Enemy Agents (2 page)

Fifteen feet back, the attacker took three shots to the chest. He was Pete Hershey, who worked in Quarrel’s office. They were the same age, but Hershey had started his career a little earlier. Quarrel was one of only two people who had to work beneath Hershey, and Quarrel grinned now as he realized he had just killed his smarmy superior. Hershey was in a higher pay grade than Quarrel, but not so high up that he had an office; this was one cubicle drone killing another. Hershey quietly wiped at the red paint that had sprayed his face, flipped Quarrel the middle finger, and laid down dead—which for Hershey meant relaxing in a dry spot with his hands behind his head. Hershey managed a smirk as he lay down, as though being eliminated from the game somehow made him better than Quarrel. In fact, just about everything he ever did made Quarrel think him a smug, superior bastard, but this was pushing it.

Despite whatever spin Hershey would like to put on the situation, Quarrel would still relish the fact that Hershey had missed an open shot, and that Quarrel himself had taken out his rival.

Quarrel was crawling through a forest in northern Ontario in the middle of the spring. The snow was mostly gone, leaving behind freezing cold mud for Quarrel and the nine other trainees to crawl through (although Hershey’s clothes had looked quite dry, as if he hadn’t crawled on belly but instead confidently strolled through the woods). It was a simple attack-defend game: one team of five defends a small wooden deck in the middle of the forest while the other team attacks it. There is a flagpole on the deck, with a symbolic skull-and-crossed-rifles flag flying. The attacking team wins if they can lower the flag in less than ten minutes. The defensive team wins if they can withstand for the full ten minutes. Either team loses if all five of their team members are shot. Quarrel checked his watch. The game was half over. He needed to move.

Quarrel quite enjoyed the physical aspect of this sort of training: running, crawling, shooting (even it was just a paintball gun), but having to work with a randomly-chosen team seemed pointless. Quarrel worked for a clandestine intelligence service. Once you were out in the field, there were no team-ups, no games, just a man alone against the enemy. So what was the point of learning Army hand-signals if his entire career was going to be spent working solo?

While this particular training site (one secret enough that the actual Army didn't know about it) was located in Canada, most of the trainees were Americans. Only three of the ten—Quarrel, Hershey, and Gibbons—were on their native soil. The trainer, a legend of the spy game, was an American. Jack Hall had one week to put the team through their paces. At the end of the week, no more than five of the ten would be given a certificate that they passed the program. Most years only had three graduates. Today was the final day of training.

Moving as quietly as possible, hoping that his camouflage was working, Quarrel advanced on the structure. He didn’t have a plan. While the other four team members had huddled to hash out a strategy, Quarrel had ran off to the side of the field of play and began his crawl toward the deck alone. This game was only ten minutes and the defenders knew they were coming. There was no time to plan, only to act, and Quarrel intended to win this thing on his own and guarantee that he passed the program.

The deck was pretty basic: an elevated wooden platform, six by twelve, with a stairway in each corner. The walls of the deck were four feet high, easily enough to hide behind, so the attackers would be at a severe disadvantage as they climbed the stairs. The instructor, Jack, sat on a sort of lifeguard chair behind the flagpole, elevated higher than the rest of the deck. He said nothing at any point in the game, other than declaring victory for one team or the other. Hall’s chair pivoted so he could see all directions, observing the field of play. Three other instructors, dressed in bright orange like hunters, supervised from the forest below.

Quarrel pulled himself along the forest floor, watching the stairways on the deck in case any guards were watching. He saw nothing. With fifteen feet to go he broke out in a run, sprinting not to the stairs but underneath the deck, where he hoped the guards wouldn’t be able to see him. There was no sound of footstep above, which di
d
no
t
mean he hadn’t been seen, only that the defenders were smart enough to stay quiet.

