I Am the Mission: The Unknown Assassin Book 2

by Allen Zadoff

  He’s describing my own skill set. Characteristics I thought were a part of my personality and training.

  “The part they don’t understand…” he says. “If you don’t feel fear, you don’t feel joy or love. Not in any real way. Without the fear, the risk is gone. And without risk, rewards don’t matter. You’re left with nothing much at all. You’re numb.”

  He watches me, gauging my reaction.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “I would be thinking the same if someone had told me this four months ago.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “You’re thinking I’m insane.”

  I look at Francisco sweating in the cool forest air, his flesh marked by a hundred cuts, his eyes wild.

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “You’re also measuring what I say against your own experience. So you know it’s true.”

  I smile, trying to placate him.

  “I know you believe it.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you?” he says. “I’m telling you these things because I want you to know. So you can save yourself.”

  My smile fades.

  “I don’t need saving.”

  “Do you know the easiest way to die, Daniel?”

  “I know several ways.”

  “Not the easiest way to kill. The easiest way to die.”

  “In your sleep.”

  “Very good. And why is that?”

  “If you’re asleep, you don’t know that you’re dying,” I say.

  He nods. “That’s you. You’re dying right now and you don’t know it. You are asleep and dying. I’m trying to wake you up.”

  He steps toward me. I look at the marks up and down his arms.

  He says, “Find the joint where your humerus meets your elbow. Check an inch interior from there.”

  I can’t listen to this anymore. It’s a distraction. He’s trying to trick me, get my arms out of position so he can strike.

  “Check,” he says, his voice urgent.

  “There’s nothing to check,” I say firmly, and I step away from him.

  He looks at me, astonished.

  “They own you,” he says in a whisper.

  “It’s not ownership,” I say. “It’s loyalty. I’m a soldier.”

  He shakes his head.

  “That’s what I thought. They taught me to forget my old life and replace it with loyalty to them. But they didn’t finish the job. Because the memories came back. It took years for me, but they did. The chip only works on fear. Everything else is still there, suppressed by your training. Until it isn’t anymore.”

  I think about the way my memories come back between missions. The way I still see my father when I close my eyes, the way he sometimes visits me in my dreams.

  Francisco says, “These people you work for, they’re not good people.”

  “They defend this country,” I say. “They’re patriots.”

  “They are not,” he says. “When you remember, everything changes.”

  There’s only one thing I must remember. My training. The things I’ve been taught to do, the way I’ve been taught to do them.

  “You’ll look for the chip later,” he says.

  He traces the cuts that crisscross his chest, some healed, some still pink and raw.

  “I had to look for a while,” he says. “But eventually I found it. You’ll find it, too. Then you’ll know I’ve told you the truth, and you’ll get out.”

  “I’m not looking for a way out,” I say.

  “You’re still asleep,” he says. “I feel sorry for you.”

  There’s something about the way he says it, what I perceive as a sneer on his lips, his tone of voice.

  “And what are you?” I say, my anger flaring. “You’re at Liberty training to poison the water supply, blow up nuclear power plants, or whatever the hell you’re doing, and you call that being awake? You’re a terrorist.”

  His face goes rigid. He holds up a finger in warning.

  “Don’t you dare use that word,” he says.

  “Does Moore have a different word for it?”

  “I don’t agree with everything Moore does,” he says, “but the end justifies the means.”

  “What end? You’re a soldier like me, Francisco. You were trained to protect the country, not dismantle it.”

  “I’m still a soldier,” he says. “But I have a different mission now.”

  “What mission?”

  “To wake up this country.”

  “They’re already awake. Nine-eleven. The Cole bombing. The war in Iraq. The attacks in Syria. They are wide awake, and they don’t need your help.”

  “What about us?” he says.

  “Us?”

  “The Program,” he says. “The things their country is doing behind their backs. Are they awake to that?”

  I can see now that I am the only patriot here. Francisco has become something else.

  A traitor.

  He is a traitor, and I cannot allow it.

  So I attack.

  I cover the ten feet between us in an instant, opening with a lightning-fast strike to the center of his chest that stuns him. Then I quickly turn to the side, grab his arm, and spin him hard, slamming him against a tree.

  There is no reaction time before he is coming back at me. In an instant his energy shifts from attacked to attacker, so fluid it would be easy to miss.

  Miss and die.

  That’s how well trained he is.

  He aims a strike toward my head, but I sidestep and take the force of his blow to the shoulder instead. Even this is enough to send a shock wave through me.

  We separate in the woods, and I look at him, shirtless, muscles rippling.

  His body, his style, his reaction time—they’re all too familiar to me. It’s almost like I’m fighting myself.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” he says.

  “How else can it be?”

  “You asked me why I let you into camp when I could have killed you. It’s because I knew you had doubts about The Program. Just like I did when I came here.”

  “You’re wrong about me,” I say.

