by Stuart Gibbs
Due to the way the harness worked, Erica was pressed right against my back. When she spoke, she barely had to whisper, as her mouth was right next to my ear. “Careful,” she warned calmly. “There’s going to be a slight jerk as we take off.”
Three seconds later, the last of the rope played out, and then the whole line snapped taut.
As was the case with many of the things Erica said, “a slight jerk” turned out to be an understatement. It felt as though I was in a car wreck, but in reverse. Instead of slamming to a stop, my body was suddenly yanked forward at great speed. My head whipped back so fast, I might have smashed Erica’s nose if her head hadn’t also done the same thing. We were instantly jerked off the pier and into the air. Luckily, the parasail billowed out behind us just as quickly. Instead of dropping into the water, we were now yanked backward almost as violently as we had been yanked forward a second earlier. The sail caught the air, and we rose upward so fast, my ears popped. Normally, parasails only went up twenty to thirty feet, but Erica had tied several tethers together. Before I knew it, we were ten stories above the water, the motorboat so far below us, it looked like a bathtub toy.
I was surprised to find that, despite dangling from a thin piece of fabric high above the ground, I wasn’t that afraid of falling to my death. Though this was probably because there were so many other things to be afraid of at the moment: being captured by SPYDER, being killed by SPYDER, screwing up the mission in front of Erica. Compared to infiltrating an enemy hideout, parasailing was quite peaceful and almost relaxing.
I had been concerned that the motorboat’s sound might draw attention, but between the roar of the surf and the wind rustling the palm trees along the shore, the beach was surprisingly noisy, and the thrum of the motor was swallowed up. From our high vantage point, we couldn’t even differentiate its sound from the ocean’s—which was hopefully the case for any guards stationed at the penthouse as well. Even so, Erica had instructed Mike to keep his distance from the yacht anchored offshore. Instead, Mike paralleled the beach in the opposite direction, then hooked a sharp turn and headed back for the pier.
There were two extremely simple controls for the parasail: cloth handles that Erica could yank on, tugging us left or right. Erica pulled on the left-hand one, and we made a graceful curve in the air, dropping in behind the boat as it raced back toward the resort complex.
When the boat reached Aquarius once again, Erica whipped the fish knife from her holster and cleanly sliced through the tether, cutting us free. The line dropped away into the ocean below.
Parasailing no longer seemed quite so peaceful or relaxing. My entire body tensed in preparation for confronting SPYDER.
Erica pulled on the left handle again, harder this time. We veered inland, soaring over the outer reaches of the resort. Darkened villas and swimming pools swiftly passed far beneath my feet. Ahead of us, the main pyramid of the central building loomed.
The penthouse remained shrouded in darkness. The balconies were impossible to make out—as were any guards who might have been patrolling them.
“Are you sure the guards won’t see us?” I asked.
Erica replied, “It’s a little bit late to be asking that now, don’t you think?”
“There’s still time to abort,” I said, then thought to add, “Isn’t there?”
“The guards aren’t going to be anything to worry about,” Erica told me. “They’re watching a sleeping resort for the two hundredth night in a row. Nothing’s happened in all those previous nights. They probably assume nothing’s going to happen tonight, either. Especially at this hour. If anyone’s even on patrol, they’ve probably nodded off by now.”
That made sense—and yet it seemed counter to the whole idea of guarding a hideout. If you got hired as a guard, you knew you were signing up for exceptionally long periods of boredom. For this reason, the job tended to attract dim-witted thugs, people who liked the idea of not having to do anything for eight hours at a stretch. Or worse, sadists who were so excited to do harm to someone, they sat up all night, eagerly scanning the skies for any incoming enemies that they could kill.
We homed in closer, passing over the Coco Loco Lounge. Mike’s boat was now far enough away that it had disappeared into the night.
A light flicked on in one of the windows of the penthouse.
It was only a single lamp, but in the pitch-black night, it was almost blinding.
Erica stiffened behind me, apparently surprised that someone at SPYDER was awake.
