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James Frey


A short prequel story set within the world of Endgame – the New York Times bestselling series and international multimedia phenomenon by James Frey.Humanity rests on the shoulders of the Players representing the twelve lines. But there are some people out there who aren’t keen to let their fate be decided by twelve strangers. They are Endgame conspiracy theorists, people who fear and know of the coming Event and will stop at nothing to ruin Endgame in a desperate bid for survival. They call themselves The Zero Line, and they have one goal: kill all of the living Players before Endgame even begins.























Copyright (#ulink_9a2a18d6-afc6-5c04-aa87-68621670e250)


First published in ebook in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Endgame: The Zero Line Chronicles: Feed © 2016 by Third Floor Fun, LLC

Cover design and logo by Rodrigo Corral Design

Additional logo and icon design by John Dismukes

James Frey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780062332714

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780007585298

Version: 2016-04-07


Contents

Cover (#u017c3330-2994-5a5d-9ae5-5b782b64be1d)

Title Page (#u314f6477-9302-57ac-800a-9f2a5e7efc25)

Copyright (#ulink_b420a304-c3f4-5d0d-9e23-a08b4e4d4a77)

Chapter One (#ulink_bf50bd0f-6f83-5408-be85-0033fe62386e)

Chapter Two (#ulink_61b7e57e-d64c-5f4b-8be4-0f3893543504)

Chapter Three (#ulink_543bfec1-1339-5a72-a2f4-1a6f6fce06bb)

Chapter Four (#ulink_5ddfe42c-c4c1-5e5a-a241-79839c2d5dbd)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Excerpt from Endgame: The Calling (#litres_trial_promo)

Marcus Loxias Megalos (#litres_trial_promo)

Chiyoko Takeda (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Books in the Endgame Series (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_7efd4105-1224-582f-b428-bdff5b281a5b)


I knelt in the rocks, sharp stones digging into my knees and shins, and placed the bomb. It was small, about the size of two bricks, and was contained inside a cardboard box. There wasn’t much to it: a chunk of C4—a plastic explosive with the consistency of soft clay—a few components of an alarm clock, and four D-size batteries. I took the two wires from the clock, twisted them onto the leads of the detonators—short metal cylinders. I pushed the detonators into the C4.

C4 was supposed to be extremely stable—you could drop it or shoot it or rip it in half, and it wouldn’t explode. It needed an electric current to detonate. And I’d just given it that electric current. It was ready to blow, and sweat dripped down my forehead onto my nose and into my eyes.

This wasn’t the first time that I’d done this: I’d prepped a dozen practice bombs, where the C4 was replaced with Play-Doh. This was the first time I’d done it for real, though: real batteries, real detonators, real explosive. My fingers trembled with every step.

I looked over at Kat. She was older than me by five years: 24. She was tall and pretty, with brown hair that shone like copper in the evening sun. Eugene was with her, the two of them unrolling a tarp that had been painted with a thick and heavy coat of thermite. The design was a spiraling series of rectangles—the logo for the Munich Olympics. At the bottom was painted “9-5-1972.”

This was how we would “invite” the Players to meet with us. John and Walter didn’t know for certain how a real Calling worked. Walter had said that the Cahokians believed that there would be a sign from heaven—possibly something violent. The only thing they knew for sure was that it would be unmistakable, and the Players would know where they were to gather. So we’d use bombs to get their attention, and use the thermite to burn the Olympic logo into the ground.

When they had the tarp unrolled, Eugene unrolled the fuse and pulled out a lighter.

I hit the timer on the clock, and it started to count down.

I stood up and walked to them. Eugene touched the unlit lighter to the fuse, and we all headed for the trees. As we walked, Bakr, the man who’d made the bombs, walked past me, heading toward the bomb to check it.

Eugene held his hand out to me, and I slapped it, reluctantly.

“Nice job, man,” he said.

“Let’s see what Bakr says,” Kat said, stopping at the tree line and turning around.

I looked back at him, 30 yards away in a natural low spot in the forest. It was muddy in the middle, which we’d worked around, but he had boots on and walked right through the mud, just as he’d done for the other groups who had practiced this exercise. We were now the eighth group to practice with the real equipment. Four more to go. All the Zero line members were getting their chance, because practicing with Play-Doh was one thing but sticking detonators into real C4 was something completely different. I hadn’t expected to be so intimidated by the bomb.

