Spy School Project X: A fan teaser

Chapter 12 - SLEUTHING

June 23

Murray's Compound

Middle of absolutely nowhere, Georgia

0800 hours

I returned Erica's smile. "I already have an idea."

"Where?"

"It's a secret."

Erica rolled her eyes. "I'll call Grandpa and let him know we need a ride. While I do that, see if you can find any clues as to what Murray is up to.

"Will do," I said with a salute. "And, uh, what about him?" I asked, indicating Dane.

"Yeah... we should probably tie him up."

"Well we can't use the ol' shoelace trick like I did on Seabrook. He'd bust through those like spaghetti noodles."

Erica scanned the room, then walked over to the enormous window that gave a view of the enclosure Murray had tried to trap us in. There were giant curtains on either end of it, which could slide together to blackout the room. Erica ripped one off of the rails and laid it flat on the floor next to Dane. "Well don't just stand there," she said impatiently, "help me out."

I got down on my knees next to her and together we rolled Dane onto the curtain. I made that sound way too easy - let me rephrase that. It took us a full two minutes of strenuous effort to roll Dane onto the curtain. When he finally flopped over, Erica and I were both drenched in sweat and breathing heavily.

"Holy crap," Erica said in between breaths. "He's gotta weigh as much as a rhinoceros."

I could only nod my head in agreement. After resting for a few minutes, we wrapped the curtain tightly around his arms and torso, then tied dozens of knots, creating a makeshift straight jacket. "That ought to hold him," Erica said when we had finished.

"Ought to?" I said with concern.

Erica rolled her eyes again. "Okay, that will hold him. Does that make you feel better?" With that, she walked over to the phone on the desk and began dialing.

I looked around the control center for clues, but quickly deduced that there wasn't anything helpful in here. The walls were empty, the desk had no drawers, and the only things on the desk were the phone and some empty pizza boxes (Murray's diet was atrocious). So I left the control center and began checking nearby rooms. The first one I came to looked promising. 

There was a table littered with sticky notes and a map on one of the walls. As I read the sticky notes, however, I realized that they were all useless. They read things like "Order more pizza," and "Hire someone to replace the cameras that Ben broke," so I took a look at the map.

It had five thumb tacks in it: one about 50 miles north of Atlanta, and four scattered along the Gulf of Mexico (two in Texas, two in Louisiana). I assumed that the one by Atlanta was where we were. As for the others, I had know idea if they were important or not. Maybe they were the locations of similar hideouts that Murray owned. Or his favorite pizza places along the coast. Heck, maybe he even put them on there randomly in case I managed to escape, that way I would lead the CIA on a wild goose chase while he carried out his plans on the other side of the earth. I memorized the locations anyway, then continued my search for clues.

I didn't have any luck after that. There was nothing else in the map room, and there was nothing at all in the remaining rooms of the hallway; they were completely empty. I didn't bother venturing off to a different part of the compound, because I probably would have just gotten lost. I walked back into the control center just as Erica was hanging up the phone.

"Find anything?" she asked. 

I told her about the map.

"Hmmm. There must be something important about those locations. If he wanted to send us on a wild goose chase he could have just planted a piece of paper with some fake evil plans on it."

"Yeah. Maybe Cyrus knows something about those spots. Speaking of him, how long until he picks us up?"

"He said about an hour. He's still back in Atlanta with everyone else. While we wait for him, we can check out some of the rest of this place."

"Yeah, we'll be lucky if we cover a whole 2% of this enormous place in that time..." I trailed off as I noticed some movement on the security screens behind Erica. My eyes grew wide as I realized what it was.

Erica noticed immediately. "What's wrong?"

"You think they're coming to us?" I said, pointing at the screens. Dozens of assassins were sprinting up the stairs, armed to the teeth.