Disruption

by Whibley, Steven

  I cleared my throat. “We were just finalizing that.” I looked around the room, pleased to see the rest of the team nodding. If nothing else, the CIA picked kids who are excellent liars.

  Ms. Clakk folded her arms across her chest. “Do I need to remind you that the events at this camp are elimination events?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, even though I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Good.” She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Listen, I know this isn’t a camp for novices. In the incredibly unlikely event that you make it to the end and win, you will actually be in the field doing real missions.” She shook her head and muttered, “Lord help us.” She blew out a quick breath and continued. “Because of that, I’m not interested in holding your hands. You can either do it, or you can’t. Though I have to admit, after that scene on the path a few days ago, I have reservations about your judgment.” She slowly swept her gaze over each of us. “All of your judgments.”

  “We’re taking it seriously,” I said. “We want to win.”

  “We plan to win,” Rylee added.

  “I’ll be sure to hold my breath,” Ms. Clakk said, rolling her eyes. “More to the point, I want to stress the importance of being aware during the Delta events. Things are not always as they seem.” She pointed at me. “Obviously, as you experienced, there was more to the soccer ball challenge than just kicking it into a net. You’d be wise to remember that.” She did an about-face and paced across the cabin, only to turn again and pace back. “But Capture the Flag is pretty straightforward: go get the other team’s flag, bring it back to your base, and protect your flag at all costs.” She pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow. “You know that, right?”

  I wanted to say, “Capture the Flag? Isn’t that the game with horseshoes?” Did she think I was a complete moron? Every kid over the age of eight was familiar with Capture the Flag.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said instead. “I do.”

  She nodded. “Good. Just pick your team carefully.” She looked at her watch and tapped the digital face. “Noon,” she said. “Have your team gathered at the soccer field at noon. Understood?”

  I nodded. Without another word, Ms. Clakk marched out of the cabin and disappeared down the path.

  “She hates us,” I said. “And she must think we’re a bunch of idiots.”

  “She’s just trying to prepare us,” Rylee said.

  “I agree,” Amara added. “It’s like she said, if we can’t handle a couple of simple competitions, we’re just not ready for real missions.”

  “No,” Angie said, “I think there’s more to it than that. I think she genuinely hates Matt. But I’m pretty sure she likes me.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t?” Juno said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You’re incredibly friendly. You and Clakk are like kindred spirits.”

  “Careful,” Angie said. “I don’t like sarcastic people, and I haven’t stabbed anyone in a really long time.”

  I glanced at Rylee. She mouthed the word “psychopath” and rolled her eyes.

  “See what I mean?” Juno said, glancing around at the rest of us. “You can’t buy that kind of friendship.”

  “All right,” I said, “no one’s stabbing anyone today. At least not anyone on our own team.” I thought it was obvious I wasn’t being serious, but saw Angie give a resigned nod, as if I might have just given her the okay to stab someone on another team, so I added, “Let’s just not stab anyone at all. Got it?”

  She plopped down on her bed and folded her arms.

  “Okay, I’m open to suggestions. Who has an idea for strategy for today’s event?”

  Rylee stepped up. “I do.”

  “Of course you do,” Angie muttered.

  Rylee ignored her and began to lay out her plan. It was like listening to a football coach explain the most complicated play in history. There was lots of talk about flanking and something about a hammer and anvil.

  When she was done, I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Rylee.”

  Her face sank. “It’ll work, Matt. I know it will.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little too complicated?” Amara asked.

  “I don’t think it’s complicated at all,” Rylee grumbled.

  “I do,” Angie said. “Can’t we just rush in and take the flag and rush out?”

  “Oh, that’ll be smart,” Juno said, sarcastically. He turned to me. “If we go in without a plan, we’re screwed. They’ll pick us off like college students near a bell tower.”

