The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2

by Roy MacGregor

Simon and Travis could hear the rope rubbing and straining on the far gunwale.

  “Heave!” Andy called again.

  They pulled and the boat rocked, but not so violently this time. The rope was groaning with the strain.

  “Heave!” Andy called, and with an explosion of trapped air the tarp broke the surface.

  Travis and Simon held on tight, both of them shaking badly now. Andy reached over and grabbed two of the bungee cords, Lars grabbed another, and with Nish and Data pulling on the rope, they lifted the object up out of the lake–the tarp making a huge sucking sound as it left the water–and into the boat.

  “I’m jumping ship!” Data screamed.

  “Hang on!” said Lars. “Look at it!”

  Travis and Simon, still in the water, had no idea what was going on in the boat. They exchanged startled looks. All they could hear was Nish’s response.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “What is it?” Simon called.

  “Have a look,” said Andy. His voice was calm, without fear.

  The two boys, with Lars’s help, pulled themselves up to look over the gunwale.

  The first thing Travis saw was the hand: white, with three fat fingers.

  Then the face: grinning, gap-toothed, eyes half open, big black ears.

  Goofy!

  “The yellow vest,” said Data.

  There was no need to explain what he meant. Lying in the bottom of the boat like a drowned cartoon character was the Goofy costume from the first photograph–the one taken outside the Hall of Presidents when they had encountered the maintenance worker who also turned out to be the man in the rowboat.

  The other man in the boat must have been the person inside this Goofy costume. It explained why the first Goofy had been so anxious to avoid the Screech Owls. It did not explain, however, what he had been up to at the Hall of Presidents.

  “We better talk to Muck,” Travis said.

  “We’ll have to take this back with us,” said Andy.

  “L-L-Look there!”

  It was Nish, and there was real fear in his voice. Travis looked up with everyone else and saw that Nish was pointing to the beach. The beautiful young woman was there in a bathing suit. She must have come down for a swim, but she had turned back and was running toward the path.

  “She saw us!” said Nish.

  “Where’s she going?” Data asked.

  “To get the others!” Travis said.

  “Let’s hurry!” warned Lars.

  With Andy rowing strongly and Simon and Travis holding onto the rowboat’s transom again and kicking as hard as they could, the boys raced to shore. Travis was trying to picture the layout of the camp. The quickest trail back to the Owls’ campsite would take them right past the campsite of the Goofy impersonators–they couldn’t chance that. But there was another, longer, trail that skirted the campsite and ended up by the showers, which were close to the Owls’ site.

  “We’ll go back by the shower trail!” Travis shouted up into the rowboat.

  “Got you!” Andy called back.

  As soon as Travis’s flippers touched the bottom, he stopped swimming and pushed. Simon did the same. Andy gave one final dig with the oars and the rowboat ground hard onto the beach. The boys scrambled to get out, Andy grabbing the Goofy head and Lars scooping up the body of the costume for the run back. Travis kicked off his flippers and grabbed them.

  “This way!” Travis called.

  With Travis leading the way, the Owls raced toward the head of the second trail.

  “Hey!”

  The shout came at them like a gunshot. It was a man’s voice, deep and angry. None of them had to turn to see who it was. They began to run even faster.

  “Hey! You kids! Wait a minute!”

  Another man’s voice, this one with fury in it.

  “Drop that if you know what’s good for you!” the first man yelled.

  Travis could hear the men running. They were well behind the Owls, but they were fast and, unlike Travis anyway, weren’t tired from all that diving and swimming.

  The men were gaining, quickly.

  Up ahead, Andy rounded a sharp turn in the trail, hit some mud, and slipped down on his side, the Goofy head spilling into the bush. He got up, scrambling and limping. Nish, empty-handed, reached out and scooped up the head. Lars was well in front with the rest of the Goofy outfit.

  Travis’s snorkelling equipment was slowing him down. He tossed the flippers and mask and ran as hard as he could. He could feel his chest tighten. He turned his head briefly–just enough to see how far back his pursuers were–and in an instant he knew they were going to catch him.

  This was real terror, true terror–not the manufactured terror of a ride. He felt like he was going to burst into tears like a little child. What would they do to him? Kill him?

  The trail widened. He was almost home, but he knew that he wouldn’t make it; one of the men was now so close behind he could hear his breathing. He tried one final burst.

  The trail curled around a large sycamore tree, the moss hanging down from the lowest branches like a curtain. Travis recognized the tree. Once beyond it, he would be able to see the showers. There was the smallest chance he’d make it, if he could just dig down a bit more and come up with yet one more burst of energy.

  But he had nothing left. He was exhausted, beaten, defeated. The man had him. All he could do was make it to the tree and, perhaps, a few more feet along the trail, and hope that someone would see him being captured.

  As he rounded the tree he sensed movement, a quick blur, to his right, then the sound of two heavy objects coming together hard.

  “OOOOFFF!” came the sound from behind.

  Travis turned just in time to see the maintenance worker flying through the air, turning a half somersault before crashing, flat on his back, into the low shrubs and mud to one side of the trail.

  Standing between Travis and the fallen man, leaning over slightly with his hip stuck out, was Muck.

