Anthony Jordan, the President of the United States.
Some people were getting to their feet.
Travis didn’t know what do to. Stand at attention?
Without thinking, he began tapping his stick on the ice in salute. The rest of the Owls on the ice followed suit. The Owls on the bench stood and leaned over and rapped their sticks on the boards.
It was a wonderful moment. The cameras turned on the Owls and then on the Wall, all of whom began doing the same thing.
The President noticed and gave the Owls’ bench the thumbs-up, which Mr. Dillinger returned. Muck didn’t even notice. The puck was about to drop, and Muck was already lost in the play.
The President took his seat and the linesman moved back into position for the faceoff.
Travis looked up.
Chase Jordan was staring at him.
Chase winked.
Travis winked back.
The puck dropped.
“H-h-h-helpppp!” Nish called.
He could hear it well enough himself. But was the sound getting out?
He had chewed through and spat out enough of the foul-tasting tape to be able to call out. But any noise he made seemed to bounce right back at him.
Was there any air getting in? he suddenly wondered.
What if he died in here?
25
Sam did her best to work the puck out. She rapped it off the boards, stepped around the first forechecker, and moved as quickly as she could up towards the blueline before flipping the puck ahead to Sarah.
Sarah spun just as she gathered in the pass, her sudden movement to the side throwing off her check. She had enough space to move and dug in hard, moving up over centre, stickhandling and looking for a play.
Dmitri broke hard, cutting from the boards towards the centre of the Wall’s blueline, and Sarah hit him with a perfect pass. Travis knew the play. If Dmitri was coming his way, he should go Dmitri’s way. The criss-cross, a play to throw off the other team if they were trying to cover each player.
Dmitri carried the puck in, and both Wall defence, momentarily confused, moved to check him at the same time.
Dmitri saw them coming and dropped the puck. But he kept going, “accidentally” ploughing into the two defence. One went down with Dmitri, the other lost his stick.
Travis was in free, with nothing between him and the Washington goal but a stickless defenceman.
The defender lunged and fell, hoping to gather the puck into his body. Travis tucked the puck and stepped around the spinning defenceman.
Completely free!
He looked up. The Wall goalie was skittering out to cut off the angle. Travis knew exactly what he would do: fake the slapper, maybe draw the goalie out even more, then hold and cut for an angle shot, hoping the goalie wouldn’t be able to recover and get back in time.
He raised his stick to fake the slapper.
The goalie went for it, driving hard towards Travis and going down to cut off the angles.
Travis held and swept around the goalie.
Empty net!
He had the tying goal. He aimed dead centre.
And suddenly his feet went out from under him.
“H-H-H-ELLLP!!!”
Nish could really yell now. He had chewed off and spat away most of the duct tape. He was yelling and screaming.
“H-H-HELP! … SAVE MEEEEE! … HHHELLLP MMMEEEEEE!!!!”
But nothing.
Nothing save his own desperate voice bouncing back at him.
He began to cry.
“PENALTY SHOT!”
Travis, still down on the ice, could hardly believe it. He had turned enough to see who had tripped him, and he had heard the referee’s whistle. But he hadn’t expected this. It was a penalty shot! His second of the tournament! And the player who had tripped him was Chase Jordan!
Sarah was tapping his pads as he got to his skates.
“It’s up to you, Trav,” she said. “We need you here.”
The Owls needed the goal to tie. There were only forty-five seconds left on the clock. It was up to him.
Muck called them over to the bench. The other Owls would all have to be on the bench for the shot. Only Travis and the Wall goaltender would be on the ice.
The camera crews were all down at ice level now. They were acting like they were in charge, ignoring the referee and jumping over onto the ice to get the best shots. One crew was over at the Wall bench, the camera in the face of Chase Jordan, who was trying to ignore them.
Travis wished they would all go away. Why him? Why couldn’t it be Sarah or Dmitri taking the shot? Or Nish? No one would enjoy all the attention more than Nish.
Everyone was on their feet, even the President.
Travis looked up, trying to clear his mind.
All he could focus on was Earplug, chewing his gum so fast it was a wonder smoke wasn’t coming out his mouth.
“Lindsay,” Muck said in a quiet voice. He was smiling. “Just remember to shoot this time, okay?”
The linesman placed the puck at centre ice, and the referee blew his whistle, the signal for Travis to start skating.
It all felt so dreadfully familiar: too much snow on the ice, a forty-pound puck, legs like wet spaghetti, arms of lead, brain of marshmallow.
Travis picked up the puck and bore down.
Muck had said it all: just shoot the puck.
Travis felt instantly better. His speed picked up. The puck lightened on his stick.
He reviewed what had happened just before the foul. The goalie had fallen for his fake slapshot and Travis had tried to go around him. He’d be expecting Travis to try the same thing.
Travis pushed the puck over the blueline. High in the slot, he went into the same slapper motion.
This time the goalie stayed back, sure Travis would try to pull him out and get the angle on him.
It was one of Travis’s better slappers. The heel of his stick caught the puck flush, and he was certain he could feel the puck roll along the length of his blade and spring off the slight curve at the end. The puck rose about a foot off the ground and smashed – hard – into the pads of the goalie.
