Spy School Goes South Read online

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Fine. She has one, but it’s not very pleasant.”

  “Erica’s not that bad. You don’t know her the way I do.”

  “True. But you had a crush on her before you knew her well, and back then, she was nothing except cold and mean and manipulative to you.”

  “No she wasn’t.”

  “Ben, she consistently put you in danger to further her own agenda.”

  “Maybe, but her agenda was to protect our country.”

  “Would you listen to yourself?” Zoe exclaimed. “You’re actually defending her for doing awful things to you! And no matter how much you think she’s changed, she’s still doing awful things to you.”

  “That’s not true. . . .”

  “Really? Think about this mission. Erica talked you into doing it, didn’t she?”

  I thought about that for a moment, then admitted, “Kind of.”

  “How?”

  “She said it’d be easy. And maybe even fun.”

  “Ha!” Zoe laughed. “She manipulated you! She never thought this would be easy. I’ll bet she was expecting this thing to go south all along.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then why did she fake being asleep on the plane all morning? She knew SPYDER was plotting a trap, and she brought you along as bait.”

  I stared at the TV for a bit, reviewing everything that had happened over the past day. To my dismay, I realized Zoe was probably right. Erica would have been willing to do anything to take down SPYDER, including walking into a double cross. But she knew the mission wouldn’t happen without me, so she’d talked me into coming and hidden the truth from me.

  “You know it’s true, don’t you?” Zoe asked.

  “Okay, I admit that Erica has put me in danger a few times. But she has always saved me from that danger too. And her plans have always worked out.”

  “Oh yeah,” Zoe said sarcastically. “This morning worked out perfectly. The whole part where we almost got blown up by a missile and eaten by crocodiles and then nearly died in the jungle couldn’t have gone better. We were lucky to survive, Ben! Mike and I might have stowed away on that plane, but she conned you onto it. She risked your life for this mission.”

  “I don’t think she imagined it would be this dangerous.”

  “Of course she did. Face it. Erica might be a great spy, but the mission is all she ever cares about. She is cold and ruthless, and she couldn’t give a rat’s patootie about anyone else—and yet all the guys at school fall all over themselves like a bunch of pathetic lapdogs whenever she’s around.” Zoe took a few moments to screw up her courage, then said, “I might not be anywhere near as good a spy as Erica, but I’m a much better person. I’m nice and I’m smart and I’m fun. So why don’t guys like me more than her?”

  “Warren liked you more than her,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah. And look how well that turned out. I’m not talking about Warren. . . .” Zoe trailed off, embarrassed about continuing the thought, but it was evident where it was going, even for someone as generally clueless about girls as me. She wanted to know why I had never noticed she was all those things.

  But I didn’t answer her right away. Because, while I knew Zoe was all those things, I was now struck, once again, by how pretty she was. And now she was sitting only inches away from me, in a fancy villa with the roar of the surf close by, bathed in the delicate glow of the TV.

  I had only kissed one girl in my life, and that had been the very brief kiss with Erica when we thought a nuclear bomb was about to vaporize us. A kiss that Erica later claimed was merely to distract me from my imminent death.

  At that moment, I very much wanted my second kiss to be with Zoe Zibbell. And I was quite sure she wanted me to kiss her. And I was additionally sure that a kiss without the threat of nuclear annihilation would probably be even better than the first.

  But as much as I wanted to kiss Zoe, I didn’t. I almost did. I leaned forward, then hesitated and pulled back.

  I did it for reasons that I thought were right. And yet it immediately seemed to be the wrong thing to do. Zoe looked as though I’d offended her. “So you don’t like me,” she said.

  “No!” I protested. “I do! But . . .”

  “But you like Erica more.”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “Then what’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Well, obviously something must be. Because you still seem hung up on Erica.”