Whoever had turned it on wasn’t looking out the window, though. And they seemed to be the only person awake in the complex. By now, we were close enough that I could make out distinct shapes on the balcony. I could see the tufted forms of potted palms, the mushroom caps of patio umbrellas—and a great deal of gymnastics equipment. Located away from the railing, where we hadn’t been able to see it from below, was a set of uneven bars, a pommel horse, a balance beam, and a trampoline.
“Looks like Ashley’s keeping in shape,” Erica observed.
There was also a guard on the balcony. A big, imposing slab of muscle. However, as Erica had predicted, he was asleep, slumped in a deck chair by the railing.
He didn’t even stir as we drifted ten feet over his head. We crossed above the rest of the balcony, then came to the roof of the penthouse. Erica dropped us down perfectly atop it, then dug in her heels. We came to a pinpoint stop, and the parasail collapsed behind us.
Since the roof of the penthouse was the highest point at Aquarius, and thus couldn’t be seen from anywhere else at the resort, no one had made any attempt to beautify it. It was an ugly, flat expanse of tar paper, dotted with ventilation ducts, water pipes, and industrial-size air conditioners. The air conditioners were humming busily, easily covering the sounds of our arrival. We detached ourselves from the harness, but when I went to bundle it up again, Erica shook her head and said, “Don’t.” Given the noise of the A/C units, she could speak normally without fear of being overheard.
Even so, I whispered back. “Why not?”
“In case we have to leave in a hurry.”
I considered the parasail wadded in my hands. “You mean . . . we’d jump off the building?”
“How did you think we’d be leaving? The elevator?”
“Er . . . ,” I said. Because, up until that moment, I had been so concerned about how we were getting into the penthouse, I hadn’t given any thought to how we’d leave it. Taking the elevator might have been reckless, but it still seemed infinitely safer than jumping off a building and hoping that the parasail deployed fully enough on the way down to prevent us from splatting onto the pavement.
“Relax,” Erica told me. “That’s only the backup.”
“What’s the primary?” I asked.
“This.” Erica removed the speargun from the mesh bag and calmly fired it off the roof.
At some point while I’d been fetching Mike, she had affixed a spool of fishing line to the spear. The line spun out behind the projectile, which disappeared into the darkness and impaled something in the far distance that I couldn’t see. Given that whatever it hit didn’t scream in agony, I assumed it wasn’t human.
“That’s our primary escape route?” I asked, aghast. “Going down a fishing line?”
“Calm down. It’s eight-hundred-pound test line. You can land a marlin with it. It ought to hold us just fine.” Erica calmly sliced through the line with the gutting knife and then efficiently tied it to a standpipe.
“Ought to hold us?” I repeated. “You just cut through it with your knife!”
“I don’t recall either of us having knife blades for hands.” Erica didn’t put the knife back in its sheath. Instead, she found a large ventilation duct, jabbed the blade under the edge of the grating, and pried it up. The grating easily popped free, and Erica deftly caught it before it clattered onto the roof. She pressed a finger to her lips, indicating there should be no more arguments from me, then lowered herself through the hole i
nto the ventilation system.
I reluctantly followed her. The ventilation system was pretty much the last place I wanted to go, but I wasn’t about to let Erica do this solo. A cardinal rule of being a spy was that you never let a partner go anyplace dangerous alone—and a cardinal rule of being partners with Erica was that if you didn’t follow her plan, you would lose her respect.
The ventilation duct was cramped and claustrophobia inducing. Erica could barely fit inside it with the gear bag slung on her back. We had to move by wriggling along with our arms folded beneath us. I was staring at Erica’s feet, which turned out to be the one part of her body that didn’t smell fantastic. Plus, SPYDER had the air-conditioning cranked to eleven, so arctic air blew through the ducts, refrigerating us.
Every once in a while, we would come to a slatted grating that allowed us a peek into the room below it. Erica paused at each, scoping out the rooms before silently moving on. Thus, I arrived at each only after she had already been there.
The first looked down into the bedroom of Ashley Sparks. Ashley was asleep, though she was having a terrible dream. She writhed back and forth restlessly under the sheets, murmuring, “That’s not fair! I stuck the landing! I stuck the landing!”
