by Stuart Gibbs
However, Alexei looked the angriest of all of the Furies. He was thirty-two years old and built like a lumberjack, with broad shoulders and thick arms. He had short blond hair and blue eyes and a swastika tattoo on the biceps of his left arm. There was one photo in particular that struck Charlie. Alexei was passing a girl on the street, a Middle Eastern woman who looked somewhat like Charlie. Alexei was glaring at her with pure, unadulterated rage, as though he despised her for merely existing. It was the type of look that sent a shiver down Charlie’s spine, a look that indicated Alexei Kolyenko would have no concern with engineering the deaths of millions of people. Maybe he would even be happy to do it.
The other men were merely his followers. Though the Furies didn’t seem particularly impressive on paper, Charlie knew not to underestimate them.
Charlie had read quite a bit about criminals. Contrary to what movies showed, most of them weren’t particularly intelligent. The greatest heists in history hadn’t been conducted by brilliant criminal masterminds, but by dumb men who got lucky. The world’s most infamous serial killers had all been unimpressive losers who had been unsuccessful at just about everything except murdering random helpless people. Even Adolf Hitler, the most horrible person in recent human history, had been a failure for much of his life.
So Charlie read everything the CIA had on each of the Furies, just in case it turned out to be important later. Alexei. Marko. Oleg. Fez. Hans. Vladimir. Six men who looked ordinary but who were determined to cause pain and suffering for millions.
After she finished with that, there were two more files Dante had given her.
They were about agents Dante Garcia and Milana Moon. The idea being that Charlie ought to know who she was working with. No doubt Milana had also received quite a file on Charlie. Dante wouldn’t have needed a file; he knew plenty about Charlie already.
Similarly, Charlie knew plenty about Dante. But she skimmed his file anyhow: born and raised in Miami, statewide wrestling champion, nationally ranked debater, full ride at Georgetown University in DC, recruited by the CIA before he’d even graduated. No surprises there. There wasn’t any information on what she really wanted to know about: his cases. But all that was certainly top secret.
So Charlie turned her attention to Milana Moon.
As she had guessed, Moon was Native American. Blackfoot tribe, to be specific, from the reservation in northern Montana, just outside Glacier National Park. She had grown up poor, but had worked hard in school and had been a star athlete in track, earning herself a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. She had excelled there as well, attracting the attention of the CIA, which had hired her right after graduation and placed her in the agent training program at Camp Peary, aka the Farm. Milana had been one of the top recruits in her class and then quickly proved herself in the field as well. She had excellent marksmanship, spoke Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, and was cool under pressure. The file made it obvious why Dante had selected her for this mission. Although Charlie suspected there was one other factor that had influenced Dante’s decision as well.
He had the hots for Milana Moon.
Charlie had seen it in the way Dante looked at her. She had noticed how, when he had brought her a meal on the jet, he hadn’t asked what she wanted to drink. He had just known her well enough. But Charlie was sure Dante hadn’t said anything to Milana yet, and maybe he never would, because dating a fellow agent was probably against the rules at the CIA—or at the very least it was frowned upon. And Dante wasn’t the kind of guy who broke the rules, even if it meant having an unrequited crush.
Charlie thought this was ridiculous. But then, she had always thought that rules were for other people.
Now, as the jet taxied across the tarmac in Greenland, Charlie set down the files and peered out the window. The base sat on the edge of Baffin Bay, but it was a winter night in the arctic, and Charlie couldn’t even see as far as the water. It was pitch-black outside—and probably had been since noon. A howling wind was blowing so hard that the plane shuddered and the snow whipped sideways. Stands of klieg lights were arrayed along the edges of the runway, but even their powerful beams barely made a dent in the darkness. All Charlie could make out were a few Quonset huts, a fuel truck, and an air force man swaddled from head to toe in winter gear, obviously wondering what he had done wrong to end up assigned to this godforsaken place.
The jet came to a stop, and Milana shut down the engines. The airman waddled toward the plane, looking miserable, signaling to Milana that she should stay inside but open the door for him.
Charlie, Dante, and Milana zipped their ski parkas back on. Charlie pulled on her gloves and jammed her feet back into her ski boots too, preparing for the door to be opened.
Milana unlocked the door from the inside. A gust of subzero wind and snow instantly rushed through the gap, making Charlie shiver despite her heavy clothes.
The airman stepped inside, and Milana shut the door behind him, cutting out the frigid winds again. The airman looked like he was fresh out of the academy, maybe twenty-one years old, and his face was raw from the cold. “Greetings, Agents,” he said. “Welcome to Thule Air Base.” Then his gaze fell upon Charlie and he gawked, wondering what a girl her age could possibly be doing there.
“It’s bring-your-daughter-to-work day at the CIA,” Charlie told him. “Dad and Mom here are taking me on a covert mission to thwart some illegal arms dealers. They say if I help they’ll give me a lollipop.”
“Ignore her,” Milana said, and then started to discuss the fueling procedures with the raw-faced airman.
