Chapter 20: Training Exercises, Part 3

They climbed up the stairs to the upper floor. Jimmy led the way to a hallway of doors.

"Not all the doors we need to get through will be unlocked." He opened a backpack Trey hadn't noticed and pulled out a black cloth. It unrolled to reveal a strange assortment of tools and electronic gadgets. "This is how we get in. I don't expect you to get past the fancy locks, but you should be able to pick a basic one."

He handed Trey a long thin flat piece of metal and a finer round one.

"This is how it's done." He knelt beside one of the doors and slid in the flat piece, then the round one and in seconds he had the door open.

"You try."

Trey tried to copy the exact motions Jimmy'd made, but the door stayed stubbornly locked.

"You have to feel for it. You want to push the tumblers out of the way."

Trey knelt at the door fumbling with the picks until suddenly something moved. He got the next one faster and soon had the door open.

"Not bad for a novice, though the cops would have come and dragged you away long ago."

They worked on a few more doors and Trey got marginally faster.

"Practice," Jimmy told him. "Keep the picks with you. You never know when you want them. Trey put the picks beneath the insole of his shoe and practiced when he had the chance. He wanted to impress Jimmy next time he had a chance.

Trey didn't know what Annie and Bert's roles were. They were easy going and friendly. Each of them took turns sparring with Trey during training, or showing him around the Underground. They never answered any direct questions.

Bert apparently was in charge of meals for the team. They ate in a room with a table and lockers for gear that didn't fit in their rooms. Comments about the food were leveled at Bert. The oldest person on the team, Bert might have been Harry's age, but he'd grin at complaints and list the strange or horrible things the team might find on their plates next meal.

The Chief rolled through their training at odd times. Hand to hand combat against a trained opponent in a wheelchair was much harder than Trey imagined. Occasionally the Chief ate with them, and once caught Trey trying to pick a lock on a door up on the balcony over the Underground.

"You want to watch your back, Trey." The Chief grinned wryly. "The security people aren't thrilled with people breaking into locked rooms. They aren't as gentle as I am."

Once Trey had mapped the tunnels in his head, he tried to put them on paper sitting at the table in the team's dining room. Drawing a map in three dimensions would have been hard even if he could draw. He left in disgust to find a roll of exquisitely detailed maps on the table the next day with a note from the Chief.

Trey never met any other teams, and rarely did more than say hello to anyone outside his own.

The training was one of the best times of Trey's life. He belonged in a way he'd never imagined possible. They were all different, so no one was more of an outsider than any other. Though Red didn't treat him any differently than the rest of the team, Trey couldn't get enough time in her company.

The six team members trained and ate together daily, but other than a general agreement that the present system wasn't fair, none of them talked about why they were part of the underground. Trey got his first lesson in underground politics when Red announced they had an assignment.