by Paul Greci
“What about protection?” Derrick asks. “Will we have guns?”
“To reach your goal, you’re going to need to travel light,” Sam says. “If you get into a firefight with Russian soldiers, it’s unlikely you’ll come out of it alive.”
“I get that,” Derrick says. “I just—”
Sam cuts in. “Who here has ever fired a gun?”
Derrick raises his hand.
“What kind?” Sam asks.
“A twenty-two,” Derrick says, “when I went bird hunting with my dad.”
“The crew you’re replacing,” Sam says, “they were bringing limited weapons with them, but they’d been trained in how to use them.”
“Still,” Derrick says, “you’re going to send us out there with nothing? That’s a raw deal.”
“Derrick has a point,” I say. “What if we run into trouble we can handle with a gun but we don’t have one?”
Shannon says, “We’ve still got some bear spray, but I agree, some type of gun would be good to have.”
“I think so, too,” Brooke says.
“This place has to be loaded with weapons,” I say. “It’s a worst-case-scenario shelter.”
Sam scratches his beard. “Yes, I’ve got some weapons. And, like I said, the crew you’re replacing was bringing weapons they were trained with. Usually people learn how to use them before taking them into the field.” Sam sighs. “I’m giving you each a knife in case you encounter someone at close range, or if you need to ambush someone guarding the bridge from below. But I’ll give you one pistol, too. Again, use this only if you encounter a problem that can’t be solved any other way. That’s all.”
“Agreed,” Derrick says. “Obviously, I hope we don’t need to use it.”
I think about having to kill someone, and it really starts to sink in. What we’re going into is a life-and-death situation. We might encounter enemy soldiers. We might have to quietly take out a guard with our knives—or our gun. A chill runs up my spine.
A couple of beeps burst from Sam’s control panel. He puts his fingers to his lips, goes over to the swivel chair, and puts his headphones on.
Someone must be flying overhead again.
For several minutes, we sit in silence while Sam has his back to us. He fiddles with a knob or two, but mostly he just sits and listens.
Finally, he takes his headphones off and turns toward us. “They’re gone, but they circled around a few times before leaving. They must know something is down here. Hopefully they won’t be back until after we’ve gone. In thirty-six hours, we’re out of here.”
CHAPTER 65
WHILE SAM WORKS ON HIS own preparations, the four of us keep practicing using the equipment and discussing who’s going to do what.
“I think I should be one of the swimmers,” Derrick says. “I used to be on a swim team. And since I have long arms, I can lift the person up who does the drilling.”
Brooke nods and says, “I don’t want to have anything to do with swimming in the river. I’ll do it if I have to, but I don’t know how good I’d be at it.”
“Swimming isn’t one of my strong points,” Shannon says. “I know how to swim, but when I’m swimming that’s all I can do. I can climb things and run, but swimming? Like Brooke, I’ll do it if I have to for the mission, but I don’t know how successful I’d be.”
I feel all eyes on me. “I guess I better make sure my flippers fit.”
Brooke and Derrick each crack a smile.
Shannon says, “Thanks.”
I nod. “Now we can plan the rest of the mission details. For starters, you two”—I point at Brooke and Shannon—“will take all of my and Derrick’s stuff, kayaks included, after you drop us upriver a little ways from the bridge.”
“You and Derrick will keep the communication device that lets us know when to place the explosives.” Shannon picks up the device off the floor and hands it to me. “It’ll take you two longer to do your job since you have to swim, and Brooke and I will already be in position on opposite sides of the river. When we see you start to swim we’ll know it’s time.”
Sam turns around from his desk and says, “One thing to keep in mind: The pipeline crosses the river just upstream from the bridge. There’ve been a couple of land-based attempts to sabotage it, so it might be guarded. When you get close to the pipeline, but before you get too close, stop and scout so you know what the deal is.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Sam nods and turns back around.
“So, after me and Derrick set our explosive, one of us will swim to you.” I point to Brooke. “And one of us will swim to you.” I point to Shannon.
“Let’s really pin it down,” Shannon says.
“Here’s what I think,” Derrick says. “From whatever side you drop us on, I’ll swim to the opposite side since I have the most swimming experience.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
“I’ll cross the river towing Derrick’s kayak,” Shannon says, “since I have more boating experience than Brooke.”
“That works,” Brooke says. “I’ll tow Josh’s and stay on the same side of the river.”
“Does anyone else…” I pause. “I mean, does it hit you—what we’re doing and why? I keep thinking I’m going to wake up from this intense dream, but I never do.”
“From all the way back since the earthquake,” Brooke says, nodding. “How is it that we survived the quake, survived a starving ninety-mile hike where we didn’t know where we were going, and now we’re doing this?”
Shannon says, “My mom’s people—my people—have lived on this land for thousands of years. Why should they suffer and possibly have their land rendered uninhabitable by a nuclear strike that has absolutely nothing to do with them? What choice do I have but to try to stop this destruction?”
