Meanwhile, the students at spy school were the cream of the crop from around the country. They were brilliant. They were athletic. They were awe-inspiring. There were students who could defeat ten ninjas at once, students who could take out snipers while riding a horse, students who could build bombs out of household objects and chewing gum, and at least two who’d mastered piloting a helicopter while fighting an assailant with a knife (at least on the simulator). I’d begun to understand why my math skills alone hadn’t been enough for me to make the cut.
But I was still determined to prove I belonged there. As tedious as the classes were, I’d thrown myself into my studies, tearing through my textbooks, trying to learn everything I could. (I was still sleeping in the Box, and though it wasn’t pretty, the solitary confinement made it easy to study without distractions.) I put in extra time at the gym and the shooting range.
And then something like the war game would come along, proving that I still had light-years to go to catch up with my fellow students.
Zoe and I ducked into a hollow in the jagged rocks where she’d been hiding until I’d come along. “What’s the plan, Smokescreen?” she asked.
I had no idea what the plan was. The best I had was to hide in the rocks and wait for everyone else to kill one another off, which I knew wouldn’t go over well with Zoe or our instructors. However, I’d learned one valuable lesson from Alexander Hale: You could always get someone who respected you to do your thinking for you.
“I’m still assessing the options,” I said. “What’re you working on?”
“Trying to find the flag,” Zoe replied. “Chameleon’s out doing recon.”
A dove cooed close by, which was odd, given that they’d all gone south for the winter.
Zoe cooed back. “Here he is now.”
Warren slipped into our small cave. I wasn’t a big fan of his—he was peevish and had a big chip on his shoulder—but it was undeniable that he was an expert at camouflage. He’d used tree sap to gum large chunks of moss and tree bark all over him, then blackened his face with dirt. There were even a few snails perched on him for good measure. He looked like a walking terrarium.
Warren was momentarily startled to see me, then seemed caught between relief and annoyance. I’d already determined that he had a crush on Zoe—he followed her around like an enemy agent—and he didn’t like how much attention she gave me. On the other hand, he’d bought her stories about my skills hook, line, and sinker.
“Good news,” Zoe said. “Smokescreen’s teaming up with us!”
“Awesome,” Warren said flatly.
“What’d you find?” I asked.
“The blue team has their flag up on the roof of the old mill.” Warren sketched a map in the dirt with a stick. “There’s five men guarding, four at the corners, and Bull’s-eye’s up on the roof.”
Zoe frowned. Bull’s-eye Bailey was the best sniper in the school, a fifth year who was rumored to be able to decapitate a flea with a bullet from a mile away. “That’s gonna be tough.”
“No kidding,” Warren groused. “He took out three members of our team while I was watching.”
Zoe and Warren looked to me expectantly.
“I’ve never been to the mill,” I said. “Can you give me a breakdown?”
I hadn’t had time to see a lot of the campus. Given that I had potential assassins looking for me, wandering the grounds alone didn’t seem like such a hot idea. Besides, any time I hadn’t spent studying or training, I’d spent trying to help track down the mole.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t got far with that, either. Whenever I got close to Chip or Hauser, they’d seemed as intent on watching me as I was on watching them. Neither had done anything suspicious. I hadn’t found any other possible moles either. The only time I’d thought I had a lead was when I spotted Oleg Kolsky, a third year, covertly slipping off the campus. I’d immediately texted Erica, who’d gone after him—only to find he was making an unauthorized trip to the arcade.
Erica hadn’t made any more visits to my room, mostly staying in touch with me by somehow slipping notes into my new book bag. (Campus had provided me with an official academy bag after the ninjas had demolished my old one.) I had no idea how she did it. One day I’d tried to keep my bag in sight all afternoon, and there’d still been a note in it afterward. Her messages generally instructed me to leave my updates on various pieces of paper secreted around campus, which was embarrassing because I never had anything to report. Other than this, Erica showed no sign she knew I was alive, let alone collaborating on a mission with her. This was no different than the treatment she gave everyone else, though. She just sat by herself, always studying, immune to anyone else’s presence. Zoe called her Ice Queen.
Still, that was more contact than I’d had with Alexander, who seemed to have vanished from existence. I hadn’t heard squat from him.
“The mill’s built into the side of a hill by a stream toward the back of the property,” Zoe explained. “It’s been there since the Civil War. Big old stony thing. Probably the best way to attack is to come around the back and approach from up the hill.” She looked at me expectantly.
I imagined what Alexander would have said to me. “Good thinking. Let’s go with that. What else?”
Zoe beamed, actually thankful I’d praised her. Warren tried his best not to look sullen and failed.
“We’ll probably need a distraction to get Bull’s-eye’s attention,” Zoe suggested. “Chameleon, that’s you.”
Now Warren made no attempt to hide his sullenness. “Me? Why can’t I go after the flag?”
“Do you know how to take out a sniper?” Zoe asked.
“No,” Warren replied.
“Well, there you go,” Zoe said.
Unfortunately, I had no idea how to take out a sniper either. But I couldn’t tell them that. “How do we access the roof? Can we scale the walls?”
