I Am the Mission: The Unknown Assassin Book 2

by Allen Zadoff

  “What are we doing here?” I say.

  “We’re just taking a tour,” Lee says. “An unauthorized, nighttime tour.”

  “Don’t look so serious,” Miranda says. “This is the fun part.”

  Without another word, she hops over the stone wall and disappears into the darkness. Lee does the same, then whistles for Francisco and me to follow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ONE SENTRY DRIVES THE ROAD AT NIGHT.

  One sentry, every two hours or so, unless something draws his attention before that time. It’s our job to make sure nothing draws his attention. That’s what they tell me.

  We come to the locked side door of the treatment plant.

  Miranda pulls a small kit out of her pocket and leans down in front of the lock.

  “We’re going to break in?” I ask Lee.

  “Not exactly. We sneak in, find what we’re looking for, and leave undetected. That’s how The Hunt works. They can never know we were here. Or else our team loses points,” Lee says. “We’re scored on our performance, then the scores are tabulated and added to our game profiles back in camp.”

  “The game I played last night.”

  “The one you tanked on,” he says with a smile.

  “Keep it down,” Francisco says.

  “Yeah, I’m trying to concentrate,” Miranda says.

  She holds a miniature flashlight in her teeth while she expertly works the lock.

  A minute later, the door opens.

  “We’re in,” she says. “Sixteen minutes.”

  “Let’s do this,” Lee says.

  We slip inside and close the door behind us. I’m surprised that I feel the same rush I do when I embark on a Program assignment. The danger, the excitement of possible discovery, the need for a focus so intense that it shuts out every other thing in your life to the point where all your problems seem far away.

  I look at Lee and Miranda, and I recognize the expression on their faces: the excited buzz of doing something forbidden.

  Then I look at Francisco, and I see something else.

  He is calm.

  He glances over to find me watching him, and his entire physicality changes in an instant. His shoulders rise and his jaw tightens, his body taking on tension.

  It happens so quickly it’s easy to think I misread him in the first place.

  Francisco hisses under his breath, drawing our attention, and then he guides us to a wall, pointing down a hall and up to the ceiling, where a camera is mounted in the corner.

  “No motion detector,” he says. “Just a digital recording system, but an older one that rotates and records with a slow frame rate.”

  The frame rate is not unusual for a security camera. Regular video records at thirty frames per second or greater. But most surveillance video runs at six to ten FPS to save energy and storage space. Although playback will have a herky-jerky quality, it’s still easy to make out the motion of the figures on the video, the way they’re dressed—

  And their faces.

  The good news is that Francisco knows about the system and where it’s located. It’s not only old, it’s badly placed, midway down the hallway and against the wall, sweeping left and right. That makes it easy to wait until it’s aimed away and move below it.

  We pass down the hallway until we’re clear of the camera. Then we move into the main chamber of the water treatment plant, a massive room filled with complex machinery and the computers that monitor it. Francisco pulls out an iPad mini, bringing up a schematic of the building before focusing in on the room and the machinery all around us.

  “We’re looking for this,” he says, pointing to a piece of machinery on the screen.

  “What is it?” I say.

  “It’s the chemical feed system. That’s where they add the chloramine,” Lee says.

  Chloramine. I’ve heard that term before. It’s a compound of chlorine and ammonia that some municipalities use in their drinking water as a disinfectant in place of pure chlorine.

  Lee says, “They feed the chloramine into the water in late-stage treatment to kill all the nasties.”

  “Why do we need to find that?”

  “Maybe we want the nasties left in there,” Lee says.

  And he smiles.

  Francisco interrupts him. “We find it because that’s the game,” he says. “We don’t ask questions.”

  I don’t like what I’m seeing here.

  Nobody would imagine a terrorist threat in the middle of rural New Hampshire, in a place where the greatest threats are weather and wildlife. But a hundred and sixty thousand people is a tempting target. And how many targets like this exist throughout the United States?

  The scope of it is staggering. If you were to disturb the water supply for a city like Manchester, then every water supply of this size and greater would suddenly need to be protected. The cost in security, man hours, and structural upgrades would be prohibitive. How can you protect every municipal water plant, every Department of Public Works, nuclear facility, university laboratory, electrical facility? Trying to do so would bankrupt the U.S. economy.

  “Six minutes, guys,” Miranda says.

  “What happens if we’re late?” I say.

  “We lose points if we’re late, and we can’t let that happen,” Miranda says.

  “Over here,” Lee says.

  He’s tracing a piece of machinery along the wall, following a large pipe across the room, where it disappears into the floor.

  “Damn, it’s in a separate room,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  He starts down a metal ladder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THE ROOM BELOW.

  That’s where we find the chemical feed system, the last stop before the water is distributed into the community.

  Miranda uses Lee’s phone to take a picture of the machinery. “We got it,” she says.

  I see her check the photo and close her camera app.

  “We can go now?” I ask.

  Miranda shoots a nervous glance toward Lee. “Not exactly,” she says.

