The Trigger Mechanism

by Scott McEwen

  McCray swiveled his head at an unassuming man standing in the back of the restaurant. Even across the room, she could see the pit rings on his button-up shirt. “He’ll take you when you’re ready.”

  McCray walked out, and the man came over to the secretary’s table and handed her a card, all black with a golden CV embossed on the front and only a phone number on the back.

  CHAPTER 7

  Great time, effort, and resources had been put into keeping both the existence and location of Camp Valor confidential. The list of those who knew about it was short: graduates of Group-A and B, qualified staff (mostly graduates themselves), junior campers, and those who had, at a minimum, qualified for Group-C. Valorians aside, there were a few select persons in the U.S. government who were also privy to it, but Eldon Brewer did everything in his power to ensure his nosy sister-in-law was not one of them.

  “I love y’all, but I ain’t getting up to say goodbye when you leave for camp in the morning,” Aunt Narcy warned. “Now that I’m in business for myself, I can decide when I do and don’t get up, and I don’t get up unless I’m getting paid to get up.”

  Prior to moving to Charlottesville, Wyatt’s aunt Narcy, formally Narcissa, had performed various odd jobs. She’d been a limo driver in the days before Uber, which, according to Narcy, was the reason she couldn’t get off disability. “My back is completely destroyed.”

  She’d worked in toll booths, sold time-shares. In her late twenties, she’d even been a card dealer at a low-end casino. “That was when I still had my figure,” she told anyone who’d listen. “You shoulda seen how the men would tip me when I wore a tight bustier.”

  And after she relocated to Virginia with Wyatt and the rest of his family, Narcy had gone into business for herself, working as a realtor. To help launch Narcissa in this career, Wyatt’s dad had invested in several new pantsuits for her, because, as Narcy put it, “A strong woman needs to look strong.” He also was convinced to buy what Narcissa called her attaché: an old briefcase that contained nothing but a pen, lipstick, a Twix bar, and a thin file of work-related documents. To date, Narcissa had sold a grand total of zero homes, but she got to make her own schedule. “And Sunday,” she told the Brewer family, “is my day of rest.”

  Despite her threats, at 5:15 in the morning, Sunday, June 3rd, Narcissa was in the kitchen, hugging up a storm. Although Narcy had never quite warmed to Wyatt, she had become a surrogate mother to Cody. This was especially true during the bleak months the previous summer, when Narcy believed Wyatt was in juvie. In fact, he was at Valor. And when Wyatt’s father had been missing, Wyatt’s mother had been grieving, minimally competent, and clinically depressed. So Narcy stepped into the mothering role for Cody, while her sister, Katherine, checked out. Cody happened to be one of those nearly perfect kids who needed little guidance, which was fortunate because for all of Narcy’s bossiness, she was a loving, yet completely inept parental figure.

  “Take care.” Narcy smothered Cody in a tearful hug. “Remember to eat. You’re so thin. Don’t want you coming back any thinner, you hear?”

  “I will, Aunt Narcy.” Cody obliged her with a smile. “Don’t worry.”

  “Wyatt,” Eldon called up the stairs. “Time to roll out.”

  As was typical, Wyatt had waited until the last minute to pack. He pulled out his old canvas backpack, the beige military rucksack he’d found in Narcy’s garage a couple of years before. “What the heck am I gonna do with that?” Narcy had said when Wyatt had asked to have it. “It’s your dad’s anyway.” Though he’d been angry at his father at the time, when Wyatt slipped the heavy straps over his shoulders, he’d felt the weight of something important. So he made the bag his own. It had a pocket for everything—water bottle, favorite jacket, comic books, ChapStick, candy, cell phone, and a few protein bars. Wyatt had even gotten his mom to add loops to hold his lacrosse sticks and a mesh bag attachment for his ball. The center of the bag contained a waterproof liner that he filled with neatly rolled shirts, pants, and socks, and then cinched closed.

