0062120085. (C) (19 page)

“W
AIT,” I SAID, “YOU CAN’T DO THIS!”

Medlock laughed. “Oh, but we’re not doing this. You are. We will stop as soon as you tell us what we want to know.”

“I will. What do you want to know?” I said, knowing that I was being weak. But I didn’t care; I couldn’t sit there and watch them torture Olek.

But I also kept working the razor back and forth. I was starting to make some progress now. I was maybe one fifth of the way through the thick plastic tie. I worked
faster, knowing that I was already so panicked it would simply look like my shoulders were trembling from fear rather than working to cut myself free.

“How many contacts at the Agency did you have?” Packard asked.

“I . . . I don’t know,” I stammered. “I only communicated with them via email.”

“You’re lying,” Medlock said.

“No, I swear!”

Medlock looked at me and then nodded at Packard. Packard grabbed a chunk of Olek’s arm with the teeth pliers and started applying pressure. Olek’s scream was about enough to destroy me.

“Okay, okay!” I said. Packard released the pressure slightly.

“Carson, no, don’t tell,” Olek yelled.

“Just one. There was only one guy.”

Mule Medlock studied me. Then he shook his head. “I’m disappointed that you clearly care about your friend so little. Packard, proceed.”

Packard once again squeezed the giant teeth pliers and then started twisting. Olek screamed so loud that my will just shattered. I know this makes me a horrible secret agent. But I couldn’t handle knowing that I was
causing Olek so much pain.

“Three! I only had contact with three guys at the Agency. I swear that’s the truth this time!” I shouted, referring to Agents Nineteen, Blue, and Chum Bucket.

Packard released Olek’s arm. I saw that the skin where he’d gripped him was already purple and blue from bruising. Blood dribbled down where several teeth had broken the skin. Olek didn’t cry, though; he just breathed deeply and rapidly.

“There we go! See?” Medlock said. “We already knew that, of course, since we’ve been following you from the day you got the package, remember? But thank you for finally telling the truth.”

“If you knew that, then why did you ask?” I shouted. I kept working the razor. I was close to halfway now.

“Just to see how far we had to push to get the truth out of you,” he said. “Not very far at all, I must say. See? This is one of the problems with hiring a kid to do secret-agent fieldwork. You just break so easily. You have no willpower, no discipline. Well, at least not enough to be an Agency operative. But their mistake is my gain, as usual.”

He nodded at Packard to continue. Packard looked at me and grinned.

“Tell me the names of your contacts?” he said. “Both their codenames and covers.”

“I really don’t know! They never told me!” I shouted.

Medlock shook his head and Packard gripped one of Olek’s thumbs with the teeth pliers. He squeezed and started twisting it. I heard a snap as Olek’s thumb broke. He screamed so loud it was almost deafening. Then Packard moved on to the other one.

At the same moment I was finally able to cut through the zip tie. The guard and Medlock were both watching Packard do his thing and didn’t see that I was loose. I reached down and quickly sliced the ties on my ankles and then lifted my elbows, allowing the bungee cords to slide up my arms and round my neck.

Mule Medlock looked at me with pure shock right as I emptied my smokescreen gun into his face. Then I lunged at him, screaming as pain ripped through my ankles. My shoulder connected with his midsection as smoke billowed around us.

He fell backward into the guard who had already drawn his pistol. They both fell to the ground as he fired several wild shots. I heard pings of ricocheted bullets in the confined space.

I rolled off Medlock. I could no longer see due to the
smoke, but my hands found the guard’s face and I jabbed both my thumbs into his eye sockets. I pushed so hard I thought I might kill him. He screamed and flung me off him. I hit the floor pretty hard, but I knew I’d done some damage. The fog was thick, but through the haze I could see the guard flailing blindly on the ground.

Where was Mule Medlock? I spun around and saw him lying on the ground with a pool of blood blooming under him. He must have gotten hit by a ricocheting bullet. I crawled through the smoke, no longer able to put any weight on my ankles, in the direction of Olek and Packard.

