I Am the Mission

by Allen Zadoff

  Back to business as usual. The assignment followed by the waiting.

  “Will it be a long wait this time?” I say.

  “I can’t be sure.”

  I start to climb out of the helicopter.

  “Zach,” Father says.

  I hesitate in the doorway.

  “If it gets to be too much, will you call me?”

  “Too much?”

  “The thoughts. I know waiting can be difficult for you.”

  “I’ll call.”

  “I’d prefer it. These last few days—” He pauses, choosing his words carefully. “I had to make some choices that were difficult for me on personal level. I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but I think it’s important that you know. I’d like it if this was an anomaly, something that we move on from.”

  “I’d like that, too,” I say.

  “Call me if you have an issue. Don’t let it get to this point again.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  I step onto the tarmac. The blades rev up behind me, whipping the air into a frenzy as the helicopter takes off, banks hard, and disappears in the night.

  A G37 COUPE IS WAITING IN THE PARKING LOT OF THE GROCERY STORE OUTSIDE THE BASE.

  There is an iPhone charging in the center console and a set of documents in the glove compartment. I push down the visor, open the vanity mirror, and blow hot air on it. A number appears there, the secure PIN for the phone that will serve as my code for this waiting period. I memorize it and wipe the mirror clean.

  I start the car. The engine roars to life. It’s the big engine that Infiniti is known for, 330 horsepower of muscle, a rare indulgence these days.

  I pull out of the parking lot, the wind whipping through open windows.

  The Program is back, our protocols are in place, and the elements have been arranged for my safe egress.

  It’s as if the last four days never happened. The Program never disappeared, never left me.

  Part of me wants to accept this. I was used and I survived. This was my mission. It was more complex than the ones that preceded it, but so be it. Everything is back to normal now.

  But another part of me knows this is a lie. I trusted these people once.

  Never again.

  A phone vibration snaps me back to the present moment.

  It’s not coming from the new Program iPhone in the center console. It’s the iPhone I forgot I had. The one connected to Howard.

  “Jets leave trails in the sky,” he says when I answer the phone.

  His voice is rushed and excited, Howard in fast-forward mode.

  “I’m not following you,” I say.

  “Jets leave trails. So do digital signals. E-mails, voice messages, interagency communications. They all leave faint trails online, even the secure ones. Especially the secure ones, because even though they are erased, they are not overwritten by the amount of traffic that overwrites normal public communications.”

  “Where are you going with this, Howard?”

  “I followed the trails.”

  “Followed them where?”

  “To your father.”

  I’ve accelerated without realizing it, and when I look up, I’m bearing down on the rear bumper of the truck ahead. I swerve, narrowly missing it as I switch to an empty lane.

  “Where are you now?” I say.

  “I’m still in Manchester.”

  “I told you to get out of there.”

  “I just had to do one thing before I left,” he says. “And one thing led to another, and the data started to come in—”

  “Promise me you’ll pack up as soon as we get off the phone.”

  “Absolutely,” he says. “I triple swear it. That’s what Goji makes me do when I promise to FaceTime her in Osaka, but I forget and—”

  “My father. Tell me where you found him.”

  “Right, right,” he says, getting back on task. “He was in the historical data. The Program data. Remember that twelve-year-old hacker I told you about when you were in New York?”

  “The Loop kid.”

  “That’s right. Infinite L∞P. The one who thinks he’s hot shit. Well, guess what? He screwed up and left a backdoor open in the rear quadrant of a firewall. Not really open. More like a tunnel that looks closed from the outside when it’s not. The point is I got inside and I cracked one of The Program’s remote servers.”

  “You’re telling me you found data about my father on a Program server?”

  “That’s right. They were communicating with him.”

  “You mean they made secret contact as a precursor to killing him? Like setting him up before the mission?”

  “That’s the weird thing,” Howard says. “They were communicating openly with him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Like internal agency communications.”

  “My father was working for The Program?”

  “No,” Howard says. “The Program was working for your father.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I’ve got e-mail evidence, secure text messages, even some—”

  Howard stops talking.

  “Howard? Hello?”

  The line goes dead.

  I slam the brakes, skidding the car to the side of the road.

  I dial Howard’s number, let it ring. There’s no answer.

  I wait sixty seconds and do it again.

  Nothing.

  I wait another two minutes, and I call again. Still nothing.

  I whip the car around, crossing four lanes of traffic to the protest of angry horns. I race back east, plotting a route that will avoid Boston while taking me north toward Manchester.

  I call Howard five more times over the course of several hours without a response. Finally I give up, knowing I’m not going to reach him. I try to imagine a reason why that might be, a reason that does not include something terrible happening to him, but I cannot.

