Disruption (31 page)

“The bus!” I glanced at my watch. 3:15. I swore and then turned and looked down the street toward the alley where I was supposed to meet the bus. It was gone.

I straightened and hobbled down the outer wall of the station through the frazzled and dusty mob. I made it to the corner of the building just in time to see the bus pull into an intersection a hundred yards away.

All I could think was that I needed to get on that bus. I needed to get away from the station. Our disturbance might have been bigger than I’d intended it to be, but Chase had outright lost his mind. I needed to tell someone what he’d done. I stepped off the curb and staggered across the street.

Behind me someone yelled, “Hey!”

I turned and spotted a security guard. He was eyeing me as though he recognized me. I didn’t see how he could’ve. I turned back and kept going. I could make it to the bus if I could just get their attention. They’d stop for me.

“Stop!” the voice yelled again. It was closer now, just over my shoulder. He sounded angry. I wondered if he’d seen me on the security cameras or if he’d seen me acting weird on the main platform and thought I was responsible. I
was
responsible, at least partially, but I wasn’t about to let some rent-a-cop stop me. I willed my legs to move faster.

The man yelled again, but this time, it was more of a generic yell and not really any words. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see him dive at me. Enough time to see him, but not enough time to move. He tackled me to the ground, and pain exploded all over. I rolled, and he rolled too. I tried to get up, but he got up first and tackled me again. I saw the curb coming straight at my head, but I don’t remember hitting it. I don’t remember anything really. Just the security guard tackling me for a second time, and the curb. I definitely remember the curb.

After that, everything went black.

Chapter 47

I woke up lying on a soft mattress. For half a second, I thought I was home. I wondered if my mom would call me to breakfast or if Jason would be calling to hang out.

It was the scent of antiseptic cleaner that jolted me into full consciousness. I jerked upright into a sitting position and winced when I tried to pull my hand to my face to shield my eyes from the harsh fluorescent lights, because something hard bit into my wrist. It took a minute for me to realize what I was looking at when I glanced down at my hand.

“Handcuffs?”

A dizzying wave of nausea forced me onto my back, and I counted to twelve before I thought I might not puke. I hurt. Every part of me. My head felt like a team of soccer players had used it for a practice game. I tried to reach for it, only to have the handcuffs dig into my wrist again. There were bandages on my wrists too, and with my free hand, I felt around and realized there were bandages around my head as well.

It came back slowly. First the summer camp. Then the CIA. Then, finally, Chase and what must’ve been his psychotic break. He’d really tried to blow the place up. He actually wanted to kill people. Didn’t the CIA do any psychiatric screening of the kids they let into camp? I thought about my team and how Angie was clearly unstable. Then there were Rob, Alexis, and Duncan. They were nuts too.

Maybe psychiatric tests don’t work on kids.

The door to my room opened, and two police officers dressed in dark blue uniforms walked in.

“You’re awake,” the first man said. He was short and chubby and had a flat face that made him look a bit like an angry, overweight dog. “Good.”

He moved to one side of my bed while his partner slipped over to the other. His partner was young, maybe mid-twenties. He had a narrow face and close-cut hair.

“What’s your name?” Flat-face demanded.

I tried to focus. What was I supposed to do in a situation like this? I had to talk to someone in the CIA. I had to tell them that Chase had gone crazy. Camp Friendship was a secret, wasn’t it? I remembered Jason and how the FBI had all but figured out who I was anyway. They’d be here soon. I could be uncooperative with these officers, or I could be direct and just tell them I needed to speak to someone in the CIA. That would probably speed things along a bit.

“Should we call you Gunnar?” Flat-face asked.

I realized the chubby officer had my wallet. I shrugged.

“You don’t look like a Gunnar Konstantan from Sweden.”

I sighed. My head hurt. My body ached. For all I knew, Chase had gotten away and was blaming the whole thing on me. I needed to hurry this along, so I settled on being direct. “I need to speak to someone in the CIA.”

The two officers laughed.

“The CIA?” Flat-face asked. He turned to his partner. “Did you hear that? The CIA.”

