Max Read online

  "You cannot board a vessel of the United States Navy unless you satisfactorily pass a BSSTC, a basic survival skills training course," Lieutenant Khaki almost snarled. "This course normally takes three weeks. Under these extraordinary circumstances, we can compact it into one week. In the extremely unlikely event that you last a week, you may then board a United States Naval vessel in an attempt to ascertain Dr. Martinez's whereabouts, and, if possible, execute a rescue mission, under the supervision, direction, and authority of the United States Navy."

  "You sure do like saying 'United States Navy,' " said Gazzy cheerfully.

  Her gray eyes flared as she looked down at him.

  "Lieutenant, I'm sure you can appreciate the very dire need we have to begin the search as quickly as possible," John said firmly. "Admiral Bellows assured us that we would have every resource necessary."

  "And so you shall," said Lieutenant Khaki, turning to him. "As soon as you pass a BS—"

  "Yeah, we got the BS part," I interrupted. "But look, we have all the survival skills we need—and then some. You guys just don't have that much to teach us."

  For a moment Lieutenant Khaki looked like she was about to laugh in amazement. Instead, she just snorted and motioned to a khaki-clad underling. "Ensign, please show our visitors—and their dogs—to their quarters."

  "Yes, ma'am," said the young ensign, touching his cap.

  As Total huffed indignantly, I whirled to stare at John. He looked upset and also tired and frustrated. I remembered that he cared about my mom too. He waved us closer.

  "Guys," he said, "I'll make some phone calls, see what I can do. In the meantime, just do what they say. If they do agree to help us, it could mean the difference between life and death."

  My mom's life or death.

  "We need their resources," John went on. "And frankly, I don't know that we have any contacts with enough leverage to make the navy forgo their standard operating procedure. But, like I said, let me make some calls."

  Reason and emotion battled inside my head. Where was my Voice when I actually needed it? I thought it had popped up earlier, but I wasn't sure if that had really been my Voice returning, or if Angel had been putting thoughts into my head. Or was it my own wishful thinking, blurting out something in the (somewhat relative, in my case) privacy of my mind?

  At any rate, no Voice stepped up now to help me make a decision.

  I hated this. Hated it. I'd always gotten us out of scrapes on my own. I'd never once had to agree to let some official person help us. But this was different. I knew I couldn't find my mom by myself or with just the flock. The Pacific Ocean is too big, too deep.

  The fact that accepting this bitter reality practically made my psyche split in two is indicative of my trademark inability to work or play well with others. I missed the good old days, when I was just supposed to save the world. That was so much easier to stomach than having to save my mom.

  After a minute, I nodded tensely. "They have to take us as soon as we pass the course," I snapped at John. "Even if it's less than a week."

  He nodded. My jaw tight, chest aching, I turned to follow the ensign, who was waiting for us.

  "Is there a mess hall?" Gazzy asked him. "Can we see your weapons? Can I drive a tank? Do you have a lot of explosives?"

  The ensign looked besieged. "Yes, mess hall. No to the weapons. Major no to the tank. The explosives are nothing you'll get close to. Okay, kid?"

  Gazzy looked disappointed.

  Welcome to the khaki wonderland.

  32

  GIVEN OUR BACKGROUND, you need to know that having our lives take huge, bizarre nightmarish turns for the worse is kind of a regular thing. And yet when the alarm went off at five a.m. the next morning, I felt like we were exploring a whole new level of bad.

  We had spent the night in an overturned metal half-pipe. John said it was called a Quonset hut. It was like a long, low hotel room with a hobbity roof. At one end were eight narrow cots. Total had instantly claimed one for himself and Akila. I looked away. Nudge wouldn't need hers now.

  We had just barely rolled out of our cots when we heard a bang on the metal door. "Ensign Chad Workman reporting for duty!" someone yelled.

  I opened the door. "What," I said coldly.

  The young crew-cut guy looked startled. He double-checked the number on our door. "Uh, Ensign Workman reporting for duty. I'm supposed to lead some temporary recruits to mess, kit, and then the BSSTC grounds."