  “That’s not why I—”

  “She’s no good for you,” Zoe interrupted coldly. “Her nickname is Ice Queen for a reason. If you want to keep pining away for her, I can’t stop you—but I also can’t keep hanging around, waiting for you to change your mind. I might not be as awesome or amazing as Erica, but I’m not chopped liver, either. Sooner or later, I’ll get over you, and then I’m going to move on. And if it takes you that long to realize Erica is a no-go situation, it will be too late. Understand?”

  “Yes,” I said, hoping that I really did. “Um . . . Do you have any idea how long I have to figure this out?”

  Zoe rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You mean, you want an exact timetable for my emotional state? I’m a human being, Ben, not a train station.”

  “I know,” I said. Even though I really had been hoping for an exact timetable.

  “Just know this,” Zoe warned. “However strongly you feel about Erica, it doesn’t go both ways. Maybe she cares a little bit about you, but she cares much more about being a spy. If she had to choose between saving your life or thwarting SPYDER, she’d thwart SPYDER.”

  “That’s not true,” I said hotly.

  “Actually, it is,” Erica said.

  Zoe and I leapt to our feet, startled, and found Erica standing in the shadows by the stairs.

  “How long have you been listening to us?” I asked.

  “Long enough.” Erica stepped forward. She was now dressed for action in her freshly laundered black suit and her utility belt. “Zoe is right, Ben. I’ve said it to you before, but evidently it hasn’t sunk in: Friendships are a liability in the spy game, and an organization like SPYDER knows how to exploit them. Sooner or later, they’ll try it. And when that happens, all of us need to be prepared to sacrifice the others for the greater good. That might sound awful, but if we can’t do it, SPYDER will win.”

  “Told you,” Zoe said to me under her breath.

  Erica gave her an icy stare. “Sometimes you don’t have the option to be a good person if you want to save the world,” she said. Then she tossed me my clothes, fresh from the dryer. “Get dressed, Ben. It’s time to get to work.”

  13

  PREPARATION

  Luxury Villa 11

  Aquarius Resort

  March 30

  0330 hours

  I considered the clothes in my hands. Erica had compulsively folded them perfectly so they looked like they had just come from the store. The mere thought of putting them on and going up against SPYDER filled me with dread. I looked to Erica. “We’re going right now?”

  “Statistically, this time of the night is the best for infiltrating an enemy hideout. Their guards will be bored and tired.” Erica checked her watch. “Although, if you need a little extra time to get mentally prepared, I can spare ninety seconds.”

  I turned to Zoe. I still hadn’t got the chance to explain why I hadn’t kissed her. But I didn’t have any idea how to even begin, let alone how to do it in only ninety seconds.

  “Ticktock,” Erica warned. “Time’s wasting.”

  “You should go,” Zoe told me.

  So I slipped into the downstairs bathroom and dressed as quickly as I could, whacking my elbow on the sink twice in my haste. I also went to the bathroom. I had already gone a dozen times that night, but it always made sense to have your bladder bone-dry before a mission. I was back out the door and ready to go in a mere eighty-eight seconds.

  Erica still se
emed annoyed that I hadn’t been faster. “Let’s move,” she said.

  We exited onto the beach and worked our way down the hard-packed sand along the edge of the water. There was no moon visible, and we were far enough from civilization to be free of light pollution. Back in DC, we were lucky if we could see ten stars on a good night. Here, there were millions. The resort still had a few lights on, illuminating walkways so tourists didn’t tumble into any of the swimming pools by accident, but those barely made a dent in the darkness. Across the resort complex, SPYDER’s penthouse was merely an even darker shadow against the night sky. I couldn’t see Dane Brammage or any of the other guards—but I knew they were up there.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of us, the yacht was a similarly dark and lifeless shape out on the ocean.

  Even though Aquarius had a very large staff, no one was awake down by the beach at that exceptionally early hour. Which was certainly another reason Erica had chosen to launch our mission then. There were no tourists, either. Even the Farkles, who had seemed to be a stay-up-late-to-party bunch, were nowhere to be seen, save for one in his early twenties who was passed out on the beach, snoring gently.