Zoe grinned proudly, then produced a grappling hook from her backpack. “I assume you know how to use this?” she asked.
I didn’t. I’d never even seen a grappling hook until that moment. Not outside of the movies. I couldn’t even imagine where she’d got it. I’d never noticed a grappling hook store—or a grappling hook section at Target—in my life. “Uh . . . I’ve never used this particular model before,” I covered. “I’ve only worked with the German ones.”
“Oh.” Zoe seemed embarrassed. “I don’t know how those work.”
“Then maybe you should work it,” I said. “I trust you.”
Zoe beamed again. Warren looked like he wanted to brain me with a rock.
“Let’s move,” I said, even though I would have been happy to stay in our little nook in the rocks all day. It was out of the wind and the sleet, and with all of us crammed in there, it was almost warm. But I had a reputation to keep.
We set out into the cold, working our way up the icy streambed, keeping low, listening to the sounds of battle in the distance. The fight had been going on for over an hour now; I had to assume we’d remained alive long enough to get C’s.
We synchronized our watches, then split up by a large oak tree around a bend from the old mill. Warren stayed where he was, curling up and tucking a sheet of moss over him so that he looked like a log. Zoe and I set out to loop around up the hill so we could approach the mill from behind. Birdcalls—or any vocalizations—were no longer an option for communication; the other team would see right through that. So the plan was simply that, in exactly half an hour, Warren would start a diversion. Then Zoe and I would use the grappling hook to scale the mill, take out Bull’s-eye and the other guards, and recover the flag.
The whole time, I had a secret plan, which was that somehow, in the next half hour, someone else from our team would come up with a better plan, wipe out the blue team, and win the game. But it didn’t seem likely. As we looped around, we noticed many members of the opposing team in the distance . . . and found quite a lot of evidence of our own team members’ deaths—usually splatte
rs of blue paint surrounding imprints of bodies in the snow. We didn’t say a thing, moving slowly and quietly.
After twenty-five minutes we’d crested the hill and had the mill in sight. The flag was still there; no one else had beat us to it. Around the mill the four guards were starting to get cold and bored. The two at the corners closest to us had left their posts and were chatting about something. Up on the roof, though, Bull’s-eye was still on alert, sweeping the horizon with his gun.
“You’ll have to take him out from here,” Zoe told me.
I’d been afraid she’d say that. She was right. It was our best chance to get him, and we wouldn’t stand a chance of recovering the flag if he was still alive. But I was still having trouble hitting a silhouette twenty feet away on the shooting range, let alone a live human 140 yards away in a sleet storm. I could instantly calculate where I had to aim to make the shot, but it took an entirely different set of skills to hold the gun perfectly steady and fire it. One major way movies differ from real life is that, in real life, guns are heavy. Aiming them is extremely difficult. Plus, with every shot, they kick back hard enough to bruise you, which means you have to aim again every time you fire. In the movies every hero seems to be able to hit an enemy right between the eyes, even when the enemy is at the far end of a football field, surrounded by innocent hostages, and the hero is dangling by one hand from a runaway helicopter. In real life even a crack shot like Bull’s-eye couldn’t pull that off.
On the other hand, if I fired at Bull’s-eye and missed—which was a very likely scenario—he stood a decent chance of being able to shoot me before I could regain my aim and hit him. Thus, shooting at him seemed like a very bad idea; but if I pawned off one more job on Zoe, she’d start to suspect I had no idea what I was doing.
“All right,” I said, setting up my gun. “But this isn’t going to be easy. I’m more of a hand-to-hand combat kind of guy.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why you’ll have to lead the attack once you’ve taken Bull’s-eye out.”
Me and my big mouth, I thought.
I set my gun in the crook of a tree, steadying it, then checked my watch. It was two minutes until Warren was due to create his diversion. Bull’s-eye would theoretically be distracted, and I’d theoretically take him out.
Zoe took out the telescopic range finder to coordinate my aim.
A twig snapped to our left.
It was far away, but the wind had stopped blowing for once and the sound carried.
Zoe and I turned that way, fearing an ambush.
Instead, we saw two members of the enemy team in the distance. They’d frozen in mid-step, aware they’d made a telltale noise and were looking around to see if anyone had heard. They were fifty yards away, too far to make out their faces.
We were hunkered down close to the base of the tree, hopefully blending in with it.
“Do they see us?” I whispered, barely loud enough to hear.
“I can’t tell. Check it out.” Zoe handed me the scope. I was in a better position to see our opponents than she was.
I put it to my eye with as little movement as possible. The scope worked like a digital zoom camera lens, automatically focusing on the others so I could instantly see who they were.
“It’s Chip and Hauser,” I said.
They didn’t see us. After a few seconds they seemed convinced no one had heard them and continued walking. Only, they weren’t coming toward the mill or heading toward where our flag was hidden. Instead, they slunk toward the back wall of the property, away from the war game altogether. They were taking great care to not be noticed.
“Looks like they’re not after us,” Zoe said with a sigh. Then she checked her watch. “T minus sixty seconds to diversion.”
