by Scott McEwen
* * *
The suffering devised by the sadistic geniuses at Valor was a training protocol smash-up consisting of PT, outdoor-survival training, war-gaming, and seven consecutive Spartan Games all rolled up into one week of hell. Each of the twelve candidates was issued a couple new pieces of gear to carry. These items included a dummy M4 rifle (plugged barrel), a black hockey helmet, five pounds of MREs (meals ready to eat), NVGs, and a Buck knife. That is, everyone but Wyatt was issued a Buck knife. He already had his—the pearl-handled Buck knife Mum had given him on his first day.
As Wyatt and the rest of the campers quickly assembled rucksacks for Hell Week, he now realized why Hallsy, and others, had taken issue with the gift. Receiving the knife was the honor granted to those who had made it to Hell Week. Being able to keep it, that was the reward for finishing Hell Week. Make it through hell, win a knife. In that moment Wyatt decided he would not give anyone reason to question Mum’s confidence in him, her belief that he would make it through.
Seven days, Wyatt told himself, one day at a time, one hour, one minute. Just keep moving forward and you’ll make it.
The day commenced with a simple command: “Crawl.” Hallsy pointed to the top of the Caldera. “And stay down. Or you’ll get your head blown off. We are in enemy territory.”
All twelve fell to their knees. Rifles in ready position. They began the slow slog up the long, shale-strewn path. The pounding rain intensified. Fingers squished deep in mud. Knees were shredded. Wyatt’s back screamed in pain. Twenty minutes up the path, Samy crawled next to Wyatt. “Hey, man, you know why they plug the barrels during Hell Week?”
“No,” said Wyatt. “You?”
“Heard rumors. Weird to be carrying a gun that don’t work.”
“What kind of rumors?”
Hud looked back, shushing them.
Samy whispered, “I heard the staff plugged the barrels of the M4s during Hell Week to prevent campers from turning weapons on themselves.”
* * *
Halfway to the top of the Caldera, Wyatt heard a stick crack off in the brush. He rose up onto his knees to see what it was. Instantly, the surrounding woods lit up with machine-gun fire. Tracer rounds buzzed overhead, flash-bang grenades exploded on each side of the path, and Wyatt’s black helmet glowed Day-Glo orange and emitted an ear-splitting tone.
Hallsy ran over and screamed down at Wyatt. “I said stay down! Now your head is gone. Fifty push-ups.”
Wyatt buried his nose into the muck and began pushing out push-ups.
“Out there,” Hallsy motioned to the woods, “this entire week, ghosts are watching. Your every move. They will catch your every mistake. And Wyatt,” Hallsy said as the tone cut off and the helmet turned back from orange to black, “I didn’t expect you to be the first to screw up. Get it together. Or you will wash out. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Wyatt said, pushing out once more.
“All right, soon as Wyatt is finished, we begin again.”
And so the slog continued.
* * *
Wyatt pulled himself up the flat rocky crest of the Caldera as the sun peaked over the horizon, yellow light spilling out over the surrounding islands and water.
“At ease,” Hallsy said. “Take a fifteen-minute break for water and breakfast.”
Hallsy looked off to the woods. As if materializing from a tall shrub, a staff member walked out of the forest carrying a large backpack and two gallons of water. This was the punk rocker Wyatt had seen on the first day at Valor, the kitchen helper, Fabian Grant, Mackenzie’s brother. He topped off water bottles and replaced their MREs.
“Keep kicking ass,” Fabian said. “Don’t drop, don’t stop.”
Wyatt’s spirits were buoyed.
Hallsy paced among them. “Make sure you eat and drink. You should not conserve your food. In the field, you’d be limited, but during Hell Week, we want you to keep your water and calorie intake high. You’ll burn between seven and ten thousand calories a day, so be sure to drink and chow. Just don’t gorge yourselves. We’ll be moving again soon. Now eat.”
The mud-splattered candidates shoveled and chugged.
When the campers finished eating, Fabian left the same way he came, disappearing into the woods.
Hallsy gave the next order. “We’re going to be taking a swim soon, so we need to work up a sweat.”
Of course they were already caked in mud, soaked in sweat, and practically swimming in the rain cascading down.
“Three 15-sets. Let’s go!”
