33
I WAS ALREADY SEETHING as we trooped through the doors into a small, linoleum-tiled classroom. A classroom. People trying to stick me in classrooms was becoming as predictable and annoying as people trying to kill me, but with less-fun results.
"I can't believe I'm sitting at a freaking desk when my mom is tied up on a submarine somewhere!" I exploded. "This is total crap!"
"Sit down!" snapped our instructor.
With great difficulty, I forced myself to sit on a plastic chair attached to a metal desk. I was calculating how much force I'd need to hurl one of these desks through a window when several other students, male and female, dressed in khaki, looking young and impressionable, filed in silently and immediately took their seats. They tried hard to ignore us, already well on their way to the whole stiff-upper-lip thing, but I felt them sneaking glances.
The man was writing on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. "LTC Palmer."
He dropped some files on the desk and turned to regard the class with loathing.
Angel raised her hand. "Excuse me. What does LTC stand for?" She blinked innocently. You know and I know that Angel is two parts adorable blond cherub, two parts unholy demon, and two
parts of something completely indefinable but even scarier. Most people only see the cute little girl. The lucky ones.
"Loving Tender Care?" Gazzy suggested.
If our instructor had had lasers for eyes (like Flyboys did, for example, or the latest dumb-bots we'd battled, the M-Geeks), he would have sliced Gazzy in half.
"Lieutenant colonel," he sputtered. "You're here to learn how to survive, kid. Why, I don't know. But it's my job to teach you. First lesson: you speak only when spoken to. You got that?"
Okay, I admit it: I giggled. It's just so dang cute when grown-ups get all bossy. Instantly, the lieutenant colonel's eyes were locked on mine. I swallowed my chuckle and looked at my feet. He turned back to Gazzy.
"You got that?"
"Uh-huh," said Gazzy.
"You say, 'Yes, sir!' "
"Okay." Gazzy was starting to get bewildered.
"Say it."
"Oh. Okay. Yes, sir." Gazzy looked pleased with himself.
I had a question. "Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?"
The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. "Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world," he said crisply. "It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a war, since the Revolutionary War."
None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated.
Gazzy leaned over to whisper, "It was a movie with Ben Affleck."
Ah. Now I remembered.
The lieutenant colonel turned back to the whiteboard. He wrote, The Basics: Personal Defense. Weapons Use. Outdoor Survival. Covert Operations.
Let's cast our minds back, shall we? The flock is, well, somewhat talented in the area of self-defense. Most weapons we were already pretty familiar with—though, granted, I'd probably need some coaching in launching air missiles. Outdoor survival? You mean, what we'd been doing for the past two years? The desert rats, the cactus smoothies, the hobo packs made of whatever we could steal from Dumpsters? I think we're good there. And of course, covert operations. That was going to be fun. I could hardly wait till they saw Fang disappear right before their eyes.
I figured we could knock this course off by about four o'clock this afternoon, if we took a short lunch. Then we could get on an official U.S. Navy vessel and go spring my mom at long last!
Then I was going to take Mr. Chu apart, one piece at a time, and feed him to the weirdly enthusiastic seabirds that seemed to hang out here.
34
I LEANED OVER the instructor, looking anxiously at his face. "You okay? Sorry. Didn't mean to slam you against the wall that hard. Nose not broken? Good."