Packard found me first. He came rushing out of the smoke with a giant saw in his hand. He swung it at me and I managed to just duck the blow without even thinking. I was on my knees, which put me at about an even height with him. I grabbed his whole torso in a massive bear hug, pinning his arms at his sides. Then I pushed all my weight toward him and we slammed to the hard tile floor.

Packard wheezed, the wind knocked out of him. I rolled left and then got back to my knees. He tried to get up but stumbled. I grabbed his hair and yanked back as hard as I could. He screamed and I ended up with a
handful of black hair.

Hey, I know it’s cheap, but right then I just wanted to win the fight. By any means necessary. Who cared if it was by cheap means? I was fighting for our lives, after all.

Packard swung his fists at me wildly, but I was able to duck away from his pretty short reach. Then I grabbed wildly at the cart of tools. My hand closed around a massive syringe. Through the smoky haze, our eyes locked.

He held up a huge white knife made from what looked like a sharpened tusk. He swung it at me so quickly that I was barely able to fall back and out of the way. I actually felt a whoosh of air hit my face as the blade sliced just past my nose.

As I fell backward, I threw the syringe. I heard a soft thump and screaming. I climbed back to my knees and saw Packard running around wildly in the fog, the giant syringe lodged in his forehead. He was so out of control in the smoky haze that he ended up running right into the concrete wall with a thud. He slumped to the ground, blood dripping from a clearly broken nose.

This was turning into a bloodbath.

“Olek, are you okay?” I called out.

“Not really,” he replied calmly.

I guess it was a silly question being that he had
two broken thumbs and a nasty bite mark on his arm. Although his reply meant he was alive, which was good enough for me.

“I’ll cut you free soon,” I said.

“No rush,” he said.

“My eyes, I can’t see,” I heard the guard moaning from somewhere behind me. “Kid, what did you do to my eyes?”

I crawled over to Olek and cut him free. His hands and arms were swollen and looked really painful. But he seemed to be in high spirits anyway.

“I knew you rescue me,” he said. “You’re best agent I ever meet.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, remembering that I was the one who had gotten us into this in the first place. “I can’t walk, Olek.”

“Here,” he said. The smoke was lifting now and I saw him swipe his arm across the metal cart, shoving all the tools onto the floor. “Get on.”

I climbed onto the cart. “Can you push it? With your thumbs and everything?”

“No worry, I got it,” he said.

He grabbed the cart with his fingers only. His crooked thumbs dangled below his palms.

“Take us over to Packard,” I said.

Olek wheeled us over to him. He was still breathing but completely knocked out. I reached into his jacket pocket and found a set of car keys with a security keycard attached to it. Just in case we encountered any locked doors while making our getaway.

“Okay, ready,” I said.

Olek pushed us toward the door, past the guard who had passed out with his hands covering his eyes. I knew he wasn’t dead because his chest heaved.

I used Packard’s keycard and shoved the door open. Olek pushed the cart forward and suddenly we were jammed in the door frame. I gave the door another push and looked back at Olek. He grinned as he struggled to get the cart through.

Behind him I saw a pool of blood on the cement where Mule Medlock had been lying. But Medlock himself was no longer there.

“O
H, CRAP, OLEK, WE HAVE TO GO, NOW!”

Then I saw Medlock. He stumbled toward us, one hand over his stomach where he’d been shot, the other holding a gun. He fired just as Olek gave a final push and freed us from the door frame.

“Are you hit?” I asked.

“Like Beatles song?” he asked.

“Not now,” I shouted, even though I knew his answer was as good as a no. “Let’s go!”

The cart moved pretty quickly down the hallway with
Olek running while pushing it. Mule Medlock was running behind us, or more stumbling than running. But he was firing. Bullets whizzed past us, sometimes slamming into the wall just ahead of me. Had he not had a bullet wound in his stomach, I was pretty sure his aim would have been more deadly.

When we were finally at the outside door, Olek stopped the cart and ran around to open it. He grabbed the underside of the cart and pulled us both outside. The cart hit the doorframe and tipped, and we both spilled onto the pavement as the door swung closed. I sat up and Olek struggled to get to his feet with his injured hands.

Men with machine guns ran toward us from across the huge lot. Medlock must have hit some kind of alert. Then I saw the Mini Cooper. Its custom license plate read:
PACKARD
.

