I Am the Mission

by Allen Zadoff

  “You were right,” I say. “She must be sleeping.”

  “So much for being a worrier.”

  “She’s also an Ambien user. The two kind of go together.”

  I walk toward Miranda, slipping my phone into my pocket.

  “I want to ask you something serious,” I say. “Earlier tonight in the truck, you told me to stay away.”

  She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Things are changing here, Daniel.”

  “How are they changing?”

  “It’s not just a camp anymore. My father. He’s different since my mother left. I think she kept him calm in some ways. No more. Now he’s got plans.”

  “What kinds of plans?”

  She comes even closer, our faces nearly touching.

  “Frightening plans,” she says, her breath soft on my cheek.

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “I can’t say more,” she says.

  I lean toward her, our faces inches away from each other.

  “But you didn’t even know me when we were in the truck. Why bother to tell me anything?”

  She looks at the ground, suddenly shy.

  “I liked you right away,” she says.

  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

  “I’m used to being around military-type guys,” she says. “I guess it’s made me kind of tough.”

  “But the warning—?” I say, getting her back on track.

  “I didn’t think it was fair to bring you here without you knowing what you were getting into.”

  “I’m trying to register for the next camp session. That’s a good thing, right?”

  “My father canceled the next camp session. That event was just for show.”

  “There’s no camp this summer? Then what am I doing here?”

  “He wanted you here. From the very beginning, the moment you walked into the community center. They were talking about you before the event. I overheard them.”

  “Them?”

  “Francisco and my dad.”

  “That’s strange.”

  Moore rejected me after his speech and refused to meet me. He was trying to keep me out, not bring me in.

  So why would she say the opposite?

  “Nothing happens without my father wanting it to,” she says.

  “Nothing?” I glance at her phone.

  “Almost nothing,” she says.

  Maybe it’s the night, or the girl, or the sense of danger all around us. I just know I want to step forward and kiss Miranda.

  It could help my mission or harm it. I can’t be sure.

  So I step back.

  “It’s getting late,” Miranda says, obviously uncomfortable. “We should probably go back before they notice we’re not in camp.”

  “It was fun while it lasted,” I say, and she laughs, a sweet laugh that makes me wish I had kissed her.

  But I am a soldier. I am here to accomplish a mission. Nothing else.

  Miranda moves away from me through the forest.

  “Hey, what’s the best way down?” I call to her.

  She keeps moving.

  “You were talented enough to make it up here,” she says, her tone suddenly teasing. “Can’t you find your way back?”

  “I can if I follow you.”

  “I’m going down alone,” she says. “I don’t want to risk us being seen together outside of camp.”

  Her outline is faint now.

  “Either I’ll see you at breakfast,” she says, “or I’ll see you after the search party finds your body.”

  “Wait a second….” I say.

  But she doesn’t. She disappears into the night.

  I’m alone in the dark now, thinking about what just happened.

  It’s not getting down the mountain that’s the problem. I’m on a ridge peak next to a river that flows south and feeds the encampment. So direction is not the issue.

  Nor is getting back through the laser perimeter. Not for me.

  It’s what it will say about me if I do. Miranda took me off the path, led me higher into the mountain, and left me here. If I get back down, that says a lot about my skill set. Too much.

  And if I don’t make it down, they’ll search for me and the entire camp will know I breached security. There will be questions, doubts, maybe even censure.

  So I have to make a choice.

  Before I decide, I take out my phone again, open a secure connection, and try Mother.

  It is the same as before. Silence.

  I try Father, both public and private lines.

  Nothing.

  It’s possible the mountains are causing interference with the signal. It’s possible blocking tech from Liberty is affecting the ability of the phone to uplink to the satellite.

  Possible but unlikely.

  What exactly is going on?

  I don’t know.

  I only know I have to stay in the moment, and the moment requires me to make a choice.

  Follow the river back to camp or play lost? Either could work, either could fail.

  Life is about risk. Mission dynamics are no different. It’s just that the stakes are higher on a mission.

  Much higher.

  I make my choice.

  I head south, moving silently through the darkness, walking back down toward Camp Liberty.

  IT’S A COUPLE OF HOURS BEFORE DAWN WHEN I GET BACK.

  It’s my experience that a security detail loses focus closest to dawn when it nears the end of its shift. The end of a shift is like the last minutes of a job, of school, of nearly everything. By that time you’re just waiting for it to end so you can get home and do what you want to do.

  That makes it a perfect time for me to explore.

  I watch from the cover of the woods. I listen for the clang and whir of metal fabrication, and then I follow it toward the workshop building, moving along the tree line outside of camp, my body turned inward so I can watch for trouble.

