“Time!” We all threw our snowballs, and Roberto was hit on every side of his body. Driven every direction by the force, he fell prostrate onto the ground. It grew quiet as we all looked down at Roberto, flat on his back as if he were about to make a snow angel. Alice shook her head and walked slowly toward him. She stood over him and stared down into his face.
“You’re dead, soldier.”
After we all took turns suffering the humiliation of that drill (Valerie was the only one who beat the timer), Alice took us over to our command post where we would make and store our arsenal of snowballs hidden behind two clubhouses and a bed sheet. Making snowballs and putting them in a pile was a welcome diversion from the workout we had just been put through, even though none of us could really feel our hands.
As I laboriously packed and stacked, Nelson came over to show me his plans.
“Here’s my anti-missile device.” He showed me a picture. It was a map of Kidsboro with something that looked like a net over it. “A mesh screen,” he said. “We hang this in the trees over strategic targets—our houses, the base, and anything they catapult over here will be sifted into harmless flakes when it hits this.”
“That looks good. How are we gonna get the mesh?”
“I’m working on it. Now, look at this.” He showed me a rough sketch of some kind of launching device. “This is a salt shooter. I have bags of snow salt at my house. This device will send them—a few salt pellets at a time—into enemy territory and into their arsenal of snowballs. Now, it’ll take a while, but after a couple of hours, the salt should have melted a good portion of the pile, or at least the snow will stick together and be worthless for throwing.”
“How are you going to get it to be that accurate?”
“I’m working on that, too. I’ll test it in my backyard before I bring it over. But listen, this way we can deplete their arsenal virtually undetected, since we’re doing it just a few salt pellets at a time.”
“That’s brilliant,” I said, holding the plans with both hands.
“Cummings!” Alice shouted at me. “Get back to work!” I guess she figured that she outranked me now that we were at war.
“You’d better show these plans to Alice,” I told Nelson.
“All right.”
After we had made a pile of snowballs about three feet high and seven feet wide, Alice marched us to the little league baseball field in Mc Alister Park and had us climb the backstop. She told us It was good training for climbing the wall between Kidsboro and Bettertown. I had no idea why we would need to do that, since I had told her that we weren’t going to attack, but she seemed to think it was necessary.
This exercise was especially difficult because our hands were numb. But everyone managed to climb it anyway.
After that, we went back to the 25-second snowball drill, and this time, Roberto hit three of the targets before his time ran out. Eight people, instead of one, actually hit all five, and everyone came a little closer than they had before. Alice looked satisfied for the first time all day.
Alice dismissed us to our homes as the sun went down. Strangely enough, no one complained about the day, and no one hung his head low. Perhaps surviving the training exercises made us feel as if we had accomplished something.
Maybe we felt like we were ready.
The success of the day before may have been the reason I was a little too cocky for my own good the next morning. Max was reclined in my office chair when I walked in.
“Get any sleep last night?” he asked, smiling.
“Plenty.” This was true. I had slept like a baby after the workout Alice had given me.
“Didn’t stare at the ceiling last night, wondering when we’re gonna strike and annihilate your little town?”
“Not at all.”
“That’s surprising, Ryan. You being so worried about your citizens like you always are. I figured you’d be a little more concerned about their wellbeing.”
“I think you ought to be a little concerned yourself.”
“Oh, really?” He sat up, ready to get down to business. “Do you enjoy war, Ryan?”
“Of course not,” I replied.
“Of course not, no. You’re a man of peace, ’t you? So, what would you say if I told you we could prevent this inevitable conflict between our two fair cities?”
“How?”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll call off my dogs, we sign a treaty, and the two of us live in peace and harmony.”
“If?”
“If you give me back my wood.”
I wasn’t surprised by this request. Ever since I’d noticed that his “school” was made out of bed sheets instead of wood, I knew that Max was getting low on building material. Of course, across the creek, he saw our houses made of wood that used to be his. Naturally, he would ask for it back.
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s my wood.”
“We bought that wood from you.”
“You don’t need it now anyway. You’ve got your tarp and all that. Why don’t you just use that?”
“That’s not the point. You’re talking about our houses. They belong to us.”
“But isn’t it a small price to pay for peace?”
I stiffened. “You’re not taking our wood.”
He stood up and smiled again. He acted as if he had come as an instrument of peace and had been thwarted by a war-mongering dictator. He shook his head and said, “Then I’m sorry to say this, but … I’m afraid we’re at war.” He slapped me gently on the shoulder, and then turned and left.
8
THE RESCUE SQUAD
ABOUT THREE MORE INCHES of snow had fallen during the night, so our arsenal had to be dug out a bit. The footprints from the day before were gone. Evidence of our training had been buried.
Alice put us through more drills. We all ached from the day before, but none of us cared. We all seemed a little sharper, a little more determined, a little more excited about being there. Every person—except James the doctor—hit all five targets before time ran out. We were suddenly a well-oiled machine, a team of trained soldiers taught to protect each other with every freezing, pained bone in our bodies.
