“I do remember something odd concerning all of this. Last summer, I was discussing my upcoming article with some friends over lunch at a restaurant. We were talking about the tunnels and how amazing it was that they existed. I’m pretty sure that I said where the tunnels were.
“A man at the next table was interested in what I was saying. He was listening so blatantly that I felt uncomfortable. As soon as our check came, we got up and left.”
I asked Sarah if she remembered what the man looked like. She responded that it had been so long ago that she doubted it.
“I’ll do what I can to help, though,” she said. “Let me give you my address. If the FBI wants to come by, tell them I’ll be home all day.”
As I was thanking her, Dave came into the room to let me that the sketch artist had arrived.
We worked on the composite drawing for over an hour. In the end, I felt that the artist had captured how the man looked. I only wished I’d gotten a better look at him.
Steve said that he and Dave would be taking the drawing of this man and a photograph of Major Davis over for Sarah to look at. They didn’t really know how what she’d written could be tied in with my uncle’s abduction, but if she could connect one of them to her conversation at the restaurant, that could help unravel the mystery of how they had found the tunnel in the first place.
The rest of the afternoon was uneventful at best. My head throbbed, and I was crabby with practically everyone that evening.
Chapter 19
The next day was Tuesday. I should have been in class, but we stayed home. The sunshine had been replaced by ominous gray clouds. Nobody slept in that morning, although there was no reason not to. There seemed to be nothing to do, and a tedious boredom hung over us.
Charlie had been missing for two and a half days. There were no other messages from him. It was really hard to keep our spirits up.
Ben wanted to go for a bike ride. Since I didn’t think he should be going anywhere by himself, I said I’d ride too.
We went coasting down the street. Ben rode ahead of me; the wind ruffled his hair, making it stand straight up on top. It was another cold day, and the wind cut through my jacket.
“Where do you want to go?” I called.
Ben looked back over his shoulder and said, “Why don’t we go down to Oak Road. Doesn’t that turn into the blue belt a little way down?”
I pulled up beside him, “Ben, the blue belt covers a lot of miles. It goes clear around the city.”
Ben shrugged. “Do you have anything else better to do?”
Since I didn’t, we turned down Oak. Soon we were on the blue belt.
I wasn’t sure what we were looking for. It was absurd to think that two kids would be able to find anything of importance just by riding around. The wind got colder, and the clouds got heavier. Traffic was all around us, and it took a lot of concentration just to stay out of the way along the side of the road.
A bus went by, leaving us in a cloud of diesel exhaust.
That’s when I saw the van. There was nothing remarkable in how it looked—other than the mirrored windows. The shiny gunmetal gray van almost looked like it had no windows because they blended in so well.
The driver had his window down, and I could see a cigarette in his fingers. What drew my attention was the driver. It was him! The man that had chased me from the tunnel!
There he was, stuck in traffic, waiting in the turn lane for the light to change.
I know what you’re thinking—and you’re completely right. Ben and I should have turned around right then and gone back to tell Steve or Dave. The trouble with this is that, once again, I couldn’t see the license plate—and he would be gone in seconds!
To make matters even stickier, when he did turn, he’d be turning right in front of me! My heart began to thud, and my palms grew sweaty on the handlebars.
“Ben,” I called in a low voice. “Wait up—it’s him!”
My brother looked over at me. “Who? Where?”
“Don’t look now or he’ll see you. He’s third in line in the turn lane. It’s the guy that hit me on the head.”
“Are you positive, Alexander?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll try to get the license number. You go down the street. When the light changes, that will be the way he’ll go. It will give you a head start.”
I nodded and started around the corner.
I heard a car coming up from behind, so the light must have changed. Prickles went up my spine. What if he were to reach out and grab me? Or worse—what if he went after Ben! Why hadn’t Ben caught up with me yet?
The next car whizzed past. I wanted so badly to turn around and look, but I pedaled on. I heard another vehicle approach. This was it. It was the third. It would be him!
I braced myself, but nothing happened. In a moment, he was gone—just another van in traffic.
I turned to look for my brother. For a moment I didn’t see him, and my heart skipped a beat. Then he rounded the corner and caught up with me.
“—couldn’t get it,” he panted. “Let’s try to catch him at the next light.”
I pedaled harder. Going uphill made it difficult to keep our speed up.
The traffic alongside us was slowing. Good—the light ahead must have changed. We still had a chance.
The light was turning green when we neared the van. He still had his window down. I looked at him, and he caught sight of me in his mirror. It felt terrible to know that he knew that I knew. For one horrific moment, we stayed suspended like that—me looking into the reflection of his eyes.
Somewhere a horn sounded, and he pulled forward.
“He’s seen us now,” I said. “If he was going to where Charlie is being held, he certainly won’t be going there now.”
“I got his tag number!” Ben said.