I locked eyes with Olek; he must have been thinking the same thing. We both nodded as I started crawling toward the car. The approaching men began firing. A few bullets hit the side of the car, and I heard them shouting.

“Don’t hit the dark-haired one. We need him alive!”

The shooting stopped, but they were getting close now. I used the keys I had taken from Packard to unlock the car. We climbed inside. I sat in the driver’s seat. I’d
never driven before but figured it couldn’t be too hard. I’d seen my mom do it thousands of times. I started the ignition and put my foot on the brake, then yelled out in pain.

“Olek, you have to drive. I can’t use the pedals!” I yelled.

“I can’t steer,” he said, holding up his mangled thumbs.

“Uh, okay, you work the pedals, I can handle steering,” I said. “Press the brake.”

He crouched on the floor and then reached over and pushed on the brake pedal with his knuckles, wincing as he did so. I shifted the gear stick to
R
, which I assumed meant reverse.

“Okay, gas!” I yelled.

He slammed his hand onto the gas pedal and the car’s tires screeched and then suddenly we were zooming backward, way faster than I expected. Through the rearview mirror, I saw the men with guns diving out of the way.

I turned the wheel. “Brake!”

Olek hit the brake, and the car started spinning as it slowed. We must have spun at least 720 degrees before finally stopping. I smelled burned rubber. I quickly surveyed the road ahead. We were now facing the fence that
separated the gray building from the main carnival area. I looked behind me. There were seven men with machine guns climbing to their feet.

“Gas, punch it hard!” I shouted.

Olek did, and after spinning for a second, the tires got their grip and we fired forward like a rocket. I screamed and held the wheel as steady as I could as we slammed into the fence. The car crashed right through it. We raced straight toward a ticket booth.

“Less gas!” I shouted.

Olek let up, and I spun the wheel. I turned it way too far, having no idea what I was doing. The car spun again, and I felt the right wheels lift up as we almost tipped over. Then we skidded to a stop, just missing the ticket booth.

“Gas!” I said as I saw the men chasing us on foot through the rearview mirror.

The fairgrounds looked empty. They must have closed it after the animal debacle. It was dark outside now. I looked down and found a switch with a drawing of a light on it. I pulled it out and the headlights switched on.

“Okay, easy gas,” I said.

And then we were driving. It was a jerky, bumpy, swerving ride. But we managed to find the park entrance. The gate was closed. It was one of those dual metal
triangle poles, but it looked a lot sturdier than the fence had been. I wasn’t sure if this small car could break through it. I looked back and saw several dark sedans zooming toward us.

I heard more shots and then suddenly our car spun out of control and crashed into the main ticket booth, rear end first. Airbags exploded everywhere around us even though we hadn’t hit it that hard.

“They must have shot our tire out,” I said.

Olek climbed back up into the passenger seat. He had been thrown into the back of the car by the collision. He sat down and nodded, looking dazed. Several sedans approached quickly.

“It’s over,” I said. “I’m sorry. I tried.”

“Is okay,” he said, and sighed.

Then a car pulled up on the other side of the front gate. The door opened, and Agent Blue got out of the driver side. He jumped the front gate and ran over to our smashed car, pulling out a pistol.

He pointed the gun at the approaching black sedans and fired four shots. All three cars spun out of control as their tires were hit. One of them actually flipped and started rolling, before coming to a stop upside down.

Agent Blue opened the door to the Mini Cooper.

“What are you waiting for? Let’s go,” he said.

“I can’t walk,” I said.

He reached in and lifted me out of the car easily, flung me over his shoulder, and we all ran back toward his car. Meanwhile, another car pulled up and Agent Nineteen and two other guys I didn’t recognize got out.

“I’ll get them back. You go take care of the enemy operatives,” Agent Blue said.

“Gray building behind the fun house!” I shouted as they hopped the gate and ran toward the crashed black sedans.

Agent Nineteen threw back a thumbs-up to let me know he’d heard me.

Then the three of us were in Agent Blue’s car, heading toward the school. I wanted to talk on the way back, but I was too exhausted to do much of anything but sit there and wonder what in the heck had taken them so long.