Maybe I don’t belong here after all, he found himself thinking, looking at the bloody and battered Nick.
“Wait,” Akiko broke in. “It’s been a tense day for all of us. We’ve developed a way to deal with problems as a team, sir,” she said, turning to the instructor, “and I’d appreciate it if you’d let us try to work this out among ourselves before you took this anywhere else.”
The instructor hesitated, then looked at the rest of the team. “That so?” he asked, looking into all of their faces carefully.
Sam, Chloe, Melvin, and Don all looked at Akiko, then at each other. Slowly, they turned back to the instructor. They all nodded.
Vaughn looked at Nick, waiting for him to burst out again, scream that it wasn’t true, that they had no system for dealing with problems. But Pastino only stood with the blood running onto his shirt, a look of menace and anger on his face.
Well, I guess Nick is scared of something, Vaughn thought. He knows he can fool our instructors, but he also knows that if this goes to a disciplinary hearing, his career would be at risk too.
Vaughn was glad to have finally found the limits of Nick’s playacting. However, he didn’t need Nick to try this poor-me routine in front of Betty Harlow. It was scary enough that he’d provoked Vaughn the way he had.
The instructor was still looking at the group. “Work it out,” he finally said. “Work it out quickly, or we’ll work it out for you.”
“I’ll let you know, sir,” Akiko said calmly. Not for the first time, Vaughn gave a silent prayer of thanks for her powers of persuasion.
The instructor walked off. When he was finally out of earshot, Nick started laughing. Vaughn couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Nice work, guys,” he said, shaking his head. He stuck his hands in his sweatshirt pockets, positively happy now, and disappeared inside the dorms.
“Psycho,” Chloe said, watching him leave. She turned to Vaughn. “Vaughn, what happened? What’s going on?”
Vaughn looked at their faces, each a mix of sympathy and worry. Vaughn knew they were wondering why he’d beaten Nick so badly—and he knew he’d scared them by doing so. The thing was, he’d also scared himself.
“I don’t exactly know,” he began.
Since that day, Nick’s antics had decreased, but the wall of ice that had gone up between him and his teammates was making them all suffer. In their weekly reports, they’d all seen their assessments go down. It was unavoidable—they were supposed to work as a team, and they weren’t doing so. But while they were all thrown off balance by Nick’s presence, he seemed to function smoothly and without errors, blocking them out when he had to and working with them when it suited his purposes.
Although Vaughn didn’t like the stress he and the rest of the group were under—and he certainly didn’t like his assessments going south—lying low and just dealing with it seemed like the best solution. Now Akiko was trying to bring up the problem again. And this time, it could put them all in the same vulnerable situation he’d been in.
“Akiko, do we really need to do this?” Vaughn asked.
Akiko looked at him and nodded. Vaughn sighed.
“My daughter is four,” Akiko said, stealing some of Sam’s fries, “and she’s at that stage where she sometimes tries to play my husband and me against each other.”
“Fascinating,” Don said, taking a swig of his soda. “You know us childless lugs always like to hear about the little tykes.”
“Anyway,” Melvin broke in. “Go on, Akiko.”
“Well, last time I went home on weekend leave, we decided to try something new to make sure we didn’t have another three-chocolate-sundaes-in-one-day situation,” she said. Sam laughed, and Akiko gave him a warning glance. “Just bear with me,” she said.
“So you punished her and sent her to her room,” Don threw in.
Akiko shook her head. “We tried that, but it just seemed to make things worse. She kept picking on her little brother, you know, and it was tantrum city any time we went out in public.”
“Sounds like someone we know,” Melvin said.
Akiko nodded. “So this time, we decided to do exactly the opposite. If she asked for one candy bar, she got two. She said her brother was bothering her, we sent him to his room. We took her to Great Adventure, got her six videos, let her eat all the candy and popcorn she wanted.”
“And she was in heaven,” Chloe said. Vaughn thought it sounded like a likely outcome, too.