Bakr turned around and gave a thumbs-up sign. I’d done it right.

“Nice job, Mike,” Kat said, and squeezed my arm.

“We’ve rehearsed this enough,” I said. “I should be able to do it in my sleep.”

Walter spoke without looking at me. “Don’t get cocky. Forget a single step in there and you could blow yourself to hell.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying we’ve practiced enough. We’re ready. As ready as we can be.”

“You and your team need to be a well-oiled machine,” John said.

Then why is Eugene with me? I thought. The whole group blamed Eugene for Tommy’s death—at least I assumed they did. It was obvious in the way they talked to him, talked about him, and spoke about Tommy. Eugene screwed up and Tommy had died. And now I was in a squad with him and Kat.

I sat down on the hillside next to Mary. Why we’d gotten split up, I couldn’t explain. We had grown so close throughout the summer spent on her family’s ranch. We each knew how the other thought, how we’d respond in any given situation. But she was leaving with Bruce—just the two of them—going after the Olmec.

“Nice job,” she said as I sat.

“It’s easy,” I replied. “Like I said, we’ve done it so much.”

“But this time the bomb is real. Come on, I had my turn, and it wasn’t the same thing at all. I kept freaking out that there was going to be a spark—from the clock wires, or even the static electricity in my clothes. Nerves, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Nerves. I think we’ve all had our final turns. No more until the real deal. How’s the weather in Veracruz this time of year?”

“Shut up,” she said, and laughed a little. “It’s not like this is a vacation.”

“You get to go to the beaches of Mexico, and I get to go to Istanbul and Baghdad.”

“It’s going to be hot.”

“You think Baghdad isn’t?”

“It’s probably more humid in Mexico.”

Kat squatted down next to us and laughed. “You can wear a bikini in Veracruz. I have to wear a hijab in Baghdad’s heat.”

Bakr took the disassembled bomb to the west side of the depression, and Bruce and Eugene rolled the tarp up again and then hauled it back to the bomb. Bakr had grown up in Baghdad—one of the cities Eugene, Kat, and I were going to, but he wasn’t part of our team. He said he didn’t want to be accidently recognized.

“Rodney, Jim, Julia,” John said. “You’re up.”

Jim was right behind me, and he stood up.

“Last time,” John said to him. “We’re off to Reno tomorrow, so make it count.”

Reno tomorrow. That gave us a week before the meteor would come and we’d have to go off to plant the bombs—to send the invitations to the Calling. It would only be a few more weeks before we were all reunited in Munich at the Olympics.

Weeks that I would be away from Mary. Weeks that Bruce would spend pretending to be her boyfriend, on a vacation on the sapphire shores of Mexico, drinking margaritas and tequila, and—

“What are you thinking about?” Mary asked.

Fifty yards away from us, Julia had picked up the bomb and Rodney and Jim were carrying the tarp into position.

I kept my voice low. “I think you should ask John to swap you out for Kat. Or Eugene—even better.”

She didn’t immediately answer. She leaned back on her elbows, watching the bomb being moved into place.

I knew what she’d say by this point. We’d been over it a dozen times.

“Mike,” she said, a sigh in her voice.

Walter reached over and smacked me lightly in the head. He wasn’t quiet when he spoke. “Get over it already. We’ve been practicing in these groups for six weeks. I’m not going to change it at the last minute. You have the streets of Istanbul memorized. You learned conversational Turkish. You need to worry about the plan now, and about your love life later.”

“I don’t speak Turkish. I’ve learned how to count to ten and how to ask directions to the hotel.”

John looked at me. “We’ll all be back together soon.”

“I just think that Mary and I work well together. Look,” I said, pointing at the group planting the bomb and tarp. “Jim and Julia are staying together.”

“Because they know how to work together,” Walter said, his tone cold as ice. “You don’t. You think you do, but in every combat exercise we did, you’d ignore mission objectives to defend Mary.”

“So you’re putting her in a different unit so I’ll be less worried about her?” I said rhetorically. I knew his answers.

“We’re saving the world. We have to make sacrifices. You’ve never seemed to understand that.”