  Wyatt stepped out of his room and was making his way to the athletic closet, where he’d pick out an old lax stick to bring to Valor, something he could use to toss around a ball if he wanted, but not his long stick. The closet was beside the garage entrance. As Wyatt stepped up to the door, he could hear his parents talking in his father’s study, which was down the hall a short distance. The door was ajar. He could see his mother pacing, frantically cleaning the room—anything to avoid eye contact—as his dad sat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed, trying to persuade her to join them at camp.

  “James,” his mother was saying, “or whatever the hell your name is. I know this is something you have to do, but”—her voice softened—“I’m dealing with twenty years of lies.”

  “I was protecting you,” his father interrupted, putting a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and stepped away.

  “Protecting me? I’m going insane. First you’re a truck driver, then I think you’ve abandoned us, then I think you’re dead. And you come back with…” Wyatt could see her looking down at Eldon’s mutilated hand and he knew where this discussion would go—nowhere. This argument, about the lies his father had told his mother about his work for the U.S. government and the sacrifices he had made for their family not only had dominated the relationship between the two but had become the entire family dynamic since his father had come back from the dead. His mother was no longer in a relationship with his father, but in a perpetual reckoning of what she had thought their life was and what the reality had been.

  “I’m sorry. But I can’t,” his mom now said. “I don’t know who you are yet, I don’t know who my son is even, and most of all I don’t know who I am. I just can’t go to some mysterious camp and be somebody else.”

  Katherine Brewer was not, by anyone’s standards, a traveler. Born and raised in the dusty, middle-American town of Millersville, she was a classic homebody. With the exception of the patently chaotic way in which the family was relocated to Charlottesville, she had rarely wandered more than a few hours from where she was born.

  “Kathy,” Eldon said softly, trying to reach out to her again. “You know this is not what I want. I want you with me. But if you can’t come, I will call you every day. I’ll make the boys speak to you. You will know everything about what we are doing—no lies—anything that does not cause a security breach to share I will share—”

  “No. No!” Kathy pushed Eldon away. Wyatt could hear her voice get gritty. “I can understand and accept that you and Wyatt and now Cody have some responsibility to our country. That this responsibility takes you and our sons away from me. But I cannot and will not be on pins and needles. I can’t take that. I spent countless months wondering what had happened, waiting for the call. I don’t want this, I can’t.” She was crying now. “You can go play war and I’ll be here when you get back. But I can’t and won’t be waiting every day to know if you’re alive, in danger—”

  “We’ll mostly be training,” Eldon said. “Low to no danger this summer.”

  “Mostly. I don’t want to suffer through mostly. Just do me one favor … You just take care of my sons.” Her voice began to shake. “Because if anything happens to them, so help me God—”

  “Wyatt! What’re you doin’ over there,” Narcy came barreling around the corner.

  “Just getting a lacrosse stick,” Wyatt said.

  His dad and mom came out of the study, his mother wiping tears from her face.

  “Kathy, you okay?” Narcy asked.

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “Just a lot going on today.”

  “Okay … Now, Eldon, what about a physical address? I mean, I could have an emergency…”

  “You don’t need one.” Eldon walked through the cramped hallway carrying his own rucksack into the garage. “Cody! Time to go.” Everyone followed. “You have the email and the PO Box in Washington, D.C.”

  “Washington. That’s good. Glad you’ll be close,”
Narcy said, fishing for an address.

  “No, Narcissa. If you need us, email, okay?”

  “Oh, I’ll be so worried.” She dramatically pawed her forehead.

  “Don’t worry,” Wyatt’s dad said, loading his bag into the back of their Suburban. “We’ll be great, Narcy … and Kathy, I love you.” He gave his wife a long look.

  “I love you too,” she said quietly, then turned to her sons. “If you don’t want to go, you can stay with me. You can choose any life you want to lead.”

  Cody looked up at Wyatt, who spoke first. “Mom, we love you. And our choice is to go to Camp Valor for the summer.”

  She pulled them close. “Be careful. I won’t stop worrying until you are back here safe—both of you.”

  “You mean all three of us?” Cody looked at his father.

  Katherine nodded. “All three.”

  * * *

  “Put this on.” Eldon handed his youngest son a blindfold.

  “For real, Dad?” Cody asked. “Wyatt isn’t wearing one. And I get carsick as it is.”

