by Scott McEwen
“So they came up on me, but I was in my Honda, the one I had set up to drift. I got my Gat low in my seat like this…” The Asian kid signaled like he had a gun held low, telling his story.
Hud walked up behind him. “Conrad, I said listen up.”
“Yeah, when I’m done.” Conrad motioned him away and kept on with his story. “So I had like the choice to run or—”
Hud put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Conrad shot up to his feet and spun around. “Why you up in my grill, man?” Conrad raised his fist to punch, but Hud’s move was fast. A punch to the neck, and the kid just dropped, unconscious at first, but then choking trying to breathe.
Hud placed a foot on him to pin him to the floor but did not look down. Hud spoke quietly, “Half of you won’t be here tomorrow, so I don’t care if you stay up all night, ruining yourself. But I want my sleep. ’Cause I’m going to need it. We all will, if we want to make it to day two, let alone the end of the summer. Or to make Top Camper, which I will have you all know now is my prize to lose. So you’ve been warned.”
Hud glanced around the cabin as the candidates hurried back into their beds. “Thank you.” Hud reached down and yanked the sleeping bag from Conrad’s bed and threw it on the floor. “There you go, Wyatt. You have a bunk.”
CHAPTER 11
Spring 2010
Beirut, Lebanon
Raquel liked her kibbeh raw—ground lamb, spices, bulgur, a drizzle of oil over top, a couple shakes of salt, served with slices of raw onion and pickled turnip. She was only nine, but it was her favorite dish. Relatives would kid her about it. “Raquel looks like a doll. And she loves raw meat!” And she did look like a doll, except cuter. She was a true Lebanese blonde, though only Lebanese on her father’s side. On her mother’s, she was Syrian.
In the afternoons her great-uncle Samir, who had raised her after her parents died, would instruct a waiter to set up a table for her on the sidewalk outside of his restaurant, Phoenicia, one of the culinary gems in Beirut. Raquel would eat alone, enjoying a partial view of the Mediterranean, the quiet street, and fading sun. Perfect.
And that is where she was one afternoon when the tourists rounded the corner. Japanese? Raquel thought. No, Korean. Two men, one woman. The men carried big cameras. All were old, a little gray, and chattering away like schoolchildren. Or ducks. Raquel thought they sounded like ducks. She smiled, imagining them as ducks in a poultry yard, and a little girl lurking behind them with a cleaver.
They saw her smile and melted. They approached. In highly broken English smattered with some Arabic, which they rapidly Googled on their phones, the three attempted to explain themselves. The old lady took the lead as ambassador, explaining that she was a grandmother and she had granddaughters back in Korea that were just like her. Likely not just like her, Raquel might have pointed out if she’d cared to.
The old lady took one of the men by the arm and said that he was her husband and the other guy was her brother-in-law and explained that they were food bloggers back in Korea.
“Not profession,” her brother-in-law pointed out with a chuckle. “Hobby. Passion hobby. We foodie.”
The little girl batted eyelashes at them. And the old lady finally got around to asking what they wanted from her. With exceeding politeness, she asked if they could photograph Raquel eating kibbeh for their blog. She promised they’d write about it, and people in Korea would be very interested in seeing her eating kibbeh.
As the old woman spoke, the little girl imagined a duck with graying eyebrows quacking and quacking until it gets its head lopped clean off. Fewapppp! A spurt of blood and the duck head does a circle in the air, mouth still quacking. Raquel smiled slyly and giggled, and the brothers with the cameras and the old lady all took this to mean it was okay to go ahead and snap a few pictures.
Cameras came up and trigger fingers came down. Repeatedly. Raquel felt every shutter click as a bullet tearing through her. Gunned down. Strafed. Shot to pieces. Worse with those giant lenses, she imagined eyeballs telescoping through the air to touch her and roll around on her skin, like slimy marbles. She wanted to scream, to attack, to pick up her fork and jam it in the old lady’s ear. Her hand trembled, itching to strike, but the smile on Raquel’s face stayed sweet as a bowl of rice pudding.
The photo shoot only lasted seventy seconds, and the cameras stopped. The trio bowed many times, gave many-many thanks, and then made their biggest mistake yet. The capper. The coup de grâce. The old lady’s brother-in-law drew out a wad of Lebanese pounds from his pocket and dropped a couple bills on the table. A tip. The girl scowled.