Two other attackers were already there, having apparently chosen this as a rally point. Erica Gibbons, from Quarrel’s office, and a skinny American named Jones. Quarrel raised one finger to them
.
I got one kill
.
The others both shook their heads. So there might still be four defenders. He checked his watch. Six minutes fifty seconds. If any other attackers were alive, they’d have to show up now. No one came.

They spread out, each to a different staircase. The combination of their heavy boots and the wooden stairs would make a stealthy approach impossible. Their best bet would be to storm three sides at once, hoping to overwhelm the defence. As long as one attacker made it to the flagpole, their team would win. Dying didn’t matter. The mission mattered. Nothing else.

Jones gave th
e
advanc
e
signal and all three attackers pounded up their stairs, running hard and making tons of noise. Quarrel turned his body to the doorway before he reached the opening so that when he emerged, the defender was right in his sights.

Twip. The defender went down. Directly in front of Quarrel, a second defender shot Jones. Quarrel shot the man in the back. The defender gave an annoyed shrug and looked over his shoulder at Quarrel before he too lay down, wanting to know who had shot him. On the far side, Gibbons had taken out her target before he could shoot. That left the fourth corner, the stairway that nobody had taken. There was a defender here as well; apparently their plan had been to guard all entrances, with the extra man, Hershey, roving through the woods. The last defender turned around, surprised to find enemies behind him. For a split second his focus was split between Quarrel and Gibbons. He made his choice and lined up Quarrel, just as both attackers unleashed a barrage of red paint at him. He went down.

Finally, Quarrel was able to break silence. “That’s it. We got all five. Game over.”

Sitting on his elevated chair, Hall said nothing. Quarrel smiled as he walked over to the flagpole. All that was left was to lower the flag and he’d not only have won the game, he’d also be one of just two survivors. That had to help with getting one of those five certificates.

He never heard the shot, just felt the familiar sting of a paintball in the back. He turned, confused, and saw a defender through the opening at the northwest staircase. Someone was still out there, approaching fast. Maybe it was a twist on the game: an unknown surprise to test the team who thought they had won. Quarrel was confused, but he dropped facedown on the floor, making sure to turn himself so he could watch the stairs that he expected the enemy to enter from. He wanted to yell at Gibbons to hurry up and lower the flag, but the dead can’t speak. Instead she took a defensive position by the doorway, waiting for the attacker to enter.

Only a few seconds later he heard another shot. It came from behind him, opposite where he was looking. The new defender had somehow made it up the stairs in silence, and placed a paintball between Gibbons’ shoulder blades. Above them, Jack Hall blew hard into a whistle.

“Fuck!” she shouted, turning around.

With the game over, Quarrel rolled over and sat up. The new defender was in sock feet—he’d removed his boots in order to slip up the stairs. Otherwise, he was the same Pete Hershey that Quarrel had shot five minutes earlier. But this time Hershey’s chest showed no sign of paint.

“I thought you said you got him!” shouted Gibbons.

“I fucking did!” Speaking to Hershey now, he shouted “I shot you three times in the chest. You’re done.”

“This chest?” Hershey tugged on the thin camouflage jersey he wore—they had each been given one, in slightly different colours to make it easier to know friend from foe. “Because I don’t see any paint.”

“So where’d you steal the extra jersey from?”

By now the other two attackers and the three referees were filing into the structure, drawn by the whistle.

“Did you see this guy shoot me? Did you?” he demanded of the referees as they climbed the steps. “Didn’t think so since it never happened.” The judges shared a look between them, each shaking their head.

“Oh fuck off,” said Quarrel, shoving Hershey.

“Enough!” shouted Hall, jumping down from his perch. “Did anyone see anything to suggest that this guy was ever killed?”

The judges hadn’t seen it.

“Then defenders win.”

“Horse shit,” said Quarrel.

“The point of the exercise was teamwork. Who lives and dies was unimportant, only the mission. Your team never accomplished your goals, so you lose.”

