Spy school goes to Zoo

Chapter 3

Operation

History class turned out to be just as boring as I remember in my old middle school. Lyndon B. Johnson middle school wasn't quite as bad as my old middle school, but it was still awfully close. The bathrooms where putrid, the cafeteria food was junk, and the teachers were mind-numbingly dull. The only way how I made it through the day without boring myself to death was thinking about my mission. Was it really going to go as planned? All the missions that I have been on so far have not turned out as planned. Was this any different? I couldn't help but be haunted by the thought that SPYDER might be several steps ahead of us yet again.

After the day was over, I met Erica by the flagpole as planned. She checked her watch as if I had taken too long. The last bell rang. I pushed through the sea of people who were also desperately trying to leave the confines of the middle school. I found Erica standing by the flagpole, chatting it up with a group of girls among whom was Summer. She looked so out of place, talking with lots of kids her age. It took a lot of restraint to not laugh at how far from "normal Erica" she was acting.

I started in her direction, but before I could ask her what we were doing, she ran up to me excitedly.

"Hey Ben! You ready to go?" she said in her perky Sasha voice. I assumed the whole act was for the benefit of the group of teenagers surrounding us, but I couldn't help but blush.

"Sure am!" I said, playing along with whatever Erica's plan was. She started to head towards the parking lot, subtly dragging me with her.

"Have fun, Sasha!" yelled one of the girls from the bunch. Erica and I walked through the parking lot when Erica handed me a small card. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it was my FunJungle season pass.

"So we're not going to go catch some sleep and rest until tomorrow?" I asked sadly, knowing full well that's not what the afternoon would have in store.

"Nope, we got season passes for a reason. We are going to stay in Funjungle until closing time every day to socialize with Teddy and Summer."

I groaned at this but made no argument. We walked to the car that was waiting for us. Erica said something to the driver and the engine roared to life. A seemingly endless amount of trees whizzed past us on our ride to the park. I had to pinch myself several times to not doze off during the ride.

When we finally got to Funjungle, we hurried out of the car. It was 4:00 which meant that we had 3 hours to socialize and investigate before the park closed. As we approached the park, my heart filled with some excitement. Yes, we were on a serious mission, but for once, it looked like it would be somewhat fun. I was about to go talk to the daughter of one of the richest men on the planet and was going to have a free visit to the biggest zoo in the world. For once, it looked like I would have an exciting day. I never could have guessed how wrong I was.

The park turned out to be just as gigantic as I heard it was. It was twice the size of Disneyland, but instead of rides, there were incredible animal enclosures. Animals were always an interesting subject to me. In fact, up until I had devoted the rest of my life to a career in the CIA, I had wanted to be a veterinarian. Because of that, I was really happy about going to FunJungle despite the fact that we were on a mission to catch a sponsor of one of the evilest organizations in the world. Erica and I put our earpieces in and Cyrus immediately came online, "Alright, talk to me. What's your status? Have you made contact with Summer and Teddy?" Like always, Cyrus sounded grumpy and almost annoyed.

"We introduced ourselves and talked about irrelevant topics at lunch. Everyone at the table seemed to have a lot of random gossips to share," Erica reported back. "I'm planning on bringing up J.J to Summer right now. We need to have somewhere to start."