Read Spy School for Free Online Page B

to rig a fiber-optic camera and a portable Van de Graaff electrostatic generator. I wouldn’t be afraid of them if I were you.”
    Only, I was afraid. In fact, it occurred to me that I’d spent a considerable amount of time since my arrival at spy school in various states of fear, ranging from moderately spooked to completely terrified. In a way, I was even more afraid of Chip than I had been of the enemy agents during my SACSA exam. They’d simply wanted to kill me (or so I’d believed at the time); Chip could make my life miserable for years to come. Given, I’d led a very sheltered life, but up to that point Chip Schacter was the scariest person I’d ever met.
    Until that night.
    The next guy made Chip look like a cream puff.

ASSASSINATION
    Armistead Dormitory
    January 17
    0130 hours
    “Rise and shine, kid.”
    There are plenty of lousy ways to wake up: having your REM sleep shattered at four a.m. when a raccoon trips your burglar alarm; snapping awake in a boring math class to discover you’ve been talking about Elizabeth Pasternak in your sleep and everyone has heard it; being pounced on by a young cousin who accidentally drives his knee into your spleen. . . .
    But those are all bliss compared to having an assassin jam the barrel of a gun up your nose.
    I pried my tired eyes open, saw the man shrouded in black . . . and my primal instincts immediately kicked in.
    I leapt into action, springing as far away as I could.
    Unfortunately, there was a wall six inches away from me.
    I slammed into it hard enough to rattle my teeth, tumbled back into my cot, and found myself right back where I’d started. With the gun pointed at my nose. Only, the assassin was laughing now.
    “Man, you should’ve seen the look on your face,” he snorted. “It was classic.”
    I couldn’t tell anything about him in the dark room. A sliver of moonlight through the window illuminated only his gun. He was merely shadow set in deeper shadow.
    “Please don’t kill me,” I said, for the second time that day. It was becoming my mantra.
    “Whether I kill you or not is entirely up to you. Let’s see how well you play ball.”
    I wasn’t sure how the assassin had gotten into my room. I’d taken the precaution of not only locking the door, but also propping my desk chair underneath the knob—although I’d only thought I was protecting myself from Chip, his goons, or other potential bullies at the time.
    After dinner Murray had introduced me to a few fellow students, all of whom had made polite small talk and then run off to do homework. I’d returned to my room to findan inch-thick packet of paperwork to fill out: registration forms, personal skills assessments, applications for false identification, weaponry rental agreements, organ donor cards, and the like. Once I’d finished all that, I’d compared my class schedule with the campus map to figure out everywhere I had to be the next day, logged in to the school computer system to set up my student profile and secure e-mail account, called my parents, lied to them about how great everything was, and discovered, somewhat late, that none of the locks on the toilet stalls in the common restroom worked. Then I’d secured my room—or so I’d thought—read a few pages of a book, and passed out.
    According to my alarm clock, it was now one thirty in the morning.
    “What do you want?” I asked.
    “Tell me about Pinwheel,” the assassin replied.
    “Pinwheel? What’s Pinwheel?”
    “You know damn well what it is. Don’t play stupid with me!”
    “I’m not playing! I really am stupid!” Admittedly, that wasn’t the best choice of words, but I was panicked. I was new to having guns aimed at me and might have told my assailant anything I knew to spare my life, but he’d thrown me a major curveball by asking me about something I didn’t know anything about. “Are you sure you’ve got the right guy?”
    “You’re Benjamin Ripley, aren’t you?”
    “Uh . . . no.” It was