Akiko shook her head. “She was practically in a coma by the end of the day,” she said. “She’d made herself sick with all the Cokes and candy, and she didn’t want to watch any of the videos. A friend was supposed to sleep over, and we had to call her and cancel. When we put her to bed, she said, ‘I’m tired of this party, Mommy.’” Akiko laughed and shook her head.
“I don’t get it,” Vaughn asked. “You think we should shut Nick down by giving him too much ice cream?”
Akiko got the same artful look she’d had when she first met Vaughn at the conference. “We’ve tried freezing him out, kicking his butt, and turning the other cheek,” she said. “But we haven’t yet tried killing Nick Pastino with kindness.”
The next morning, the Excel schedule on Vaughn’s laptop indicated they were starting the day with a two-mile swim, then, after breakfast, doing role-play on Main Street. The day would end with operations against two other teams in the Vault.
“Perfect,” Vaughn said, turning the computer off. A day spent mostly in the classroom wouldn’t give them much chance to put their plan into action, but work in the field would let them try everything they’d brainstormed the night before.
“Do you think this will actually work?” Chloe had asked as the group went back out into the summer evening.
“We’ve got enough firearms and demolitions in our coursework,” Melvin said. “I think it’s a good idea to try to turn down the volume as much as we can.”
That morning, at the water’s edge, Vaughn saw Don heading over to Nick. It looked like the plan was already taking effect.
Vaughn watched the two men talking from afar, not able to see the confused expression he was sure was on Nick’s face. Akiko walked up to his side, trying to rub the goose bumps off her arms in the chilly morning air. “Is it happening?” she asked, giving Vaughn a delighted smile.
“Yup,” Vaughn said. Don and Nick had waded into the water, and Don was gesturing wildly. Suddenly, he reached up to Nick, grabbed him, and pulled him down into the water with him. “Is this the right way?” Vaughn could hear carrying faintly over the water as the two men floated off in a strange grapple of a backstroke.
“Let’s just see if he can keep it up,” Akiko said.
In Vaughn’s opinion, Don more than did his job. He peppered Nick with questions throughout the swim, leading the instructor to comment on the situation—thankfully, with approval. “Looks like Don’s really shaping up!” he said to Vaughn, cutting cleanly through the water as he observed his students. “I’m glad to see him taking some initiative.”
At breakfast, phase II went into action. Chloe and Akiko hadn’t eaten breakfast with Nick since one early week in the program, when they’d unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to stop making himself such a thorn in everyone’s sides. But now they joined him as if there had never been a problem. “Hey, Nick, what’s your favorite movie?” he heard Chloe say. “Akiko and I were just talking about The Matrix trilogy.”
Vaughn had to hide his smile in his pint of milk. Akiko’s plan might have seemed obvious, but it was also brilliant. Because now, if he wanted some peace, it was Nick who had to stalk off angrily in front of the instructors, not them. And instead of constantly being annoyed and frustrated, they’d reversed the equation—now Nick was trying to swim away from Don, whom he’d previously loved to pick on, and was clearly so terrified that Chloe and Akiko would talk to him, he’d abandoned his eggs and coffee and run for the door.
The problem had been that the team wasn’
t willing to pay Nick back in kind—to insult him, assault him, risk jeopardizing the operations like Nick routinely did. But there was nothing to stop them from being incredible pests—and acting so nice about it that Nick would have to throw a fit just to get rid of them.
“He’s psyching us out,” Akiko had said the night before. “So we have to psych him out one better.”
Vaughn turned and saw Nick leaving the cafeteria practically at a dead run. Akiko and Chloe had warned that they were going to get into a discussion of the merits of The Real World as soon as they could—even though Vaughn knew Akiko had only seen the show half-asleep with her daughter and that Chloe had never seen it at all.
In their first exercises of the day, a slightly more complicated part of the plan had to be put into action. “To get back the power, we’ve got to give him the power,” Akiko had said.
