by Stuart Gibbs
I was completely intimidated by him, but Erica’s advice when we were facing the bears came back to me. They were just like humans, she’d said. If you show fear, they get confidence. But if you act confident, they get scared. So I did my best to show confidence. I straightened my back, steadied my hands, and returned Joshua’s cold stare.
The monitor now indicated there were only four minutes and thirty seconds until launch.
“How did you know it was me?” Joshua asked.
It occurred to me that his curiosity about this might be the only reason I was still alive. So I tried to distract him with it. As I did, however, my mind was racing, trying to figure out how to take out both of my enemies and reprogram the missile’s trajectory in the next four and a half minutes. “The whole time we’ve been up against you,” I said, “we’ve been amazed by how much SPYDER knows about spy school. Everyone assumed that SPYDER must have had another mole inside the school, like Murray. But whoever it was obviously knew far more than Murray ever did. Like how to get on and off the campus—or spy camp—without being seen by a single one of the security cameras. I’m not sure that even the professors could pull that off. The only person who knows either campus that well is Erica—and she learned a lot of that information from you.”
Joshua smiled wistfully. I got the sense it was in response to my mentioning Erica.
“And then it occurred to me,” I said, “that no one ever saw your dead body. You supposedly got blown up. All anyone saw were remains that the crime lab said were yours. But if SPYDER could deliver someone who wasn’t Murray here to Apple Valley without anyone noticing, how hard could it be to insert a false lab test into the computer system? Therefore, maybe you weren’t dead after all, but had merely faked your own death to cover up your defection to the dark side.”
Joshua nodded appreciatively, trying not to give too much away.
Murray was far more effusive. “You see?” he said. “I told you Ben was smart. Everyone here razzed me for letting him defeat Operation Scorpio, like maybe it was my fault he figured it out. And now he’s figured out your genius plan, too.”
Joshua frowned, not nearly as happy about this as Murray seemed to be.
“C’mon,” Murray said. “Admit it, he’s good. If he could just drop the whole morality thing, he’d be a great fit here.” He looked back toward me. “What do you say, Ben? Are you going to sign that contract or not?”
I failed to conceal my surprise. “That wasn’t just a ruse to lure Cyrus Hale out of retirement?”
“No!” Murray laughed. “Well, not entirely. I mean, it was designed to do both: grab your attention, and get the whole Hale family involved.”
I shifted my attention to Joshua, unsure whether to believe this or not. “Is this for real?”
“It is,” Joshua admitted. “Despite your thwarting of Operation Scorpio, my superiors still think you have potential. However, this is the very last time we’ll be able to make you this offer.” Joshua raised his gun. “You’re either with us or against us.”
The moment should have been terrifying. After all, my life was on the line. But I felt oddly euphoric. The job offer hadn’t been a complete sham. SPYDER still saw potential in me. Which meant I wasn’t useless at all. If SPYDER didn’t want me working against them, that was because they were afraid of what I could do.
I glanced back at the timer. There were now only ninety seconds until the missile launched. Even if I could miraculously manage to disarm and subdue my enemies, there was no way I’d ever be able to figure out how to reprogram the system in time.
But maybe I didn’t have to.
Buoyed by my newfound confidence, I had a sudden inspiration. I’d been coming at this from the wrong angle. Reprogramming a missile to not strike its target was immensely complicated.
But preventing a missile from launching in the first place might not be.
I simply had to hold everyone’s attention for a little while longer.
“I didn’t finish telling you how I knew Joshua here was still alive,” I said. “I had one more clue. In fact, it was the thing that convinced me my theory was right.”
“Really?” Joshua asked, unable to control his curiosity. “And what was that?”
“I was watching Erica when you captured her,” I said. “I didn’t see you, but I saw her face. I’ve never seen her so surprised before. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone so surprised before. I thought it was just that she was seeing someone who’d come back from the dead, but I realize now that there was something more to it.”
