Phoenix Island (25 page)

Carl started to laugh—this had to be a joke—but stopped as he remembered his file, the handwritten note,
National Boxing Champion
, beneath his sixth-grade photo. “But that was . . . years ago.”

“Indeed,” Stark said. “Several years. I kept track of you, and when the time was right, I made the proper arrangements.”

A feeling was building in Carl, something like getting punched, like getting nailed with a shocker of a right hand you hadn’t seen coming, but in very slow motion. “Wait.” He pictured the summary sheet he’d found in his folder, the strange note about Idaho and North Carolina, the date that he’d assumed was an error. “You’re serious?”

Stark smiled. “Completely.”

For a stunned moment, Carl could only stare. It felt like his brain had turned to stone. “So you’re saying . . . that you—”

Stark waved dismissively. “I can’t take all the credit—your choices and actions led to each move, after all—but I made sure that your path led here.” He laughed again. “Didn’t you think it bizarre, getting moved all over the country? Idaho? North Carolina?”

“Yeah,” Carl said, his own voice sounding strange to him, distant, the rock in his skull crumbling now, falling into dust, “I guess I did.”

Stark half turned and started sliding the cover over the mirror again. “Well, I had to get you away from home, break old ties, and eventually
wrap you around to one of my judges. I have a couple dozen friendlies spread from Alaska to Florida, and they keep me in business, without ever really knowing what they’re doing.”

The debris of Carl’s crumbled brain now whirled around his skull in a tornado of confusion. All these years, Stark had been watching him, waiting, pulling strings to bring him here? It called a lot of things into question. That gray-haired judge back in North Carolina, sitting there joking with the cop . . . he’d just been following Stark’s orders? Implications shuddered through him. “Did you put me places where you knew I’d slip up?”

Stark laughed. “You make me sound like the villain from some crazy conspiracy theory.”

“Am I right?” Carl asked, his knuckles starting to ache. “Did you set me up?”

“Set you up?” Stark asked, almost like he was hurt by the question. All at once, his smile died, and his eyes went dark. “I
saved
you.”

In that moment, everything changed, Stark’s anger clicking into place with the simple efficiency of a cocked hammer. Like it was always there, at the ready when he needed it. Carl tensed, certain he’d just crossed a very dangerous line. He had to deescalate this before it was too late.

“Tell me,” Stark said, taking a step closer. “If I hadn’t
set you up
, as you put it, where would you be now? More to the point,
what
would you be?”

I’d be living my own life,
Carl thought, but with caution lights flashing in his mind, he kept that thought to himself and simply shrugged as if he was unsure and open to Stark’s opinion.

“I’ll tell you what you’d be,” Stark said. “Without me, you’d be the neutered pup of some suburban foster family that would pump you full of happy drugs twenty-four/seven. Would you like that?”

“No,” Carl said, telling himself,
Fix . . . this . . . now. . . .
“I wouldn’t like that at all.” He shook his head for effect.

“I didn’t think so,” Stark said, and leaned back a little. “I only want what’s best for you, Carl. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Carl forced a smile onto his face. “I know. Thanks.”

Stark smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “My decision to facilitate your direction might seem bold, but that shouldn’t bother a person like you. Life is a series of choices. People pretend these choices are simple—right versus wrong, good versus evil, heads or tails, take your pick—but in the real world, we face dilemmas. No simple answers. Nothing black or white, everything gray. You and I both know it.”

Carl nodded, thinking,
Keep nodding
.
Keep him happy
.

“Boxing success brought your name to my attention,” Stark said, “but it was your handling of dilemmas that won me over. A single charge, repeated ad infinitum.”

Carl stiffened. The exact phrase he’d seen in his folder . . .

Stark started pacing again. “When you saw bullies picking on someone, you acted decisively, intervening even though you knew it would bring you trouble. Even as boy, you were a man of action.” He grinned.

Carl looked at the ground. “They made me mad.”

“Understandable,” Stark said, “Anger is a natural response to a world gone mad, where schools fearing public opinion claim ‘zero tolerance’ for bullies, then punish a boy for showing that exact lack of tolerance, the same world where a government fearing global opinion declares a ‘war against terror,’ then betrays an elite soldier who actually tries to wage that war.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

But Carl could see that Stark was lost in his speech and didn’t seem to hear the question. “The world needs us, Carl, needs us to set things right. We don’t hesitate during dilemmas, we act—decisively—because we understand and accept that the price of progress runs high at times. That’s what we do: we affect progress, making the world a better place, even if that means breaking rules, even if the price runs high at times.”

Carl nodded again, feeling like a puppet on a string.

“No matter how you got here,” Stark said, “you’ve come to the right place. Phoenix Island is the heart of a much larger organization committed to making the world a better place. We have additional operations, albeit cruder ones, all over the world.”

“Wait,” Carl said, rattled out of the nodding routine. “There are more places like this?”

“Many,” Stark said. “We have facilities in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. The best children end up here, though, where I train them as Phoenix Force troopers.”

Carl tensed, remembering Eric’s journal. Phoenix Force, the Old Man’s killers-for-hire. But he just said, “You train Phoenix Force?”

“Abso-hooah-lutely,” Stark said, beaming with obvious pride. “I’m company commander, the father of this organization. That’s why they call me the Old Man.”

T
HE JEEP DROPPED THEM
a couple of miles from camp. Thick forest hugged both sides of the road. A little way back, they had driven over the big swamp. Octavia opened the map.

Ross, pretending to call after the jeep, said, “On second thought, I’ve changed my mind. Drop me off in Massachusetts instead.”

The guy never quit with the jokes. Here he was, with a face like a train wreck, stuck out in the woods, still joking around. In a way, it was pretty cool. In another way, not so much—and Octavia hoped she could control her temper.

