Spy Ski School (5 page)

“I call one bed!” Chip exclaimed the moment we entered our room.

“You can't do that,” Warren pointed out. “There's only two beds. We have to share them.”

“Fine.” Chip sighed. “I'll share with you. You can have it during the day and I'll use it at night.”

“Deal,” Warren said. It wasn't until they'd shaken hands on it that he realized what he'd just agreed to. “Hey! Wait a minute. . . .”

“Too late. You shook on it.” Chip flopped onto the bed, staking his claim to it.

“Handshakes aren't legally binding!” Warren protested. “Tell him, Jawa!”

“Technically they are,” Jawa said, then looked to me. “I suppose that means you and I are sharing the other bed.”

“All right.” I was pleased not to have to share with Chip or Warren. Chip was so big, he would have taken up the whole bed, and Warren smelled like old cheese. (Zoe claimed this was because he never did his laundry, but I suspected he had some sort of personal hygiene problem.)

None of us bothered to take off the heavy ski parkas we were wearing. It was too cold in the room for that. There was a small heater by the door, but despite clattering like a car that had thrown a rod, it seemed to be heating only the three inches of air surrounding it.

We'd been traveling the whole day. First we'd taken a plane from Washington to Denver. Economy class, of
course, but I hadn't cared; it was the first plane I'd ever been on. Then we'd boarded a shuttle from the airport, which took us up the winding highway, through the mountains, to Vail. I had spent the whole time on both legs of the trip staring out the window. I'd been awed to see the country passing below me from thirty-five thousand feet above—and I'd been equally awed by the Rocky Mountains from ground level. The previous summer I'd thought that the mountains of West Virginia were impressive (although I'd been a bit too busy running for my life to fully appreciate them). However, those were mere speed bumps compared to the Rockies, which were far more massive and beautiful than I could have ever imagined. I'd seen plenty of pictures of them before, but those hadn't come close to doing the mountains justice.

Jawa set his suitcase on the bed and unzipped it, revealing a neatly arranged selection of ski clothes. Jawa was exceptionally well organized; he had separate, clearly labeled plastic bags for socks, gloves, sweaters, and thermal underwear.

Chip, on the other hand, appeared to have wadded all of his clothes into a ball and then crammed it into a duffel bag that was two sizes too small. Two of the seams had split en route, forcing Chip to repair them with duct tape.

“I can't thank you enough for inviting me on this,” Jawa told me, carefully arranging his underwear in the bureau. “As
if it weren't amazing enough to be on my first assignment, I also get a free ski vacation out of it!”

“Yeah,” Chip echoed. “You wouldn't believe how jealous everyone else back at school was when I told them I was going.”

I turned to him, aghast. “You weren't supposed to tell
anyone
. This mission is top secret!”

“Relax,” Chip told me. “They already knew. It's a school for spies. Nothing stays a secret there for long.” He rolled off the bed and unzipped his overstuffed duffel bag. Clothes erupted from it with such force that a pair of boxer shorts sailed across the room and nailed Warren in the face.

Warren screamed in horror, stumbled backward over his own suitcase, and collapsed on the floor.

“It's not really supposed to be a vacation,” I warned them. “Erica says our lives could be at risk.”

Chip laughed and shrugged this off. “Erica always thinks her life is at risk. Remember last year when she got all worked up about us having a mole in the school?”

“Um . . . there
was
a mole,” I reminded him. “And our lives really were in danger. I almost got killed. Twice.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chip recalled. “That's right. Hey, I wonder if anyone will try to kill
us
this time.”

“I hope so!” Jawa said excitedly. “That'd be amazing!”

“Assuming they're unsuccessful,” Warren pointed out.

Chip pegged him in the face with another pair of boxers. “Well, duh. No one wants a
successful
attempt made on their life, you nitwit.”

“What if it happened on the slopes?” Jawa asked, his excitement ratcheting up a few notches. “And we got to have an honest-to-goodness ski chase? How fantastic would that be?”

“It'd be the best,” Chip agreed. “Warren, stop playing with my underwear, you pervert.” He snatched the boxers Warren had just removed from his head and tossed them into a drawer, along with a handful of random socks and gloves.

