Agent Out

by Francine Pascal

  Gaia suddenly stopped walking.

  The light had changed.

  Squinting ahead, she was sure—the tunnel was getting brighter. There was another light source ahead, a bright one, around a curve in the tunnel’s sloping wall.

  Gaia moved forward hesitantly. Her eyes had gotten so used to the darkness that the yellow light ahead seemed blindingly bright, and she squinted painfully until her eyes adjusted.

  There was a hole in the wall up ahead.

  It was easy to see that it wasn’t a part of the tunnel’s original construction. But unlike the hole beneath the courthouse, which had been instantly created in the past hour by means of expertly placed explosives, this hole was much more regular. It looked like it had been neatly sawed out of the stone.

  Bright light was shining out through the hole—and by concentrating, Gaia could hear murmuring voices.

  On the opposite wall of the tunnel, illuminated by the brilliant yellow glare from the hole, a final chalk sign had been drawn. Not another arrow—a big X.

  X marks the spot, Gaia thought dazedly. I’m here.

  A metal ladder had been attached to the catwalk she was on, leading up to the hole in the wall.

  Gaia unsnapped her holster and carefully drew out her Walther. She flicked the safety back. Her hands were slippery, and she dried them impatiently on her pants legs. It wouldn’t be very smart to drop her gun in the water.

  With the gun ready, Gaia took a deep breath and then walked to the ladder as quietly as she could. Gripping the gun tightly, she climbed up step by step, taking care to keep her head below the edge of the hole.

  What am I going to see? What’s in there?

  Gaia had no idea.

  She could hear voices, but the roar of the water was still maddeningly loud, and she couldn’t make out how many people were speaking or what they were saying any more than she’d been able to hear Will an hour before, however many miles behind her they had said goodbye.

  Without sound cues Gaia had no idea how to move through the hole. It was conceivable that she’d be shot dead the moment she stuck her face up into view. There might be some kind of acrobatic way to get through the hole, land without stumbling, and point her gun at any assailants who were there—but it would be very difficult, if not impossible. There was just no way to predict what the area in there was like. The floor could be right there or it could be ten feet down, with another ladder on the other side of the punctured wall. From her vantage point all she could see was a smooth, dimly lit cement ceiling.

  Will was right, Gaia admitted to herself. I can’t do this by myself.

  But it was a little late to change her mind.

  Slowly raising her head, Gaia looked through the hole.

  IMPRESSIVELY FAST REACTION TIMES

  She was looking into a brightly lit room with a low ceiling lined with industrial fluorescent lights. The room was wide and bare, about the size of a small warehouse. The walls were featureless white cinder block. The floor was clean, dry cement.

  The room was full of supplies. Gaia could see stacks of crates and rows and rows of weapons—artillery, rifles, handguns, cases of grenades, bundles of dynamite. Several of the crates had warning labels that read DANGER: EXPLOSIVES and C-4.

  Not a place where you want to be firing a handgun, she realized uneasily.

  Five men were standing in a clump to one side. They all wore black T-shirts and baggy camouflage pants, and their hair had been shaved down to buzz cuts. All of them were well built and carried themselves like they had received physical training. Poised at the top of the ladder, Gaia kept her head low, peering over the cement edge of the hole in the wall, watching the men as they intently unpacked a crate, removing and assembling what looked like the mounting tripod for an large-bore artillery gun.

  I can take them, Gaia thought, looking at the men. They didn’t seem to have noticed her—but then, of course, they could be faking—just pretending not to see her so that they could capture her by surprise once she moved toward them. There was no way to tell.

  The men were all armed, she saw, with what looked like Clock handguns in belt holsters, but the same restriction applied to them as to her—a stray bullet in that room could mean an explosion big enough to vaporize a city block.

  So, no shooting—hand to hand. One against five.

  The problem was that she couldn’t see the whole room. It was too big, and there were too many crates and boxes in the way. Any number of other men could be hidden from view, ready to pounce.

  So be it, Gaia told herself. What are you going to do—wait for everyone to leave?

