James Patterson - Max

After a minute, I nodded tensely. “They have to take us as soon as we pass the course,” I snapped at John. “Even if it’s less than a week.”

He nodded. My jaw tight, chest aching, I turned to follow the ensign, who was waiting for us.

“Is there a mess hall?” Gazzy asked him. “Can we see your weapons? Can I drive a tank? Do you have a lot of explosives?”

The ensign looked besieged. “Yes, mess hall. No to the weapons. Major no to the tank. The explosives are nothing you’ll get close to. Okay, kid?”

Gazzy looked disappointed.

Welcome to the khaki wonderland.

GIVEN OUR BACKGROUND, you need to know that having our lives take huge, bizarre nightmarish turns for the worse is kind of a regular thing. And yet when the alarm went off at five a.m. the next morning, I felt like we were exploring a whole new level of bad.

We had spent the night in an overturned metal half-pipe. John said it was called a Quonset hut. It was like a long, low hotel room with a hobbity roof. At one end were eight narrow cots. Total had instantly claimed one for himself and Akila. I looked away. Nudge wouldn’t need hers now.

We had just barely rolled out of our cots when we heard a bang on the metal door. “Ensign Chad Workman reporting for duty!” someone yelled.

I opened the door. “What,” I said coldly.

The young crew-cut guy looked startled. He double-checked the number on our door. “Uh, Ensign Workman reporting for duty. I’m supposed to lead some temporary recruits to mess, kit, and then the BSSTC grounds.”

I looked back into the dark hut. “Time for the BS, guys!” I glanced at Ensign Workman. “I think we’ve got the ‘mess’ thing under our belts. The BS is gonna be up to you.”

Ensign Workman was taken aback. “Um, are you hungry? The mess hall is open.”

The rest of the flock staggered toward the door and stood in a ruffled, sleepy group behind me. Brigid and John, with their quaint notion of not sleeping in their clothes, were taking longer to get ready.

“We’ll bring you some food, Total,” I said as he trotted out the door.

“Yeah. This ain’t exactly France,” Total muttered, heading off to find a good potty spot. He had loved how many French restaurants allowed dogs.

Ensign Workman stared at him, then looked back at me, chuckling nervously. “And after breakfast, we’ll get you set up in some uniforms.”

Iggy fingered the khaki cloth of his uniform pants. “This is not a good color for me. I’m really more of a ‘winter.’ ”

Frankly, it wasn’t a good color on any of us. And it was downright odd on Fang, who normally wore only dark clothes. I was glad, though, that Nudge wasn’t here asking if her uniform came in cute pink camo or had a matching headband.

Ensign Workman gasped audibly when I pulled out a pocketknife and started slashing long slits in the backs of our new shirts.

“You’re defacing property of the United States Navy!” he said, shocked.

“Gotta let the wings out, man,” said Iggy.

Gazzy took no pity on Ensign Workman and proceeded to snap his wings out, right there. Ten feet of authority-defying feathers and bones, attached to a grinning mutant bird kid.

Ensign Workman turned white, which, as you can imagine, only made his uniform look even worse.

The BS grounds were separated from the rest of the base by a seven-foot chain-link fence. A tall, chisel-faced man stood at the entrance, holding a clipboard and wearing a frown. Ensign Workman silently turned us over to him, then slunk away, no doubt hoping never to see us again. It’s weird how many people feel that way about us.

“The classroom is aft of those trees!” the guy barked. “March!”

I know this will surprise you, but we’re not good marchers. We’re not even good at staying in line. And if you’ve skimmed any of my previous adventures, you’ve already figured out how well we respond to orders.

Of any kind.

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.