Chapter 1: Emergency Procedures 1 EMERGENCY PROCEDURES Somewhere over the island of Java, Indonesia August 18 2200 hours As far as I''m concerned, the most frightening word in the English language is "uh-oh." There are thousands of situations in which those two simple syllables can make your blood run cold. You don''t want to hear your doctor say them during surgery. You don''t want to hear a member of your team say them while you''re sneaking through an enemy compound patrolled by homicidal henchmen. You don''t want to hear an explosives expert say them when they''re defusing a bomb. And you certainly don''t want to hear the pilot of your airplane say them while you''re coming in for a landing. I had heard Alexander Hale say "uh-oh" hundreds of times. Alexander was an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, but he wasn''t a very good one.
His long and distinguished career had been built on luck, lies, and taking credit for other people''s work. However, he was a talented pilot, which was why he was at the controls of our plane. Alexander said the word "uh-oh" so often, I had learned to recognize the different variations of it. A somewhat exasperated "uh-oh" indicated that Alexander had done something absent-minded, like forgetting his gun in a taxi, and wasn''t much cause for alarm. A more breathless "uh-oh" signaled that a threat was close by, such as a heavily armed thug or a perturbed grizzly bear, and meant that everyone should go on the alert. The extremely worried "uh-oh" that had just come from the cockpit was the worst by far: It meant that something had gone seriously wrong and that our lives were in grave danger. "What did you screw up this time?" Cyrus Hale barked from the copilot''s seat. Cyrus was Alexander''s father, and he also worked for the CIA.
He was a much better spy but a far less kind person. I could tell from the grogginess in his voice that he had nodded off and just woken up. "Nothing," Alexander said defensively, then added, "I think. The airport sort of disappeared." I glanced out the window next to my seat. We were supposed to be landing in Yogyakarta, a city on the southern coast of Java, the most populous island in Indonesia. A minute earlier, the ground below us had been ablaze with the lights from millions of homes. Now everything was dark.
"What happened to the city?" I asked. "I don''t know," Alexander replied meekly. "That disappeared too." I turned to face the six other passengers on the plane. Five of them were my age; four, like me, were junior spies-in-training. The sixth passenger was Mary Hale, Alexander''s mother and Cyrus''s wife, who had been a top CIA analyst until her retirement. Mary looked extremely concerned, as did Mike Brezinski, Zoe Zibbell, and Trixie Hale. The other two passengers appeared perfectly calm.
That wasn''t a surprise. Erica Hale and Svetlana Shumovsky had trained to be spies from a very young age. Erica was Alexander''s daughter and Cyrus''s granddaughter and had come from a long line of spies dating all the way back to the American Revolution. Meanwhile, Svetlana came from an equally long line of Russian agents, although she had defected to train with us earlier that summer. Both were far more used to crisis situations than normal people; each would have probably been calm and collected in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. I had been in a surprising number of crisis situations myself, given that I was only fourteen. Twenty months earlier, Alexander had recruited me to the CIA''s top secret Academy of Espionage. Ideally, the next six years should have been devoted to training and education at spy school, but things hadn''t gone as planned.
Due to a series of unusual circumstances, I had already been involved in twelve missions, confronted numerous evil organizations, and nearly been killed 156 times. (Most kids my age kept track of things like how many soccer games they had played or how many books they had read. I had a running tally of my near-death experiences.) Much of that had been extremely frightening--and yet, it had still been far more enjoyable than attending my regular middle school. Things hadn''t gone that well for the academy, either. A few months before, it had been destroyed by enemy agents. (That was near-death experience #127.) Thankfully, no one had been hurt, but fearful of another attack, the CIA had sent most of the agents-in-training home.