  Amara offered a suggestion that Juno insisted was suicide. Then Rylee tried to re-suggest her plan with some modifications, only to be shot down by Angie, who called it “stupid” rather than complicated. In seconds, the cabin had erupted into a frenzy, and every one of my teammates was shouting and looked ready to start swinging. Even Yaakov, who I didn’t think would be interested in this kind of thing at all, was making wild hand gestures and shouting along with everyone else.

  While they fought I thought about what an idiot I was going to look like. When I played Capture the Flag back home, it was way less intense. For one thing, we didn’t do it with paintball guns, and for another, we mostly used the strategy Angie had suggested: rush in, steal the flag, and rush back before the other team made it back to their base. There was only one thing that would come from me directing my teammates during this challenge: I’d show everyone how much of an amateur I really was.

  “Enough!” I hollered. “What is wrong with you guys? It’s just a game of Capture the Flag.”

  Rylee humphed. “Yeah, it’s an elimination game.” She said the word like it was a curse. “So pardon me for wanting to make sure we don’t do something stupid and come in last.”

  “We wouldn’t have had a shot with your plan,” Angie said.

  Rylee spun around, her finger pointed and her face twisted into an angry sneer.

  “Stop!” I said before she could speak. “Just stop.” I shook my head. “You guys are nuts. Now listen, I have a plan.” Which probably surprised them as much as it had surprised me moments before when I’d come up with it. “I’ve been thinking about it for days,” I lied.

  “You have?” Rylee asked. “A minute ago I thought you were confused about what Capture the Flag was.”

  I dismissed Rylee with a wave of my hand. “Ms. Clakk said we get to add twenty campers to our team, right?” My teammates nodded. “So here’s what I suggest. Rylee, you are going to work with Juno and Yaakov. Make a plan; implement it. You get to pick seven other campers to join your team.” I turned, not giving Rylee a chance to interject. “Amara, you and Angie are a team. You guys also get to pick seven campers.”

  “And you?” Rylee asked. “What’ll you be doing?”

  “I’ll choose the remaining six, who will stay back and guard the flag while I go out on my own and try to kill as many of the other players as I can.” Or, in other words, I’d find a really cool hiding place and only shoot people when I was sure I could hit them.

  “Oh, brother,” Angie said, “are you seriously trying to be one of those stupid lone-wolf Deltas who thinks they’re hot stuff? Because if you are, it would be a lot more convincing if you didn’t have two black eyes and a bandaged hand.”

  “That’s true,” Amara added. “It’s hard to really trust in your abilities when I’m pretty sure the only fight you won was against that girl you bashed with your shoe.”

  “Argh,” I said, “why do people keep bringing her up? It was an accident.”

  “And speaking of bandaged hand,” Angie added, “what is it they call you in archery again?”

  “Squirt,” Juno said, laughing.

  The others joined in.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “hilarious. I won’t have a squirt gun today, now, will I?”

  Angie tsked. “Twenty bucks says Captain Squirt gets shot in the first fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” Juno said.

  Really? I wouldn’t have taken it if I were Juno. It d
id feel nice that someone believed in me, though. I smiled. “Thank you, Juno.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He shook hands with Angie, sealing the bet, and added, “I think he’ll make it twenty minutes. But just barely.”

  Chapter 27

  We met at the soccer field just before noon and geared up. I had to admit that, dressed in camouflage and holding paintball guns, we looked intimidating. I felt like a commando. The other teams were grouped along the sidelines. They looked pretty intimidating, as well. Most of them, anyway. Team Hyena still looked a bit weak, what with their captain on crutches. It was a bit difficult to be frightened by someone who couldn’t walk. But I had to give her points for being tough about it. Most girls at my school would’ve left in tears if they’d been confronted by a mosquito, let alone a land mine.

  Our extra campers were also there dressed in camouflage and already divided up into groups. Rob, Alexis, and Duncan were front and center. They had been thrilled when I approached them and said they’d be guarding the flag.

  “We won’t let you down,” Rob said. “No one will get the flag.”

