They also spotted Luis, the handyman from the town hall, and Jose and Pablo Ruiz from the rental agency. Both brothers looked worried, as did most of the people in the room. A collective, concerned whisper filled the air.
“I bet Jose is wishing he’d stayed on Kendall Key,” Frank said.
“I’m almost wishing I had stayed in Bayport,” Callie replied. “I really need to get in touch with my folks. I’m sure they’re freaking out about the storm. There must be a working phone somewhere in here—or some way to get a message out.” She stood and looked around for a phone to use.
“Good idea,” Frank said. “When you talk to your folks, have them tell our parents that we’re okay too. There’s no sense in all of us tying up the available lines.”
Iola stood up as well.
“What’s wrong?” Joe asked. “Callie can talk to your folks too.”
“I need to find Angela,” she said. “I don’t see her around.”
“Maybe she’s at another shelter,” Joe suggested.
“This shelter is probably in touch with the others,” Iola said. “I’m going to check.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “Would you bring some coffee when you come back?”
“Sure will,” Iola replied. She smiled at Joe, and she and Callie wandered off on their errands.
The brothers leaned back against the wall. “Not the kind of vacation the girls had hoped for,” Frank finally said.
“Well make it up to them somehow,” Joe replied.
“The storms not to blame for all our troubles, though,” Frank said. “Storms don’t slash tires or shoot blowguns.”
“And it wasn’t even cloudy when someone set El Diablo free,” Joe said, continuing his brother’s thought. He shook his head. “Someone is stirring things up on this island. The question is who, and why?”
“It was very convenient for Lucas McGill to be at Casa Bonita when it caught fire,” Frank said.
“He was there at the boat hijacking and when the bull got loose too,” Joe said. “And he was at the town hall, come to think of it.”
“He’s a shady character, just like Angela said,” Frank observed. “No doubt about it. But what could he gain from all this chaos?”
“What would anyone gain?” Joe replied.
“It could be some kind of hotel insurance scam,” Frank said. “Ms. Aranya could have torched her place for insurance and set up the other stuff to make it look like a general pattern of crime.”
“Or Lopez could be looking to get rid of his hotel’s competition,” Joe suggested.
“Either way, it seems a bit extreme,” Frank said. “This kind of trouble could hurt the whole island’s economy.”
As the brothers pondered the mysterious case they found themselves thrust into, they felt the tension in the room grow. A crowd gathered in the center of the gymnasium, and the mayor stepped on top of a chair in the middle of the throng.
“Everyone stay calm!” the mayor said. “This building is safe. We have plenty of food and fresh water. Everyone will be all right.”
“What about our homes?” someone called.
“And our businesses?” asked another.
“Tourism is already down,” said a third. “We will be ruined!”
“All this trouble has made our property nearly worthless!”
“Never mind all that,” someone said. “I have family missing out in the storm. What am I going to do about that?”
The murmur grew to a dull roar. The mayor waved her hands, palms down, to quiet the crowd. Rodrigo Lopez stepped forward and stood on a chair next to the mayor. “I am organizing volunteer search parties to assist the police,” he said. “We will look for missing people and help anyone who is injured. We won’t wait for the storm to end. If you are interested, meet me by the main doors.” He got down and headed in that direction, followed by a handful of people.
Jorge Tejeda stepped up onto the empty chair. “I have faith in our town,” he said. “Nuevo Esteban will bounce back from this disaster. I will help locate buyers for those who cannot afford to rebuild damaged property themselves and for those who do not wish to rebuild—as I have done after past storms. Recovery will be a long, arduous task, but Nuevo Esteban will rise again. This I promise you.”
The two short speeches calmed the crowd. Most of those present drifted back to their personal business. Shortly thereafter Iola and Callie returned. They looked worried.
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked Callie.
“Did you talk to your parents?” Joe added.
“I got them on the phone,” Callie replied. “But we couldn’t find Angela.”
“She’s not at the other shelters, and no one seems to have seen her,” Iola said.
The brothers stood up. “We’ll go with the search parties,” Frank said, “and try to find her.”
“You two stay here,” Joe added. “No sense in all of us trudging into the storm again.”
“Besides, we need someone here in case Angela shows up,” Frank finished.
Iola and Callie glanced nervously at each other. Callie finally said, “Okay. Keep the heroics to a minimum, though. All right?”
Frank nodded at her and gave her a quick hug. “You bet.”
“Don’t get hurt,” Iola said to Joe.
The younger Hardy smiled. “What, me? Never.”
The brothers joined the small crowd gathered with Lopez near the doorway. They saw Luis the handyman, Jose Ruiz, Pablo Ruiz, and Jorge Tejeda among the crowd as well.
“I guess Tejeda had to volunteer,” Joe whispered.
“Only if he wants to be reelected,” Frank whispered back.
Lopez and his volunteers handed out flares, flashlights, compact emergency blankets, and plastic ponchos for those who needed them. Some volunteers requested to check a specific area, while others offered to go on general patrols. Joe and Frank asked to be assigned to Angela’s neighborhood. One of Lopez’s people gave them a map with an area marked off in waterproof marker.