A 15-set was fifteen up-downs or “burpies,” as they are known, 15 push-ups, 15 sit-ups, and 150 seconds of flutter kicks, followed by 14 up-downs, 14 push-ups, 14 sit-ups, and 140 seconds of flutter kicks, and on down to zero. The low number of initial reps was deceiving. 15 burpies? No problem. How about 120 burpies?
One 15-set included 375 exertions, all to be executed properly and not phoned in. To put it simply, three 15-sets was punishing.
Wyatt wasn’t sure how far they were into the sets. He was trying not to count when Sanders, the tough-as-nails juvenile car thief from Kentucky, dropped his pack off his back and, gripping his stomach, staggered off into the woods. He’d gorged on MREs. Big mistake.
Sanders wasn’t ten yards off the trail when his shoe snagged on a stealthily hidden length of fishing line. A booby trap. The ground directly next to Sanders erupted in a volcano of dirt, rock, and pine needles, knocking Sanders sideways. Like Wyatt’s helmet had sounded off and flashed earlier, Sanders’s helmet turned orange and shrieked like crazy.
“You are a sorry bunch,” Hallsy said. “It isn’t even 7 a.m. and we got two dead. Sanders, next time you need to take a crap, you best ask first.”
“Ain’t going to be a next time,” Sanders said, clawing at the straps on the side of his helmet. “I want out. I am done!” He waddled toward Hallsy walking funny. Wyatt realized that when the explosion had gone off Sanders had crapped his pants.
“Give me the horn,” Sanders said. Hand out.
Hallsy studied the boy, face red and getting redder. Shame building. “Tell you what,” Hallsy said, his tone softening. “I’ll let you change and wash up. Don’t quit.”
“Gimmie the goddamn horn!” Tears ran down Sanders’s cheeks.
Hallsy nodded. The fog horn sounded and two more staff members materialized from the woods, put on cuffs, and led Sanders away.
Wyatt and the rest of the candidates watched Sanders leaving in shock. He was a hard-ass. And a good kid. He had quit and was gone without even time to say good-bye.
Wyatt adjusted his helmet and spat.
“Gone,” Samy said. “Like that.”
Hallsy shrugged. “No sympathy. If a little doo-doo in your shorts’ll stop you, this ain’t for you.”
* * *
After the 15-sets, the remaining eleven candidates rappelled a cliff on the backside of the Caldera into frigid water. They were then told to swim, loaded with weapons and packs, to a nearby shore, where they found that three inflatable boats had been dragged up onto the beach and left at the base of a steep, narrow trailhead.
Another 15-set, and Hallsy gave instructions. They were to carry the boats to the end of the trail and await instructions. Each boat weighed three hundred pounds. They would need to split up into teams to do this.
Wyatt consulted his map, quickly estimating that the checkpoint was five miles inland through enemy territory. Meanwhile Annika, Wyatt’s friend who looked and performed like an Amazonian huntress, hefted the side of one of the rafts, shook her head, and simply said, “Horn.” It wasn’t even noon yet.
CHAPTER 18
Winter 2015–2016
Monaco and Panama
Pablo’s barstool in his casino sat empty for weeks, then months, then one day, some other fat butt smothered the sacred, shiny metal seat. Some other guy perched in Pablo’s spot, like a toupee—a cheap, ill-fitting replica in place of the real article.
Pablo’s vodka, ordered specially from
Russia, piled up. The bartender dropped it from his order sheet. The casino’s regular patrons, who originally came for the free drinks that Pablo dished out, initially inquired about his absence, but then quickly forgot about Pablo, preferring a peaceful environment without the domineering old blowhard jeering, “Prost! Prost!” So what if it meant paying for their drinks?
A few employees briefly considered calling the police to report his absence, but they had listened long enough to Pablo brag about his past with the Russian mafia. And their paychecks kept coming. Why mess with that? Even Pablo’s best friends felt more at ease with him gone. It was easier to cheat the house without Pablo peering over their shoulders. All in all, Pablo’s casino grew quaint and comfortable in its owner’s absence.
Nobody really worried about Pablo. After all, he was last seen leaving the casino with a young pretty girl in a red dress. He was lucky. Most people assumed he was on an extended getaway or running elicit errands for an oligarch. Or on a drunken binge. A few people, of course, whispered that Pablo Gutierrez may have been decomposing somewhere musty. But this was not said openly.
