I Am the Mission

by Allen Zadoff

  He would have a different approach. A bigger approach.

  I think about the vans I saw as I drove in earlier. The other night the vans were unmarked. But driving in, they were all marked with the same two words.

  NORTHEAST ELECTRIC.

  That’s when I remember something Lee said the first night I came to the encampment. The video game system.

  It’s not just a game. It’s training.

  He told me that he was the one who developed the scenarios.

  “You know your way around game systems, don’t you?” I ask Howard.

  “I’m taking that as a rhetorical question.”

  “I need you to play a game now.”

  “Normally I’d be thrilled, but shouldn’t we be saving the country?” he says.

  “The game. That’s how we’re going to do it.”

  I POWER UP THE GAMING SYSTEM BACK IN MY ROOM.

  I show Howard how the game works, bringing up the profile for Daniel X, my game character from the other night.

  “You’ve got lousy stats,” Howard says.

  “I’ve got lousy game stats. It’s life stats that count.”

  Howard grins. “Is that a tag line from your spy manual?”

  I sigh. “I liked you better when you were a scared kid in the hallway at school.”

  “That’s the old me. I’m an espionage guy now.”

  I bring up the GAME SCENARIOS prompt screen.

  “This is amazing,” Howard says. “They created this themselves?”

  “It’s like a training simulator for them.”

  “It’s very cool,” he says. “They’ve got some real talent here.”

  “Too bad it’s wasted.”

  Howard scrolls through the game scenarios.

  Laying Plans

  Waging War

  Tactical Disposition

  “Where should we start?” he says. He clicks on one of the scenarios in the middle, but he’s blocked from entering the game. “Actually, I asked the wrong question. We have to start at the top.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s an ascending level design. You can’t move up to the next until you’ve successfully completed the previous.”

  “So you have to win the scenario before you can proceed?”

  “Unless you have cheat codes.”

  “Nope.”

  He nods. “Then I’m going to have to win. But it’s not going to be easy with your character stats. No offense.”

  “Enough about the stats.”

  “Sorry. I’ll get started.”

  “I’m going to watch over your shoulder until I find what I’m looking for.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I won’t know until I see it,” I say.

  I’m trained to sort through enormous amounts of visual data, categorizing, sorting, and testing the data against various hypotheses. If the answer is in the game, I trust that I’ll be able to see it.

  “Can you play with someone watching you?” I say.

  “Are you kidding? Have you ever seen a game tournament?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  “Well, you’re going to see one now,” Howard says. “Time for Fro-Fro to throw down. Fro-Fro. That’s Goji’s pet name for me.”

  “I remember,” I say.

  He bites his lower lip, his face set in concentration as he clicks into the first scenario, LAYING PLANS, the one I played the first night in the camp. The schematic of the campsite comes up, and I watch as the ATF attack unwinds on the screen in front of me.

  “This is awesome,” Howard says.

  Unlike me, he is completely comfortable with the controller, the internal commands, the ways of maneuvering the character through the game. It’s like he’s fluent in a second language, seamlessly adapting himself to this world with a few keystrokes.

  “There we go,” he says. “Now I’m rolling.”

  He races through the main square in the game, somehow gaining access to the house and making his way to safety without getting slaughtered by the ATF.

  Within seconds, the first scenario is over, Howard is triumphant, and Daniel X’s character stats have improved considerably.

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Howard says. “On to the next level.”

  He cracks his neck once, then he’s back in.

  For the next twenty minutes, Howard plays as fast as he can as I watch what amounts to a gamer’s tour through the philosophy underlying Camp Liberty. I see defensive strategies, offensive strategies, various means of attacking infrastructure out in the world. One of the scenarios is divided into multiple sections, part of which takes place inside an artificial World Wide Web where the Daniel X character is transformed into a digital packet that Howard has to navigate through various international servers undetected, until at last he can breach the firewall for a large commercial bank.

  I watch it all with Lee in mind, comparing what I see to what I believe I know about him, his desire for attention, his need to better his father.

  Eventually Howard arrives at the fifth scenario:

  The Attack by Fire

  Something about the name. It feels like it would be attractive to Lee. I perk up as Howard starts the scenario.

  The game map opens up. It’s an external setting, a series of tall buildings crowded together, a downtown cityscape of some kind.

  Howard bites his lip again, studying it as I watch over his shoulder.

  “Where does this one take place?” he says. “Let’s see…”

  He races through the area in some kind of vehicle.

  “Stop the car, Howard.”

  “I’m not supposed to stop,” he says. “See the GPS on the dashboard?”

  “Just stop it.”

  He screeches to a halt on the side of the road.

  “Get out and walk around for a second, please.”

  Howard opens the door of the truck onscreen. He gets out and walks a few steps through the city street. The buildings cast long shadows across the pavement from west to east.

  It’s sunset.