“I don’t understand that?” I said, standing up. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve given up all my life’s goals. I gave up my admission to Berkeley. I gave up my life savings. I killed a man for Christ’s sake. I’ve given it all up, and you can’t cut me a little slack.”

“Quiet,” John said, watching Julia kneeling next to the bomb.

“I asked to be on a different team,” Mary said. “You know that.”

“I know. And I’m asking for you to change your mind.”

“It’s too late to change,” John said. “Even if she wanted it. She knows Spanish. Four years in school. Bruce does too. Not to mention all of the intel she’s memorized—and the intel you’ve memorized. Tell me, where in Veracruz is the best place to find black-market guns? The best place to hide if the police come after you?”

“I don’t need to know it. Mary already does.”

“What if she gets shot?”

Then what’s the point? I thought. I believed in Zero line’s goals, but I had my priorities, and Mary was placed above the mission.

Walter spoke. “Where do you get the bomb and tarp in Turkey?”

I ignored him.

“I’m asking you a question, Mike. Where do you get the bomb in Turkey?”

I glared at him. “The Fethiye fish market, from an anchovy dealer named Salomao.”

“And what’s it going to be packaged in?”

“A case of fish with a false bottom. Look, I know what you’re getting at.”

“Then shut up,” Walter said.

Mary looked at me and took my hand.

Something inside me wondered if I was losing her. Yes, I did defend her. Of course I would. I wasn’t an unfeeling bastard like Walter. If chasing down Players meant leaving Mary on her own, of course I would stay with her.

I knew the Players were tough—Walter and Agatha had drilled that into us—but we would operate as a team. In every practice—the daily runs and obstacle courses, the shooting drills, the bomb practice, the sales dialogues—we were a team, and we stuck together. The only times where I changed the plan and defended Mary were when there was an error: when we were attacked from behind, or when we lost radio communication. That wasn’t a reason to tear Mary and me apart. It was adapting to the changing conditions.

Julia stood up from the bomb, and Rodney touched the fuse with his unlit lighter.

Bakr once again trotted out to disassemble the bomb, readying it for squad nine, which was just John by himself. John and Walter were taking on their jobs alone. We had so few of us that this was the only option. Groups of three—like me, Eugene, and Kat—had two targets to hit. Others had just one.

I squeezed Mary’s hand. I wanted all of this to be over.

John stood up. “We’re leaving for Reno tomorrow afternoon. We have more practice ahead of us before our flights next week. And we’ve scouted out a good place to watch for the meteor.”




CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_a06f80af-b09f-56ae-9f3b-0d452e68be70)


“We still have more training we need to do,” Walter said. All of us were back in camp, except for Tyson, who was staying out front guarding the gate. “We’ve started surveillance training, but we need to do it in a city environment. We need to teach you how to follow people, both in a car and on foot. So we’re going to hit it hard this week—we’ll need this to track down the Players when they get to Germany.”

Rodney spoke. “I know we’ve been over this already, but are we really sure about this? Does that meteor affect our plans? My squad is supposed to go to the Aksumite compound first. Ethiopia. That’s on the other side of the world. They wouldn’t have seen any meteor.”

“It’s a trigger event,” Walter said with a hint of anger. “It would make the news, and this is what the Cahokian line believed would be the signal. A big natural event. It could have been an earthquake in Rome or a tsunami in Japan. Some big event that sets everything into motion. Nature is sending us a big break, but now it’s our turn to use it and send out these invitations to the Players.”

“But why bombs?” Lee asked. He was smiling—obviously not concerned about the morality of bombing anyone. After all, he’d been the one to design the thermite and smuggle all the bombs out to our destinations. “We want to call them, not kill them, right?”

“It’s what Walter knows and Agatha described,” John said. “She said that the invitation would be violent. It sends a message.”

“Speaking of which,” Henry said, “why does the La Tène get a free pass? Why aren’t we stopping him?”

“We’ve been over this before,” John said. “Agatha said she’d handle it. We have to trust her. She has no reason to betray us since she’s been excommunicated by her line.”

“And remember,” John said, “our goal is not to kill these people. We’re stopping them. We’re going to, hopefully, enlighten them.”