  As quietly as she could, Gaia reholstered her gun, carefully flipping the safety back on. With the holster snapped shut she took a moment to calculate her move, setting her hands in the right places on the top rung of the ladder, and then, when she was good and ready, surged upward and jumped through the hole.

  She landed neatly on floor, her shoes squeaking slightly as they hit the cement. The five men turned toward her instantly and displayed impressively fast reaction times. They didn’t stop and ask themselves why this blond girl had suddenly jumped into the room—they just dropped into fighting stances.

  “Hai,” Gaia hollered from her center, leaping toward them. She jumped forward, aiming a kick at the head of the man nearest to her. With incredible speed the man whipped his head back, and Gaia twirled in the air, fighting not to lose her balance before landing heavily on her other foot. The men to either side of the first man moved toward her—

  And suddenly Gaia felt cold metal pressing against her head and heard the unmistakable sound of an automatic pistol being cocked.

  “Stop right there,” ordered a voice she instantly recognized. “Move one muscle and you’re dead.”

  Someone else in the room, she thought furiously. I knew it, I knew it—

  “Hands behind your back,” the deep, resonant, almost theatrical voice continued. “I’m watching your feet, Gaia—if you look like you’re even thinking about performing a scorpion kick, I’ll hit you with a nerve-block punch and you’ll be immobilized for hours.”

  The gun remained pressed against the back of her head as a hand reached around to pull her own Walther roughly out of its holster. The five men in front of her stared dully into her eyes, their arms poised in ready position. Gaia stared right back. She could feel the gun pressed to her head suddenly pull away.

  “Okay, I’m out of your kill zone,” the voice behind her said, having moved farther back. “But I’ve still got you covered—and I will shoot. Turn around slowly with both hands showing.”

  Gaia had placed the voice. She knew what she was going to see as she slowly turned around. But even expecting it, she still found the view a sickening surprise.

  “Very good,” Winston Marsh said, leveling his Beretta between her eyes. He was exactly far enough away that she couldn’t reach him with a flying kick. He was dressed like the others, in a tight black T-shirt and camouflage pants. As she watched, she could hear the men behind her circling around back into view. “Hello, Gaia—and welcome. Do you know where you are?”

  “I think so,” Gaia said. “This is Socorro headquarters, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly.” Marsh smiled, his eyes crinkling pleasantly. He looked exactly the same as he had in the Clavarak Motel room the last time she’d seen him, but the change of clothes—and the whole situation—made a tremendous difference. “You realize there’s nothing to be gained by attacking, right? Even if you subdue everyone in this room, which is extremely unlikely, you’ll never make it through those doors and out of here alive. Anyway, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Gaia couldn’t even muster words. She knew she should be shocked and bewildered. After all, he was standing there before her—alive and well. Smiling, even. The man who was supposed to have been gray-opped into oblivion by the FBI. The man who’d somehow reminded her of her father.

  But there was no more room in Gaia’s psyche for shock or bewilderm
ent or horror. She’d exhausted every last bit of it in the first seventeen years of her life. No, this was a scenario with which she’d become far too depressingly familiar: betrayal.

  Apparently she was no less gullible now than she had been at the age of six. That big fight with Rossiter obviously had been staged, and she’d been duped by the charade. It wasn’t her father she’d sensed in Winston Marsh. It was her uncle.

  It was too pathetic even to admit to herself. But it seemed, no matter how much training she’d gotten at Quantico, there were still some things she would simply never learn.

  “You’re upset,” Marsh said. He hadn’t made the slightest move toward lowering the gun. “I don’t blame you—it’s reasonable. I want you to understand, I took no joy in deceiving you. But if you’d known about my involvement in Socorro, there’s simply no way we could have brought you here. And we need you here, Gaia. You have no idea how badly we need you here with us. You’ll begin to understand.” Marsh turned to the others. “Gentlemen, would you leave us alone, please?”