“Great—let’s call home.” I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket, but it was empty except for some loose change and a gum wrapper. Good grief, what was it with me and cell phones?
“Let’s go back and use the pay phone at the gas station,” I said.
Ben nodded. I could tell he didn’t want to talk and chance forgetting the number.
With that, we headed back up the street to find the pay phone.
Chapter 20
At the gas station, I dug out enough change and made the call.
Steve said that they would work on tracking down the van right away. He wanted to send someone out to pick us up, but I protested. We had our bikes—why not just ride them? Steve grudgingly agreed, but emphasized that we needed to head back right then.
I have to tell you that this was exactly what Ben and I set out to do. The excitement I felt in coming this close to that man was tempered by my need to look out for my brother. I couldn’t risk anything happening to Ben.
A fine, drizzly bone-chilling October rain began to fall. Ben pulled his hood up, and I yanked my hat down as far as it would go without hurting the side of my head.
We were going to take the shortest route back to our house. We turned off of the busy thoroughfare onto a side street. We rode at a slow pace through a neighborhood of stately homes. We couldn’t help wanting to take time to check out the vehicles that were parked in driveways along the way. You can’t really blame us for looking. I’m sure you would too.
We turned down a road that I remembered went straight through the neighborhood and would end up close to our home. At certain times, it was busy because it was a shortcut to the expressway. It was late enough in the morning that there were very few cars. We could hear the sound of traffic on the blue belt, which was running parallel to us, just two blocks over.
As we coasted down a long incline, a gunmetal gray van caught our attention. It was barely visible from over the top of a tall privacy h
edge. We only saw it because we were up above it.
“That has to be the same van!” Ben said.
We slowed to a stop and pushed our bikes over into some bushes where they could not be seen from the street.
Looking through the hedge, we saw the van parked in the driveway. We moved in closer to it.
It seemed to be empty, but who could know, with the windows being mirrored. Steam was rising up from the hood as if it had been driven recently.
The house was quite grand—and had a well-kept lawn. A small sign by the front steps said No Trespassing. A larger sign read Beware of Dog.
Ben and I saw the black dog at about the same time that he noticed us. He appeared out of nowhere with lowered head, raised hackles, and bared teeth. He was a big, sleek dog. We could hear a low insistent growl.
Ben and I both like dogs. One might even go so far as to say that we love them. This was not a dog that we were going to form any attachment to!
“Postmen reach down like they are going to pick up a stone,” I said as we eyed the dog.
“Well, I’m no mailman—and I’m not going to get any closer to the ground than I already am!”
The dog’s growling got louder, and he started toward us. As he crouched to leap, a man’s voice commanded him to stop.
There, in the front doorway, loomed the imposing figure of Major Davis. He gave us a cold smile.
“Boys, nice of you to come, I’m afraid you’ve just missed your uncle. So sorry, now come on into the house—or shall I turn Mamba loose on you?”
With great trepidation, we went inside with him. There was a suitcase in the hall, and all of the furniture was shrouded in sheeting.
He followed my glance. “Dust covers,” he said. “I’m afraid that I can no longer stay in this fair city … or country.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Actually, you almost missed me. I had just come in to grab this last bag.” He motioned to the lone suitcase by the door. “The information your uncle unwittingly provided us with was of great importance. He was making me a very, very, rich man. However, nothing is important—or lucrative enough—to warrant my capture.”
“Where is Charlie?” Ben demanded.
“Your uncle’s whereabouts are of no consequence. Come this way—now!”
Mamba’s toenails clicked on the floor as we went down the hallway. At the end of the hall, large double wooden doors opened inward as we neared them.
“Now, if you boys will kindly step in here, I’ll be on my way. Mamba, of course, will be around the house. You need not fear him though, because this room has special security doors. Once the doors are closed, they can’t be reopened without an access code. Mamba can’t get in—and you can’t get out. Farewell little kiddies, you were good detectives—just not good enough.”
I jerked back, but Mamba’s gleaming eyes stopped me, and we went on into the room. When the doors shut with a click behind us, all we could see was blackness.
Chapter 21
We remained perfectly still as our eyes adjusted to the darkness. All sounds in the house had ceased. The major presumably was making his escape.
The medium-sized room had high ceilings but no windows or other doors. I pulled on the handles of the doors we had come through, but they were locked securely and did not move.
There was a stained glass panel above the double doors. The only light in the room filtered in through the semi-opaque glass.
I could make out the shadowy form of a massive conference table. A few chairs were scattered around the room. There was enough light to make out shapes, but too dark to see any color. The cloths covering the furniture looked like grotesque ghosts.
I took up the dust cover from over a sofa and the small end table, but the brass lamp that sat on the table did not work. There was no power.
Ben lifted the phone’s receiver from its cradle. No dial tone. The phone was dead.
“Well, we’re trapped!” I said.
“I’m not so sure of that,” Ben responded. “I think I know a way out.”