More bows. Polite apologies. “Many thank.” The three then entered the restaurant and proceeded to order up a feast—hummus, kafta, frog legs, makdous, sujuk, and, of course, raw kibbeh. They photographed every dish. Up close. Many time. A beautiful night. No doubt about it.
When the Koreans left, the sun had just set and none of them noticed the kibbeh sitting untouched at the table where the girl had been earlier. Only a couple flies buzzed around the untouched meat. The fork was still speared through the onion. But the knife was missing.
* * *
The following morning three Korean tourists, a husband and wife and the brother-in-law, were found murdered in their hotel suite, their throats slit while they slept. All of their money, their computers, their phones, and expensive camera equipment had been taken. This initially led investigators to conclude that robbery was the motive behind the killing; however, one curious detail confused the case. The two male victims had been stabbed in the eyes as they died.
The murders made international headlines and the case drew attention from Korean politicians who placed considerable pressure on the Lebanese police and intelligence community to solve the murders and bring justice. This shouldn’t have been too difficult a thing to do. The killer or killers had entered the hotel room using a stolen keycard. The hotel had cameras in every hallway, in the lobby and on the grounds, but when investigators reviewed the video on the hotel’s server, they saw it had been hacked. Within an hour of the first reports of the murders, someone had hacked into the hotel’s network and deleted twenty-four hours of digital surveillance. All signs pointed to a state actor or terrorist group.
* * *
Raquel once again sat in the fading sunlight outside her great-uncle’s restaurant, calmly eating her raw kibbeh with onions and pickled turnips. This afternoon was little different than others except she had a brand new Korean-made computer and was shopping online when the screen to the computer no longer responded to her commands. A message box appeared: Glowworm12 wants to be your friend and has sent you a message. Click to see.
She clicked. A video file opened, one she had never seen and one she hoped she’d never see. It was security footage from the hotel that revealed a nine-year-old killer, footage Raquel had learned from the news shows had been mysteriously deleted. She saw herself in the hotel hallway, then entering the Koreans’ room. Fear prickled through her; she grabbed the laptop and prepared to throw it in the sea. Then she saw a new message: Don’t be scared. I deleted the files to protect you.
Raquel: Who are you?
Glowworm12: Your biggest fan … I have been looking for someone like you my entire life.
Raquel: Where are you?
A pause.
Glowworm12: Want to see?
Raquel: Yes.
The camera on her computer activated, a chat window opened on her screen and she found herself looking into darkness, and then a figure approached the screen.
CHAPTER 12
June 2017
Camp Valor
Wyatt glanced down at his wrist: 5:25 a.m. Still damp, not quite light, and painfully cold. Wyatt shivered on the beach with twenty-five other camper candidates, all part of Group-C, all wearing bathing suits. All recently yanked from dreams of summers back home—Sunday-morning cartoons, pickup baseball, video games, lazy days avoiding a summer-reading list. Now they stared at icy water, calm in the break
ing dawn.
Hallsy paced out on the dock in the swirling fog, a long carbon-fiber paddle in his hand. “All you have to do is focus on what you are doing right now and you will make it through this program and have a chance to make history. It’s that simple. Stay focused on the now. If you think about what will happen ten hours from now, you’ll fail. If you’re thinking an hour ahead, you’ll fail. Don’t even think ten minutes or even ten seconds ahead. Just give me a hundred percent of now, and I’ll tell you when you can let up. Do that and you’ll do great. If you start to question why you are here and if you can make it—if you think about the road ahead at all—you will be fighting two battles: one now and one later. Let the other battle wait. You’ll get there soon enough. This is a mental game first and foremost. Lead with the mind, and the body will follow.”
Hallsy turned to face the cove. Staff floated in canoes, bundled up, breath steaming, waiting for the swim to begin.
“Before we start, I want you to hear an admonition about reputation,” Hallsy said. “Reputation is everything. It is built starting today. ‘But this is a secret place,’ you may be saying to yourself, ‘so why does reputation matter? No one back home will know if I quit or cheat or don’t give that one hundred percent.’ The truth is, you will know, and I will know, and your fellow Group-Cs and the Bs and the As will know. Reputation always matters. What you do here in the next three months will follow you for the rest of your life. Whether you go on to join the SEAL teams, DELTA, or the CIA, or enter the private sector, how you behaved at Valor—among those who know you—will define you. This is when our reputations are created. Legends are made here. Remember that.”
