The Stowaway Solution

by Gordon Korman

  For the Lee family, Alex, Margverite, and Alexia

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Mr. Bass — your son is on line two.”

  Mitchell Bass, the well-known Washington attorney, picked up the receiver. “Jonathan — is everything okay?”

  “It’s not Jonathan,” declared a voice that was both shaky and determined. “It’s Aiden — Falconer.”

  Falconer.

  It was a name wrenched from the top stories of CNN. Doctors John and Louise Falconer, the husband-and-wife criminologists convicted of treason. The charge: aiding and abetting foreign terrorists.

  Mitchell Bass had been their lawyer. He had tried — and failed — to prove that the Falconers had been working for the CIA.

  Bass drew in a breath. Fifteen-year-old Aiden Falconer was a fugitive from justice. He and his eleven-year-old sister, Meg, had escaped from a prison farm for young offenders. They had been eluding the juvenile authorities, the FBI, and more than a dozen state and local police departments for more than two weeks.

  “Aiden — ” he managed. “Where are you? Is Meg with you? The FBI said you were in California — ”

  The voice on the phone was suddenly sharp, wary. “You talked to the FBI?”

  “They called me,” Bass explained. “They thought you might try to contact your parents’ lawyers. Aiden, listen to me — I talked to your parents, too.”

  All at once, the teenager’s tone softened. “How are they?”

  “Worried sick,” the lawyer said honestly. “They’re more concerned about you two than they are about prison. Both of them begged me to convince you to turn yourselves in.”

  There was hesitation on the other end of the line. “Turn ourselves in …” Aiden mused.

  “Give me that phone!” There was a brief struggle, and then an angry voice — a young girl’s — declared, “No way, Mr. Bass. If that’s what you’re thinking, forget it. The next cops we hang around will be the ones who let Mom and Dad out of jail.”

  “Meg,” Bass said sympathetically. “Your parents are serving life sentences. We did everything we could, but — ”

  “You didn’t do everything you could!” the girl cried. “We found evidence that Frank Lindenauer worked for the terrorists! How come nobody figured that out, huh?”

  Bass was stunned. “That’s impossible!” Frank Lindenauer was the Falconers’ CIA contact. By the time of the trial, he had flat-out vanished. How could two kids on the run have uncovered what a team of professional investigators had missed?

  Aiden came back on the line. “We got into Lindenauer’s old gym locker. He had a stack of flyers for a charity run by HORUS Global Group — and HORUS was a front for the terrorists.”

  “Remarkable!” exclaimed the attorney, making notes on a legal pad. “It could help the appeal. But you have to understand it doesn’t prove anything to a judge. Just because Lindenauer may be guilty doesn’t mean your parents are innocent.”

  “That’s why we have to dig deeper,” Aiden told him. “We need the information your firm gathered about HORUS.”

  Bass was bug-eyed. “For what?”

  “To prove our parents were framed. We have to find Lindenauer. Someone from HORUS knows where he is.”

  “But there is no HORUS anymore,” Bass protested. “The FBI shut down their Denver headquarters and all their satellite offices. Everybody associated with the group is in jail.”

  “Frank Lindenauer is out there somewhere,” Aiden pointed out. “He’s associated with HORUS. And there’s a professional killer after us — ”

  Bass was more worried than ever. “A killer?”

  “He might just be a big, bald psycho. Or maybe some yahoo who wants revenge on our parents. But what if he was hired by HORUS to tie up the loose ends?”

  “All the more reason why you have to go to the police,” Bass insisted. “You’re in grave danger. Not just from this threat, but in general. Think of your mother and father. Surely it can’t be your plan to add to their burdens.”

  Despite his powers of persuasion, Bass could not convince the Falconer siblings to give themselves up. They honestly believed that they were their parents’ only chance for freedom. Bass swallowed a lump in his throat, torn between admiring their bravery and seeing nothing but tragedy in their future.

