by Bruce Hale
Lights blazed on, illuminating the equipment lockers, the command center, and its computers. Hearing a sound, Max glanced up the stairwell.
The enormous tiger was padding down the steps, shoulders shifting sinuously with each movement, eyes fixed on Max.
Max fled toward the command center. Where could he hide? The raised platform offered no protection. The cells in the back corridor were locked up tight.
He checked the stairwell. The white tiger was nearly halfway down, and growing more comfortable with negotiating the steps. Max had only a handful of seconds left.
Scrambling around behind the computer bank, he searched for a tall ladder, a loft, anyplace to climb out of reach. Nothing. All that greeted him were metal-and-leather chairs ranged around a glass table.
The tiger snarled, and the sound echoed through the enclosed space like a sky giant’s bowling ball barreling down a cloud alley. Max knew how the pin felt.
His gaze lit on the tall metal lockers. There! He grabbed a chair and dashed for the nearest one, jamming the chair up against it. Max stepped up and risked a quick glance at the stairwell.
The tiger had reached the floor. Spotting him, it charged across the room with jaws stretched wide.
Electrified, Max sprang upward, fingertips scrabbling for the top rim of the locker.
He missed.
Once more he leaped, and this time he caught the edge. With a superhuman effort, Max kicked off the chairback, knocking it away, and hauled himself up.
Bam! The beast’s body slammed into the metal cabinet, precisely as Max got his legs under him. The whole locker shook, and he had to hang on tightly to avoid being tossed off by the impact.
The big cat chuffed in frustration. It reared onto its hind legs, one paw braced against the locker, the other one swiping at Max, who scooted back out of reach. Despite its seven-foot-long body, the predator could only stretch to the rim of the locker’s top with its paw. That was close enough for Max, who eyed the four-inch-long claws whizzing past.
Clearly, the time for stealth had passed. Max imagined that everyone in the mansion had heard the ruckus, so he shouted to scare off the beast.
“Beat it, Stripes!” he cried, waving his arms. “Shove off, you plonker! You’re not snacking on me!”
The big cat cocked its head as if to say, Oh, really? Then it spread its fanged jaws and hissed like a basketful of cobras. Max could smell its fetid, meaty breath.
Again, it swiped at him, and Max slid back to the other side of the locker. He didn’t intend to wait up there like a chump for Humphrey and Dijon to collect him, not if he could help it. Max patted his pockets. No weapons. Nothing but his lock picks, flashlight, and the spices he’d used in the stew.
On impulse, Max uncapped the jar and shook the chili powder over the huge predator. The tiger’s eyes widened. It blinked in surprise, and gave a terrific sneeze.
Then it growled again, sneezed once more, and resumed trying to climb onto Max’s perch. Its claws raked the metal with a sound like fingernails on a blackboard, but way more menacing. Apparently, tigers didn’t like spices.
Keeping a careful watch on the beast’s progress, Max reached down into the open side of the locker and fumbled around for a weapon. He wasn’t picky. A pistol, a Taser, a speargun—anything would do.
His hand closed around a cool metal tube, and he tugged. Something heavier and bulkier than he’d expected came free, nearly unbalancing him. Max hauled it up and over the rim.
He blinked in surprise. It wasn’t a weapon. It looked like an oversize metal rucksack with tubes curling around it and a pair of armrests with joysticks at the end of them.
It was the jet pack.
A grin tugged at Max’s mouth, despite his predicament. If a spy had to flee, might as well flee in style.
He slipped the device onto his back and clipped the safety straps across his chest as the big cat slammed the locker once more. Max began examining the dials and buttons, trying to suss out how to operate the thing.
“Oi! What’s going on?” a deep voice called. It was Styx, staggering down the last few steps with a whip in his hand.
Oh, great.
“Just enjoying a little quality time with Mr. Whiskers,” said Max.
Which was the starter, he wondered, the red button or the black button? And exactly how did you steer this thing?
The agent swayed toward Max and the tiger, one hand clamped over his stomach and a grimace pasted across his features. “Here now,” he growled. “Take that gizmo off and—ooh—come down here.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You did notice that our stripy friend is trying to snack on me?”
