Kalvin pointed a warning finger at me, opened his mouth to speak, and then snapped it closed. He pointed at Amara and looked about to speak again but instead just sighed. He glanced over his shoulder at his sister, who was carrying a tray of drinks across the dining room. “I hate sisters.”
He led us back onto the street, around the side of the restaurant, and down an alley to a small staircase that led us into the basement. Fluorescent lights kicked on when the door opened, and a row of storage lockers lined the back wall. Kalvin marched to the one on the far left, unlocked the padlock, and lifted the door.
The walls of the locker were lined with enough fireworks to burn the entire building down. I recognized several pieces. There were M80s, flying spinners, ground spinners, snakes and strobes, rockets, ladyfingers, bottle rockets. But there were dozens of other pieces that I’d never seen, some so large they looked like the Air Force could drop them from planes. In the center of the room was a bare wooden table, and below it were boxes. A couple of them had no lids and were filled with neatly organized tools.
Amara whistled. “Not bad, Kalvin with a K. Not bad at all.”
“Where do you get all this from?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m just surprised you still have all your fingers.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I know what I’m doing, and safety is my top priority.” He waved his hand around the shed with the flourish of a magician. “Well? What’ll it be?”
“Roman candles,” I said. He reached under one of the shelves and pulled out a box of Roman candles and put them on the table. “More than that,” I said. “A lot more.”
“That’s all I have,” he said.
“Jason said you had crates of them,” I said. I sounded whiny and instantly regretted it.
“Well, Jason exaggerates,” he said. He pointed around the room. “I have other stuff.”
I had no idea what other stuff might be as good as a Roman candle. I turned to Amara. “What do you think? Can you modify some of this stuff to make more Roman candles?”
He looked at me as if I’d just asked him if he knew how to tie his own shoes. I felt my face flush again.
Kalvin’s face lit up. “A fellow pyrotechnician?”
“Hardly,” Amara said.
“Just grab what you need,” I said. “I want to get back.”
Amara was as methodical as a world-class chef gathering ingredients for his next meal. He even smelled a few of the items the way you might test the freshness of an herb before deciding to make a purchase. A couple times he returned the items he’d inspected to a different spot from where he’d found them, and Kalvin, who obviously prided himself on the organization of his work area, would huff and move them back. I got the impression that Amara was doing it as a distraction, but even though I was watching him carefully, I didn’t see why. By the end I decided he just wanted to mess with the little twerp. That made me smile.
“That’s it then?” Kalvin asked when Amara had finished stacking items on the table. Amara nodded, and Kalvin made note of everything in a small binder and then pulled two black duffel bags from a box under the table and stuffed the items carefully inside.
“Jason said he’d pay for all this,” I said.
Kalvin nodded. “I know. Must be nice to have rich friends.”
I doubted this kid had any friends at all.
He nudged the bags toward us. “If you get caught with any of this stuff—” Kalvin shot us an icy stare, “you don’t mention my name.”
“Sure,” I said. “Not a word.”
As we made our way back to the station, I thought again about how Amara had purposefully messed with Kalvin by putting things back in places they didn’t belong. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if he hadn’t stolen a few things while Kalvin had been distracted. I don’t know why he would, since he could have put anything he wanted on the table. Still, it was the only thing that made sense. It didn’t matter to me that he’d done that, but I wanted Amara to know that he hadn’t fooled me.
“I saw what you did in there,” I said.
Amara raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“When you distracted him by putting stuff back in the wrong place,” I added.
Amara smiled slyly. “I thought you might.”
Aha, I knew it. I kept a straight face. “Not that I mind,” I said, “but it wasn’t really necessary, you know.”
“No?” Amara asked.
I shrugged the duffel bag onto my other shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. He was a little punk. He deserved it.”
Amara nodded. “That’s what I thought too.”
Something in Amara’s tone gave me a chill, but I decided to let it go. He was an intense guy and no doubt disappointed I’d seen him steal or, at least, that he thought I’d seen him steal. I wondered if theft was another skill the camp would teach. I smiled at the prospect. I’d already learned so much. I couldn’t wait to put the stuff I’d learned to use. I imagined using some of the skills to torment my teachers or to get even with some of the school bullies. Before I realized it, I was smiling so big I almost laughed.
Amara was looking at me with a slightly scrunched face. “You’re happier than I thought you’d be about that,” he said.
I shook my head. “Honestly, I’m indifferent.”
“You and Angie will get along well then,” he said. “I still feel kind of bad when I have to do stuff like that.”
I almost laughed but decided Amara wasn’t someone I wanted to offend. Amara was more complicated than I’d thought. He’d deal with explosives and work to disrupt an entire transportation hub in the downtown core. But he’d have remorse for stealing from a little punk like Kalvin with a K? I wondered if all this spy stuff messed with where you drew the line between right and wrong. I shook my head.
The CIA was a good thing. Part of our government. They protected people. They protected the entire country. At least, I thought they did. I would have to do a bit more research on them when I got home.