Derrick points to Brooke. “I get what you’re saying. We’re lined up to do all these things that heroes do.” Derrick pauses. “Mostly, I’m a lazy person, if I can afford to be one. My dad’s pretty much right about me on that count.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but you’ve got good judgment. You know when to be lazy and when not to be.”
“True.” Derrick smiles. “It used to be that I tried not to look lazy when I knew my dad was watching. But that quake changed me. Seeing that it was only us who survived and then seeing what we needed to do to keep surviving…” He shakes his head. “And now this? Like Shannon said, we don’t really have a choice.”
“If I chose to do nothing,” I say, “and I survived, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
CHAPTER 66
“WE SHOULD TRY TO KEEP the rope in front of us as we swim toward the bridge,” Derrick says. “That way, we’ll have less of a chance of tangling our legs in it.”
“Maybe we should keep it bunched up tight until we’re in the middle of the river and approaching the support,” I add. “We could swim side by side and then separate when we’re close to the support and let the rope spread out from there.”
“That should work,” Derrick says.
Our packs are all packed up, and we’re all wearing gray long-sleeve shirts and pants that are supposedly bug-bite proof. We’ve got gray rain gear if we need it, and we have the gray dry suits, gray rubber boots, gray bathing caps. Gray everything.
Sam also gave us each a water bottle with a built-in filter. You fill the bottle, put the filter in the top, and screw it into place with the lid, and when you squeeze the bottle to take a drink, water is pushed through the filter before it leaves the bottle, and it’s purified.
“Graze on what you want.” Sam points to some shelves filled with crackers, cookies, and granola bars.
“What happens to this place after we leave?” I ask.
“It’s pretty tightly built,” Sam says. “We don’t really have any perishable food. And I’ll close off the spring water we’ve got routed through the pipe that gives us drinking water. The solar panels—the ones disguised as trees—will keep the batteries c
harged so when someone does need to be stationed here, they’ll have some juice when they arrive.”
“How’d you get into this line of work?” Shannon asks.
“There’s a part of the government that’s secret,” Sam says. “It is, ideally, independent of politics. We go into action during emergencies. What we do goes on in the background. I ended up where I am by being good at what I do. By getting an invitation.”
“How many of you are there?” Brooke asks.
Sam says, “I’ve probably already told you too much. I can’t disclose how many people or how many official stations, but I’ll tell you this. Sometimes we plan our missions and are ready to act, and then a conventional solution is successful and we abort. That’s the preferable alternative almost every time.”
“How will we know if that happens with this mission?” Derrick asks.
“If the light doesn’t come on instructing you to place your explosives, then don’t place them,” Sam says.
“How long should we wait?” I ask.
“If your light doesn’t come on, someone will make contact with you. Don’t move from your position until either your light comes on and you carry out the mission, or someone makes direct contact. Whoever contacts you—if someone contacts you—will say the river is running high.”
“So there’s a chance we may not have to go through with blowing up the bridge?” Brooke asks.
Sam looks at Brooke, and then makes eye contact with each one of us. Then he says, “You never want to go into a mission thinking that you may not have to carry it out. Psychologically, you have to be ready.”
I’m eating my second pack of cheese and crackers, and I’m thinking about what Sam said. How can I not think about how great it would be to abort this mission? That’s what I hope for, and now he’s given us a little bit of hope. But I also know what Sam’s talking about in terms of being psychologically ready. It’s like when the weather turns bad and there’s talk about canceling a cross-country race. Our coach drilled it into us to always be prepared to run your best no matter how likely it is the race will be canceled.
Don’t lose your edge.
Shannon’s voice jolts me back into the present. “Should we take these?” She’s holding up her binoculars.
Sam swings around in his swivel chair. “Yes,” he says. “They’ll be good for scouting, especially once the bridge comes into view.”
“Do we just leave the rest of our stuff here?” Derrick asks. “You know. Our old packs and sleeping bags and stuff.”
“If you have anything small that’s personal that you want to take, that would be okay,” Sam says. “But you don’t want anything big or heavy that would slow you down. Or anything that would help the enemy if you’re captured.”
After I get my binoculars, I pull out my blue stuff sack with my journal, which I haven’t written in since we left Simon Lake. I glance over at Brooke. She’s got the solar charger her dad gave her in her hand. Derrick is rustling through his possessions, and Shannon has her journal in her hands.
Whatever small stuff we all end up bringing, I just hope we come out of this alive.
CHAPTER 67
THE NEXT MORNING, SAM SAYS, “We’ll be flying around midnight to take advantage of whatever amount of darkness we have.”
Two more flyovers happened yesterday late in the afternoon, and that has Sam on edge.
“It’ll take a couple hours to walk to the plane, and then an hour or so to check its systems and clear the runway, so we’ll leave here around nine p.m.,” Sam says. He turns back to his communication desk.
Twelve hours, I think. Twelve hours, and we’ll be starting this crazy mission to save the free world. I think about the other two teams that will be blowing up bridges, and Sam’s team, which will try to penetrate the fort and reset the nukes. They’ve all got to be highly skilled to have been chosen and trained. Like Sam.
And then there’s us. Yeah, we’re pretty tough, because we survived a crazy earthquake and then a starving hike.