The next room was also a bedroom, although the bed appeared to be empty—at first. It was only after I had stared at it for a few seconds that I realized Warren Reeves was actually in it. Even while asleep, he naturally camouflaged himself. His pale skin blended in perfectly with the white sheets, and he slumbered without sound or movement.
Next came the bedroom for Dane Brammage. While Warren seemed lost in his bed, Dane was way too big for his. His feet jutted past the end, his huge shoulders extended the width of it, and the whole piece of furniture was buckling beneath his bulk. While Dane was sound asleep, he still seemed primed for action. I got the impression that, if need be, he could snap awake instantly, ready to kill or maim anyone who warranted it. His presence so disturbed me that I froze, looking down at him for way too long. When I finally pried my attention from him, Erica had disappeared.
I scuttled along as fast as I could to catch up with her—although that wasn’t very fast. For a few, desperate moments, I feared that she might have left the ventilation system altogether, abandoning me in the ceiling.
But then I rounded a corner and found her. She was several feet ahead of me, and she must have taken a different route to this point, because she was now turned in my direction, so I could see her face, not her feet. There were two gratings looking down into the room below us. Erica was on the far side of the first, while I was arriving at the second.
Light beamed up into the duct from the room below, sliced into thin beams by the gratings. This was obviously the room that we had seen the light come on in during our approach. The sounds of a conversation filtered up into the duct as well.
I stopped at the closer grating and peered down through it into the room below.
If my spine hadn’t already been freezing, a chill would have gone up it.
Joshua Hallal sat directly beneath me.
Joshua had once been one of the most promising students at spy school, but he had switched sides to become one of the most promising evildoers at SPYDER. He was only five years older than me, but he had been a true evil prodigy, quickly working his way up through SPYDER to become one of its highest-ranking members. (There were others above him, but I—and the CIA—didn’t know their identities yet.) He was cruel, he was dangerous—and worst of all, he had a big grudge against me. While running away from me after I had thwarted his plans the previous summer, he had been horribly disfigured. That hadn’t really been my fault, but he still blamed me. He had lost a leg, an arm, and an eye in the incident.
The room below me was the dining room for the penthouse suite, but it was being used as more of a conference room. Joshua sat at one end of the dining table with three items before him: a stack of important-looking documents that were too far away for me to read, a phone, and a small, sleek device with a single red button on it.
It had been seven months since I’d last seen Joshua, back at SPYDER’s evil headquarters. He had fled those before they had blown up. I had no idea where he’d been in the interim—although I could guess at least a small portion of that time had been spent at a hospital. Before, Joshua’s missing hand had been replaced with a hook, which was scary but not very practical. Now, that had been exchanged for something much more high-tech: a prosthetic metal hand. There was no fake skin on it; instead, it seemed that pains had been taken to show off how nonhuman it was. It was skeletal in its design. The metal had been precision sculpted and polished until it gleamed. Although it was far less medieval than the hook, this new version was even more menacing. It lay flat on the table below me, one finger tapping against the wood. That simple motion, and the rhythmic tap, tap, tap, was terrifying.
Joshua seemed well aware of this. It appeared that he was doing his best to terrify the other person in the room with him.
I had been so focused on Joshua, I didn’t even notice the other man until he spoke. He was sitting at the opposite end of the dining table. He was considerably older than Joshua, in his fifties, I guessed, and not nearly as frightening. In fact, given that he was attached to SPYDER, he was about the least frightening person I could have ever imagined. He was meek and twitchy, his skin moist from nervous perspiration, his eyes nearly obscured behind thick glasses. It was hard to tell how tall he was, as his posture was stooped and cowering. He was on the phone, speaking to someone else in an anxious, stuttering style that betrayed an air of permanent embarrassment. There was a slight English accent in his voice.
