License to Thrill

by Dan Gutman

  “Ha-ha, good one, boss,” said the clean-shaven bowler dude.

  “Quiet!” barked John Pain. “You’re ruining my flow.”

  “Sorry, boss.”

  “It’s an engineering marvel, ain’t it?” asked John Pain, pointing the flashlight beam left and right. “The water rushin’ through here generates enough ’lectricity to power millions of homes and businesses. And think of it. When your bodies get sliced up by those giant turbine blades, you’ll become part of the history. Thanks to you, America will be green. You’ll become an alternative source of energy.”

  The bowler dudes couldn’t stop themselves from giggling.

  “We’re going to die in here!” Pep wailed. “Do something, Coke!”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Coke asked.

  “Oh, don’t feel so bad, little lady,” John Pain said. “Lots of folks died right here, buildin’ this dam. Ninety-six, to be exact. Legend has it that some of ’em are buried in the concrete and became part of the dam itself. So you’ll be in good company.”

  “You’ll never get away with this!” Pep said. She didn’t really believe that, but felt the need to say it anyway.

  “Lemme tell y’all a little story,” Pain said. “The first person to die here was a man named J. G. Tierney, back in 1922. He was a surveyor lookin’ for a good spot to build the dam. Poor fella fell into the Columbia River and drowned. And you know who was the last man to die here, exactly thirteen years to the day later?”

  “Who?” Coke asked.

  “His son, Patrick,” said John Pain. “He fell from one of the intake towers. True story. Sad story. Makes me kinda tear up, I gotta tell ya.”

  “You’re sick, you know that?” Coke asked. “You need help.”

  John Pain laughed.

  “If anybody needs help, it’s y’all,” he said as he looked at his watch. “’Cause I reckon that ninety thousand gallons of water is gonna come shootin’ down this pipe in . . . about fifty seconds.”

  “You want me to tie ’em up, boss?” asked one of the bowler dudes.

  “Nah, they ain’t goin’ nowhere,” said Pain. “But we really must be taking our leave. Unfortunately, I got me a touch of aquaphobia—fear of water.”

  The bowler dudes followed John Pain to the door they had used to get inside the giant pipe.

  “Wait!” Coke said desperately. “You told us you were going to get uranium for Dr. Warsaw so he could build an atomic bomb. Did you?”

  “I most certainly completed that mission,” Pain said as he opened the door. “And now I’m gonna complete this one. Ta-ta, y’all. Have a nice life, or what’s left of it, anyways.”

  The door slammed shut. Coke and Pep rushed over and tried to pull it open. No go.

  “So Dr. Warsaw does have a bomb!” Pep shouted.

  “Who cares about that? We’re going to die in here!” Coke said. “After all we’ve been through, this is how it ends.”

  “He was bluffing,” Pep assured her brother. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself all of a sudden,” Coke said. “Ever since you killed that snake.”

  “Think about it,” Pep told him. “How could John Pain possibly know the exact moment when they’re going to release the—”

  “What’s that noise?” Coke shouted.

  “What noise?”

  “That noise!”

  Both of them stopped to listen. There was a whooshing noise in the distance, echoing off the sides of the pipe. It was getting louder, closer.

  “It’s the water!” Pep shouted. “It’s coming!”

  “This is it,” Coke said, taking his sister’s hand. “This is the end.”

  “Hang on!” Pep had to shout now to be heard. The pipe was vibrating.

  “There’s nothing to hang on to!” Coke shouted back.

  “We’re gonna have to swim!” Pep yelled.

  “What, right into the turbine blades?”

  They could feel the spray now. The roar of 90,000 gallons of water rushing through the pipe made it impossible to communicate anymore. But Pep tried anyway.

  “Hold your breath!” she screamed. “And no matter what happens, I love you!”

  There was no point trying to swim. The water swept the two of them up like ping-pong balls and flung them forward. Instinctively, they curled themselves into the fetal position, covering their heads with their hands.

  What felt like an eternity took about nine seconds in real time. Coke and Pep rocketed down the pipe on a wave of water, rolling, tumbling, and sliding, upside down and sideways, completely without control.