“And more importantly,” Walter said tiredly, “as I’ve said a hundred times: this is not a real Calling. It takes more to win Endgame than just killing the other competitors. You have to follow clues and solve a puzzle. Even if Agatha is lying to us about the La Tène Player, he couldn’t win anything.”

Henry stood up and started to pace. “Do we know that? This meteor is a big deal. Too big, I think. How do we know it won’t set off a real Calling and game?”

“All the more reason to hurry,” John said.

“Right,” Walter said, “let’s just worry about the task at hand. We have a lot to do, every one of us, and it’s going to be dangerous and deadly serious. We can’t lose sight of what we’re about to do. We need to get to Reno, train there, and then get moving.”

Henry waved his hand dismissively.

“Don’t be discouraged,” John said. “We know that there will be problems. We just need to remember that there’s twenty of us and eleven of them. We’re luring them onto our turf. They’ll all be on their guard, but they’ll be waiting for the other Players at that sunburst plaza. They won’t be ready when we knock on their doors, wanting to talk. Yes, we’ll have guns, bombs, anything we need, but that’s the backup plan. The ideal is that we convince them all, and they walk away.”

“And if someone turns on us?” Henry asked. “You’ve made them out to be killing machines.”

“They’re also very savvy. Smart, tactically and strategically. A good argument, well made, could do wonders,” said John. “Yes, there are some vicious sons of bitches in the group. For them, a bullet might be the only solution. But most of them should listen to reason.”

I walked to the supply tent—it wasn’t so much a tent as it was a waterproof shelter built of tarps—and got a couple of boxes of 7.62 ammo. Ever since the gun-store robbery, I hadn’t been able to sit still. I needed to be doing something, and sitting around camp wasn’t one of those things.

Shooting helped, sometimes. I practiced almost entirely to fire at long range; the precision and concentration that it required helped drive thoughts of the sheriff out of my mind. I could hear someone coming up behind me.

“Hey, Mike.”

“Mary,” I said, and smiled for the first time all day.

“I caught the tail end of Henry’s rant. Can’t take these bullets on the plane. Well, not as carry-on, at least,” she said, with a quick smile.

She set down a box of 9 mm hollow points and pulled her Beretta from her hip.

I pulled the ear protection down into place. I picked a target at 200 yards, and took the straight-forward stance that Walter had recommended to me months ago. I made sure Mary had earplugs in before I let off my first round. The target was a one-inch sheet of steel. I’d hit it hundreds of times by now. It took me about five minutes to go through each shot: gauge the wind, adjust for the falling bullet. Mary, on the other hand, emptied her magazine into a target at 30 yards.

When we were out of ammo, she pulled her earplugs off and draped them around her neck like a necklace. She put her arm in mine, interrupting my reloading of the magazine. I set the M14 onto the hastily constructed plywood table.

“I’m still not happy we’re not going to the same place for these invitations,” I said. “I don’t care what Walter and John say.”

“I know, Mike. I know,” Mary said, exasperated.

“Do you think the thermite will work?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Barbara told me about it. Supposed to light up like fireworks. So I guess we’re going to the Olympics, huh?”

“I don’t think we’ll have much time to watch anything.”

“We might,” she said. “Once the Players are stopped, we’ll have won. We can do whatever we want.”

Mary took the binoculars from the table and spotted for me while I shot at the 300- and 400-yard targets. I was getting so much better with the rifle—I was one of the best in the group, beating everyone except the recent war vets: John, Walter, Bruce, and Henry. In all honesty, I was better than Bruce, but I had decided not to talk about it, as cranky as he was. He’d learned to shoot during Vietnam, but he’d served in the Navy, in the engine room of a destroyer, and never had the need to use his shooting skills after basic training.

I took aim at the 300-yard target through my scope, exhaled slowly, and squeezed the trigger.

“Hit,” Mary said. “Upper left shoulder.”

The target was just a chalk outline drawn on the trunk of a thick pine tree. I adjusted my aim and fired again.

In the instant I pulled the trigger, my mind was back in Redding, in the gun store where Tommy had been killed. The chalk outline on the tree was no longer a chalk outline but the image of the sheriff, his blood spouting forth from his chest, neck, and head. I closed my eyes to get rid of the image, but it was still there—it was always there. I hadn’t told anyone about it, but Mary had to know, right?