“Is that . . . well . . . I mean . . . has it happened, then?” he stammered. “Are we . . . or you . . . er . . . what I meant was . . . then it’s done?” He waited a moment, then nodded agreement, even though the person on the other end of the line couldn’t possibly see him doing it. Then, after an uncomfortable pause, he realized he needed to actually give his agreement out loud. “Oh . . . right. That’s good, then . . . isn’t it? Okay . . . yes . . . right . . . if you say so. Well then . . . good-bye.” He hung up, mopped his brow, and looked skittishly toward Joshua. “Celeste has arrived in Ushuaia.”
“Good,” Joshua said. And yet, somehow even that single word was ominous enough to make the man at the other end of the table cringe.
“So . . . ,” the other man said, almost apologetically. “Since the . . . ah . . . the goods have been . . . well, delivered . . . and that’s . . . er . . . the, uh, the . . . well, the last batch . . . then you . . . if it’s no imposition, really . . . you see, I uh . . . well, there’s the matter of . . . the matter of payment due. Which would be . . . ah . . . two billion dollars.”
I looked up at Erica, shocked by this amount. She didn’t budge at all and continued peering down through the grating, but I still got the sense the sum of money had caught her by surprise as well.
Rather than answer the other man, Joshua reached up with his good hand and toyed with something that hung on a thin chain around his neck. With many people, this wouldn’t have been threatening at all, but like everything Joshua did, it somehow seemed malicious. I couldn’t see what the object on the chain was, but the mere activity of Joshua stroking it made the nervous man shift even more uncomfortably in his seat.
After a few seconds, the phone on the table by Joshua buzzed with a text. Joshua let the object on the chain fall back beneath his shirt, picked up the phone, and read the message. “My source in Ushuaia confirms Celeste’s arrival and says everything looks to be in order with her.”
“Good!” the nervous man exclaimed. “Then you will . . . er . . . ah . . . um . . .”
“Issue payment? That seems only right. After all, you have provided our organization with exactly what we wanted, Mr. Lee.”
I looked up at Erica once again, even more shocked now. Erica was looking at me, prepared for this.
That’s Paul Lee? I mouthed silently.
&nbs
p; Erica nodded curtly, then returned her attention to the conversation below.
So did I, although I was having trouble believing the high-strung, unimpressive man facing Joshua Hallal could possibly be the Paul Lee I had heard about before. That man, according to Erica, was one of the world’s most ruthless arms dealers, a criminal she had described as “real scum of the earth.” I had envisioned someone cruel, conniving, and equally as menacing as Joshua Hallal, quite likely with a bald head and a nasty scar across his face, and also possibly with a Maltese cat in his lap, which he would stroke in an intimidating fashion. (I admit it, I had imagined that he looked exactly like Blofeld from the James Bond movies, which was stereotyping.) Instead, Paul Lee was a wretched, squirming milquetoast.
He looked at Joshua now and smiled weakly, revealing a mouthful of teeth that appeared to have never been subjected to any sort of dental hygiene. They were crooked and brownish and no two pointed in the same direction. “Right, then. So let’s . . . if it’s okay with you, we could . . . er . . . I mean, the funds . . . well, they . . . the transferring thing could happen . . . ah, well . . . Would now be good?”
“No,” Joshua said.
“Excellent!” Paul Lee said cheerfully, and then frowned as he realized that Joshua hadn’t said anything to be cheerful about. “Er, wait. Did you . . . was that . . . did you say no?”
“Yes.”
Paul Lee’s rheumy eyes blinked moistly behind his thick glasses. “But . . . but . . . you . . . well, you owe me . . .”
“Two billion dollars?” Joshua finished. “Yes, we do owe you that. And as I said, issuing payment only seems right. But as you may recall, Mr. Lee . . . We here at SPYDER are evil. We never do what is right.” With his good hand, he produced a gun from underneath his jacket and aimed it across the table.
Paul Lee started in fear, then tried to compose himself. He didn’t do a very good job. He was fidgeting so nervously, he almost smacked himself in the face several times with his own hands. “But I, er, I thought . . . that, uh, well . . . I mean, I suspected that . . . Point is, I wouldn’t do that. . . . Well, you see, this is why I brought . . .” He gave up on explaining himself and yelled, “Dane! I need you!”