by Allen Zadoff
Swivel Neck doesn’t do that. He grips me low and by the elbow, and while it’s painful, it allows the rest of my body full range of motion.
Just then the wild-haired woman pulls an object from her purse.
It’s a small pistol, matte-black metal clutched in her hand.
I’m watching an assassination attempt unfolding. An inexpert one. The way she holds the gun, I can see she is not a trained assassin.
She’s rushing toward Moore, trying to swing the pistol free from her purse when her wrist snags in the purse handle. She fights to free it, losing a precious two seconds.
Her loss is my gain.
I calculate the distance, the time it will take for me to get to her.
And I calculate something else—the chance of her success. Because if she shoots and kills Moore, I can walk away, my mission accomplished without my having to be involved at all.
But one look at her tells me the odds are bad. She’s sweating and terrified, stumbling as she rushes toward him.
If she shoots at Moore and misses, the security cordon will close down around him. He will retreat to his encampment, and I will not get another chance.
So I make a choice.
I tense my shoulder, lift, and then snap my elbow down quickly, breaking Swivel Neck’s grip.
I leap away, dodging another security guy in the process.
The security guards are reaching for me and shouting. Lee turns toward us, surprised to see me still there.
All attention on me now, none on the woman with the gun.
She raises the pistol, her face a mask of anger.
That’s when I leap, propelling my entire body toward the woman.
I shout “Gun!” at the same time, hoping the word will be enough to set off a well-practiced response from Moore’s bodyguards.
I hit the woman from the side and the gun goes off high, shattering a light fixture above us. Someone screams in the room behind me. The woman fires twice more as she goes down, but by then I’ve got her arm extended away from her body and toward the wall, where the rounds can do no harm.
The woman is shouting beneath me.
“Let me go! My daughter, he can’t take her!”
I clamp her wrist hard, forcing her to release the pistol.
As soon as it’s out of her grip, she cries in rage and frustration, collapsing into a heap under me.
Young people from the camp are on us by then, one pinning the woman’s arms, another sitting on her chest so she won’t be able to get away.
“You can’t have her, Moore!” she shouts. “Not my baby!”
One of the boys is covering her mouth, her screams muffled beneath his hand.
I glance behind me, and a group of young people have surrounded Moore. They’re rushing him out of the room.
“Call the police!” one of the recruits says.
“No,” his camp minder says. “There’s no need for that.”
I look to the back of the room to see where Moore exited, and I’m surprised to find him still in the room, arguing with a group of campers.
They’re trying to get him to go, and he’s refusing to leave.
The English teacher is still pinned on the ground crying. Suddenly she gets a second wind, fighting her way out from the grip of several boys.
“Mooooore!” she shrieks. “You can’t do this!”
That’s when Moore comes striding forward through the crowd.
He touches the shoulder of one of the boys sitting on the woman’s legs, and the boy stands up. He nods to the other boys holding her, and they, too, let go.
The woman doesn’t know what to do. She lies on the ground like a baby. She looks up at Moore helplessly.
He comes closer to her and kneels down.
It’s possible I could get to Moore, approaching in the confusion until I am close enough to inject him. But it’s too risky.
I’m going to have to find a different way.
Moore whispers to the woman too quietly for me to hear it. Her face goes from hatred, to surprise, to something else, something almost peaceful.
After a moment he extends a hand to help her up. She takes it without a word, brushing herself off as she stands.
The two of them face each other—
Then Moore holds out his arms, and the woman steps into them, embracing him.
Several people in the room gasp. Next to me, a girl wipes tears from her eyes.
Moore hugs the woman, and a moment later he is on the move again, walking away, surrounded by his people. He looks at me as he passes by but doesn’t speak. He quickly disappears through the back door.
A number of girls cluster around the distraught woman. They seem to know her, stroking her shoulders and back and leading her away.
A moment later Lee is by my side.
“Are you okay?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say, like I’m shaken up, even though I’m quite sure I’m fine.
Lee checks me from head to toe, performing a quick injury assessment like someone with advanced first aid training would know to do.
“You weren’t hit,” he says.
“Thank god,” I say. “Are the police here yet?”
“No police,” Lee says. “We’ll deal with this internally.”
“Earlier you said that woman was a troublemaker.”
Lee looks toward the ground. “She thinks her daughter is in danger, that something bad is going to happen at camp.”
“Is it?”
“On the contrary,” Lee says. “It’s something good.”
There’s a joyful light in his eyes that troubles me.
I look around the room, gauging the reaction among the other campers. They are strangely quiet, going about their business cleaning up and organizing the room as if nothing happened.
They may be quiet, but I react like a normal boy would after the shock of an intense experience wears off. I start to shiver, let my breathing get shallow and rapid.
“I think I need to sit down,” I say.