  The five men didn’t ask any questions—they just turned and moved toward one of the metal doors at the far side of the room. Gaia kept her eyes fixed on Marsh while in her mind assessing the physical situation. She couldn’t charge the gun, as she had that morning with the FBI agents. They were afraid to shoot her; she had no way of knowing if Marsh harbored the same qualms. And if she was dead, then nobody could save Catherine.

  Gaia briefly considered trying to jump back out, through the hole. It would mean a spectacular leap, mostly from memory, since a glance backward would give her away. She’d have to chance not getting shot as she jumped and then clearing the cement edges and somehow managing to miss the catwalk and land in the water, dodging the bullets from above while fighting the current—

  No. An Olympic diver couldn’t do it. Not even without the bullets. Not a chance in hell.

  “Forget about jumping backward,” Marsh said in his maddeningly calm voice. “Good, I can see you’ve already given up on that madness. Obviously I didn’t tell you the full story about Socorro, but I’m sure you can see the ways in which my hands were tied. It’s so easy to misinterpret what we do or what a visionary like Ramon is capable of.”

  Visionary? Gaia thought. What’s he talking about?

  “And the bureau,” Marsh went on. “The fabled FBI. By now you’ve checked my background; you know I was telling you the truth. Do you realize that their entire purpose is to keep things from changing? To maintain the imperialist status quo no matter what the cost? If people around the world heard our message in an unbiased way, if they could really listen to RamOn Nino and hear what he’s trying to tell them, the freedom he’s offering to them, they would rise up together and follow him. Which is why your FBI is working so hard to make sure that never happens. I may have bent the truth slightly, but make no mistake: the FBI is interested in locking people up and in silencing them, not in liberating them.”

  “I don’t want to listen to this anymore,” Gaia said quietly. “I want you to put the gun down so I can beat the crap out of you.”

  Marsh smiled. “You’re really impressive, Gaia,” he told her fondly. “So sure of yourself; so iron willed. She was absolutely right about you—and I’m so glad I listened to her.”

  She—?

  “Who’s ‘she’?” Gaia said impatiently. “And believe me, Marsh, I’ve heard just about enough of your mysterious—”

  Gaia stopped talking because the metal door had swung open again and a third person had entered the room. Gaia’s gaze was finally torn away from Marsh and from the gun barrel pointed at her face.

  There was Catherine Sanders.

  She was dressed like the others, in a black T-shirt and camouflage pants. The military getup didn’t make her look any less pretty, Gaia noticed, although the brush cut she’d recently gotten radically altered the look of her jet black hair. She still wore the same round glasses—they glinted and flashed in the fluorescent lights as she stepped forward into the room.

  Cath—Gaia tried to speak, but her throat was utterly dry. She coughed and tried again. “Catherine—?”

  “Gaia,” Catherine said warmly. “God, it’s good to finally see you.”

  And she looks like she means it, Gaia thought. She was so stunned that she had to willfully force herself not to collapse to the floor. She’s not being held captive.

  She’s one of them. She’s always been one of them.

  “Catherine?” Gaia said again. She seemed to be practically speechless.

  But there were more surprises to come.

  “Would you leave us alone, Dad?” Catherine said to Marsh. “My ex-roommate and I have a lot to talk about.”

  “Sure, kid,” Marsh said, backing toward Catherine, covering Gaia with the gun as he moved. Gaia watched in utter disbelief as Marsh put his arm around Catherine’s shoulders, kissing her on the forehead as he handed over the gun. Catherine hugged Marsh back before fixing the gun on Gaia. There had been a moment when they were both distracted, and in that moment Gaia might have attacked—but she was simply too stunned.

  I’ll see you soon, Gaia,” Marsh said over his shoulder as he moved toward the door. “We’ve got a lot of planning to do.”

  Planning? What did that mean?

  The door slammed shut, and Catherine and Gaia were alone in the room.

  the truth with a gun pointed at your head

  A TERRORIST TRAITOR

  The long silence was sickening. Gaia could only stand there and stare at Catherine’s face—her glasses, her cream-colored skin, the intelligence in her eyes. This was absolutely her friend and roommate, the woman she’d literally thrown everything away in order to save—yet at exactly the same time she was a complete stranger now, someone Gaia didn’t know at all. Someone who was pointing a gun in her face.