“You really think you could outrun someone on skis?” I asked them.

“Definitely,” Jawa replied confidently. “I've been skiing ever since I was a kid.”

“Me too,” Chip agreed. “Just let Leo Shang try to mow me down out there. I'll leave him in the dust.”

“I'm pretty good on skis myself,” Warren boasted.

I sighed. This wasn't the first time I'd found myself out of my league around my fellow students. Most of them had been training in various skills such as jujitsu or marksmanship their whole lives, which had been great assets when the CIA was looking for new recruits. Meanwhile, I hadn't really gotten into spy school on my own merits at all. Sure, I had strong math skills and some facility with languages,
but in truth, I'd been recruited as a patsy. I had been bait to catch that mole and the school hadn't really expected me to survive. When I had, they'd realized they couldn't return me to normal life—I knew too many secrets—so I'd been allowed to stay. But while I'd proven myself on subsequent missions, I still didn't feel anywhere near as confident as Jawa or Chip did. The reason they were so bizarrely eager to confront danger was that, after years of training for it, they were convinced they could handle it easily. They were like minor league baseball players who'd finally been bumped up to the majors and couldn't wait for their first game.

Meanwhile, I was like someone who'd been plunked into the majors without ever being taught how to catch. I'd had to pick up almost everything on the fly. For example, I'd never skied a day in my life. While Chip and Jawa would be posing as beginners to blend in with the ski school, I really
was
a beginner. “If anyone tries to kill
me
on the slopes, I'm going to be a sitting duck.” I sighed.

“Ptarmigan,” Warren corrected.

“What?” I asked.

“There's no ducks in the mountains,” Warren explained. “Whereas a ptarmigan is a bird found in cold climates like the northern tundra. So you wouldn't be a sitting duck. You'd be a sitting ptarmigan.”

“Shut up, Warren,” Chip threatened. “Or the next time
I throw a pair of boxers at you, they'll be the ones I've been wearing for the last sixteen hours.”

Warren cringed in fear and stumbled over his suitcase once again.

“No one's really gonna try to kill us,” Jawa told me reassuringly. “That's just wishful thinking on our part. Statistically, ninety-eight-point-five percent of CIA missions resolve without any action at all.”

“Mine haven't,” I reminded him. “So far, a hundred percent of my missions have ended with bad guys trying to kill me.”

“That's great!” Chip exclaimed. “Then you're due for an easy one. But just in case this mission
does
have some danger . . .” He paused to share an excited glance with Jawa. “Don't sweat it. We've got your back.”

“That's right,” Jawa agreed. “You brought us in on this mission. We're gonna make sure you get out of it alive.”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping they were right.

Warren unzipped his luggage on the floor beside me. “So what does the CIA think Operation Golden Fist even is?”

“They don't know.” I set my own suitcase next to Jawa's on the bed. “Though Cyrus thinks it might have something to do with one of the government facilities in the Rockies. NORAD, Strategic Missile Command . . .”

“The Cheyenne Mountain Complex,” Jawa suggested.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Noah's ark for the Cold War,” Jawa replied. “It was built during the 1950s to be able to withstand a nuclear attack. Thirty miles of tunnels, living spaces, and control rooms dug deep under the mountains. The idea was, should everyone actually launch their nukes, the president and a few thousand people could actually live down there for years so humanity would survive.”

“Why would a bad guy want to access a bunch of old tunnels?” Warren scoffed.

“Because the complex is still active,” Jawa replied. “It houses the emergency backup controls for everything from our defense systems to the entire U.S. power grid. If Shang got to it, he could cripple our entire country in one blow. Which would then set the stage for China to become the world's primary economic and military power.”

Warren's smug expression vanished. “Oh.”

“Of course, I'm just spitballing,” Jawa admitted. “Maybe Shang has something even more sinister up his sleeve.”