Styx groaned, simultaneously clamping his thighs together and folding forward. His face had gone the color of boiled asparagus.
“I got no time for this,” he moaned. “Both of you, behave!”
The whip cracked like a car backfiring. At the sound, the tiger slunk away with its ears pinned, grumbling to itself. Styx braced his hand against a wall of the command center as another wave of nausea rippled through him.
Max experimented with the joysticks and found that they rotated like the ones he’d seen used in action movies. That covered the steering. Probably. But how did you make the jet pack go up and down?
“Styx here,” the big man said into a com device. “Intruder in the—ugh—control room. Mr. Schnickelfritz on the loose. Request backup. Now.”
Max’s head snapped up. What kind of name was Schnickelfritz for a deadly predator? But more pressing was the realization that if more LOTUS agents were coming, he had to leave now, even without the information he sought.
Here goes nothing, he thought.
Stepping into thin air, he pressed the red button.
Instantly, Max plummeted toward the floor. In desperation, he yanked back on the joysticks as rockets fired behind him with a sound like someone shredding a two-story piece of paper.
Tchoom! Max’s stomach dropped into his shoes as he blasted toward the ceiling. He cracked his head on the acoustic tile, punching through the subceiling and into some silver ductwork.
“Stop mucking about!” Styx bellowed. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
Max pushed the joysticks forward, and his stomach climbed into his throat as the jet pack dove him down at Mr. Schnickelfritz. The tiger hissed and sprang aside. Barely in time, Max got his feet under him. He slammed onto the floor hard enough to fold him in half like a bendy straw, and then with a flick of the joystick, he was airborne again.
Styx lunged as he passed. Max’s trailing foot smacked the spy in the temple as he tore onward.
“Ow!” cried the big man. “Bloody twit.”
“Sorry!”
The device took him on a ride as erratic as a pollen-drunk bumblebee’s flight pattern. After narrowly avoiding braining himself on a light fixture, Max drove a foot through a computer display and ricocheted into a high-end coffeemaker, spraying hot liquid everywhere. As he tore around the room, frantically levering the joysticks, he discovered that the left one controlled speed and the right one direction. Styx alternately snatched at Max and ducked out of the way, while Mr. Schnickelfritz skulked about by the command center, chuffing at them both.
Wham! Max careened off another locker, whanging his funny bone and making his whole left arm numb. When he tried to shake the arm and bring some life back into it, his sleeve caught on the speed stick. Out of control, Max blasted straight for the stairwell.
Just then, Humphrey and a stiff-faced Dijon came clattering down the steps. At his breakneck approach, their eyes went wide. But to their credit, neither agent fled.
Instead, they braced themselves.
Whomp! Max plowed into the duo at top speed. All three collapsed onto the steps with Max on top.
He struggled to right himself and take off again. But before he could succeed, Humphrey had gripped his arms, pinning him in place. Dijon’s hand snaked out and pressed the black button, turning off the jet pack.
>
“No!” Max cried, thrashing about.
Dijon grunted as his knee connected with her gut. “That’s—oof!—enough of that.” From somewhere, she produced a palm-size Taser, reached up, and gave him a jolt to the neck.
First, a little pinch. Then, every muscle in his body went rigid as the sensation of a million bee stings rushed through him. Max writhed uncontrollably, twitched like a spastic belly dancer, then lay still.
When he opened his eyes again, the first thing Max noticed was a snarling griffin’s head in the intricate carved wooden moldings that ran below the ceiling. He groaned.
A grandmotherly face appeared in his field of vision.
“You,” said Mrs. Frost, “have caused me a great deal of trouble. And I shan’t put up with it any longer.”
“Ungh,” Max grunted.
“You have damaged my control center, dented my jet pack, given me and my staff intestinal distress, and made my new pet quite peevish.”
From somewhere off to his right, the tiger moaned.
“There, there, Mr. Schnickelfritz,” said Mrs. Frost.
“Mmfm.” Max still couldn’t form words properly.