“What?” Joshua asked.
“Betrayal.” I took a step back, planting my foot into a coil of electrical cord. “You might have been the only other student that Erica actually admired. In fact, I think she might have had a bit of a crush on you.”
For a moment, Joshua’s cold features softened and there was some sadness in his eyes. He nodded slightly.
“No way!” Murray crowed. “The Ice Queen had a thing for you? No wonder she’s so devastated!”
“It’s not funny,” Joshua said sharply, and in that moment, I realized he might have cared for Erica, too.
There were forty-five seconds left.
“No, it’s not,” I agreed. “She believed in you, Joshua. She thought you stood for the same things she did. And now, you’re planning to kill off the president and a dozen heads of state at once.”
Joshua’s eyebrows raised. “You figured that out too?”
“I had some help on that one,” I admitted. “And the worst part is, knowing SPYDER, you’re only doing it for money. Some rich jerk has an axe to grind, and you’re happy to cast aside any morals you ever had for him.”
“That is not true!” Joshua snarled. “The leaders of all these nations have betrayed their own people!”
“That doesn’t mean they deserve to die,” I said. “If you really cared about anything, you’d use your power to try to effect some change. But assassination? That’s the spineless way out. It’s easy to pull a trigger or push a launch button. Any moron can do it.”
There were fifteen seconds left until liftoff. Down the tunnel, underneath the mine shaft, the missile’s rockets began priming.
“SPYDER does not hire morons,” Joshua said. “Do you think a moron could have concocted this plan? Or bent the CIA to their will? Or obtained and installed that?” He pointed his gun down the tunnel toward the missile, taking it off me for a split second.
That was all the time I needed. I kicked backward through the loop of electrical cord, snapping it taut and yanking the plug free from the control system.
The machines immediately shut down. The monitor flashed that it was time for liftoff . . . and then went blank.
The booster rocket fired, filling the tunnels with light as the missile began to lift off the pad.
For a moment, I thought I’d been too late.
And then the booster shut off.
Joshua swung back toward me. “What did you do?” he demanded.
“I think I just thwarted your plans,” I said.
The way I’d figured it, the control system of any rocket was designed to shut down the moment it detected anything wrong. And it wasn’t really that hard to make something go wrong. That’s why space launches were always getting delayed. Thus, if I unplugged the control system, the missile guidance would immediately assume something was defective and abort.
Murray was frantically tapping on the keyboard of the control system, unaware that I’d simply cut off the power. “Unbelievable!” he said. “Ben, you have to start working with us, rather than against us.”
Joshua pointed his gun at me, his eyes narrowed in anger. “No,” he said. “The contract’s rescinded. You’re too much like Erica. We could never trust you to do the wrong thing.”
Before he could shoot me, however, the missile crashed back down onto the launchpad. And then its fuel tank exploded.
The shock wave blasted through the tunnel, blowing us off o
ur feet. We were tossed through the air and slammed into the rock wall.
I was knocked out for a few seconds. When I came to, the entire mountain was trembling. A shower of coal dust rained down from the ceiling.
I staggered to my feet, aching but still happily alive. Through the haze of dust, I spotted Joshua and Murray silhouetted by the flames from the explosion. Neither one was concerned with me anymore. They were running for their lives.
That seemed to be a rather good idea, given the circumstances, so I followed them.
They reached the former site of the launchpad well ahead of me. The remnants of the missile were scattered everywhere, jagged shreds of metal embedded in the walls and the roof of the cavern. Several fires burned, though the largest was in the tunnel where the three backup missiles were stored. The warhead of the destroyed missile lay beside them, surrounded by flames.
I figured that if that warhead blew, it would probably trigger the other three missiles, and it made sense to be as far away as possible when that happened.
Joshua Hallal and Murray Hill certainly thought so too. They jacked up their speed a few notches and hauled toward the exit.
I stopped running, however. My friends were still in the mine. I looked through the haze of fire and smoke toward the tunnel they had all gone down.