  There’s nothing left for me to do but focus on the driving, the road in front of me, the mile markers ticking off on the highway, one every thirty-seven seconds.

  THE HOTEL TELLS ME HE NEVER CHECKED OUT.

  I go to the suite and knock, but nobody answers.

  I note light along the bottom edge of the doorway. That’s when I pick the lock and slip inside.

  The room is empty. A single overhead lamp has been left on in the front room, like you might do if you were leaving during the day and not coming back until evening.

  There’s a half-eaten bag of Cheetos spilled across the desk. Nothing else.

  I find Howard’s duffel on the floor of the closet. I unzip it and look through the contents.

  There are multiple cords and power supplies, but his laptops are missing. At least they’re not in the bag.

  I check the rest of the room, then force my way into the adjoining suite.

  It’s empty, too.

  The laptops are gone. Perhaps Howard had to leave in a rush and took them with him? For a moment, my mind is flooded with hope, the possibility that Howard is away and safe, that he used some of what I taught him and his natural skill set to get away.

  But then my eye settles on a spot on the carpet. A single dark spot, less than the size of a dime.

  Blood.

  My hope fades.

  I examine the spot more closely and see that is crusted on the surface of the carpet. No vacuum has passed over it, no footsteps have crushed it into the pile.

  Which means it’s fresh blood.

  I told Howard to be careful. I told him his life depended on it.

  Now he is gone, and there is a drop of blood.

  On a hunch I take out my iPhone and dial his number. I hear buzzing coming from somewhere in the suite.

  Howard’s phone.

  I search top to bottom. I finally find it deep under the bed, pushed all the way up against the wall at an unusual angle.

  I imagine the scenario. Howard is struggling with someone. The phone falls and gets kic
ked under the bed during the struggle. Whoever grabs him fails to go after it. Maybe they didn’t see it fall, or they were in too great of a rush and could not afford to take the time to retrieve it.

  I tap through Howard’s phone menu until I get to recent calls. I see nine missed calls from earlier today and a tenth call made just now.

  All from my number.

  Nothing else.

  Perhaps there is more information to be had from the phone. I put it in my pocket to examine later.

  I do a final pass of the room, looking for any clue I might have missed.

  I find nothing.

  I’m on my way out the door when the hotel phone rings.

  I look at it on the bedside table, the red light flashing to indicate an incoming call.

  Three rings, and I pick it up.

  “I knew you’d come back,” the voice says.

  I know the voice instantly.

  It’s Mike.

  “Listen to me carefully,” Mike says. “This is an open line.”

  I grunt acknowledgment.

  “They have your friend,” Mike says.

  “They?”

  “You heard me correctly.”

  Mike is a part of The Program. If it’s The Program who has Howard, Mike should have said we.

  We have your friend.

  But he didn’t say we. He said they. Two possibilities:

  1) Someone other than The Program has Howard.

  2) The Program has Howard, but Mike is excluding himself from the equation.

  “I have to see you,” Mike says.

  I’ve seen Mike twice since graduation. Both times have been on his terms. Both times my life has been in danger.

  “Do you remember the first place we ever met?” he says.

  It was the middle of seventh grade. Mike appeared in our school as a transfer student. I first saw him at school, but that’s not the first place we met.

  I was at Twelve Corners in Brighton one afternoon. I bought a pizza bagel, then walked out of the store and bumped into him.

  “You’re the kid in my homeroom,” he said.

  My life would end six weeks later because of that meeting, but I had no way of knowing it then.

  “You remember, don’t you?” Mike says on the phone.

  “Yes.”

  “Meet me two days from now,” he says.

  And nothing more.

  I hang up the phone, my head spinning.

  I glance at my reflection in the mirror above the dresser. I am haggard from lack of food and sleep. I cannot think clearly or organize my thoughts.

  Worst of all, I am afraid.

  I take off my shirt. I peel the tape from over my scar, and I locate the chip on the back of it.

  The neurosuppressor. That’s what Francisco called it.

  I pull it from the tape.

  The wound on my chest is still fresh. I use my fingers to rip the skin apart, revealing pink-and-red flesh below.

  The blood comes. I ignore it.

  I put the chip on the tip of my finger, and I put it back inside me, pressing it hard against the flesh of my pectoral muscle.

  The pain is incredible, but it doesn’t stop me. I press until the miniature probes stick inside the muscle. A faint glow emanates from within the glass capsule.

  It’s working again.

  I close the wound and seal it with the tape.

  Already I can feel the edge receding, my body coming back to stillness, my mind slowing.

  I look at myself in the mirror again.

  I look stronger, more capable. Maybe it’s only in my imagination.

  No matter.

  If I’m going to find Howard, I’ll need every advantage I can get.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TK