Of all the possible speculation, no one who had ever known Pablo—friend, foe, or flunky—could have ever possibly guessed that the old paramilitary thug and strong-arm man had left Monaco for Panama to become a key player in one of the most disruptive start-ups of our time.
Yes, Pablo had traded in his ten-thousand-dollar suits for a hoodie, a ratty, pit-stained T-shirt, and a Bluetooth earpiece, attached to his sole remaining ear. Instead of slugging vodka all day, he now sipped Pu-er tea from an ancient rice bowl, hovering over a keyboard. Rather than spending days drunkenly sounding off to a bunch of washed-up lowlifes, Pablo now commanded the undivided attention of some of the greatest and most devious minds the tech industry had spawned.
Pablo didn’t just work at Glowworm Gaming, he ran one of its most important and secretive divisions—a skunk-works affair code-named Project Prep School. Pablo Gutierrez led the team tasked with avenging the death of the Glowworm’s father. Project Prep School had two clear targets: capture or kill Chris Gibbs and burn the program that trained him to the ground.
Of course, Pablo wasn’t exactly getting paid for running Project Prep School. Not in dollars or euros or even Bitcoins. Pablo’s remuneration came in a far more valuable currency—time tacked on to his lifespan.
Pablo had been both relieved and horrified when Raquel dispatched the hacker who had failed to discover the salt stain photos on Pablo’s computer.
It sent a powerful message. Pablo knew that any failure to produce results would give the Glowworm and Raquel a welcome excuse to kill him horribly. And so it was by Pablo’s progress and productivity, and by the Glowworm’s grace, that Pablo continued to haunt the earth.
Pablo lived like a silicon slave. Long hours and pressure to perform. Slave that he was, Pablo surprisingly found his new job rewarding. And at times, he was even imbued with a sense of purpose, camaraderie, and learning. The health perks at Glowworm Gaming weren’t bad either. In order to keep Pablo productive (and alive), the Glowworm had him on a medication regime similar to his own. This included human growth harmone, nootropics (smart drugs), 2000 mg of B-12 daily, and a hearty dose of good old-fashioned Adderall.
Pablo quickly shed his belly fat, often lifting up his shirt to show his cubical buddies his “sagging six-pack.” He felt so great, in fact, he even signed up for the CrossFit classes held in the basement of the compound in Panama. Sometimes Raquel taught the class. Pablo savored those days at CrossFit, and soon was known as the King of the Kettlebells until he shattered his wrist in a one-on-one burpie competition with Raquel.
In many ways, Pablo was back in action, baby. He was ripped and geeked and, at eighty, looked like a grizzled, steroidal, geriatric hospital escapee. He felt younger and badder than ever, and he always kept the vision of Glowworm’s Vitamix blender in the forefront of his mind. If Pablo was going to get out of there, his ticket to ride would be solving the riddle of Chris Gibbs and the American program that trained him.
Pablo knew the only way to do that was to match the past to the present. The Chapan School for Boys, where Chris and Wilberforce met as boarding students, converted its paper files to digital back in the early 2000s. This meant that Pablo’s team could easily hack the school’s system and retrieve the files from the late ’80s. The problem was that nearly all records relating to Chris Gibbs had mysteriously disappeared before the digital trail had been started.
What remained of Chris were a few photos and mentions in the Chapan yearbook, The Aegis. There was Chris in a grainy portrait, just another lanky freshman wearing a coat and tie, smiling into the camera. His face dotted by a smattering of zits and his mop of brown hair verging on a mullet. Chris could also be found obscured by a teammate’s afro in the JV football photo, and skating down center ice, hockey hair out the back of his helmet. He was listed as a member of the debate team and the gaming club, and a contributor to the student newspaper.
Working with the Aegis photographs, Pablo’s team created a series of renderings of what Chris might look like today: a fairly unremarkable man of fifty. Armed with the childhood photos and the renderings and facial recognition software, the Glowworm’s best hackers gained access to the U.S., Canadian, and British passport offices and began searching for possible matches to the renderings. They hacked into U.S. State Department databases for license, prison, and morgue photos and searched those as well. Since the renderings depicted how Chris might look as an adult, the results were mixed. A possible match would come in and undergo a vetting process by Pablo’s team. The closest contending photographs would be taken to the Glowworm for his inspection. No photo so far had passed the Glowworm test. If this didn’t change, Pablo was going to lose body parts.
