Spy School

  Inside, the grounds were surprisingly large. There were vast expanses of lawn that I assumed would be beautiful in spring, although they were currently buried under a foot of snow. And beyond the buildings stood a large, pristine swath of forest, untouched since the days when our forefathers had decided a fetid, malaria-ridden swamp on the Potomac River was the perfect place to build our nation’s capital.

  The buildings themselves were ugly and gothic, trying to imitate the majesty of places like Oxford and Harvard but failing miserably. Though braced by flying buttresses and dotted with gargoyles, they were still gray and uninteresting, designed so that anyone who accidentally stumbled upon St. Smithen’s Science Academy would turn his back and never think of it again.

  But compared to the squat cement slab where I went to middle school, the campus was gorgeous. I arrived with Alexander at an inauspicious time, minutes before nightfall in the dead of winter. The light was bleak, the sky was leaden, and the buildings were shrouded in shadow. And yet, I was thrilled. The fact that we’d come in Alexander’s customized luxury sedan with a few extra buttons on the dashboard probably heightened my excitement. (Though he’d warned me to keep my hands off them for fear of launching heavy artillery into rush-hour traffic.)

  My parents hadn’t protested my leaving much. Alexander had wowed them with his pitch for the “science” academy and reassured them that I was going to be only a few miles away. Mom and Dad were both proud of me for getting into such a prestigious institution—and thrilled that they wouldn’t have to pay for it. (Alexander told them I’d earned a full scholarship, and he told me the whole tab was picked up by the U.S. government.) Still, they’d been surprised that I had to leave so quickly—and disappointed that Mom couldn’t even make me a farewell dinner. Mom was big on commemorative dinners, throwing them for things as mundane as my getting elected captain of the school chess team, even though I was the only student on the school chess team. But Alexander had quelled their anxiety by promising I could return home to visit soon. (When they’d asked if they could visit me on the campus, he’d assured them they could, although he’d artfully avoided telling them exactly when.)

  Mike Brezinski hadn’t been quite so enthusiastic about my going. Mike has been my best friend since first grade, though if we’d met later in life, we probably wouldn’t have been friends at all. Mike had grown into one of those cool underachievers who should have been in all advanced classes but preferred remedial ones because he didn’t have to work in them. Middle school was one big joke to him. “You’re going to a science academy?” he’d asked when I called him with the news, making no attempt to hide his disgust. “Why don’t you just get ‘loser’ tattooed on your forehead?”

  It took every ounce of restraint I had not to tell him the truth. More than anyone, Mike would have been blown away by the idea that I had been selected for training by the CIA. As kids, we’d spent untold hours reenacting James Bond movies on the playground. But I couldn’t reveal a thing; Alexander was sitting in my room, casually eavesdropping on my phone call. Instead, I’d only been able to say, “It’s not as lame as you think.”

  “No,” Mike had replied. “It’s probably lamer.”

  So as I arrived at the Academy of Espionage, escorted by an honest-to-God federal agent, I couldn’t help but think that, if Mike were there, for the first time in our lives he’d be jealous of me. The campus seemed full of promise, intrigue, and excitement.

  “Wow,” I said, my nose pressed against the car window.

  “This is nothing,” Alexander told me. “There’s far more here than meets the eye.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alexander didn’t answer. When I turned back to him, his normally confident expression had clouded.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I don’t see any students.”

  “They’re not all at dinner?”

  “Dinner’s not for another hour. This period is reserved for sports, physical conditioning, and self-defense training. Campus ought to be crawling with people right now.” Alexander suddenly braked in front of a rambling four-story building with a sign denoting it as the Armistead Dormitory. “When I say so, run for that doorway. I’ll cover you.” It turned out, there was a gun holstered under his left armpit. He snapped it out and reached for my door handle.

  “Wait!” Within a second, I’d gone from blissful to terrified. “Isn’t it safer to stay in the car?”

  “Who’s the agent here? You or me?”

  “You.”

  “Then run!” In one fluid motion Alexander popped my door open and practically shoved me out it.

  I hit the ground running. The stone path to the dormitory was slick with slush trampled by a hundred pairs of shoes. My feet slipped and skidded in it.

  Something cracked in the distance. A tiny explosion erupted in the snow to my left.

  Someone was shooting at me!

  I immediately began to question my decision to attend the academy.

  Another series of cracks echoed in the cold air, this time from behind me. Alexander was shooting back. Or, at least, I assumed he was. I didn’t dare turn around to see for fear that it’d waste precious milliseconds that could be better spent running for my life.

  A bullet ricocheted off the ground by my feet.

  I hit the dormitory door at full speed. It flew open, and I tumbled into a small security area. There was a second, more secure door ahead next to a glassed-in security booth, but the door hung ajar and the glass was pocked with three neat, round bullet holes. I scrambled through and found myself in an open lounge area.

  It was the type of place students would normally have been hanging out. There were ratty couches, an old television, a lopsided pool table, and some ancient video games. Hallways extended from it on both sides, and a weathered grand staircase led up to—

  Something suddenly swept my feet out from under me. I landed flat on my back. A split second later someone dropped on me, sheathed entirely in black except for the eyes. Each knee pinioned one of my arms to the ground. A hand slapped over my mouth before I could scream.