Chapter 42
I was relieved to see that the bakery lights were out and the windows were covered with blinds when we got back. A striped black-and-yellow CLOSED sign was on the front door, and it seemed genuinely closed. We went to the side entrance, in an alley that it shared with a small three-story office building. Amara reached for the door without hesitation and pulled it open.
“They just left it unlocked?” I whispered.
Amara scrunched up his face. “Of course they did. Do you want to stand out here pounding on the door while the neighborhood notices you? Or do you want to walk in like you have every reason in the world to be here? Seriously, Cambridge, I’m really starting to worry about you.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” I gestured him on. “Let’s go, er, in … I guess.” My stomach knotted as we stepped through the door and into a small locker room, no doubt where employees locked up their personal stuff. There was a bathroom off to the right and racks of dry baking ingredients on the left. Straight ahead was a door with a small sign that read WASH YOUR HANDS. Amara strolled through the room toward the door on the other side as if he knew exactly where he was going and had every right to be there.
I, on the other hand, froze.
The worst thing I had ever done before this moment was a bit of vandalism—minor stuff, really, like when I’d used fertilizer to burn a swear word into the grass of the school football field, or when I’d used epoxy resin to permanently lock a teacher’s car door. But here I was breaking and entering. I could get a criminal record for this. Worse, my dad would rip me apart. The thought made me want to puke.
“Coming?” Amara asked, his hand poised over the handle of the door that led farther into the building. He looked like he couldn’t care less about the consequences. Like nothing mattered.
Pull it together, Cambridge.
We’re in a CIA training camp. Nothing that happens today can be used against you. We’
re running a mission in broad daylight. The odds that we’ll get caught are really high. The odds that we’re going to be seen are one hundred percent. The goal was not to get caught, but if we did get caught, if the owners of the bakery showed up and called the police, or if we let off Roman candles and security nabbed us, well, we were with the CIA. They’d have us out and back in camp before I could say, “Get me a lawyer.” I suddenly felt very foolish for being so nervous.
I smiled. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
We stepped through the door and made our way into the kitchen. Huge ovens covered the far wall, and large mixing contraptions and metal bowls filled tables around the perimeter. A gigantic metal table sat in the center of the room and was polished to such a degree that, even with the lights off, the faint light that seeped into the room from the fogged glass windows reflected off the surface. Amara slipped the duffel bag off his shoulder and tossed it on the table.
“This is where I’ll work,” he said. “You can toss your bag up here.” He tapped the table.
“And you can get it all done before”—I checked my watch—“one o’clock?”
Amara shook his head. “It’ll probably be done by just a bit after two. I don’t rush unless my life depends on it, and even then I might not. Rushing around explosives isn’t smart.”
I groaned. “Yeah, okay. Of course.” I rubbed the back of my head. “But if you see a safe way to speed something along …”
Amara nodded and then gestured to the door. My cue to leave.
I turned and pushed through the swinging door that led to the front of the store. Rylee and Juno were seated at one of the tables, examining a map. Yaakov was at another table, surrounded by wires, bits of plastic, and what looked like a dismantled radio.
“About time you got here.” Angie’s voice came from my right, and I spun around to see her perched at another table, chowing down on a plateful of pastries. She gestured to the glass display case that held dishes filled with the bakery’s wares. “Eat if you’re hungry. We don’t get treats like this at the camp.”
How in the world could she eat? My stomach was twisted in such a knot that the mere thought of food caused discomfort. I shook my head.
Rylee looked up from the map. “Amara?”
“He’s set up in the kitchen,” I said.
“Good,” Yaakov said. “If he messes up in there, maybe we won’t all be killed.”
“Any trouble getting in?” I asked, glancing around the group.
Angie shook her head, then held up one of the pastries from her plate. “Easy as pie.”
“The people just left when you cut the power?”
“Customers did,” Yaakov said.
I glanced at Rylee and she grimaced and nodded to a door at the back of the room.
It took me a second to put together what her gesture meant. “Wait, so the workers are in there?”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Angie said. “There were only two of them, and I don’t think they were willing to share the space.”
I walked over to the door and pulled it open. It was a bathroom and two bodies lay on the floor with actual flour sacks over their heads. Blood stained sections of the sacks, and there were red smears on the floor as well. The bodies were zip-tied at the wrists and ankles, and lay unmoving beside a toilet. I jerked around. “Did you … kill them?”
Angie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and then I tied them up, and covered their faces just in case they turned out to be zombies. C’mon, they’re fine. At least half of that isn’t even blood. It’s raspberry filling.”
“Raspberry—”
“C’mon, just close the door. We have to get the rest of this sorted out.”
I looked at Rylee and she mouthed the word psychopath and shrugged as if she was shrugging away the quirky habits of an embarrassing family member.
“But they’re fine, right?”
Yaakov shrugged. “They’re not dead.”
I couldn’t believe how unaffected they all were. There were two bodies zip-tied to a toilet, and they didn’t seem concerned at all. If something like that didn’t bother Yaakov, I was in farther over my head than I’d thought.