  The second, smaller man was coming up fast and had seen what Muck had done to his partner. He was tired, his eyes wide in surprise, and he all but ran into Muck as he rounded the tree.

  Muck stood his ground, both fists clenched. The second man put his head down and lunged, blindly, to tackle Muck around the waist.

  Muck pulled back his right fist, took aim, and with one punch sent the second man into the bushes on top of the first, who was flailing desperately in the mud, gasping for breath.

  Travis turned back up the trail. Mr. Cuthbertson and Mr. Dillinger were running toward him. Right behind them was Lars, who had been well ahead of the pack in the race back to the Screech Owls’ camp. He must have run into Muck first and sent him back to rescue Travis.

  Travis’s chest was killing him. He had no breath. He couldn’t even stand. He slipped to his knees, choking and coughing. Muck came up to him, ruffed his wet hair with one big hand and put the other on his shoulder.

  “Nearly had you, didn’t they?” Muck said with a bit of a chuckle.

  Travis tried to answer, but could say nothing. He gasped for air. He put a hand to his forehead and it slid right off. He was wet with sweat.

  The man with the shaved head was rolling about on his back, trying to get up. He had got his breath back, but it was too late; Mr. Dillinger stood over him, waiting. Mr. Cuthbertson was watching the second man, who was out cold from Muck’s single punch.

  The trail was filling with people now. They were running from everywhere: the showers, campsites, other paths. A truck with two men in military uniforms was pulling up as close to the trail as it could come, lights flashing.

  The other Owls were first to reach the group. Andy and Nish in the front, Simon and Data right behind them. The rest of the Owls–Sarah and Jesse in the lead–were just coming onto the far end of the path, running hard to see what all the commotion was about.

  Sweat was pouring off Nish’s face. But he was laughing.

  “Great check!” he said to
Muck.

  Muck couldn’t help himself: he grinned.

  “You said the hip check was a lost art!” Nish said.

  “It is,” Muck answered.

  “Yeah, but you also said there was no place in the game for fighting, didn’t you?”

  Nish grinned like he thought he had Muck. But he didn’t.

  “This isn’t a game, son.”

  It certainly wasn’t a game. The two police officers who had driven up in the truck pulled out their handguns and held them on the two men, while another searched and handcuffed them, then shoved them into the back of a police car that soon arrived on the scene.

  Before long there were more authorities swarming over the campground. They found the young woman and handcuffed her, too, and took her away. Then they brought in a special crime-investigation unit to begin studying the campsite and, most importantly, the Goofy costume the boys had brought up from the bottom of the lake.

  Late in the afternoon, a silver-haired man in a light-brown suit, calling himself Agent Morris, came to talk to them. He was most intrigued by Data’s photographs of the two Goofys and asked if the FBI could have them for evidence.

  “You’ll probably receive a special citation for this, son,” Agent Morris said. “Good work.”

  “I’m the one who got Goofy to pose for the picture,” protested Nish.

  “Mr. Ulmar,” Agent Morris said in a voice of great authority, “is the one who noticed the discrepancies in the colour of vests, sir.”

  Nish swallowed hard. “Mr. Ulmar” instead of Data. “Sir” instead of Nish. This was not a person to joke with; but then, this was no laughing matter.

  Agent Morris explained it this way. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had received an anonymous tip several weeks ago that an unknown terrorist group would be trying something around the time of the President’s planned trip to Disney World. The trip had been no secret; most of America knew he would be going and that he would be taking his family. The FBI, however, had almost no other information to go on. They didn’t know the day–whether it might be before, during, or after the visit–they didn’t know what terrorist group was involved, and they didn’t know how the attack would take place, if it took place at all.

  “The only other tips we had was to watch the campgrounds and keep an eye out for suspects working in disguise,” Agent Morris said. “We knew our sources were excellent, but the information was far from perfect. That’s why we set up the surveillance you encountered.”

  The helicopters had been to scare off the terrorists, perhaps even to flush them out if they were holed up in any of the many campgrounds near Disney World. The road checks, particularly on cars leaving various campgrounds, had been to look for suspicious characters.

  “But since we didn’t know what disguises might be used,” said Agent Morris, “the road checks were pretty useless. If you boys hadn’t figured it out for us, we might never have caught these people.”

  The FBI agent paused, swallowing hard: “And God only knows what might have happened…”

  Agent Morris was being a bit too kind to the Owls. They hadn’t actually figured it out. But the discovery of the Goofy costume had provided the evidence the FBI had needed to lead them to the terrorists. The man with the ponytail had decided to co-operate with the authorities, Agent Morris told them, and slowly the details of their plot were being pieced together.

  The information officer at Disney World had been right when he said they would never have a second Goofy on the site. The terrorists had been able to bring the costume onto the grounds by having the young woman pose as a mother pushing a pram with her baby inside screened off from the sun. She seemed so harmless that no one had wanted to disturb her sleeping child, and she had passed through the gates easily. The man with the ponytail had simply paid to enter as a tourist. They used a diaper-changing room to hand over the costume, and the man had slipped into it in a washroom stall.