“You do? There are no doors or windows we can open.”
“I think maybe we can open the doors,” Ben said excitedly. “On our way in here I saw a red light up on the wall in the hall—and there was another on the ceiling. Charlie once told me about security systems that use laser beams. Those red lights out there are lasers. They operate on a backup power supply—so even if the rest of the power is out, they stay on.”
Ben moved closer to inspect the doors, tracing his finger down the gap where the doors came together. He said, “If we throw something out between these doors, something thin and stiff, it would pass through the beam, breaking the circuit, and the doors would unlock—for a split second anyway.”
We prowled around the room searching for something that could fit between the doors. A drawer in the little table yielded some magazines, but nothing rigid enough. We found a thick stack of writing tablets on the conference table.
“What if we use these?” I asked.
“We can try—we’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Don’t forget about Mamba, Ben. Once we get through the door, we still have that dog to contend with.”
Ben made his way back over to the sofa and picked up one of the dust covers from where we’d piled them. “We’ll have to throw one of these over him,” he said.
Without another word, he brought a chair from over by the table and placed it in front of the doors.
“Alex, you stand on the chair and hold the cover from the sofa. I’ll get Mamba’s attention. When we hear him at the door, I’ll flip the cardboard from a tablet up through the crack, and hopefully the doors will unlock. As I pull the door open, I’ll jump out of the way—and you throw the sheet over the dog. While he’s tangled up, we make our escape. Easy.”
“Piece of cake,” I said dryly.
Getting the dog’s attention was easy. Getting the doors to open wasn’t.
After flipping three pieces of cardboard through the crack to no avail, it became apparent that we had to try another method of escape.
“Let’s make a rope out of the dust covers,” Ben suggested.
“We could go up over the doors through the transom window, and use it to slide down on the other side.”
We looked up at the transom, then at each other, and then we shrugged. As pretty as the stained glass was, it would have to go.
As we tied the lengths of cloth together, I realized we still needed to save one of them to throw over Mamba. I took the last one and set it aside on the back of the sofa.
Ben looked at me—and then at the doors. “Let’s do it,” he said.
We brought the makeshift rope over to the doors and knotted one end securely through the handles. I gave it a hard pull to test it, and the knot did not slip.
Together we pushed the sofa near the double doors. Next we balanced a chair on the sofa.
Ben said, “You’re taller. You climb up while I keep the chair from tipping.”
I cast around for something heavy enough to break the glass with and decided to use the lamp on the end table.
I scrambled up onto the wobbly perch. Ben positioned himself between the sofa and the door, and used both hands to steady the chair. I held the lamp. “Put your head down Ben!”
I closed my eyes, and used its heavy base to bash the glass as hard as I could. Some broken glass rained down on us, but most of the glass went through the window with the impact. Neither of us had been cut. I used the lamp base like a sledgehammer and broke off any remaining shards of glass from the window frame. A metal support post remained intact inside the center of the window frame. I tossed the cloth rope through the window, and then looped it around the post to form a knot. I tugged on it, and it held tight.
On the other side of the doors, Mamba was in a complete frenz
y!
I inspected the lower edge of the window frame. “Ben, can you hand up a couple of sofa cushions? I still think we will get scraped up on the window ledge. Grab the big soft floppy ones.”
Ben handed them up to me, and I positioned them over the top of the window ledge to shield us from any sharp glass that I’d missed.
Satisfied that we wouldn’t get cut, I shinnied up the rope and straddled the window frame. Ben was right behind me. Mamba was snarling and jumping at us.
“Oh great,” Ben said. “We don’t have the cloth to throw over him.”
He slid back down into the room and grabbed it from the sofa.
“Minor glitch in our plan,” I said.
“Yeah, minor.”
After we were both in position, I pulled our escape rope through the window so that it hung down into the hallway.
“Are you ready for Mamba?”
“Ready as I’m going to get,” Ben replied stanchly.
We spread the remaining dust cover out as wide as we could, which was not easy to do, considering we were hanging out of a window.
Mamba had calmed down a little bit and was pacing back and forth.
We dropped the cloth straight on top of him, covering him completely.
As Mamba whirled around, trying to get free, Ben and I slid down the rope and fled down the hallway. In seconds, we were out of the house.
“Easy, huh?” Ben said.
We collapsed on the cold, wet grass, laughing hysterically. I sat up and wiped the grass from my hands as I looked down the driveway. The van had vanished.
“We’d better get home.”
“Yeah, before someone else finds us,” Ben said, serious once again.
He looked over at me as we pedaled. “Remember that dog’s name? He must be named after the Black Mamba snake. We learned about them in class.”
“The Black Mamba is the fastest snake in the world, as well as one of the most deadly. It lives in Africa—and it’s said that they will attack a man, even if not provoked.”
That dog’s name fit him perfectly.
Alexander, Spy Catcher Page 7