  Francisco puts the duffel bag down at his feet.

  “What’s going on?” I say.

  I get no response.

  “A minute forty-five seconds,” Miranda says, studying the timer on her watch.

  I look at the duffel bag.

  “What’s in the bag, Lee?”

  “Something we add to the system,” he says.

  I look at the feed pipe in front of me, the top of it with a latch and round handle that turns like a metal steering wheel. Pop the latch, and you have an opening directly into the system.

  “What are we adding?” I say.

  Lee and Francisco look at each other. They don’t answer me.

  “A minute fifteen,” Miranda says.

  Lee pulls thick gloves from out of a side pocket of the duffel bag. He holds the gloves out to me.

  “For you,” he says. “You’re the guest of honor.”

  “What do I do with those?”

  “Put them on. You’re going to be handling a hazardous substance.”

  “I thought this was a game,” I say.

  Lee shrugs, noncommittal.

  “Leave him alone,” Miranda says. “He doesn’t know what’s going on.”

  “He’ll find out soon enough,” Lee says to her, then turns back to me. “If you’re with us, you’ll put them on.”

  “I can’t be with you unless I know what we’re doing.”

  I look at Miranda, but she won’t meet my eye.

  “We’re poisoning the water supply,” Lee says.

  I glance at Francisco. He’s watching me carefully.

  “Why?” I say.

  “Because those are my father’s orders,” Lee says.

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “I don’t question orders. I carry them out.”

  The words are so familiar it’s like they’re coming out of my own mouth.

  I look at the gloves be
ing dangled in front of me.

  Is this real, or is it a game?

  Judging by the serious expressions on the faces around me, it’s no game.

  My mission is to take out Moore. Anything I do is in service of that goal alone.

  If helping them commit an act of terrorism would bring me closer to Moore, then in theory I should do it.

  But why was Moore targeted in the first place, if not to prevent something like this from happening?

  Is my loyalty to the mission or to the purpose behind the mission, or at least what I perceive that purpose to be?

  Without being able to talk to The Program about this, I’m going to have to make a judgment on my own.

  As I look at Lee holding out the gloves, I realize I already have.

  I can’t stand by and watch these people poison the water supply, even if acting against them will destroy any chance I have of completing my mission.

  Miranda is peering at the timer on her watch. “One minute to go.”

  “Well?” Lee says.

  I look at the gloves, but I don’t reach for them.

  Lee grunts and snatches them away.

  “Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” he says, putting them on.

  “Slow down,” Francisco says calmly. “We don’t do anything until we get the signal.”

  Lee glares at him. “Unzip the duffel bag, Franky.”

  “Not until we have confirmation,” Francisco says.

  Lee is sweating, the veins in his neck popping out. Francisco, on the other hand, is relaxed, his gaze steady and unblinking.

  “Goddamn it,” Lee says. “Open the bag.”

  “Wait,” Francisco says calmly.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Miranda says, her voice tight with tension.

  “I hate you,” Lee says to Francisco. “You’re not even one of us.”

  “I am one of you,” Francisco says. “Your father trusts me with his life.”

  “I don’t trust you. Not at all.”

  “Whatever your feelings about me,” Francisco says, “we follow procedure.”

  “Fine,” Lee says. He makes a huge gesture of taking the phone out of his pocket and holding it in front of him.

  “Countdown starting,” Miranda says.

  I watch Lee, judging the distance between us, planning how I will take him out if he reaches into the duffel bag. My only question is order of attack—can I move fast enough to neutralize him before Francisco and Miranda realize what’s happening and respond? Based on what I’ve seen up until now from Francisco, I decide it would be prudent to disable him first before going after Lee.

  Miranda says, “We go hot in three, two, one…”

  There’s a ping from Lee’s phone.

  He looks at it, and his shoulders slump.

  “Goddamn it,” he says. “It’s just the game.”

  Miranda exhales loudly.

  “What did I tell you?” Francisco says. “No need to even open the bag.” He betrays no emotion as he says it.

  “Sending the picture,” Miranda says, and I see her using her phone to text the photo of the feed pipe.

  “Wonderful,” Lee says with a sneer.

  “You’ll keep first place in the rankings,” Miranda says, trying to make him feel better.

  “That’s kids’ stuff,” he says. “I’m talking about the real thing.”

  “You shouldn’t be in such a rush to get to the real thing,” Francisco says.

  “Whatever,” Lee says, pulling off the gloves and throwing them into the bag.

  “All right, let’s focus,” Francisco says. “We still have to get out of here undetected and get back to camp.”

  “Maybe we should make Daniel walk back,” Lee says.

  “Stop it,” Miranda says.

  “I don’t know whose side this guy is on,” Lee says.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” I say.

  “But are you loyal?”

  Francisco and Miranda pause, waiting for me to answer.

  “I don’t give my loyalty away,” I say. “It has to be earned.”

  “That’s a good answer,” Miranda says softly.

  “We haven’t earned it?” Lee says, challenging me.

