Locked and Loaded Read online

I was further discomfited because even though I could speak Spanish I had never actually tried teaching it to anyone, and as any student who has ever had a bad teacher will tell you, knowing how to do something and being able to teach it effectively are two completely different things.

  It didn't help that all my 'students' were older than me and mostly men. Men who looked like they needed some asses to kick in order to release some of those pent-up male hormones and not Conversational Spanish 101.

  They stared at me, expectantly.

  I stared back, hopelessly.

  “Are you going to teach us anything?” one of the men asked after several minutes. “Or are you just going to sit there and stare at us for the next two hours?”

  “I'm thinking,” I protested, as my face got warm. Stall, stall, stall. “How much Spanish do you all know? And, um, what regional dialects?”

  “Two years,” said the jerk. “Castellano.”

  Great.

  “My last roommate was Mexican,” one of the men said. “So I know the colloquial a bit, but I can't read or write.”

  “That's fine,” I said. “That's what this class is for.”

  “I took some in high school,” said the woman. She paused, her expression growing cloudy. “Or maybe that was Italian. Portuguese. I took several.”

  She had made it all the way to this top-secret training school, and couldn't tell the differences between the Romantic languages?

  On the other hand, she did look like she was in her thirties. Maybe she really couldn't remember. But still.

  “I'm from Chile,” another man said, “but I know some Mexican slang. Mostly curse words.”

  “And I'm from Argentina,” the last man said, cementing my horror. Because Argentina was the only other country besides Spain that still used vosotros, a more casual version of ustedes I was not familiar with at all.

  And then, of course, Chilean Spanish was its own thing, with no rhyme or reason. Completely different from other dialects. I had been thrown the most diverse mix possible.

  It was almost like someone, somewhere, was playing a horrible, horrible joke on me.

  With my luck, they probably were.

  Michael

  Callaghan had never been one to miss an opportunity to rub salt in the wound, but eventually even he figured out that I really had no idea where Christina was in spite of his threats.

  When he ceased his questioning I knew that I had been granted a reprieve, not given a release. There was more shit to come for as long as the hacker remained at large, and then again as soon as he received reason enough to do so. It was an endless cycle.

  I knew this. I anticipated this. Still, I was concerned when he summoned me into his office again the next day. Concerned that he might have found a new lead that compromised Christina more than the imposter had.

  “You called, sir?”

  “I have a job for you.”

  “Forgive my lack of enthusiasm.”

  Like about last night, no good had ever come from that set of words either. Not from him.

  “I want you to do a bit of insider trading.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “The Martha Stewart kind?”

  “No.”

  “Then what, you want me to rob a fucking bank?”

  “Don't be so bloody ridiculous.” I watched him sit at his desk, crossing his legs and setting them up on the highly polished surface. “I've a different kind of trade in mind.”

  “The kind involving a ditch and a shovel, I'll bet.”

  “I have a rather compelling lead about the BN.”

  I knew it. “For the last time, sir. I haven't been in contact with the girl. I don't know where she is and even if I did, which I don't, you'd be the last fucking person on earth that I'd bring her to.”

  “But you did meet with the heads of the BN a year ago.”

  What was he playing at? I could see his mind working as clearly as if he were a cat batting around a crippled mouse, but I couldn't figure out his game.

  “You know I did. It was on your orders. When you had me pose as a double-agent, and the Sniper blew the whole thing and almost had me killed.”

  Just in case he was thinking about framing me again as a traitor, I wanted to go on the record for saying that he had put me up to that scheme.

  He narrowed his eyes. Did I spoil your plans?

  I smiled. “But I digress. What did you want to know about that mission?”

  “Birds of a feather.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Their group has a penchant for avian handles. Sparrow, Hawk, Peregrine.”

  “Cock.”

  “You cannot speak to me that way, Michael.”

  “I was referring to a male rooster, sir. A male rooster is called a cock.” His eyes narrowed, and I knew that I had won this round. I permitted myself the luxury of a sneer. “With all due respect, get to the fucking point.”

  “I want you to rob their nests. One nest, in particular. I want you to bring me the child of the woman who introduced herself to you as Sparrow. She was one of the heads, wasn't she? So her opinion has some sway.”

  “The woman who lives in England?”

  “She doesn't live in England, Michael. She lives here, in the U.S. On the Eastern seaboard. It is where her daughter resides.”

  Daughter? Oh, shit — no.

  “Let us show them that we're not just fucking around. I believe that's your philosophy. Kidnap the daughter and bring her here. She'll make some nice collateral.”

  Christina

  My room was clean when I got back.

  That was nice, not having to worry about tidying up on top of everything else. It was all I could do to shovel food in my mouth three times a day, just to keep my body fueled. If I'd had to do shopping and housework on top of that, I'd go crazy. Thank God for those memo pads, and the invisible maintenance staff….

  The memo pads.

  Like the one my note had been written on.

  That was when I put two and two together.

  The cleaning people had access to my room every day and they moved invisibly among the rooms while the rest of us were at training.

  Someone on the cleaning staff must have written me that note. All I had to do was figure out why.