“Hit,” she said. “Center of the chest. Kill shot.”

My heart was pounding, and I began to sweat as I sighted the target once more. I could feel my hands trembling, and the crosshairs on the sight were dancing around the tree. I blinked and the sheriff was back.

Morris, I’ve been trying to get you on the horn for ten minutes. What’s with this call I got about gunfire …

Tommy was lying on the floor. The huge blast of buckshot that had come from Morris’s sawed-off shotgun had killed him immediately—no time to suffer, or move, or speak. I had been hit in the shoulder, and I could still feel the dribble of blood.

I fired the gun again.

“Whoa,” Mary said with a smile in her voice. “Way off to the left.”

I tried to hold my hands steady. I didn’t know how Bruce and Eugene were able to shrug it off. Bruce had killed Morris, and the guy who shot Tommy.

I fired again, and a chip of bark blew away two feet above the outline’s head.

“I can’t do it, Mary,” I said, dropping the gun onto the ground and standing up.

“Now you’ll have to resight the scope,” she said, picking up the rifle.

“Didn’t you hear me? I can’t do this!”

“Just practice,” she said. “You can do it. You’ve been beating everyone in camp for weeks. You’re beating me, and I grew up with guns. I had my first twenty-two when I was ten, and my dad had been teaching me to shoot his guns since I was seven. And as of our last competition, you came in third place out of twenty.”

“That was a fluke. So what if I shoot like this when we’re in Munich? What if I’m shaking so hard I can’t even look through the scope? I’m supposed to be a sniper. At this rate I’ll kill our own people who are down on the ground.”

“Two bad shots don’t make you a bad sniper. You probably just need water and something in your stomach.”

“I see him every time I shoot,” I said.

Mary was quiet. She was looking down at the rifle in her hands, checking the scope to see if it was damaged.

Without looking at me, she said, “I know you do.”

“How am I supposed to live with that? And don’t tell me that it’s better to kill one person than lose billions, because I’m so sick of John saying that. The Players are legitimate targets—we need to stop them. Even kill them if they don’t listen to us. That sheriff was one of the good guys. He didn’t need to die. He shouldn’t have even been there. Damn Eugene.”

“I agree,” she said simply. “It was Eugene’s fault. I worry every day about you and Kat. Kat’s smart, but Eugene is a screw-up. He’ll get you killed if something doesn’t change.”

“Well, we’re out of time for things to change. The meteor can’t be postponed, and that means that we have to send the invitations.”

“We have time. The Olympics don’t start for another two weeks.”

I took the rifle back from her and aimed at the closest target—a white fir with a big red dot spray-painted on the trunk. It was only 25 yards away. I fired.

“Wide right,” Mary said.

I fired again, aiming to the left of the tree trunk.

“Hit,” she said.

I fired again. And again. And again until the magazine was empty.




CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ae5fa950-023d-5384-872a-4b27b5150c2d)


It didn’t take long to break camp and load our equipment. We left the tents and the rest of our camping gear—our Coleman stoves, sleeping bags, coolers—and just took what we thought we would need. One day Mary was going to come back and return to her old life, maybe. But for now the camp was secluded in a place where no one should stumble across it until hunting season. And if they did, they wouldn’t necessarily know it was us. The only thing she insisted we clean up was the thousands of brass shells at the gun range. She wasn’t worried about her family finding a shooting range—they were all shooters, and there was another range somewhere else on the ranch—but the sheer quantity of spent shells made it obvious that this range was not for casual use.

It was nearly three in the afternoon when we started driving to Reno. Mary and I rode in the Suburban, the second vehicle in our little convoy. We wanted to leave the van behind—it was what we used to rob the gun store, and it might have been seen by someone—but we just had too many people and too much gear. We planned to ditch it as soon as we found something else.

We had pooled our money together as soon as we got to the ranch. We didn’t have enough, though; it had cost Lee and Lin quite a bit to secretly obtain enough C4 and thermite for our invitations. We’d have to find another business to rob to get the kind of cash we’d need for plane tickets: traveling to Munich was expensive in itself, but first we had to fly people to all kinds of unusual places. My squad was going to Istanbul for the Minoan Player and then Baghdad for the Sumerian. Lee and Lin had to get into China, which was almost impossible. We had to get to Syria and Ethiopia and India, and all those flights would be pricey, not to mention the hotels we’d need, and food, bribes, and tickets to Munich.

