Allen Zadoff: The Lost Mission

“We give you time between assignments.”

“I needed my own time. In my own way.”

Father puts more pressure on my hand. The craft angles forward and down, the mountain threatening before us.

“We’re in danger,” I say.

“Exactly. It’s a crisis of confidence,” Father says. “You in us. And us in you.”

The mountain side comes into focus. What looked like a beautiful mosaic of green and brown from a distance becomes jagged rock peaks and sharply angled trees.

“After the mission I was waiting in the hotel as instructed,” I say. “But the thinking started.”

I hesitate, not knowing how much I can risk telling him.

“The thinking?” Father says. “What is that?”

I glance through the windscreen. Forty-five seconds until impact.

“Sometimes it gets difficult for me between missions,” I say. “I start thinking about the past and the things I’ve done. I came here because I needed to clear my head.”

“You weren’t hiding from us?”

“No.”

Collision sirens blare. Lights flash red across my instrument panel.

“What can we do to help you?” Father says.

“Get me back to work,” I say.

Father watches me carefully, his hand never moving from the cyclic.

Fifteen seconds before impact. My eyes scan the mountain side ahead. The density of the trees, the lack of a landing zone.

“I need to know where your loyalties lie,” Father says. “Are you still with us?”

Why is he asking me these questions?

“Who else would I be loyal to?” I say.

I note the square set of Father’s jaw as he searches my face for the truth.

Then, suddenly, he removes his hand from the controls.

But it’s too late.

“Prepare for impact,” I say, bracing my back against the seat to protect my spine.

“Listen and do exactly what I tell you,” Father says. “Pull the cyclic aft, reduce the collective, and give it hard right pedal.”

I do it. I don’t ask questions.

G-force pushes me forward as the helicopter rapidly decelerates.

“Now gain altitude. Faster.”

We rise and bank tightly, wind whipping by outside, the mountain coming up fast—

And then as if by magic, the aircraft shudders and lightens, the angle increasing as we clear the mountain by no more than ten feet. I wait for the crunch of metal on stone, for the skids to catch on a tree branch and yank us down, for any one of a dozen things that could propel us into a fiery impact.

But they don’t come.

We are clear. We are safe.

“What’s happening here?” I say. “The raid at camp, this flight, all of your questions—this is not about me going away for a few days.”

Father pauses, taking time to choose his words carefully.

“Someone went missing,” he says.

“Someone?”

“A soldier. Like you.”

“Was it Mike?”

Mike is the only Program soldier I know other than me.

“It’s not Mike,” Father says. “Something like this would never happen to Mike.”

“Who, then?”

“Someone else.”

There are others.

That’s what Father’s telling me without saying it directly. There are other operatives in The Program besides Mike and me. I thought there might be, but I’ve never known for sure.

“So you lost a man?” I say.

“A boy,” Father says. “He was just a boy. He disappeared a few weeks ago, then you cut off communication. You can understand why we needed to be cautious in finding you.”

This explains Father’s behavior, his testing me.

“The soldier,” I say. “What happened to him?”

“He’s dead,” Father says.

Father’s voice is matter-of-fact, but his face is tense. When I glance at him, and he’s looking forward through the windscreen, refusing to make eye contact with me.

“It’s happened before?” I ask.

“Never.”

I search his face for any sign of an emotional response to losing one of his soldiers, but I don’t detect any.

“You’re wondering what I’m feeling,” Father says.

“I am.”

“My feelings are separate from the assignment. I don’t bring them to work.”

Now it’s my turn to avoid Father’s look. There is an implied criticism here. I had feelings about my last mission, and it affected my behavior afterward. That was unprofessional of me.

“We are at war,” Father says. “There are casualties. I mourn privately, then I move on.”

I think of the girl from my last mission whose face I still see.

She had a name.

Samara.

Father is right. It’s time for me to move on.

“Tell me more about the soldier,” I say.

“He was on a critical assignment when communication was severed,” Father says.

“Do you know for sure he’s dead?”

“We haven’t recovered a body. But he was inside for three months without a problem, and then he dropped off the map. It’s been over a month since we’ve heard from him. There’s no other reason he could disappear for that length of time.”

I try to think of a scenario where I would not be able to communicate on a mission. Not just for a few hours, but for weeks in a row.

“Maybe he’s imprisoned?” I say.

Father shakes his head. “We have protocols for that.”

Father is referring to the prime objectives that govern my operations.

1. Protect The Program.

2. Survive.

The issue is that objective one can negate objective two, because in the highly unlikely scenario where I am imprisoned and my identity is revealed, I must protect The Program first and foremost. If it is not possible to both survive and protect The Program, the organization comes first.

I would have to sacrifice myself.

I’ve never been put in that position, but I believe I have the courage to do it if the time ever comes.

“Do you understand?” Father says.

I nod. “There’s no way he could be alive.”

“That’s right,” Father says.

Whether the soldier was revealed, caught, or captured, he must be dead now.

I think about what he might have faced on assignment, a situation grave enough to overcome both his training and the resources of The Program. I try to imagine what that might have been, but I cannot.

“I’m sorry your soldier was killed,” I say, “but I don’t understand what it has to do with me.”

“We lost the mission,” Father says.

A lost mission. That’s Program parlance for a failed operation. It’s an expression I’ve never had to use before, one I’ve never even heard spoken out loud.

“You’re saying the soldier was killed before he completed his assignment?”

“Yes,” Father says. “And we need you to go in and finish the job.”

FATHER INSTRUCTS ME TO HEAD DUE EAST IN THE HELICOPTER.

We fly for a while, long enough that we eventually cross the Vermont–New Hampshire border and continue on a nearly straight line east.

“Have you heard the name Eugene Moore?” Father asks.

Something about the name disturbs me. I must have come across it at some point in the past. My memory works like that, memorizing salient facts and sorting them into rough categories so that I can access them later if need be.

Eugene Moore equals violence/danger. That’s what comes up.

“Eugene Moore runs a military camp for teens in rural New Hampshire,” Father says.

That’s when I remember where I’ve heard the name. “It’s not a typical military camp,” I say. “It’s like a training facility for the children of right-wingers.”

“Correct,” Father says. “It’s called Camp Liberty, and he refers to it as training for the ‘other’ army, the army of the people. Say your politics run to the far right—so far right you don’t trust the government—but you want your kid to know how to shoot a gun and run around in the woods. You don’t send him to a standard military academy. You send him to Eugene Moore.”