Evil Spy School

by Stuart Gibbs

  I sighed. Erica’s argument made sense—and yet it seemed so wrong. “So, the solution is to go through life without friends?”

  “Yes,” Erica said.

  “You’re not saying that just because Joshua broke your heart?”

  Erica turned on me. The temperature on the boat seemed to suddenly drop ten degrees, though I wasn’t sure if it was because of Erica’s cold gaze or the fact that the sun was setting. Finally, Erica said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do,” I said. “You liked him. Just because he turned out to be the biggest jerk of all time doesn’t mean everyone else will. Friends aren’t always a liability. Sometimes they’re the best asset we have.”

  Before Erica could respond, Cyrus announced, “Can the chitchat, you two. Time for stealth mode. No talking unless absolutely necessary.” He shut off the engines and handed a paddle to each of us.

  Without the roar of the big motors, it was startlingly quiet. Even though New York sat only a few miles to the north of us, the wide expanse of water swallowed up the sounds of the city. When I looked south toward the modest homes on the Jersey Shore, it was easy to imagine that I was off the coast of some rural fishing village. To the east, Sandy Hook appeared completely uninhabited.

  We paddled toward it. It was hard work, and we had a mile to cover. As we went, the night grew darker, covering our approach. We strapped on our night-vision goggles and scanned the shore. No one was moving. The Nike site looked like a Cold War–era ghost town.

  When we were a hundred yards from shore, Cyrus signaled us to stop rowing. The current caught us, carrying us the rest of the way.

  There wasn’t a single light on at Sandy Hook. The peninsula was merely a silhouette that grew as we came closer to it until finally the waves slid the cigarette boat gently onto the sand.

  We beached a bit north of the main building complex, where some scrub grew close to the water. We dragged some of it down to the water’s edge to hide the boat, sending up clouds of pollen. Alexander wrinkled his nose at the smell and then his eyes opened wide in alarm. He began huffing in air, building up to what looked to be an enormous sneeze.

  Cyrus wheeled on him with a don’t-you-dare-make-a-noise expression.

  Alexander looked around desperately, spotted the handkerchief poking out of my utility belt, snatched it away, and placed it to his nose, stifling the sneeze at the last second. He sighed with relief—and then realized, a bit too late, that the rag was soaked in chloroform. “Oh shoot,” he said, and then collapsed face-first onto the sand.

  Cyrus and Erica rolled their eyes, then headed toward the silo complex, leaving Alexander snoring softly on the beach. I felt a little bad about leaving him behind, but he wasn’t going to wake anytime soon, and I knew we couldn’t delay our mission a moment longer. It was coming up on eight o’clock.

  Even with the night-vision goggles, Cyrus and Erica were almost impossible to see as they slunk along. They melted into the shadows, becoming a part of them. I did my best to mimic their movements, praying that I wouldn’t screw up like Alexander had.

  There were three missile silos on the property, sunk deep in the ground, covered by large round metal lids that would slide open when the time came to fire. The access was through three cement bunkers, which were the low, squat buildings I had seen at the beach.

  We were almost to the first bunker when we finally encountered some guards. Unfortunately, just like Alexander, they were sprawled on the ground. They were unconscious, rather than dead, though this did little to relieve my fear. SPYDER had obviously beaten us there.

  Cyrus pressed a finger to the neck of one of the guards, taking his pulse.

  “How long has he been out?” Erica whispered.

  “At least half an hour,” Cyrus replied, his voice laced with concern.

  I shifted my gaze to the nearby bunker. There were no windows and only one door, five feet tall and made of rusted steel.

  It hung open. Cyrus led us through it.

  A metal staircase plunged downward, almost exactly like the secret one at Hidden Forest. It was as though any organization that needed a covert underground lair used the same architect. We crept down it, spiraling several stories into the earth, until we arrived in a large room.

  While SPYDER’s underground lair had been tastefully decorated and homey, this room was cold and industrial. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all concrete. It was lit by bare bulbs dangling from electrical wires, and the furniture all appeared to be relics from the Cold War: metal desks, folding chairs, a water cooler. However, the missile systems had been upgraded relatively recently. The computers on the desks were only a few years out-of-date, which qualified as modern for the government, and the large screens that would be used to track incoming missiles were of decent quality.