  Now I know what you’re thinking, reader. You’re thinking that there’s no way Coke and Pep could survive the crush of ninety thousand gallons of water and then manage to make it past the blades of a spinning turbine. Surely, they would be drowned, their bones broken, their bodies sliced into tiny pieces. How could they possibly get out of this mess?

  Well, they did, okay? I can’t explain it. I wasn’t there. All I can say is that Coke and Pep didn’t drown. Their bones weren’t broken. Their bodies weren’t sliced into tiny pieces. It’s preposterous, I know. But hey, that’s why you found this book in the fiction section. Miracles happen. Just go with the flow, so to speak.

  Once past the turbine blades, the pipe spit the twins out into the Columbia River downstream from Hoover Dam.

  A few seconds later, Pep bobbed to the surface, choking and gasping for breath. She managed to get her bearings and swim to shore. When she saw her brother nearby, floating face down, she waded back in and grabbed him. Then she pulled him up on a rock and slapped him in the face see if he was conscious.

  “Are we dead?” Coke asked, opening his eyes.

  “Not yet,” Pep told him, panting. “Not yet. Let’s blow this pop stand.”

  Like a couple of drowned rats, the twins struggled to climb up the rocks at the side of the river and back to the visitors’ center.

  “We’ve been looking all over for you,” Dr. McDonald said when he saw them. “I was about to call the police! You missed most of the tour! What happened?”

  “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Pep said.

  “You’re soaking wet!” said Mrs. McDonald.

  “Hey, at least my shirt isn’t ripped,” Coke replied.

  The twins staggered to the bathroom to change into dry clothes, and soon they were in the Ferrari and on the road again. Dr. McDonald circled back to Route 93 and crossed the Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, which was built in 2010 right next to Hoover Dam. At the end of the bridge, this sign came into view. . . .

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Hoover Dam.

  In the B box, type Las Vegas NV.

  Click Get Directions.

  Chapter 20

  VEGAS, BABY!

  When she didn’t hear any hooting and hollering from the backseat, Mrs. McDonald turned around to look behind her.

  “Coke, aren’t you going to shout ‘Woo-hoo!’ and share some Nevada trivia with us?” she asked.

  “Woo-hoo,” he mumbled, with a total lack of enthusiasm.

  “What’s the matter, son?” Dr. McDonald asked. “Not feeling well?”

  In fact, Coke wasn’t feeling well at all. Thanks to the incident at Hoover Dam—combined with all the other incidents—he was beginning to show classic signs of depression, or maybe learned helplessness. It had finally sunk in with Coke—this is what life was going to be like from now on. Every couple of days, some nutcase would do something horrible to him and his sister.

  So far, he and Pep had been lucky. But eventually, one of these attempts on their lives was likely to succeed. It was only a matter of time. They would be dead and Dr. Warsaw would probably kill thousands more with his bomb. That thought would depress anybody.

  Besides, there was no reason to hoot and holler about entering Nevada. This was not the family’s first v
isit to the state. They’d crossed northern Nevada when they were heading east at the beginning of their trip. Now they were at the southernmost tip of the state on their way back home.

  Coke continued to feel glum as the Ferrari headed west on Route 93, also known as The Great Basin Highway. More rocks. More desert. Miles and miles of nothingness. The sun was starting to set, yet the temperature was still close to triple digits.

  But then, not more than a half hour after leaving Hoover Dam, signs of civilization started to pop up here and there. At first they were just gas stations and warehouses. But very soon the signs became larger, brighter, and more colorful. The architecture became flashier.

  Dr. and Mrs. McDonald knew which city they were approaching, but had decided to surprise the kids. Coke’s mood perked up when he spotted this sign. . . .

  “Woo-hoo!” he shouted. “Vegas, baby!”

  After driving through the desert for almost a week, it was somewhat of a culture shock to see downtown Las Vegas. Everyone was craning their necks as they drove through “the Strip”—four dizzying miles of gigantic hotels, palm trees, flashing lights and signs, wild colors, souvenir shops, magic shows, strange-looking people, and of course, casino after casino.

