Crisis Zero (21 page)

N
ONE OF US SAID ANYTHING AS WE DRAGGED THE HEAVY
sleds a half mile to the low hill in between where we'd parked the car and Augustine Church. There was a small row of trees that ran across the hill and we positioned the sleds in between them to keep them as much out of sight as possible.

Dillon gave Danielle and me each a walkie-talkie and then sat down between the two sleds and saluted us.

“See you guys on the other side,” he said. “And stay frosty.”

Danielle and I continued down the other side of the hill together. We each somehow resisted the urge to look back up at Dillon. I didn't want to think about what might happen to him if things all went wrong. Or to us, for that matter. But looking back wouldn't have accomplished anything since it would have been too dark to see him anyway.

Danielle and I stayed low and ran between the trees and boulders and abandoned farm shacks as we moved toward Augustine Church. We said nothing as we slowly picked our way to the top of another small hill. Of course, these were hardly hills by most people's standards. More like bumps in the landscape, as if the prairie had acne or something. But in North Dakota, even a small ant mound could be called a hill.

There was an old, crumbling farmhouse near us. Danielle crouched inside it with a riflescope she'd taken from her dad's cache of hunting gear. She peered at Augustine Church down the hill, several hundred yards away. It was still plenty dark, but the faintest hint of pink on the horizon indicated that the sun was on its way up. Which meant the exchange was nearing.

Danielle put the scope down and gave me a thumbs-up.

“Okay then,” I said. “I'll see you afterward, right?”

She looked away, clearly struggling not to cry. She nodded without looking up again.

“Don't worry,” I said. “I got this. This is what I do. I'm Codename Zero, right?”

Danielle didn't respond and so I didn't waste more time spouting off false confidence. But just as I got to the gaping hole in the western wall of the old house, Danielle finally spoke.

“Carson,” she said. I turned around. “Stay frosty.”

I gave her a single nod and then dashed outside.

At the bottom of the hill, I hit the deck and flattened down onto my stomach. From here on out, I'd need to be careful. There wasn't much cover between me and Augustine Church.

Still, the Agency was on the lookout for Medlock and probably a whole team of armed men, not one small twelve-year-old crawling across a snow-covered field in the pitch-black. So I actually did believe I had a chance.

It was even colder near the ground, but the adrenaline shooting through my body seemed to work like antifreeze in my veins. I was aware of the cold but didn't feel it. And so I kept crawling across the ground, staying behind the dead stubs of winter wheat stalks.

After several minutes my walkie-talkie crackled with activity.

“Interceptor, this is Sightseer, come in. Over,” Danielle's voice said.

I pulled the transmitter from my pocket and hit the button.

“This is Interceptor. Over,” I said.

“We have some activity northwest of your position,” Danielle said. “Two Agency spotters with binoculars. Only proceed when I give you the go-ahead. Over.”

“Copy that,” I said.

Then a third voice crackled over the receiver.

“This is Pushman,” Dillon said. “Anything near my position, Sightseer?”

“Pushman, you're supposed to say
over
at the end of the transmission. Over,” Danielle said.

“Whatever. Over,” Dillon said.

“Negative on anything near your position. Over,” Danielle said. “Just stay low.”

“You forgot to say
over
after the last part. Over,” Dillon said.

I heard Danielle sigh into her receiver. Then silence.

I waited for Danielle to give me the go-ahead to proceed. It seemed to last for hours.

“Okay, Interceptor,” Danielle finally said. “They're not looking your way. Proceed, but stay low. Over.”

I began crawling again, faster this time. I'd need to cover as much ground as possible when I could. It was imperative that I got to the church before the people from the Agency who were making the buy, the people selling the technology, or Medlock arrived. My plan depended on it.

“Cease progress, Interceptor,” Danielle said.

I stopped crawling and flattened myself to the ground. More waiting. I was breathing hard, not realizing until just then how much I'd been pushing myself. I wanted to peek up and see just how close I was getting, but knew better. I tried my best to slow my breathing, to remain as still as possible. My radio crackled to life again.

“Sightseer, this is Pushman,” Dillon said. “I've got some possible activity on highway fifty-three. Over.”

“Copy that,” Danielle said. “I see it also. We've got two black sedans approaching from the southwest. They look to be slowing at the county road junction. Over.”

I waited and listened.

“The two sedans just turned onto County Road Sixteen, headed this way,” Danielle said. “I think it's the Agency buyers. Over.”