  “Not yet,” I say.

  Francisco nods. “Fair enough,” he says. “Now let’s get out of here before we have a bigger problem on our hands.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  WE MAKE IT BACK TO THE VAN.

  Francisco drives us to camp with Lee sitting in the front seat this time, slumped down, a cap pulled over his face as he naps.

  When we’re clear of Lake Shore Road, Francisco turns on the radio, finding a jazz station he likes and keeping it low.

  I lean over to Miranda in the backseat.

  “I don’t understand what happened tonight,” I say quietly.

  “The teams are sent to scout different places and bring back a picture of what they find as proof. We get points for every successful mission.”

  She lowers her voice, and I move a little closer to her in the van.

  “If it’s just a game, why is Lee so upset?”

  “We have to treat it like an actual op until the text comes in.”

  She glances toward the front seat.

  “He wants it to be real,” she whispers, “but it never is. It’s my dad’s version of a mind fuck.”

  “That’s a relief,” I say.

  “You wouldn’t have gone through with it?”

  I detect the change in her tone as she asks it, her voice serious.

  “Killing innocent people?” I say. “It sounds a little crazy to me.”

  “It’s not about killing people. It’s about shaking up the system in a profound way.”

  She looks at me, her face hidden in the dark of the backseat.

  “I’m all for shaking things up,” I say.

  “I thought so,” she says.

  She reaches over and runs her fingers down the length of my arm. The sensation makes me shiver.

  “My father wants us to confront questions like these. It’s a part of the game.”

  I think about a camp full of kids being trained for military operations on American soil. That doesn’t sound like a game to me.

  A large component of soldier training is desensitizing recruits to the stimuli they will receive in an actual battle situation, so when the soldier finally gets into battle and the explosions start around him, he doesn’t freak out. He’s already experienced it, albeit in the relatively safe environment of the training facility.

  Moore is doing the same thing with these kids, bringing them to the brink time and again, without them knowing what is real and what isn’t.

  I think about the operation tonight, imagining a dozen white vans, some heading down to Boston and into western Massachusetts, others staying in the immediate area. I think like Moore, considering targets he could hit if that was his intent: Natick Labs, the main research and development center for the U.S. Army; Raytheon; Boston Scientific; various tech labs at MIT; the campuses at Harvard, BU, or any of the other sixty or so colleges and universities there. The possibilities are endless, and from Boston, it’s a short hop to New York and Washington. Suddenly Camp Liberty’s location in the mountains of New Hampshire doesn’t seem so remote.

  “You have to admit it was a rush, wasn’t it?” Miranda says.

  “It was,” I say, placating her.

  She slips her hand in mine.

  “What are you two whispering about?” Lee says, waking from his nap.

  “Daniel is telling me how much fun he had tonight,” Miranda says, pinching my palm at the same time.

  “Yeah, right,” Lee says. “Lots of fun.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THERE IS A FIRE AT LIBERTY.

  I can see it as we pull in: the glow of flames against houses, the trail of smoke rising from the center square of the valley.

  “Is something burning?” I say.

  “It’s a bonfire,” Lee says.
<
br />   “We have a party after The Hunt,” Miranda says.

  Francisco parks the van, and Miranda hops out fast.

  “Let’s go,” she says, pulling me along beside her.

  “I want to talk with Lee. I’ll catch up with you in a couple minutes,” I say.

  “Fine,” she says, obviously disappointed.

  I don’t like being caught in the middle of this competition between Lee and his sister, but I need to talk to Lee about what happened tonight.

  Lee gets out of the van, walks around, and opens the back door.

  “How are you doing?” I say.

  “How am I doing?” he says angrily.

  He reaches in and pulls the duffel bag toward him. He unzips it and holds it open to me.

  I look inside. There, in the bottom of the duffel, are two sacks of unbleached flour, double sealed inside plastic bags.

  “I’m fantastic as long as we’re going to a cake-baking contest,” he says.

  He rezips the bag and pushes it violently into the truck.

  “You wanted to poison those people?” I say.

  He kicks the bumper, and suddenly all the anger drains from him.

  “No,” he says, his head hanging down. “That’s not what I wanted. I wanted—”

  Francisco comes around the van, and Lee stops in midsentence.

  “Lee, let’s go talk to your father,” Francisco says, his voice gentle.

  “Not now, Franky. I’m not in the mood.”

  “I think you should,” Francisco says. “You’ll feel better.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” Lee says. “Especially not you.”

  Francisco looks back and forth from Lee to me, then he throws up his hands and moves on.

  Lee slumps down on the back bumper.

  “I didn’t want to poison those people, but I want to do something. Somewhere. Sometime. We talk and talk and never do anything. It makes me so angry, I can’t even speak to my father anymore. He’s just like the government he pretends to criticize. All talk, no action.”

  He looks up at me, angry.

  “You’re the same way,” he says. “I offered you the gloves and you wouldn’t take them.”

  “That’s not fair.”