“Wait!” Hauser protested. “You can’t take those without filling out an H-33 Semiautomatic Request Form!”
“We’re on a mole hunt,” I said. “C’mon.”
“Really?” Hauser looked like a kid who’d just been offered a puppy. “Awesome!”
Erica frowned at me, but she didn’t take the time to argue. She simply ran out the door. I followed. Behind us, I could hear Hauser scrambling to grab a weapon of his own.
I got back on the phone. “Zoe, round up everyone you can and get out to the training grounds. We need to find Murray before he gets away.”
“Already mobilizing,” she said. “Shoot to kill?”
“Uh . . . I don’t think that’s necessary,” I replied. “Maybe just shoot to hobble.”
Erica darted across the quadrangle. It took everything I had to keep up with her. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “Anyone else you want to invite to the party?” she chided. “Your grandmother, maybe?”
“We can’t cover all two hundred ninety acres by ourselves,” I panted. “The more eyes we have out here, the better.”
Erica tried to give me a disapproving stare, but I could see she knew I was right.
Across the quad from us, the doors to the mess burst open. Students poured out, racing toward the training grounds. The troops had mobilized in a hurry. But then, since this was the first actual call to action at a campus full of wannabe spies, that wasn’t really surprising.
Erica and I were well ahead of the others, though. We plunged into the woods.
It had been bitterly cold in the two days since our war game, and what snow remained on the ground was now as hard as cement. Which meant Murray wouldn’t have left fresh tracks in it.
“Okay, math whiz,” Erica said. “Murray’s probably heading from Bushnell toward the closest point on the perimeter, and he has a two-minute jump on us. So what vector gives us the best chance of intercepting him?”
I considered all the variables, then pointed slightly north of due west. Erica adjusted her course and went that way. I followed dutifully.
We moved quickly through the forest, leaping downed trees, ducking branches, skidding on the ice. Erica stayed silent now, conserving her breath and her energy, so I did the same. Many of our fellow students weren’t as professional. I could hear them whooping and hollering as they came through the trees, like this was a party rather than a life-or-death mission.
We came upon the gully where Zoe had saved me two days before, which meant we were closing in on the perimeter. I didn’t see any evidence of Murray ahead. Not a footprint, not a flash of movement, not a white puff of exhaled breath in the cold. Either he’d made it to wall faster than I’d expected or—
A line of bullets tore across the ground by my feet.
“Ambush!” I dove for cover behind a log.
Erica flattened up against a tree ahead of me.
“Do you see where he is?” I asked her.
“That wasn’t from Murray!” she grumbled. “That was friendly fire!” Then she yelled back into the woods. “Lay off the artillery, you dimwits! It’s Erica and Ben! We’re the good guys!”
“Sorry!” I heard Warren yell. “My bad!”
Erica took off once again.
As I staggered back to my feet, however, the frozen crust of snow beneath me gave way and collapsed into the gully, taking me with it. I tumbled head over heels, smashed through an ice-covered gorse bush, and thudded into the streambed at the bottom.
On the ridgeline above, Erica continued on without so much as a second glance my way. I knew that stopping to help me would have jeopardized any chance she had of catching Murray, but I was still annoyed just the same.
I tried to sit up, but my M16, which was slung over my shoulder, had lodged in some rocks. While I futilely tried to wrench free, the rest of the student body thundered past on the ridge, leaving me behind.
“You all right?”
I turned to find Chip skidding down through the snow toward me.
“Yeah, just stuck,” I said. “How’d you . . . ?”
“Hauser called me. I was out on the artillery range. Is Tina on the run?” Chip reached behind me, twisted the gun free, and helped me to my feet.
As I stood, three pounds of snow that had lodged in my jacket slid straight down my back and into my pants, freezing my rear end. “It’s not Tina. It’s Murray. He set her up.”
Chip’s jaw practically dropped to his knees. “Murray Hill?! No way. That guy’s a total slacker.”
“No, he’s a master at getting people to underestimate him . . .” I trailed off as my own words sank in. Murray had consistently defied our expectations. He’d convinced everyone he was a washout, fed misinformation to our investigation, and played everyone off each other. Every time we thought we knew what he was going to do, he’d done something else.
A revelation hit me. “He’s not going for the wall! He’s doubled back!”
I scrambled back up the slope of the gully as fast as I could.
“Wait!” Chip yelled. “How do you know?”
“I just do!” There was no time to explain it to him. I was only putting it together as I ran. Murray knew he’d been seen heading for the training grounds. Heck, knowing Murray, maybe he’d even allowed himself to be seen. Murray wasn’t very athletic, though. He knew he didn’t have much of a chance of beating Erica to the wall, but if he let her think he was heading to the wall—as well as every other student on campus—then he’d leave the path to the front gate wide open. Another diversion. All he’d have to do was find a place to hide, wait for everyone to stampede past him, and then go the other direction.
I raced back through the woods. Behind me, I heard Chip rallying the others in his own personal way. “Turn around, you morons! Ben says Murray’s doubled back!”
Far ahead of me, through the trees, I caught a glimpse of Murray climbing down out of a huge oak. He saw me as well, paused while he considered all his options . . . and then fled like a coward.
By the time I emerged from the woods, he was all the way across the quad, skirting the Hale Building on his way toward the front gate.
“Murray! Stop!” Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d swung the gun off my shoulder. “Don’t make me use this!”
Murray froze and turned around, allowing me to see he also had a gun in his hand. He aimed right back at me. When he spoke, any friendship he’d ever showed me was gone from his voice. Instead, it was cold and disdainful. “Just back off and let me go, Ben. You don’t want to duel me. I know you can’t hit the side of a barn from that distance.”