  But it’s not the truth.

  I doubted during my last mission. And I doubt now. My purpose for being here, the reason I was sent in the first place.

  “Look at me, Daniel. I’ve gotten my life back. You could have yours back, too.”

  “I already have a life,” I say.

  I come at him, indicating a high attack while I strike low at his feet.

  He does not take the bait but kicks out at me, his style suddenly switching to Muay Thai. I instantly match him, our legs flying, shins crashing together, a spin kick to my head that I dodge, a return kick toward his chest that only just misses contact.

  But it sends me off balance, and he pounces.

  He is as fast as me and as smart. Yet he is not my equal. Not quite.

  Because in surrendering his mission, he has not gotten stronger. He’s gotten weaker. Something is broken inside him. I sense it like an animal senses weakness in another animal. Beneath the hard exterior, the training, the calculation, the intelligence—

  He

  is

  damaged.

  An operative who has stopped operating. Such a thing cannot be allowed to exist.

  Suddenly my phone buzzes in my pocket, the single vibration that indicates a text message coming in.

  Francisco senses my distraction and takes advantage of the moment, coming at me with a side swipe, then a full-on kick to my chest that sends me careening against a tree trunk.

  The force of the kick is such that it takes my breath away, and a shiver passes through my body.

  Francisco has the strength and training to kill with one kick.

  A heart blow. A heel to the chest, a twist at the last moment to sharpen the angle, shatter the ribs over the pericardium, puncture the fluid sac, and cause heart failure.

  I was out of position an
d the kick hit me dead center. That means he could have killed me, and he didn’t.

  Francisco intentionally pulled his kick, sparing my life.

  Why?

  He must see the confusion on my face, because he answers the unvoiced question:

  “Imagine you and me, with our training… the things we could accomplish if we put our skills together.”

  “Accomplish where? With Moore? You traded The Program for a madman,” I say.

  “I’ll admit he’s got his issues. But there’s room to shape his beliefs. We could do it together, build this into something special.”

  He lowers his voice.

  “The Program wouldn’t stand a chance with us together. Think about it.”

  I consider teaming with Francisco. There’s something nice about the idea of being together, soldiers united rather than isolated in the world.

  “You’ve only been here three days,” Francisco says. “I understand if you’re not ready to make a decision yet, but give yourself time to get to know Moore. Give us time to talk this out together.”

  I hesitate, the tiniest seed of doubt creeping into my mind.

  “I don’t have time,” I say.

  I have a mission. I can’t allow myself to be confused.

  “Listen to me,” he says. “I’m trying to throw you a lifeline.”

  “I don’t need your lifeline. You betrayed The Program,” I say. “You betrayed your training, everything you believed in.”

  “I never believed,” he says. He stares at me, his eyes piercing through the dimness of the forest. “Did you?”

  That’s when I hit him. A roundhouse to the side of his head.

  He’s startled by the speed of my attack. I go from stillness to a rapid strike in less than a second.

  He reaches up to defend himself, and I hit him again.

  He tries to grab a length of branch from the ground, but I’m too fast. I hit him a third time.

  He tries to speak, but I don’t wait to hear what he’s going to say.

  I’ve heard enough.

  I’m trained to kill without leaving a trace.

  I know two dozen ways to do it. When I don’t have a weaponized implement, I know how to do it with my hands or with items in the environment. I can always kill in a manner that is undetectable if I choose to do so.

  Not now.

  Now I take his head in my hands, and I bash it against a tree.

  He goes limp in my arms, the fight drained out of him.

  I push him up against the tree, my palm pressing into his throat, choking him out slowly.

  “You said you recognized me earlier,” I say.

  He groans, and I slap his face, snapping him to attention.

  “Listen to me,” I say. “Earlier you said you knew I was Epsilon by looking at me. What did you mean?”

  “Your face,” he says through bloody lips. “It’s familiar.”

  “How is it familiar if you’ve never seen me before?”

  “You look like your father.”

  My hand comes away from his throat. I stand before him, undefended.

  “You know my father?” I say.

  He stares at me, surprise showing through swollen eyes.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he says.

  “Know what?”

  “How you got to The Program. Who you really are.”

  “Mike brought me in.”

  “But why? You must have thought about it.”

  I have thought about it. Nobody is innocent, nobody who The Program targets. They’ve all done something to bring it on.

  My father did something to bring it on.

  But what?

  Francisco strikes at me then, a wild swing as a last-ditch effort to save himself. But his timing is off, his body injured beyond repair. I sidestep, the punch narrowly missing me but glancing off the side of my skull hard enough to start a ringing in my ears.

  He is like an animal, injured but dangerous until the end.

  “Who am I?” I say.

  “I can’t tell you that,” he says.

  “You won’t,” I say.

  “I can’t,” he says.

  I leap on top of him, kneeling on his chest, my hands closing around his throat.