  “Sorry, but it’s protocol for new candidates. As much for your safety as anything else.”

  Cody tied the blindfold around his head and leaned back against the pillow as Eldon backed out of the garage into the still-dark morning.

  By the time they got to Andrews Air Force Base, Cody was sound asleep, blindfold snug over his eyes as Eldon drove out onto the tarmac and into the belly of a C-130. Wyatt, who’d been snoozing in the front passenger seat, was startled awake when the car bumped up the ramp. He glanced around to get his bearings, then dozed back again. The plane took off without the rest of the Brewer family even stirring.

  An hour into the flight, they awoke, surprised to find themselves in their car, tightly secured to the floor of a military aircraft thirty thousand feet in the air.

  “You all right?” Wyatt said, looking back at Cody. A couple summers ago, he’d had to retrieve his little brother from the high-dive at the city swimming pool. Cody had been up there for forty-five minutes, paralyzed by his fear of heights.

  “Yeah, first flight,” Cody said. “I’m actually glad this plane doesn’t have windows. Don’t have to worry about my stomach dropping.”

  “We’ll be touching down soon.”

  “This how you got to Valor last summer?” Cody asked. “’Cause it’s pretty freaking cool.”

  “I was coming from jail.” Wyatt shrugged. “Your commute is nicer.”

  Two hours later, the plane began to make its descent, and again the blindfold was pulled down.

  While Camp Valor itself had a landing strip, it was five hundred feet shy of the runway requirement for a C-130, so the plane came down smoothly some twenty miles from Valor, on a remote airstrip used mainly for getting supplies into the rough, mountainous country.

  Eldon hitched a trailer with a load of supplies to the back of the Suburban and after a short, bumpy drive, Wyatt turned to Cody. “Okay, you can take it off now.”

  Cody lifted his blindfold, eyes widening at the entirely different world than the one he’d left. The flora and fauna looked much like the Pacific Northwest—tall pines, lush green vegetation, thick fog in the morning air. Not to mention the scale and size of the place. Everything, from the mountains and the trees, to the boulders in the distance, was simply awesome, especially if you’d grown up in Millersville.

  “We’re here?” Cody stared out at a weather-beaten concrete slab stretching into a gray lake, forming a sort of industrial pier.

  “Almost.” Eldon nodded at the mist, and Wyatt saw the familiar prow of the Sea Goat, the stout work boat and ferry Valor used to shuttle supplies and campers to and from the island. At her helm was her captain, Mackenzie Grant, a heavyset Native American man with long black hair and a ready smile.

  Mackenzie secured the boat to the dock. “Hail to the new chief,” he said and stuck out his hand for Eldon to pull him up onto the dock. An older woman was behind him. She could’ve just as easily been in her sixties as in her eighties, her blue eyes and youthful spirit seeming to defy age. She hugged Eldon, her white-gray hair billowing on the breezy dock.

  She turned to the Brewer boys. “Would’ve thought you were Wyatt one summer ago,” she said to Cody. “I’m Mum. Your dad has told me about you for the longest time.”

  Mackenzie high-fived Wyatt. “Good to see you, buddy. Looking swolt.”

  Wyatt smiled. “I’m still half your size.”

  “I see you brought your mini-me,” Mackenzie said.

  Cody held out his hand. “I’m Cody.” Like his brother, Cody’s cool, unassuming demeanor was most evident in new situations.

  “Need to get this boy into my kitchen,” Mum said. “He’s skinnier than you were your first day, Wyatt.”

  “Ready to get back to that kitchen.” Wyatt patted his stomach.

  “Are we the first ones back?” Eldon asked.

  “Nope.” Mackenzie began unhooking the thick ropes from the cleats. “Picked up Cass yesterday.”

  At the mention of Dolly’s older sister, Wyatt tensed and looked out over the gray-blue water. “How is she?”

  “She looks great, considering…” Mackenzie said. “Don’t think she’s been out of the hospital much more than a month, but she’s already back in the Caldera, training.” He motioned to the fast-moving clouds overhead. “Enough pleasantries. Better get going before the weather turns.”

