“What thing?”
“That’s classified. But trust me, she screwed up big time, which means she probably doesn’t have the skill to spoof. She has to be using a jammer.”
“How does all that make me a genius?”
“Your average pocket-sized cell phone jammer has a range of maybe eighty feet. But this school is huge, with high-grade construction and very thick walls.”
“And so…?”
As I talk it through, I feel my heart race like it did when I was in the air shaft over chem lab, but in a good way this time. I know I’m onto something.
“Everywhere I’ve gone in the building—the exits, hallways, stairwells on all three floors—I could never raise a cell signal on my phone. Not only that, I heard the janitor talking on his phone. That can only be possible if the hacker is using one seriously hard-core jammer, one with an external antenna that can be tuned to individual frequencies.”
Bunker shakes his head like he’s trying to clear water from his ears. “Dude. You’re talking gibberish.”
It makes so much sense to me now, and I’m so relieved to finally take a step forward instead of two steps back that I’m talking so fast Bunker probably wouldn’t understand me even if he had a clue about zeroes and ones.
“A jammer like that needs its own electric source and would be very noticeable inside the building. She’s on the roof. Or at least her white noise generator is. The signal jamming is too effective to be coming from anything else or anywhere else. We need to get up there and take out that noise generator.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Bunker says, already heading for the door.
“Slow your roll. With those two hostiles next door, we can’t risk taking the hallway. We don’t have time to escape through the air shaft,” I say, already working on a plan. “Help me carry Maitland back in sight of the door.”
Once that’s done, I pull the expandable baton from my backpack, unlock the door, then stand on one side of it, out of view. Bunker gets the idea, grabs the metal coat rack from behind Ms. Flagler’s desk, and takes up guard on the other side of the door.
“Now we just need to get their attention.”
I grab a textbook from a bookshelf, open the door, and throw it at the lockers across the hall before closing the door and getting back into place.
We aren’t in position for ten seconds when we hear someone trying the doorknob. And just as I’d hoped, when the hostile enters, there is a brief moment between him seeing Maitland on the floor and realizing someone else must be in the room.
That’s when I land the steel baton against his pterion, the weakest point on the skull, immediately incapacitating him.
Or possibly killing him.
That’s a step in my development as a covert operative I’d hoped never to take. I never expected I’d have to, despite all the scenarios the Company psychologists tried to prepare me for. It calms my stomach a little when I place two fingers against his neck and find he still has a strong pulse. He’ll probably live long enough to die of something else. Hopefully while in a supermax prison.
I motion to Bunker, and he immediately drags the body out of sight of the window while I close the door, leaving it unlocked. Maitland remains in position, bait for the hostile’s partner, who will surely arrive at any moment.
The problem I’ll face with Hostile #2 is that he’ll be more on guard. Not only does he know I’m in here, he’ll suspect I’ve taken out his partner. He’ll be angry about leaving the classroom, which means leaving his hostages—and his safe passage off the campus—unattended. He’ll be worried the hostages won’t believe whatever story he told to keep them from leaving the classroom. His adrenaline will be pumping just a little harder. He’ll be a little afraid. He’ll be far less predictable than the first guy.
I take my position beside the door again. When Bunker moves to take the same position he held for the first hostile, I raise my hand, signaling him to stay near our latest unconscious captive. Bunker gets it. He knows I want him to make sure the captive stays that way. I’ll have to deal with the next guy on my own. With my back pressed against the wall, I can feel the vibration of the door in the next room opening, then closing again. I nod at Bunker. The second hostile is coming.
As soon as he hits the doorway, and before he can put one foot in the room, I slam the baton into the man’s stomach.
The plan was for me to knock the wind out of him so I could easily get him into a choke hold. But dude didn’t get the memo. When the wand hits his stomach, it’s as though I’ve struck metal, and the energy of the strike reverberates through my hand.
For a brief moment, the sensation causes me to loosen my grip on the baton, allowing the man to take it from me with one hand and aim his sidearm at me with the other. He smiles, but there is nothing in his eyes but cold, hard murder.
“Doesn’t Marchuk want me alive?” I ask.
“Yes. But I don’t care what Marchuk wants.”
You know how they say your life flashes before you when you’re about to die? It doesn’t happen like that for me, not like a movie, anyway. Right now, I’m thinking it was good Rogers made me that offer, and I’m glad I said yes, even if it’s about to get me killed. She gave me something when I’d given up on having anything. I’m thinking I’ve already gone out with a really dope girl and maybe it’s okay that I’ll never know for sure whether she was one of the bad guys. And I’m feeling so afraid, so desperate for something to hold on to even as I’m on my way out, that I try to remember my parents’ faces and, for the first time since forever, they come to me as clearly as the last time I saw them.
He raises the gun and points it at my heart.
This is it. He’s taking me out.
Suddenly he just crumples to the floor as though his legs have been cut out from under him.
Bunker has thrust the bottom end of the coat rack, fencing-style, into the back of the hostile’s knees. It incapacitates him just long enough for me to come back to this world and apply the choke hold I’d planned before he came this close to killing me.
I admit I’m more than a little pissed-off about that, about what he almost took from me, so once again, this guy is very lucky Bunker’s here. No one has spent hours preparing Bunk for all the emotion and potential crazy that comes from seeing the life leave a man by your own hands, and it would probably scar him for life.
It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for me to compress his carotid artery and jugular vein to the point where he’s out cold, but—thanks to Bunk—still breathing. Otherwise, I may have applied the hold a few seconds too long, and then he wouldn’t be.
CHAPTER 16
Bunker and I quickly strip the two hostiles of their clothes. The set I change into reeks of cigarettes and sweat, but I don’t have a choice. Being dressed like them will help us if we’re caught making our way to the roof. Or at least we hope so. Bunker is about eight inches shorter than the shortest of the two bad guys, and the clothes fit him that way. The shortest guy was pretty ripped, but on Bunker, his shirt is much too tight and his pants half a foot too long. If we run into the janitor, fooling him into thinking we’re his fellow bad guys may not prove as successful as we hope. At least we’ll be wearing their Kevlar vests, which explains why it felt like I hit metal when I slammed my baton into that second hostile’s chest.
We’ve changed into full combat gear—everything but the masks—and are about to look for something to tie up our quarry with when we hear footsteps behind us, coming from the supply room and sounding way too heavy to belong to a guinea pig.
“What the hell?”
I turn around, prepared to fight yet another hostile, and for the first time since ever, I’m relieved to see Duncan. I think.