  Their safety was his number one priority. But if they refused to be saved, he had to help them any way he could. With a heavy heart, he instructed Janine, his assistant, to fax the firm’s file on HORUS Global Group to the number Aiden provided.

  Janine sat unmoving in her swivel chair, the thick folder clutched to her chest. On the desk in front of her lay a copy of The Washington Post, open to page six. Her eyes were glued to Department of Juvenile Corrections photographs of Aiden and Margaret Falconer, and the headline above them:

  $25,000 REWARD OFFERED FOR CAPTURE OF FALCONER SIBLINGS

  On the opposite side of the continent, a boy and a girl crouched in an alley in West Los Angeles, California. Although they were almost completely hidden behind an overloaded garbage Dumpster, the pair wore their LA Lakers caps tight and low, obscuring their faces.

  There was a word for fugitives who took chances: “prisoners.”

  Aiden Falconer peered at the Staples superstore across the street. Somewhere in that building sat a sheaf of faxes from Mitchell Bass’s law firm, hopefully untraced. Vital information about HORUS Global Group. The file was to be picked up by one Gary Graham.

  Gary Graham — Aiden’s alias.

  He shuddered. The idea that an ordinary high school student should need an alias was pretty weird. Then again, nobody with the name Falconer could ever be considered ordinary.

  Who would have believed that Mom and Dad would be in jail for treason? he thought glumly. Or that Meg and I would be wanted by the FBI? Who would have believed that I’d be charged with arson, grand theft, breaking and entering, resisting arrest, and impersonating a police officer?

  Perhaps most bizarre of all was the fact that — except for the arson — those charges were true. Breaking the law was business as usual when you were on the run.

  “Let’s go,” Meg urged. “It stinks here.”

  They waited for a break in the traffic and crossed to the Staples entrance. The store felt like a strange alternate universe. Every passing glance was a penetrating stare. Aiden held his breath and waited for the look of sudden recognition — the one that would be followed by shouts of: It’s those Falconer kids! Call the cops!

  His sister displayed no such trepidation. Classic Meg, cool under fire. Either that or she was too young and naive to realize that only the flimsiest onionskin layer of vigilance and pure luck separated them from disaster. They were almost famous now — “notorious” might be a better word. Every minute spent in public was a risk.

  With a mixture of admiration and resentment, Aiden watched her step brazenly up to the service desk. “I’m here to pick up a fax for Gary Graham.”

  To his amazement, the man behind the counter just gave it to her. Aiden was still fumbling for his fake ID when Meg thrust the file into his arms.

&n
bsp; It was so unexpected that the precious documents slipped out of his hand and scattered to the floor. Urgently, the Falconers stooped to gather them up again.

  That was when Aiden spotted the newspaper. Why would somebody come into Staples to read the LA Times?

  All at once, a pair of eyes appeared above the headline. Alert, searching eyes.

  Cop’s eyes.

  It’s a setup!

  The terror came in the form of a jolt of raw electricity. It shocked Aiden back to his feet, and he pulled his sister up with him by her fistful of crumpled faxes.

  Their fugitive radar was so sensitive, their flight instinct so instant, that the Falconers were halfway to the exit before Aiden noticed two more sets of cops’ eyes, attached to big bodies blocking the door.

  All around the store, plainclothes officers were coming out of cover, advancing on the Falconers — one from the Stationery Department, one from Photo Processing, one from Computer Accessories —

  We’re trapped!

  “What are we going to do?” hissed Meg in desperation.

  Aiden had no answer. Staples had only one exit. If that was barred, there was no way out. Unless —

  He made for Office Furniture, cramming the papers into his pockets as he ran. He selected a heavy steel computer desk that was on casters and swung it into the wide aisle.

  Meg was bewildered. “What — ?”

  There was no time for explanations. “The window,” he ordered. “Fast!”