No one had made plans for anything after Munich. No one had even brought it up. I think we were all too nervous.

Our caravan of vehicles—the Jeep, the Suburban, the van, and the Skylark—stopped at a grocery store in Susanville. Douglas and Barbara, who had spent much more time out of camp than the rest of us, went inside to buy dinner.

“Everybody else stay in your vehicle,” Walter said over the walkie-talkie. “Molly, can you find a new license plate for the van?”

She was in the Jeep, ahead of us, and jumped out. She walked confidently into the back of the parking lot.

“How long is it to Reno?” Bruce asked from the driver’s seat.

“Ninety minutes,” Mary said. “And I don’t care what anyone else says: I’m taking the first shower.”

“Tired of washing in the stream?” Kat asked. “I may fight you for that shower.”

“How many rooms are we getting for the twenty of us?” Jim asked. “I vote we splurge. I want a bed.”

“A bed,” I said, relishing the thought. “I haven’t gotten a single good night’s sleep in forever.”

“I’m with you guys,” Bruce said. “But I’m not the one holding the money. I’m just driving the car.”

“I donated my life savings to this,” I said. “And I’m getting a bed.”

Mary squeezed my hand. We had shared a tent, along with Bruce and Larry. I had gotten used to nuzzling up next to her, wrapping my arms around her as we slept.

Mary had become a part of me, more than I had ever thought possible. We spent every waking minute together. We knew how to press each other’s buttons. When we ran the hills at camp, I could tell when she was just tired or when she needed real help—and she did the same for me. When she was fussing with the camping gear, making dinner or stoking the fire or sweeping dirt out of the floor of the tent, I knew what must be troubling her. I knew her thoughts, and she knew mine.

And she helped me as I struggled to get over killing the sheriff. When I woke in the middle of the night, screaming and fighting against the claustrophobic confines of my sleeping bag, she could whisper me back to sleep.

When this Calling was over, I would have nothing left—no home to go back to, no money to live on, no friends I could turn to. Except Mary.

But could I truly turn to Mary? Now that she was going off with Bruce, I … Well, I didn’t know. What if something happened to her?

I had to get that out of my head. I shouldn’t be paranoid. This had been the plan for two months, almost. I should have come to terms with it.

Ahead of us I saw Molly climb back into the Jeep, the old license plate in her hand. She worked fast.

It took 20 more minutes for Douglas and Barbara to return from the grocery store, and they had a full cart. I wished that it could be a hot meal, but at least it was food. They stopped at each vehicle and handed off bread, cold cuts, mayo and mustard, and far more snacks than we’d ever need: potato chips, Hydrox cookies, Hershey bars, caramels, Ring Dings, Twinkies, and several six-packs of Fanta, 7Up, and TaB.

Mary took the bread and cold cuts and took sandwich orders from everyone in the car. It wasn’t fine dining, but it tasted fresh, and it was the first meat we’d eaten in months that hadn’t been cooked over a campfire.

We ate and ate. The sudden sugar rush of snack foods we hadn’t had since June made us all a little sick, but I stuffed myself nonetheless. I think I ate half the Ring Dings all by myself.

Kat held the newspaper on her lap while she ate. “They’re calling it the Great Daylight Fireball,” she said. “And dig this—it’ll fly over Nevada up to Canada.”

Mary finished chewing a bite of her salami sandwich and read over Kat’s shoulder. “It says it might not hit. It’s close enough to pass through the atmosphere and burn. We just need it to work as the trigger.”

John came up to the car and Bruce rolled down his window.

“We’re going to hit the bank,” John said.

“Whoa,” Bruce said.

“Are you serious?” Kat asked.

“It’s almost closing time,” John said, looking at his watch. “We want to hit it before they lock up. Look, I know you’re not happy with him, but Eugene is taking the lead. He’s robbed three banks before.”

Bruce laughed. “And he spent five years in jail for it.”

“Because his getaway car chickened out.”

“And you’re asking me to go with him?” Bruce asked. “To make sure he doesn’t accidentally shoot someone?”

