by Stuart Gibbs
All around us, the Union soldiers were rushing to form tight ranks in front of the cannons.
One of the walkie-talkies in Erica’s hand suddenly crackled to life. “There’s fewer agents on hand than I expected,” Cyrus reported. “And this battle’s distracting them. I’m going for the hostages.”
“No, Grandpa!” Erica shouted into the radio. “Don’t do it!”
“I have to,” Cyrus told her. “We’re not going to get another chance like this. I’ll be in and out before they even know what hit them. Going to radio silence.”
“Wait!” Erica yelled. “They know you’re coming! They’ve wanted you all along!”
But there was no answer in response.
“He’s turned off his radio,” Erica said. I’d seen her in danger many times before, but until that moment, I had never seen her look scared. “I’m going after him.”
“Me too,” Alexander said. He appeared both determined to prove his worth to his father—and absolutely terrified to face the enemy.
“Count me in,” I said, desperate to prove my worth as well.
“No,” Erica told me. “You’re still only a first year, and these men are dangerous.” She handed me a walkie-talkie. “Stay here. Be our eyes on the farmhouse. I’ll be in touch.”
Before I could protest, she was running off the battlefield, fighting her way through the surging Union forces. Alexander was on her heels.
“Hey!” the lead cannoneer shouted at them. “Don’t desert your posts! The battle’s about to begin!”
Erica and Alexander didn’t even look back. They vanished into the sea of blue uniforms, leaving me alone on the battlefield.
BATTLE
Winchester, Virginia
June 15
1600 hours
I leaned back against the cannon, feeling use-less. All the things SPYDER had said about me had turned out to be lies. I didn’t have a secret, amazing talent. I wasn’t more valuable to them than Erica Hale. I wasn’t an incredible spy in any way, shape, or form. It had all been a ruse to lure a real incredible spy out of hiding.
And now that Cyrus Hale was in trouble, all I could do was stand aside while his granddaughter ran to his rescue. Yes, Erica had told me to be the lookout for the operation, but in spy terms, that was basically like being asked to be the towel boy for the varsity football team; it was the job you assigned to the earnest kid who really wanted to help but who didn’t have any actual skills to contribute. In truth, I was relieved I’d been ordered to stay behind—I didn’t have a clue what to do in this situation. Thus, in addition to feeling useless, I felt guilty as well.
I raised the spyglass, hoping that I could at least keep an eye on things without screwing up. But I quickly proved to be rather inept at this, too. I couldn’t find Erica anywhere. I scanned the SPYDER farm in vain for her, but she was too good to be seen.
I could find Alexander, however. He was even more useless than I was. Somehow, in the process of fighting his way through the Union troops, he’d gotten turned around and ended up going the wrong direction. He was currently asking for directions at a souvenir stand, proving that his father had been right not to bring him along.
I directed my attention back to the farmhouse. The SPYDER agents were going about business as usual. They appeared completely unaware that Erica was en route, or that Cyrus was already somewhere on the premises.
Most of the fake Union soldiers had filed past me and formed ranks to meet the Confederates. Three long lines of blue uniforms stretched from one side of the battlefield to the other, whooping war cries and taunting the enemy. Around me, men were scrambling to load their cannons.
I, on the other hand, was merely propped against mine, staring off in the wrong direction.
It didn’t take long for the lead cannoneer to notice. He was a gangly college kid who couldn’t even grow his own sideburns—he had fake ones glued to his cheeks—but he was taking his position way too seriously.
“What is going on over here?” he demanded. “The Confederacy is about to charge us and you’re lolling in the sun like an old coon dog! Do you not care a whit for your country?”
“No, I do. I care many whits for my country,” I assured him, keeping the spyglass trained on the enemy. “It’s just that something very important is happening.”
“The Battle of Second Winchester is happening, private!” Lousy Sideburns shouted. “And you’re missing it!” With that, he snatched the spyglass from my hands.
“Hey!” I snapped. “I need that!”
