Max (Maximum Ride 5)

A: Take a running start, brace one foot against the wall, throw one hand to the top, try to hang on long enough for a comrade to either grab your hand at the top or for another comrade to push your butt over from below. It takes teamwork!

BKA (bird-kid answer): Or, you could just, like, fly over it.

Q: Twenty yards of dirt to crawl across on your belly. The catch? Rows and rows of barbed wire, strung eighteen inches off the ground. How do you get across without being snagged?

A: Do the "sniper" crawl. Be sure not to raise your butt or shoulders or head too high. Ouch.

BKA: What can I say? We've been crawling like rats and slithering like snakes for years. How else to sneak up on each other, hiding beneath the bed frame to grab Iggy's ankle when he gets up for a drink of water? Plus, we're really thin. If we keep our wings tucked in tight, no worries.

Q: Is there anything a bird kid can't do?

A: No. Apparently not.

BKA: Well, we still totally fall down in the table-manners department. I'm just saying.

Rope swings over quicksand, wading through rivers while holding weapons above our heads, balancing on spinning logs, climbing ropes, running fast, crawling through tunnels—we were starting to seriously depress our fellow naval classmates, all of whom were older than us and had already been in training for a while.

Explaining that we'd been designed to be stro

ng, fast, and light didn't really cheer them up. They just saw us kids beating the socks off them. We were barely panting when our classmates were bent over at the knees, throwing up from exertion. Heights don't bother us. (Duh.) We've already been in awful, to-the-death fights. We've already been chained in dungeons. Locked in dog crates and experimented on. We've crawled through miles of air-conditioning ducts. Been pushed to our extreme limits physically, psychologically, emotionally. All of this BS training was just kind of a picnic after that.

Is that what Jeb had meant when he said everything that we've gone through was just a way to train me for the future? I would so hate for him to be right.

"This is fun!" Gazzy exclaimed, shoveling down the food at lunchtime. "That obstacle course reminded me of that time when we were jacking the car from the chop shop, remember? And we had to climb through all those piles of car parts without making a sound? Pass the ketchup."

I pushed the ketchup his way.

"I gotta hand it to the navy," said Iggy. "They know how to keep the chow coming." He got up to get fourths, easily threading his way through the tables and the crowd, picking up a fresh tray and starting again at the beginning of the line.

"Okay, are we done yet?" I asked Fang. "It's almost one o'clock. My mom has been tied up on a sub for almost two days! Every minute counts here!"

"We've gotten through self-defense, the obstacle course, and outdoor survival," said Fang. "We've still got weapons use. We'll probably be done by five or so."

"What's next?" Angel asked, starting on her third hamburger.

Fang checked our list. "Covert ops."

Angel smiled.

36

TAG! YOU'RE IT!" Gazzy tapped the navy guy on the shoulder, causing him to jump about a foot in the air and stifle a shriek.

I have to admit, it was almost fun being set loose in a patch of heavily palm-treed terrain and then having to get past guards to get to "home base."

Fang pretty much just walked past the camouflaged guards, taking slow, quiet steps, pacing his breathing, and simply blending in with the trees.

Iggy and I had been forced into more stealthiness, actually ducking behind trees and the occasional huge volcanic boulder. All the same, despite the wide-eyed alertness of the sailors on guard, it really wasn't too hard to slither past them in a big circle.

Gazzy had relied on the element of surprise, as he often does. First, he'd perfectly mimicked a bird call, making a guard look up. Gazzy had tagged that guard. Then, when the guards were in pursuit, he'd utilized his other—well, I refuse to call it a skill. In fact, I think of it as a huge design flaw. Despite how hilarious the guys think it is, Nudge and Angel and I are simply more evolved than that. We try not to encourage demonstrations of his mastery of the gaseous arts.

Suffice it to say that Gazzy incapacitated the guards, leaving them coughing and gagging, gasping on the ground, their eyes watering. Then he raced through the trees, cackling in triumph, and burst out into the clear meadow where the lieutenant colonel was waiting with a clipboard and a stopwatch.

Iggy and Fang gave Gazzy high fives just as Lieutenant Colonel Palmer's nose turned up, and he frowned at the woods.

"It'll dissipate in a couple minutes," I said, flopping down on the grass. "It always does."

Palmer turned a ferocious glare on Gazzy. "You were forbidden to bring or to use antipersonnel weapons!"