  When I get closer to the source of the sound, I move into the encampment, slip through the laser perimeter, and instantly make my gait casual, like a guy who is taking an early walk because he can’t sleep. I turn a corner, and I see it, a factory building with double doors wide enough to drive a truck through. I recognize the building from the game, the second of the two large structures in camp. Even in the dark I can see the doors are sealed tight with huge padlocks.

  The windows of the workshop are blacked out, but I can make out flashes of light coming between cracks in the paint. The flashes stop then start again in a staccato rhythm. At first I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but after a moment the pattern becomes familiar.

  Arcs from a welding torch. Something is being assembled in the workshop in the middle of the night.

  I look down the road at the white vans parked there. They look like utility trucks, but there’s no branding on their sides.

  Lee said they outsourced components to earn extra income. That might explain the vans, but it doesn’t explain the all-night fabrication processes.

  I move toward the workshop, heading for a bank of high windows on the side. If I can find something to stand on, I might be able to get a sight line—

  “You can’t be back here,” a voice says.

  A flashlight beam snaps on in my face.

  I recognize the voice. It’s Moore’s bodyguard, Swivel Neck.

  How did he find me back here? And how did he get close without my registering it?

  I haven’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours, and I’m starting to make mistakes. Miranda tracked me into the forest, and Swivel Neck snuck up on me. These are bad signs.

  But I can’t do anything about them now. I have to react.

  I hold my hand up to my eyes and feign surprise.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I say, and then I pretend to suddenly recognize him. “You work the night shift, too?”

  “I work all the time,” he says. “And you’re not allowed to be out here now.”


  “I couldn’t sleep. I was taking a walk and I heard some noise.”

  “Curfew lifts at dawn. The camp is off-limits until then,” Swivel Neck says.

  “There’s a curfew? Nobody told me.”

  He plays the beam across my face.

  “I’m telling you,” he says.

  “Off-limits. It’s all good,” I say with a shrug. “By the way, what time is breakfast served? Unless waffles are off-limits, too.”

  “Funny man,” he says. “Follow me.”

  He turns, and his flashlight beam catches a small flash of red on the ground.

  I follow him, stopping briefly to tie my shoe. I scoop the little piece of red into my hand and close it into a fist.

  “You coming?” he says.

  “Right behind you. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Why do you need to know what my name is?”

  “Relax, guy, I’m trying to fit in here.”

  He points the flashlight in my face again.

  “My name is Aaron,” he says.

  Then he swings the flashlight back around and beckons me to follow him to the building with my sleeping quarters.

  “Breakfast is in the main house at oh seven hundred,” he says, using the military designation for seven AM.

  He blocks the keypad with his body while he dials the code. The lock clicks, and he opens the door and waits for me to go inside.

  “Thanks, Aaron.”

  “How’d you get out in the first place?”

  “It was unlocked.”

  “Lee,” he says, shaking his head. “Sloppy.”

  He closes the door, and I hear the lock click.

  I go back to my room and flip on the light.

  I open my fist to examine what I found on the ground outside.

  It’s a thin red curlicue of rubberized plastic insulation. The shape tells me it’s been stripped from some type of wire. It could be from a car or some other machine, an engine that was being repaired. It could be from electrical wiring in a building.

  It could be anything at all.

  I button it into the side pocket of my camo pants, then I strip down and go to bed.

  I DON’T SLEEP.

  For the rest of the night I lie awake, thinking about The Program and why I am unable to communicate with them. I come up with three major hypotheses:

  Technical interference, either man-made or spontaneously occurring.

  They’ve cut me off on purpose, either because it’s not safe for me to communicate with them or for other reasons I cannot fathom.

  They are themselves cut off, in trouble, or otherwise compromised.

  Of the choices, I deem number two to be the most likely. If our communications system has been breached by Moore’s people, the only choice would be to stop communicating with me until a message can be passed safely.

  But if that’s true, what does it mean for my assignment? Do I continue forward until I get to Moore, carrying out the last directive I was given? Or do I default to primary objectives, protecting The Program first and myself second?

  I run through the options again, but I don’t come to any conclusions.

  After a while I get up and sit in a chair. Sleep research has found that after lying in bed for thirty minutes without falling asleep, it is better not to fight sleeplessness. It’s more effective to get up and do something else for a while, change location and tasks, thereby allowing your body to find its own sleep rhythm. You will get tired later and go back to bed without having to force it.

  So I sit in a chair and think about everything I’ve learned about Liberty up until now. I think about Moore, where he might be sleeping, what it would be like to sneak up on him unprotected and complete my assignment.

  And maybe for a second I think about Miranda, the softness of her chest against my arm when I grabbed her in the forest.

  I stay in the chair for the rest of the night.

  I don’t sleep.

  The next thing I know light is creeping between the window blinds, and I hear distant bangs, a sound both distinctive and chilling.

  It is the sound of gunfire.

  IT BEGINS WITH A SINGLE SHOT.

  One becomes two, two becomes cascades of rifle fire, the echoes bouncing around the valley.