  The wind blew a slight surf across Lake Tecmaga, but it was still calm enough to transport the family and the supplies they had pulled by trailer off the C-130 to the dock and loaded onto the Sea Goat. Mackenzie eased the old ferry away from the pier and pointed her toward Camp Valor’s entry facility, nestled in the archipelago in the distance. Wyatt watched Cody looking out from the small pilothouse, the wonder in his face reminding Wyatt what it was like to come to Valor for the first time. The sights, smells, even the taste of the moist air in his mouth brought back memories, but even the good ones caught him like a stitch in his side.

  The camp was situated on the tallest of the numerous rocky islands all blanketed with emerald-green pines. Drawing up to the beach, one would think there was nothing particularly special about it—a narrow strip of sand in a horseshoe cove bisected by an L-shaped concrete dock. At the end of the dock was a post with a simple wooden sign that read, CAMP VALOR.

  The beach, which was normally lined with canoes, paddleboards, all manner of watercraft, was vacant. Even the clotheslines above the crabgrass hung empty, awaiting the coming campers.

  A path from the beach wound up to a red-and-white clapboard lodge with a broad porch, and just off it, a pole with an American flag fluttering in the light wind. To the right of the lodge and back from the water were crude white cabins. “Is that where we are staying?” asked Cody.

  “Yeah—you and me. Campers are in the cabins. Dad, as director, has a different residence.”

  The cabins were divided male and female and organized by groups, starting with the most junior program—the Mounties—for those under twelve. Then there were the Junior Rovers, ages twelve to thirteen, then the fourteen- to fifteen-year-olds in Group-C, the fifteen-to sixteen-year-olds in Group-B, and finally Group-A, composed of the most senior and elite campers. The ages of campers only served as general guidelines; the more important divisions were individual ability and readiness.

  Beyond the cabins and the lodge, a nondescript path led into a tall old-growth forest. As Mackenzie edged the Sea Goat up to the dock, Cody pointed to the ridgeline in the distance. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah.” Wyatt nodded. “The Caldera.”

  Though Wyatt and his father had spoken of Valor only in whispers, Cody had heard about the Caldera, an ancient volcanic crater several miles wide that housed the secret training facility where the real Camp Valor was located.

  “Cool.” Cody squinted, his long blond hair falling into eyes filled with curiosity and wonder.

  Eldon, who couldn’t wait for Mackenzie to finish tying off,
leapt from the bow. “Come on!” he called over his shoulder. “Got a lot of work to do. Let’s get moving.”

  CHAPTER 8

  While he had not yet been convicted—or even formally charged—with a crime, thirteen-year-old Jalen Rose found himself under what amounted to house arrest. This was done for two reasons, the first being that local police and multiple three-letter agencies wanted unimpeded access to interviewing Jalen. The other reason for the isolation was for his own safety. Everyone in the U.S., from the press, to private citizens, to nutcases, was trying to figure out the identity of the kid in the video wearing a VR headset gleefully running over actual human beings.

  He was an accidental mass murderer. After a couple of weeks, his confinement had become reality and the safe house in the podunk town of Clarkston his new home. It was as if he were a castaway, trapped on an island that was not only physical, but emotional as well. Once his picture started circulating on the national news—even with the VR headset obscuring his identity—Jalen felt exposed. If someone knew it was him, he’d be America’s most hated human and a target. He deactivated all his social media accounts. He turned off his iPhone and left it in a bowl on the kitchen counter. The only account he left active was Twitch, but when he finally went online to delete that one as well, he found the government had already done it for him: User not found.

  And if the overbearing, unwelcome eye of the U.S. government’s security detail was not enough, Ronnie had hired a guy of his own, Willie Green. Willie had been Ronnie’s teammate with the Lions, and he supplemented his retirement working private security detail.

  “I tell you what,” Ronnie said to Tyra. “I’m not gonna trust no FBI to keep my family safe. No, sir. We take care of our own.”

  Since Ronnie had already disclosed the Rose family’s whereabouts to Willie Green, it was decided that it was safer to go ahead and let him stay. So Jalen spent most afternoons with a three-hundred-pound ex-linebacker eating hot wings and working on crossword puzzles.