LOTUS’s chief leaned closer, until the twin tunnels of her patrician nostrils and her narrowed, smoke-gray eyes filled his view.
“You have lost your freedom of choice,” she said, in a voice colder and flatter than an Arctic lake. “Would you like to know what happens now?”
Max nodded.
“You will be locked in your room, without your little lock picks. Then, tomorrow we will file some documents, and you will become my ward. Forever.”
Max gulped.
Mrs. Frost glared. “And how, as the Americans say, do you like them apples?”
“Guh,” said Max. But what he meant was, Not the least little bit.
AS THE LAST purples of twilight bled into darkness, the sparrows tucked into their eaves to rest. Weary commuters returned home for dinner. And Cinnabar and Wyatt watched Mr. Segredo shoot out security lights with a silenced gun.
“That should do it,” he said as the glass from the second lamp tinkled onto the sidewalk.
Now a thirty-foot-long stretch of the wall around LOTUS headquarters was cast into shadow. The three of them crouched behind the shelter of the van, waiting for a response from the LOTUS guardhouse.
Ten minutes passed. None came.
Cinnabar drummed her fingers on the metal paneling.
“Blue Team, we’re good to go,” Max’s father murmured into his com device.
Cinnabar’s earbud crackled. “Right then, Red Team,” came the voice of Mr. Stones, her second-favorite teacher at S.P.I.E.S. “You cupcakes ready to rumble?”
Cinnabar felt a smile spread across her face.
“We were born ready,” she said.
“That’s an affirmative,” said Mr. Segredo drily. “Maintain com silence unless absolutely necessary. Let’s go.”
Their plan was a simple one, as such plans go. Mr. Stones, along with Tremaine and Nikki, would lop a tree limb so that it fell across the electrified wire that topped the fence. This, hopefully, would short out the wire and draw the attention of the in-house security team; meanwhile, Mr. Segredo, Cinnabar, and Wyatt would hop the fence in a different spot, break into the mansion, and rescue Max.
A simple plan. But simple, as Cinnabar well knew, was not the same as easy.
They gave the Blue Team five minutes to get into position and another ten to chop off the branch. Cinnabar fidgeted, checking and rechecking the time on her cell phone. She had chatted with her sister earlier that day and reassured herself that Jazz was safe. That left only Max.
“Are they going by way of Timbuktu?” she said. “What’s keeping them?”
“Patience,” said Mr. Segredo.
“It’s probably Nikki,” said Wyatt. “Bet she’s put her foot through someone’s window.”
“Or face,” Cinnabar muttered.
The com device gave three clicks, Mr. Stones’s signal that the deed was done.
“Finally,” said Cinnabar. “Can we go now?”
“Give it some time,” said Mr. Segredo. His face was impassive; Cinnabar figured the man could give polar bears lessons on being cool.
“But—” she began.
He held up a hand. “I know you want to go and save him. So do I. But if we rush in half-cocked, we’ll get captured, and how will that help Max?”
Cinnabar sighed. “But I’m about to crawl out of my skin.”
“Want to be helpful?” Max’s father asked.
“Yes, please.”
He passed her a rubber-handled machete. “Take the stepladder, and go and check the current through the wire with this. Carefully.”
“I’ll come along,” said Wyatt. “Just in case.”
Cinnabar rolled her eyes.
They fetched the stepladder from the back of the van. The night air was crisp as an autumn apple. The street smelled of petrol and wood smoke and roast beef from somebody’s dinner. All was quiet; residents of the big houses were inside having their meals or away on expensive holidays.
With a wary look in both directions, Cinnabar and Wyatt crossed the road and leaned the stepladder up against LOTUS’s brick perimeter wall.
“Simon says, gloves,” whispered Wyatt.
“Gloves?” she replied.
He dug his own pair from a jacket pocket. “As in, Simon says, wear your gloves for extra safety.”
She sighed again but went along with his request. As Wyatt braced the stepladder, Cinnabar climbed to the second-highest step and reached down for the machete. Wyatt passed it up, handle first.
“Now be extra careful not to touch—” he said.
