Infiltration (5 page)

I looked out the bedroom window at the sun setting behind the identical houses marching down the street, like an army of clones. This wasn't a place I would want to stay in either. Before I could ask any more questions, Kieran spun the laptop around so I could see the screen.

“Here,” he said. “Like I said, I've got a bunch of blueprints and maps of the DMA site in here. It's not complete. My dad nearly busted me copying this stuff off his computer, so I had to rush it. But there was enough for me to see that there's no way in. That I could find.”

I sat down on the bed, taking his laptop with me. As I scrolled through the computer files, the screen filled with digital pictures and maps. I realized that this was going to be like breaking into a bank. There were security cameras, fences, guard posts—the works. Instead of getting frustrated, though, I was getting more excited. It was a puzzle waiting to be cracked. Kieran watched over my shoulder.

“You know, there are rumors about you at school,” I said to him, while I worked my way through the files. “Did you guys move here because of something you did?”

I turned and saw Kieran's face tighten up. It looked the same as when he screamed at Mr. Kurtzia in the science lab. But he kept his voice steady.

“It wasn't my fault that we moved,” he said. “It all started when my mom died.”

My hands froze on the keyboard.

“What happened to her? Like, an accident or something?” It sounded awkward as I said it. I should have kept my mouth shut.

“No,” said Kieran. “Suicide.” I felt so bad for him right then. He said the word flatly, like it didn't mean anything. He stared at his hands in his lap, fiddling with a chunky ring on one finger. Then suddenly he looked at me, that hard look back in his eyes.

“I'm trusting you, right? You never repeat this shit that I'm telling you, get it?” I just nodded. Kieran went back to looking at his ring.

“I had a hard time with it. But my dad…” Kieran's voice trailed off. “My dad wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, like we had to hide her death or something. I couldn't talk about it with him.” Kieran's voice was changing as he got more wound up. But instead of yelling, he dropped his voice almost to a hiss. Low. Spooky.

“He's so useless,” he spat, his fists clenching. “You know something? When my mom got…sick, before she did it, you know what my dad did?” A vein throbbed near Kieran's temple as he spoke. “He worked more. Longer hours, always at the lab. Every night. He couldn't face her. Or me.” His voice shook. “When things got tough, he made my mom disappear.”

He looked out the window. It was like he was trying to get ahold of himself.

I waited.

“And after Mom died,” he continued, “he tried to do the same thing to me. After she killed herself, I was pissed off at everyone. The fake smiles, the pretend friends. I mean, what's the point?” He shook his head. “I wasn't going to play along with it. My father thought he solved the problem when he found a therapist who would put me on a bunch of drugs.”

“Seriously?”

“Check it out.” Kieran pulled out a desk drawer. He held up a half-empty pill bottle. “Antidepressants,” he said. Another bottle: “Anti-anxiety meds.”

I shuddered. Who'd want to drug their own kid to keep them from grieving their mom's death?

“Anyway,” Kieran said, “we finally moved when I got busted for starting a fire in one of the chem labs.” He shrugged. “Maybe I did it. Maybe not. Didn't matter. It was enough to convince my dad that a change of scene would make me forget my problems.”

“Did it?” I said. He shook his head.

“That's the problem,” he said. “My dad wants to forget her. Forget me. Make us go away.”

Kieran seemed to pull himself together a little. Maybe he saw the stunned expression on my face. There was way more going on here than I thought.

“Look, uh,” I said, “the idea of sneaking into the DMA site is awesome. But I can't—I don't want to get into something between you and your dad.”

“It's not like that,” said Kieran, shaking his head. “You just help me figure out how to get in there, it'll be an awesome run. And as a bonus we'll make some money. Plus, I'll be able to do something that really gets my dad's attention, you know? No skin off your back.”

This was messed up. Part of me wanted to get up and leave right away, walk away from the whole complicated scene. I didn't want Kieran's problems. But I felt bad for him. I knew he didn't have any friends at school to talk to. Despite his strangeness, I liked him. Especially now that I knew what he'd gone through.

And I wish I didn't care about the money, but I did. The chance to fix things with Asha was too big to pass up.

I swallowed my unease.

“Maybe there's something here,” I said. I pointed at a blocky map on the laptop screen. “This is where they used to rig up the rocket engines for testing.” I flipped to an old black-and-white picture of huge concrete pillars and iron girders. A massive rocket nozzle was strapped to the top. I'd read about something similar at an old NASA lab in California on the urban exploration websites.

“Underneath those big platforms, they built tunnels and filled them with water,” I said. “The water would help keep the noise of the rockets down. Kept things from catching on fire too.” I explained that the blast from the rockets would turn the water in the tunnels to steam. The tunnels vented the steam out, safely away from the testing area. I tapped the screen to show a point well away from the fence line of the DMA site.

“See these marks on the map? I think this is where the old tunnels ended. That's our way in.”

Chapter Eight

We decided that we needed to scout the entrance to the tunnels before going any further. Hopefully, DMA had figured that the tunnel entrances were in the middle of nowhere and just boarded them up. Worst case, they might have backfilled the tunnels with rubble. In which case, I'd need to come up with a new brilliant plan.

Kieran and I arranged to go out there Saturday night. I left a note for my parents saying that I was staying over at Jake's house. As long as I told them where I was going, and had my cell, they never seemed to worry. A fringe benefit of my responsible “nice guy” image.

I'd been putting off telling Kieran about adding Jake to our team. But I didn't have a choice now. Jake and I arrived at Kieran's house together. When Kieran opened the door, he looked at Jake, then turned to me.