“No, you need to load this cannon. That’s a direct order. Should you disobey, I’ll have no choice but to find you guilty of treason and send you to the hoosegow.” Lousy Sideburns pointed toward the sidelines, where there was a fake field prison full of traitors, dissenters, and a few farbs in “Confederates Suck” T-shirts.
On the far side of the field, the rebels had formed their attack lines as well. Commanders on horseback raced along both fronts, shouting rallying cries that probably would have been inspiring if I’d had the time to listen to them. The soldiers fell silent in preparation for battle, and an eerie calm before the storm fell over the field.
“I don’t have time to explain this,” I told Lousy Sideburns. “There’s something going on here that’s much more important than this silly reenactment.”
Lousy Sideburns gasped, offended. Apparently, I hadn’t chosen my words well. “There is nothing ‘silly’ about reenacting! It’s a glorious way to pay homage to the heroes who made this country great!”
“Then why doesn’t anyone reenact battles from World War Two?” I asked, before I could help myself. “You never hear about folks dressing up like doughboys and Nazis and reenacting the D-Day invasion.”
“This isn’t dress-up!” Lousy Sideburns shouted. “We are embodying the spirits of warriors!”
A bugle call rang out from the far side of the battlefield. The Confederate cannons fired.
Our cannons answered. It was staggeringly loud. We were suddenly enveloped in a cloud of thick, sulfurous smoke.
My walkie-talkie buzzed. It was Erica, though she spoke in code so that anyone from SPYDER would think she was just a reenactor using inappropriate technology. “Commander Ripley, this is the advance party. I have failed to convene with my superior, as he is already in place to engage the enemy. I intend to extract him—and the others—but it won’t be easy. There are far more rebels here than originally suspected. So I need you to create a diversion for me.”
I glanced sideways at Lousy Sideburns. “Uh, how soon do you need it?”
“Sometime in the next two minutes would be nice,” Erica replied.
“Is that a walkie-talkie?” Lousy Sideburns demanded, looking apoplectic. “You can’t use twentieth-century technology in a Civil War battle!”
This, coming from a man whose sideburns had been made in China.
I did my best to ignore him. “Exactly what kind of diversion were you thinking of?” I asked Erica.
“You have a cannon, don’t you?” she asked. “That could be handy.”
For a moment, I was overwhelmed by the request. How was I supposed to help Erica, rescue my friends, and deal with Lousy Sideburns all at once? But then an idea came to me that, despite everything, actually brought a smile to my face. “I’ll see what I can do,” I told Erica.
Then I spun back to Lousy Sideburns and saluted. “Your words of wisdom have made me see the light, commander. You’re right. This isn’t dress-up. This is a great way to honor the heroes of yesteryear. Rest assured, those Confederates are cannon fodder.” With that, I went to work prepping the giant gun for battle.
Lousy Sideburns was surprised, but pleased, by my sudden turn. “Very good, soldier,” he said, and then asked, “By the way, where’s the rest of your crew?”
“Picked off by snipers,” I reported. “Medics already took them away. But I can handle this myself.”
“Nonsense!” Lousy Sideburns said. “You keep at this. I’ll fi
nd some fresh recruits to help.” He handed my spyglass back to me and raced down the cannon line.
There was a final bugle call from the battlefield, this one longer than all the others. The call to attack. The air was instantly filled with the roar of a few thousand fake Confederate and Union soldiers crying out at once—and then the lines charged one another.
Even though this was happening quite close to me, I couldn’t see it all that well. There was no breeze at all on the field and the cloud of smoke from the cannons hadn’t drifted away. Instead, it still hovered around, cloaking the entire cannon line in smog. I had only the haziest view of my surroundings.
However, that meant everyone else, from the spectators to my fellow reenactors to the enemy agents in the farmhouse, couldn’t see me well either.
I’d paid close attention when Cyrus had explained how to load a cannon, so I knew how to do it. And I’d learned a thing or two about jury-rigging explosives during my time at spy school. Now, I scrambled to create the diversion Erica needed before Lousy Sideburns sent reinforcements my way.