“The metal part of the blade,” she interrupted. “I’m not a complete berk, you know. I do have a few brain cells to rub together.”
He raised a palm. “Didn’t want anything to happen to you,” he said.
“Don’t get mushy.”
Wyatt smirked. “Who’s mushy? It’s only that the smell of fried Cinnabar would be hard to get out of my nostrils.”
She snorted at his comment, but she did make doubly sure that no part of her hand was touching the metal blade. Then, Cinnabar stretched her arm up to its fullest extent, and with an involuntary grimace, gingerly touched the machete to the razor wire.
No sparks, no jolt. Nothing.
Both of them let out their breath. “Cowabunga!” Wyatt crowed.
Cinnabar shushed him.
“Beauty,” he whispered. “Our plan is working.”
“So far,” said Cinnabar, passing back the machete.
Wyatt gave a thumbs-up to Mr. Segredo and hurried over to the van. He returned with two rubber floor mats, which he handed up to Cinnabar, who draped them side by side over the razor wire.
Mr. Segredo slipped from the vehicle like a shadow and motioned for Wyatt to join him. Together, they carted over a professional-quality mini-trampoline and set it up beside the wall.
“Remember,” he said, “if either of you isn’t comfortable with this, you can always—”
A dog’s yap interrupted him.
The trio whirled to see an old man, as bent as a question mark, following a scrappy little Scotty dog up the sidewalk. Mr. Segredo leaned against the ladder, trying to camouflage it. Nothing could be done about the trampoline.
The old man shuffled up and fixed it with a bleary eye. “What’s all this, then?”
“Trampoline,” said Wyatt with a guileless grin.
“Mini-tramp, actually,” Cinnabar corrected.
Mr. Segredo spread an arm expansively. “Merely making sure the kids get some exercise,” he said. “Tearing ’em away from the computer, you know how it is.”
“Nope.” The man’s dog sniffed the trampoline while its owner squinted at the ladder. “And what’s that for?”
“Gives ’em more height, you see,” said Simon Segredo. “For a bigger bounce.”
The dog walker grunted, tugged the dog�
�s leash, and began to shuffle on past. Cinnabar slumped in relief, but then the man turned back to them.
“You live in that whopping great house behind the wall?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Cinnabar and Mr. Segredo at the same time as Wyatt answered, “No.”
She glared at the blond boy. “He’s visiting. Why do you ask?”
“Tch,” the old man tutted, shaking his head. “Such odd noises coming from there, day and night. Like a regular zoo, it is.”
Mr. Segredo raised a calming hand. “Sorry about that. We’ll try to keep it down.”
With a final harrumph, the man led his dog out of sight.
“What do you reckon all that was about?” Wyatt asked.
“No idea,” said Max’s father. “Time to go.” He moved the ladder to the proper spot, in line with the mini-tramp and the mat-draped section of the wire.
Cinnabar volunteered to go first. She scaled the stepladder to the top, pumped her arms, and leaped onto the rebounding surface.
Once, twice, three times she bounced, higher and higher. Then Cinnabar gave the hardest jump of all, tucked her limbs, and shot up…and over the wall!
Some low shrubs broke her fall on the other side. Not a perfect landing perhaps—the Russian judges wouldn’t give it a ten—but good enough for espionage work.
“Well?” Mr. Segredo’s whisper cut through the darkness.
“Made it,” she whispered back, a fierce exhilaration filling her. “Next?”
Wading through the bushes until she was out of the way, Cinnabar made a quick scan of her surroundings. A narrow rim of shrubs grew just inside the wall, giving way to a wide swath of lawn. Beyond that, dimly illuminated by tasteful spotlights, lay a tennis court, and beyond that the hulking sprawl of the mansion, its lights blazing through the darkness.
She listened intently. No guards came running, no dogs barked.
So far, so good.
Cinnabar heard grunted exhalations from the other side of the wall. Then, like a blond-haired moon, a round face rose into view, followed by a flailing body. But Wyatt’s efforts, rather than carrying him farther, landed him in trouble. As he descended, one outflung arm caught on the uncovered razor wire.