  The fugitives got behind the desk and began wheeling it across the store, picking up speed as they headed for the plate glass storefront. Customers dove out of the way like tenpins as Aiden and Meg accelerated to a full sprint. The rollers sang against the terrazzo floor.

  “Hey — stop!” One of the cops hurled himself into their path. He literally bounced off the flying desk, landing with a crash in a bin of ink-jet cartridges.

  The other officers could only watch in frozen disbelief as the siblings blasted the desk into the floor-to-ceiling window.

  Crash!

  The glass shattered into a billion pieces and rained down all around them as they barreled into the street. The desk toppled and skidded across the sidewalk in a shower of sparks, slamming into a mailbox.

  Aiden and Meg barely noticed the destruction. They were already half a block away, in full flight. Six undercover LAPD officers burst out of the chaos of the store in hot pursuit.

  It was a sensation that had become familiar in recent weeks — the searing chest-fire of a desperate high-stepping sprint. Yet this was no school track meet. The stakes were so high — escape or be arrested. Capture meant the end of all hope for Mom and Dad. That kind of urgency obliterated any discomfort. The pain was there, but the adrenaline of the moment overwhelmed everything.

  Without missing a step, Aiden grabbed Meg’s shoulder and steered her around the first corner. As they charged down the side street, Meg lurched to a sudden unscheduled stop in front of a boy and a girl who were walking in the opposite direction.

  “Free hats!” she panted, taking her Lakers cap and placing it on the girl’s head. “Support the home team!” She snatched Aiden’s cap and tossed it to the boy. “Wear it with pride. Go, Lakers!” And the Falconers dashed off again.

  Aiden risked a quick glance over his shoulder. No cops — not yet — just the bewildered boy and girl, sporting their new headgear. But the pursuers couldn’t be far behind. The sound of distant sirens confirmed his worst fear. Word of their narrow escape had gone out over the police radio. Who knew how many officers the LAPD would send to bring in the fugitives who had converted the front of a Staples superstore into a heap of broken glass?

  We’ll never get away on foot!

  “We need someplace to hide!” he rasped.

  Meg looked around frantically. Identical three-story apartment buildings lined the block. “One of these doors must be unlocked — ”

  “No!” Aiden insisted. “The cops might go house-to-house!”

  Then he saw it. A hundred yards ahead, where the street dead-ended at Olympic Boulevard, an enormous car transport came to a slow, grinding halt at the curb. The driver jumped out of the cab and disappeared inside a Burger King.

  The Falconers didn’t hesitate. They pounded down the road and across Olympic. Motorists swerved and slammed on the brakes. Horns sounded, and angry shouts rang out.

  Aiden heard none of it. He was focused on the tractor trailer with such laser-straight singleness of purpose that the rest of the world barely existed. With Meg hot on his heels, he clambered up the steel grid of the double-decker rig’s frame. The two hoisted themselves onto the top level and crawled inside a navy blue Honda Accord, shutting the doors behind them. Aiden stretched himself across the floor of the backseat; Meg snuggled into the space below the glove compartment.

  “I can’t believe we got away!” she rasped.

  “Shhh — no talking. We’re not away yet.”

  They cowered there, hardly daring to breathe, listening as police sirens converged on West Los Angeles. It was as mind-boggling as it was frightening. Being chased was nothing new. But never before had they been the targets of a massive manhunt by a big-city police force.

  It’s like something out of a movie, Aiden thought as squad cars raced past the tractor trailer where he and his sister lay hidden. If somebody saw us — if they tell the cops —

  It was too awful to think about, all four Falconers in jail, no hope for the family.

  Still, he could not keep his fevered brain from churning out worst-case scenarios. Even if they did somehow manage to evade this dragnet, then what? After today, LA would be hotter than a blast furnace. There would be no corner of this vast city where they could seek shelter, no rock large enough to hide under.

  Yet leaving town would be even more perilous. Every bus depot, train station, and airport would be crawling with cops. There would be roadblocks, random searches, maybe even wanted posters.