Adrenaline coursed through me. My heart hammered in my chest. “Drop your gun, Murray! You’re under—”
Murray didn’t even let me finish. He opened fire. The first bullets plugged a tree two feet to my right.
I had the chance to shoot back only twice before taking cover. As I dove, I felt a round tear through the sleeve of my jacket and nick my left arm.
Neither of my shots came anywhere close to Murray.
But then, I wasn’t aiming for him. He was wrong about one thing. I could hit the side of a barn from that distance. More to the point, I could hit the roof of the Hale Building.
The ice on the steep peaked roof had frozen into a crust several inches thick. Both my bullets pounded into it, sparking a network of fractures. A few small glaciers calved free and rocketed off the roof, knocking a dozen massive icicles loose from the eaves en route.
Murray was too busy shooting at me to see it coming. The ice plummeted four stories and flattened him. He face-planted in the snow, out cold.
I got back to my feet, clutching my arm. In the movies when heroes get winged by bullets, they always shake it off and keep going, like they’ve been bit by a mosquito. In real life it freaking hurt. It felt like someone had dragged a red-hot poker across my arm—and then punched me a few times for good measure. Thankfully, the wound wasn’t too deep and wasn’t bleeding too badly.
My he
art was pounding so loudly, I didn’t hear the other students until they were almost upon me. Chip was the first to arrive, though everyone else wasn’t far behind.
“You took out the bad guy?” Chip asked. “Nice!” He raised his hand for a high five.
“Sorry. I can’t do that right now,” I said, pointing to my wounded arm.
“You got shot?” Zoe was suddenly at my side, her eyes even wider than usual. “Awesome! You’re the first in our class to have a battle scar!”
“That wasn’t from me, right?” Warren asked. “I mean, back in the woods there, you looked like Murray.” He stopped and gaped at Murray across the quad. “Holy cow! You killed him!”
A series of gasps rippled through the crowd.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, relax,” Erica sighed, emerging from the trees. “Ripley’s not a killer. Murray’s unconscious.” She stopped beside me and casually inspected my wound. “Aw, that’s barely even a scratch. You’ll be fine. Just keep pressure on it.”
She stared across the snow at the prone body of the mole, taking everything in. For a few moments she seemed to be her usual, distant self, and I wondered if I’d annoyed her by taking out a bad guy before the entire class when she’d really wanted to do it. But then she turned back to me, patted my shoulder, and smiled. “Good work.”
Another series of gasps rippled through the crowd. But now everyone was reacting to Erica. It was the first time many of them had ever seen her touch another human being without being involved in hand-to-hand combat. I think, for a lot of my fellow students, getting Erica to smile was even more impressive than rooting out the mole.
I grinned back. In that instant all my misgivings about the Academy of Espionage flitted away. Sure, the place was poorly managed, run-down, and occasionally life-threatening, but I now felt like I belonged there. I’d proven myself, I’d made friends, I’d earned the respect of the most beautiful girl I’d ever met . . . and I’d thwarted the plot of a criminal mastermind to behead the entire intelligence community of the United States of America.
Regular school couldn’t hold a candle to that.
For the first time since I’d arrived on campus, I had a sense that everything was going to work out for me there.
Across the quad Alexander Hale emerged from behind the chemistry building with his gun raised. He cautiously approached Murray’s prone body and nudged it with his foot a few times to make sure he was really unconscious.
A door banged open, and a dozen men in three-piece suits and military uniforms poured out of the Hale Building. I recognized the principal’s red face among them. “Is that the kid who planted the bomb?” he asked.
“Yes, but he won’t be causing us any more trouble.” Alexander set one foot upon Murray’s haunch and posed dramatically, as if Murray were a grizzly bear he’d downed. “I’ve neutralized him.”
The espionage elite and military leaders reacted with awe. There were shouts of “Well done” and “Bravo!” A few actually applauded.
Alexander bowed dramatically, soaking up their praise.
I turned to Erica, stunned. “Did your father just steal all the credit for what I’ve done?”
“Looks that way.” Erica put a friendly arm around my shoulders and smiled. “Welcome to the wonderful world of espionage.”
From:
Office of Intelligence Coordination
The White House
Washington, DC
To:
Director of Internal Investigations
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Classified Documents Enclosed
Security Level AA2
For Your Eyes Only
After reading the enclosed transcript, it is evident that considerable work lies ahead of us. It appears that reevaluation of the governance of the Academy of Espionage and the CIA itself is in order. It is shocking and dismaying that the only person in the entire intelligence community to uncover direct evidence of SPYDER is a first year at the academy. Worse, a first year who didn’t even officially qualify for entry. Immediate further investigation into this nefarious organization must proceed at all costs.
To that end, I recommend Benjamin Ripley’s acceptance into the school be made official. He has certainly earned it. As he remains a target for SPYDER, he should be given K-24 security status—although at this time, it is probably too early to brief him on Operation Enduring Assault. If he knew that he’d probably flip out. Instead, allow him to once again believe he is a normal student at the academy whose life is not in the slightest bit of danger.
In addition, as far as the investigation of SPYDER is concerned, I recommend immediate activation of aka Klondike. I am fully aware of the inherent dangers in doing so, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If SPYDER is not neutralized soon, this could portend the end of the intelligence community—and perhaps even the United States of America—as we know it.
My best to Betty and the kids.
Director of Covert Affairs
Stuart Gibbs, Spy School
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