  Except for us, the room was empty, which was unsettling in a command center that was supposed to be staffed twenty-four hours a day, weekends and holidays included.

  Cyrus and Erica seemed worried by this as well.

  There was only one other door besides the one we had come through. It was a thick steel affair, like you’d expect to find on a bank vault, rigged with all sorts of alarms and marked by dozens of signs saying that it shouldn’t be opened for any reason.

  It was open.

  Since the alarms weren’t ringing, I assumed they’d been dismantled.

  Cyrus headed for the door. Erica and I followed.

  We passed through a cement wall several feet thick and found ourselves at the base of the missile silo. The missile was still there, towering above us. I didn’t get a very good look at it, though.

  I was too distracted by the explosives.

  A ring of dynamite was strapped around the base of the missile with duct tape. I’d never seen dynamite outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but it looked exactly as I expected: foot-long red tubes with wires sticking out of them. All the wires snaked to a small electronic device that was also duct taped to the missile. There was a timer on the device. It showed there were four minutes and thirteen seconds left until everything exploded.

  SPYDER wasn’t planning on stealing the missiles after all. They were destroying them instead.

  Cyrus Hale considered all the dynamite—and then ran. “C’mon!” he yelled, bolting out of the silo. “Move your butts before they get blasted off!”

  Erica and I followed right behind him.

  “You’re not going to defuse it?” I asked as we dashed back through the control room. Now that Cyrus had spoken, I figured I had free rein to speak as well.

  “How many great CIA bomb defusers have you ever heard of?” Cyrus demanded.

  “Er . . . none,” I answered.

  “Exactly! There aren’t any! Because people who try to defuse bombs get killed.” Cyrus pounded up the staircase ahead of us.

  “But if SPYDER’s trying to destroy the missiles,” Erica protested, “shouldn’t we be trying to thwart their plans?”

  “Defusing that bomb would take way more than four minutes,” Cyrus explained. “I’ll bet you SPYDER’s up to more than just blowing up those missiles. And we’re not gonna be able to thwart them if we’ve been reduced to smithereens. Standard operating procedure in this case isn’t to risk our lives with the bomb. It’s to get the holy heck away from it.” He burst through the door at the top of the stairs, then stopped so suddenly that Erica and I slammed into him from behind.

  I started to ask Cyrus what the problem was, but then noticed he had his hands in the air.

  And after that, I noticed the twenty men aiming guns at us. They were arrayed in a semicircle around the door of the bunker, cutting off any route of escape.

  “Cyrus Hale,” a voice announced from the darkness. “This is the CIA. You and your associates are under arrest.”

  “Nuts,” Cyrus said.

  EVACUATION

  Site 56

  September 17

  2000 hours

  I raised my hands the same w
ay Cyrus had, hoping he knew how to get us out of this mess—and do it quickly. Due to my innate sense of time, I was well aware there were only two minutes and thirty seconds left until the dynamite blew.

  If Cyrus was worried, though, he didn’t show it. He simply squinted into the darkness at the CIA agent who had spoken and asked, “Rafferty, is that you?”

  “That’s affirmative,” Agent Rafferty replied. He was middle-aged and pear-shaped, standing behind his men in the center of the line.

  Cyrus said, “Think we could lower the guns and continue this discussion a few hundred yards from here? This silo’s rigged to blow in a couple minutes.”

  “Yeah, right,” Rafferty said. “I’m not falling for that old routine. You think I’m an idiot?”

  “I don’t think that at all,” Cyrus said. “I know you’re an idiot.”

  Rafferty sputtered angrily, then exclaimed, “I’m not the one who defected from the CIA and then illegally infiltrated a top-secret military base!”

  “I did no such thing,” Cyrus shot back. “Don’t you think it’s suspicious that you showed up here exactly when I did? Let me guess what happened. About fifteen minutes ago, you received a classified Double-A red alert from Internal Affairs detailing my arrival here along with a warning that I’d left the Agency to pursue some evil scheme or another. Furthermore, this alert told you exactly where and when to find me.”