To my relief, I saw them coming. Hank and Chip had Cyrus Hale between them. Alexander Hale and Claire had Erica. Jawa and Zoe were racing ahead. “They’re okay!” Jawa yelled when he saw me. “Get the bad guys!”
“The missiles are going to blow!” I yelled back to him. “Get everyone and clear the mine now!”
Then I took off after Murray and Joshua again. My brief hesitation had given them a big head start on me, but Murray had never been that great an athlete—and he’d let himself go since spy school. Even now, running for his life, he was awfully slow, gasping for air and clutching at a cramp in his side.
Joshua Hallal, on the other hand, was in very good shape. Despite Murray’s cries of “Joshua! Don’t leave me!” Joshua left him, blazing through the tunnel like an Olympic sprinter. He disappeared out the entrance well ahead of us.
I caught up to Murray near the entrance. He glanced over his shoulder and tried out a weak smile on me. “Last chance, Ben,” he said. “I can still get you a lucrative job at SPYDER. Let me go and I’ll make it worth your while.”
“It’s not gonna happen,” I said. And then tackled him.
We tumbled out of the mine, into the open air . . .
And were immediately raked by gunfire. As I was on top of Murray, I got the worst of it, four shots tearing across my chest.
I gasped for air, looking down at the blooms of red on my chest, stunned that I’d come so far only to get shot now.
And then I smelled latex.
“Warren!” I shouted angrily.
“Sorry!” A nearby bush stood up, revealing itself to be Warren, armed with a paintball gun. He’d done his usual bang-up job camouflaging himself. “I thought you were one of the bad guys.”
“The bad guys don’t usually tackle other bad guys,” I said. “The good guys do that.”
“Guess I just got a little overexcited.”
“Where’d the first guy go?”
Warren pointed toward the Winnebago. “I tried to shoot him, too,” he explained. “But I missed.”
Sure enough, the Winnebago was coated with splotches of red paint. The driver’s-side door suddenly flew open. Joshua Hallal scrambled back out, having discovered that I’d taken the keys. He no longer looked cool and unflappable. Instead, he looked desperate and frightened. He glanced at me briefly, then darted into the woods.
I was still on top of Murray, who wasn’t even trying to fight back. He was too winded from his run.
Jawa and Zoe emerged from the mine. “Zoe!” I called. “Can you handle Murray for me?”
“Glad to,” Zoe replied. She promptly pounced upon Murray, driving her elbow into his stomach. “That’s for betraying your friends!” she snarled.
I threw her the Winnebago keys. “Get everyone out of here before the mine blows,” I said.
“What about you?” Zoe asked.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, hoping that was true. I took off into the woods after Joshua.
Jawa fell in beside me. “Who are we chasing?” he asked.
“Joshua Hallal,” I replied. “Turns out, he’s not dead.”
Jawa’s eyes widened in surprise. “Holy cow,” he said.
I’d heard that Joshua had been one of the best students in hand-to-hand combat spy school had ever produced, a master of karate, jujitsu, and Lithuanian knife-fighting. Therefore, he wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to be chasing through the woods in the dark. And yet, I was going after him anyhow. I couldn’t explain why, exactly, except that I felt that I somehow owed it to Erica for what he’d done to her.
Luckily, Joshua seemed to be merely trying to get away, rather than lying in wait to ambush us. We could hear him crashing through the forest ahead and followed the sound.
“How’s Erica?” I asked, panting with exertion. I probably should have been saving my breath, but I had to know.
“She’ll be all right,” Jawa replied. Despite the fact that we were running full-tilt, he didn’t even seem winded. “But they worked her over to make Cyrus give up the information. Apparently, she told him not to, that she could take anything they could dish out . . .”
“Thanks for rescuing her,” I said.
“Thank Alexander,” Jawa said. “The rest of us ran right into a trap. Luckily, Alexander saved us.”