The boys and girls lined up on the beach, seeming to mull over the sentiment and the idea of reputation and then spit the whole concept back out.
“How ’bout his ass takes a swim,” the big Arab-looking kid who had been playing craps said under his breath. Snickers followed. Wyatt noticed the kid with the Kentucky tattoo was so thin he almost looked skeletal in the morning chill, already shivering, his bones rattling under his skin. But he was smiling.
Hallsy didn’t hear. “All right.” He glanced at his watch. “Enough talk. Time to get to work. We are going to start the day with a dip in the water—a two-mile swim to Flint Rock to start the morning.”
“Two miles?” Wyatt heard another camper say. “That’s like … far, man.”
“Got a problem with that? If so, you can go back to jail right now.” Hallsy stared back. “You don’t like this, you’re welcome to go chill in your cell. Who wants that?”
No one spoke. “Okay, then. Those of you who have not qualified, this will serve as your swim test. Later, we will assign swim buddies. For now, you are not allowed to assist fellow campers. Okay, let’s get wet.” Hallsy stepped from the dock onto a paddleboard, a massive gorilla of a man seeming to glide out onto a cloud of smoke.
The frozen campers shared awkward glances. Was this really starting now? In this icy water?
“How about I make it easy for you,” Hallsy said, dipping his paddle and shooting the board out toward the open water. “Last one to the rock has to do the swim twice.”
Campers surged. Arms, legs, bodies crashed through the steely surface. Wyatt’s skin stung as if it were being jabbed with needles. His heart hammered.
It was hard at first for Wyatt not to think about how far two miles really was. Had he ever swum that far? He was freezing. Would the water get warmer? Would every day be like this? Would every morning start with water so cold he wanted to scream?
Stop it, Wyatt told himself. Stop thinking.
Just reach, pull, kick, breathe, and repeat. Reach, pull, kick, breathe, reach, pull, kick, breathe. Swim. One stroke at a time.
It was working. Focus on the now, he reminded himself. Don’t think a stroke further ahead.
Two of the campers decided they’d rather go back to jail before they reached Flint Rock. One of the first two to quit was Conrad, the big talker from the night before. He and another boy were pulled dripping out of the cold water, plopped into canoes, draped with towels, and given a large pill and warm liquids to drink. Then their hands were cuffed and they were whisked back to the island.
Wyatt tried not to look at the quitters. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stay, but he sure as heck didn’t want to go back to the CYDC. Reach, pull, kick, breathe. Repeat. Until the shore materialized, and he pulled himself up onto a large, forty-foot stretch of bedrock, the beach at Flint Rock. The beach faced the rising sun and was now warmer. He lay chest down on the rock, letting the heat rise up into him. He was too cold and tired to do anything but catch his breath and shiver.
“You swim better than you drive.”
Wyatt glanced up at Hallsy, peering down from his paddleboard. “You swim almost as good as the Blues.” Hallsy nodded to Hud and Dolly, the only other two candidates to beat Wyatt to the island. Hud was by far the strongest candidate in the group and, not surprisingly, he had been the first to reach the rock, followed by Dolly. “Keep up the hard work,” Hallsy said, paddling back out toward the incoming swimmers, “and you just might make it through the rest of the day.”
When Wyatt’s teeth finally stopped chattering and his muscles loosened, he sat upright to watch campers arriving at the island. Once again, another candidate quit. She was pulled out not far from shore, given a blanket, the liquids, and the pill to take before the cuffs were clapped on.
Wyatt turned to the tall athletic girl sitting next to him. “What’s that pill they gave her?” he asked.
“It’s to make us forget.”
“Forget?” The voice came from the large black boy who had been doing push-ups the night before. “How do they do that?”
“I don’t know. A drug. They make you take it so that when you get back to your life, this place is only a dim memory. Like a dream.”
“Damn.” The black kid shook his head. “That ain’t gonna be me.”
“Me either,” said the girl.