CHAPTER 19
July 2017
Camp Valor
The raft bucked and plunged. Ebbie’s body thrashed and jerked, eyes and tongue lolling, no clear signs of life, his blood streaming so heavily Wyatt could taste copper. Whitewater boiled up around their faces. They weren’t submerged but they might as well have been. They raced down one final chute and shot out, listing into another calm stretch.
No one moved. They drifted in the foamy slipstream.
“Is he dead?” Hud asked.
Wyatt pulled himself up to Ebbie’s face and listened. And heard breath. “Alive. Hurting, but alive.”
They’d begun Hell Week as twelve, and they were now six zombies clinging to a half-sunken raft, heading down a frigid river. The end had to be near. Or they would die. Wyatt knew Ebbie needed medical assistance. He’d fallen from his raft and suffered a head injury.
The river flattened and deepened. And seemed to speed ahead. The fog lifted, but the day was cool and gray and a sleeting rain came down. A steep, tree-covered bank loomed up on the left. As they swept around it on a wide turn, Ebbie started coughing and his body began shaking. His eyes opened, eyeballs strained.
One word came out of his mouth. “Look.”
It wasn’t just the Old Man and Mum on the shore but the entire staff lined up. Torches burning. Soup boiling, blankets warming. Pizza boxes stacked. Group-C’s souped-up inflatable at the ready. The Sea Goat anchored.
Cheers rang out from the shore. The Old Man yelled, “Congratulations, Group-C, you have completed Hell Week!”
Hallsy, Mackenzie, and Cass raced down the river on jet skis. Hallsy hooked the back of his jet ski to the raft. “Lift to shore?”
Wyatt spoke for everyone. “Is it over, is it really over?”
They trudged up the sand like the refugees they were. Their war had been Hell Week and they’d won. Bloody knees and elbows and hands rubbed raw. Borderline hypothermic. Bodies practically sucked dry by thousands of bug bites. No fat. All muscle and sinew, moving cautiously like wet, starved feral cats.
Stretchers were brought for Hud, who had smashed his ankle, and Ebbie. Samy fell on his knees and kissed the sand. Dolly’s body shook, she sobb
ed with relief. Wyatt sat by the fire and silently and secretly prayed, thanking God for giving him the strength he did not have.
The Old Man walked over with a bowl of soup.
Wyatt moved to stand.
“Sit. Don’t get up.” The Old Man’s knees creaked as he lowered himself to Wyatt’s level and handed him the soup. “No one can take this away from you. Ever.” He patted Wyatt’s back firmly. “You can take this with you the rest of your life. I’m so proud. I know your father would be too if he were here.”
What was that? Wyatt pulled back, scowling. “What does my dad have to do with this?”
“I’m sorry,” the Old Man said, seeming genuinely apologetic. “I just meant any father would be proud. Any mother, too. Just look at Mum.” Wyatt saw Mum headed his way, tears in her eyes, carrying a blanket.
Mum draped a blanket around Wyatt’s shoulders and whispered into his ear, “I knew I made the right choice when I gave you that knife. Next step is to prove you are worthy of Top Camper.” She winked.
Wyatt nodded, but in truth all he could think about was sleep. The Old Man read his mind. “Get rest, Wyatt,” he said, “and don’t get too cozy. You’ll have a couple days to recover, then it’s back on. A hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time.”
* * *
For Wyatt, Hell Week began by staring at Dolly, and so it ended in the same way. Not long after staggering to shore, Wyatt lay in the stern of the Sea Goat, under a pile of warming blankets. Dolly lay beside him, their IVs pumping fluids, painkillers, sedatives, and antibiotics. Wyatt’s eyes were heavy but he could not stop watching her, her hair blowing across green eyes, rimmed in red, staring at the water.
Under the warming blankets Wyatt felt a hand touch his. Her fingers were surprisingly calloused, like his, and still cold. She took his hand into hers and seemed to smile, before her eyes fluttered shut.
CHAPTER 20
Spring 2016
Panama and Places Unknown
The first credible photographic match Pablo’s team found came from a newspaper article published by the Bloomington Courier on December 12, 1982.