Lee looks worried. “Try to relax,” he says. “It’s totally normal to feel like this after your body gets a surge of adrenaline.”
“I can’t believe what just happened,” I say. “She tried to kill your father.”
“She tried,” Lee says. “But you stopped her.”
He backs away a little, his demeanor shifting.
“How did you stop her, Daniel?”
“I don’t know exactly. I just grabbed her.”
“You didn’t just grab her. You tackled her and held her gun arm so she wouldn’t have a firing solution.”
He’s much more perceptive than I realized. I have to be careful now.
“I was acting on instinct.”
He shakes his head. “You looked like a pro out there,” he says.
“A pro what?”
“A security pro.”
“I have some training,” I say.
“What kind of training?”
“Martial arts. My father thinks it’s important that a person knows how to defend himself.”
He glances over my shoulder toward the back door.
“You’ll need to tell my father about that,” he says.
“Your father?”
“He wants to talk to you now.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MOORE STANDS IN THE GLARE OF TRUCK HEADLIGHTS BEHIND THE COMMUNITY CENTER.
I cannot see his face, only his profile intermingled with those of the young men who protect him.
Lee guides me in. We pass Miranda, one side of her face lit by headlights.
Lee stops suddenly and gestures for me to continue forward on my own. The security people stand in a line on both sides, watching as I pass by.
Moore waits for me to come closer.
Four steps away now. The air seems to vibrate around him. He stands with one hand on the truck hood, his lower half lit by the headlights, but his face in darkness.
I stop when I am two feet away.
It’s known as the privacy zone. In America strangers naturally stand about twenty-four inches from one another. Closer in Asian countries. Farther away in Britain.
But it’s twenty-four inches in the United States. Farther than that and you send the message that you are afraid. Closer and it feels rude, antisocial. Or dangerous.
I stop at twenty-four inches, communicating to Moore that I am neither afraid nor a threat.
I can’t see his eyes, but I can sense him looking at me. There are people all around us, just outside the range of the headlights, watching my every move.
I consider reaching for my glasses, a seemingly innocuous gesture that would put a weapon in my hands, but when I glance left, I note a trace of red-and-gray plaid in the shadows.
Flannel.
He is here on the periphery, circling like a shark. I choose to keep my hands by my sides.
“Are you a hero?” Moore asks.
His voice is more powerful up close, clear and confident.
“I don’t think so,” I say, my own voice uncertain.
“You acted in a heroic way.”
“It happened so fast. I’m not even sure what I did.”
“You stopped an assassination attempt.”
“I just reacted,” I say.
“People who react are heroes.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Moore says, and he reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder as if to steady me.
Physical contact. Moore is inside my kill zone, but I’m pinned in the light. I can’t move in any way that might appear threatening.
“So you think I’m a hero?” I say, like I can’t believe it.
Moore’s grip suddenly tightens on my shoulder. I squirm beneath it, acting as if I’m surprised and in pain because of the pressure he’s exerting there.
A normal person would be both.
I am neither. I am curious.
“You’re hurting me,” I say.
“You know what bothers me about what you did?” Moore says.
I try to get out from his grip, but I cannot, not without taking overt defensive action.
“The difference between a hero and a villain is a very thin line,” Moore says.
I look up at him like I’m confused.
“I don’t think I’m either of those things.”
He bears down even more on my shoulder. I let my face wince in pain.
“You’re wrong,” Moore says. “I think you’re one of those things.”
I sense Flannel moving closer just outside my view. I crane my neck like a kid who is scared and trying to see what’s going on around him. I use the gesture to inventory the bodies just outside the headlights. I might have to defend myself in a moment, and if I do, I want to know what I’m up against.
Moore’s intensity grows as he stares at me.
“Which are you?” Moore says. “A hero or a villain?”
He waits for me to respond.
I exhale slowly. I’m trying to get a line on Moore so I know the right thing to say, but it’s nearly impossible. His energy fluctuates in a way that makes it hard to follow him.
Still, I have to respond. He’s on the cusp of deciding something about me.
Suddenly I have an intuition about him. He’s a gruff ex-military man. I should appeal to that energy in a way that will feel familiar to him.
“I didn’t come here for this shit,” I say, and I wrench my shoulder hard enough to surprise him and break his grip.
Bodies leap toward us from outside the light, but Moore puts up a hand to stop them.
“I thought you were a great man,” I say, talking fast. “At least that’s what my father said, and I wanted to see if it was true. But I didn’t come here to get shot or be interrogated. Seriously, to hell with this.”
I stiffen my back and raise my face to him, challenging his power.
“You’re not being interrogated,” Moore says, momentarily on the defensive.
“I risked my ass to protect you from some crazy woman. And you don’t even thank me. You accuse me of—I don’t even know what. I just know I’m out of here.”
I slump my shoulders and look at the ground, spent from my outburst.
