Spy School

by Stuart Gibbs

  The passage led to a spare living space. There were eight cots and dressers, two showers, some imitation-leather couches arranged around a squat coffee table, a small kitchenette and—because this bunker dated back to the Cold War—a full bar. Alexander went to the refrigerator and got himself a neon yellow sports drink. It looked like a radioactive urine sample.

  “How long do people usually stay down here?” I asked.

  Alexander shrugged. “Not very long. This was all built quite some time ago, when the higher-ups expected the Russians might take over the country at any instant. I won’t kid you, there’ve been a few scares over the years, but never anything serious. All troubles were attended to with great dispatch. I think the longest anyone ever had to be sequestered down here was a week.”

  “Have you ever had a situation like this before?” I asked.

  Alexander hesitated for a half second too long before answering, then realized he’d done it and owned it. “Not exactly. But don’t worry. We have the best of the best out there, working to protect you. And I’m in charge. I once had to protect the queen of Saudi Arabia from a horde of terrorists with nothing but a Swiss Army knife, and she made it through without a scratch. You’re going to be fine. Energy drink?” Alexander waved to the refrigerator.

  I shook my head. My stomach was too jittery to handle anything. My lunch was already threatening to make a return trip—although this was routine for sloppy joe days. “When you said the enemy is coming for me, what did that mean, exactly? Do they want to capture me . . . or kill me?”

  “I’ll be honest with you: We’re not sure.” Alexander sat on one couch and waved me to the other. “If I were a betting man, I’d say they’re looking to extract you. Someone with your talents is worth far more alive than dead. But I can’t guarantee that. You need to be on your guard at all times. Do you have a weapon on you?”

  “Uh, no,” I admitted. It was recommended that students at spy school carry weapons at all times, even when they didn’t have an active threat against their lives—and many did. But even though I’d been putting in a lot of time on the shooting range lately, I’d somehow managed to get less accurate. The head instructor, Justin “Deadeye” Pratchett, had even suggested it was safer for me to not have a loaded weapon—although he had given me a realistic-looking toy gun so I could bluff my way out of trouble without shooting myself in the foot. I told Alexander this and showed him the dummy gun.

  Alexander tutted disapprovingly. “If the going gets rough—not that it’s going to, of course—you’re going to need more than a toy.” He thumped the coffee table, and a secret panel slid open, revealing a dozen guns crammed inside, ranging from pistols to assault rifles. “And just in case,” Alexander said, “there’s a portable missile launcher in a panel behind the bar.”

  I eyed the guns warily, then glanced back down the hall toward the command center. Everything had been quiet since we’d arrived. Either the agents monitoring the security cameras hadn’t seen anything that concerned them, or they had seen something and done an incredible job of keeping calm about it. “What was the intel you got about the enemy?”

  “We picked up some chatter. The Agency has several massive computers devoted solely to monitoring every bit of electronic communication,” Alexander said. “Land lines, cell phones, satellite links, e-mail, Twitter feeds . . .”

  “We actually think the terrorists are going to Tweet their plans?” I asked.

  “We don’t want to rule out anything,” Alexander cautioned. “I once was able to bring down an entire terrorist cell in Kandahar because one of them posted pictures of their hideout on his Facebook page. Anyhow, we plugged the word ‘Jackhammer’ into the matrix this morning and got a hit right before I came to get you.”

  I perched on the edge of the sofa, worried. “What’d it say?”

  “The system doesn’t quite work like that,” Alexander explained. “It has to sort through an unfathomable amount of information. Trillions of bytes per second. All we know is when it picks up a lot of keywords at once. Which is what happened. We got ‘Jackhammer’ several times . . . in Arabic. And the phrase ‘Get Ripley’ once, also in Arabic. We have a hundred techs working on this right now, going through all that data, trying to find and decrypt the entire message—and hopefully, track it to its source. But that may take a while.”

  “How long?”

  “If we’re lucky, hours.”

  “And if we’re not?”

  Alexander averted his eyes. “Weeks.”

  I snapped to my feet. “You mean, I might have to stay down here until then?”

  “Of course not,” Alexander said in the most soothing voice he could manage. “I assure you, we will find these people long before that.”

  “When they try to kill me!”

  Alexander placed a comforting hand on my shoulder and steered me back to the couch. “Benjamin, I know this is stressful. I remember the first time I was made a target. It was no picnic. But I got through it all right, and you will too. In fact, if you think about this, it’s actually quite an exciting opportunity.”

  “How so?” I asked glumly.

  “You’ve only been here a few weeks and you’re already a key part of a real, live mission,” Alexander replied. “Do you have any idea how many of your classmates would kill for this chance? And I mean that literally. There are top-quality students out there who’ve only been running simulations for six years. There are actual spies who’ll never get to be a part of anything this exciting.”

  “They’ll never get to have assassins target them?” I muttered. “How unlucky for them.”

  “They are unlucky,” Alexander said. “None of them have even seen this bunker. They’ve never had the entire CIA mobilize because of them. And not to sound pompous, but none of them have ever had a chance to work with me. Not even my own daughter, and I taught her everything she knows. This is what the Academy of Espionage is all about. This is the brass ring everyone’s reaching for—and it’s fallen into your hands. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Play it right and you just might end up the golden boy here.”