  I drop from the chair and crawl away from the window, expecting shattering glass and the sound of rounds hitting the wall above my head. None come.

  The shooting stops. For the briefest of moments I think I dreamt it, and then it begins again, another volley of gunfire.

  This is not an attack. It’s training.

  I walk down the hall and hit the head quickly, pause to look at myself in the mirror.

  I see a boy with bags under his eyes, his face puffy from lack of sleep. I see that my tight haircut is in need of a trim. I note that I lost some weight in the sports camp and on the journey to New Hampshire. This causes my muscles to appear too pronounced. Normally I like to hide my physical abilities behind a couple of extra pounds, just enough to lower expectations.

  I see this too-thin, too-tired boy who has been up most of the night, first on a mission and then on postmission planning, and I transform his energy into that of a boy who had trouble sleeping because he is nervous about what he might do today. A boy who is desperate to impress but who feels the need to be impressive at the same time. A sixteen-year-old boy confused about who he is and what he is here to do.

  In short, I make myself into Daniel Martin, the new recruit at camp.

  Finally I stretch out my T-shirt, loosening it up to make myself appear smaller and less athletic.

  When I’m done, I look away from the mirror, draw my attention back to the morning and the moment.

  The sound of shooting continues in the distance.

  I walk to the exit door down the end of the hall.

  Last night it was locked from the outside. Today it is open, an invitation to the game.

  I take the invitation.

  LEE IS WAITING FOR ME.

  He is lost in thought, leaning against the wall of my building, his hands jammed deep in his camouflage pants pockets.

  “You’re awake,” he says when he sees me.

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Not long. Dad asked me to let you sleep. He said trauma can exhaust a person emotionally and physically.”

  Trauma. Tackling a crazed woman with a gun and narrowly escaping being shot. Just seeing that would be too much for most people, triggering days of anxiety and posttraumatic stress. And being in the middle of it? That would indeed be traumatic.

  But I am not traumatized. Not by a long shot.

  Another volley of gunfire echoes across the camp. I note a brief lag between the shot and my reaction to it, which doesn’t please me. My response time is dulled from lack of sleep.

  “Is someone being executed?” I say.

  “We only do that on Wednesday,” he says. “Today is Saturday.”

  “It’s nice to have something to look forward to.”

  He smiles and motions for me to follow him.

  “We train every day,” he says as we walk. “You’re going to get a taste of life here.”

  “How about a taste of breakfast first?”

  “Plenty of time to eat afterward,” he says.

  He takes me around the back of the structure and we walk toward the camp perimeter. I’m memorizing details as we go, matching the small, dark wood cabins and larger white buildings to the images from the game last night, creating a mental map of the compound so I can navigate in the light or dark.

  We walk through what was an active laser fence last night, out past the perimeter and around to a gun range. It’s set several hundred yards away from the camp facing out toward the mountain. Any stray rounds will continue on for a time until they impact in the forest, where they can do no harm.

  There are about two dozen teens out here, half in shooting positions, half watching from behind, awaiting their chance on the firi
ng line.

  Shooting practice.

  It’s one thing to receive weapons training for self-protection or so one can be a safe and knowledgeable hunter. But that’s not what I see here.

  These teens are on their bellies firing assault rifles from combat positions.

  I recognize the range master from the community center last night. He’s the man in his early forties with a shaved head, the one Moore trusted to talk with the parents.

  The range master calls for a ceasefire on the shooting line, and the teens fire off their remaining rounds, pop the magazines, and wait with breeches open. These kids know what they’re doing, and they exhibit proper range etiquette. The range master walks the line like a pro, inspecting weapons and correcting where he finds error.

  Then he crosses to us, giving me the once-over.

  “This is the guy I’ve heard so much about?” he says.

  Lee nods. “Daniel, this is Burch,” he says.

  “Sergeant Burch,” the range master says, correcting him.

  “You were at the community center last night,” I say.

  “So were you. And you did a hell of a job, son. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He extends a callused hand to shake. I let him crush me a little with his grip, allowing him to assert dominance right off the bat.

  A true military man.

  “I’d like to give Daniel a chance to fire off a few,” Lee says.

  Sergeant Burch’s face grows troubled.

  “That’s not a good idea,” he says.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Lee says. “What do you think, Daniel?”

  I’ve been trained to shoot, but I don’t like guns.

  The nature of my work doesn’t call for them. There’s no such thing as anonymity with propulsive weapons, no way to use them quietly, to fully control the damage inflicted, or to obliterate the forensic evidence that remains after the fact.

  For all their power, guns are inefficient for someone like me.

  “It’s not up to me whether I shoot,” I say, deferring to Sergeant Burch.

  “That’s right,” Burch says with an appreciative nod. “Nothing personal, young man, but we don’t allow the new people—”