  Most people don’t know that the Strip is not in the city limits of Las Vegas itself. It’s actually in the towns of Winchester and Paradise.

  Mrs. McDonald was in paradise herself. She didn’t even have to look in her Nevada guidebook to find quirky places to visit in Las Vegas. All she had to do was look out the window. . . .

  The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime. The Houdini Museum. The Pinball Museum and Hall of Fame. The Elvis-A-Rama Museum. The Neon Museum. There were replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. A dancing waters fountain show outside the Bellagio Hotel. The largest gold nugget in the world was at the Golden Nugget Hotel (of course). There was a real roller coaster on top of the New York–New York hotel. And if you wanted to see a chunk of the Berlin Wall, you could come to Las Vegas. In this one town, Mrs. McDonald would be able to gather a year’s worth of material for Amazing but True.

  Even Dr. McDonald was fascinated, especially when he drove past the National Atomic Testing Museum on East Flamingo Road. He had been thinking about his book idea, and this would be a great place to do research.

  “This town is cool!” Coke said. “Can we live here?”

  “For two nights you can,” said Dr. McDonald as he pulled into the Mirage, one of the larger hotels on the Strip. He handed the car keys to the valet and went to check in at the front desk.

  All the hotels in Las Vegas are also casinos, and the twins had never been in one before. Once they walked through the front door, there were hundreds of slot machines all over, clinking and buzzing and flashing to attract customers.

  “Can we try one?” Coke asked his parents. “It says they’re only a dollar.”

  “Kids aren’t allowed to gamble,” Dr. McDonald told him. “You have to be eighteen before you can throw your money away.”

  It was getting late, so rather than go out and search for a place to eat, their parents decided to stay in the hotel. There are twelve—yes twelve—restaurants in the Mirage. Mrs. McDonald chose Paradise Café, which specialized in “exotic drinks and light fare.” Not too fancy.

  During dinner, Dr. McDonald kept looking at his watch as if he had to go somewhere. The waiter brought the check a few minutes before eight o’clock.

  “Follow me,” their father abruptly told the twins. “I want to show you something.”

  The whole family followed him out to the front of the hotel, where a crowd was forming.

  “What’s going on?” Pep asked.

  “You’ll see,” her father replied.

  The crowd had gathered around a big mountain of rocks. Well, fake rocks, anyway. They were probably made of plastic, like just about everything else in Las Vegas.

  At precisely eight o’clock, animal noises and eerie jungle music started to play near the rock mountain. Then, a few wispy puffs of smoke appeared to come out of the top of it.

  “I’m scared, Mommy!” a little girl said, clutching her mother’s leg.

  But things were about to get scarier. As the native drumming became more intense, pink, yellow, and orange flames shot high out of the top of the mountain.

  Suddenly, two pirates—or guys dressed like pirates, anyway—came running over.

  “Gangway, landlubbers!” shouted the first pirate.

  “Ahoy there!” shouted the second one. “Which of you lads or lassies is going to walk the plank?”

  “Ha-ha!” laughed Mrs. McDonald. “They must have come over from the pirate show at Treasure Island down the street.”

  The pirates stalked the crowd, looking everybody over. Rows of torches in the water around the mountain of rocks started flaming up.

  “Well, shiver me timbers!” said the first pirate as he approached Coke. “Here’s the bilge-sucking hornswoggler we was lookin’ fer!”

  “Blimey!” the other pirate said as he came over. “Ye scurvy dog! Let’s flog him on the poop deck, matey!”

  “I got me a better idea,” said the first pirate. “Let’s send him to Davy Jones’ Locker!”

  With that, they grabbed Coke and hoisted him over their shoulders.

  “Hey, knock it off,” Coke protested.

  “Stop!” Pep shouted. “Leave my brother alone!”

  “Relax, honey,” said Mrs. McDonald. “It’s all part of the show.”