There was a bag full of gunpowder charges by the cannon. By themselves, they would just pop and smoke for the enjoyment of the spectators, but all together, there was enough gunpowder in them to make a significant explosion. I threw two charges down the barrel of the cannon, then dug through Cyrus’s haversack.
As I’d expected, there was a roll of duct tape inside.
On the battlefield, through the haze, the first wave of enemy lines met each other. Four hundred fake fights broke out at once, faux Yanks and Rebs pretending to stab one another with dull knives and clobber one another with toy muskets. Scores of men dropped to the ground and died in the hammiest way possible. In real life, when someone gets killed by the enemy, they tend to do very non-heroic things like cry and soil themselves. Out at Winchester, virtually every man went down valiantly cursing the enemy and imploring his fellow soldiers to go on without him.
The spectators loved every moment of it.
A giant ramrod hung from the bottom of my cannon. It was a long metal shaft with a padded end and thus looked somewhat like a Q-Tip for an elephant. I used it to ram the two gunpowder charges down the barrel of the cannon, then quickly wrapped the remaining charges to its shaft with duct tape.
Three men suddenly emerged from the smoke beside me. They were all considerably older than I was, dressed as basic infantry. “The lead cannoneer says you’ve lost the rest of your team,” one with a shaggy beard said. “We can take it from here, son.”
I knew I couldn’t give up the cannon. If I did, I’d be letting Erica, Cyrus, and all my friends down. So I tried to imagine what Erica would do in the situation. It wasn’t hard: She’d simply assume the position of authority.
I didn’t even look at the men. I simply continued working, as though this was exactly what I was supposed to do. “You men got here just in time. I could really use some help turning this cannon around.”
Two of the men didn’t even question this. They simply rushed to help me. Big Beard held back, however.
“Turn the cannon?” he asked. “Why? It’s aimed toward the battle.”
“The Confederates are planning a sneak attack behind us,” I said confidently. “My team spotted them right before the battle began. But Johnny Reb picked them off before we could counter.”
Big Beard bought it. “Well then, let’s give Johnny Reb a little taste of Union vengeance,” he said.
There were chocks under the wheels of the cannon to prevent it from rolling backward down the hill it was perched on. All we had to do to turn the cannon around was pull the chock out from under one wheel and give a little push. The cannon rolled backward and spun so that it now faced the farmhouse.
The haze was clearing a bit around us. I could now see the farmhouse again, which gave me the ability to sight my target well. Since it also gave the enemy the ability to see us, however, we had to work fast.
Thanks to my gift with numbers, I was able to quickly calculate the proper angle to set the cannon at, given the approximate distance to the farmhouse and our position above it. (It was quite easy, as there was no wind to account for.) Together, my new team and I set the barrel and locked it in place.
Unfortunately, Lousy Sideburns had now spotted us as well. He stormed toward us again, sputtering in rage. “What on earth is the meaning of this disobedience?”
“We’re countering a Confederate sneak attack, sir!” I said, snapping a salute. The other three men followed my lead.
Lousy Sideburns’s anger dimmed. He now looked confused. “I don’t think there’s a sneak attack in this battle.”
“Of course there is,” I replied. “It’s in all the history books. Jubal Early sent a squad of Confederate commandoes to circle around behind enemy lines to assault the Union forces from the rear.” I struck a match, lit one of the charges in the bag taped to the ramrod, then dropped the entire makeshift missile down the barrel of the cannon.
Lousy Sideburns was squinting in the direction of the farmhouse. “I don’t see any commandoes,” he said.
“They wouldn’t be very good commandoes if you could,” I replied. Then I turned to Big Beard and said, “Light it.”
Big Beard gleefully lit the fuse on the cannon. “This ought to show those traitors a thing or two,” he said, laughing. Then he stepped back and stuck his fingers in his ears.
“Package is en route,” I told Erica through the walkie-talkie. Then I plugged my ears as well.
