

The car kept to the speed limit, and any idle observer would have conceded the driver was merely on their way home from a late work shift. However, it was not so with this car. Inside, two male occupants remained in total silence, the passenger cradling a sealed A4-sized paper envelope in leather-gloved hands. The envelope, stolen from a safety deposit box inside a nondescript office just fifteen minutes earlier, was now being inserted into a typed, pre-addressed, waterproof pouch then sealed. The envelope contents contained various notes, instructions, diagrams, and formulas, and all were handwritten in mixed languages. The contents of the paper envelope were one of a kind. The inventor and author of the notes did not fully trust digital security on any devices connected to the Internet. Instead, the author went old school and used pen and paper and what the author thought was a heavily secured floor-standing safe. Industrial espionage is big business, and the buyer of the stolen formula would pay handsomely for its recovery.

The car continued quietly along the boulevard before turning into the business district and heading towards the building that belonged to the international courier marked on the pouch. The vehicle drew alongside the curb opposite the building and the courier’s 24-hour parcel depository and slowed to a stop. The passenger opened the car door and stepped out. Without looking around, he walked straight towards the depository. Then without hurrying, he lifted the handle and slid the envelope down the one-way chute before returning to the car. As the car pulled away from the curb, the passenger sent a single text message to an international number: ‘Done.’ Within 90 seconds, the mobile phone signalled a response with a beep. ‘Half payment transferred now, remainder upon receipt of the package.’ Both the car’s occupants relaxed and drove off into the night, never to be seen again. The stolen formula would not be noticed missing until the following Monday morning when the office staff returned for the new working week, but, by then, the envelope would be well on its way Down Under.

Chapter 2

‘Hey! Where’s my propeller?’ Max burst out, trying to find his missing Supermarine Spitfire model part.

‘I haven’t got it,’ Rigby smirked, trying to keep a straight face. However, Max would not let this act of defiance slide by. He jabbed his paintbrush, already laden with dark green paint, onto one of Rigby’s grey General Dynamic F-111 model aircraft wings.

‘Wow. Really! Now, look what you’ve done. Go clean it up, and here’s your stupid propeller,’ said Rigby, as he tossed it back at his brother’s chest. Dad, absorbed by his music in the living room, was trying to figure out how to use his new mobile phone. He too was applying serious concentration, and he would sort it out one way or another on his own, without asking either of the boys for help. But the growing racket from the kitchen was starting to get a trifle annoying and distracting. Dad decided to give them one more minute and, in that time, he hoped to sort out the bluetooth settings. However, he knew his boys well enough and, when the two started niggling each other, peace went straight out the window.

‘Dad!’ one of them yelled out. Not even a minute, he thought and began to get up and threaten them with the removal of their hot chocolates if they continued to behave like three-year-olds. This tactic had always worked in the past, as both loved Dad’s special hot chocolate. However, this time, the bickering was interrupted by the sudden vibration of Rigby’s mobile phone: three short vibrations followed by three long vibrations in a continuous cycle. These patterns were the internationally recognised Morse code for SOS. Though the origin of the three dots, three dashes and three dots were nautical for Save Our Ship, Rigby used this pattern for one unique number in his phone. The brothers stopped bickering immediately and looked at the phone simultaneously, with paintbrushes still hanging in the air. It had caller ID blocked, but they knew who it was: the secretive D. It sounded like he needed their help again.

Such a secret he was, the boys had never actually met him in person and only knew him by the sound of his digitised voice. He was the head of the Secret Intelligence Organisation or SIO and was the boys’ leader and mentor. D only contacted the boys directly when there was trouble somewhere and, now, it looked like he needed their help again. Rigby picked up the phone, pressed the call button on the phone’s screen, and then spoke in his deep voice, but quietly so Dad could not hear.

‘Yes, D, what can we do for you?’

D, speaking in a non-emotional tone as always, went straight to the point.

‘I need DP and The Fang at headquarters right away, please. Pack for a couple of days up the coast, and do not forget your hats and sunblock.’

‘Ok,’ they both responded, ‘We’re on our way,’ whispered Max before Rigby pressed the end key.

‘Really? Right now? But I haven’t finished my cuppa. Cold chocolate is just not the same when it’s raining,’ whispered Max, with a glum look on his face.

No one knew who DP and The Fang really were because they wore secret outfits allowing them to remain anonymous, even to their close family and friends. Their undercover disguises were hidden in a secret place, like the Bat Cave or the Thunderbirds secret cave on their private island. But the secret boys’ place was smaller, much, much smaller and way, way less high tech. Actually, there was none at all, but it was their secret lair.

‘Dad, Ari and Jason just phoned and wondered if we could come over and stay a couple of nights again,’ Rigby yelled out as they ran into Rigby’s room.

‘Righto,’ Dad called out from the lounge room as he looked at a message that just appeared on his digital watch and grinned as he cast a side look towards Rigby’s bedroom.

‘Going north are we boys? That’s not where your cousins live?’ whispered Dad to himself with a smile.

