by Allen Zadoff
“I don’t trust you. Not at all.”
“Whatever your feelings about me,” Francisco says, “we follow procedure.”
“Fine,” Lee says. He makes a huge gesture of taking the phone out of his pocket and holding it in front of him.
“Countdown starting,” Miranda says.
I watch Lee, judging the distance between us, planning how I will take him out if he reaches into the duffel bag. My only question is order of attack—can I move fast enough to neutralize him before Francisco and Miranda realize what’s happening and respond? Based on what I’ve seen up until now from Francisco, I decide it would be prudent to disable him before going after Lee.
Miranda says, “We go hot in three, two, one…”
There’s a ping from Lee’s phone.
He looks at it, and his shoulders slump.
“Goddamn it,” he says. “It’s just the game.”
Miranda exhales loudly.
“What did I tell you?” Francisco says. “No need to even open the bag.” He betrays no emotion as he says it.
“Sending the picture,” Miranda says, and I see her using her phone to text the photo of the feed pipe.
“Wonderful,” Lee says with a sneer.
“You’ll keep first place in the rankings,” Miranda says, trying to make him feel better.
“That’s kids’ stuff,” he says. “I’m talking about the real thing.”
“You shouldn’t be in such a rush to get to the real thing,” Francisco says.
“Whatever,” Lee says, pulling off the gloves and throwing them into the bag.
“All right, let’s focus,” Francisco says. “We still have to get out of here undetected and get back to camp.”
“Maybe we should make Daniel walk back,” Lee says.
“Stop it,” Miranda says.
“I don’t know whose side this guy is on,” Lee says.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I say.
“But are you loyal?”
Francisco and Miranda pause, waiting for me to answer.
“I don’t give my loyalty away,” I say. “It has to be earned.”
“That’s a good answer,” Miranda says softly.
“We haven’t earned it?” Lee says, challenging me.
“Not yet,” I say.
Francisco nods. “Fair enough,” he says. “Now let’s get out of here before we have a bigger problem on our hands.”
WE MAKE IT BACK TO THE VAN.
Francisco drives us to camp with Lee sitting in the front seat this time, slumped down, a cap pulled over his face as he naps.
When we’re clear of Lake Shore Road, Francisco turns on the radio, finding a jazz station he likes and keeping it low.
I lean over to Miranda in the backseat.
“I don’t understand what happened tonight,” I say quietly.
“The teams are sent out to scout different places and bring back a picture of what they found as proof. We get points for every successful mission.”
She lowers her voice, and I move a little closer to her in the van.
“If it’s just a game, why is Lee so upset?”
“We have to treat it like an actual op until the text comes in. “
She glances toward the front seat.
“He wants it to be real,” she whispers, “but it never is. It’s my dad’s version of a mind fuck.”
“That’s a relief,” I say.
“You wouldn’t have gone through with it?”
I detect the change in her tone as she asks it, her voice deepening. She’s serious.
“Killing innocent people?” I say. “It sounds a little crazy to me.”
“It’s not about killing people. It’s about shaking up the system in a profound way.”
She looks at me, her face hidden in the dark of the backseat.
“I’m all for shaking things up,” I say.
“I thought so,” she says.
She reaches over and runs her fingers down the length of my arm. The sensation makes me shiver.
“My father wants us to confront questions like these. It’s all a part of the game.”
I think about a camp full of kids being trained for military operations on American soil. That doesn’t sound like a game to me.
A large component of soldier training is desensitizing recruits to the stimuli they will receive in an actual battle situation, thereby inuring them to it before it happens. So when the soldier finally gets into battle and the explosions start around him, he doesn’t freak out. He’s already experienced it, albeit in the relatively safe environment of the training facility.
Moore is doing the same thing with these kids, bringing them to the brink time and again, without them knowing what is real and what isn’t.
I think about the operation tonight, imagining a dozen white vans, some heading down to Boston and into western Massachusetts, others staying in the immediate area. I think like Moore, considering targets he could hit if that was his intent: Natick Labs, the main research and development center for the U.S. Army; Raytheon; Boston Scientific; various tech labs at MIT; the campuses at Harvard, BU, or any of the other sixty or so colleges and universities there. The possibilities are endless, and from Boston, it’s a short hop to New York and Washington. Suddenly Camp Liberty’s location in the mountains of New Hampshire doesn’t seem so remote.
“You have to admit it was a rush, wasn’t it?” Miranda says.
“It was,” I say, placating her.
She slips her hand in mine.
“What are you two whispering about?” Lee says, waking from his nap.
“Daniel is telling me how much fun he had tonight,” Miranda says, pinching my palm at the same time.
“Yeah, right,” Lee says. “Lots of fun.”
THERE IS A FIRE AT LIBERTY.