Quarrel walked away, shaking his head. Jack shouted at him. “Got something to prove? You’re on defence this time. There are clean jerseys for the attackers back at the start, and new ones for the defenders under my chair. Get clean, reload, and the next game starts in ten.”

#

Nineteen minutes later, Quarrel was alone on the deck, waiting for something to happen. Well, not quite alone. Jack was up on his high chair, watching and judging, his eyes revealing nothing to Quarrel.

Quarrel’s team had opted for the opposite tactic to the one that Hershey’s team had used. They sent four of their members out into the woods, hopefully to ambush the attackers. Quarrel was left alone at the base, the last line of defence if an attacker slipped by or if the defenders were all dead. He had drawn the stay-here-and-wait job mainly because the other defenders on his team resented him for costing them Round One.

An hour earlier, the forest had seemed quiet except for the sound of the wind. Now, Quarrel heard everything. Scurrying in the wet leaves, chittering of small rodents, and the ever-changing wind whipping the still-bare branches. There were no bird calls, as it was too early for them to be back up north.

And finally, footsteps.

Front side.

Quarrel backed up against the rear wall, so that he’d have both of the front stairs in sight. The attacker would see him from the stairs, but that was better than having his back turned to one of the potential entrances, especially after Hershey had just demonstrated how to get up the steps in silence.

Quarrel kept his gun raised, safety off, his eyes flicking back and forth to the two stairways. Finally, there was a shadow in the stairs to the left. He lined up his sights and waited. Inhaled. He’d fire on the exhale. A shoulder poked around the corner. A shoulder dressed in the green and brown camo of the defending team. Could be one of his own. Could be Hershey in another stolen jersey.

“Sing out!” shouted Quarrel.

“It’s a trap.” Gibbons’ voice. “He’s behind me.”

Then she jerked forward and up the stairs, revealing her wrists tied together in front of her with a plastic cable tie. Hershey was behind her, using her as a human shield. He was just small enough that he was safely hidden behind the slim woman. He kept her in place with a hand gripping the back of her collar. He held a small paintball pistol that Quarrel hadn’t seen before. It would be terrible at range but considering that Gibbons was only six inches from the muzzle, it would hurt like hell. Worst of all, Hershey had stripped Gibbons of her mask so her head was exposed. A paintball to the face would cause an injury, regardless of who fired, and in the wrong spot (the eye) that injury would be permanent.

“Just let me lower the flag and she’s fine.”

“Or I could just shoot her and have a clear line of fire at you.”

“You’d have to shoot her in the head to make she’d drop that quick.” He spoke to Gibbons, gloating, “You don’t want Chrissy to shoot you in the face, do ya?”

“Fuck off,” she muttered under her breath. She was clearly embarrassed to be in this position, but they were supposed to act like there were real guns in play.

“Walk to the flagpole. Slowly.”

She took a step. Quarrel watched her face for any sign. He could see a few inches of Hershey’s grinning face, but dared not fire. Paintball guns aren’t as accurate as the real thing. A minuscule dip in air pressure could throw the ball off course and hit Erica in the face – break her orbital bone or nose, or one of those big brown eyes – no, he couldn’t risk it just to beat Hershey in a game. He could feel himself sneering in frustration
,
Hershey gets another feather in his cap at my expens
e
, but made effort to hide his seething.

They were at the flagpole now, and Hershey had a problem. He needed one hand to hold his human shield in place, and another to hold his gun. He couldn't lower the flag unless he grew a third hand. He jerked Gibbons’ collar. “Lower it.”

Gibbons nodded, but before reaching forward, she slipped her fingers under the jersey, fumbling at the waistband on her pants.

“Lower it, or I shoot Chris,” Hershey sneered, turning his gun on Quarrel.

Erica seized the moment. Spinning hard out of Hershey’s grip, she dropped her body while raising her hands, now holding a white object that registered only as a blur to Quarrel. She slashed her hands at Hershey’s face and fell away, stumbling.