“I’m Ebbie.” The black kid stuck out his hand.
“Annika,” said the athletic girl.
The kid with the Kentucky tattoo raised a finger. “Sanders. And I don’t know how y’all got here, but I’m here ’cause I got a taste for driving nice cars that other people pay for.”
“Your name is Sanders? And if I got it right you are from Kentucky?” Ebbie asked incredulously. “Like Colonel Sanders?”
The kid nodded. “KFC all the way, baby.”
“And who are you?” Ebbie said, turning to Wyatt. “Everybody’s been wondering about the boy who got the personal escort from the Old Man and Hallsy.”
“Name is Wyatt. And I’m no one. I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Lemme solve that for you,” Ebbie said. “You here ’cause you’re bad. And expendable … now lemme ask a question. After all these fools have quit, who is gonna be the poor sucker to come in last and have to swim back?”
Turns out, it wasn’t even close. The last waterlogged swimmer crawled up on the rock long after the second to last. The boy was very tall, maybe six-four, Arab or Afghani. He had a huge hooked nose and large hands.
He lay on the rock gasping. Hallsy walked over. Everyone was thinking the same thing. Would he have to swim back? Or would they cut him a break? Clearly, he had lost the race to Flint Rock not because of effort, but because he could barely swim.
Hallsy let him catch his breath before he got down on his haunches and said, “How you doing, Samy? Didn’t think you’d make it. You all right?”
The big Arab squinted, frowning a little, face plastered on the rock. “Yeah. Perfect, boss. Good to go,” the kid said in a mingled accent of Far East and American ghetto slang.
“Good, ’cause you got another two-miler.” Hallsy rose, looking back in the direction of base camp, hidden behind islands in the archipelago. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes to rest up and get warm. Then it’s back in.”
Samy sniffed, seemed to taste something in his mouth. He
stood, his skin blue and his joints creaking, clearly in pain. He shot a snot rocket from his nose and then looked back toward base camp. “Why rest?”
“I’m sorry?” said Hallsy.
“Sir, camels don’t need no rest.” Samy pounded his chest.
“Camel, huh?” Hallsy said. “You don’t mind being called a camel?”
“I don’t mind callin’ myself a camel. They badass animals. Watch.” Samy splashed into the water. A slow breath and a slow stroke, and he started back again.
Hallsy clapped his hands. “All right. No rest for the camel.”
* * *
While Samy swam, the remainder of Group-C paddled in canoes, nice and easy, cruising back. “Slow it down, guys,” the staff coached them. “You’ll want to conserve your energy.”
Wyatt couldn’t take his eyes off Samy, floundering behind, straining to stay afloat, sloppily moving forward. Back at the beach by base camp, Group-C squeezed out push-ups and sit-ups and up-downs while Samy half-drowned in the water somewhere between the shore and Flint Rock. Minutes passed. Arms numbed. Legs stiffened. The sand calisthenics were worse than the cold water, or so the campers imagined. They moaned and groaned, their willpower ground down with the sand and sun like milled wheat.
The sun inched across the sky. No Samy. Grumbling rippled among the campers. “If he can’t swim, what is he doing here?”
“What are we waiting for?”
“Where is he?”
Squinting up from a push-up, Wyatt saw Hallsy slide into the cove, drifting on the surface of the water. A body splashed alongside Hallsy’s board. The kid had made it. Or he had almost made it.
Less than two hundred yards from shore, the big kid began to sink. Arms slipped under. His head disappeared. Hallsy leaned over and peered into the calm surface. Samy bobbed up again. And sunk and bobbed again. This motion worried Wyatt.
Wyatt’s father had taught Wyatt how to swim at an early age. And not just how to stay afloat, but proper technique. It was one of the things they did together. His father would be gone for months at a time driving his rig, but when his father was home for short periods during the summer, he would take Wyatt hunting and fishing back home. Wyatt took to the muddy rivers and warm reservoirs of Millersville County like a river rat. It was hard to peel him out of the water. Wyatt’s father had also taught him some basic lifeguarding techniques; likely he was worried about Cody and wanted Wyatt to know what to do if someone was drowning. Watching Samy now, and observing the way he struggled in the water, Wyatt thought it looked like Samy had a cramp. But he wouldn’t quit.