  “Do me a favor. Turn around and look at the car.”

  His character turns. It’s not a car at all. It’s a white van. NORTHEAST ELECTRIC is stenciled on the side.

  “This is the one,” I say. “I can sense it.”

  “Where does it take place?”

  Howard uses the character to scan the area, moving to a corner where he can get a better view.

  I look at the buildings, the configuration of the downtown area. One of the buildings looks familiar to me. I run it through a database of buildings in my head.

  “The Prudential Tower,” I say.

  “It’s Boston,” Howard says.

  “What are they doing in Boston?”

  Howard puts the game controller on the table. He leans back, rubbing his eyes.

  “I’m trying to remember something,” he says. “Something that’s happening in Boston this week.”

  I think back to my time at the mall yesterday. I sat in Barnes & Noble reading magazines, catching up on the news. I passed a rack of newspapers on my way out, glancing at them as I walked by.

  One of them was a Boston Globe.

  I play the scene over in my mind, trying to remember the headline that I saw.

  Suddenly it clicks.

  “The new JFK Federal Building,” I say. “It’s opening today.”

  IT WAS MEANT AS A SYMBOL OF STRENGTH.

  A redesigned plaza built around the JFK Federal Building in Government Center downtown. A public park, a tribute to those lost, a new hope for the city.

  That is where I’ll find Lee.

  I drive Howard back to the Manchester Holiday Inn. He remains silent on the way, lost in thought. It doesn’t take long before I pull into the parking lot.

  “We have to stop them,” Howard says.

  “I have to,” I say.

  “I want to come with you.”

  “You’ve already done your part. More t
han your part.”

  He looks at me uncertainly.

  “I want you to pack everything and get out of here. Don’t go to New York right away. You’ll have to pass through Boston and it’s too dangerous. Take a train west to Albany or anywhere else you want to go. You can go home in a week or so.”

  “How will I know that you’re okay?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Meanwhile I’ll work on the stuff we talked about. The stuff about your father.”

  “Drop that for now. Just get yourself to safety. We can talk about the father stuff later. Do you understand me?”

  He nods.

  “Thanks, Daniel.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who saved me from a torture chair, remember?”

  He reaches across the seat and hugs me. I let him to do it. Maybe I even hug him back a little.

  He opens the truck door, then he pauses before getting out.

  “The next time I see you, you’ll have a different name,” he says.

  “That’s right.”

  “But it will still be you.”

  “It will.”

  “And you’ll remember me?”

  “I promise.”

  “Be safe,” he says, and he gets out of the truck.

  IT’S A STRAIGHT SHOT TO BOSTON.

  I take 93 south the whole way, maxing out my speed, slowing only to avoid police traps. I make good time. It’s early evening when I arrive, and downtown Boston is emptying out with the last of the day’s business rush.

  I move in the opposite direction as most of the traffic, heading into downtown at this late hour and making my way toward the new and improved JFK Building.

  I’m thinking about what I might find there.

  Any federal structure built since 9/11 is going to include blast-proof doors, reinforced steel, and exterior barricades. It’s not as if a group of white panel vans is going to be able to drive up and park next to the building. Whatever Lee is planning, he’s going to have to do it from the inside.

  What’s more, bombing a federal building would be news, but sadly, it wouldn’t be original.

  I try to get into Lee’s head.

  An angry boy, out to prove himself to his father and the world.

  The Attack by Fire.

  He must be aiming bigger. I can’t put it together yet, so I head for the federal building and hope I will figure it out on the fly.

  Traffic is cordoned off for several blocks around the plaza where the federal building is, so I have to park the truck and go the rest of the way on foot. I can see the building looming in front of me, forty stories of steel and glass rising above the Boston skyline.

  It is lit up for its opening, the lights burning bright to the very top, where it is capped by red, white, and blue tracer lights. From the ground, giant spotlights are aimed up the sides of the building, framing it in still more light.

  I step out of the truck, and I hear an explosion far off behind me. The sound booms and rolls through the downtown area. I look toward the federal building, but there’s nothing happening there. A minute later, there are multiple explosions from different parts of the city. I see a plume of smoke rising over the skyline from several blocks away. It’s black against the sunset.

  Maybe I was wrong about the location of the attack. Maybe there was more to the video game, and I should have let Howard continue to play.

  Now I can see smoke plumes rising from different corners of the skyline.

  I don’t know which direction I should go, which buildings are being targeted.

  And then, suddenly, the street goes black.

  It happens in a wave, lights blinking out from far away to near, moving up Cambridge Street and continuing past me. Cars screech to a stop as streetlights go out. I hear fender benders and horn blasts on nearby streets.

  Then the buildings start going out one by one as the main power grid fails.

  The vans at Liberty. They all said NORTHEAST ELECTRIC.

  I imagine them parked at substations around the Boston area. Even one failing substation can cast a substantial part of the city into darkness. And several of them?