  We arrived at the pier from which Warren and Ashley had caught the dinghy to the yacht. Nine motorboats of various shapes and sizes were moored to it, lazily rocking in the surf: two midsize, flat-bottomed scuba-and-snorkel cruise boats, two large fishing boats, and five smaller, sleeker speedboats. On the beach, not far from the pier, sat the activity shack. The shack was quite large but was designed to look run-down, like it was a quaint local business, with wooden walls that were slightly askew and a palm-frond roof, but all this was merely set dressing. Beneath it all, the shack was actually a thoroughly modern building, with plumbing and air-conditioning and a high-end security system that would have deterred most people.

  Erica wasn’t most people, though. She dismantled the alarm and picked both locks on the door in a mere forty-three seconds. Then she led the way inside, shut the door behind us, tossed me a penlight, and flicked on her own.

  Inside, the shack didn’t even pretend to be quaint. It was dull and utilitarian: cinder-block walls, cement floor, and fluorescent lights (which we didn’t turn on). A big resort like Aquarius needed lots of sporting equipment: Long racks of it lined the walls and filled the interior. Our puny penlights only dimly illuminated a fraction of it all.

  There were no guards on duty. Erica and I were alone and far from where anyone might overhear us. So I took the opportunity to ask the question burning inside me. “Did you really believe this whole mission with Murray was a setup from the very beginning?”

  Erica sighed, like she was annoyed that I was squandering precious time with this, then said, “Of course.”

  I was stunned by the bluntness of her answer. “And yet, you talked me into coming along?”

  “It wouldn’t have happened without you.” Erica started down an aisle of scuba gear. “And it was our best chance to get close to SPYDER.”

  “You said it was going to be easy!” I exclaimed. “You said it might even be fun!”

  “Yes. I lied to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have come.”

  “I could have been killed!”

  “But you weren’t. You’re welcome, by the way.” Erica grabbed a mesh bag designed for carrying scuba supplies.

  “Welcome for what?” I asked. “Saving me after you put my life in danger in the first place?”

  “No. For putting you in a position to help take down SPYDER. You can avenge every bad thing they’ve ever done to you and make the world a safer place. Most people never get the chance to make a difference like that. Very few spies even do. But we have it now, and we need to take advantage of it. So I’d really appreciate it if you could go find me a speargun.”

  “A speargun?” I repeated, more dully than I’d intended. I was thrown, not only by the sudden change of topic, but by the fact that Erica’s argument had actually been convincing. It seemed I should be livid at her for manipulating me, and yet I had to admit she had a good point.

  “Yes.” Erica slung the mesh bag over her shoulder and headed off to find more gear. “Check the fishing supplies.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to have a real gun?”

  “I doubt they stock real guns here. And even so, it’s not for defense.” Erica faded into the darkness before I could ask what it was for. Although, knowing Erica, there was a good chance she wouldn’t have answered anyhow.

  I stood there a while longer, reeling from our conversation. I was annoyed at Erica for manipulating me, but equally annoyed at myself for letting her do it. I felt I should have been wiser about SPYDER’s motives, or savvier about Erica, or a better spy in general. And as worried as I was about the upcoming mission, Erica had struck a nerve: I did want to take down SPYDER, make the world a safer place, and avenge every last thing they’d ever done to me. So I set off to find a speargun.

  I passed all sorts of other gear: bundled-up volleyball nets; bins full of Frisbees and smashball paddles; supplies for bocce, cornhole, and badminton; and plastic tubs of snorkels and scuba masks soaking in disinfectant. Finally, I found the fishing gear. There was a staggering amount of it, indicating that fishing was a very popular pastime at Aquarius. Hundreds of fishing poles were racked along one wall, with shelves full of replacement parts beside them. Tackle boxes the size of suitcases lined the floor.