You will,
she told herself.
You will do everything you have to do because you’re going to win this thing
. She had to get these guys on board.

“All right,” she said, “Medicaid— Uh, what’s your real name?”

Medicaid looked at her and laughed. A light breeze passed, and Octavia smelled urine.

Lord, give me strength,
she thought. “All right, then. We’ll just continue with Medicaid. Go on over to that checkpoint. They said there should be some paper in the box.”

To her surprise, Medicaid went straight to the post, pulled out the paper, and brought it to her.

“Look,” Octavia said. “We can do this, guys. I mean it. We might not be the most athletic group, but we’re smart. Map reading was easy. I liked it.”

“Stockholm syndrome,” Ross said. “You’re going native. Next thing
you know, you’ll develop a love for camouflage, plan a wedding dress in green and black.”

“Ross, for as much as I admire your spirit, if you don’t stop screwing around, I’ll strangle you.”

“Whoa—” Ross said, putting up his hands. “I’m all for trying to win, but don’t ask me to stop making jokes, like, ever.”

“Whatever. Just take a look at this map, okay?”

They flattened the map on the ground, took out the compass and a pencil, and got started. Medicaid scuffed around on the road, talking to himself, while she and Ross plotted the course.

“That’s where he got it,” Ross said, pointing to the right side of the map, which showed the outline of the island but no detail, just dark cross-hatching, save for a single, short phrase she couldn’t understand.

“That’s where who got what?”

Ross glanced over his shoulder toward Medicaid. “Nothing. I saw another map, and it used this phrase,
hic sunt dracones
—here are dragons. It’s a figure of speech—an old one—meaning an uncharted area, maybe dangerous, maybe not. Besides, whatever’s on the other side of the island, there’s a fence between it and us.”

She didn’t like the way he smiled at her then, like it was forced, like he was worried or afraid or something. Like he was lying. She started to say something but stopped. There wasn’t time. “All right. Let’s shoot this azimuth.”

“The girl speaks Mapese!” Ross said, and this time his smile was genuine. “Shooting the azimuth, ma’am.”

She knew Ross was smart. It showed as they worked out the best path together.

“Sometimes,” Ross said, “the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line.” He traced his finger across the map between their location and the first checkpoint. “See how all those lines and circles get tight here? See how the numbers get lower and lower?”

“The swamp?” Octavia said.

“Bingo,” Ross said. “Let’s walk back up the road past it,
then
head into the woods. Then we won’t have to cross the swamp on foot. We can use the bridge.”

At a glance, the route he’d charted looked silly, a long curving line that went way off before looping back to a point that lay straight ahead of them, but she knew he was right. If they traveled in a straight line, they would get stuck in the marsh with all those snakes and spiders and who knew what else.

“Good idea,” Octavia said. Then, to Medicaid, she said, “All right, let’s go.”

She and Ross started walking. Medicaid followed.
Note to self,
she thought.
Look over your shoulder every now and then. Make sure the kid hasn’t wandered off and gotten lost
.

They walked up the road and crossed the bridge.

“Let’s step it up,” she said. “I want to win this thing.”

Medicaid laughed, perhaps a little cruelly.

“I hate to say it, but the kid has a point,” Ross said. “I just want to avoid coming in last. If ever anybody needed a beauty rest, it’s me. I mean, really”—he pretended to fluff nonexistent hair—“I don’t think these bruises do a thing for me, do you?”

She wanted to punch him. This place, the constant pressure—they were driving her nuts. She fought to keep her voice level. “I’m serious, okay? We have to win. I don’t care about the food—well, I do, but that’s not the point—we have to show them they can’t control us. Did you see Parker’s face when he read off the group? Did you hear Decker laughing? They obviously expect us to take last. I’m not giving them the satisfaction.”

Ross started jamming on an air guitar. “I can’t get no . . . satisfaction!”

She grabbed his throat and glared into his eyes. “Ross! Enough . . . with . . . the . . . jokes! Now get serious, or I swear I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

Ross wriggled free and backed away, rubbing his neck. “Honestly, I’m not sure I
can
stop. It’s a thing with me. I mean, I can’t control it, really. Last night, those guys were beating the crap out of me with their clubs, I made a crack, and they gave it to me all over again. I mean, what I said wasn’t even a
good
joke.”

“Wait a minute. You said ‘those guys’—you mean Decker, those guys?”

“Well, yeah . . . you see anybody else walking around with clubs?”

“I assumed Parker did it. He let
them
hit you?”

“Let them? He
told
them to do it. Not that he had to tell them twice.”

“That’s crazy. I don’t know why I’m surprised, but—”

“There’s a lot about this place that would surprise you.” Ross stared at her for a second, and she’d never seen him look so serious. Those eyes weren’t within a mile of joke.

“Don’t make me play guessing games, Ross—talk.”

But Ross turned his bruised eyes to glance at Medicaid, who bumbled after them vaguely. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Hey,” she said to Medicaid, who was laughing and mumbling to a bright blue butterfly fluttering around his head, “you want to step it up? Stop fooling with the butterfly and let’s go.”

“Pretty butterfly!” Medicaid said, and then giggled like the thing was tickling him.

Turning to Ross, she said, “He’s not listening.”

“Don’t be so sure. The kid’s gone completely insane over the last couple of weeks, but he hears a lot more than he seems to. Isn’t that right, Medicaid?”

Medicaid laughed.

Ross raised his brows.

Octavia sighed. “Whatever. Let’s just step it up, okay? Wait—does this have to do with Carl?”

Ross shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, it has to do with all of us, but yeah . . . I’m worried about him. But seriously, not now, okay? It’s not worth the risk, with our partner.”