I can see it as we pull in: the glow of the flames against houses, the trail of smoke rising from the center square of the valley.
“Is something burning?” I say.
“It’s a bonfire,” Lee says.
“We have a party after The Hunt,” she says.
Francisco parks the van, and Miranda hops out fast.
“Let’s go,” she says, pulling me along beside her.
“I want to talk with Lee. I’ll catch up with you in a couple minutes,” I say.
“Fine,” she says, obviously disappointed.
I don’t like being caught in the middle of this competition between Lee and his sister, but I need to talk to Lee about what happened tonight.
Lee gets out of the van, walks around, and opens the back door.
“How are you doing?” I say.
“How am I doing?” he says angrily.
He reaches in and pulls the duffel bag toward him. He unzips it and holds it open to me.
I look inside. There, in the bottom of the duffel, are two sacks of unbleached flour, double sealed inside plastic bags.
“I’m fantastic as long as we’re going to a cake-baking contest,” he says.
He rezips the bag and pushes it violently into the truck.
“You wanted to poison those people?” I say.
He kicks the bumper, and suddenly all the anger drains from him.
“No,” he says, his head hanging down. “That’s not what I wanted. I wanted—”
Francisco comes around the van, and Lee stops in midsentence.
“Lee, let’s go talk to your father,” Francisco says, his voice gentle.
“Not now, Franky. I’m not in the mood.”
“I think you should,” Francisco says. “You’ll feel better.”
“I don’t care what you think,” Lee says. “Especially not you.”
Francisco looks back and forth from Lee to me, then he throws up his hands and moves on.
Lee slumps down on the back bumper.
“I didn’t want to poison those people, but I want to do something. Somewhere. Sometime. We talk and talk and never do anything. It makes me so angry, I can’t ev
en speak to my father anymore, I hate him so much. He’s just like the government he pretends to criticize. All talk, no action.”
He looks up at me, his face suddenly angry.
“You’re the same way,” he says. “I offered you the gloves and you wouldn’t take them.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Either you’re one of us or you’re not.”
“I came to learn about your father’s ideas. You can’t throw me into something like that and expect me to be okay with it.”
“Maybe you’re scared,” he says. “Maybe you don’t have what it takes to sacrifice yourself for a cause.”
“We’ll see.”
“We will. I agree.” He slams the van doors. “If you stick around. And if my father ever decides to do something for real.”
“This camp is for real,” I say, trying to get back on his good side. “What he’s teaching everyone here, the training he’s giving them that they’ll take out into the world.”
“Sometimes I think it’s all a scare tactic,” Lee says. “He builds this big weapon and never uses it, just waves it in people’s faces.”
I hear Lee’s frustration, but I disagree. You don’t send kids out on mission ops unless you intend to use them some day. Why risk getting caught? Why risk dealing with the authorities at all?
So I think Lee has it wrong, but I understand his frustration with his father. Maybe I can use his frustration to get closer to him.
“Have you talked to your father about it?” I say.
“Ad infinitum,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter. You see how he treats me, how he dismisses me.”
I glance down and see Lee’s fists clenched by his sides.
“One day I’ll be in charge,” he says, “and it will all be different. Believe me when I tell you.”
“I believe you,” I say.
“You do?” he says, looking up for the first time.
“Really.”
“You think I have what it takes?”
“I do. I saw it tonight.”
He smiles.
“Sorry about earlier,” Lee says. “Maybe I was wrong about you and I jumped to conclusions.”
“Maybe I should have taken the gloves. I don’t know.”
“We’ll have another chance.”
“I hope so.”
He starts walking toward the main square, and I follow.
“Do you think your father will let me stay?” I say.
“We’ll see,” he says.
“Where is your father now?”
“I don’t know. He usually lies low during parties. He’s not much of a celebration guy.”
“What about you?”
“Not in the mood. But you should go.”
“Maybe I’ll hang out with you,” I say.
He smiles.
“I’d rather be alone,” he says. “Besides, my sister will have a hemorrhage if you don’t show up at the party. I think she likes you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you see how she stuck up for you tonight?”
“I think she was doing that just to piss you off.”
He laughs.
“Seriously, are you okay if I hang out with her? If not, I’ll—”
“It’s fine with me,” he says. “But be careful. She only seems nice. She’s tough under the surface.”
“She’s tough on the surface, too.”
He laughs.
I think of Mother, the woman who runs The Program.
“Anyway, you don’t have to worry about me. I can handle a woman with a temper,” I say.
“You think you can,” he says. “But she might surprise you.”
I HEAR THE SOUNDS OF MUSIC AND KIDS LAUGHING IN THE DISTANCE.
I follow them into the main square, where a large bonfire is lit. Nearly the entire camp is here, girls and guys celebrating together, singing songs and talking about their various exploits from the evening.