  As for the man with the shaved head who posed as a maintenance worker, he had made it onto the site with forged identification tags and a perfect replica of one of the special uniforms the various Disney workers wear. Since no workers’ uniforms had been reported stolen, there was no one on the alert for a maintenance worker, and this guy had seemed to know what he was doing.

  The maintenance worker was able to get into the electrical works of the Hall of Presidents, which the real President was scheduled to visit in order to listen to President Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address. The terrorists did not know, however, the precise time this would take place–the twenty-minute show played throughout the day–so there was no point in merely planting a bomb with a timer. What the maintenance worker had done was smuggle in three small but powerful homing devices in his toolbox.

  Since “Goofy” could pretty much come and go as he pleased in Disney World, his job was to plant the devices in strategic locations. One, of course, had been in the Hall of Presidents. Another had been along the parade route where the President and his family were to watch the daily parade of Disney characters. “Goofy” had planted this one in the bottom of the parade’s final float, the float that would be carrying the real Goofy, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and Donald Duck down Main Street, U.S.A., right past the living, breathing, unsuspecting President of the United States.

  “These homing devices could be used for a missile attack,” said Agent Morris. “Whether they planned actually to attack or to threaten we do not yet know–but the important thing is that they have been stopped.”

  He paused again. “If you hadn’t stopped them–we might have had a national disaster on our hands.”

  Agent Morris looked around, smiling, then shook hands with each of the Owls in turn, then with Muck, who seemed a bit sheepish. Agent Morris said to him, almost privately, “Thanks for being there.” Muck only nodded.

  “What country are they from?” Data asked.

  Agent Morris didn’t quite follow. “Excuse me?”

  “The terrorists–where are they from?”

  Agent Morris blinked, his distaste obvious.

  “They’re Americans, son.”

  Mr. Cuthbertson, Mr. Dillinger, and Muck called the Owls and their parents to a team meeting. They sat around a campfire and Mr. Dillinger handed out soft drinks. Then the three men sat on a makeshift bench by the fire and talked about what the team had just gone through.

  “I just don’t understand how they could be Americans,” Data kept saying.

  “Anybody can be a terrorist,” said Mr. Cuthbertson. “It’s happened in Canada. A bit before your time, but your parents will remember. All it takes to be a terrorist is to be willing to do whatever is required to advance your cause.”

  “It seems so stupid,” said Data.

  “To the rest of us, it does,” said Mr. Cuthbertson. “But an American can hate his or her own government, just like a Canadian. There’s a world of difference, however, between disliking a government and voting against it and despising that government and seeking to destroy it.”

  “But they would have killed innocent people,” Sarah said.

  “That’s why they’re called ‘terrorists,’” said Mr. Dillinger. “They spread the worst kind of fear. When you never know where they’re going to hit, or who they’re going to hit, it’s very difficult to protect yourself against them.”

  “That’s why what you guys did was so important,” said Mr. Cuthbertson. “You may have saved a great many lives.”

  Everyone paused while this sank in.

  Travis looked at Muck, sitting by the fire. Perhaps it was just the way the fire flickered, but it seemed to Travis that the big coach’s eyes were glistening.

  The following morning, two representatives from Walt Disney World came to the campsite, thanked the Owls for what they had done, and handed out courtesy passes to the entire team. The Screech Owls would have one last day at Disney World. And that night they would travel to Tampa, to the magnificent Ice Palace, where they would play in the championship gam
e of the Spring Break Tournament.

  “Go easy!” Muck called to his players as they scrambled off the school bus when they arrived, running and screaming toward the entry gates. “Save something for tonight!”

  But his warnings went unheeded. And judging by the big smile on Muck’s face as he, too, hurried along, his bad leg swinging stiffy, the Owls’ big coach was advising caution merely because he knew it was expected of him.

  “You on?” Travis said to Simon as he caught up to the smallest Owl.

  Simon neither turned his head nor smiled. “I’m on,” he said.

  The two friends headed for the Disney-MGM Studio lot–where the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was waiting.

  They both had a point to prove.

  Fear sometimes felt like a swarm of insects climbing over Travis’s body. He and Simon were in the long, twisting lineup for the Tower of Terror, eating ice cream and laughing. It would have looked like he was relaxed, but inside Travis couldn’t shake the sense of dread any more than he could brush off a cobweb into which he had just stumbled.

  Simon turned, still licking his cone, and said with a smile, “I’m scared to death.”

  “I am, too,” Travis admitted.

  They passed into the lobby of the old hotel, and were soon in the boiler room, approaching the terrifying service elevator. Simon had already gone beyond the point where, last time, he had bailed out.

  It was in the boiler room that Travis had jumped out of the line, the words “Those who experience anxiety in enclosed spaces should not ride” sending shivers up and down his back as if he had a million spiders crawling on his naked body. Travis tensed, his mind fighting to hold him back.

  He felt a tug at his arm and turned, panicking.

  It was Simon, smiling. He had taken firm hold of Travis’s wrist, as he had when the weed wrapped around Travis’s ankle.

  “We’re next,” Simon said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Travis replied. He wondered if his voice betrayed him.

  “I’m not,” Simon admitted. “Stick close to me, okay?”