“We have ourselves a genuine spy,” the younger officer said. “A Swedish one, at that, only I didn’t hear any accent when he spoke.” He raised his eyebrows as if he’d just pointed out a mistake.

“So, you would like to speak to someone in the CIA?” Flat-face asked again. “Not a lawyer? Not your parents? Just the CIA?”

Definitely not my parents
, I thought, but didn’t say. “The CIA,” I repeated. “It’s important.”

“Obviously,” Flat-face said. “It must be very important if you want to talk to the CIA. We don’t usually get requests like that unless it’s very serious.” He leaned over my bed smelling of sweat and coffee, and I had to try very hard not to gag. “Did the CIA tell you to do it? Did they hire you to try to blow up the station?”

“
What?
” I shook my head and just about passed out from the pain that exploded behind my eyes. After a couple breaths, I added, “I didn’t do that. I stopped it.”

The younger officer raised his eyebrows. “If
that’s
what you think ‘stop’ means, you need a new dictionary.”

“I tried to stop it. I tried to get everyone out before—” Stop talking, I told myself. Just keep your mouth shut about anything that happened at the station. “CIA,” I said again. “I need someone from the CIA.”

For the next couple hours, the officers tried to get me to talk. When I wouldn’t, they’d switch tactics and try something else. They’d leave for a while and then come back and pepper me with questions. Sometimes they’d be friendly; other times they’d yell and get right in my face. It was annoying more than it was intimidating. These guys were amateurs compared to Butler. I smiled at the fact that I’d managed to survive his interrogation. That had to count for something once the CIA got here and had to decide what to do with me.

“Something funny?” Flat-face asked.

I wiped the smile off my face.

“People were hurt today, Gunnar. A lot of people.” He pointed a stubby finger at me. “We have you on the security tapes. You’re the one we see carrying that exploding tube. You’re the one we see throwing that bomb onto the tracks.”

Yaakov, you idiot. Why didn’t you erase the
. . . I let out a slow breath. He probably did erase it. He erased the footage from the tracks he was supposed to erase. I wasn’t on the right track. I had followed Becca, and because of that, they had me on camera.

“But we know you weren’t working alone. So just give us some names and—”

“Enough,” I said, surprising myself with my defiance. “You both are giving me a headache. I’m not intimidated by either of you. I won’t be answering your stupid questions. For the hundredth time, I want to speak to someone from the C – I – A.” I emphasized each letter.

The officers left, and a little more than an hour later, the doctor came in. She was young and had chin-length brown hair and red-rimmed glasses. It was a pretty nice change from the nurses who had come in from time to time during the interrogation. They’d all looked like they could be very close relatives to Flat-face. From the same litter perhaps.

The doctor scanned my chart and then sat down on the edge of the bed.

“How are you feeling?”

“I hurt,” I said.

“Anywhere in particular?”

“Everywhere.” I reached up with my free hand and touched the side of my head. “But especially my head.”

She shone her little penlight in my eyes, one at a time. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Yeah, I know.” I jerked lightly on my handcuffed hand. “Real lucky.”

She studied me for a moment. “You don’t seem nearly as worried as I would be if I were you.”

That made me feel pretty cool. Here I was, handcuffed to a hospital bed by police who thought I was some kind of insane-Unabomber-type psycho, and I had a smoking-hot doctor telling me she thought I was brave. She was saying that, wasn’t she? I felt my smile widen. The crazy thing was that once the CIA showed up, I had a good shot at being a hero, too. My friends back home would never believe it.

Things were looking up. Chase was a freaking psychopath, but I’d stopped him, and I was sure the CIA would make him disappear. It didn’t even matter if everyone found out I wasn’t supposed to be at the camp and that somehow my dad had weaseled me onto the roster. I belonged there now. I was going to be a CIA operative. Agent Matt Cambridge. I was going to be James freaking Bond. Well, not really, since he’s British, but I was going to be the American version of James Bond. I tried to think of an American equivalent of James Bond and couldn’t. They really need one of those.

“You’re smiling?” the pretty doctor said. “I don’t think I could be as collected as you if I were facing the charges they’ve levied at you.”