“No!” Travis shouted to himself, spinning away and raising his eyes to the rafters.
Failed, again.
But then he saw the cheers go up from the Owls’ bench.
Sarah threw her stick in the air.
Sam leapt up, screaming.
Fahd pumped his fists.
Travis turned back.
The puck had trickled through the goalie’s pads!
Tie game, 5–5.
They played out the final few seconds and the horn blew. The Presidential party was already headed for the Zamboni chute. But the championship game was tied. There would have to be sudden-death overtime.
The referee blew his whistle, consulted with the linesmen and then the off-ice officials.
He went over to both benches. “I’m ordering a flood,” he told Muck. “There’s too much snow on the ice to play.”
“Good,” Muck said. The Wall coach agreed.
All the players leapt over the boards onto their benches to wait out the quick flood.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” It was Earplug. He was screaming, hammering on the glass behind the office officials’ bench. He looked like he was about to burst.
“We can’t play on this,” the referee calmly explained. “I’ve ordered a fresh flood.”
“YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” Earplug roared. “THIS IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. HE HAS A STRICT SCHEDULE TO STICK TO!”
“It’s my call,” the referee said, clearly fed up. “It’s for safety reasons. These are peewee hockey players, not soldiers.”
“I’M ORDERING YOU RIGHT NOW TO PROCEED WITH THE GAME INSTANTLY!” Earplug screamed.
The referee shook his head. “You’re in charge of nothing here, pal, so relax. Five minutes, that’s all it takes.”
Earplug slammed his fist so hard ag
ainst the glass Travis thought it would shatter. He stomped away towards the Presidential party. The President himself was busy talking to people in the crowd and shaking hands. He didn’t seem in the slightest concerned about a five-minute delay for a flood. If anything, he was welcoming the opportunity to do a little campaigning.
Earplug needs a vacation, Travis thought to himself.
26
Nish was already screaming when he heard the roar.
He was screaming and crying, convinced he was going to smother in this airtight box, when, suddenly, there was a slight whining noise, then the sound of something catching, coughing, then an enormous roar.
Mr. Dillinger took the opportunity to race back to the dressing room. He had five minutes to check the room and around most of the rest of the lower arena for Nish.
Mr. Dillinger was getting worried. He was responsible for the kids off the ice. He prided himself on taking great care of the team, without being too protective. But right now he felt terrible. He had lost Nish.
He checked the Screech Owls’ dressing room, and the equipment rooms, and even the other dressing rooms. He checked the washrooms and corridors. He asked Secret Service guards at two rear doors and at the Zamboni main doors if they’d seen a chubby little kid in full hockey uniform, but no one had seen him.
That smell. What was that smell?
Nish knew it from somewhere. It was like … like … like rotten eggs! Yes, that was it. Rotten eggs.
Had he smelled it in science class? Fahd’s old egg salad sandwiches he kept forgetting in his locker?
He felt a motion. Whatever he was in seemed to jump and chug and roll. And then the roar again – a huge roar.
His nose filled once more with a fresh burst of the rottenegg smell.
But now he knew what it was.
Not rotten eggs, but propane fuel!
He felt his little prison cell moving now, smooth and fast. He heard all kinds of new sounds: valves turning, water running, something twisting, something grinding.
He felt something being sprayed onto him. Something cold, very cold.
Something like ground-up ice, or snow!
He knew now. He knew exactly where he was.
Inside the Zamboni!
27
Muck looked up as Mr. Dillinger climbed back onto the bench. Mr. Dillinger looked crushed. He shook his head at Muck, but it was already obvious. Everything Mr. Dillinger had to say was on his face. No Nish.
“We could use that crazy idiot right about now,” said Sam.
Travis saw that Sam was beyond worry. She was afraid for Nish. He realized how much Sam liked Nish, even if she never let on for a moment. The same for Sarah, who was biting her lip and staring out at the Zamboni as if it, somehow, held the answer.
“HHHHELLLPPPPPP!”
“I’M HERE – INSIDE THE ZAMBONI!”
The louder Nish screamed, the more his voice seemed to be lost in the roar of the machine.
The smell of the propane was much stronger now. He was breathing in fumes. His head was throbbing. His eyes stung. He was gagging. The snow was churning in on him. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold out.
The thought came to him in a flash. He’d use his skates! His hands were tied in duct tape, but whoever had tossed him in here had done nothing to his legs. He could bang his skate blades against the metal sides of the Zamboni.
He kicked hard.
Bang! Bang!… Bang! Bang! Bang!… Bang! Bang!
“Do you hear that?” Sarah turned her head.
“Hear what?”
“Something’s banging in the Zamboni!”
Travis listened hard. “Yeah,” he said, “I do hear something.”
“So do I,” said Sam.
“Wait’ll it comes around again,” said Sarah.
The Zamboni made a wide turn, the ice glistening wet behind it, and headed back up-ice, drawing closer to the Screech Owls’ bench.
At first the sound was faint. But then, as the big ice-surfacing machine drew alongside the bench, the sound grew considerably louder.
