Code of Honor by Alan Gratz

Author:Alan Gratz [Gratz, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2015-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

MY SNEAKERS CUT PATHS THROUGH THE SLUSH IN the parking lot as the big soldier dragged me backward, away from the Homeland Security building. A white van screeched up behind us, and its side door flung open. Hands grabbed me, dragged me inside, and the door slid shut with a bang.

“Go,” the soldier said, his voice deep and urgent.

The van accelerated. It was dark inside, windowless, and it took me as long to catch my breath as it did for my eyes to adjust. I was on the floor of an empty cargo van. There were two seats at the front, only one of them occupied. The driver was a young white guy with sandy brown hair, wearing all black, but that’s all I could make out from my angle. The big soldier sat on a low metal bench welded to the van wall behind me, his huge black army boots by my head. Another man, tall but thin, sat in shadow on a bench on the other side of the van, facing me.

“Well,” the shadowy man said, his voice instantly familiar. “I have to say you certainly made that a lot harder than it had to be.”

“Mr. Hagan?” I said.

It was. A passing streetlight lit up the inside of the van, illuminating his thin, stubbly face.

I sat up. “Mr. Hagan? But what—how—why—?”

“All very good questions,” Hagan said. “Have a seat and I’ll try to answer them all. We don’t have much time.”

A phone rang, and Hagan pulled his out of his pocket and looked at the screen. He held up a finger. “I need to take this,” he said. He answered it and held it to his ear. “Hagan.” He waited. “Escaped, you say?” He feigned surprise and looked right at me. “Now, how did he do that?”

I climbed up onto the bench beside the soldier as Hagan listened, and I purposefully slid a few inches away. My chest still throbbed from the big guy’s punch. I had been hit a lot in football games, but I’d never taken a shot as hard and painful as that man’s fist.

“Did he, now,” Hagan said. “Did he, now? Incredible. And you think he had help? I see. Do you have a description of the vehicle? Yes, I see. Yes, of course. I was already headed in. I’m in the car as we speak. If I see the van, I’ll do what I can to detain it. Yes. All right.”

Hagan hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. “It seems you’ve managed a daring escape, Kamran Smith. Far more daring than the more prosaic one I had already arranged for you.”

“But you said—”

Hagan put up a hand. “I always meant to break you out. The moment the higher-ups told me we were finished, that they had their one and only terrorist plot all taken care of, thank you very much, now get back to your cubicle, Mickey Hagan, I knew I had to do something. We had to do something. And that meant getting you away from there.

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