Spy School (27 page)

So I left her in the corner and ran over to examine the bomb. In the movies bombs always seem to be attached to only two wires, a green one and a red one. If you yank the correct one, the bomb doesn’t detonate, whereas if you yank the wrong one, it does. Still, that was fifty-fifty—considerably better than my chances of survival if I did nothing.

Unfortunately, a real-life bomb turned out to be far more complicated. There were hundreds of wires snaking about the C4 explosive, in hues ranging from sea green to magenta to cerulean blue. Knowing Murray, I guessed most of them probably didn’t do
anything
; he’d only included them to make defusing the bomb maddeningly complex. I had no idea where to even begin.

So I decided to try running away instead. True, this would allow the bomb to detonate and destroy the building, but if I carried Erica, at least we’d be alive. However, Murray had jammed the door shut from the outside. I wedged the mop handle into the gap between the door and the wall and tried to force it open. Instead, the handle shattered into toothpicks.

The clock now said there were ninety seconds left. I’d
squandered three and a half minutes and hadn’t made a bit of progress.

Panic set in. I had no idea how to defuse a bomb and no ability to contact anyone who did. And I was quickly running out of time.

I struggled to calm myself. Losing control of myself—or my bladder—wasn’t going to help anything. I thought back over my weeks at spy school to see if I could recall
anything
that would be useful in this situation, but nothing came to mind.

Until I thought about the very last conversation I’d had.

Somewhere in there, Murray had said something strange. Something that didn’t quite make sense. I struggled to remember it.

The clock showed only forty seconds left until detonation.

In a flash the comment came to me. It was virtually the last thing Murray had said before storming out the door.
At least I’m going to be a live double agent. And after today everyone will think you’re a dead one.

What had he meant by that? I wondered. Why would everyone think
I
was a double agent?

The clock now showed only thirty seconds.

The clock!

I ran back to the bomb to inspect it again. I’d been so focused on the wiring before, I hadn’t paid any attention to
the timer itself. But now I saw what Murray was talking about.

He’d used my own clock to make the timer.

It was another insidious move on his part. Not only did he plan to kill me, but he planned to frame me as well. After the bomb went off, the government would bring in a Crime Scene Investigation squad to pick over every single piece of debris, no matter how small. And somewhere in the midst of that, they’d eventually find the charred and twisted remains of my clock, which would tie the bomb to me. Once again, Murray would divert attention from himself and make someone else look like the bad guy. Then he’d probably go right back to business as usual.

But there was one thing Murray hadn’t counted on. My clock was a piece of junk.

It can’t be that simple to stop the bomb,
I thought. And yet there was only one thing I could come up with.

There were ten seconds left.

I smacked the clock with an open palm.

It froze at 00:07.

I spent the next seven seconds in agony, fearing that the timer didn’t have anything to do with the bomb at all and that I’d be blown sky-high anyhow.

I wasn’t.

The bomb didn’t detonate.

“What’s going on?”

I spun around to find Erica sitting up, groggily clutching her head.

“
Now
you’re conscious?” I asked. “You couldn’t have come to five minutes ago?”

Erica took in her surroundings and realized what had happened. In an instant she was up on her feet and down to business. “You stopped the bomb?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“How?”

“I stopped the timer,” I said, trying to sound like it was no big deal.

Erica looked it over, then turned to me, impressed. “Nice work. Although the bomb’s still live.”

“Do you know how to defuse it?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve been doing this since I was three.”

“I guessed as much,” I told her.

Erica quickly went to work, removing a pair of wire snippers from her utility belt, inspecting the wires that fed into the timer, tracing them to where they connected to the bomb, and selecting the proper ones to clip.

I stood back to give her room. “How’d you end up down here?”

“I was looking over Chip’s evidence against Tina while I was talking to you.” Erica snipped an aquamarine wire in two. “But it didn’t quite add up, like someone had faked it to
make Tina look bad. And then I started thinking, what was the point of putting a bomb in the tunnels anyhow? There’s nothing down here really worth destroying . . . although if you built a big enough bomb, like this bad boy here, you could take out the entire building above it.” She snipped two more wires, eggshell and crimson. “And the moment I thought that, I realized there wasn’t a better target than the Omega conference. So I came down here to see what I could find. Unfortunately, Murray got the jump on me. I was a little distracted by that conversation you and your pal were having about me.”

I felt my ears turn red. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? I could’ve helped.”

“Guess I just got cocky. You know me and my hero complex.” Erica sliced through a tangle of fuchsia wires, then heaved a sigh of relief. “There we go. Bomb’s not live anymore.” To prove her point, she patted the C4.

I cringed reflexively, but Erica was right. Without the charge connected to it, it was as dangerous as Play-Doh.

Erica ripped off a handful and started toward the door.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You want to get out of here or not?” She jammed the explosive into the crack around the dead bolt, backed across the room, and lifted her pant leg to reveal a holster strapped to her leg.

I stared at the gun nestled in it. “That would’ve been good to know about when Murray was here.”

“Why? Did he try to kill you?”

“Uh . . . no. He offered me a job.”

Erica turned to me, surprised. “That’s interesting.” Then she pointed behind the furnace. “You might want to take cover.”

I did. She crowded in next to me and shot the C4 around the dead bolt.

There was an explosion. When I peeked out from behind the furnace again, the door was hanging open, a hole the size of a cannonball where the lock had been.

“C’mon,” Erica said, racing into the hall. “Before Murray escapes.”

I followed right on her heels. “You mean, you
want
my help?”