Only those of us sitting on that plane had been allowed to continue our education, this time at a remote wilderness facility in Alaska. The program was such a secret that most people at the CIA didn''t even know it existed. All of us were currently returning to school from our latest mission. Like most of the missions we had been on, this one hadn''t been officially sanctioned by the CIA. Instead, it had begun with me getting double-crossed and kidnapped by an American agent who had hauled me off to the country of Botswana and handed me over to a bad guy named Rufus Shang, who wanted revenge on me because I had previously thwarted the evil plans of his brother. My friends had gone rogue to rescue me, traveling halfway around the world from Alaska to Botswana. By the time they arrived, I had managed to escape Rufus on my own but also deduced that he had an evil scheme in the works. So my team had helped me prevent it, which had been very dangerous and exhausting.
(And resulted in near-death experiences #149-156.) All in all, it was a typical week at spy school. After our mission, no one felt like making the long slog all the way back to Alaska. Even Cyrus, who could be crustier than a week-old loaf of bread, thought we deserved some rest and relaxation. Luckily, an acquaintance of ours from a previous mission--a staggeringly wealthy young computer hacker named Orion--had a beachfront compound on the eastern coast of Java (as well as an estate in England, a ch'teau in France, a penthouse in Manhattan, a mega-mansion in Beverly Hills, a safari lodge in Tanzania, and possibly several other places that he''d forgotten he even owned). We had once saved Orion''s life, so he had given us free rein to stay at his properties whenever we wanted, as long as there was space available--which was usually the case, as many of them had enough bedrooms to house an army platoon. Obviously, the Tanzanian safari lodge was closer to Botswana, but Orion had already lent it out to the United Nations, which was holding an economic summit there, so we opted for Indonesia, which was on the way home. As an added bonus, Orion was currently staying there, learning to surf, and he was excited to host us.
Indonesia isn''t particularly close to Botswana; we still had to fly there. Luckily, Rufus Shang had a private jet that he didn''t need anymore, because he was in jail. Cyrus had commandeered it for us on behalf of the United States government. Rufus had enjoyed his luxuries. The jet was the most expensive one on the market, and he had spent lavishly on the interior decorations as well. I didn''t know much about private jets, but I would have bet this was the only one on earth with a crystal chandelier over the dining table. In addition, the passenger seats were fully reclining with built-in heating and massage functions, and the gourmet kitchen had one of those machines that made every kind of soda you could imagine (although sadly, the cartridge that provided cherry flavor was tapped out). Even with all the amenities, it had been a long flight over the Indian Ocean.
I was looking forward to being back on solid ground. Only the solid ground didn''t seem to be there anymore. Everyone else gathered at the windows, trying to figure out what had happened. "Maybe Alexander veered out over the ocean by accident?" suggested Zoe. Whip-smart and an excellent fighter, Zoe had been one of the top students in my class at spy school before it had exploded. We had quickly become close friends after my recruitment. "No," Erica replied. "We''re still over land.
You can see the headlights from all the cars." I looked down and realized that Erica was correct, as usual. I could see the occasional glow of headlights moving through the darkness far below. They looked like fireflies on a moonless night. "The power must have gone out," I said. I couldn''t think of any other reason the buildings would be dark and not the headlights, which would work as long as the cars had gas or batteries. "The power for the entire city?" asked Mike Brezinski skeptically. "Usually, blackouts are more localized.
" I had known Mike almost my whole life. He had been my best friend before I was recruited to spy school. Despite the academy''s secrecy, Mike had determined that it existed and ended up getting recruited himself. He specialized in coming up with outside-the-box solutions to problems and was an intensely loyal friend. "Plus, the airport should have backup power in case of emergencies," added Trixie. "It doesn''t make sense that it would be dark too." Trixie was Erica''s younger sister, the one member of the Hale family who had not been deemed spy material. Instead, the family had kept their careers a secret from her for years, sending her to normal school while covertly training Erica to be a spy.
This had always seemed wrong to me, as Trixie was one of the most intelligent people I had ever met, possessing encyclopedic knowledge about hundreds of subjects. With the proper education, it seemed to me that she would have made a better spy than most of the other students at spy school. Trixie normally wo.