by Stuart Gibbs
“Just like you did when you spoke to Ben on my phone the other night,” Zoe said.
“Yes,” Erica said. “We Hales can be very devious. It’s our thing. But Grandpa had one other reason for playing along. Have any of you ever been to the Pentagon?”
“My family took a tour once,” Jawa said.
“How long did it take you to get through security?” Erica asked.
“An hour,” Jawa replied.
“Exactly,” Erica said. “And that’s after Pentagon security has already run a dozen background checks on you, because you normally have to apply for access months ahead of time. In addition, most people can only visit the official public levels, not the top secret levels down below. Now, imagine that my grandfather wants to get all of us inside the Pentagon quickly. If he has to go through the proper chain of command, it’ll take hours to get approval, and it’ll probably tip off SPYDER that we’re onto them. But if he turns us over to the military . . .”
“They walk us right through the door themselves,” Chip finished. “You have to hand it to that old coot. He’s as sneaky as they come.”
I wasn’t convinced as quickly as Chip, but as I mulled over Erica’s argument, it began to make sense. I was pretty sure Cyrus hadn’t been on our side throughout the tribunal; it seemed he’d truly suspected we were working for SPYDER for at least the first half of it. But once I had explained what I thought SPYDER’s plan was, things had changed. Cyrus had remained suspicious and crusty on the outside, but he’d suddenly been in quite a hurry to end the proceedings and hand us over to the military.
Beside me, Mike wasn’t completely convinced himself. “Are you positive that’s what your grandfather is up to?” he asked Erica. “Because if you’re wrong, we’re all about to have a really terrible morning.”
“I’m ninety percent positive,” Erica said. “First of all, if SPYDER has gone through all this trouble to elevate Elmore Finch, then they probably want him to take control of the portable launch system as soon as possible. Which would be first thing this morning. Second, given the pattern of turns we’ve been making, this paddy wagon is definitely heading for the Pentagon.”
“You’ve been keeping track of every turn this vehicle has made?” Jawa asked, astonished.
“Yes,” Erica said. “As well as timing how long we’ve spent on every road to assess how far we’ve gone on them and then comparing all that to the complete map of the city that I’ve memorized. Haven’t all of you been doing that too?”
“Er . . . yes,” Chip lied. “That’s exactly what we’ve been doing. And you’re right. We’re heading for the Pentagon.”
We all quickly agreed with him, pretending to be equally as talented as Erica.
The paddy wagon suddenly slowed to a stop. From the front, we could hear the driver talking to someone outside the vehicle.
“We’re at the security checkpoint for the Pentagon’s eastern gate,” Erica said. “Since we’re prisoners and they’re taking us to an information-acquisition complex that isn’t even supposed to exist, seeing as it violates the Geneva Conventions, they’re bringing us in through the secure zone, rather than any of the official entrances.”
“There’s one more thing,” I said. “Even if we are getting inside past security, we’re still prisoners.” I jangled my handcuffs. “What are we supposed to do about that?”
“I’m guessing Grandpa has a plan,” Erica told me.
All we could do after that was hope she was right.
PERSONAL ISSUES
The Pentagon
Arlington, Virginia
February 13
0745 hours
The paddy wagon passed through two more security checkpoints, then pulled a U-turn and backed up to the Pentagon.
“The Pentagon is the largest office building on the planet,” Erica informed all of us. “It covers more than twenty-eight acres. There are more than seventeen miles of hallways and twenty-six thousand employees. I don’t know where Elmore Finch will be in all that, but we’re going to do our best to find him. Be on the alert for anything out of the ordinary. Keep your eyes and ears open. Oh, and remember, we’re not supposed to know Grandpa is on our side, so treat him with utter contempt.”
The engine shut off. We heard the rear doors being unlocked. Four heavily armed soldiers opened them. They were all wearing green army camouflage outfits, which was a little strange, given that we were a dozen miles from the closest forest.
We had backed into a covered loading area. It was quite dim, and yet after the darkness of the paddy wagon, the sudden light was still blinding. I had to blink a bit before I could make out the faces of the soldiers.
They were all quite shocked to see us. “They’re just kids!” one exclaimed. He seemed like the leader, and he was built like an oak tree. The name stitched into his camouflage was MARTINEZ.
“Don’t let that fool you, soldier,” Cyrus Hale warned. We couldn’t see him, as he was still somewhere off to the side of the paddy wagon. “They are extremely dangerous. Do not drop your guard for a second.”
“Get out of the vehicle,” Martinez ordered us.
We obeyed, filing out onto the loading dock.
I quickly assessed our surroundings. The rest of the convoy that had accompanied us—three black SUVs, of course—had parked around the paddy wagon. Several other soldiers climbed out of them along with a stern-looking woman I assumed was Felicia DuVray. She wore a military uniform so starched it looked bulletproof. Everything about Felicia seemed starched as well: her dour expression, her crisp movements, her snow-white hair, which was pulled back into a bun so tightly, it looked as though it might be painful.
I spotted Alexander Hale. He looked miserable. Obviously, Cyrus hadn’t let him in on his secret plan to sneak us into the Pentagon.