“Well, whatever he's plotting, I'm sure Ben will figure it out.” Chip gave me a punch in the arm that was supposed to be supportive and playful but was actually strong enough to knock me into the wall. “Oops,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

“It's cool,” I said, trying to act like it hadn't hurt—even though it had. I was also trying to act like I wasn't completely
daunted by my mission. The idea that Shang could be plotting something so diabolical was terrifying to me, and I didn't have nearly the confidence in myself that Chip seemed to. I caught sight of myself in the slightly cracked mirror that hung over the lopsided dresser in the motel room. I didn't merely
feel
incapable; I didn't
look
capable either. But then, my pathetic clothing probably had a lot to do with that.

While Chip, Jawa, and Warren all wore brand-new ski outfits, I had cobbled mine together with hand-me-downs from my cousins. My parka was twenty-five years old, and my scarf had more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese. My gloves didn't even match.

In fact, now that I thought about it, I was missing one glove entirely. The first was still clipped to the zipper of my parka, but the other had gone AWOL. I tried to remember when I'd last had it. The lobby, I figured. I'd worn the gloves when getting off the shuttle in the motel parking lot but had removed them in the lobby to warm my hands by the fire. The fire had turned out to be a fake—some ceramic logs with cheap plastic flames dancing among them—but I hadn't seen my other glove since then.

“I'll be right back,” I said.

“Where are you going?” Chip questioned. “To see Erica?”

“Why would I be going to see Erica?” I asked.

“Because you're madly in love with her,” Chip replied.

Yet another piece of top-secret information that everyone at spy school knew anyhow. Although this wasn't really a testament to any great spy skills on Chip's part; practically every guy at spy school had a crush on Erica. “I'm not seeing Erica. I lost my glove.”

“Ah, the old ‘pretending to lose your glove so you can go see Erica' trick,” Jawa teased. “Can't fool us with that one.”

“I'll be right back,” I said, then stepped through the flimsy door into the parking lot.

It wasn't much colder outside than it had been inside. The sun was already sinking below the mountains on the horizon, casting the valley in shadow, but the sky was still brilliant blue above. Across the highway, I could see the snowy slopes of Vail Mountain, giant white slashes through green forests with skiers wending their way down them.

Something suddenly nailed me in the head, just behind my right ear. For a moment I was terrified that I'd already been ambushed by the enemy, but then the sensation of cold wetness kicked in and I realized the weapon had merely been a snowball.

Hank Schacter, Chip's seventeen-year-old brother, emerged from around the side of the motel, smirking, two more snowballs at the ready. Hank was a meathead and a jerk. I never would have willingly invited him on a mission, but as my resident adviser at spy school, he'd been brought
along as a chaperone. Somehow, he'd scored his own space—albeit an extremely cramped one that barely had room for a twin bed. “We're on a CIA mission, Ripley,” he scolded. “You can't drop your guard like that. We can't have anyone making dumb mistakes.”

“Like announcing that we're on a CIA mission in a public space?” I asked.

Hank tried to think of a response, failed, and then threw another snowball at me.

I tried to dodge it, but wasn't fast enough. It thwacked me in the chest.

“Lousy reflexes, too,” Hank chided. “You better hope the heat doesn't come down on this operation, or you're gonna be dead meat.”

I looked around for cover, but there wasn't any in the parking lot. The few cars were too far away. And there wasn't any snow nearby to fight back with; it had all been pummeled into slush.

The third snowball smacked me in the face. Snow cascaded down into my jacket.

“You're pathetic!” Hank snarled. “If you want to survive, you need to think! You need to keep your guard up at all times. If you allow yourself to be distracted for so much as one second, you're gonna end up in serious trouble.”

“Like you?” a voice asked.

Hank spun around, startled, to find Erica fifteen feet away, standing next to a large pile of snowballs. Meanwhile, Hank had thrown his last one at me and was unarmed. Instantly, his demeanor changed from cocky to weaselly. “Hold on, Erica,” he pleaded. “I was just trying to teach Ben a lesson. . . .”

“So now I'll teach you one,” Erica said. “Don't be a jerk, or
this
will happen.” With that, she unleashed a fusillade of snowballs, moving so fast Hank might as well have been shot with a snowball machine gun. Hank ran, but Erica predicted his every move, pegging him repeatedly, until he finally escaped into the safety of the lobby.