  I look around and see all of downtown blacked out.

  Almost all.

  Because the federal building is brightly lit. It stands out from the darkness, rising like a beacon in the Boston night.

  The federal building would have its own independent generators, and they’d be running for a big event like the one that’s happening tonight.

  Lee’s plan takes shape in my mind.

  Cast an entire city in darkness except for one building, the building that is a symbol of the government and its power.

  That is the beginning, but it’s not the end. Not by a long shot.

  I race through the dark streets toward the federal building.

  SECURITY IS BREAKING DOWN IN THE PLAZA.

  The ceremony that was going on in the building has been interrupted by the explosions. Police officers in their dress uniforms rush from the area, called to their ready stations to deal with the mounting crisis. FBI agents in suits are forming around the front of the building, talking on cell phones as they look at the plumes of smoke in the sky around them.

  As I approach the side door, I see a service driveway that leads under the building.

  After 9/11, many new buildings moved delivery and loading areas out to satellite locations away from the main structure. Others got rid of basements altogether and even first floors, raising buildings up on reinforced pylons to increase survivability in a terrorist attack. But more security means more hassle, time delays, inconvenience. Buildings don’t want to give up prime first-floor retail space and the revenue it generates, and executives don’t want to wait hours while urgent packages are delayed for screening. In the ensuing years since 9/11, builders have gotten lax, trading convenience for protection.

  There is a guard at the service entrance, but he’s surrounded by people asking questions as they stream from the building.

  It’s easy enough to get by without his seeing me.

  “The building is being evacuated,” he’s saying to someone as I pass by, pushing through a group of people and sneaking into the building.

  I FOLLOW THE SERVICE CORRIDOR TO THE SUBBASEMENT.

  A loading dock area.

  There are more than a half-dozen white vans down here. They are too heavy, their suspensions low to the ground. I look through the back window of one, and I see the same kind of barrels I saw in the Camp Liberty workshop. It is loaded in the back of the van between spools of wire and electrical supplies. To the casual observer, it might pass for a utility van carrying needed equipment for a new building and a big event.

  But I know it’s carrying something else.

  Explosives.

  I look at the vans interspersed through the garage. I log the locations, the way more vans are parked toward one corner of the structure, the potential consequences of a coordinated explosion on the structure above me.

  This is Lee’s plan. Black out the entire city, then take out the building that best represents the government. If the government can’t protect itself, how can it protect its citizens?

  I examine the other vans, finding no wires or other connections between them, which means one of two things. They are on timers, or there is a detonator. If it’s a detonator, it could be triggered from far away via cell phone, or it could be a device that requires the bomber to be close at hand.

  I think as Lee might think, what he wants, what motivates him. Does he see himself far away, watching the explosion and chaos from across town?

  I don’t think so. My instinct tells me he’s here. He’s going to make this happen with his own hand, and he wants to be close enough to see it.

  Now where will I find him?

  I think about Lee in high-pressure situations. I remember him reaching for a brownie during the recruiting event that first night, then for a chocolate bar during The Hunt.

  Wha
t would Lee do now before the biggest mission of his life?

  He might eat some chocolate.

  I don’t see him in the subbasement, so on a hunch I ask a maintenance man where I can locate the vending machines. He looks at me like I’m crazy.

  “You have to get out of here,” he says.

  “My brother. I need to find him,” I say.

  He points me toward the staircase.

  “One story up on the basement level. Be quick.”

  I thank him and race up the stairs. I’m running down the hall toward the vending machines when I see Lee coming toward me. My hunch was right. He’s biting into a chocolate snack cake, the plastic pulled back halfway to keep his fingers from getting dirty.

  He stops when he sees me coming. It takes a moment for him to understand what he’s seeing. I was trapped at Camp Liberty and now I am free. I am here. I am a danger to him.

  His moment of confusion should be enough for me to get to him, but he recovers more quickly than I expect, dropping the cake, spinning in a 180-degree arc, and darting into the stairwell without a word.

  I give chase.

  The stairs lead in two directions: up to the lobby or down to the subbasement. I pause and hear footsteps echoing below me. I follow them down.

  He has ten meters on me. He is fast from the physical training at the camp, but I am faster, and I make up the distance quickly. He pushes through the door into the subbasement, and I catch it a second later, right on his heels. I calculate the trajectory of a leap and tackle, but before I can accomplish it, he turns and holds his hands up in front of him.

  Something glints in the light. A cell phone.

  He holds it out so I can see it.

  The power is on. The screen glows.

  There’s no mistaking what this is.

  A detonator.

  The only question is how I’m going to get it from him without allowing him to use it.

  Ten feet away. I could cover that space in less than two seconds. Plenty of time for him to press a number and complete the call that triggers the explosives.

  “How did you escape from camp?” he says.