  His reverie was interrupted by the clang of heavy boots on the rig, followed by the slamming of a vehicle door.

  A small moan of fright escaped Meg. If the police were going to search the cars on this transport, there would be no escape.

  A split second later, the truck’s motor started. Aiden ventured a peek out the Honda’s window. It wasn’t the cops. The driver had climbed behind the wheel of the cab and was seated there, drinking a tall soda through a straw. The tractor trailer roared to life, pulled out into traffic, and made a left turn.

  Meg elevated herself just enough to peer out the passenger window. A dozen police cruisers dotted the street, sirens muted but lights still flashing. At the center of a sea of blue uniforms cowered the boy and girl from the side street, still wearing their newly acquired Lakers caps.

  “Those poor kids,” she whispered remorsefully.

  “They’ll be okay,” Aiden shot back. “They’re not us.”

  The transport slowed down as it picked its way between the parked squad cars.

  It happened a split second before the driver was able to speed up again. A Ford Taurus screeched up to the curb. The door was flung wide, and a very tall man unfolded himself and began lumbering across the road toward the center of activity.

  Twin gasps escaped the Falconers, and they ducked back down again.

  This was a man they knew all too well. He was Emmanuel Harris, the FBI agent who had arrested their parents and started this tragedy in motion. Now he was after them, never more than a few steps away — relentless and powerful.

  The truck wheeled onto Santa Monica Boulevard, leaving Harris behind.

  Aiden had a sinking feeling that they had not seen the last of him.

  Take us away! Take us far away! The words echoed inside Meg’s head as the car transport moved along the crowded freeway.

  She peered outside, praying to see the open fields and countryside that would mean they had left Los Angeles. Instead, houses, houses, and more houses.

  “Does this city ever end?” moaned A
iden from the backseat. It seemed as if they’d been driving forever and getting nowhere. How long had it been? An hour? More?

  Time drags when you’re scared out of your wits, Meg reflected.

  The Honda’s windows acted as a greenhouse for the relentless California sun. The car was an oven. Meg thought back to the news stories about babies and pets suffocating in hot, airless vehicles. It was all too easy to believe.

  The rural scene she was hoping for never came. Instead, the neighborhoods grew more industrial — rusty machinery, sprawling warehouses, high chain-link fences, some of them topped with razor wire.

  The transport left the highway and began a laborious rumble over train tracks and broken pavement.

  “Where are we?” Meg queried in frustration. “What kind of place is this?”

  Aiden could only shake his head. After the wealth and polish of movie stars’ homes and Hollywood glitz, their surroundings looked like something out of the Terminator movies.

  Through the split in the Honda’s front seat, brother and sister shared a look of dismay as the truck came to a stop in the middle of this alien landscape. Enormous cranes towered all around them, a titanic huddle of skyscraping robots, some with booms, some just steel skeletons, reaching for the stratosphere.

  The motor died. They felt the vibrations as the driver stepped out and jumped to the ground.

  “Now what?” whispered Meg.

  They had thought only about escaping from Staples. Neither had any plan for what might come next.

  Without warning, a dark shadow spread across the Honda’s windshield, blocking the light.

  Aiden and Meg cried out in shock and fear.

  The shadow spread its wings and landed on the hood of the car. It stood there, staring in at them.

  “A pelican!” Meg breathed. “Oh, man, I thought we were caught!”

  “A pelican,” Aiden repeated, weak with relief. “They’re seabirds. We must be at the waterfront.”

  “This doesn’t look like any beach I know,” Meg said dubiously.

  “Not a beach — a port. These cars are being shipped somewhere.”

  They permitted themselves a real look around. A vast commercial harbor stretched before them. The cranes were at the water’s edge, loading and unloading an endless lineup of freighters, tankers, and barges at dozens of piers. The system of warehouses was a city on its own, teeming with dockworkers.