Rigby did not like telling Dad a lie, but it was urgent. As far as they were concerned, Dad was not aware that both were part of a secret crime-busting organisation, and going to stay with their cousins was plausible as they often visited them. They quickly cleaned up, packed away their modelling kits and headed towards Rigby’s room. Once inside, they closed the door and immediately dropped to the floor parallel to the side of Rigby’s bed. Without a word, they rolled under it. Max went first as he could roll faster than his big bro. As he rolled under the bed, a portion of the floorboards popped up, hinged on the far side, forming a trapdoor that allowed enough height for him to fall into the gaping dark hole. Rigby followed but, when he rolled over, all Max could hear was roll … thump … roll … thump … roll … thump.

‘What a Wally,’ Max giggled, as his brother fell into the hole and onto an old mattress next to him. The trapdoor closed behind Rigby with a soft metallic click. As he dusted himself off, he noticed the funny look on his brother’s face.

‘What? It gets harder the taller you get, so just wait until you sprout some more and stop that ridiculous giggling.’ Rigby scowled at his brother, but Max was enjoying himself too much.

‘I can’t stop. It’s so funny.’

Under Rigby’s bedroom, between the floorboards and the ground beneath the house, was an unused space where the boys built a soundproof secret lair. It was a little bigger than Rigby’s bedroom, six metres long by four metres wide but only two metres high. Inside, the timber sound-proofed walls and ceiling were all painted white. A strip of LED lighting ran along the centre of the secret room’s ceiling and switched on automatically as soon as the trapdoor closed and turned off when the outside door opened. The foundation was made from concrete and covered by a floating hardwood timber floor mounted on rubber dampers so no vibrations could be felt in the house, especially by Dad. At the back of the room, two single floor-standing metal lockers were bolted to the back wall where DP and The Fang stored their outfits. Here the boys changed into their disguises. Max sported a black cowboy hat and black cloak and, with these on, he became The Fang.

Not Fang. It’s The Fang. Suppose you found some courage and dared call him Fang to his face or even mention the word in public while in his presence, only then would you feel the fear and thunder of instant spiflication, which was worse than having your underpants pulled up over your head. Spiflication is a secret weapon The Fang used to disable someone without using weapons of any sort and often resulted in the victim suffering long-term memory loss. Rigby sometimes got a bit worried about The Fang. One night, when they were out in the country tracking spy satellites through their 130 mm optical telescope, he glanced over to his brother. To his surprise, he could see The Fang’s steely red glowing eyes in the dark but more disturbing were the tips of two bright white fangs hanging below each corner of his bottom lip. The sight of the mystery fangs gave DP the chills, and he vowed never to look at his brother in the dark again. The Fang was indeed a deep and mysterious boy, and so was his secret weapon. Even Rigby was not fully aware of its potential or potency or even precisely what the secret weapon was, for that matter, nor did he care to find out firsthand. Of the few miscreants The Fang had spiflicated in the past, not one had been able to describe the experience. Its effect on the human senses and long-term memory loss removed all possibility of them explaining who or what had put them in that state in the first place.

Rigby had many aliases of his own. His favourite was when he wore his white baseball cap and reflective sunglasses, or sunnies, as he preferred to call them, light blue jeans with a black jacket. With these on, Rigby became the legendary SIO agent Darth Pants, or DP for short, because it sounded cool and menacing, and dogs always ran away from him when they smelt him. DP never figured out why this always happened to him. He got this name when he was little, as Dad always called him Smarty Pants because of his uncanny ability to remember things for a long time. But as he got older, Dad substituted ‘Smarty’ with ‘Lazy’ then, eventually, with Rigby’s favourite movie villain, Darth, much to Rigby’s delight. It had stuck ever since. However, as for his secret weapon, it too was never spoken about in public. It was so powerful it turned any person into a sobbing mess for days, and left them with a complete loss of their sense of taste and smell.

Once the boys got dressed, they grabbed a prepacked backpack from a shelf marked ‘Summer,’ then it was time to go. There was only one way to get to headquarters in a hurry, and it was under the white silk dust sheet in front of them. DP pulled the sheet back. It was sleek, it was beautiful, it was powerful, it was metallic crimson red in colour with black chrome-spoked wheels and, best of all, it had eight big cylinders.

Chapter 3

There it was, sitting there in all its glory, waiting to be taken out for a drive and stretch its legs on the endless black ribbon of tarmac that made up the Australian highways. Unfortunately, there was no time to admire the car, and The Fang jumped straight into the passenger side, while DP headed over to the driver’s side. Both boys could drive a car, but The Fang was not old enough to have a driver’s licence, so he rode in the front passenger side. This spot allowed the passenger to use the built-in laser beams, missiles, and other necessary cool devices to play havoc against the bad guys, which suited him perfectly. DP swung open the car door and leapt into the driver’s seat but not before The Fang noticed biscuit crumbs on the driver’s seat and started laughing again. As DP buckled himself up, he looked straight ahead and called out to The Fang.

‘Ready?’ But all he could hear was laughing.

‘What now, you little pipsqueak?’

‘You have been sneaking down into this car from your room again.’

‘Have not … how can you tell?’ DP responded sheepishly.

‘All the biscuit crumbs on your seat,’ laughed The Fang.

‘Yeah, well, the sound system in this car is brilliant, and it beats listening to Dad’s 80s