I Am the Mission: The Unknown Assassin Book 2
Page 15
“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 this 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 someday. 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 Moore.
“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.
“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.”
“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 instead,” 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. 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.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
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. “Something like that. And you’d be lucky compared to me.”
“That sounds like a good reason for you to leave.”
“To me it sounds like a good reason to stay.”
“How do you figure?”
“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 large, 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 that 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 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.”
“The camp is full of guys your age.”
“Guys so beholden to my dad that they wouldn’t dare do anything to 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.
She runs her hand 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?”
“It could be like this every night. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“You, naked every night? It would be a change of pace, I’ll say that much.”
“You’re such a guy,” she says.
I grin.
“I didn’t mean just sex,” she says. She takes my face in her hands and brings it close to hers. “I meant us every night.”
Us.
There’s something powerful about the word. I let it wash over me, then feel some relief when it passes.
The mission is everything. And I have work to do.
“What are you thinking about, Daniel?”
“I’m thinking we’d better send you back to your room before something happens.”
“Maybe I want it to happen.”
“There’s no rush,” I say.
She opens her mouth like she’s going to contradict me, then she stops herself.
“You’re right,” she says. “There’s no rush.”
She dresses quickly. I want to stop her half a dozen times, but I don’t.
When she’s done, she pecks me on the cheek and slips out the door.
It hurts to watch her go. Not in my head. Someplace else, someplace deeper.
Closer to my heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I CLOSE MY EYES FOR A WHILE AFTER THAT, BUT I DON’T SLEEP.
I lie in bed thinking about Miranda, the things she’s shared with me since I’ve come to the camp, her dreams of the future, the way she’s torn between duty to her father and the life she wants to live.
I think about it for a while, and then I let it go.
It’s hard to focus now. It’s been almost forty-eight hours since I’ve slept. My body is trained to function with little sleep, but at a certain point I begin to lose operational awareness. I’ve learned how to take micronaps, small bursts of REM sleep that allow me to stretch the time between periods of full sleep. But even those seem out of reach now.
The disappearance of Father, the operation at the water treatment plant, my interactions with Lee and Miranda, all of these conspire to keep me awake.
Eventually I give up and sit in a chair, attempting to slow my thoughts and move my focus back to where it belongs, not on Miranda or Lee, or even on The Program.
I focus on the mission.
On Moore.
I think about Moore sending teams of young kids through the countryside at night, searching out targets.
They call it a game. I call it something else.
Domestic terrorism.
During my missions I am never given the reasons why a target has been assigned by The Program. I am trained not to ask questions, to focus only on target acquisition and removal, leaving the why of it to others.
But living among Moore and his people, I can’t help but see the danger they represent.
This, more than anything, helps to steady my intentions. Whatever the purpose of this mission from The Program’s perspective, I have my own purpose now.
I have to stop Moore.
I sit in the chair thinking of ways to do it. By the time I glance at the clock, it’s seven AM.
I ate some trail mix last night, but that’s not enough to fuel multiple days of mission operations. I need real food.
I dress quickly and head for the main house, following the smell of bacon in the air. In the central square, I see the ashes of last night’s bonfire being raked up by two young kids, one of whom collects trash in a large plastic bag.
I walk past them unchallenged and head toward the main house.
I press the handle on the front door, but unlike in the video game, it is unlocked.
I ready myself, and then I open the door and step inside for the first time.
CHAPTER FORTY
IT’S MOORE.
He’s standing in the hallway inside the door as if he’s been waiting for me. Francisco and Aaron are by his side.
“Good morning,” I say, like I’m happy to see him.
“You’re in a good mood,” he says.
“Absolutely,” I say, but not for the reasons he might think.
“How was last night?” he says.
For a moment I think he’s talking about Miranda being in my room, but I doubt he’d be smiling if he knew.
“You mean the treatment plant?” I say. “That was interesting.”
“Not the word I was expecting.”
I shrug. “It’s a lot to process all at once.”
Teens pass by us heading to breakfast. When they see Moore and me talking, they hug the wall, giving us plenty of space.
“Lee told me what happened,” Moore says. “It sounds like you had some doubts about the mission.”
I want to be real with Moore, letting him hear my concerns, at least up to a point.
“That’s a fair way of characterizing it,” I say.
“I thought you wanted to be a soldier,” Moore says.
“I do.”
“Last night was preparation for the battle.”
“The battle against the dangerous people of Manchester, New Hampshire?”
Moore’s face reddens. I see the tension ripple through Aaron’s shoulders as he prepares for trouble.
“Explain it to me,” I say quickly. “Help me understand.”
Moore nods, his face returning to normal.
“Are you familiar with the shot heard round the world?” he says.
“The first shot of the American Revolution.”
“That’s right. It was the Battle of Lexington and Concord, where the patriots fired against their colonial oppressors for the first time. It was in that moment that the world changed.”
“What does that have to do with last night?”
“We are modern-day patriots,” Moore says. “We who choose to live at this camp. We are practicing for that first shot. We don’t know when or how it will need to be fired, but we know we must be ready. You said you wanted to be a soldier—”
“More than anything.”
“That�
��s what a soldier does. He trains for the day when he will be needed by his commander.”
I pause, thinking about what Moore has said. He has a masterful way of using truisms to support his ideas. One can easily agree with the truth of the surface statements without questioning the ideas themselves.
It makes it easy for me to agree with Moore, at least for the time being.
“I understand what you’re saying.”
Moore smiles. “I know you do, Daniel. I have confidence in you. So does Lee. He told me so last night.”
“Is that right?” I say, wondering what Lee said to his father.
Moore signals for Francisco to come forward.
“Francisco’s going to take you home now,” Moore says.
“Home?” I say, my voice rising.
I feel myself getting upset, lost in the character of Daniel. He’s opened his heart and now he’s being rejected by Moore.
“Please. I don’t want to go,” I say.
I play it up, letting myself get desperate in front of Moore. If he throws me out, my mission is over.
Moore holds up his hands, trying to calm me.
“I’m sending you home because I want you to make arrangements with your parents,” he says.
“Arrangements for what?”
“To come back and stay with us for a while.”
“For a camp session?”
“There is no camp session, Daniel. Not anymore.”
This is what Miranda was trying to tell me in the forest the first night.
“What about the recruiting event?” I say.
He waves his hand as if it was insignificant.
“That was for appearances. We’ve moved beyond camps and temporary fixes and on to the next phase of our growth.”
“What phase?”
I want to ask another question, but Moore steps closer and looks me in the eye.
“Do you trust me, Daniel? Even if you don’t fully understand my methods?”
“I do.”
Moore reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. It would not be out of character to flinch, especially after getting squeezed in the parking lot the other night and seeing Moore put the pincer movement on his son the first night.
But I don’t flinch. I let him touch me.
His hand is firm and steady on my shoulder.
“Do what you have to do to convince your parents,” he says. “Then come back to us.”