If that was really Cyrus’s secret plan at all. There was still a chance that Erica was completely wrong and that we were all on our way to having the worst morning of our lives.
Beyond the soldiers, the glare of daylight made it hard to see much outside the loading area, but I could make out the security checkpoints we’d come through and several square acres of Pentagon parking lot.
“Eyes forward, kid!” Martinez informed me. “Keep moving!”
I fell in line with my fellow students.
The soldiers lined us up two by two, as though we were boarding Noah’s ark: Erica and me in the front, Mike and Zoe behind us, Chip and Jawa at the rear. Then they herded us toward a secure door flanked by two more soldiers.
Cyrus emerged from around the paddy wagon and approached Erica. “I’m glad to see you’re all right,” he said. “I trust your friends filled you in on what transpired while you were asleep?”
Erica spat in his face.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Cyrus said sourly.
“Erica!” Alexander gasped, mortified this had occurred in front of so many people. “We do not spit on our grandfathers in this family!”
“That’s all right. I deserved it.” Cyrus wiped the phlegm off his cheek with a handkerchief, then put a hand on Erica’s arm. “Sweetheart, this isn’t personal. . . .”
Erica recoiled from him. “Don’t touch me. You don’t get to condemn me to this and still act like my grandfather.”
“You brought this on yourself,” Cyrus told her coldly. “I can’t get you out of it. But you can. Just give us the information we need. Do it now, before we’re forced to take more extreme measures.”
Felicia DuVray smiled at this, like it excited her.
Erica didn’t deign to answer Cyrus. She spun away from him and marched onward.
The soldiers led us through the secure door and into the Pentagon.
Even though Erica had warned me how big it was, I was still taken aback.
The outer hallway, which looped the entire building, stretched a mind-boggling distance in both directions. Even at the early hour, it was filled with hundreds of people, as crowded as an airline concourse. Most of them wore
military uniforms, but there were quite a few civilians as well. I noticed a group of older men in military tracksuits who appeared to be simply cruising the halls for exercise, the same way civilians might walk laps around the shopping mall. There were also a few souped-up golf-cart-like vehicles zipping about, shuttling around people who were too important, too hurried, or too lazy to walk through the miles of hallways.
A lot of people were carrying Starbucks coffee cups. Or takeout bags from McDonald’s.
“Is there a Starbucks and a McDonald’s in the building?” I asked Erica.
“Yes,” she replied, in an all-business tone that indicated she had already put the exchange with Cyrus behind her. “In fact, there are four Starbucks. As well as two dozen other places to eat, a tailor, six gift shops, five post office branches, a florist, a barbershop, two pharmacies, and a hospital. It takes so long to get in and out of here, it saves time to have all these businesses inside the building.”
“So it’s like a self-contained city in here,” Zoe said.
“Doesn’t look like it’s too hard to be a barber here,” Mike observed. “Everyone has the exact same haircut.”
This was true. Every man we passed had a military crew cut. So did a lot of the women.
“None of them looks like a potential SPYDER operative,” Chip said.
“A good SPYDER operative wouldn’t look like a potential SPYDER operative,” Jawa pointed out.
“Well, then, since none of them looks like a potential SPYDER operative, I guess they all look like potential SPYDER operatives,” Chip replied.
It was the same problem I’d had at the White House: Anyone SPYDER had corrupted would blend in perfectly. It would be impossible to pick them out with a mere glance.
We turned into another hallway. This one angled toward the middle of the Pentagon, slicing through five rings of offices, then dead-ended an eighth of a mile away at a bank of windows that revealed a central courtyard. The courtyard had a large lawn, several trees, and what looked like a nice outdoor café. In front of the windows was a glass case holding two dozen swords.
“Are those swords for emergency attacks?” Chip asked.
“No,” Erica said disdainfully. “That’s a museum case. There are thousands of military artifacts on display in the Pentagon. Those appear to be part of a presentation on Revolutionary War armaments.”
I could barely even make out the swords from our distance, let alone tell what war they were from, but I had no doubt that Erica was right.
The soldiers led all of us into a stairwell. We descended two floors to yet another secure door. This one had an ID card scanner. The soldiers all looked to Felicia DuVray expectantly; apparently, none of them ranked highly enough to access this area.
Felicia swiped her ID through the scanner with surgical precision. The door clicked open, and our procession passed through.
The basement level was laid out the same way as the ground floor, only due to the elevated security, there was almost no one else down there. Now the enormous size of the building made everything feel eerier somehow—as though, if the military wanted to, they could lock us up down there and no one would ever be able to find us again. Our footsteps echoed ominously throughout the empty halls.
There were a hundred things I should have been concentrating on, but at the moment only one was at the forefront of my mind—and it had nothing to do with SPYDER. Thanks to the sedative she’d been darted with, Erica was in a rare mental state. For once in her life, she’d actually answer me honestly. However, it would probably wear off soon, and there was a question I was desperate to ask her. It was a completely unprofessional question, but I had been dying to know the answer for weeks.
So I leaned in close to her as we walked and whispered, “Erica, do you like me?”
She gave me a wary glance. “You’re taking advantage of my weakened mental condition.”