She held out her hand for the scope, but I didn’t return it to her. I kept watching Chip and Hauser.
It seemed like they were up to something. If they were, the timing was right. The entire student body and faculty were focused on the war, but no one was keeping tabs on where anyone specific was at any exact time.
“Smokescreen!” Zoe hissed. “They’re unimportant. Gimme the scope!”
“Sorry. Something’s going on here.” I racked the focus on the scope, trying to see where they were heading. A small stone shed by the back fence sprang into view.
“T minus forty!” Zoe said. “We’re gonna blow the game!”
“This is more important,” I told her.
“C’mon, it’s only Chip,” she argued. “Chameleon’s about to martyr himself here!”
Chip and Hauser reached the shed. Chip reached into his pocket. . . .
A war whoop echoed from down the hill, past the mill.
It was Warren. Thirty seconds early. Apparently, we hadn’t synchronized our watches right.
Chip and Hauser turned toward the sound, startled.
“Nuts!” Zoe snatched the scope from my hand and spun it toward the mill.
I could barely see Chip and Hauser through the sleet without the scope.
I turned to grab it back, and as I did, I caught a glimpse of the disaster unfolding down the hill. A log had suddenly sprung to life and was charging headlong toward the mill, firing its gun indiscriminately. Warren.
The blue team guards all turned his way. Even Bull’s-eye was distracted.
I fired my gun at him, hoping for the best . . .
And pegged a tree ten feet away, missing my target by a mere 130 yards.
The guards and Bull’s-eye all opened fire at once upon Warren. He would have been an easy target, even for me. So many blue paintballs smeared him that, within three seconds, he looked like a Smurf.
As this happened, something burst out of the snow on our side of the mill, away from the action. It took me a moment to realize it was a person. Someone who’d somehow dug through the snow to within mere feet of the guards without them noticing. The person hit the mill wall running and scrambled up it like a squirrel, no grappling hook required.
“It’s Erica!” Zoe crowed, watching through the scope.
I’d already guessed. It couldn’t have been anyone else. But I grabbed the scope back to see her anyway.
Within seconds, she was atop the mill. Bull’s-eye was dead before he even knew she was there.
Other blue team members, ones we hadn’t even noticed, emerged from the woods around the mill, racing toward it to stop the inevitable. They opened fire on Erica, but it was too late. She’d already snatched the flag.
Everyone’s attention was on the mill.
Except that of two people, I guessed.
I took off in the direction I’d last seen Chip. Erica’s attack had taken only a few seconds, but I’d allowed myself to be distracted by it for too long.
I darted through trees and leapt rocks, skidding on ice and snow, until I reached the stone shed. Two sets of footprints led through the snow to the door, which was still propped open, thanks to a clod of ice that had got in the way.
I hesitated, unsure whether to yank the door open and surprise Chip and Hauser, but then the wind took care of the decision for me. It blew the door wide open.
The shed was only a few feet square, gardening implements piled several deep around the walls.
There was no sign of Chip and Hauser inside.
They’d vanished into thin air.
SURVEILLANCE
Sublevel 1
February 8
1445 hours
Although a lot of surprising things occurred at spy school, I was relatively sure no one there was capable of instantaneous molecular dispersion. I knew Chip and Hauser had come into the shed: Their wet boot prints still marked the floor. The trick was to figure out where they’d gone.
I was wary of going after them myself, given that both of them were significantly bigger than me and had several years more training in how to cause serious pain in other people. But there wasn’t much choice. In the distance I could see my team’s victory celebration had already begun. Zoe and e
veryone else were racing toward the mill, chanting Erica’s name. It would take several minutes for me to go back and convince anyone to come help me, minutes I didn’t have if I wanted to stay close to Chip and Hauser.
But beneath my concern, there was a current of excitement as well. Outside, everyone else was merely pretending to be spies, while I had been given the opportunity to actually be one. I had an honest-to-God mission: to find out what Chip was up to. And if I did it right, people might soon be chanting my name.
I cased the shed for clues. It was freestanding, which meant there was only one direction Chip and Hauser could have gone: down.
I looked at the floor again. It was weathered concrete, chipped and scarred from years of poor treatment. There was a small square of it in the center of the shed, three feet on each side, nested inside a larger square that made up the rest of the floor. Chip’s and Hauser’s boot prints were confined to the central square, except for one. This was a toe print on the far side from the door, as though one of them had been reaching for something high up.
I quickly examined the far wall. A rack of garden tools hung from it—hoes, rakes, shovels, hedge clippers—with rusty blades and well-worn handles. It was like I’d stepped into a gardening catalog in 1950. Above that was a second rack holding smaller items: lanterns, trowels, loops of extension cord. The toe print seemed angled toward a trowel. As both Chip and Hauser were at least six inches taller than me, I had to clamber onto a sack of fertilizer to reach it.
The trowel was welded to its rusty hook, so it didn’t come off. Instead, it swiveled upward when I grabbed it, like a light switch.
There was a soft metallic click from inside the wall, followed by a loud hiss from under the shed. The inner square of concrete suddenly lowered into the floor.
I pulled the shed door shut and leapt onto the square.