“I’m not worried about that.”

“This isn’t something easy to walk away from,” Bruce said. “Do we have a getaway car?”

“We’ll take the Skylark. Molly will switch the plates. In the meantime, I want you and the other two vehicles to go to Reno now. Find us rooms at Harrah’s. Use your fake IDs.”

John looked back at me. “You’re coming with us, Mikey. You too, Kat. This is your team’s operation.”

“What?” I asked, flabbergasted. “Why?”

“Partly because you saved everyone’s asses at the gun store, but also because you have grown a hell of a distinctive beard. It’s gonna be you, me, Kat, Eugene. Grab a pistol and make sure it’s loaded.”

As John left the window, Mary squeezed my hand. I kissed her and grabbed my M1911.

“Don’t say it,” I said as she stared at me. “I’ll be careful.”

But even as I took the pistol and tucked it in the back of my pants, hidden under my shirt, I could feel myself trembling. Still, I climbed out of the Suburban and walked back to the Skylark, where the six of us robbers gathered. Kat walked with me. She was in a T-shirt and jeans.

“I didn’t expect to be doing this today,” Kat said to me.

I put my hands in my pockets to hide their trembling. “You’ll do great,” I said. “We’ve practiced working as a team. And we have both Walter and John to help us, and they know what they’re doing. We just need to make sure we keep Eugene under control.”

“He’s done this kind of thing before,” she assured me.

“I know what he’s done.”

“Listen,” Kat said. “I know you hate him for what happened at the gun store. But we have to work together. This whole trip to Turkey and Iraq is going to be for nothing if we can’t work together.”

“I know it,” I said.

She touched my arm. “It’s going to be fine.”

“We’re robbing a bank.”

“We need to. We can’t buy plane tickets if we don’t. We have to live in Turkey and Baghdad for three weeks, remember.”

I stopped, and looked at her. “I trust you,” I said. “I just don’t know what to do about him.”

“I trust you, too,” she said. “It’ll work out. We’ll just rely on each other. Just you and me. We’ll let Eugene take care of his jobs, but think about this. It’s just you and me. We can do this, together.”

I looked into her green eyes. I didn’t know what it was. But I believed her. She hugged me and told me it was all going to be okay, and then we walked to the car.

Molly sat in the driver’s seat, her long red hair hidden under a very convincing Afro wig.

I climbed in beside John. Eugene was next to him. Kat took the front seat.

“This is going to be easy,” Eugene said as the other three vehicles pulled away on their way to Reno. “Walter, you stand outside and don’t let anyone in or out. We want customers in there. Anyone we can threaten with a gun is going to be important. John, you go in first and ask to open a checking account. Mike, take two hundreds with you and ask the teller to give you change. Kat, you go with him. Act like you’re filling out a form—a deposit slip or something. I’ll be the last in. You’re all there backing me up if something goes wrong. Make sure there are no heroes. This isn’t going to be a quiet robbery—I’m going to be loud, get in their faces. Don’t show your guns unless you have to. Kat and Mike, don’t even get into the action unless you have to. Just act normal. Molly, how long will it take for you to steal new wheels?”

“Faster than it will take you to rob the bank.”

“Okay, good.” He looked at his watch. It was 20 minutes from closing time. “Let’s go.”

Molly drove three blocks down and turned into a parking lot that was shared by the bank, an insurance company, and a Burger King.

Everyone checked their guns. John and Kat had pistols, like me, but Eugene carried the Beretta Model 12 submachine gun that he’d been practicing with all summer. All the guys had beards, and we all smelled of wood smoke. I doubted we’d really blend into the crowd very well.

Eugene put a backpack on.

John hopped out of the car and sauntered to the door. He looked so relaxed. I didn’t know how he did it. Especially with Eugene calling the shots.

I got out of the car and walked into the bank. There was a line of just two people. Three tellers were at their stations, helping customers. I made a show of pulling money out of my pocket.

The pistol seemed so heavy and so bulky against my back, only hidden by my Los Angeles Rams T-shirt. I felt very exposed, like this was the dumbest thing I could be doing. I started breathing too fast, and I tried to use the meditation techniques John had taught us all at camp, forcing myself to breathe five times per minute.