The airman got on his walkie-talkie and talked to the driver of the fuel truck, who drove it over to the jet, then got out into the cold and started moving the gas lines about. He looked even more miserable than the first airman. Through the icy window, Charlie saw a dozen signs warning people that the tanker was flammable and there should be no smoking or open flames anywhere near it.
She slipped her hand into her parka, clutching the item hidden away in the pockets, the item the CIA had missed.
There was a thunk as the gas line was connected to the jet.
The young air force guy kept talking to Milana, drawing out the discussion. Charlie figured he was excited to see a woman, as there probably weren’t many stationed up here in Thule. Even more likely, he was looking for an excuse to stay inside the warm jet and not go back out on the freezing tarmac.
Charlie returned to her files, finding herself drawn once again to the unsettling photos of Alexei Kolyenko.
Finally, the air force guy seemed to run out of things to say. He had Milana sign some forms on a clipboard, then said, “You folks ought to be finished in a few minutes. Good luck on your mission. I apologize, but it’s about to get nasty cold in here again.” Then he turned around and opened the door.
In the next instant, Charlie sprang from her seat, shoved the air force guy aside, and dove out the door.
The cold hit her like a truck. It was far worse than anything she had ever experienced, certainly well below zero, and then there was a brutal windchill as well. It made her muscles tense and sapped her strength, but she willed herself forward anyhow. It was hard going. Her ski boots weren’t made for running, and the tarmac was icy, but then, she wasn’t planning to go far.
As she had expected, Dante was right behind her. He had probably been keeping a close eye on her, hoping she wouldn’t do anything stupid, but prepared just in case.
Although he probably hadn’t expected she would do anything nearly as stupid as what she now planned.
“Charlie, freeze!” Dante shouted. “I’ll shoot you if I have to!”
Charlie stopped beside the fuel tanker and turned around. Dante was only fifteen feet away, but it was hard to see him through all the blowing snow. She could still make out the gun in his hands, though.
The wind was so loud, Charlie had to yell over it. “I know you won’t shoot me, Dante!”
“What are you thinking here?” Dante
asked. “There’s nowhere to run. There’s no one else here but military personnel, who’ll hand you right back to me the moment they catch you—and if, by some miracle, you got past all of them, there’s nothing but a thousand miles of snow, ice, and polar bears in every direction.”
Charlie took her hands from her pockets. In her right, she was holding the object the CIA hadn’t found on her. A cigarette lighter.
The lighter wasn’t a cheap plastic one from a convenience store. It was carved from jade with an intricate dragon etched into it. The kind of fancy family heirloom that got passed down from one generation to another.
Dante’s eyes went wide at the sight of it.
The airman stepped out of the jet behind Dante and freaked out.
“Whoa!” he cried. “Do not light that! You’ll blow us all to bits!”
Milana emerged from the jet door. She had her gun stiff-armed, aimed directly at Charlie.
Charlie ignored her and kept her gaze fixed on Dante. “Tell me what really happened in Bern. The truth this time.” The air around her was thick with the stench of fuel exhaust. “Or I flick this and we see what happens.”
“Dang it, Charlie!” Dante said. “Would you just get back in the jet? Stop screwing around out here before you kill us all!”
Charlie placed her thumb on the plunger of the lighter.
“Okay!” Dante held up his free hand, palm out, signaling Charlie to be calm. “Fine! I’ll tell you everything!”
“It’s about time,” Charlie said. “I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to crap like this.” She took her thumb off the plunger but didn’t put the lighter away. “I’m all ears, Dante. Start talking.”
TWELVE
Charlie had been outside for less than a minute, but it was so cold on the tarmac that she could already feel her core temperature dropping and her extremities going numb. Still, she stubbornly stood her ground, facing off against Dante. “What went wrong in Bern?”
“The Furies did make one of our men,” Dante admitted. “About ten days ago. I don’t know the full details, because I wasn’t on the mission. The guy had been working to infiltrate the group for weeks. He’d even made some progress. But he messed up. He made a mistake in his German that tipped them off that he was a spy. Or, heck, maybe they’d made him weeks before. I don’t know. But it blew the mission.”
“What happened to the agent?” Charlie demanded.
Dante didn’t answer for a few seconds, weighing his options. Finally, he said, “They killed him.”
This didn’t really surprise Charlie, but having Dante tell her the truth still shook her. Deep down inside, she had been hoping she had guessed wrong, but now the reality of it was overwhelming. Her legs suddenly felt weak. “What was the agent’s name?” she asked.
“I don’t see why that matters. . . .”
“What was his name?” Charlie shouted.
“Russo,” Dante said. “John Russo.”
“Was he a good agent?”
“Yes. He was one of our best.”
Charlie felt panic beginning to set in, in a way she had never experienced before. She felt the cold and the dark closing in, like they were going to crush her. She fought to keep her tough facade up, but she couldn’t do it. Instead she screamed at Dante, “You weren’t going to tell me? Didn’t you think I deserved to know?”
“I thought you’d be better off if you didn’t.” Dante sounded genuinely sad about this. He replaced his gun in the holster under his jacket. “Why don’t you get back in the jet, where it’s warm?”
“That jet is taking me to some place even more dangerous than here!” Charlie yelled. “People are getting killed over this equation! Good agents with plenty of training! And I’m only twelve! How could you possibly drag me into this?”