“You sound like Oprah,” Melvin laughed.
“I’m serious,” Akiko said. “It works. Just let me try it, and you’ll see what I mean.”
So when it came time to take roles in their operation, Akiko stepped up and said the words none of the rest of them wanted to say. “I think Nick should lead today,” she offered.
The instructor looked at her. Since the team always chose its leader, Nick had never functioned in that capacity before. But the instructor was clearly pleased at the idea. “Nick?” she said, then nodded her permission to the group. Nick nodded back at her, then looked at the group as if they’d each sprouted a third arm.
“You’ve got a midsized company with standard security, both human and online. Your team’s job is to hack onto the network, disable the security, and distribute bugs throughout the facility. Mission time’s eighteen minutes, pullout by air. Everyone clear? Good.” The instructor clicked on her stopwatch, then looked back at the group. “Go.”
Nick looked as if he was unclear what to do now that his role was a little more complicated than delivering sarcastic comments under his breath. “Um . . . Sam and Chloe, hit the network,” he finally said, standing up a little straighter. “Melvin and Akiko—get the hump on the door. Don, you’re fix-it—maintain the mikes. And Vaughn”—here he looked straight at Vaughn for the first time since their fight—“you’re coming with me.”
As the team scattered, Vaughn and Nick began to make their way up the exterior of the building, aided by crampons and a sophisticated pulley system used routinely by SWAT teams. They reached the fourth floor of the building without any problems and held their position momentarily while Nick checked in with the team. “We’re at the window. Is the system down?” Nick asked via headset.
“Good to go,” Vaughn heard Don reply, and Nick pushed open the window and disappeared. Moments later, his arm reappeared, held out as if to give Vaughn a hand inside.
“C’mon!” Vaughn heard Nick yell from inside.
Dangling over the window’s ledge, Vaughn hesitated—would Nick do something that would actually endanger his life? He hoped that Akiko was right: that when Nick was in the lead, he had too much heat on him to pull any tricks. As he reached for Nick’s arm, Vaughn was relieved to find that she had been right. Nick’s grip on Vaughn’s arm was steady and sure.
Once inside the facility, Nick and Vaughn hastened to distribute the bugs throughout the fake office. It was a delicate balance—while the bugs had to remain in a central enough position that they could pick up the information needed, placing them out in the open also placed them in jeopardy, where they could be swept aside, thrown away, or—even worse—discovered.
“You ready?” Nick asked as they looked around the room.
“Let’s roll,” Vaughn said, making his way out of the window first. Back on the ground, they rendezvoused with the technical and ground team, then hooked up with Don.
“Move it out!” Nick hollered at them as the helicopter lowered itself to the landing field. He slapped each of them on the back as they entered the small cab of the helicopter. Vaughn knew the exercise wasn’t really over—once the helicopter touched down again, they’d be disembarking, going over every step of the exercise with the instructors, questioning each team member’s roles, the choices they’d made, and how well they’d worked. In real operations, they would be writing a cable and sending it to Langley now. Instead, they were just pulling up briefly, then touching down to go get lectured.
But for now, it seemed that Akiko’s plans had been a striking success.
As the team left the copter and rejoined the instructor, Melvin and Sam stepped up to do their part. “Dude, can I ask you something?” Vaughn heard Sam ask Nick. “We’ve got some questions about Friday’s lecture—you seemed to have some really good insights. Can we come study with you tonight?”
“Um . . . ,” Vaughn heard Nick say. “I was really planning to—”
“C’mon, man, share the wealth!” Melvin chortled. “We’re a team, remember?”
Akiko and Vaughn watched them walk off together, then hung back for a second to revel in their triumph with Chloe and Don.
“We gave him the keys to the city,” Vaughn said, joining Chloe, Don, and Akiko in a group high-five. “And now it’s ours again.”