  I looked back into the dark hut. "Time for the BS, guys!" I glanced at Ensign Workman. "I think we've got the 'mess' thing under our belts. The BS is gonna be up to you."

  Ensign Workman was taken aback. "Um, are you hungry? The mess hall is open."

  The rest of the flock staggered toward the door and stood in a ruffled, sleepy group behind me. Brigid and John, with their quaint notion of not sleeping in their clothes, were taking longer to get ready.

  "We'll bring you some food, Total," I said as he trotted out the door.

  "Yeah. This ain't exactly France," Total muttered, heading off to find a good potty spot. He had loved how many French restaurants allowed dogs.

  Ensign Workman stared at him, then looked back at me, chuckling nervously. "And after breakfast, we'll get you set up in some uniforms."

  Iggy fingered the khaki cloth of his uniform pants. "This is not a good color for me. I'm really more of a 'winter.' "

  Frankly, it wasn't a good color on any of us. And it was downright odd on Fang, who normally wore only dark clothes. I was glad, though, that Nudge wasn't here asking if her uniform came in cute pink camo or had a matching headband.

  Ensign Workman gasped audibly when I pulled out a pocketknife and started slashing long slits in the backs of our new shirts.

  "You're defacing property of the United States Navy!" he said, shocked.

  "Gotta let the wings out, man," said Iggy.

  Gazzy took no pity on Ensign Workman and proceeded to snap his wings out, right there. Ten feet of authority-defying feathers and bones, attached to a grinning mutant bird kid.

  Ensign Workman turned white, which, as you can imagine, only made his uniform look even worse.

  The BS grounds were separated from the rest of the base by a seven-foot chain-link fence. A tall, chisel-faced man stood at the entrance, holding a clipboard and wearing a frown. Ensign Workman silently turned us over to him, then slunk away, no doubt hoping never to see us again. It's weird how many people feel that way about us.

  "The classroom is aft of those trees!" the guy barked. "March!"

  I know this will surprise you, but we're not good marchers. We're not even good at staying in line. And if you've skimmed any of my previous adventures, you've already figured out how well we respond to orders.

  Of any kind.

  33

  I WAS ALREADY SEETHING as we trooped through the doors into a small, linoleum-tiled classroom. A classroom. People trying to stick me in classrooms was becoming as predictable and annoying as people trying to kill me, but with less-fun results.

  "I can't believe I'm sitting at a freaking desk when my mom is tied up on a submarine somewhere!" I exploded. "This is total crap!"

  "Sit down!" snapped our instructor.

  With great difficulty, I forced myself to sit on a plastic chair attached to a metal desk. I was calculating how much force I'd need to hurl one of these desks through a window when several other students, male and female, dressed in khaki, looking young and impressionable, filed in silently and immediately took their seats. They tried hard to ignore us, already well on their way to the whole stiff-upper-lip thing, but I felt them sneaking glances.

  The man was writing on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. "LTC Palmer."

  He dropped some files on the desk and turned to regard the class with loathing.

  Angel raised her hand. "Excuse me. What does LTC stand for?" She blinked innocently. You know and I know that Angel is two parts adorable blond cherub, two parts unholy demon, and two
parts of something completely indefinable but even scarier. Most people only see the cute little girl. The lucky ones.

  "Loving Tender Care?" Gazzy suggested.

  If our instructor had had lasers for eyes (like Flyboys did, for example, or the latest dumb-bots we'd battled, the M-Geeks), he would have sliced Gazzy in half.

  "Lieutenant colonel," he sputtered. "You're here to learn how to survive, kid. Why, I don't know. But it's my job to teach you. First lesson: you speak only when spoken to. You got that?"

  Okay, I admit it: I giggled. It's just so dang cute when grown-ups get all bossy. Instantly, the lieutenant colonel's eyes were locked on mine. I swallowed my chuckle and looked at my feet. He turned back to Gazzy.

  "You got that?"

  "Uh-huh," said Gazzy.