“I didn’t think I had a choice! If the Furies get Pandora, a lot more people will die than that one agent!”
“And your only choice was me? You ought to be protecting me, Dante! Not putting me in danger!”
Charlie was still holding the lighter in her hand, though in truth she had forgotten all about it.
Milana Moon hadn’t. She kept her gun trained on Charlie, just in case the girl did something stupid. Dante turned to Milana and gave her a slight shake of his head. Milana reluctantly lowered her gun, although she didn’t holster it.
Dante slowly approached Charlie through the blowing snow, his hands up where she could see them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have been honest with you. You deserved that. So know this: I’m being honest with you now. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe on this mission. I am only asking you to help advise us. I am not going to put you in harm’s way. I promise I will protect you.”
He was directly in front of Charlie now. She looked into his eyes and saw he was telling the truth this time.
Her own eyes were hurting from the cold. Her cheeks stung, and she realized there was ice on them. She had been crying, and her tears had instantly frozen to her skin.
Dante reached out to her and took the lighter from her hand. Then he examined it closely, intrigued. “This was Granddad’s?”
Charlie nodded, then stuffed her hands inside her pockets. The little bit of warmth made no difference at all. Her hands were freezing. She was freezing. She was starting to shiver uncontrollably.
Dante wrapped an arm around Charlie’s shoulders and led her back to the jet. On the way, he noticed the young airman was still staring at them, unsure what to do.
“Get back to work,” Dante told him.
The young airman nodded and scurried off across the tarmac, disappearing into the snowstorm.
As Dante and Charlie neared the jet door, Milana asked, “How is she, Dagger?”
“She’ll be fine,” Dante said. He led Charlie back up the steps and past Milana into the jet. In the brief amount of time the door had been open, the temperature had dropped like a rock; inside, the jet was now as frigid as a meat locker. Snow had blown through the open door and piled up on the carpet.
Charlie looked at Dante, curious. Though she would have never admitted it, having his arm around her had made her feel a lot better. Her panic had subsided, and she was beginning to feel normal again. “Dagger?” she asked teasingly. “Oooh. Very macho code name.”
“It has nothing to do with macho. It’s from my initials. Dante Alejandro Garcia. DAG. Dagger.”
“That’s right. You never did like Dante.” Charlie shuffled back to her usual seat, blowing on her hands to warm them.
Dante was still holding the lighter. He stared at it thoughtfully, running his thumb along the inlaid stone dragon. Then he noticed something. He shook the lighter but didn’t hear any liquid sloshing inside. “There’s no fuel in this.”
“Nah,” Charlie said. “It ran out years ago. But I don’t smoke.”
“So you were bluffing out there?”
“Of course. I’m not stupid enough to blow us up. I’m a genius, remember?”
Milana Moon stepped inside the jet, closing the door behind them, cutting out the howling wind and the snow. She hadn’t heard everything Dante and Charlie had said outside, but she had heard enough. Enough to finally make sense of the dynamics between them and to be upset at Dante for not being honest with her about it all.
“She’s your sister?” Moon asked angrily.
“Half sister,” Dante corrected, cramming the lighter into his pocket. “Now, let’s turn the heat up and get the heck out of here.”
THIRTEEN
Even though Dante and Charlie had the same father, they hadn’t really considered each other family. There was a sixteen-year age gap between them, and they had grown up far apart, Dante in Miami, Charlie in Burlington, Vermont. They had seen each other only three times in their lives before Dante had shown up in Snowmass.
As far as Dante was concerned, the only thing they really had in common was a hatred of their father. Larry Thorne was an accountant who had abandoned Dante’s mother when she was t
hree months pregnant. She had punished him by not even passing his last name on to her son, using her own surname instead.
Larry remained married to Charlie’s mother, but Charlie always wished that wasn’t the case. Not that she was a big fan of her mother, either. Which was why she had hightailed it to college as soon as possible. Her father had always been a jerk, and her mother was vain and neglectful. Neither of them had been interested in spending much time with Charlie until they realized she was unusually intelligent—a revelation that it had taken them a disturbingly long time to reach. Charlie had continually told them that the reason for her rowdiness in preschool and kindergarten was that she was bored. They had ignored this and simply assumed she was a bad student and a liar. For a while they had even thought she might be mentally deficient.
Finally, a kindergarten teacher named Mrs. Peacock hadn’t just listened to Charlie, but had thought to give her an IQ test. And then Mrs. Peacock had given her three more, just to confirm that the staggering scores weren’t a mistake. When confronted with the evidence that Charlie was a genius, her parents had finally taken an interest in her—but not as a daughter so much as a meal ticket. Their first instinct had not been to try to get her into a school where she could thrive and be challenged, but to call talent agents. They had spent most of her elementary school years trying to make her the star of her own reality show.
However, to the chagrin of her parents, Charlie wasn’t merely intelligent; she was also socially adept. By then she had discovered that not everyone was as impressed with her unusual mental abilities as her parents were. In fact, those abilities often seemed to alienate people. So Charlie had learned to keep them a secret.