6
VAUGHN ADJUSTED HIS GOGGLES and made sure the oxygen meter on his tank was reading correctly. The team had gotten off surprisingly easily with the instructors that morning, and they’d been given an unprecedented hour off before lunch. Vaughn had spent his happily reading newspapers in three languages on the Internet, secure in the knowledge that Melvin and Sam were tailing Nick like the worst kind of protective detail.
I don’t care how well the operation went this morning, Vaughn thought. I hope they’re making him talk about The Real World too.
But now it was afternoon, and the team was assembling for one of their most difficult exercises: a survey course through the Vault.
Of all the complicated exercises that went on at the Farm—racing boats, jumping out of planes, running through training courses in the woods—those that went on in the Vault were the most difficult and the most closely guarded. A two-mile-long network of underwater caves, waterways, tunnels, and derelict structures, it was meant to prepare the trainees for situations no one could foresee: getting out of burning or compromised buildings, working in cities during riots and insurrections, being abandoned in unknown regions. Vaughn likened it to the survival trips he knew some Native American tribes sent adolescents on—except that on the Farm, you worked with a team, and no one had ever stayed in the Vault longer than a day.
That he knew of.
Their team’s mission was simply to survey and map out a certain part of the Vault. This was a typical reconnaissance mission, and Vaughn was confident that with the work they’d gotten done this morning on Main Street, they’d come through again with flying colors.
“Vaughn, you’ll be leading the team through our maneuvers this afternoon,” the instructor said as they buzzed out on the flat-bottomed boat towards one of the Vault’s many entrances. Vaughn glanced at his team members, all wearing their scuba gear, their flippered feet dangling in the water. They’d all planned to choose Nick again as team leader, but they could make this work.
“Sounds good,” he replied, trying put a hearty tone into his words that he didn’t quite feel. In his gear, Nick was unreadable, his half-covered face pointed toward their destination. There was no sign of whether Sam and Melvin’s company had sent him over the edge.
This entrance to the Vault required trainees to swim about a hundred yards through an underwater chamber to reach the spot they were required to survey. Vaughn chose Chloe to serve as the lead, then counted the swimmers off. One by one, they flipped backward into the water and made their way to the entrance in a tight line, each swimmer keeping a close eye on the one in front. Vaughn brought up the rear, making sure no one was straggling or getting out of line. In a space this tight, any mistake could cause an underwater traffic jam, leaving the swimmers no way to get in or out.
They reached the underwat
er cave with no problem, despite Don’s slowing the formation slightly during the ten feet or so of rock wall they were forced to climb freehand after depositing their flippers neatly at the bottom. “Okay,” Vaughn said after they were all assembled at the top, flipping his mask up and pulling off the watertight pack that held their tools. “I want Chloe and Sam on the south passageway, Akiko and Melvin in the north corridor, and Don staying at the base to coordinate. Nick,” he said, looking in the man’s eyes, “you’re coming with me.”
You wanted to keep an eye on me this morning, right? Vaughn thought. Nick, believe me, I’m keeping an eye on you.
The team secured their wireless headsets, took their pencil-thin cameras, and set off. The mission was to take as many photos of the area as they could, from which they would later determine the contours and depth of the various regions. Vaughn knew the CIA was working on unmanned drones that could fly over facilities and take the same kind of depth-recording photographs, but they hadn’t been given the sophisticated prototypes to play with yet at the Farm.
Cameras were another story. Since he’d arrived at the Farm, Vaughn had seen cameras in every form imaginable: credit cards, pens, even one embedded in a piece of bread in a tuna-fish sandwich. The ones they were using today were strictly utilitarian, though—small clip-ons that fit in the palm of the hand and were virtually indestructible.
Vaughn and Nick set off for the far corridor. “Team one, copy?” he asked, beginning the routine headset check. Sam answered in the affirmative. “Team two?”
“Gotcha, chief,” Akiko replied.
“Base?” he asked. There was no reply. He jiggled his headset, hearing only the empty hum of the network. “Base?”
The Pursuit (Alias) Page 6