A few minutes later, Danielle gave me the go-ahead to keep crawling. I did, keeping my eye on the area around the church. There were several good hiding spots nearby. A few trees, an old gazebo, a few outhouses, a row of snow-covered bushes, and even a massive pile of snow that had been plowed behind the church, perhaps by the Agency for this very meeting.

I was getting close enough to start plotting where I'd hunker down until the exchange, when Danielle told me to stop moving again.

“The two cars were definitely Agency,” she said. “Agents Smiley and Nineteen and one unidentified agent are all here. And an unidentified fourth individual still inside one of the cars. Over.”

I lay there waiting, trying to muffle my visible breath into my gloved hands. In the silence of the early morning, I heard faint talking. I couldn't make out who was speaking or what they were saying, but I heard them nonetheless. If they spotted me, would they shoot on sight, before even figuring out it was me? Or would they shoot anyway, even if they knew it was me? I tried to shake the morbid questions from my head. There was no time for that kind of thinking.

“A large SUV is approaching from the south,” Danielle
said. I turned the volume on my receiver down. “Interceptor, if you want to get close, now's your chance. All eyes are on the newcomer.”

I didn't even wait for her to say
over
before making my move. I quickly sprang into a crouching run and sprinted toward the back of the church, already knowing where I was going to hide. Staying low, I made my way toward the row of bushes next to the church and then dived right into them face-first. Of course I covered my face with my arms, assuming the bush had branches and everything. Several of them still managed to scratch my cheeks, but the winter sparseness of the huge shrub left plenty of room for me to basically perch inside it.

With all of my winter gear, I sort of figured the best place to hide was inside the snow-covered shrubs. I felt pretty secure and out of sight, oddly cozy even, crouching inside the huge bush. From this vantage point, I could certainly see the two Agency cars pretty clearly, even in the darkness of early dawn. I was perhaps only thirty yards away, obscured slightly by the corner of the old church.

“Interceptor, where are you? Over,” Danielle asked.

“Inside the bushes. Over,” I whispered into the receiver.

There was a long pause, and I was debating whether or not to risk repeating myself more loudly when she finally responded.

“Wow, took me a long time to spot you,” she said. “Great hiding spot. Don't move. Over.”

“Any sign of Medlock yet?” Dillon chimed in. “Over.”

“Not yet. Over,” Danielle said.

We waited and watched in silence from our three triangulated positions. The large gray SUV approached from the south, drawing closer by the second. It turned on to the county road and then eventually pulled up and stopped ten yards away from the Agency's sedans, even closer to me than I was hoping. I'd only been in this business a few months now, but in my experiences, I rarely caught breaks like this.

Once the car pulled up, the fourth person finally stepped out of the Agency's sedan. It was Director Isadoris himself.

Three people got out of the gray SUV. Two were large men in black suits, like bodyguards or something. The third person was a younger man with glasses that looked way too large for his face. He held a small metal case that was handcuffed to his right wrist.

The Exodus Program.

“That must be it, guys,” Dillon said. “Should I release the kraken? Over.”

“No, not yet,” I whispered into my walkie-talkie. “I'll let you know when. Over.”

“Okay, will do. Over,” Dillon said.

“Pushman, do you have eyes on anyone aside from those at the church?” Danielle asked. “Why haven't we seen any sign of Medlock?”

I had been wondering the same thing. What was his plan? Perhaps he was waiting, and his plan was to intercept the program after the exchange. Which sort of made sense: Then there'd be fewer people to deal with. But then what did the Agency have in mind once he made his move? I guess it didn't matter, since I would be laying down my cards first hopefully, and then neither of their plans would even come into play.

The seller and his bodyguards approached the four agents. They shook hands and then Director Isadoris handed a briefcase to one of the bodyguards. The large woman popped it open and showed the contents to the seller.

“Now?” Dillon asked.

“Just wait!” I snapped. “Sorry, but you need to wait for just the right moment. Over.”

There was no reply. The seller peered into the open briefcase, and even from a distance, I saw him smile. I didn't know how much money the Agency was paying for the ability to spy on the world, and I didn't want to know. It was probably over a billion dollars. Which was an impossible amount of money for me to even imagine. My parents made, like, eighty thousand a year combined. That alone seemed like a lot to me.

The bodyguard closed the case. The other one began helping the seller detach his own briefcase from his wrist. This was it. My heart was like a car spinning out of control on a patch of ice.

“Get ready, Pushman,” I said into the walkie-talkie.

“Copy that,” he said back.

Once the case was detached, he punched in a code on the front while one of the bodyguards held it.

“Now, Dillon, now!” I said.

I took as many deep breaths as I could possibly fit into the next thirty seconds.