  “Who are you?” my attacker hissed.

  “B-B-B-Benjamin Ripley,” I sputtered. “I’m a student here.”

  “I’ve never seen you before.”

  “I only got accepted this afternoon,” I explained, and then thought to add, “Please don’t kill me.”

  My attacker groaned. “A newbie? Now?! This day just keeps getting better.” Now that the voice was inflected with sarcasm rather than aggression, it was higher than I’d expected. I looked at the body sitting on my chest and realized it was slim with curves.

  “You’re a girl,” I said.

  “Wow,” she replied. “No wonder you got accepted. Your powers of deduction are amazing.” She pulled her mask back, revealing her face.

  I wouldn’t have thought my heart could have beat any faster than it had while racing for my life from a hail of gunfire, but it suddenly sped up to a whole new level.

  Elizabeth Pasternak was no longer the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

  The girl sitting on my chest appeared to be a few years older than me, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with thick dark hair and incredibly blue eyes. Her skin was flawless, her cheekbones were sculpted, and her lips were full. She was slight of build—almost delicate—and yet she’d been powerful enough to flatten me in half a second. She even smelled incredible, an intoxicating combination of lilacs and gunpowder. But perhaps the most attractive thing about her was how calm and confident she was in the midst of a life-or-death situation. She seemed far more annoyed that I’d stumbled into the action than by the idea that bullets were flying outside.

  “Do you have a weapon on you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Can you use a gun?”

  “I can handle my cousin’s BB gun pretty well. . . .”

  She sighed heavily, then unzipped her flak jacket, revealing a sleek leather bandolier across her chest bri
stling with weapons: guns, knives, Chinese throwing stars, grenades. She bypassed all of these and selected a blunt little object for me. “This is a Taser. It’s not effective over long range, but on the plus side, you can’t accidentally kill me with it.” She slapped it into my hand, gave me a quick tutorial—“On/off switch. Trigger. Contact points.”—then stood and motioned for me to follow her.

  I did. It wasn’t as though I had any other ideas. We passed the grand staircase and headed down the south hall of the dormitory. The girl seemed to know what she was doing, so I felt slightly safer being with her. I mimicked her moves, creeping along as she did, holding my Taser the same way she held her gun.

  As it was my first action sequence, I wasn’t quite sure what the protocol was. It seemed I should introduce myself. “By the way, I’m Benjamin.”

  “So you said. I’ll make you a deal. If we survive this incident, then we can get to know each other.”

  “Okay. What’s going on?”

  “Apparently, we’ve had a security breach. There was an assembly on diplomacy for the entire student body this afternoon. The enemy infiltrated the campus during it and surrounded the assembly hall. All students and faculty are being held hostage inside.”

  “How’d you escape?”

  “I didn’t. I’d ditched the assembly. I could give a hoot about diplomacy.”

  “Is anyone else with you?”

  “As far as I know, it’s only you and me. I tried calling for backup, but the enemy is jamming all transmissions somehow.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “I’ve counted forty-one. So far. Those I’ve seen are very professional, heavily armed, and extremely dangerous.”

  I gulped. “I’ve been here only five minutes, and I’m supposed to face an entire platoon of deadly commandos with only a Taser?”

  For the first time since I’d met her, the girl smiled. “Welcome to spy school,” she said.

  CONFRONTATION

  Nathan Hale Administration Building

  January 16

  1710 hours

  Thinking you might be ambushed by enemy operatives at any second is a lousy frame of mind to be in for your first school tour. Although I followed the girl past many locations that would be important to me if I survived, I couldn’t focus on any of them. Meanwhile, the girl remained amazingly composed given the circumstances, even pointing out things of interest along the way, as though this were the standard orientation.

  “This is the only dormitory for the school,” she informed me as we crept through the first-floor hallway, weapons at the ready. “All three hundred students live here. It was built over a century ago, so as you’ve probably noticed, its enemy defense systems are lousy. Plus, the plumbing is prehistoric.

  “The mess hall is over there. Mealtimes are promptly at 0700, 1300, and 1800 hours . . . Now we’re heading into the south passage between the dorm and the admin building. It’s usually faster to go outside, but this way is better when the weather’s bad—or when there are enemy snipers on the property.”

  There was the distant sound of gunfire outside. Even though it was taking place more than one hundred yards away on the other side of a thick stone wall, I ducked reflexively. This provoked yet another sigh from the girl.

  “Wait!” I said. In all the excitement I’d forgotten something. “We’re not alone here. I came with Alexander Hale.”

  I’d expected her to be relieved, maybe even thrilled. But to my surprise, she seemed irritated instead. “Where is he?”

  “Outside. Fighting those snipers. I think he saved my life earlier.”

  “I’m sure he’ll think that too,” she said.

  We reached a fork in the passage where windows opened onto the snow-covered lawns. The girl signaled me to stay low, then peered through the glass. It had grown too dark for me to make out anything other than the silhouettes of buildings, but she seemed to see something. “They have the entire campus perimeter covered,” she frowned. “We’re not getting off the property. So here’s the plan: There’s an emergency radio beacon on the top floor of the administration building.” She nodded toward a five-story gothic structure that loomed immediately south of us. “It’s a direct link to Agency headquarters. So old school, the enemy probably doesn’t even know it still exists. If we can make it there, we can probably call for backup.”