  Alexis placed her small fist into her other palm and grinned. “Yeah, if anyone gets near our flag, we’ll crush their faces into the dirt and stomp ’em.”

  I laughed, and then stopped when I noticed that none of them were laughing. “You are joking, right?”

  The trio looked at one another like they hadn’t understood what I said. I was about to remind them that I didn’t want them to do anything crazy. We were just supposed to protect the flag. If they ended up crushing some poor camper’s face into the dirt, it would be because things went very wrong. But before I could speak, Mr. Dalson stood on the raised platform and addressed the teams.

  “Welcome to the first group Delta event.” He wore khaki pants and a polo shirt and looked like he was ready to go to a church picnic—just as soon as he sent us paintballing kid spies out to the woods to blast one another. “You’ve been given the rules,” he continued, “so let’s not waste time. When you get to your bases, you’ll wait until you hear this horn.” He held up a can that looked like it might hold spray cheese and pressed the top, splitting the air with a blast that sounded like a ship’s horn. “At that time,” Mr. Dalson continued, “you can begin. Understood?”

  The kids in each group nodded.

  He pointed across the field into the woods. “Off you go, then.”

  Our base was a circular clearing about the size of a classroom. In the center was a chest-high wooden pole bearing a flag embroidered with a grizzly bear.

  “Cambridge,” Juno said, “give me your gun.”

  “Why?”

  “Just hand it over.” Juno smiled as he took it and dropped to his knees. He pulled out a small knife, opened up one of the side panels, and started messing with it.

  “What are you doing?”

  Rylee and Amara leaned over him and nodded.

  “You’re making it automatic,” Amara said. “Resourceful.”

  “Pleased to have your stamp of approval,” Juno said. He took out a piece of the gun, reassembled it, and then handed it back to me. “You’ll use more paint, and you might go through your C02 pretty fast, but one squeeze will fire half a dozen balls.”

  “Thanks,” I said, though I wasn’t sure an automatic paint gun was really what I needed.

  Rylee grabbed a stick from the ground and called everyone over. “Yak and I looked up the locations of the other bases on satellite this morning.” I wished I’d thought of that. She drew a circle in the dirt. “This is us,” she said. She drew four other circles, one by one, glancing over her shoulder into the trees, presumably to get her bearings before each one. “Octopus,” she said, pointing at the one farthest away, “and this is Squirrel … and Hyena … and this is Arctic Fox.” She looked at me. “Which flag do you think we should go for first?”

  I shrugged. “The plan was for you to come up with your own plans. Go for whichever flag you want.”

  Rylee tsked at me. “You’re really just going to leave us to it while you go commando through the woods?”

  Juno burst out laughing. “Go commando?” He laughed again, and I couldn’t help but laugh as well.

  Angie wrinkled her nose. “Our captain goes commando? That’s gross and TMI.”

  “Ha ha,” Rylee said, without a hint of humor. “You know what I meant.” She glanced down at the circles she’d drawn in the dirt. “We’re going for Squirrel.”

  “We’re going for Arctic Fox,” Amara said.

  Rylee winced. “Can you go for Octopus instead?”

  “Why?” Amara asked.

  Rylee huffed. “I have a temporary alliance with Arctic Fox. Just for this game.”

  Juno swore and shook his head. “You can’t trust Bratersky. He’s not going to honor that alliance. He doesn’t even try to hide his background. Why’d you even bother?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “What background?”

  “His tattoos,” Juno said. “He’s ROC, it’s as clear as the scowl on his face.”

  ROC? What in the world did that mean? I decided to just nod and figure it out later.

  “He’ll honor it,” Rylee said. “It’s just for this one game.”

  I nodded. “Great! It sounds like we all have solid plans.”

  “Where are you going?” Rylee asked.

  “Hyena,” I said.

  “Hyena?” Rylee asked. “Everyone’s going to go for that flag. It’s going to be a shooting gallery down there.”