  "You say, 'Yes, sir!' "

  "Okay." Gazzy was starting to get bewildered.

  "Say it."

  "Oh. Okay. Yes, sir." Gazzy looked pleased with himself.

  I had a question. "Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?"

  The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. "Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world," he said crisply. "It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a war, since the Revolutionary War."

  None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated.

  Gazzy leaned over to whisper, "It was a movie with Ben Affleck."

  Ah. Now I remembered.

  The lieutenant colonel turned back to the whiteboard. He wrote, The Basics: Personal Defense. Weapons Use. Outdoor Survival. Covert Operations.

  Let's cast our minds back, shall we? The flock is, well, somewhat talented in the area of self-defense. Most weapons we were already pretty familiar with—though, granted, I'd probably need some coaching in launching air missiles. Outdoor survival? You mean, what we'd been doing for the past two years? The desert rats, the cactus smoothies, the hobo packs made of whatever we could steal from Dumpsters? I think we're good there. And of course, covert operations. That was going to be fun. I could hardly wait till they saw Fang disappear right before their eyes.

  I figured we could knock this course off by about four o'clock this afternoon, if we took a short lunch. Then we could get on an official U.S. Navy vessel and go spring my mom at long last!

  Then I was going to take Mr. Chu apart, one piece at a time, and feed him to the weirdly enthusiastic seabirds that seemed to hang out here.

  34

  I LEANED OVER the instructor, looking anxiously at his face. "You okay? Sorry. Didn't mean to slam you against the wall that hard. Nose not broken? Good."

  The guy in the white karate gi, his black belt marked with eight level lines, was still trying to catch his breath. He'd already tried jackknifing to his feet, only to slide slowly sideways as his brain realized that his lungs didn't have any oxygen in them.

  We stood around waiting, along with the rest of the class, which now stared at us as if we were freaks. Oh, wait—that was because we are.

  So far in this class, there had been ten minutes of watching the instructor chop, flip, throw, kick, and punch just about everyone in the room. He'd ignored us until I'd stepped right in front of him, ready to take my turn in line.

  "You can just watch for now," he'd said briskly.

  I shook my head. "Let's get it over with."

  So he'd explained what he was going to do and how I should block it or evade it, but I was already thinking about lunch and didn't really pay attention. Then he'd come at me, and I dodged to one side, under his arm, then kicked his knee out from in back, making him sag.

  He started to spin, but I gave him a two-handed chop on the shoulder, trying not to break his collarbone, then jumped and did a spinning back kick, right into his chest. That was when he'd smacked up against the wall and slid down like a raindrop.

  He looked a little better now, wheezing slightly and sitting up.

  "I told ol' Palmer that we had a pretty good handle on this, but I guess he didn't believe me," I said apologetically.

  His eyes narrowed as he slowly stood up, a good six inches taller than me, and I'm five-eight. He probably outweighed me by about a hundred and forty pounds. "That was a fluke," he said. "I was going easy on you because you're a kid. But if you want a fight, I can fight."

  I guess this gets filed in the bulging folder of Max's Nongirliness, but my heart gave a little jump. I'd been worried about getting soft, losing my razor-sharp survival instincts. And what do you know, this nice navy guy was volunteering to help me brush up on them.

  "Yeah?" I said, trying not to look too excited. Behind me, I heard Fang snort, saw Gazzy and Iggy start to calculate odds and exchange money.

  "Don't hurt him too bad, Max," said Angel, smothering a grin as fury crossed the instructor's face. He rolled his shoulders, walked about ten paces away, and cracked his knuckles. The other students looked nervous and backed away from us, edging toward the door.

  He stared at me with cold, cut-me-no-slack determination, then got into a fighting stance, holding one hand out, beckoning me.

  "I saw that movie too!" I said. "It was like the coolest movie of all—"

  He launched himself at me.

  That was when his day really went downhill.

  It didn't last that long—maybe four minutes. Which can feel like a long time when someone's whaling on you. Not to malign the U.S. Navy or anything, but he didn't land a single blow. Maybe he was having an off day. Finally, we resumed our earlier position: me leaning over him as he gasped on the floor.