  And if I play it wrong, I’ll end up dead, I thought. But I didn’t say it. Because I knew Alexander had a point. When I’d chosen to come to spy school, I’d known I was accepting a potential life of danger. I simply hadn’t expected it so soon. Now that it was here, it seemed far less romantic than it had in my imagination . . . but I had to admit, it was kind of exciting, too. “You’re right,” I finally conceded.

  “That’s the spirit!” Alexander slapped his knee and laughed. “I’m going to check on our security status. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable here? Familiarize yourself with some of this weaponry, fix yourself a drink, grab a magazine. I think there’s some cases of snack cakes in the larder. Or, if you want, come on over to the monitoring station and watch us in action.”

  He trotted back down the hall.

  I took his advice and tried to make the best of things. I poured myself a bright green Gatorade and found the snacks. There was a case of Ding Dongs that had been placed down there around 1985, but they had so many preservatives in them, they still tasted like new. I took a pass on examining the weapons—the steel walls of the bunker looked as though they could ricochet an errant bullet around for hours until it ended up in my skull—though I did opt to join Alexander at the monitoring station.

  Turns out, it wasn’t very exciting.

  The monitors merely displayed dozens of static shots of the perimeter of the school not being attacked. The agents kept shifting the images, jumping from camera feed to camera feed, but all were virtually the same. It was like watching the 24-hour Wall Channel. After half an hour I found myself actually hoping we’d get attacked. At least then something might happen. As it was, the most thrilling moment was when one of the agents saw a squirrel.

  After an hour I chose to go read magazines, many of which hadn’t been replaced since the early seventies. I learned quite a lot about the cast of
Bonanza.

  After two hours there was a shift change.

  After three hours I was asleep.

  After five hours and forty-two minutes, however—at exactly 7:30 in the evening—there was a beep.

  It was a persistent and annoying beep, designed to grab your attention but not freak you out, more like a microwave timer than a Klaxon. I came to on the couch and heard excited voices in the monitoring room.

  I hurried in and found the agents quickly scrolling through camera feeds while Alexander watched over their shoulders. None of the feeds showed anything but walls and woods, all in night-vision green, as darkness had fallen. No one seemed very concerned, although I did notice sweat on both the younger agents’ upper lips.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “We have a breach,” Alexander replied. “Southwest perimeter.”

  I felt my heart begin to race. “Is it the enemy?”

  “Friends tend to use the front door, not come over the wall,” Alexander said. “Plus, whoever it is, they’re crafty. We’re having trouble tracking them.”

  “Got ’em!” one of the agents exclaimed. “Camera 419. Back woods, near the pond.”

  We wheeled toward his monitor and saw someone in a heavy winter jacket dash through the trees, moving at a full clip. It was impossible to make out any features in the darkness.

  “He’s coming straight for the school,” the other agent said. “Picking him up on Camera 293.”

  We turned toward his monitor, just in time to see the intruder wing a snowball into the camera lens, blacking it out.

  “Is that only one person?” I asked.

  “That we can see,” Alexander replied. “Which means there’s likely a dozen we can’t.” He snapped out his radio with one hand, his gun with the other. “Attention all agents, this is Big Dog. We have activity in the southwestern quadrant of the property. The enemy has breached the perimeter and appears to be heading for the dormitory. All available agents converge there, on the double.” Alexander pointed at the two agents stationed by the door. “Both of you, come with me.”

  “You’re taking my protection?” I asked.

  “After we’re finished with these guys, you won’t need any more protection,” Alexander said reassuringly. He typed a code into a keypad. The giant door unlocked and slid open.

  “But still, it couldn’t hurt to leave them behind, right?” I suggested. “Just in case something goes wrong.”

  “Nothing will go wrong, Benjamin. I’m in charge here.” Alexander checked his reflection in the gleaming steel—as though he wanted to make sure he looked good for the troops. “Now let’s move out, men. We have an enemy to subdue.” He darted down the hall.

  The agents who’d been guarding the door dutifully followed him.

  I watched the steel door slam closed behind them, then waited for the reassuring click of the dead bolt sliding back into place before returning my attention to the monitors.

  Video images were now coming up faster and faster as the agents tried to track everything that was happening on the surface at once. I caught glimpses of the enemy hurtling past cameras in the woods, teams of CIA agents en route to the dormitory, Alexander and the two agents he’d just commandeered racing through the underground tunnels to be part of the action. The radio crackled with inter-agent communications: teams coordinating, requests for intel on the enemy, Alexander ordering everyone to stand down until he arrived.

  I saw the enemy race past the gymnasium, closing in on the dorm.

  “We have visual,” an agent stationed by the dormitory reported.

  “Hold all live fire,” Alexander told everyone. “If possible, we want these guys alive.”

  On the monitors I saw Alexander emerge aboveground from two different angles, then fall in with a platoon behind the dorm. There was a quick discussion I couldn’t hear, and then the platoon fanned out, ready for action.

  The enemy was skirting the mess hall, almost to the dorm, but now something started to bother me. There was something disturbingly familiar about the gait of the man I was watching. And furthermore . . .