A couple of girls invite me to join them, but I politely shrug them off, looking instead for Miranda.
I don’t find her.
And I don’t find Moore.
Instead of staying at the bonfire, I head back through the darkness toward the building where I bunked last night.
The door is unlocked. I flip on the lights in the bedroom and find everything as I left it last night. Only the bed has been made.
Suddenly a toilet flushes down the hall. I leap up and turn out the light. Then I hear footsteps coming toward the room.
I press myself behind the door, waiting to see who is coming and whether they are a threat to me.
A figure comes into the room and pauses, sensing something is wrong.
I can’t see her in the dark, but I don’t have to. I smell her.
Miranda.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“You don’t sound happy to see me,” she says.
“You said you’d meet me at the bonfire.”
“I changed my mind. Too many people out there.”
“So you came to my room?”
“It’s not like I could call you and let you know I was stopping by,” she says. “Actually, I could have called you because you have a phone.”
I hear the teasing tone in her voice as she reminds me of what happened last night in the forest.
“What if someone saw you come in?” I say. “I’m not sure your father would be happy.”
“You shouldn’t be thinking about him right now.”
“He’s all I’m thinking about.”
“All?” she says, and she flips on the light.
She’s wearing a bath towel cinched tight above her breasts, her hair wet against her shoulders. I look down and see her legs, long and bare beneath the towel.
“Maybe not all,” I say.
She walks toward me, her face coming close to mine, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“Do you know what would happen if my father found out I was here?” she says.
“I’m guessing it would involve Sergeant Burch and a shotgun escort out of camp.”
She nods. “And you’d be lucky compared to me.”
“Well, that sounds like a good reason for you to leave.”
“To me it sounds like a good reason to stay.”
“How do you figure?” I say.
“There’s nothing more exciting than breaking the rules,” she says. “Didn’t you feel it at the water treatment plant tonight?”
She puts a hand on my chest, one finger lightly moving against my T-shirt. Her breathing is heavy. I feel my body stir, the heat building in my groin.
“Besides,” she says, “we have nothing to hide from each other. We already know each other’s secrets.”
My body tenses beneath her touch, and I step back.
“What secrets?” I say, preparing to take action against her if need be.
“I know about your phone, and you know about mine. So we’re evenly matched. Did you ever learn about the Cold War doctrine called MAD? Mutually assured destruction. As long as we both have the same weapon, we’re safe.”
She drops the towel and faces me. Her breasts are firm, nipples hard in the cool air of the room.
“I see you’ve got different weapons than me,” I say with a grin.
“You never got the birds-and-bees speech?”
“It’s been a while. I might need a refresher course.”
“I can help you with that,” she says. “You just need to put your arms around me.”
I step in and we kiss, a long kiss, our tongues playing against each other.
“I asked if you had a girlfriend before,” she says when we come up for air.
“Are you asking again?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she says.
“My answer hasn’t changed,” I say. “No girlfriend.”
“You hesitated when you answered. Which means there was someone, wasn’t there?”
Miranda is very perceptive. I like th
at about her, but it reminds me that I need to be cautious.
“There was someone.”
“Someone special?”
“Very special. And very over,” I say, wanting to change the subject. “How about you? What’s your status?”
“Single and available,” she says. “And missing my shirt.”
“I noticed that.”
I glance down and see she’s wearing tiny black lace panties.
I say, “I think your jeans might be missing, too.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. But I’m surprised you don’t have a boyfriend here.”
“It’s not like I have a lot of choices.”
“What do you mean? The camp is full of guys your age.”
“Guys so beholden to my dad that they wouldn’t dare do anything that might upset him.”
“Why do you think I’m different?”
“I know you’re different,” she says. “You’re not afraid of anything. Including my dad.”
She pulls my T-shirt over my head.
“Now we both have our shirts off,” I say.
“Isn’t that a coincidence,” she says.
Her hand runs across my chest, tracing the muscles there. She stops when she comes to the knife scar on my pec, probing the hard flesh.
“What is this?” she says.
“I got burned when I was a kid,” I say. “I barely remember it.”
“No more talking,” she says and steps in to kiss me.
“Wait,” I say, gently pushing her back.
It’s possible that sleeping with Miranda would bring us closer, thereby giving me access to Moore. It’s possible, too, that it would complicate things, creating emotion and attachment where it is unnecessary, maybe even alienating Moore.
I can’t tell Miranda any of that. But I step away from her.
“Why are you stopping?” she says.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be here tomorrow. Your father could change his mind and ask me to leave, my parents could call and—”
“We don’t know if any of us will be here,” she says, interrupting me. “Sometimes you have to take a chance.”
“Carpe diem,” I say.
“Verum est,” she says. She runs her hand softly down my cheek. “But if you did stay—”
She pauses.
“What?”