  "It's not your fault," I said, not even breathing hard. "I'm genetically enhanced. And, you know, ruthless. Plus, of course, meaner than a rabid wolverine. Are you okay?"

  After a long pause, he nodded silently.

  I jerked a thumb at the rest of the flock. "Do you want to try it against any of them?"

  Everyone except Fang failed at not looking hopeful. The guy shook his head no.

  "Good choice. Then how about you give us a checkmark saying we passed the self-defense part of the BS? Okay?"

  He nodded again.

  I looked at the others. "Is it lunchtime yet? I'm starving."

  Iggy felt his watch. "It's a little past nine. In the morning," he clarified.

  I groaned. "Okay, let's find some vending machines. I need, like, about a million Twinkies."

  It looked like we might be finished by four, after all.

  35

  Q: You're presented with a smooth-faced, eight-foot-high wooden wall. Your objective? Get over it. To, like, save comrades or something. How to accomplish this?

  A: Take a running start, brace one foot against the wall, throw one hand to the top, try to hang on long enough for a comrade to either grab your hand at the top or for another comrade to push your butt over from below. It takes teamwork!

  BKA (bird-kid answer): Or, you could just, like, fly over it.

  Q: Twenty yards of dirt to crawl across on your belly. The catch? Rows and rows of barbed wire, strung eighteen inches off the ground. How do you get across without being snagged?

  A: Do the "sniper" crawl. Be sure not to raise your butt or shoulders or head too high. Ouch.

  BKA: What can I say? We've been crawling like rats and slithering like snakes for years. How else to sneak up on each other, hiding beneath the bed frame to grab Iggy's ankle when he gets up for a drink of water? Plus, we're really thin. If we keep our wings tucked in tight, no worries.

  Q: Is there anything a bird kid can't do?

  A: No. Apparently not.

  BKA: Well, we still totally fall down in the table-manners department. I'm just saying.

  Rope swings over quicksand, wading through rivers while holding weapons above our heads, balancing on spinning logs, climbing ropes, running fast, crawling through tunnels—we were starting to seriously depress our fellow naval classmates, all of whom were older than us and had already been in training for a while.

  Explaining that we'd been designed to be stro
ng, fast, and light didn't really cheer them up. They just saw us kids beating the socks off them. We were barely panting when our classmates were bent over at the knees, throwing up from exertion. Heights don't bother us. (Duh.) We've already been in awful, to-the-death fights. We've already been chained in dungeons. Locked in dog crates and experimented on. We've crawled through miles of air-conditioning ducts. Been pushed to our extreme limits physically, psychologically, emotionally. All of this BS training was just kind of a picnic after that.

  Is that what Jeb had meant when he said everything that we've gone through was just a way to train me for the future? I would so hate for him to be right.

  "This is fun!" Gazzy exclaimed, shoveling down the food at lunchtime. "That obstacle course reminded me of that time when we were jacking the car from the chop shop, remember? And we had to climb through all those piles of car parts without making a sound? Pass the ketchup."

  I pushed the ketchup his way.

  "I gotta hand it to the navy," said Iggy. "They know how to keep the chow coming." He got up to get fourths, easily threading his way through the tables and the crowd, picking up a fresh tray and starting again at the beginning of the line.

  "Okay, are we done yet?" I asked Fang. "It's almost one o'clock. My mom has been tied up on a sub for almost two days! Every minute counts here!"

  "We've gotten through self-defense, the obstacle course, and outdoor survival," said Fang. "We've still got weapons use. We'll probably be done by five or so."

  "What's next?" Angel asked, starting on her third hamburger.

  Fang checked our list. "Covert ops."

  Angel smiled.

  36

  TAG! YOU'RE IT!" Gazzy tapped the navy guy on the shoulder, causing him to jump about a foot in the air and stifle a shriek.

  I have to admit, it was almost fun being set loose in a patch of heavily palm-treed terrain and then having to get past guards to get to "home base."