A Better World

CHAPTER 20

The guard was young, with all the screw-you swagger that implied. Which was impressive considering he was kneeling on the floor with a gun to his head.

“You’re both dead.” His voice had a thick West Virginia drawl. “This is a DAR facility. We’ll know who you are, where you live. You may as well give up now.”

“Sweetie,” Shannon said, “I promise you. The DAR already knows who we are.”

She nodded at Kathy Baskoff, and the commando jammed her submachine gun barrel deeper into the guard’s neck. His swagger disappeared. After all, he’d watched Kathy kill his partner without hesitation.

And you have no idea how much she’d like to do the same to you.

Shannon took a roll of silver duct tape from her kit bag and yanked the end free. She wrapped a dozen loops around his wrists, then another dozen across his chest, binding him to the chair.

“We’re go,” she said, then stepped over the body of the other guard and into the cold predawn.

There were engine sounds, and the headlights of four trucks rolling up the hill. Light splashed across the heavy sign that read DAVIS ACADEMY, carved in granite and sitting there like it should have read YALE.

“This was my academy,” Kathy said. “From age eleven to eighteen.”

“I know,” Shannon said. “That’s why I picked you.”

In the dark, the commando’s thin-lipped smile looked carnivorous.

A Jeep and three heavy trucks pulled forward, engines chugging. Shannon waited for them to line up. “All of you, listen.” She had the urge to yell like William Wallace urging the Scots to battle, but she knew the earpiece would carry just fine. “You all know why we’re here. No matter what they call this place, no matter what they pretend so they can sleep at night, every academy is a prison. Some of you, like Kathy, spent time in them. Some of you didn’t. That doesn’t matter now. What matters is that tonight the first is falling. We’re done playing nice.”

She heard whoops through the truck walls.

“Every adult here is complicit. Guard or janitor, they all sat by and watched children be brainwashed and tortured. If they surrender, fine. If not”—she shrugged—“even better.”

The whoops were replaced by laughter.

“But remember. Our first goal is to get every single kid out of here. So check your targets. Don’t pull the trigger unless you’re sure.” She walked to the passenger side of the Jeep, pulled herself up. “Let’s roll.”

“Where to?”

“Administration. There’s someone there I want to talk to.”

Shannon had been planning the attack on Davis Academy for two months. Her penance, a way of making good on her sins. She’d pored over satellite photos, memorized reports written by former “students,” analyzed the list of attendees. She’d even spent a week camped out in the woods near the perimeter, watching vehicles come and go, and she was not a camping girl. After all of that, the inescapable conclusion was that there was simply no way to do it that didn’t put her team—and the children they were rescuing—in serious danger.

For a while, she’d even wrestled with bringing Cooper in on it. His knowledge of DAR systems would be invaluable, and together they were pretty unstoppable. Besides, the sin was his too.

It had seemed such a minor thing at the time. Three months ago, when she was delivering Nick to John Smith, they’d been on the run. They’d been in Chicago, hunted by the DAR, and when they needed a place to sleep, Shannon had suggested a friend’s apartment.

She just hadn’t thought it through, that was all. Hadn’t realized the massive force arrayed against them. How far the government would go to catch them, and what it would do to anyone in its way.

Tonight you wash those sins away.

In an ironic twist, it was John and his crazy mission that had made this possible. She’d agreed to rob the DAR for him, but in trade, his programmer had to make sure they lifted the things Shannon needed, too.

Like the bypass code for the alarm system.

Like the duty roster and guard post locations.

Like detailed maps of the administration building, including the residence.

Information is usually more dangerous than bullets.

The most dangerous part had been sneaking up on the outer gate post. Low profile was the way to go, so dressed in tactical blacks and night vision goggles, she and Kathy had crept in alone. Taking their time, staying down, branches snagging at clothing, animal sounds magnified.

When they’d reached the guard booth, Shannon eased alongside the door and knocked. Things had gone fast after that, Kathy coming in hard as Shannon shifted into the guard hut, blocking the panic button.

One guard had gone for his weapon. Kathy’s silenced submachine gun had made a single whoomp, and he was down, a hole in his forehead, which bled surprisingly little.

The other had decided to settle for talking tough. She hoped he was enjoying the show on the monitors.

Now, rolling through the night in an open-topped Jeep, the air cold, she felt a crystalline clarity. Most times on a job she was surfing adrenaline, getting off on the rush of whatever ridiculous stunt she was pulling. But this was different. She wasn’t working solo tonight, for one thing. Instead of a spy or a scout, tonight she was a soldier, and she knew that some of her fellow soldiers might die.

But it had more to do with a fear of what she might find. A fear that all of this might not grant the absolution she was looking for. The redemption for her terrible error.

You couldn’t have known. There was no way to predict that spending a night in your friend’s home would mean their daughter was shipped off to an academy.

Besides, it’s going to work. In fifteen minutes, you’ll be leading 354 children out of prison.

Including her.