Bang! Bang! … Bang! Bang! Bang! … Bang! Bang!
That familiar rhythm … It was Nish!
Sarah stood up, screaming at the Zamboni driver. “Stop! STOPPPPP!”
Sam was already over the boards.
“STOPPPPP!”
28
“Another few circles and we might have lost him.”
Nish was under the care of the President’s own personal doctor. He had come running down onto the ice immediately after Travis and Sam and Sarah had forced the Zamboni driver to stop.
The driver had been furious. No one was to come onto the ice when the machine was resurfacing, he yelled at them. It was dangerous.
And then he, too, had heard the banging.
He had reached up and pulled a lever. There was the sound of valves moving and gears shifting, and slowly, like some yawning prehistoric monster, the Zamboni had opened up. Inside, half covered in snow and ice chips, was Nish, still screaming and pounding his skates against the insides of the huge machine.
“Either the snow would have smothered him,” the doctor was saying, “or the fumes would have killed him.”
“He’s used to fumes,” said Sam. The doctor looked at her, but he didn’t get it.
The Screech Owls were all in the dressing room, waiting. Nish was in the corner, his skates kicked off and his face beaming red, but he hardly looked ill. He had two Cokes going at once and seemed, once again, delighted with all the attention.
But the big news story was unfolding outside the dressing room. The television crews that had come to get some footage of the President at a hockey game were now going live with a much different story.
A threat on the life of the President!
Travis was stunned by how quickly the Secret Service had moved. The building had been cleared at once. Both teams dispatched to their dressing rooms with guards on the doors. A complete investigation had taken place in less than an hour.
Two older men, one Secret Service, the other a presidential aide, had come around to the Owls’ dressing room to explain.
Nish had come across an act of sabotage. The plan had been to assassinate the President as he was stationed in the Zamboni chute waiting to present the championship trophy – presumably to his son, Chase.
High-tech plastic explosives had been smuggled in past security and wired to explode when a signal was transmitted from a hand-held device by the assassin, who was also in the building.
The security camera in the Zamboni area had been tampered with so that it failed to cover that small space in the corner where the explosive had been planted.
The worst part, the Secret Service man said, was that the suspect in custody was “one of our own.”
But Travis already knew that. He knew now why that little block of wood had been placed next to the security camera in the Zamboni chute.
He knew now why a certain person had seemed so nervous.
He knew now why there had been such yelling and screaming about a silly flood.
Only one person knew that Nish had been bundled into the Zamboni, and that once the Zamboni was back on the ice it was only a matter of time before Nish would be discovered, alive or dead, and the opportunity to kill the President would be lost.
The assassin was Earplug.
“Why would he?” Fahd asked the men.
The answers were shrugs. “We have no idea,” the Secret Service man said. “We hope to find out. He might well have been acting alone. Obviously, he had become a very sick person without us noticing. And it’s our job to notice.”
There was a knock at the door and a man walked in, another of the President’s aides. He smiled at the Screech Owls and nodded appreciatively to Nish, who had helped avert a terrible disaster. Had they not discovered him and then checked the chute, they would never have found the explosives.
“President Jordan has asked that the game continue,” the man said. “T
he ice is ready.”
The Owls cheered.
Nish reached down and picked up his skates. He handed them to Mr. Dillinger.
“Can I get a quick sharp,” he said. “I think I took a bit of the edge off them.”
Mr. Dillinger took the skates, his eyes wide in shock. Nish was going to play? Not even an hour ago he had been facing death!
Mr. Dillinger looked questioningly at the doctor, who smiled back.
“Probably the best thing for him,” he said.
“Can I play?” Nish said to Muck.
Muck seemed to think about it awhile. Then he nodded. “You were on the game score sheet. Nothing says you have to see ice before overtime, I guess.”
“LET’S GO!” shouted Sam, who slammed her stick into Nish’s pads as she jumped up.
29
The ice was perfect.
Travis took a few easy loops around the rink before the officials came out to start the overtime. He was glad to get back to the game. He tried not to think about what had almost happened. Earplug, for whatever reason, had wanted to kill his President. Maybe he was a double agent, or maybe simply insane. He hadn’t even given a thought to all the other deaths and injuries the explosion might have caused. Earplug could have been killed himself.
Nish made it out just before the game got underway again. He seemed a bit wobbly as he checked out Mr. Dillinger’s sharp on his skates, but he also seemed keen to play.
The overtime started and the Owls got an early chance. Sarah hit Travis with a quick pass and he managed to squeeze between the boards and the Wall defenceman, popping free with the puck along the left side and no one between him and the goalie.
He wished he’d shot. Muck always said, “You can’t go wrong with a shot.” But he’d seen Dmitri swooping in from the far side and tried to hit him with a pass, only to have the other Wall defender dive onto his stomach and reach his stick out to jab the puck away.
The Owls had other chances. Little Simon broke in but hit the post. Fahd almost scored from the point, but the Wall goaltender stacked his pads and just got enough of the puck to deflect it clear. Sam had a clear shot and put it right into the goalie’s chest.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4 Page 32
