Spy School Viva Vegas

Chapter 4 - Intelligence Work

Armistead Hall
CIA Academy of Espionage
June 11
0700 hours

"Wakey. Wakey," the voice cooed.

I had fallen asleep in my dorm room thinking about Erica, and now she was there next to my bed trying to rouse me from sleep. Maybe she wanted our first date to be brunch, I thought. She was an early riser after all. I dreamily opened my eyes.

Instead of Erica smiling at me, a finger came flying at my forehead. It had been flicked hard.

"Wake up," Chip said.

I sat upright in my bed, rubbing the middle of my forehead. It wasn't Erica trying to get me up, but my friends Chip Schachter, Jawa O'Shea, and Mike Brezinski.

"What are you doing," was the only thing I could think to ask. I had many questions, but that's the first to come out of my mouth.

"I guess we have you to thank for Cyrus barging into our cabin and yanking us out of our beds in the middle of the night," Chip said.

My vision was still blurred, but I looked around at them all. They definitely had the appearance of people that had dressed haphazardly in a rush, and they had dark rings under their eyes

"He only said 'Ben found something. Now get moving',"Jawa added.

"I was having a nice dream where I was floating down a river on inner tubes with a pretty girl before he interrupted it by throwing a bucket of water at me," Mike chimed in to make me feel even more guilty. "Now that I think about it, that may be why I was dreaming about a river."

"I swear I didn't tell him to wake you up. We did find out something, though. Jessica had some information on Murray Hill. I didn't think he would grab you in the middle of the night. I didn't even ask for you."

Chip narrowed his eyes and said, "You're saying this is a mission?"

"Yeah, I guess it is," I said, but in truth I didn't know myself.

"And there will be threats to our lives?"

"It involves Murray, so probably."

"Alright, you're forgiven. Let's go, Cyrus is waiting for us at the cafeteria," Chip said, and strolled out, slapping the top of the door frame with a whoop.

Jawa rolled his eyes and followed him. I got out of bed.

"Thanks for getting me out of there. If Chip made me do one more pushup I was going to throttle him. Except I couldn't lift my arms," Mike said. I laughed. "Plus they took away my phone and I couldn't..."

I made a frantic gesture cutting him off, knowing where this conversation was headed. Trixie didn't exist as far as my friends at school knew. Plus, Mike was bound to start asking about Erica. While our friends knew or suspected something was happening between us, I didn't want to discuss it right where anyone could be listening in. That was not an uncommon occurrence at spy school, eavesdropping was taught in our first year. I'm also certain the CIA had my room bugged.

"Couldn't look up the sports scores that I'm very interested in," Mike said, trying to recover, but sounding like he was awkwardly reading a line handed to him on a piece of paper.

He left the room so I could get changed out of the clothes I slept in, and met me outside my door before we caught up with Chip and Jawa entering the cafeteria. Even though very few students stayed on campus during the summer, there was enough of the teachers and other staff to keep a small group of the cooks around. Everything was a lot smaller, mostly just cold staples for breakfast like fruit, and dry cereal. There were some hot drinks like coffee, and hot water to make your own cup of tea. I hadn't really taken to coffee, I think it was mostly for the adults who looked like they could not put together a coherent thought without it. But, since I was exposed to English Breakfast tea by Catherine and Erica during our mission in London, I had started having it with breakfast.