Halfway through target practice, I heard a psst! I was apparently the only one who had heard it. I looked around, but didn’t see anyone. Thinking I had imagined it, I went back to the drill. Then I heard it again: “Psst!” I turned again and saw a small bit of a black jacket sticking out from behind a tree. I glanced around to see if anyone noticed me, and then I went to investigate.
It was Marcy.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You gotta call this off,” she said, her eyes darting all around her.
“Call what off?”
“The war. Just give Max whatever he wants and forget it.”
“Why?”
“He’s brought in ringers.”
“What?”
“He went around town yesterday and recruited a bunch of hoodlums—Rodney Rathbone, Luke Antonelli, Jerry Wilmott, and lots of others.” Jerry and Luke were pitchers on the Odyssey Middle School baseball team. Rodney wasn’t the athletic type, but he could probably give the Bettertown army some tips on cheating.
“What do those guys have to do with this? Why did they even want to be involved?”
“Are you kidding? This is a war. There might be an opportunity to pound someone. You think they’d pass that up?”
“I guess not.” I looked at the troops, loyally preparing to defend their city, and I knew in my heart that we didn’t have a chance against those guys. At least, not if we pitted strength against strength.
“Would you dome a favor, Marcy?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“Keep an eye on ’em. Let me know if they’re planning an attack.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.”
Marcy hurried off for fear of being discovered. I rejoined my unit.
We still had one advantage over them. With Nelson on our side, we
were smarter. If we could out-strategize them, we had a chance. I casually went over to Nelson, who was watching the drill.
“How much longer before that salt shooter is up and running?”
“It’s ready.”
We set it up under the tree that was closest to the creek, where we could still escape detection. The salt shooter looked like a narrow-barreled cannon. Nelson poured an entire 10-pound bag of salt in the back of it, and then motioned for me to climb the tree. I took a pair of binoculars with me to scout out the guards around the snowball pile while we shot the salt at it.
I started up the tree. Nelson checked the wind, and there was none. I continued to climb until I could just see the guards’ heads over the sheets, shielding the snowball pile. The pile was higher than they were. I nodded to Nelson, and he turned the machine on. It revved up for a couple of seconds, and then it made a phht! sound, like an air pump. A dozen or so pellets flew out, and I quickly put the binoculars to my eyes to see where they landed. The sheet puckered all over.
“You hit the sheet. Aim it farther,” I said. “You’d better go real far so you don’t hit the guards.”
“Gotcha,” Nelson said, adjusting the machine. The cannon rose up a bit, and he was ready again. Another dozen pellets flew out with a phht! I looked through the binoculars and saw the pellets hit the snow behind the pile.
“About 10 feet back this way.”
Two adjustments later and Nelson had it. I saw the pellets hit the snowball pile. The guard in front looked up as if he’d heard the sound of rain. The sky was perfectly clear, so his eyebrows rose a bit. Then he seemed to brush it off. Nelson shot another round. Bulls-eye. The guard looked around again, thoroughly confused. I chuckled at this funny sight.
Nelson hit the target fairly consistently with the next five shots, and every time the guard looked around, he saw nothing and probably thought he was going crazy. He went over to talk to someone else and …
Suddenly I saw something through the binoculars that I wasn’t expecting. In front of the sheet were several guards pulling someone forcefully toward Max’s office. The person they were pulling was struggling to get away, like a dog being taken to the vet. The struggle continued until the victim came out of the jacket and fell to the ground. It was a black jacket.
Marcy.
They’d captured our spy.
I hurried down out of the tree and gave the binoculars to Nelson.
“What’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer. I went straight to Alice.
“We have to form a rescue team,” Alice said without hesitation.
“How are we gonna rescue her? We can’t even get through the wall.” This was barely even a question to Alice. The wall, the bridge, and the creek were not obstacles to her.
The bridge was the only legitimate way to get across the creek. The Water was from three to six feet deep. During the summer, It was possible to wade through it, but the cold was a factor now. Upstream from the bridge, the drop-off was too extreme. It was like falling off a cliff. Downstream from the creek, there was the threat of getting caught in the current and going over the waterfall. This was the reason that control of the bridge was so crucial to this war. There was no other way across.
“We’ll get across,” Alice said. I thought that maybe she was thinking of taking out the guard at the wall, but now that Max had recruited the thugs of the school, he had a guy even bigger than Alice there, plus another one on the other side of the bridge.
“How?” I asked.
“We’ll get across,” she repeated. We went to the troops.
“Men,” Alice said to the unit, “I have a dangerous mission that we must undertake. One of our brave soldiers has been captured by the enemy.” Everyone started looking around, trying to see who was missing. “We have to form a rescue team, go into hostile territory, and bring her back.”
“Her?” Pete asked. “Who?”
“Marcy,” Alice said.
“Marcy’s a Maxite.”
“She was spying for us. Now she’s been found out. No telling what kind of torture they’re putting her through over there. We have to go. I need two good men.”