“Let’s just say that when the truth about what happened gets out, I won’t be in any trouble at all.”

“So you didn’t blow up the station?”

I shook my head. “If I hadn’t been there, it would have been a lot worse.”

Shut up, Matt!

“But you know who did it?” she asked. “And the other attacks around the city too?”

I nodded. “Oh yeah, I—wait. What do you mean attacks
around the city
? You mean the one at the station, right?”

She studied me for a moment and then reached across my bed to grab the remote control. She pointed it at the small TV mounted against the opposite wall. “There were attacks at a few places,” she said, flipping through the channels. Every channel seemed to be playing the news, and each had scenes of destruction and panic, people crying, buildings on fire, and crowds huddled outside of buildings. A few of the scenes were of the station, but many weren’t.

“The university was evacuated because of anthrax,” the doctor continued.

“What? An anthrax scare?” I wasn’t sure exactly what anthrax was, but I knew it scared the heck out of people and it was pretty deadly. Jason and I had wanted to have a long weekend once and considered filling an envelope with flour and sending it to the school with the word
Anthrax
on the inside. But we decided, on the off chance we got caught, we’d get in less trouble if we called in a bomb threat instead.

“Not a
scare
,” the doctor said. “It was real anthrax. There were a few exposures. Those people might die.”

My jaw dropped. That didn’t make any sense. Chase was the one who’d lost his mind. He was the one trying to kill people, and his team had been at the station. Hadn’t they? Maybe only some were, and the others were doing crazy things in other parts of the city. Becca and her team might have been responsible too. I mean, they must’ve put their plan in motion before getting to the station. They certainly hadn’t looked like they were in any hurry, and by then, they only had a few minutes before the three o’clock deadline. But
real
anthrax? It had to be Chase. Becca was crazy, but not that crazy.

Something on the screen caught my attention as the doctor flipped through the channels, and I jerked my cuffed hand, trying to point. “Wait,” I said. “Go back.” She flicked back a couple stations. “There,” I said. I only recognized the sign at first. The giant plastic waffle was partially melted and charred, but it was definitely Rick’s Waffle House. Kalvin with a
K
’s house.

“Do you know that place?” the doctor asked.

It was a coincidence. It had to be. I mean, the kid did have an entire storage locker of fireworks. Those things are dangerous.

“Do you know that place?” she asked again.

I nodded slowly. “I don’t get it. Chase wouldn’t have gone there. He wouldn’t know that place. And that means . . .” It came to me all at once. Amara hadn’t been trying to steal anything. He’d been rigging something to go off in that room. He knew explosives. He’d have known the fire would take the building down, but he’d done it anyway. Why would he do that?

“That means what?” the doctor prodded. When I didn’t respond, she added, “It hasn’t been released yet, but they’re saying that place was part of the attack. It was one of the first targets.”

“They are?” I asked. “They think it’s one of the first attacks?” I jerked my head around to the doctor. “Wait a minute. How do you know? How do you know any of this stuff? If it hasn’t been released, then where are you getting your information?”

Her expression turned to ice. She tossed the clipboard to the foot of my bed, stood up, and shrugged off the white lab coat. There was a gun on her hip.

She walked over and opened the door, and two men wearing dark suits marched in. One of them closed the door behind him, set the lock, and then put his back against the door while the other man closed the curtains in the room and then took a position beside my bed.

“What’s going on?” I said, looking frantically between my gun-strapped doctor and the new dangerous-looking men in the room. “Who are you guys?”

She turned and looked at me through narrowed eyes. “My name is Agent Knox,” she said. “That is Agent Chen, and the man by the door is Agent French.”

Agent Chen was tall and lanky but looked mean. He reminded me a bit of Bruce Lee, only older and with less hair. He sat down on the small chair beside my bed and opened a laptop. Agent French had dark hair cut really short and was about six feet tall. He wore a scowl that made him look really angry, like he wanted to hurt someone. Like he wanted to hurt me.

“Agent?” I asked. “Then you’re not a doctor?”