  “Sounds good.” I tried my best to sound calm, even though I was growing more terrified by the minute.

  “Stay close and do what I tell you.” The girl started down the left fork of the hall but paused to point to the right. “The gym’s down there, by the way. And the firing range, just for future reference.”

  I followed her, my head ducked below the windows, fearing imminent attack. My first gunfight wasn’t going the way I’d expected at all. Where were all the bad guys? I wondered. Were we cleverly circumventing them, or were they waiting to ambush us? Where was Alexander Hale, and why hadn’t the girl been happy to hear about him? And perhaps most important . . .

  “Is there a men’s room anywhere nearby?” I asked. “I really have to pee.” This would be the first time I experienced what is generally referred to in spy school as “Hogarth’s theory of fear-based urination”: The amount of danger you are in is directly proportional to your need to pee. Abraham Hogarth was one of the CIA’s first operatives and, thus, one of the original professors at spy school. He’d written the essential espionage textbook based on his experiences (and he was rumored to always wear an adult diaper, just in case trouble arose).

  The girl sighed once again. “Why didn’t you go before the gunfight?”

  “I didn’t know there was going to be a gunfight,” I explained. “In fact, I believe I have to go because of the gun-fight.”

  “Hold it in, Buttercup. We can’t afford to drop our guard.”

  I did my best to comply.

  We soon reached the Nathan Hale Administration Building, which turned out to be the center of campus. Outside, all other buildings radiated around it, like it was the hub of a wheel. Inside, the passage we’d come down funneled into a towering entry hall flanked by sweeping grand staircases. Thick oak doors on one side of the room led outside, while on the other, two significantly larger doors stood open, revealing the school library beyond.

  The girl started toward the closest staircase, then suddenly lashed out a hand and clenched my arm. I froze.

  She placed her lips a millimeter from my ear and spoke so softly, I almost couldn’t hear it. “Two enemy agents. Upstairs.” The words were among the most terrifying I’d ever heard, and yet her warm breath on my ear almost made the danger seem worth it. “I’ll have to hold them off. Cut through the library and take the rear stairs up.”

  “To where?” I tried to be as quiet as her but couldn’t. Even my whisper seemed to echo through the room.

  On the mezzanine level, a human shape emerged from the shadows.

  “The principal’s office!” the girl hissed, shoving me forward. “Run!”

  I might not have been able to shoot a gun or fight hand to hand, but running, I could handle. I’d had to flee from Dirk Dennett plenty of times. However, I’d never run with a full-on, life-or-death adrenaline surge before. It was like having afterburners. I covered the twenty yards to the library in the blink of an eye.

  Gunfire raked the carpet behind me and splintered the doorjamb as I lunged for safety.

  The library was cavernous, four floors of wide balconies ringing a central open space. On the main floor was a maze of shelves. Normally, I would have been thrilled by the sheer acres of books, but at the time the library only looked like a gigantic booby trap to me; there were a thousand places for assassins to hide.

  In each corner a staircase spiraled up. I zigzagged through the shelves toward one on the far side of the room and bounded upstairs while the sounds of a gunfight echoed from the entry hall.

  A bullet pinged off the banister just as I reached the third floor.

  I hit the
deck.

  On the first floor a black-clad man clutching a machine gun darted toward my staircase.

  My Taser wasn’t going to do me a damn bit of good from that distance.

  But there was a shelf full of reference books nearby.

  I snatched the heaviest I could find—Cooper’s Pictorial Guide to Soviet Era Weaponry—quickly estimated the speed of my attacker in relation to the force of gravity, and determined the exact right moment to drop the book over the railing.

  From below came the distinct thud of book colliding with skull, followed by the grunt of the assassin collapsing.

  Contrary to everything Mike Brezinski had ever claimed, I had just found a real-world application for algebra.

  I dashed up to the fourth floor and found a door that looked as though it hadn’t been opened in years. It led to a dingy old stairwell. One more flight up brought me into a long, wide hallway lined with imposing office doors. I dashed down it, scanning the nameplates on each: Dean of Student Affairs; Vice Dean of Risk Assessment; Director of Counterespionage. Finally, in the center, I found a door marked “Principal.”

  From the direction I’d come, I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. More than one set.

  I threw myself against the principal’s door.

  It was locked. I bounced off it and landed on my ass in the hall.

  There was a computerized keypad to the right of the door, a tiny screen above it reading ENTER ACCESS CODE.

  No one had said anything about access codes.

  I glanced back toward the dingy stairwell. The footsteps were louder, as though my enemies were almost to the door. They’d emerge within seconds, far too little time for me to race to the safety of the far end of the hall.

  The principal’s door was the only escape route, and I could think of only one way to get through it.

  I flipped on my Taser and jammed it into the keypad. The tiny screen flickered as I shocked the system. Then the electricity overloaded, and every light in the hall blew out, plunging me into darkness.