  It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to Hyena. I was going to find a large tree, climb it, and sit there and shoot people who wandered by. “Well, you’re not going,” I said. “Maybe others had the same thought.”

  She considered that for a moment and then nodded.

  The horn blast echoed, and birds scattered from the trees.

  I imagined all the sports movies I’d seen over the years, ones where the coach gives the team a big pep talk and the players get all worked up and run out onto the field full of energy. I tried to remember one, or part of one. Nothing seemed to quite fit for a game of paintball with a bunch of kid spies. So I just forced a smile and said, “Good luck, everyone.” I spun on my heel and took off into the woods.

  When we played Capture the Flag back home, it was mostly in the neighborhood. Sometimes it would spread out into a park, but never a forest. The trees were really dense in here, and under some of the sections of canopy, it actually felt like dusk. I tried to keep my bearings, but not five minutes later, I was turned around and unsure which way was out. I stopped in a section of sparse woods that had some sunlight streaming in through the breaks in the canopy and turned around, hoping one of the directions would jump out at me as the right one.

  Should’ve brought a compass, you idiot.

  Twigs snapped to my right, and I dropped into a crouch, ducked behind a bush, and held my breath. A full minute later two campers crept into view, their guns held like they were ready to use them. They scanned the woods, back and forth, as they walked.

  I adjusted my grip and brought my gun up to my shoulder. This was going to be great!

  The campers moved carefully a few paces past where I was hiding. I considered taking them hostage, but then decided they might turn around and get a lucky shot before I managed to shoot them. I’d only played paintball once, but it was enough to remember the sting of getting shot. I wasn’t keen to feel that again.

  I held my position. I’d let them get three more steps, and then I’d pop up and blast them.

  One.

  Two. They paused and then …

  Three—

  Just as I was about to stand, someone cleared their throat behind me, and I froze.

  “You can stand up now,” the voice said.

  I turned and faced the wide smile of Chase Erickson and two other campers beside him.

  “Hey, Bryce?” Chase said.

  “Yeah?” said one of the campers I’d been planning on shooting a secon
d before.

  “Is it Christmas? Because it feels like Christmas.”

  “Then it must be Christmas,” Bryce said.

  The five of them laughed, and then Chase’s expression dropped.

  “Take his gun,” Chase said.

  Someone from behind me snatched my weapon out of my hand. I raised my hands. “Okay, okay, you got me. Congratulations.”

  Chase shook his head. “You’re our prisoner.”

  One of the campers behind me grabbed my arms and pulled them behind my back, hard.

  “Hey!”

  They jerked me backward against a tree. Chase removed a roll of industrial tape from one of the pockets on his cargo pants and threw it to another camper. They quickly moved over to me, mask still down so I couldn’t see their faces, and started taping me to the tree.

  “Okay,” I said, “really funny.” I struggled to get away, and the camper wrapping me in tape paused and punched me in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of me. By the time I stopped coughing, I was secured to the trunk by three thick bands of tape—one across my chest and upper arms, one across my waist that also pinned my arms to my side, and one over my knees.

  I cursed and struggled against the restraints and then cursed some more. “You can’t do this,” I said. “This is a total violation of the rules. No physical violence.”

  “Are you in pain?” Chase asked.

  I nodded to the camper who’d just punched me in the stomach. “He hit me, so obviously I am.”

  “I slipped, sir,” the camper said. He tossed the mostly empty roll of tape into the air and deftly caught it. “I certainly wasn’t trying to hit him.”

  “There,” Chase said, “you see? It was all a misunderstanding.” He walked over and patted my face. “So we’re not using violence to hurt you. We are simply restraining a POW.” He looked over at one of his teammates. “Is that against the rules?”

  “No, sir,” the camper said. He glanced over his shoulder and then up at the sky. He took a couple paces to his right until he was standing beneath the leafy branches of a huge tree. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone, or a camera, or maybe a cell phone with a camera, and held it up to record what they were about to do.