  “You can’t tell me who I am because you don’t know,” I say.

  The color drains from his face, a sign that he is bleeding internally. He struggles beneath me, a sticky line of blood dropping from the corner of one lip and making contact with the ground.

  His voice is hoarse as he speaks.

  “I can’t tell you,” he says, “because you have to find out for yourself.”

  I squeeze his throat.

  He gasps, looking up at me.

  I meet his gaze, and I squeeze tighter.

  My focus is singular. I must crush this boy.

  I imagine him telling Moore about The Program before turning against us.

  I think of him at the water treatment plant, holding Lee back, not because he was morally opposed to acting, but because he was awaiting instructions from Moore.

  He fights for breath, but I do not allow him any.

  This traitor. This boy who was one of us and is no longer.

  I will protect The Program from the damage he has done. I will protect the country from the terrorist acts he might carry out if he is not stopped.

  The phone in my pocket buzzes again and again. Someone is trying to reach me urgently, but the buzzing is like a fly far away on the edge of my thoughts.

  Time seems to stop. There is nothing but this moment, and my mission.

  Protect The Program.

  I will destroy the voice that tells lies about my father.

  The traitor’s hand that reached out to me with a lifeline.

  The soldier willing to poison innocent people for an insane cause.

  The mind that plots The Program’s downfall.

  I squeeze until they are gone, and there is nothing left.

  Until all is silence, and The Program is safe.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  WHEN I’M SURE FRANCISCO IS DEAD, I DRAG HIS BODY DEEPER INTO THE WOODS.

  A section so dense that he will never be found.

  The heat and moisture will start the process. The animals and their hunger will finish it.

  I reach down and take the device that turns off the laser perimeter from his pocket. I’ll use it to get back into camp.

  I stop and listen in the darkness.

  No movement, no footsteps.

  I am alone.

  I hear the call of a night bird and the distant gurgle of running water.

  I follow that sound, tracing it back through the woods until I arrive at the river, and I plunge my hands into cold water.

  I sit on the riverbank. I take off my shirt and rinse it in the river. I twist the fabric and watch water and blood pour from it. I do the same with my pants. I wash the blood from the boots Francisco lent me.

  When I’m finished, I put the cold shirt back on. It shocks me back to the present moment.

  The phone vibrations earlier.

  I take out my Program iPhone, but that’s not where the messages are. They are on my other phone, the one I’ve been using to contact Howard.

  Howard has sent half a dozen texts asking me to call him.

  Howard.

  I made a mistake asking him to come up here. I see that now.

  Francisco crossed the line into treason and went insane. I will not make the same mistake.

  After I am done with my mission, after I have killed Moore, I will get Howard out of here safely. I’ll cover our tracks. I’ll send him home, and I’ll never contact him again under any circumstances.

  Then I’ll reconnect with The Program. Things like this will not happen again. Breaks in protocol. Questions.

  Doubts.

  I sit down in the woods. I feel the cool air on my skin.

  I’ve gotten confused during my last two missions. My job is not to understand the bi
g picture of my life.

  My job is the small picture of the mission. Acquiring targets, getting close, finishing.

  That’s what I have to do now.

  Finish.

  I should stand up, but I don’t. Not right away.

  I am tired. My body. My mind.

  Time passes.

  When I look up again, the moon is out.

  When did it become nighttime?

  I drag myself up off the forest floor. I am lost here in the darkness. I do not know where I am.

  That’s when I remember the river.

  Miranda told me that one side flows down to Moore, to camp, to my mission.

  The other goes someplace else, someplace I do not know.

  I only have to make the right choice, and I will be fine.

  I follow the river south toward Camp Liberty.

  I have work to do.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  I HIKE OUT OF THE WOODS.

  I use Francisco’s device to turn off the laser perimeter and walk back into the encampment unseen and unchallenged. I go directly to my room and lock the door behind me.

  I must sanitize this space. It will be my next-to-last act here.

  I move through the room, erasing evidence of my presence, cleaning surfaces with tissue, then flushing them to erase genetic evidence.

  My thoughts are racing below the surface, threatening to bubble up and confuse me, but I keep them down below where they cannot interfere with my tasks.

  I stand in the center of the room, looking around one final time to make sure it has been properly prepared. Normally I call in a cleaning crew after I have finished, contact Father and have him send a team while I get a safe distance away. But I do not have access to those resources now.

  I must act alone. I must prove myself.

  Something happens to me now. I fuzz out, losing track of time.

  When I come to, I’m standing in the center of the room. My hand is on my opposite arm, pressing at the bones of my elbow, searching for something there beneath the skin.

  I am looking for the chip, just as Francisco said I would.

  I put my hand down.

  Francisco lost his mind and betrayed The Program. His words are lies, his actions suspect. I cannot allow myself to get confused at a time like this.