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Amber Landis pushed her blond hair behind her ears and wiped the sweat from her forehead. It was hot and muggy in the basement computer room. It was also dark. The only light was a crack of sunlight at one side of the narrow window up near the ceiling where the blind had curled at its edge. She hadn't turned on the light because she wasn't really supposed to be there.
“Wait,” her father had said when he left the compound. “Look after your brother, do what Cassie says, and just wait. When news of the mission gets onto the nets, it'll be full of lies. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.”
“But what is the mission?” she had asked. He hadn't answered. He'd only gone to join the group of camouflage-clad men milling around the truck that was revving its engine in front of the old barn.
There are things you're better off not knowing, she'd heard all her life. She hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated it! How would she ever be part of her father's mission, how would she ever make a difference in the world, if she wasn't even allowed to know what they were doing till after it was done?
Cassie, her stepmother, knew, and she was worried. She was doing her best not to show it, giving Amber and Kenny their stupid homeschool assignments as if everything was perfectly normal. But she had taken the radio into her room as soon as the men left, and Amber knew she listened to it early every morning and late every night. Amber couldn't understand why nobody wanted her and Kenny to know what was going on even now, when it surely had to be over, or nearly over. It wasn't as if they'd tell anybody. It wasn't as if there was anybody to tell. Since the men had left, she had not seen one single person except Kenny and Cassie.
She'd thought about the possibility that this mission was so much more dangerous than usual that something bad'really bad'might happen. If that was true, Cassie might be trying to protect them from finding out. Amber couldn't see what difference it would make when or how they found out about it if the news was that bad.
The mission was different from anything the Free Mountain Militia had ever done before. Different and very, very big. That she knew. For weeks the air had been charged with a new energy as the men had prepared for it. There had never been so much coming and going from the compound, lots of it at night.
It was the fifth day since the men had driven away in the truck, her father following in his black Honda. Five long, hot days. No mission had ever taken that long. Amber was tired of wondering, tired of waiting, and even more tired of trying to look after Kenny. Her ten-year-old brother insisted he was a soldier, a soldier who didn't need looking after. Especially not by a sister only two years older than he was. “You're just a girl,” he'd sneered that very morning when she reminded him he wasn't allowed to go out in the canoe without a life jacket. “You can't tell me what to do.” So he'd gone without the life jacket. If he drowned, it wouldn't be her fault.
She listened at the door for a moment, then clicked the lock on the doorknob and switched on the computer. When it had run through its wake-up pattern, she sat down and took herself out onto the nets. And found immediately the lies her father had warned her about:
>Path:>Laurel.grt.com!news.amherst.edu!news.mtholyoke.
>edu!111-winkenllnl.gov!agate!bass!clarinews
>From: clarinews@clarinet.com (AP)
>Message-ID: militiaUR237_eb6@clarinet.com
>Date: Thurs, 10 Aug 00 8:34:50EDT
>
>PLATTSBURGH, NY (AP) No leads have been >reported in the most devastating terrorist attack ever
>launched against American citizens in their own
>country, bigger even than the bombing of the federal
>building in Oklahoma City. The death toll from the
>bombing of two overpasses on Interstate 87, the
>highway known locally as the Northway, has risen to
>183 with the confirmation that two buses carrying
>Canadian tourists home from a visit to DisneyWorld
>were among the vehicles lost in the bomb blasts and
>the ensuing explosion of a gasoline tanker truck.
>According to sources, identification of bodies will not
>be completed for some time, but both buses were
>carrying 45 passengers.
>The Free Mountain Militia, an anarchist fringe
>group never before suspected of terrorism, has taken
>credit for the bombing. Local police have been joined
>by the FBI, the National Guard, and large numbers
>of citizen volunteers in an all-out search of the area
>surrounding the highway south to Lake George and
>north to the Canadian border, where the RCMP is
>conducting its own search.
>United States President Daniel Harris and
>Canadian Premier Jacques Martier both arrived this
>morning to survey the scene of the devastation and
>are assuring their citizens that the perpetrators of
>this atrocity will be found and dealt with to the
>fullest extent of the law.
>In an unrelated story, an eight-year-old African-
>American boy suffering from autism has disappeared
>from Laurel Mountain, a private mental institution
>near the site of the bomb blast, and is lost in the
>extensive Adirondack wilderness where the search
>for the terrorists is being conducted. A separate
>search has not been initiated for the boy; searchers
>have been asked to keep an eye out for him as they
>go. “We're determined to cover every square inch of
>forest,” National Guard Officer Lester Cunningham
>has said. “There's no way we'll miss that little boy in
>the process.”
Amber read the piece again. Lies, her father had said. Of course. The government always lied, and the media were controlled by the government. She knew that. She'd always known it. But which were the lies?
Flight of the Raven. Copyright © by Stephanie Tolan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from Flight of the Raven by Stephanie S. Tolan
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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