“I’d say you’ve proven yourself today.” Erica snapped a radio out of her pocket—something else it would have been nice to know about earlier—and spoke into it. “Dad, it’s me. There’s a bomb in the furnace room under the library. . . . Whoa, don’t freak out. It’s been neutralized. But someone needs to get down there to remove it. Ben and I are on Subbasement Level Two in pursuit of the mole. His name’s Murray Hill. . . . No, I didn’t suspect him. . . . Because I didn’t, that’s why. This is not the time to discuss
my analysis skills. I’m hanging up now.” She flipped off the radio and gave an exasperated sigh. “Parents. Don’t get me started.”

“Any idea where Murray is?” I asked.

“Not exactly. Though I’m betting he’s still on campus. A good mole wouldn’t flee before the bomb goes off—that’d look suspicious. But our guy now
knows
something’s wrong. The bomb didn’t detonate, which means you and I are still alive—and we know who he is. Now he
has
to run. But he’s only known that for . . .” Erica checked her watch.

“Three minutes and thirteen seconds, “ I said.

“Right. So we only need to check the cameras.” We arrived at the security room from which I’d been kidnapped the day before. The door was still off its hinges. A construction crew was currently repairing it. Erica swung through the gaping hole where the door had been and froze in her tracks. “Nuts.”

The security system was down. Every monitor was black. One of the agents who controlled it was frantically leafing through the user’s manual. The other was on hold with tech support.

“What happened here?” Erica demanded.

“It just went down,” the agent with the manual said.

“About three minutes and fifteen seconds ago?” I asked.

The surprise on her face was all the answer we needed.

“Murray,” Erica and I said at the same time.

Erica kicked a trash can angrily. “This campus is two hundred ninety square acres, and he has a huge head start. We’ll never find him without the cameras.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “You have a phone on you?”

Academy Training Grounds

February 10

1340 hours

One of the advantages of being gifted with
mathematics is that you never forget a phone number. I called Zoe first, because she always knew everything that was happening on campus. She answered on the third ring. “Hello?” It was lunchtime, and I could hear the usual cacophony of the mess hall around her.

“Zoe, it’s Ben.”

“Smokescreen! Where have you been? You missed an awesome psychological warfare lecture today.”

“Have you seen Murray in the last few minutes?”

Erica led me up a flight of stairs and through a secret doorway to emerge from behind a rack of guns in the armory. Greg Hauser, who worked at the weaponry checkout desk, snapped awake and tried to look like he hadn’t been napping on the job, even though there was a strand of drool hanging from his lip.

“Why’re you looking for Murray?” Zoe asked.

“Because he’s a mole!” I told her.

“Washout? No way. He’s way too lazy.”

“It’s a front. He just tried to blow up the Hale Building and now he’s on the run. Do you know where he is or not?”

“I haven’t seen him, but hold on.” I heard Zoe shout at the top of her lungs, “Has anyone seen Murray?” Someone shouted a response, and then Zoe got back on the phone. “Blackbelt says she saw Murray leaving Bushnell Hall two minutes ago, heading toward the training grounds.”

That made sense. The grounds were the opposite direction from the main gate, which had the highest security. Murray was probably looking to sneak through the woods and go over the wall.

“Training grounds,” I told Erica.

Erica had already grabbed two M16 rifles off the rack. She tossed one to me along with two extra clips of ammunition. “Let’s go.”

“Wait!” Hauser protested. “You can’t take those without
filling out an H-33 Semiautomatic Request Form!”

“We’re on a mole hunt,” I said. “C’mon.”

“Really?” Hauser looked like a kid who’d just been offered a puppy. “Awesome!”

Erica frowned at me, but she didn’t take the time to argue. She simply ran out the door. I followed. Behind us, I could hear Hauser scrambling to grab a weapon of his own.

I got back on the phone. “Zoe, round up everyone you can and get out to the training grounds. We need to find Murray before he gets away.”

“Already mobilizing,” she said. “Shoot to kill?”

“Uh . . . I don’t think that’s necessary,” I replied. “Maybe just shoot to hobble.”

Erica darted across the quadrangle. It took everything I had to keep up with her. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “Anyone else you want to invite to the party?” she chided. “Your grandmother, maybe?”

“We can’t cover all two hundred ninety acres by ourselves,” I panted. “The more eyes we have out here, the better.”

Erica tried to give me a disapproving stare, but I could see she knew I was right.

Across the quad from us, the doors to the mess burst open. Students poured out, racing toward the training grounds. The troops had mobilized in a hurry. But then, since this was the first actual call to action at a campus full
of wannabe spies, that wasn’t really surprising.

Erica and I were well ahead of the others, though. We plunged into the woods.

It had been bitterly cold in the two days since our war game, and what snow remained on the ground was now as hard as cement. Which meant Murray wouldn’t have left fresh tracks in it.

“Okay, math whiz,” Erica said. “Murray’s probably heading from Bushnell toward the closest point on the perimeter, and he has a two-minute jump on us. So what vector gives us the best chance of intercepting him?”

I considered all the variables, then pointed slightly north of due west. Erica adjusted her course and went that way. I followed dutifully.

We moved quickly through the forest, leaping downed trees, ducking branches, skidding on the ice. Erica stayed silent now, conserving her breath and her energy, so I did the same. Many of our fellow students weren’t as professional. I could hear them whooping and hollering as they came through the trees, like this was a party rather than a life-or-death mission.

We came upon the gully where Zoe had saved me two days before, which meant we were closing in on the perimeter. I didn’t see any evidence of Murray ahead. Not a footprint, not a flash of movement, not a white puff of exhaled
breath in the cold. Either he’d made it to wall faster than I’d expected or—