The seller reached inside the open briefcase and removed something very small. This was it, my window. Why hadn't anything happened yet? Had Dillon not heard me? Had we been wrong about what we suspected would happen?

“Payload is being delivered,” Dillon said, “if you're gonna go, do it now.”

I took one last breath and then fired out of the bushes like a bullet. I had only taken a few steps in my sprint toward the exchange when an explosion nearly knocked me off my feet. I stumbled, but stayed up, and then next thing I knew there was screaming everywhere.

Not people, but bottle rockets. Which went along with a massive fireball blossoming just over a nearby hill.

E
VERY HEAD TURNED AWAY FROM ME TOWARD THE CHAOS.
They instinctively watched as rockets streamed across the sky, exploding into showers of green and red lights. The main explosion itself was even more intense than I'd expected. It had only been two sleds full of fireworks pushed into a natural gas burn-off flame, after all.

We'd spent years saving up those fireworks. Every Fourth of July we all hung out at nearby Cherry Lake and launched fireworks for hours. We always bought huge variety packs and then stashed away the extras. Over time,
we began supplementing the stash with post–Fourth of July discount sales. After six years, we'd amassed a huge stockpile of fireworks. Our plan had been to load them all into a giant wheelbarrow and then set it on fire during our eighth-grade graduation ceremony. We were going to call it the Congratulations Boom-Barrow. But this seemed like an even more important use for them.

The point was this: It was a lot of fireworks. And it served its purpose. Every agent, the seller, and both bodyguards were looking away from me. Which meant I needed to keep moving. I couldn't pause, even for a second, to watch the incredible fireball surrounded by thousands of multicolored fireworks going off.

Instead, I quickly fired a few leftover smoke disks from my hidden wrist launcher that I had recovered from Chum Bucket's supply closet. I'd aimed them right at the exchange point. I'd need to make a clean getaway, after all.

I already had in the special contact lenses that I'd also found among his stash. They had night vision and antifog vision, which would let me see the program, even if the smoke was thick. As I approached, there it was, still clutched in the seller's hand.

All of them were crouching and disoriented, trying to
see through the impossibly thick smoke in the pale, red morning light. I sprinted right between the two bodyguards and went into a baseball slide. The seller was hunched on the ground, likely trying to get away from the thick smoke and ducking from the errant and wild fireworks explosions. I slid right by him, reached out, and easily plucked the program from his hand as I did so.

And just like that, I was holding a small USB drive.

“The program!” I heard the seller shout. “I've lost the program!”

I turned to retreat toward the church when a hand grabbed my arm. It gripped it so hard that my hand went numb and the USB drive fell out and into the snow.

I looked up. It was one of the seller's massive bodyguards. He scowled at me through the smoke, even though I doubted he could see me without antifog contact lenses. But it didn't matter; his grip was like a cyborg's. I struggled, but already I saw him drawing a gun with his other hand.

But then a leg came flying in out of nowhere. The heel from a black dress shoe connected squarely with the bodyguard's jaw. He released me immediately and fell to the ground.

“Get the drive and go!” Agent Nineteen said, as he
followed through on his kick.

He didn't have time to stand there and chat with me, as he spun around and then dived for the bodyguard, who was already reaching out to grab the gun he'd dropped. I didn't wait around to see if he got it back or not. Instead, I hit the deck and searched on my hands and knees for the USB drive.

I found it, snatched it up, and then sprinted back toward the old church and its many hiding spots.

A few seconds later, I heard gunfire. Lots of it. I had no idea if they were shooting at me or at one another or just into the air. It sounded as if it was coming from everywhere. There was shouting, gunfire, and the sound of more fireworks explosions.

I kept my head down and sprinted as I fired more smoke disks all around me. It was so smoky now that without my special contacts I'd probably have crashed right into the side of the old church and gotten a concussion at minimum, and more likely been knocked unconscious. But they somehow cleared the smoke from my vision just enough to give me time to react when the church came into view. I veered right and dived head first through a giant hole in the side of the ancient building.

After quickly scrambling to my feet, I ran down the
center aisle, between rows of ancient pews. The back door was gone, which left a wide-open exit for me to continue my retreat. I headed toward it, still running as quickly as my tired legs would go.

But I had to hit the brakes suddenly as a large figure filled the doorway, blocking my path. I wasn't able to stop in time, and stumbled on the slick cold floor. The figure stepped aside and allowed me to basically fall onto my face in the snow just outside the old church.

I rolled over and looked up.

Medlock stood over me, grinning. He pointed toward the USB drive still clutched in my right hand.

“Carson,” he said smugly. “Once again, you've proven yourself to be so very useful.”