  Solving one enigma had made me brave enough to take on another. I was still thinking about Mr. Chou, and what I'd seen on his screen. The kanji that wasn't kanji. It was all so strange I might have been able to convince myself that I had imagined the whole thing, if it weren't for our conversation.

  I conspired to sit next to the only other woman in my programming class. I managed this by showing up early and then lurking in the halls until I saw her enter the lab. “Hi,” I said, conveniently entering the lab moments after she did. “Mind if I sit here?”

  She stared at me. Then shrugged. “Fine.”

  “Us girls have to stick together, I guess, huh?”

  She made a noncommittal sound that could have meant anything from “yes, I concur,” to “shut up, you're annoying me.”

  Since she did not look friendly I figured it was the latter. Even so, I nodded towards the glass cubicle where Mr. Chou oversaw lessons, currently empty. “Is he always such a…misogynistic jerk?”

  She looked at me. “Are you always so peppy?”

  I blinked, taken aback. “Are you defending him?”

  “Chou? No. He's a dick. The last instructor was better. Fuck. Somewhere there's a one instead of a zero. Now I have to scroll through this whole line of code — ”

  “Wait, so Mr. Chou is new?”

  “Goddammit. Yes, he's new, okay? He came here about a week before you did, and now the two of you in tandem are doing a great job ruining my thesis project. Fuck.”

  “What happened to the old instructor?”

  She glared at me. “I don't know. He just left. A lot of people do, usually with no explanation.”

  “How often?”

  “Maybe one or two a month. Usually more in the beginning o
f the year, but it drops off. Will you leave me alone now? Please?”

  “Um, yeah, sure.” I stood up and sat in the back of the room before Mr. Chou came in. The last thing I wanted was to call more attention to myself than I had.

  Mr. Chou was a new instructor, arriving mere days before I had.

  The old instructor had disappeared recently, under mysterious circumstances.

  What on earth is going on in this place?

  It had more disappearances than the Bermuda Triangle, and I had the unpleasant feeling that I was slated to be next.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dilemma

  Christina

  I deviated from the norms once more, and the guard came to retrieve me by going to my last location and working from there. Just like usual. Except this time, I did it purposefully.

  Once more, he cited the schedules and my apparent inability to follow them. I cut him off.

  “Just where the hell am I supposed to get these elusive schedules?”

  There was more scoffing and muttering, but I managed to persuade him to tell me by pointing out that he didn't have to chase after me all the time if I actually knew where I was going. Less work for him.

  If I'd cared at all, I might have been hurt by how quickly he saw reason on that matter.

  But I didn't care. Going to Administration, the department where the schedules were allegedly held, might give me the opportunity to figure out who had sent me the warning. I figured they handled payroll, too. It had been like that at my college, too. They liked to keep all of the paperwork in the same building.

  The man behind the desk handed me my itinerary. I smiled and thanked him. Started to walk out, then slapped my head like I'd only just remembered something. Don't overact. “Is it possible to find out who cleans the rooms?”

  He frowned. “Is there a problem? We don't handle complaints. That's HR — ”

  “No, no complaints. I was just wondering. I mean, it's so nice coming back to a clean room every evening. I kind of wanted to just thank them for doing a nice job, you know? I figured most people don't. But everything's so compartmentalized, I wasn't sure where to begin.”

  Yes, look like you're lazy. Lazy people don't scheme.

  The man shook his head. “We could pass on the message if you want to give me the room number — ”

  “I'm new,” I said, “I don't know it offhand, yet. I'm always getting the last two digits mixed up. Is it possible that you could look up the person's name on payroll or something? Just so I could leave them a note, or maybe put a name to the face or something? I don't want to go through a lot of paperwork or anything. It was just something I thought might be nice to do.”

  He looked dubious. “We're not supposed to give out information about other recruits as a general rule.”

  “If you can't do anything, that's okay.” I took a step towards the door. Watched some of the doubt lift.

  “Maintenance is in a separate file…they're not specifically classified.”

  Casual. Not too desperate. “I don't want to get anyone in trouble.”

  “It is a nice idea,” he said reluctantly. “I don't see what the harm is. Cleaners alternate. Do you want all the names, or one in particular?”

  “Whoever cleaned my room on Thursday.”

  “That's specific,” he said, with a slight laugh.

  “My room was especially messy that day.”

  He typed a few keys. Then he said, “Ah, here's the man who cleaned your room on Thursday. An Emil Anders.” He turned the computer towards me briefly, revealing a photograph of a man who was obviously of diverse ancestry — Nordic, and possibly Latin or Middle Eastern heritage. He had a striking face.

  Memorable.

  “Thanks. Oh, and don't worry. I won't tell anyone.”

  He smiled back, clearly relieved. “If you see me again, let me know how it goes.”

  I smiled back. “Of course!”

  Fat chance.

  Another unexpected unpleasantness greeted me on my schedule just a few days later.

  Physical Training.

  Physical Training.

  As in, Physical Education?

  Yes.

  Just like Physical Education.

  But worse.