  “It really looks like there’s only one guy,” I said.

  “Yeah,” one of the agents at the monitors admitted. “It does.”

  “Attack!” Alexander ordered.

  The monitor screens showed the grounds suddenly coming alive with CIA agents. They emerged from behind buildings, dropped from rooftops, burst out of leaf piles. A dozen nets were launched at once. Four hit their target, while two took out agents who got caught in the cross fire. The enemy went down in a heap, tangled in the nets, then rolled over to find fifty agents converging on him with guns raised.

  There was no additional attack from the woods.

  Which meant there was only one man.

  Klieg lights snapped on, bathing the grounds in blinding light. On every monitor the cameras zoomed in on the target. One of them managed to get a shot of his face.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  It was Mike Brezinski.

  A second later an explosion blew the steel door off its hinges behind me.

  I whirled around to find the room already filling with smoke.

  I realized I’d left my weapon in the other room, though it wouldn’t have mattered.

  Sedation darts took out the agents at the monitors before they could even reach for their guns.

  Another nailed me in the shoulder.

  The last thing I saw was three hooded men emerging from the smoke, and then darkness closed in.

  ABDUCTION

  Washington, DC

  Streets near the National Mall

  February 9

  1945 hours

  When I came to, I was moving. That was all I could tell for sure. There was a heavy sack over my head that cut out all light, and I was trussed like a calf at a rodeo: My hands were bound behind my back and my ankles were cinched together. I was lying on the floor in the back of a vehicle. I guessed it was a van, because there seemed to be a lot of space, but I couldn’t tell for certain. No one had even bothered to buckle me into a seat. I’d merely been tossed inside like a piece of luggage. My shoulder throbbed where the dart had hit me; it felt like I’d been stung by a wasp the size of a Labrador retriever.

  I was terrified, but I had the presence of mind to not say anything—or make any sudden movements. For now, it was probably in my best interest to let my abductors think I was still unconscious. Perhaps I could learn something about them that way. When I concentrated, I could detect a faint conversation from the front of the van, though the sound of the road passing through the floor of the vehicle nearly drowned it out. I focused as hard as I could, straining to pick out the words:

  “I think the Wizards are going to the play-offs this year,” one person said.

  “I think you’re a moron,” said the other.

  I frowned. It was the radio.

  Though I had to wonder: What foreign terrorist organization listened to American sports radio?

  Suddenly, there was an extremely loud thump on the roof of the van, as though something had landed on it hard enough to dent the metal.

  It startled me—and seemed to have the same effect on my abductors. Someone in the front seat reacted with surprise in a language I didn’t know. Then I heard glass breaking, followed by a wet thwack and a few groans.

  My fear cranked up a few notches. I had no idea what was happening. It was possible that someone was trying to rescue me, but it was also possible that another faction of bad guys had just leapt into the mix. This might have been an ambush, a double cross, or a complete and utter screwup. Whatever the case, I was a helpless passenger in a runaway vehicle that dangerous people were fighting for the control of, which was definitely not behavior recommended in driver’s ed.

  The sounds of a protracted struggle came from the front seat while the van veered wildly. I was pitched from one side to the other while tires squealed beneath me and a cold wind whipped through the shattered window. Th
ere was a sudden, bone-rattling jolt as we sideswiped another vehicle. Then two heavy objects—unconscious bodies, I guessed—thudded onto the floor near me. After that came a series of distinct thumps—I wasn’t sure how, but I recognized it as the sound of someone’s head repeatedly being slammed into a dashboard—and the final thud of a third body landing on the floor. The van swerved uncontrollably for a few more seconds and then finally recovered.

  “Hey, Ben,” Erica said. “You can stop faking being unconscious now.”

  I’d never been so happy to hear anyone’s voice in my life. “Are we safe?”

  “Not quite. But I’m working on it. Hold on.”

  There was a rattle of machine-gun fire behind us, followed by the sounds of bullets perforating the side of the van.

  Our brakes screeched, and the van slewed wildly, as though Erica had purposefully put us into a spin. Gunfire blasted from the front seat, after which I heard the distinct sound of the pursuing vehicle smashing into a wall.

  The van stopped skidding and resumed driving normally.

  “Okay. Now we’re safe,” Erica said. “At least for a little while.”

  “Can you untie me?” I asked.

  “Give me another minute or so. They’re still tracking us.”

  The van continued on, moving quickly but apparently within the speed limit. I heard police sirens pass us heading in the opposite direction twice—as though racing to the aftermath of what we’d left behind—but no one pulled us over. After five minutes and twenty-three seconds the van slowed and jounced, as though it had suddenly jumped a curb, then stopped.

  Five seconds after that, Erica opened the rear doors, dragged me out, and snapped the hood off my head.

  The first thing I saw was her face. She was smeared with black camouflage paint and blood, although I couldn’t tell if it was hers or someone else’s. There was a lump the size of a walnut over her left eye, her lip was swollen, and her hair was a rat’s nest, but she still looked gorgeous to me. Of course, it’s possible that if a gargoyle saved your life, you’d think it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.