He looks at me strangely.
“I received my mission brief just like always. Actually, this particular brief had an ‘urgent’ code attached to it.”
“What’s urgent?”
“You. Your status here.”
He glances around the room. I know he’s scanning for threats, evidence of other people in the space, hidden dangers, potential weapons.
I say, “I lost communication with The Program four days ago. Even the safe house was sanitized when I got there.”
I don’t tell him about the freelance team. I decide to hold back that information, at least for now.
“What do you think happened?” Mike says.
“I thought The Program had been breached.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know.”
He shakes his head.
“They cut you off,” he says.
“What the hell—?”
I’ve been worried about The Program for days, confused and upset as I’ve tried to figure out how to move forward without their support and direction.
“Why would they cut me off?” I say. “I was on a mission.”
“You already know the answer,” Mike says.
“I don’t.”
He sighs. “They cut you off because you went into the camp.”
“I had no other choice.”
“That’s not what it looked like. Not from their standpoint.”
“What did it look like?”
“I don’t know all the details,” Mike says. “But I’m guessing it looked a lot like what happened before.”
“You mean with the dead soldier?”
I see a flicker of tension at Mike’s forehead. If what Francisco said is true, it was Mike who brought him into The Program, and Mike who bears some responsibility for him.
“The soldier before you was sent in and disappeared. That’s why you were told not to go in, but you ignored orders.”
“I didn’t ignore them. It was a calculation on my part. A matter of mission dynamics.”
“Calculated or not, when you went in there, you tied their hands. They had no choice but to distance themselves from you.”
“It’s not like I disappeared,” I said. “I’ve been trying to contact them all along.”
“How could they know it was you?”
“I was using security protocols!”
Mike squats, his hands resting on his thighs. His voice gets quiet.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about this.”
I don’t say anything, waiting him out. There’s no way to trick Mike. He’ll tell me or he won’t, but it will be his own decision.
“Moore is the Pied Piper,” he says. “They’re scared of him, scared of what he can do. One operative goes in and disappears. The next goes in against orders. They weren’t taking any chances. It became a burn operation.”
“Is that why you’re here?” I say. “To complete the burn?”
He stands, chewing his bottom lip as he considers the question.
I make no outward change in my posture. But I am ready for him, ready for imminent attack.
I evaluate the odds. I am coming off a mission, and Mike looks fresh and well rested. That’s a factor in his favor. On the other hand, we are in a small interior space, and his physical advantage is diminished by lack of maneuvering room. Besides, I’m more familiar with the space than he is. That’s a factor in my favor.
But I can feel my heart beating faster than it should be before a fight. Without the chip, I have less control of my reactions.
I calculate Mike’s advantage to be 60 percent to my 40.
“Let’s calm down here,” Mike says. “I can sense you getting overheated, and there’s no need for it. It’s not a burn operation. I’m here to get a status report. And deliver a message.”
“What message?”
“Status first,” he says.
I clear my throat. I’m not used to reporting to Mike, and I’m not comfortable with the idea. But at this point, I don’t have a lot of options.
“Moore is dead,” I say. “I completed the mission.”
“Is that right?” Mike says, his face relaxing into a grin.
“You knew already,” I say, not believing his reaction for a second.
“I knew,” he says, by way of admission. “Incidentally I had no doubt that you would do it. This despite what some—uh—others may have thought.”
The subtext is clear. Mother and Father doubted.
“You said you had a message for me?”
“Ah, that’s where it gets interesting,” Mike says. “The fact is you started the mission. You haven’t finished. Not yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You cut off the head of the serpent, but you were dealing with a Hydra.”
Hydra, the multiheaded serpent of Greek mythology.
“Even as we sit here,” Mike says, “things are progressing at the camp.”
“Liberty is falling apart. I saw it happening before I left.”
“You’re wrong. You assumed it would disassemble. In fact the opposite is occurring.”
I think about Lee, his anger at his father, his desperation to prove himself worthy.
“It’s Lee,” I say. “He’s taken over.”
“That’s right. Along with his sister,” Mike says.
I think about Miranda the first night I was at the camp. Would she be helping Lee after her father’s death? Or would she use the opportunity to get free?
“I thought the camp was blacked out. How does The Program know what’s happening there?”
“Someone is feeding information to the FBI. We got it on intercept,” Mike says.
“An agent?” I say.
“Not likely. It’s someone at the camp. He got cold feet and he’s been e-mailing from the forest.”
I think of Sergeant Burch slipping out of the woods after I killed Moore, the way we passed each other without a word. Burch, who served loyally by Moore’s side for so long. I imagine him seeing Moore radicalize, watching the camp change into something it was never intended to be. I imagine what he went through before deciding to take action against his friend, the torture he must have put himself through.
Mike says, “We got the news, and we saw the truck leaving the encampment earlier. I was sent here to see if it was you who left—”
“And?”
“I was told to send you back in to neutralize the situation. Do you remember the first thing the U.S. government did during the Iraq War way back in 2003? It wasn’t Saddam Hussein they killed.”
I think back to my military history lessons when I was in training.
“It was his sons,” I say.
“That’s right. Because if Saddam died and his sons lived, nothing would have changed. You know where this is going, don’t you?”
“Moore’s children.”
“You have to take care of them,” Mike says. “Quickly and efficiently.”
“Why don’t we send the FBI in now?” I say.
“The FBI is well meaning, but it moves at the speed of bureaucracy. This has become an imminent-threat situation. By the time the FBI realizes the true nature of the threat, it will be too late.”
“You’re not my handler. You can’t send me on assignment.”
“I’m not sending you,” Mike says. “The Program is sending you.”
“If they’re so unsure about me, why would they send me back in now?”
“I can’t be sure,” Mike says, “but from where I’m standing, it looks like a test.”
“A test of what?”
“Your loyalty.”
Sweat breaks out under my arms.
“My loyalty is intact,” I say, my voice rising.
“Is that so?” he says.
I think of Francisco in the woods, his body crisscrossed in cut marks.
I killed him to protect The Program, and now I’ve found the same chip in me that caused him to go crazy.
I don’t say any of this to Mike, but I’m unable to control the anger in my face.