  “Er . . . yes,” Rafferty admitted.

  “Does that sound like something that I’d do?” Cyrus demanded. “After everything I’ve done for this country? I would never betray the Agency! I’m on a classified mission, hunting down the subversive organization that has rigged this silo to blow. That same organization sent you the red alert, not the CIA! And by keeping your guns on us right now, you’re playing into their hands. They’ve set us all up.”

  For a moment, Rafferty almost looked convinced. But then he shook his head. “The alert I got couldn’t possibly have been a fake. It had an official code that checked out.”

  “These guys have infiltrated the CIA!” Cyrus exclaimed. “One of their moles sent that to you!”

  Rafferty shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Listen to yourself, Cyrus. You’re saying I’m a fool to think you’d go join the enemy—but instead, I should believe some top-secret evil organization has infiltrated the entire CIA?”

  Cyrus sighed, then muttered to us under his breath, “Like I said, he’s an idiot. How much time till detonation, Ben?”

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “Get ready to run for the boat.” Cyrus returned his attention to Rafferty and the CIA. “Agents, all of you know who I am and what I stand for. I swear, I’m telling you the truth. So before you back Rafferty over me, there’s one thing you ought to know . . . .”

  At which point, the silo exploded.

  Cyrus, Erica, and I were prepared for it. Or at least, we were as prepared as you can possibly be for an entire missile complex to detonate beneath your feet.

  The other CIA agents were completely caught by surprise. Apparently, none of them had believed Cyrus’s warning.

  A column of flame erupted behind us, shredding the silo and sending huge sheets of rusted metal cartwheeling through the air. The ground trembled as though an earthquake had hit. Cracks spread through the earth at our feet and fractured the cement bunker into pieces.

  And then the other two missile silos at Sandy Hook blew as well. The explosions were farther away, but just as big, turning night into day and spewing dirt and metal.

  Many of the CIA agents were thrown to the ground by the blasts. Others were temporarily blinded by them. Most of the rest scattered, gibbering in fear.

  I ran for the boat as I’d been ordered. Erica and Cyrus were right there with me. We barreled past the startled agents blocking our way. Two regained their wits long enough to try to stop us, but Cyrus and Erica made quick work of them. There was a sudden flurry of arms and legs, and the next thing either agent knew, they were on the ground, wheezing in pain.

  A little farther away, a third agent was wheeling toward us with his gun.

  I defended myself with the only weapon I had: my grappling hook. I fired the air gun, launching the metal grapple at the enemy. I’d been aiming for his head, hoping to knock him unconscious, but as usual, my aim was off and I nailed him in the groin instead. It worked, though. The agent dropped his gun and doubled over, whimpering.

  “That’s not exactly the recommended way to use this,” Erica chided, snatching the grapple off the ground as we ran past.

  “You know a better way to take out the enemy with a grappling hook?”

  “Watch and learn.”

  The ground was collapsing behind us, forming a crater where the missile had once been. A huge chunk of the bunker sheared off and tumbled inside. We sprinted as fast as we could, trying to stay ahead of the expanding hole. Craters were also growing where the other explosions had occurred. Lit by fire and flame from within, they looked like volcanos sprouting on the beach.

  By now Rafferty and a few of the other agents had realized we were on the run. They came after us, steering clear of the craters as well. Rafferty shouted something that might have been “Curse you, Cyrus!” though I couldn’t hear it clearly over all the noise.

  Erica reloaded my grappling hook into the air gun, then fired it at a tree a few feet away. The grapple whipped around a low branch and held tight. Erica then jammed the gun into the crook of another tree, yanking the wire tight across the path five feet above the ground. She did this so fluidly, she didn’t miss a step. Even with all the explosions and fires around, the thin wire was almost invisible in the night. You’d only notice it if you knew to look for it.