  “As your instructor, it's not my job to coddle you, or kiss your boo-boos when you fall down. That's your mama's job. And since I don't see any mamas around here, I guess that means you're shit out of luck because when you fall down, I'm going to tell you to stand the fuck up. Because unless you're down there sucking cock, you have no business being on your knees.

  “This isn't the Girl Scouts,” he said, warming to the subject. “And right now, you're running around that track. Anyone gets less than a six minute mile and I'm going to have you run it again until you do. When you're out there in the real world being chased by a man with a gun, he isn't going to wait for you to catch your breath and you're going to be dead. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir!” chorused my fellow inmates.

  “Fucking A it is. Now start running, maggots.”

  He fired his own gun into the air.

  Six minute mile? I thought, as my sneakered feet pounded the pavement. The man was insane. I wasn't built like a runner and I didn't have a runner's endurance. The best I'd ever gotten was a nine-minute mile and that had been all the way back in middle school.

  I managed to make it in ten. Pretty good, I thought, considering that I hadn't done P.E. in years.

  Sergeant Asshole didn't think so.

  He made us run it again.

  And then again, when I failed a second time.

  And then again, when I failed a third time.

  “You can thank the rookie here for the extra laps,” he said, “she seems to think my stopwatch is a goddamn calendar.”

  Couldn't he see I was giving it my all?

  When I looked over midway through the fourth, now on my own because the other people were giving me a wide berth, Sergeant Asshole was there, running along beside me.

  “Why aren't you running, wetback?”

  I flinched, raking damp hair out of my eyes. I wasn't used to racial slurs. They were unusual in this day and age, enough that they still came as a shock when I did hear them.

  “I am running. And I'm not — ”

  “That was a rhetorical question. I'll tell you why you aren't running. It's because you've grown soft. Lazy. Unmotivated. Weak. I'd tell you that you run like a girl, but I've seen some pretty fast dykes tear through this track in my time.

  “No, that's why I've decided that you're a maggot. Maggots don't run. They crawl on their bellies. All they do is eat, and shit, and crawl. And that's what you are, a fucking spic-wetback-maggot.” He spat on the track at my feet, forcing me to do a little skip to avoid it. “Disgusting.”

  I swallowed down the anger but it seethed in me all day long. I had seen boot camp portrayed on TV but it never really resonated with me. I couldn't believe that people would say such mean things or that the people they were saying them to would just stand there and take it.

  But apparently that was exactly how it worked.

  “Goddamn calendar,” he said, spitting again, before picking up the pace to leave me at the back.

  Alone.

  It was with dread that I picked up my schedule the next morning. More of the same, with another new addition. Weapons Training. That didn't sound too bad — at least not compared to running while being shouted at by a racist, misogynistic asshole who was quite possibly insane — and it cut into my Physical Training time.

  But then I remembered something Michael had said to me the first night we had slept together.

  “They'll want to teach you how to use a gun, take you to a firing range. Say no.”

  I had thought that was weird at the time. Wouldn't he want me to be able to defend myself? But that was the thing — that was what he wanted. He wanted to keep me safe. So if he had made such a strange and contradictory request there must have been some rea
son.

  Who did I trust more? Michael? Or the BN?

  I mulled over that question all day, but deep down I had my answer.

  I trusted Michael. I trusted him with my life.

  The next day, Sergeant Asshole told me to pick up a gun. I looked at the firing range. Then I looked at the other recruits, in the process of being fitted with bulletproof vests and shatterproof goggles.

  I folded my arms over my shirtfront. “No.”

  His face grew more florid. “What did you just say to me? I must have enough wax in my ears to open a goddamn candle factory, because I thought I just heard you tell me 'no.' You think this is multiple choice? There's only one answer here, and it's I'll-get-my-ass-on-that-shooting-range-right-now-sir.”

  “No,” I said. “I'm not going to fire a gun.”

  “You damn well better, or I'll string you up by your ears and have the rest of the recruits use you as target practice, so get your fucking ass on that range.”

  “I'm a programmer,” I said, “not a killer.”

  “In my range, you'll be whatever I tell you to be.”

  As if that was supposed to frighten me when I'd been at the mercy of Adrian Callaghan.

  Had this man ever fought a man with his bare hands only to realize that it wasn't enough? That he was slowly being torn apart, piece by piece, and that there was nothing he could do about it, save admit defeat and hope you died before the pain became unbearable? I doubted it. I doubted it very strongly.

  “Fuck you,” I said, and started to walk.

  He grabbed me by the arm. “You don't walk away from Weapons Training. Ever. I know about you, Parker.”

  He knew my name? That was a surprise.

  “You think that because you're fucking some IMA blowhard that makes you exempt from the rules? My rules? If this were the military, I'd fucking court-martial your ass, you traitorous whore.”

  I pulled back my head and spat in his face.

  He looked apoplectic, but let go of my arm.

  I left, quickly, before he got the idea to do something worse than he had.

  Like I said, I watched TV. I knew you weren't supposed to attack the drill instructor. That was bad. That could get you in trouble. But that was the military.

  This wasn't the military. It wasn't like S.A. could court-martial me, despite his title. Good thing, too.