“Yes, and you’re avoiding the question. Do you like me?”
“You mean as a friend?”
“No. I mean as more than that.”
“You mean the way you like me?”
“Er . . . yes.”
Erica pursed her lips tightly. It seemed like she was fighting the urge to respond to me truthfully. Finally, she said, “It’s complicated.”
This was disappointing. I had been hoping for something more along the lines of “Yes. I love you with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns.”
“Oh,” I said sadly, and then, before I could stop myself, asked, “Why? Do you like Mike instead?”
“Mike?” Erica asked, confused, then nodded back to where Mike was following just out of earshot behind us. “That Mike?”
“Yes.”
“Why would I like him?”
It wasn’t a particularly nice thing for someone to say about my best friend, and yet it filled my heart with joy. “Well, because he’s Mike. He’s cool and fun and you actually complimented him the other day. . . .”
“That doesn’t mean I like him.”
“Well, how should I know that? You never compliment anybody.”
“That’s not true. I gave you a compliment only two months ago.”
“Most people do it a little more often than that.”
“Really?”
“Yes!” We rounded a corner into an even eerier hallway. About a hundred yards ahead of us, two more soldiers stood guard by a nondescript white door. It seemed this was where we were heading, which meant I was running out of time to get an answer from Erica. “If it’s not Mike, what’s so complicated about us?”
“Everything. Our lives are complicated, Ben.” Erica’s tone caught me by surprise. There was a sadness in her voice that I’d never heard before. “If we went to a normal school, it’d be weird enough with me being two years older than you. But we don’t go to a normal school. There’s nothing normal about our lives at all. We live in a dangerous world, and serious relationships make it even more dangerous. . . .”
“Not necessarily. You can’t get by in this business without friends.”
“You’re not asking to be friends. You’re asking for much more. And that kind of emotion is dangerous. It affects our ability to make decisions. It gives our enemies leverage over us. It creates an enormous risk.”
“So, you’re planning to go your whole life without ever connecting with someone?”
“I connected with someone once before. And look how that worked out.”
“Erica, I’m not Joshua Hallal.”
“I know. But . . .” Erica turned to me for the first time since we’d started this conversation. She looked torn between opening up and fighting to keep closed. To my surprise, emotion won out. “The other thing is, Ben . . . I’m complicated. Think about the family I’ve grown up in. My father’s a liar. My mother kept her job a secret from him. And look how my grandfather’s using me right now. That’s what this job does to relationships. It screws everything up. But I’m always going to be a spy, no matter what. So something has to give.”
“Maybe not. We could try it.”
The soldiers in front of us snickered. Despite my attempts to whisper, they had probably heard everything we’d said.
Erica realized this as well. Her eyes narrowed at them angrily. And yet she still answered me. “I’m not ready for a relationship, Ben. And I don’t think you are either. Sorry. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but you wanted the truth, so you’re getting it. Plus, there’s a fifty percent chance we’re not going to make it out of here alive. . . .”
“What?” I gasped.
“Admittedly, that’s a rough estimate, but we’re in pretty dire straits right now.”
“Fifty percent?” I repeated, still stuck on those odds.
“You did want honesty, didn’t you?”
“Um . . . maybe not that much honesty.”
“The fact is, we have to find Elmore Finch right away, so we’ll need to do something drastic to get away from all these soldiers.”
The so
ldiers in front of us glanced back our way, their steps faltering slightly. They’d obviously overheard this, but they didn’t know whether to take it seriously or not.
“She’s joking,” I said.
“No I’m not,” Erica told them. “If you don’t release us right now, I’ll be forced to knock you all unconscious.”
The soldiers laughed harder. “Yeah, right,” Martinez scoffed.
“I’d really prefer not to do it,” Erica said. “I don’t like the idea of hurting a soldier who serves this country. So why don’t you all just hand over your guns and walk away quietly? I know it sounds humiliating, but when we bust SPYDER, you’ll end up looking like heroes.”
We reached the protected door and came to a stop. Martinez stared down at Erica. “You’re going to hurt us?” he asked, amused.
“If I have to,” Erica replied casually.
“With your hands cuffed behind your back?”
“Oh,” Erica said. “Remember back on the loading dock, when my grandfather came over to me and I got all upset and spat in his face?”
“Yes.”
“That was all an act. He was really slipping me the key to the handcuffs.”
The soldiers’ eyes widened in surprise. Before they could even raise their guns, Cyrus launched himself into action. The soldiers had been distracted by Erica, so he quickly got the jump on them. Moving with the agility and speed of his granddaughter, he sent four men reeling within seconds.
Then Erica joined the fray. Like she’d said, her wrists were no longer cuffed behind her back. The whole time she’d been talking to me, she had been furtively unlocking them with the key Cyrus had given her. In the confined space of the hallway, it was as though a wildcat had been let loose in a chicken coop. She was a flurry of motion, punching, kicking, and pounding anything unfortunate enough to get in her way.
Chip, Jawa, and Zoe did their part as well. They still had their wrists cuffed, but each was formidable enough with only their legs, taking out the soldiers with powerful karate kicks—as well as the occasional knee to the crotch.