  It was only now that I realized I had no idea what a speargun actually looked like. I hadn’t ever seen one. It wasn’t the sort of thing one came across that often in suburban Virginia. There had probably been one in a James Bond movie at some point, but my memories of those were hazy at best. Of course, I could have asked Erica what to look for, but that would have merely annoyed her and lessened her respect for me. So I poked around, hoping to find the right thing.

  Eventually, I did—although I found plenty of wrong things first: water skis, pogo sticks, pool floats, a large gecko that had somehow got inside. The spearguns were hanging on the wall well to the side of the fishing poles. They looked like someone had mated a crossbow with a BB gun: long and thin, with a trigger at one end. The spears didn’t launch with gunpowder, but a far more rudimentary elastic sling system. I grabbed what I suspected was the proper spear—a long silver shaft with a nasty barbed tip on the end—and slotted it into place to make sure everything was working properly.

  “What’s taking so long?” Erica asked, suddenly right behind me. If her ability to suddenly appear in broad daylight was occasionally unsettling, doing it in the dark-and-spooky shack was downright frightening. I yelped in surprise, accidentally pulled the trigger, and launched a spear across the room, where it butchered a volleyball. The ball exploded with an exceedingly loud bang that echoed through the room.

  Erica glared at me in the darkness. “Given that this is a covert mission, it’d be nice if you tried to be quiet.”

  “It’d be nice if you tried not to scare the pants off me,” I replied.

  Erica snatched the speargun from my hands, then grabbed a few extra spears for it, which seemed to confirm that I’d at least found the right thing. In the time it had taken me to locate it, she had amassed a large amount of other supplies, which were all stuffed into the mesh gear bag. I spotted a spool of fishing line, some zip-line rigs, and a few rock-climbing harnesses. Erica also had an eight-inch fish-gutting knife newly holstered on her utility belt.

  While the knife was disconcerting, it was the climbing harnesses that concerned me the most. “Are you planning for us to climb up to the penthouse?”

  “Can you climb up to the penthouse?” Erica asked.

  “Er . . . I don’t think so.”

  “That kind of answers your question, doesn’t it? I wasn’t planning on it, though. The last thing I need is for you to get yourself into trouble while we’re dangling eight stories up on the side of the building.”

  “So how are we gettin
g all the way up to the penthouse?” I asked.

  Erica dropped a large silk bundle onto the floor in front of me. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. “We fly.”

  14

  INFILTRATION

  Manta Ray Bay

  Aquarius Resort

  March 30

  0400 hours

  The silk bundle Erica had found turned out to be a parasail. When unwrapped, it was forty feet across and a grotesque neon green—though, thankfully, you couldn’t see that in the night. A harness for two people was attached in the middle. It was designed for an instructor to take out first-timers, so one person was directly behind the other. That was good news, as it meant Erica and I could use it together, but we still needed a third person to get us into the air.

  Which was where Mike came in.

  Mike knew how to drive a motorboat. His family had one. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it worked. On summer weekends, they took it down to Chesapeake Bay to go waterskiing.

  While Erica unfurled the parasail on the pier and organized her gear, I ran back to the villa and woke Mike. I didn’t even have to explain the entire mission for him. I only got as far as “Erica and I need you to drive a boat for us” before he said “Sure thing” and hopped out of bed.

  Mike and I were back at the pier less than six minutes after I’d left. Erica already had the parasail rigged up and attached to one of the speedboats. She tossed Mike the keys to it as he approached, then gave him explicit orders as to what she wanted him to do.

  Mike didn’t question anything. He simply saluted and hopped behind the wheel of the boat.

  Erica helped me get into the harness, slung the mesh gear bag over her shoulder, then strapped herself in behind me and gave Mike a thumbs-up. Mike unmoored the boat from the pier, turned on the ignition, and pushed the throttle forward. The boat sped away, and the coil of rope connecting us to it quickly unspooled into the water.