“It's not a slumber party, Bex. What the hell is he doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, Kieran. It's such a pleasure,” said Jake. It was obvious what he really meant.

“Jake's coming with us,” I said. “We need him.”

“You told him?” said Kieran with disbelief. I nodded. Kieran swore and stomped away from the open door. Jake and I looked at each other, then entered the dark house. There was no sign of Kieran's dad this time.

Kieran was pacing back and forth across the living room.

“What the hell gave you the right to tell him about our plans?” said Kieran.

“It's my plan,” I said. “And it's my call if we need extra help. Jake is good. The three of us can cover more ground than just you and me.”

“We don't need him. We don't need anybody else.”

“What's your problem?” said Jake. He lowered himself into an armchair. He looked absolutely cool and calm. Jake was a rock. “You worried about your money? Because I don't want any of the take. I'm just here to back up Bex.”

“What the hell? Are you serious? You're here for your BFF? What are you, in kindergarten?” snapped Kieran. He'd stopped pacing now. “And, no, it's not about the money. I don't give a crap about the money. Bex is the only one who seems to really care about that.” He spun to face me. What the hell did that mean?

“Let me break it down for you,” Kieran said. “I don't know if you figured this out, but we're committing a crime. You get that? We are breaking into a ‘secure facility.' And then stealing stuff. We're criminals. And criminals don't invite their besties along for the ride.” He pointed a finger at me. “You and me are the entire team, end of story.”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

“Bex, grow up, leave your buddy here behind and join the big leagues!” Kieran said, eyes bright with anger.

Jake looked at me calmly from the armchair. It was up to me. For the first time in a long while, the decision I had to make was clear. I dropped down into the other overstuffed armchair, facing Jake.

“How about I break it down for you, Kieran?” I said. “You said you can't get in there without me? I don't do this without Jake. It's that simple.” Kieran just stood there, chest heaving.

“So, you want to try this alone?” I said. “Or do you want some help?”

Kieran looked like he was about to explode, go mental on me. But he held it together and took a deep, ragged breath.

“Fine. Whatever,” he hissed. “Just get me in there.”

Kieran drove fast, slaloming between cars on the highway. The glow of the city was behind us, the dark city limits ahead. The DMA site was less than forty-five minutes away from the city center. But it felt like I was heading off the map, away from everything that I knew.

I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Asha.

I'll make everything all right again,
I texted.
Promise.

I hit the Send key, then put the phone back in my jacket pocket. The rest of the ride, I waited for the vibration from the phone that might be Asha texting back. But I felt nothing.

It was a warm spring night. The full moon was bright enough for us to see, even without our headlamps. We left the car by the side of a dirt road and picked our way through the thin woods on the edge of the DMA facility. The only sound was the hollow roar of traffic on the highway in the distance.

I'd taken some maps we needed from Kieran's laptop and dumped them onto my smartphone. The maps were pretty good, and I was able to quickly lead us to where I thought the tunnel entrance might be. Then it was a matter of hunting around to actually find them in all the bushes and undergrowth. After about an hour, I was starting to get cold. Then I heard a low whistle from Jake.

Kieran and I arrived at the same time. Jake was pulling overgrown black-berry bushes from a huge round metal grate made of thick rebar. It was set into the slope of a hill that rose gently toward the DMA facility, about half a mile away.

The metal bars of the grate were about the thickness of my finger. I clicked on my headlamp and shined it in. All I could see were the concrete sides of a tunnel, heading off into murky shadows. I flicked on my phone, activated the gps and checked the digital map on the screen.

“This would make sense,” I said. “This is it.” I saw Kieran smile in the faint moonlight. All that stopped us from lifting the grate aside was some thin wire attached to the concrete. Jake snapped that with bolt cutters. Then we all grabbed part of the grate.

“On the count of three,” I said. It was heavy, almost too heavy to move. We grunted and heaved. The grate finally flipped away from the tunnel entrance onto the ground. It made a ringing sound that quickly died away. Just the same, we turned off the head-lamps right away. I scanned the moonlit darkness around us to make sure no one heard. There was no sign of anything, just a bit of wind rustling the leaves.

We went in.

The tunnel was big enough that I could stand up and stretch out my arms, no problem. But that didn't make it easy to travel through. The floor and walls were curved and slimy. There was a steady stream of knee-deep water running down the middle of the big concrete tube. I tried to stay to one side but kept slipping and landing in the stream, swearing at the shock of the cold water every time.

Occasionally there was a weird gust of damp wind like the tunnel was taking a deep breath. Single file, we kept marching through the tunnel in silence.

Fifteen minutes later the only thing different was that the stream was deeper, up to our waists. The water was cold, but we got used to it. The deeper it was, though, the harder it was to push against the current. To keep me going, I kept thinking about Asha. What she'd say when I gave her the money. What we could do in the summer, the places we could explore together.

We were all getting tired and cold. I wasn't sure how much farther we could go on tonight. I was pretty sure we'd have to turn back. We hadn't brought the right gear for something this wet. Beyond bolt cutters and a few other basic tools, we hadn't brought anything serious.

“Kieran,” I finally said. “Kieran!” I saw his headlamp stop up ahead in the tunnel, then spin around toward me.

“What?”

“We need to go back and take another run at this tomorrow. The water's getting deeper, we need different equipment. I'm not even sure if this tunnel is going the right way.”

“Can't you check the map on your phone?”

“No. The GPS doesn't work underground.”