  A word began to buzz through Gaia’s head, repeating itself endlessly like one of those unbearable car alarms on a New York City street. It had become her least favorite word in the English language—one she’d sworn to avoid for the remainder of her adult life, even if it meant living in relative seclusion.

  Betrayed. That was the word. Betrayed again. It kept growing louder in her mind like a permanent echo. The painful sensation of burning acid erupted in her chest and began climbing up her throat….

  How many times had she been betrayed like this? Never mind, she told herself. Never mind all the “woe is me” crap.

  Never mind the laundry list of trusted friends and family who’d stabbed her in the back over the years. Never mind how sad it was to consider all the loyalty she’d wasted on her “partner” Catherine. This moment wasn’t about her sadness or her confusion. It was about rage, pure and simple.

  “Do you have any idea … ?” Gaia shook her head slowly. Her fingers curled into fists, the nails digging into her palms. “Do you have any idea what I went through to find you?”

  “Look, Gaia, please,” Catherine said cautiously. “Just try to stay cool, all right? I know this is a lot to process, but we can—”

  “Process?” Gaia spat. “A lot to process?”

  “Gaia, everything’s going to be—”

  “No, I don’t think you heard me,” Gaia barked. She took a step closer, closing the distance between her and Catherine’s gun. “I asked you a question. I asked you if you had any idea what I went through for you. Wait, what am I saying? Not for you. What I went through for my partner, Catherine—my partner and my friend, Catherine Sanders. I don’t know who the hell you are.”

  “Yes, you do,” Catherine insisted. “I’m still your friend, Gaia. Your best friend and your partner. I need you now more than ever. We all do.”

  “Oh, you all do,” Gaia scoffed. “As in you and—and your father out there and the rest of your terrorist organization?”

  “No.” Catherine shook her head vehemently. “No, we are not a terrorist organization. That’s just what the bureau wants you to believe. We are not terrorists, Gaia, we’re activ
ists. All we’re trying to do is send a message to this country and free people from modern-day slavery—corporate slavery. And we can’t free them without our leader. We can’t free them until we free Nino. I know you can see that. I know you—I know if you look in your heart, you’ll see the truth.”

  “The truth?” Gaia narrowed her eyes with disgust. “You’re talking to me about the truth? I guess that’s what terrorists do, isn’t it? They tell you about the ‘truth’ with a gun pointed at your head.”

  “I am not a terrorist!” Catherine shouted. “You think I want to point a gun at you? I don’t. Of course I don’t.”

  “Then put the goddamn gun down!” Gaia shot back. She lurched slightly forward, forcing Catherine to thrust the gun out more securely—tightening her grip on the handle with both hands.

  “I will,” Catherine promised. “I will put the gun down, I swear. I just need to be sure I can trust you.”

  “Trust?” Gaia bellowed. “Now you want to talk about trust? I trusted you. I promised myself I’d never make that mistake again, but I did. Like a true idiot, I put my faith in you, and this is what I have to show for it!”

  “Gaia, you just don’t understand, that’s all,” Catherine insisted. “You’re just not seeing the big picture yet. You can trust me. I am your friend. I’ve always been your friend. You’re the reason I came to Quantico, for God’s sake. Socorro put me there to meet you—to find out if it was true about the ‘fearless’ girl from New York. Once I knew you were just as talented and smart as all the reports said, I knew I had to recruit you for this mission. I knew you’d be able to see the importance of what we’re doing here.”

  Gaia had stopped listening when she heard the key word:

  Recruit.

  Jesus. Of course …

  She’d been so busy feeling furious and betrayed she hadn’t even bothered to put the pieces together. But now she finally understood. The memo … the warning about Socorro recruiting an FBI trainee for D-day … Catherine wasn’t the recruit—Gaia was. She always had been, since her very first day at Quantico.