In the distance, she heard faint thumps, the sound of silenced gunfire. Suppressors didn’t work as well in real life as they did in the movies; bullets were propelled by explosions, and there was only so quiet you could make those.

By now, academy security would know that they were under attack. They’d be following protocol, retreating to checkpoints, tripping panic signals that were supposed to bring down the might of the US military. Under normal circumstances, special forces teams in attack choppers could land within seven minutes of the first alarm.

But not tonight. Tonight, you guys are the defenseless ones.

Something woke him.

It had been a disheartening thing to realize, as he grew older, that a solid night’s sleep was the province of children. Rare indeed was the evening that he didn’t get up thrice to use the restroom.

But it wasn’t his bladder that woke Director Charles Norridge. It was a sound, a loud crack that had snapped through his dreams. Fireworks? Perhaps some of the older kids had snuck out, were playing at homegrown terrorist again. If so, there would be boys in the stockade come 9:00 a.m. A crude device, but effective. Far more useful than the physical discomfort was the shame; at this age, there was no more effective teaching tool than humiliation.

“Hello, Chuck.”

With a click, his bedside lamp turned on, revealing a slim woman with dark hair. Behind another woman, bigger, stared at him with unmistakable hatred—and a large gun in her hands.

“Who are you?” His voice came out weaker than he hoped, and he coughed, summoned an imperious tone. “I don’t find this funny.”

“Really?” The slender woman smiled. “I think it’s kind of hilarious.”

More cracks in the distance. Gunfire, he realized, not fireworks. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“What’s the meaning?” She brushed her hair behind her ears. “That’s a tricky question. Like, politically? Ideologically? Morally?”

How dare she. “This is a school. I’m an educator.”

“This is a prison. You’re a warden.”

“I never hurt anyone,” he said. “I love my students.”

“I wonder if they’d say the same of you?”

He started to slide out of bed, froze when she said, “Uh-uh.” She sat on the edge of the mattress. “I’m going to give you a present, Chuck.”

“Do I know you?”

“My name is Shannon. You’ve known plenty of my friends.” She gestured at the woman by the door, the one carrying the gun. “Like Kathy.”

Norridge looked. The woman had a restless energy to her; even standing still, she seemed to be fidgeting. “I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?”

“My name is Kathy Baskoff.”

“I don’t know any Kathy Baskoff.”

“Sure you do. You just called me Linda.” The woman smiled without warmth. “Linda Jones.”

Until that moment, as frightened as he’d been, it had all felt at a remove, too. The aftereffects of a bad dream, nothing to be taken seriously. Now his bladder hit, a sudden icy tightness. “I never hurt you.”

“You don’t even remember me. How many Linda Joneses have you had at this school? A hundred? A thousand?”

Shannon said, “Kathy, what was the worst part about being here?”

The dangerous-looking one paused. “It wasn’t just that you took us from our families. That you renamed us. That you turned us against each other and poisoned our minds.” She raised the gun, stared down the barrel at him. “It was living in fear. Every single minute, in fear, and knowing we were trapped. That there was nothing we could do about it.”

Suddenly the one called Shannon gripped his forearm. Charles tried to pull away, but she was surprisingly strong. She snapped something around his wrist, cold and metal, and then jerked his arm up and fastened the other end to the bedpost. Norridge yanked, and the handcuff bit into his skin.

Shannon said, “Listen.”

He waited for her to speak again; when she didn’t, he realized she meant it more generally. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s right. No gunfire.” A pause. “Your guards are all dead. No one is coming to save you.”

Something wet coated his thighs, and Norridge realized he’d lost control of his bladder. The shame that washed over him felt hotter than the urine.

“Right now, our people are planting explosive charges. In the classrooms, the dormitories . . . the administrative residences.” She smiled. “In five minutes, this facility will be a smoking hole in the ground.”

“My God. You can’t!”

“It’s done. But here’s the good news. You have a chance to survive.”

He gulped air, strained against the handcuff, feeling weak and old. “You can’t do this,” he repeated.

“Chuck,” she said. “You’re not paying attention. You have one chance to live, one. All you have to do is answer a question.”

He tried to gather wits scattered like frightened rabbits. “What?”

“You have a student here named Alice Chen.” She leaned forward, her face inches from his. “How old is she?”

Norridge stared. His legs wet, his eyes crusted with sleep, his hand cuffed to the metal post of the bed he’d slept in for two decades. “I . . .” He fought to think, to conjure the records of his students. This woman was wrong. He knew his students, knew them all. He could look at a child and remember their transponder number, repeat every detail of their file, all their secrets. He just . . .

Didn’t know their names.

As though she could read his mind, the woman shrugged. “Too bad.” She stood up, and the two of them walked to the door.

“Wait!” His voice was as fearful and querulous as a child’s. “You can’t do this.”

Kathy Baskoff stopped at the door. “In five minutes, you’re going to die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” She smiled. “Live with that.”

The bedroom door shut with a click.