“You misunderstand,” Moore says. “We’re simply having a dialogue.”
“I want to go home and take a shower and forget I came here.”
Then I do something Moore probably hasn’t seen in a long time.
I turn my back to him and start to walk away.
“Just a minute,” he says forcefully.
I stop, but I don’t turn around.
“Maybe I was wrong about you,” he says.
Moore comes forward, breaking the two-foot rule.
He is close. Close enough for me to finish my mission.
My assignment is always to assassinate in a way that will appear to be from natural causes. I must complete the assignment without revealing myself or threatening The Program.
In a situation like this with a high likelihood of being detected, protocol dictates that I back away until another opportunity presents itself. On every other mission, I’ve had the time to properly acquire my target, and multiple opportunities to act. My job is simply to set the stage and choose one.
It’s never been like tonight.
One event. One shot. One moment with Moore.
I may not get another.
“Can I trust you, Daniel?” Moore asks.
“I guess saving your life wasn’t enough to earn your trust?”
Moore looks toward the sky, subtly craning his neck. Crickets sing in the tall grass around us.
“You’re a wiseass,” Moore says.
“A little bit,” I say.
Moore smiles.
“You remind me of myself,” he says.
He nods once, and then he’s gone, backing away from me quickly and disappearing into the night.
I stand alone, pinned in the headlights.
I’ve lost the mission.
I think about Father waiting for me half a mile away. I imagine going to him and telling him what happened here tonight.
The mission was lost once before. What will it mean that I can’t complete it now? This on top of the concerns The Program already has about me, my disappearing to Vermont, the issues with my last assignment—
Brakes squeal behind me. I turn to find Moore standing next to an SUV, leaning over and whispering to Lee. A moment later Moore climbs into the SUV and it immediately peels out, one truck in front and one behind in a motorcade formation.
Moore is gone, and with him, my mission.
Lee comes over to me, an expression of surprise on his face.
“Unbelievable,” he says.
“What?”
“My father invited you to tour Liberty.”
“Really?” I say.
This is the moment I’ve been trained for, the junction of fate and opportunity that separates the experienced operative from the amateur. The amateur hesitates, while the experienced soldier acts.
The problem is Camp Liberty. I’ve been forbidden to go there.
“What do you think?” Lee says.
“A tour? That’s great news,” I tell him.
I can go back to Father now, not with a lost mission, but with an alternative. I will go into Camp Liberty and get Moore. It’s not the mission I prepped for—it’s more complex and difficult—but it can be planned, mapped out, then executed.
I will finish my mission. I’ll just have to persuade Father to let me do it from the inside.
“When can I come for the tour?” I ask Lee.
“Right now,” he says.
“That’s not possible,” I say.
“Why not?”
I can’t go in now. I’ve got no backup and no contingency plan. Father doesn’t have any information about what’s gone on tonight.
“It’s late,” I say, struggling for a viable excuse that will keep me out of the camp.
“You can stay over tonight,�
� Lee says. “There’s plenty of room. We’ll show you around in the morning.”
We can’t have you at Camp Liberty. That’s what Father said.
“My dad is coming to pick me up in a bit,” I say.
“You can call him from the road,” Lee says.
A black truck pulls up next to us, the engine idling. Flannel is in the driver’s seat looking straight ahead.
“We have to go now,” Lee says. “If you’re coming with us, that is.”
Lee opens the back door.
I glance at my iPhone. The signal is still blocked from the jamming vehicle in front of the community center.
I imagine Father out on the utility road waiting for me. I can be there in ten minutes, safe and warm in the front seat, discussing what went wrong tonight and what we might do about it.
But if I don’t go now, what chance do I have of getting to Moore again? What chance do I have of completing my mission?
I search my mind for alternatives, but I don’t find any. The probability of success declines to nearly zero the moment I walk away from Lee.
I can’t lose this mission, not when I’ve been sent to complete it.
If I go in now, Father and Mother might be angry with me. But if I finish the job quickly, how can they be anything but impressed?
The stronger soldier succeeds where the weaker soldier failed.
I will show The Program that I am the stronger soldier.
I look at Lee standing with one hand on the open truck door.
“Are you coming?” he asks.
“I’m coming,” I say, and I climb into the truck.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING HERE?” A GIRL SAYS.
She’s in the backseat of the truck, her face obscured in shadow.
“He’s coming with,” Lee says. “Dad invited him.”
“And the night just gets weirder,” she says, and looks out the window.
I slide in next to her, Lee following behind.
“Have you met my sister, Miranda?” he says.
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” I say.
Miranda doesn’t acknowledge me.
“And I guess I won’t now,” I say.
I expect that to earn me a reaction, but I get none. The atmosphere in the truck is tense.
“I kind of thought I saved the day,” I say. “Why’s everyone in a bad mood?”