The door squeaked as Kat came in behind me. She went to the table in the middle of the bank and started filling out a deposit slip.

I watched her. Her fingers were shaking as she tried to separate one slip from the others behind it.

Eugene kicked in the door; its glass cracked with a loud pop. “If anyone touches the silent alarm I’ll kill every single person in this bank,” he shouted, waving his gun back and forth. “If I hear a siren, you’re all dead. And don’t test me—I’ve already got two murder charges in Sacramento. I’m getting the chair whether I kill all of you or not, so don’t test me.”

The bank guard, an older man with a beer belly, backed away from Eugene. His voice shook as he spoke. “Don’t do it, son.”

“I’m only going to do it if I hear a siren, or if some idiot tries to be a hero. Now give me your gun.”

The two customers in front of me had fallen to the floor and were hiding behind a narrow counter. I dropped down next to them.

The guard unholstered his revolver and very slowly laid the gun on the floor. Eugene picked it up and shoved it in the back of his pants.

Eugene pointed his gun at the first teller, a young man in a suit and tie. “Did you touch the alarm?”

“No sir.”

“How about you?” He pointed to the woman at the next stall. She shook her head. The man on the end raised his hands and said, “I didn’t either.”

“Was I talking to you?” Eugene shouted. “Now find a bag and put all the money you have in it. Empty all the drawers. Where’s the bank manager?”

The man sitting at a desk with John stood. John very calmly pulled his gun from his belt and pointed it at the manager.

“Hi,” John said, smiling casually and cocking his gun.

Eugene walked to the counter and held his submachine gun up to the customer—an overweight woman with an enormous purse. “She’s dead if I don’t see more money coming, Mr. Manager.”

“We put the money in a time-lock safe,” the manager said.

“She’s dead if I don’t see more money coming,” Eugene repeated. “Did I mention this gun fires five hundred fifty rounds per minute? But don’t worry, because it only has forty in the magazine.”

“We don’t have any more,” the manager pleaded.

John spoke. “Well, I reckon you’d better find some more. How about everybody in here empties their wallets?”

Eugene shouted again. “That’s right. Everything out of your pockets. Jewelry, too.”

The woman next to me on the floor touched a gold chain with a heart pendant on her neck, trying to hide it behind her hand, but I stood up and pulled my gun. “Hand it over.”

I took the necklace and pocketed it. Then I reached in her purse and found sixty dollars. Eugene had the bag of money and was walking back and forth with it.

“Is everybody drained dry?” he asked, and John and I said yes. Kat was still acting like a customer. She’d given her handbag to Eugene.

Eugene tossed the bag of money over to John, who proceeded to empty it on the bank manager’s desk. The manager looked stunned.

“Mr. Manager,” John said, “help me search through this mess and find the dye packs.” The manager slumped back into his chair. There was a lot of loose money, and John scooped all of that up to put it away in the bag. He took the wallets, emptied them, and dropped them on the floor. Meanwhile the manager dejectedly flipped through the bundles of new bills. He put one aside, and John looked at it. “Come on. I know there’s more.”

The manager eventually pulled five stacks of bills from the stash, and John double-checked every one.

He turned to Eugene and said, “I think we’re done here.”

Eugene looked back at the people and took off his backpack. “A couple more things. Inside this backpack is a bomb. It’s extremely sensitive. Once I set it, I don’t recommend that you try to move it. Nod if you agree.” Everybody nodded.

Kat stood up and joined us.

John, Kat, and I walked past Eugene out the door. He followed us, turning around once the glass double doors shut. He looped the backpack straps over the door handles.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” John said, and, fighting the urge to run, we walked away, giving no indication that we were in a hurry.

Kat never even had to draw her gun.

Molly, still sporting her Afro, met us in the parking lot in a tan-and-brown Monte Carlo.

Once we were inside, everyone patted Eugene on the back. Even I had to admit he knew what he was doing.

There was a paper sack on the front seat, and Molly reached in as she drove. “Gentlemen, it’s time to be civilized.” Out of the bag came four razors, four towels, and a can of shaving cream. “Let’s go to Reno.”

I only nicked myself twice.




CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_14b39002-c14f-54ac-adc1-2c383f73625e)


I stood in front of the window of a department store, facing the TVs on the other side of the glass. All in the Family




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