“Alexander?!” I gasped. “Really?”
“Why do you sound surprised? This is Alexander Hale we’re talking about. The guy was unbelievable. He took out six SPYDER agents all by himself.”
I shook my head in wonder. Apparently, I’d been right: Alexander did have some real skills. It simply took seeing his father and daughter in jeopardy to trigger them.
I wondered how big Alexander’s ego would get now that he’d actually succeeded in a real rescue mission—and done it in front of a bunch of adoring students, no less.
From the woods ahead of us came a shrill metallic squeal, the sound of rusted metal coming to life. We raced toward it, burst through a stand of trees . . . and nearly pitched over the edge of a cliff. The ground dropped away so abruptly, we almost didn’t see it in the darkness.
Jawa noticed it later than I did. He skidded to the lip and wobbled on the precipice, but I yanked him back to safety right before he tumbled.
The train tracks from the mine stopped at the edge as well. From there, a long, thick wire angled downward to a lake far below, similar to the zip line Erica had showed me at spy camp. The miners would have loaded the coal into large metal buckets hung on pulleys and sent them down the wire. However, there was only one such bucket still in working condition—and Joshua Hallal was currently racing away from us in it. Its rusty old pulley screeched and sparked as it raced along the wire. In the dark, I could barely make out the white of Joshua’s taunting grin. And the gleam of the gun in his hand.
“Take cover!” I yelled.
Jawa was already doing it. We ducked behind trees as the shots rang out.
Joshua fired until his gun clicked empty.
“There’s no other buckets here,” Jawa sighed. “He’s going to get away.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “We don’t need to catch him. We just need to cut the wire.”
Jawa looked at me, surprised, and then glanced at the wire. “Cut it with what?” he asked. “It’s over an inch thick.”
I didn’t have an answer to that. I glanced around, hoping a giant pair of wire snips might have been conveniently left nearby.
There weren’t any, however. There was nothing around but sticks and leaves. There was nothing we could do except sadly watch Joshua speed away, aware he was going to escape.
And then the mountain exploded.
The blast was far bigger than I’d expe
cted. The fire in the mine must have triggered one of the missile warheads, which triggered the others in rapid succession. The domino-reaction detonation was so enormous, it blew a hole the size of a football field out of the mountainside. A huge ball of fire erupted through it, bright enough to turn night into day. Flying chunks of rock decapitated several trees around us. The ground shook like it was made of Jell-O.
At our feet, the seismic tremors tore the cliff apart. Jawa and I leapt back as a foot of rock sheared away, tumbling into the void.
The post that held the coal-bucket wire went with it. In the halo from the explosion, I saw Joshua Hallal’s face as he realized he’d just been done in by his own missiles. His eyes went wide in fear—and then the bucket dropped as the wire went slack. Joshua screamed, but it was drowned out by the roar of fire and flame around us. He plummeted into the darkness of the forest far below and disappeared.
“This time, I don’t think he’s faking his death,” someone said behind us.
We spun around to find Erica emerging from the trees. She’d been through a lot since I’d last seen her. Both her eyes were black. Her lips were swollen. There was blood caked on her shirt—although knowing Erica, it wasn’t necessarily hers. Her arms and legs were covered with bruises. And yet, perhaps merely because she was alive, she was as beautiful as I’d ever seen her.
She looked down into the darkness where Joshua Hallal had vanished, seeming unsure whether to be pleased or upset by Joshua’s death. And then, she tamped her emotions down and became her usual, distant self. “Nice work,” she told me.
I started to correct her, to tell her that I hadn’t really done anything to take Joshua out, that we’d merely gotten lucky. But then I caught myself. I realized I’d actually learned something from Alexander Hale: If a gorgeous female agent thinks you’ve done something impressive, don’t try to change her mind.
“Thanks,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be recuperating right now?”
“Probably,” Erica replied. “But I couldn’t exactly sit still while Joshua there was on the loose. Not after what he did to me.”