But highly trained we’re not.
How will I react if we come under fire? How will I deal with the swift flowing river? I’m not talking just about the swimming part, but also the kayaking. And then there’s the drilling while Derrick somehow treads water and holds me in place so I can set the explosives.
Everything is high stakes. And everything is new. Not a good combination.
It’s like if, as a freshman at the beginning of cross-country season, I’d been told, Okay, train for a week and then you’ll be racing the top runners in the state, and if you don’t win, you die.
I glance over at Brooke. If I knew this was the last time we’d be together, I’d want to kiss her—that is, if she’d let me. Or at least tell her that I’m attracted to her. But I don’t want to dilute the energy and focus it will take to pull off our mission.
But maybe she wants to kiss me, too. If we both wanted to, then what would one kiss hurt? But if I wanted to, and told her, and she didn’t, would that create some weird energy that might get in the way when we need to focus so we don’t die?
She looks up and catches me staring at her.
I nod and flash her a smile.
She smiles back.
I don’t know what to do next, so I pretend to focus on my gear. I open the blue stuff sack and pull out my journal. I turn to the first and only page I wrote on and read the few lines there.
Running. How can I get faster and stronger?
My parents. How can I keep them from splitting up?
Brooke. How can I get to know her better?
Control. What do I really have control over?
I’m basically still searching for answers to all these questions. But the one about control really sticks in my brain. To a certain extent I can control my actions. Or at least try to control them. Or try to act in a way that will move me in the direction I want to go.
The other questions about running and my parents—they don’t really matter right now. I just want my parents to be alive. But Brooke … I glance up from my journal and look over at her. She’s turned a little to the side and looks beautiful silhouetted in the lantern light in this shelter. I’ve repaired her feet. I’ve had my head smashed against her hip when we were moving rocks. We’ve shared some good talks in the tent.
I want to just walk over to her, to tell her that if we do make it out of this mess alive, that I’d like to hang out with her and get to know her better.
I take a step, but the mission stops me. No, I tell myself.
Not now.
But if we survive. If we’ve blown the bridge, or aborted, and are still alive—when our lives aren’t in danger—I’ll tell her then.
I tuck my journal back into my blue stuff sack and put it in the gray pack Sam has given me.
What is everyone else thinking about? Are they all tossing around questions in their minds? Or are they going over the mission?
I walk to the back wall of the shelter and lie down on one of the bunks. Derrick comes over and lies on another. And then Brooke and Shannon do the same.
“We may as well get some rest now,” Shannon says. “I don’t think we’ll be sleeping much for the next several days.”
My stomach and chest feel raw. I take a deep breath and exhale through my nose. Then I hear two sharp pings from Sam’s communication panel, alerting us of another flyover.
I lie on my side and watch Sam. He’s got his headphones on and is perfectly still. We’re all lying quiet, having learned the drill from Sam. After a couple of minutes, he puts his headphones down and walks over to the bunks. “I think it’d be best if we left now. We can hide in the brush by the plane until it gets as dark as it’s going to be. Get your boots on.”
CHAPTER 68
IT’S MORE OF A HOLLOWED-OUT tunnel through the brush than a trail that snakes its way up the slope behind the shelter. We’re walking stooped over to keep our packs from catching on the brush. The new boots feel good on my feet. Hot but good. Way
better than a stuff sack. I’m right behind Sam, and he’s methodically working his way up through the brush tunnel. It’s obvious that someone spent time clearing the lower brush away while letting the willows get tall on either side of our route.
It would be hard for someone to detect anything from the air. Unless of course they’re using heat detection devices, like Sam thinks they are doing. Those flyovers may be plotting coordinates for other aircraft, Sam whispered before we left the shelter. Let’s hike without talking, he said. Just follow me single file.
Now, as we reach the top of the ridge, Sam stops and whispers, “We’ll have about a quarter mile of tundra to cross. This is where we’ll be the most exposed. I’m going to jog, and I want you to do the same. Stay in line, because I’m going to take us across the shortest possible way in order to cut down our chances of being seen from the air.”
We all agree to follow single file. Sam breaks into a slow run, and I’m right behind him. I feel more in my element than I have since the last time I ran with Theo. The flat ridgetop is rocky, and you’ve got to place your feet carefully so you don’t turn an ankle or catch your toe. My pack is going thunk with every step.
We’re about halfway across now, and it’s like a dance where every foot placement is a new move. It’s like being in a trance and having to pay attention at the same time. We keep going with the steady pace Sam has set, and when we get to the other side of the ridgetop the brush tunnel trail continues. Sam stops about fifteen feet into the brush. He doesn’t look winded at all, and that’s when I realize that not only is he super smart, he’s also in top-notch condition. Shannon, Brooke, and Derrick reach the brush, and I can hear some huffing and puffing, and I see sweat on their foreheads.
Sam takes off his pack, gets out his water bottle, takes a drink, and motions for everyone else to do the same. “The plane and runway are still a couple of miles away. When we get close, we’ll stay under the cover of the brush until the sun dips behind the ridges to the northwest.”