  “Dead men tell no tales,” one of the pirates said as they carried Coke up the mountain of rocks. As they did, Coke got a close look at their faces.

  “Bowler dudes!” he exclaimed.

  “Right you arrrr!” cracked the mustachioed bowler dude. “Long time no see!”

  “Let me go!” Coke shouted, struggling to get free.

  “Yo ho ho!” shouted the first pirate. “We’re gonna throw this scalawag into the volcano!”

  See? I told you that Coke was going to get thrown into a volcano! But you didn’t believe me. Well, I can hardly blame you after that business with the snakes back in chapter 13. But let’s continue. . . .

  One of the bowler dude pirates grabbed Coke’s arms and the other one took his legs. They began swinging him back and forth. The crowd began clapping rhythmically.

  “No! Don’t!” Coke yelled.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  With that, they tossed Coke into the volcano.

  Fortunately, the volcano was a fake. If the bowler dudes had thrown him into a real volcano, Coke would have crashed into the rocks or been burned alive by molten hot lava. Inside this volcano was an intricate computer system that produced incredibly realistic smoke, light, and sound effects.

  Oh, and there were two other things inside the volcano.

  Bones and Mya.

  When Coke came flying over the edge, they caught him before he could hit the bottom.

  “You’re safe,” Mya said. “It’s not a real volcano. They’re just playing with your head.”

  “What are you doing here?” Coke asked.

  “No time to talk now,” Bones said. “We’ll come by your room tomorrow so we can swap information.”

  “Get back out there,” Mya told him. “You’re part of the show.”

  Coke climbed out of the volcano to the applause of the crowd. The bowler dude pirates had already dashed away, cackling and giggling like the idiots they are. The flaming torches flared in time with the music, and then they were extinguished as the volcano show came to an end.

  “You have to admit, that was cool,” Dr. McDonald said as the crowd began to disperse.

  “I love Vegas!” said Mrs. McDonald as they walked back to their rooms. “Where else in the world do they put on a free volcano show every night?”

  “What was that all about?” Pep asked her brother.

  “Tell you later,” he whispered.

  “We have a big day planned,” Mrs. McDonald announced when s
he woke the twins up the next morning. “I want to go to the Mob Museum, see the fountains at the Bellagio, that fake Eiffel Tower—”

  “And I can’t wait to go to the National Atomic Testing Museum,” said Dr. McDonald.

  The two of them were as giddy as schoolchildren.

  “We don’t want to go,” Coke announced.

  “What do you mean you don’t want to go?” asked Mrs. McDonald, irritated. “We’re a family.”

  “You told us that since we turned thirteen, we were old enough to do things on our own,” Pep said.

  “Yeah, maybe we want to do different stuff than you do,” Coke said.

  The truth was, the twins didn’t want to do anything. Those crazy bowler dudes were out there on the Strip somewhere. Maybe Dr. Warsaw and John Pain were lurking around too. Coke figured it would be safer if he and Pep stayed in the hotel room. Besides, Mya and Bones had promised to come by.

  “What is it that you kids want to do?” asked Dr. McDonald.

  “We want to watch TV,” Coke said.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Dr. McDonald. “Instead of going out and having fun at all these cool Las Vegas sights, you’d rather sit in a hotel room and watch TV?”

  Coke and Pep nodded.

  “You’re going to miss all the fun,” said their mother.

  “We’ve had a lot of fun,” Pep said. “We just want to relax today. Maybe we’ll take a swim in the pool.”

  “Suit yourselves,” Dr. McDonald said with a sigh. “But your mother and I are going out. Come on, Bridge.”

  They gave the twins money for breakfast and left, shaking their heads and wondering—like all parents—what was wrong with the younger generation.

  A half hour later, there was a soft knock at the hotel room door.

  “Room service,” somebody said on the other side.

  “We didn’t order any room service,” Pep replied.

  “It’s not room service, you dope!” Coke said. “It’s them!”

  He opened the door and Mya and Bones were standing there, in Mirage uniforms. Bones was pushing a rolling cart filled with eggs, toast, orange juice, and sliced melon.