  Rafferty and his men didn’t know to look for it. They were too focused on us—or on the exploding missiles or the flaming craters or the random smoking objects that were now beginning to plummet from the sky. Behind us, I heard Rafferty yell, “If you don’t stop, I will order my men to . . . Waughhhh!” There was a metallic twang as he and all his agents caught the wire in the chest simultaneously and were knocked flat on their backs.

  Erica flashed me a cocky smile. “See? You only took down one person with it.”

  We kept on running, leaving the imploding missile base behind as quickly as possible. The cigarette boat was right where we had left it—as was Alexander, who had somehow slept through all the noise. He woke as we shoved the boat back into the water, still woozy from the chloroform, and blinked in confusion at the fire and chaos down the beach. “Ooh!” he said groggily. “Fireworks! Is it Independence Day already?”

  “And he wonders why I never invited him on a mission before,” Cyrus grumbled.

  Erica grabbed Alexander by the arm and helped him to his feet. “C’mon, Dad. We have to go.”

  “On a boat ride?” Alexander asked. “Sounds delightful!”

  We got the boat off the sand, then angled it toward the middle of the bay and clambered into the cockpit. Alexander tumbled in face-first, his legs sticking up in the air.

  Several more explosions suddenly flared in the night. They were so far away, we didn’t hear the booms until fifteen seconds later, but the blasts were bright and clear, orange mushrooms blooming on the horizon. Three were to the northeast of New York City, and three were to the northwest.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Sandy Hook wasn’t the only active missile site near New York,” Cyrus said, firing up the engines. “Looks like SPYDER just hit the others, too.”

  Rafferty and his agents had gotten back to their feet and were charging our way again. Down the beach, I saw them readying their guns. Cyrus revved the motor and we roared away, kicking up a huge rooster tail of water just as the CIA opened fire.

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief and sagged into my seat.

  “Stay alert!” Cyrus warned. “We’re not out of this yet!” He pointed behind us.

  The CIA had called for backup. Three boats were coming from the direction of t
he missile base. Gunfire erupted from them. Bullets stitched the surface of the water behind us.

  Erica grabbed for her gun to return fire, but Cyrus shook his head. “No shooting back. They’re fellow agents, not the enemy.”

  “We’re agents too,” Erica protested. “And they’re shooting at us.”

  “They’ve been hoodwinked by SPYDER,” Cyrus said. “And SPYDER would probably like nothing better than for us to do their dirty work for them and blow one another away. But we’re not playing that game.”

  “What game are we playing, then?” Alexander asked. “How about Parcheesi? I love Parcheesi!”

  “If we can’t fight back, what’s our plan?” I asked.

  “I didn’t get this boat because it looked pretty,” Cyrus explained. “I got it for the speed. We ought to be able to outrun them.”

  “And them, too?” Erica asked, pointing to our port side.

  More boats were coming. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked like the New Jersey police had mobilized their marine division as well.

  “Dang it!” Cyrus growled. “SPYDER wasn’t taking any chances with this. We played right into their devious little hands.” He yanked hard on the wheel, veering away from the Jersey police boats as well.

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  The motors were roaring so loud, Cyrus had to shout his response. “There’s no way the NJPD would have boats out this fast if the CIA had just called them. Those silos went up only a few minutes ago. That means SPYDER probably tipped them off well ahead of time too, the same as they did with the CIA.”

  “You think they have moles inside the Jersey police too?” Erica asked.

  “No,” Cyrus replied. “I don’t think they’re that big. They probably just phoned in a tip and got the police on their toes, so when the missiles went off, they were ready to roll.”

  “But with the CIA, they definitely used an inside man?” I asked.

  “Rafferty wouldn’t have been able to mobilize an Agency team that big unless he thought word was really coming from on high.” Cyrus shook his head, looking annoyed at himself. “SPYDER played us just like they played you. They fed us a single crumb—Sandy Hook—knowing that we’d bite. Then they rigged the missiles and set us up so that we’d take the fall for it. They probably hoped we’d all get killed in the blast, but this still works out for them just fine. We’re the only ones who know SPYDER’s plotting something—and now they’ve got the CIA chasing us, freeing them to pursue their evil plans. It’s deviously brilliant, really.”