“Be careful,” the volunteer said. “If you find something you can’t handle, light a flare and come back here. We’ll contact the police to help out. Whatever you do, stay away from the shoreline. Those waves will carry you out to sea, and no one will ever find your bodies.”
The brothers indicated that they understood, took a moment to orient themselves, and then headed out into the storm once more. They saw a few small groups leaving at the same time, but the driving rain soon hid their fellow searchers.
Angela’s neighborhood wasn’t far from the high school, but getting there through Nuevo Esteban’s winding streets in the tough weather proved tricky. The Hardys were forced several times to change their route because of flooding or a downed power-line.
As darkness closed in around them the brothers reached the small residential street where Iola’s cousin lived. Angela’s apartment was on the second floor of a traditional adobe building. A wooden staircase on the side of the building led to her door.
Through the rain the Hardys saw that Angela’s stairway had collapsed. The door to her apartment opened onto nothing but the rain-saturated air. Frank took out their own flashlight, and Joe took out the new one they’d gotten at the shelter. They ran to the base of the stairs and searched in the rubble, all the while calling Angela’s name.
“Here I am!” they heard a voice reply from above.
They looked up and saw Angela silhouetted in the doorway of her apartment. “The stairs collapsed just as I was about to leave,” she said. “I couldn’t get down safely, and the phones are out, so I stayed inside.”
“Smart,” Frank called up to her.
“We’ll help you down and bring you to the shelter,” Joe added.
Angela went to grab her raincoat and a bag full of belongings of sentimental value. The brothers moved cautiously over the ruins of the stairway. The rain made everything slippery, and the wind made balancing difficult. Working carefully, they finally lowered Angela to the ground.
&nbs
p; “Let’s get back to the high school,” Frank said, starting back the way they’d come.
“Wait,” Angela called above the wind. “I know a shortcut.”
The brothers followed Iola’s cousin as fast as they could through the back streets of Nuevo Esteban. As they crossed behind an old factory, though, something flashed in front of their faces and stuck in a nearby door.
“A blowgun dart!” Joe said.
As they realized what it was a shot rang out in the twilight.
“And a sniper, too!” Frank said.
Angela’s eyes went wide. “We’re trapped!”
14 Caught in the Crossfire
* * *
“Get down!” Joe said.
The three teens crouched and pressed themselves against the factory wall opposite where the dart had hit.
“Do you see anyone?” Frank asked.
Joe shook his head. Another shot rang out. “We need to find better cover,” he said. “Let’s go!” With that, the younger Hardy took off, back the way they’d come. Frank and Angela followed closely behind.
A dart whizzed by them as they ran, barely missing Frank’s shoulder. The gun fired again, but with the noise of the wind and the rain, they couldn’t locate where the sound came from.
“There’s a cave-tour entrance up ahead,” Angela said as they ran. “It leads to the old bootlegger tunnels.”
“Good idea,” Frank replied. “They can’t catch us in a crossfire underground—I hope.”
They ducked into an alley, then climbed over a fence. Another shot sounded as they landed on the other side. They didn’t even attempt to look for the sniper; they just kept running as fast as they could.
“Here it is,” Angela announced after running a ways. She indicated a boarded-up ticket stand with TOURS OF THE UNDERGROUND painted above the sales window. In the middle of the wall next to the stand was a padlocked door.
“Pretty ratty-looking tour outfit for a politician,” Frank commented.
“Tejeda is notoriously cheap,” Angela replied, glancing around nervously. “Most of his properties are run down. But he is kind to the poor and fights for government aid.”
“Cheap or not, this lock looks tough,” Joe said, examining the entrance.
Frank reeled back and gave the old wooden door his best martial arts kick. The wood around the latch splintered, and the lock fell off. “Good thing the door wasn’t,” he replied with a smirk.
“You know,” Joe said as they fled into the darkness of the underground, “I’d feel a little better about this if I had some idea of who could be shooting at us.”
“Yeah, and why,” Frank agreed.
They headed deeper into the old tunnels, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the snipers as they could. The passages they moved through were similar to the ones the Hardys and their girlfriends had been trapped in near the shore; these were old lava tunnels, worn smooth by time and water.
“Do you know where these tunnels go?” Frank asked Angela.
“Not really,” she said. “I’ve only been in them once or twice. And no one knows all of them. The caverns form an underground honeycomb on this end of the island. Some go to hidden places on the coast. Others head into the mountains.”
“We found one of those coastline tunnels yesterday,” Joe said. “The boat stolen from the Casa Bonita beach was stashed inside. Could there be a connection between here and there?”
Angela shrugged. “Maybe. This place used to be a bootlegger’s paradise. I’ve never heard of a tour going out to the coast from here, though.”
A shot echoed down the tunnel. The three teens froze, but none of them saw the gun flash or the person firing. “Keep moving,” Frank whispered. “And keep quiet. They may be firing blind, hoping to scare us.”
“It’s working,” Angela whispered nervously.
They moved cautiously down the passage until they came to a boarded-up side tunnel. “I think we can squeeze past these boards,” Joe whispered. “Do you have any idea of what’s inside?”
Angela shook her head. “They’ve blocked off tunnels where the tour doesn’t go.”