The problem of getting over the creek probably never even crossed anyone’s mind. The thought of wandering be-hind enemy lines did. There were no immediate volunteers.
“I think I should go,” I said. I felt responsible, since I was the one who had asked her to be our spy. She might have been trying to get information for me when she was captured.
“Good,” Alice said. “We need one more.”
Jill stepped forward. “Marcy’s my friend. I’ll go.”
“All right. We have our team. Come on.” Alice motioned for us to follow her. The rest of the unit went back to their stations.
Alice took us back to her real house. We followed her into the garage, where she pulled out a toboggan. She also pulled out two large pieces of wood and a long rope, and then handed them to us. I saw Jill’s eyes widen, as if she were wondering, as I was, what in the world we were going to do with this stuff.
“Put these on,” she said, handing us white parkas. “It’ll camouflage us against the snow.” She also made us put white stuff that looked like cold cream on our faces.
Without a word, she led us back into the woods, to a point well east of Kidsboro. We were far downstream of the bridge, past the waterfall, nearing the farm owned by Tom Riley, a friend of Mr. Whittaker’s. As Alice stopped, I had an inkling of what she had in mind—and it terrified me.
At this point in the creek, there was a steep hill that led to the creek bed. The cliff on the other side of the creek was five feet lower than on this side.
She wanted us to jump it.
She went down to the cliff edge and set up a ramp with the two pieces of wood we had brought. Jill and I stayed back and contemplated our certain death.
“Is she crazy?” Jill asked.
“I think so,” I said. It was a seven-foot drop into freezing water if we didn’t make it.
Alice covered the ramp with snow and then tied the long rope to a tree. She threw the other end of the rope across the creek. It landed on the other side. I presumed This was how we would get back across once we had made the daring rescue.
She headed back up the hill. She wouldn’t look either of us in the eye.
“Have you ever done this before?” I asked.
“No,” Alice said, apparently finding no relevance to this question. “Lean forward as we’re going over. And wrap your legs around the waist of the person in front of you.” She casually hopped into the toboggan and held the reins. Jill and I exchanged looks.
“What’s wrong?” Alice asked.
I had no feeling in my legs, but somehow I managed to climb in behind Jill. I grabbed tightly to the ropes along the side of the toboggan and stared down at our doom. I turned away quickly. Jill was shaking in front of me. Alice was a rock.
“Push off,” she said, and we did, as hard as we could, believing speed was our friend.
We picked up speed … faster … faster … the creek came on like an on coming train. The cold wind tore at my face. I couldn’t watch, but I couldn’t not watch.
I looked ahead and suddenly realized that we had veered too far right. We were going to miss the ramp!
Alice leaned to her left, and we went with her. Jill lifted her head, realized what was happening, and screamed. We weren’t going left.
The cliff was 40 feet away … 30 … 20 … 15 …
“Bail!” Alice screamed and dropped off the left side, taking us with her. The impact drove my face into the snow, and I went into an uncontrolled roll. Jill flipped over onto her head, kicking me in the face. Before I stopped, I saw Alice lunge for the toboggan, grab one of the side ropes, and save it before it plummeted off the cliff.
Jill was face down.
“You okay?” I asked. She lifted her head long enough to say “yes,” and then buried it again. I felt a lump forming on the side of my head.
Jill rolled over and looked straight up into the sky. “She’s not going back up the hill, is she? Please tell me she’s not going back up the hill.”
“She’s going back up the hill.”
Alice gave us a few moments to catch our breath, and then she yelled down to us from the top of the hill. “Come on, let’s go!” We both shook our heads and trudged back up.
I was a little firmer with her this time. “Are you sure this is gonna work?”
“Yeah,” she said, grabbing the reins. Jill and I took our places on the sled. Without any hesitation, Alice pushed off, and we joined her.
The toboggan gained speed … faster … The ramp approached, only this time we were straight on. We were going to do it.
I prepared to lean forward, the snow kicking in my face. I clenched my teeth, peeked at the ramp, and suddenly …
Woosh! We were airborne! The toboggan tipped up ever so slightly, but then lost speed at the zenith and plummeted back down. The front of the toboggan dipped at a severe angle. I squeezed the side ropes with all my might. The sled swooped down and …Wham! The curled wood at the front slammed into the bank. The back flipped over the top of us, sending us headlong into the snow. The jarring knocked the wind out of me.
My face was pinched between the ground and the topside of the toboggan. Jill was pretzeled up beneath me. Alice detached herself from the side ropes and quickly stood up.
We’d made it.
“Are you okay?” I asked Jill. She lifted the ski cap off her face and looked at me. She chuckled.
“I’m fine.”
I started laughing too. Soon we were in hysterics, simply happy to be alive.
Alice was on to business, of course. By the time Jill and I had stopped laughing, Alice had tied the loose end of the rope to another tree. She pulled it taut and hung underneath it to make sure it would hold us when we came back and needed to get across. She was satisfied and was ready to rescue somebody.
She led us the long way around Bettertown. She felt it would be best to move in from the back.
The Fight for Kidsboro Page 23