I closed the door and pushed the image of the two bodies out of my head—or at least tried to—as I walked over to Rylee and Juno.
“Do you have the key areas mapped out?”
They nodded, and then Rylee spoke. “Listen, we really can’t understate how big this station is. It’s huge. If we’re going to make this work, if we’re going to cause a real disruption, we’re going to have to be really strategic.” She looked around the room and then gestured at the map in front of her. “That means you guys are going to want to take a look at this.”
We crowded around. The map had been colored with pink, green, and yellow highlighters. In addition there was a series of circles and Xs with dotted lines trailing out from them, clearly indicating travel routes. It looked like something you’d find on the sidelines during a football game.
“Basically,” Rylee began, “there are the inner-city trains, the commuter trains, and then we have the subway lines and the street cars. If we’re going to cause any significant disturbance, we need to place the explosives—”
“Fireworks,” I corrected.
“Right,” Rylee said. “Fine, we’ll need to place the fireworks in three different locations.” She tapped the map of the subway. “Platform three on the red line. Platform four on the green line. And platform four on the white line. The panic from the commuters rushing out of these areas should ignite panic in the other platforms. Everyone’s going to clear out. If we toss a few smaller explosives—er, fireworks—on our way out, it’ll make things all the more effective.”
When Jason and I had formulated the plan originally, we’d thought it would be great to put bundles of fireworks on the commuter trains. Right on top. If it was timed right, they’d go off just as the trains were leaving the station, and they’d carry a bundle of exploding fireworks through the whole station. I told the group, and their faces lit up.
“Awesome idea,” Juno said.
Rylee nodded and bit her lip. “This could actually work.”
I felt my smile spread.
“You seem awfully excited,” Angie said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“You’re not?” I asked.
She shook me off. “I’d be more excited if I didn’t think our plan was super lame and we were going to get crushed by everyone else.”
“We’re going to do fine,” I said. “We’re going to empty that place.” I turned back to Juno and Rylee. “That reminds me. Did you guys figure out how we’re going to get away?”
Juno shrugged. “Like you said, it’s going to be a madhouse. We just run out with everyone else.”
Rylee nodded. “If we ditch through an emergency exit, or down one of the tunnels, any cop who spots us will know we were involved. But …” She took out a pen and circled several places on the map. “These are the alternate exits if you’re spotted and have no other choice.”
“I hacked their system,” Yaakov said. “I can set a timer to upload a virus that will erase the footage from the areas we’ll be working in, but I’ll wait until Amara is done so I have a better idea about timing.” He tapped the screen of his laptop. “I’ve been watching the cameras in that station, and since we’re hitting three places at the same time, there isn’t really a time when security will be especially lax. The guards seem to just wander around.”
“We might need a distraction,” Juno said. “Something they’d all respond to if they’re getting close to us.”
“I like it,” I said. “But nothing so big that they’ll call the police early.”
“I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about them calling the police,” Rylee said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Matt, there are two other teams in the city right now, all about to put into motion some kind of major disruption. The first thing each of them is going to do is call in a seri
es of fake emergencies—”
“Or create a series of real emergencies,” Angie injected.
“Sure,” Rylee said, “or real ones, so that police aren’t anywhere near when things go down.” She looked at her watch. “For all we know, the other teams have already started their disruptions. If they go first and distract the cops even more, it could make things a whole lot easier for us.”
Yaakov cleared his throat. “Maybe.”
“Not maybe, Yaakov,” Rylee snapped. “For sure. Chase and Becca are nuts, you know that.” She glared at Yaakov. “If either one of them starts their disruption first, there won’t be a cop left in the area.”
Yaakov laughed. “I’m not debating the fact that they’re nuts, Rylee. I just said maybe it would help us.” He shrugged his shoulder. “But maybe it will make things a whole lot worse for us.”
Rylee opened her mouth to argue, and then her expression changed, as if she’d just realized something she should have already known. “Oh, man, you’re right.”
Juno and Angie glanced at each other, then at me, both with the same puzzled expression. I shrugged.
“Care to share with the class?” Angie asked.
“We’re at the largest commuter hub in the city,” Yaakov said.
“And?” I asked.
“And,” Rylee said, continuing for Yaakov, “this’ll probably be a place that each Delta considers. For all we know, each team is already setting up.”
“The more the merrier,” Angie said.
“No,” Rylee snapped. “No way. If there are multiple teams here, only one of them is going to succeed.”
I cleared my throat. “Why?”
“Because the police will show up,” Yaakov said, rolling his eyes. “Even if they’re distracted across the city, they’re going to hear about the disturbance, and they’ll respond. The chance of us implementing our plan if another team goes first will be …” He shrugged again. “Let’s just say it’ll be unlikely. Plus, who would get the credit? The counselors would have to somehow figure out who caused which disturbance.” He bit his lip and muttered, “Maybe I shouldn’t delete the footage.”
Disruption Page 22
