“I didn’t think you actually would, but it’s clear I’ve chosen the right person to help me demonstrate today’s experiment. But first, erase that whiteboard for me while I explain the hypothesis and experiment to your not-as-chemically-gifted classmates.”
While Velasquez drones on about physical versus chemical properties, I realize why the abstract design on that piece of paper is so familiar. Erasing the board, I quickly take the paper from my pocket and sniff. Sulfur. It’s the cover from a matchbook, the kind you rarely find outside restaurants and hotels, and hardly even there anymore, at least not in this country. But in parts of Europe where smoking is still like a religion, matchbooks are everywhere. Now I remember where I’ve seen that design. Even though it went by me at ninety kilometers per hour, I’m pretty sure it was the logo of a hotel I passed on my ride from the airport through Kiev.
Ukraine.
One of the first things you learn in spy school: there are no coincidences.
The realization that someone from that operation might be inside Carlisle just about knocks me on my ass. I drop the eraser and brace myself against Velasquez’s lab table as a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea hits me.
“Mr. Smith, you don’t look so great. Are you well?”
“I … think … so.”
“If you’re to be my assistant, you need to know so. I can’t have you blowing up my sixth period,” Velasquez says, getting a couple of laughs from the class, along with a Yeah, don’t ruin that Prettyboy face from some girl. I can’t tell which one because right now, I can barely talk.
“I’m fine, sir,” I lie, hoping this will play out the way I expect.
Velasquez looks skeptical, but hands me a slip of paper. “Fetch these items from the supply room.”
Just what I hoped he would say. I’ve bought myself a couple of minutes to do something I should have done an hour ago.
I check the classroom on the other side of the supply room, which is really more like a big closet, and find it empty. That’s right; Ms. Flagler was supposed to take both her biology classes on a field trip to the museum today. Perfect. I won’t be interrupted by someone sent to fetch supplies for a bio experiment.
I never linked the hacker to Marchuk until now, because we were able to shut down his operation despite my screwup. And with his former boss in a shallow grave somewhere, I just figured the hacker had moved on to the next illegal arms supplier with a job opening. But it’s possible the hacker is still tied to someone in the Marchuk operation. How else does a hotel matchbook get halfway around the world from Ukraine to Colorado? There is a single Ukrainian student on campus, but she cleared my suspect list because she’s a junior in her third year at Carlisle. We’re in the same English Lit class.
As I close the adjacent supply-room door behind me, I tell myself she’s behind the propped-open door, but still I begin placing the phone call that has become a whole lot more important than just reporting how I’m all over the internet. Like I said, the matchbook can’t be a coincidence. My intel says neither the girl nor her family have returned to Ukraine since they arrived here three years ago. And I know from cyberstalking him that the hacker left Ukraine the same day I did. So who carries a hotel matchbook around in his pocket for seven months? No one.
Who would have a matchbook from that hotel? Someone who only recently arrived from Ukraine, that’s who.
Weird. My phone is showing zero bars, even though there’s a cell tower an eighth of a mile up the road. Luckily, there’s a landline hanging on the wall of the supply room. I punch in Rogers’s number, but just as my call begins to ring, the line goes dead. Pressing the receiver button a couple of times doesn’t make it come back to life.
I check my phone again. Still no bars. All the metal storage cabinets could be blocking electromagnetic radio waves from the cell tower, like when you can’t make a call from an elevator. Since Carlisle went all out on their security, maybe that includes securing a supply room full of combustible chemicals. Maybe the room is one big safety cabinet and the walls are lined with eighteen-gauge steel. It’s a stretch, but I’d rather that be the case than the other theory I’m trying not to come up with, which has to do with the hacker’s specialty—communications. He’s a modern-day phreak—a genius at all things telephony.
I try Ms. Flagler’s room. No cell reception in here, either. Okay, this ain’t good. And soon, Mr. Velasquez is going to send someone to see what’s taking me so long. It’s a wonder he hasn’t done it already. But he’s going to have to wait a bit longer.
I head for the hallway in search of a working phone, and just as I turn the doorknob, I hear what sounds like a scream—piercing at first, then muffled—come from my chem class.
The screamer was quieted quickly, but I heard enough to know someone in my class is terrified. It stops me in my tracks. Do I head for the hall and a phone, or go back to chem and help? Before I can really think through my decision, I’m walking quickly through the bio lab and back into the supply room. I open the door just a crack. What I see makes my blood run cold.
There are two masked men in front of the classroom, both wearing the uniform of black-ops soldiers everywhere: cargo pants, t-shirt, boots, tactical belt. The first bad guy has one hand covering the mouth of the girl who must have screamed, and I’m guessing the heavy-looking bag in his other hand isn’t holding a picnic lunch.
“Look, I don’t want any more of that screaming nonsense because there’s no reason for it,” the other bad guy explains in a thick New York accent. He obviously doesn’t understand how two guys dropping through the ceiling might worry most people. “I can promise no one will get hurt if you only cooperate. We’re thieves, not killers.”
My classmates are probably hoping that story is true, but I’m not buying it.
Mr. Velasquez isn’t convinced, either. As Bad Guy #2 reaches into the back of his waistband, probably for a weapon, my teacher tries to tackle him. Heroic, but a very bad move. These thieves are probably professionals to have gotten this far past Carlisle’s security measures. And Velasquez is a chem teacher.
Oh no. Now he’s a chem teacher in an expertly applied choke hold. Before I can even process what’s happening, the bad guy is already done with Mr. Velasquez, who he lets slump to the floor, unconscious. Or worse.
I try not to completely lose my lunch as I move through the biology classroom and head for the nearest exit.
CHAPTER 7
Out in the hallway, everything is quiet, as though there aren’t two very scary men in sixth-period chemistry holding seventeen people hostage. But you learn in the spy trade to assume nothing is as it seems, so I move quietly toward the main door. If this is happening anywhere else in the building, and all the phone lines are down, our only chance is for me to get out and find help. I stay close to the wall of lockers in case I need to suddenly take cover by running into the restroom, a janitor’s supply closet, or worst case, one of the classrooms.
Truth? I’m tempted to duck into one of those places and hide out until these people get what they want and leave. Right now I’d much rather be just a kid who is having the worst day of his senior year than a highly trained CIA operative—with a potentially blown cover, thanks to that stupid photo—who has a duty to do something.
I know what they said about being thieves, but a guy who can take high-school kids as hostages—and take out a teacher who was only trying to protect them—cannot be trusted to tell the truth. And like I said, that Ukrainian matchbook can’t be random. It’s safer to work from multiple assumptions. Considering their obvious infiltration skills and the weight and size of that tactical gear bag they were carrying, this is what I’m thinking so far:
1.??They’re truly thieves and have come to steal something really valuable.
2.??They’re lost thieves and have somehow mistaken Carlisle for the Denver Mint.