Joe used his flashlight to see through the cracks. “There’s a passage, but I can’t see what’s at the end of it.”
“Let’s go,” Frank whispered.
The brothers carefully pulled away one of the boards blocking the tunnel’s entrance. All three of them crawled inside. They crept down the passage until it came to a bend, then they stopped and caught their breath.
“Who would want to do this?” Joe asked, frustrated by the whole situation. “Jamie Escobar might want to get back at us for showing him up, but who else has a motive?”
“Maybe our troubles are just part of a larger crime scheme,” Frank replied. “I suspect that the Beth Becker hijacking, the collapse of the town hall, these sniper attacks, and even the fires at our hotel and bungalows are all related. So much trouble in so little time. It’s unlikely to be coincidence.”
“Casa Bonita caught fire?” Angela asked. “Is everyone all right?”
“Yeah, everyone got out fine—thanks in part to The Gringo, who always seems to be around when trouble happens,” Joe said.
“I warned you about him,” said Iola’s cousin. “But how would he profit from all of this? How would anyone? This is hurting the tourism we all need to live.”
“Lopez might benefit from hurting Casa Bonita,” Frank said. “Or maybe one of the local politicians is hoping to turn this into a clean-up-our-streets campaign.”
Joe frowned. “That seems like a twisted way to get reelected.”
“People have gone further than this,” Frank replied.
“So, we’ve got Escobar, Lopez, The Gringo, the mayor, and Tejeda on our list of suspects,” Joe said. “We could include Aranya, too.”
Frank shook his head and sighed in exasperation. “There could be dozens of people in Nuevo Esteban with motives we don’t know about.”
“Yeah,” Joe replied. “Too many suspects—but not enough with really obvious motives.”
“Let’s go over what we know one more time,” Frank said.
“Hold it!” Joe said. “I hear someone. Let’s move farther down the tunnel.”
The three teens did as Joe suggested. They turned around two more bends before finally coming to a small chamber. The room had nearly rectangular walls; it must have been created by bootleggers at some time in the past. A large box leaned against one wall. Leading from it was a long wire, which stretched out an exit on the opposite side of the room.
The Hardys and Angela froze. The box was clearly marked TNT.
“Why would someone store explosives down here?” Angela asked.
“The better question,” Frank said, “is why is it wired to explode—and who’s on the other end with the detonator?” He and Joe knelt by the box and quickly disconnected the leads.
“Whoever it is will be disappointed when this particular candle doesn’t light,” Joe said. “This is way too far to go for an insurance scam.”
“Unless,” Frank said, “you’re insuring the whole town.” He shone his flashlight down the exit tunnel into the darkness. The wire they’d disconnected trailed into another chamber a short distance away. “Come on,” he said. “I want to see what’s at the other end of this wire.”
Angela looked around nervously. “Maybe we should wait here,” she said.
“Wait until whoever wants to blow this place up notices we’ve messed with his handiwork?” Joe asked.
Angela shook her head, and the three of them moved into the next chamber. There they found a similar setup. Once again Frank and Joe disconnected the wire.
“I’m thinking,” Frank said, “that bombing enough tunnels could seriously endanger large portions of the town.”
“And if you did it during a storm,” Joe added, following his brother’s train of thought, “you might be able to blame it on the typhoon.”
Frank nodded.
“I he
ar someone!” Angela said. The brothers turned off their flashlights and pressed up against the walls on either side of the tunnel. Angela did the same.
A moment later a light came flitting down the tunnel, playing against the rock walls as if it was searching for something—or someone.
The Hardys and Angela held their breath.
Slowly a figure entered the room. He held a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. Before he could spot them, Frank and Joe pounced.
The man tried to grab the brothers, but Joe tackled him low and Frank grabbed him high. The elder Hardy knocked the gun out of the sniper’s grip, while Joe pulled the would-be assassin down. The man’s pistol and his flashlight skidded across the chamber. A quick one-two combination by the brothers sent the sniper to the floor, unconscious.
Angela retrieved the flashlight. Frank moved the gun far away while Joe shone the light on their pursuer.
“Jamie Escobar,” Joe said. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“I am,” Frank replied. “This case seems too complex for one tough guy out for revenge.”
They tied Escobar with his own belt, gagged him with a strip of cloth Frank ripped from his shirt, and dragged him to the side of the chamber far from the gun. Angela patted him down, making sure he didn’t have any concealed weapons. The only thing she found was some identification in his pocket.
Angela’s eyes went wide. “Look at what I found in his wallet!”
She held up the wallet she’d retrieved from his pocket, and tossed it to Joe. Inside was a San Esteban government ID and badge.
“He’s an Internal Security agent?” Joe asked, surprised.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Frank said. “If he were government security, why would he be shooting at us?”
“And what about the explosives?” Joe said. “What was Escobar up to with that?” He looked at the bound man.
“He wasn’t up to anything,” said a voice from behind them. “In fact, I’m sure Señor Escobar wanted to prevent us from setting off the dynamite. Now, bring that gun over here, or I will have to harm you.”
15 The Big Blowup
Typhoon Island Page 9