The cannon boomed. The ramrod screamed out of it and rocketed through the air toward the SPYDER farm. My calculations were almost dead-on. It stabbed into the ground only two feet away from its intended target: one of SPYDER’s minivans. But that was close enough.
The bag of charges taped to the ramrod exploded a second later. The blast crumpled the minivan and knocked it onto its side. After which the van exploded as well.
Even in the middle of the battlefield, which was filled with noise and chaos, this was noisy and chaotic enough to grab people’s attention. A hundred tourist video cameras swung from the battle to the farmhouse. Yanks and Rebs paused in the midst of fake fighting to turn toward the explosion. Men who’d just spent a good minute dying gloriously in battle suddenly came to life again, sitting up like zombies to see what had happened.
Inside the farmhouse, the SPYDER agents came to look too. Through my scope, I watched them race to the windows to peer outside.
Which was exactly the diversion Erica and Cyrus needed. It turned out—although it didn’t surprise me—that they were already in the house. One moment, SPYDER agents were standing in the windows and the next, they’d dropped out of sight, presumably unconscious on the floor. I didn’t get so much as a glimpse of Erica or Cyrus, only their handiwork.
To my side, Lousy Sideburns went nuclear. He hadn’t taken our cue to step away from the cannon, so his face was blackened from the blast. One of his fake sideburns had been torn from his cheek and was now perched on his ear like a small rodent, but he was too angry to notice. “What have you done?” he screamed at us. “What have you done?”
“Well, it’s obvious,” I said. “We’ve blown up a rebel minivan.”
In the farmhouse, the SPYDER agents disappeared from the upstairs windows and never reappeared again. Then Erica emerged. She pulled off Chip’s blindfold, and Chip gave her a huge, thankful smile. Erica sliced through his bonds with her army knife, and once Chip was free, he started to help free the other hostages.
“The Confederacy doesn’t drive minivans!” Lousy Sideburns raged. “They ride horses! You have destroyed the property of an innocent bystander!”
“No,” I said, keeping my eye to the scope. “You have.”
“Me?” Lousy Sideburns asked. “How am I responsible for this?”
“I didn’t want to use this cannon,” I said. “You ordered me to. I’m only a kid. What kind of lunatic makes a kid use a cannon?”
Lousy Sideburns gulped, suddenly very concerned.
The three men who’d helped me backed away from Lousy Sideburns, pointing fingers at him. They quickly broke character, desperate to divert any blame from themselves. “We had nothing to do with this,” Big Beard informed everyone nearby. “We were only following orders!”
Through all this, I kept watching the farmhouse. In the bedroom, everyone was free. No one wasted any time rejoicing, though. Erica herded them all out the door. She started to follow, but then something caught her attention. She whipped around, ready to attack . . .
And suddenly, I saw an emotion on Erica’s face I’d never seen before: surprise.
Her eyes went wide. Her face paled.
Whatever she saw was so startling, she did the unthinkable. She dropped her guard.
It was only for an instant, but it was enough. Whoever was in the room with her had the upper hand. Something struck Erica, and she dropped, unconscious.
The next thing I knew, I was running toward the house.
There was no actual decision to do it. If I’d taken the time to decide, I would have thought about all the enemy agents inside who were better armed and more competent than me. I would have worried about my own safety. But I didn’t.
I simply ran across the field as fast as I could, determined to help Erica. I yelled into my walkie-talkie, “Cyrus! Erica is down in the bedroom!” but as I’d feared, there was no response.
“Hey! Get back here!”
I looked back to see Lousy Sideburns racing after me, his fake facial hair flapping in the wind. He’d mistaken my running away as an admission of guilt.
“Back off!” I told him.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight until we get to the bottom of this!” he yelled.
We were getting dangerously close to the farmhouse.
Without even thinking about it, I suddenly stopped and wheeled around. Lousy Sideburns’s momentum carried him right into me, but I braced for the impact and used his inertia against him. I grabbed him by one arm and flipped him over my shoulder. He landed flat on his back in the grass so hard that it knocked the wind out of him.