B003J5UJ4U EBOK (26 page)

He smiled and poked his finger at the last entry on the second sheet. “This?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“It’s a bit of a drive,” Martin said, grinning. “But I guess I can force myself to get behind the wheel again.”

last ups

EVEN WITH THE
help of the map that was in the glove compartment, New Jersey was a lot harder to find than the airport. By the time we got to Cherry Hill, it was after midnight. The whole way there, Martin kept singing driving songs. At least, he sang when he wasn’t swearing.

“I take back what I said about wanting to drive all the time,” Martin said. “These people are freakin’ crazy. I can’t believe we aren’t crumpled up in a burning wreck on the side of the road. Hey, didn’t you already die once in a stolen car?”

“I’m trying not to think about that.”

“That would be weird, wouldn’t it? Dying for real the same way they faked your death.”

I nodded and tightened my seat belt. Cars flew past us on both sides. Trucks pulled right onto our tail, even when Martin moved over to the slow lane. I think they’d have driven over us if they could manage that without scratching their nice chrome grills. After a while, I stopped looking out the back window. I just didn’t want to see what was there.

We finally reached our exit. I figured it wouldn’t be hard
to find Ganelon Corp., since the road looked pretty short on the map. Sure enough, the factory was down by itself at the end of the road, behind a tall fence topped with barbed wire. We parked at the curb and walked over to the fence. The gate was padlocked, which wasn’t a problem. Padlocks were easier than door locks.

“This is the company Cheater was talking about. They made the defective ammunition,” I said.

“And lots of other stuff that doesn’t work,” Martin said.

“It’s all about to work a whole lot less.” I didn’t want to deal with any more front doors. We walked around to the side. It was an old building, with paint peeling from the wood near the windows and moss on the walls.

“This place remind you of anything?” Martin asked.

“Yeah. Edgeview.” The lights were on, but I didn’t see anyone inside. There were windows all along the walls, about four feet off the ground. I figured there was no way they’d put alarms on every window. I unlatched one and raised it, then waited. After fifteen minutes, I decided it would be safe to go in.

I slipped through the opening. Martin followed me in. The place was mostly one big open space, two stories high, with a couple offices in the back on the second level. Machinery and worktables filled part of the floor. Stacked boxes and barrels filled the rest. There was a second room with a big boiler. A large Psibertronix device was sitting on the floor in one corner.

“Let’s see what we can do with this.” I noticed a valve at the top of the boiler with a gauge next to it. I shut off that
valve, then a couple others. The gauge started to move. The side of the boiler made a creaking, groaning sound.

“Maybe we should get out fast,” Martin said.

“I agree.”

We went back outside and waited. Five minutes passed. Then ten.

“Man,” Martin said. “This reminds me of a dud firecracker. You want to check it, but you don’t really want to stick your face too close.”

“I know. But I guess the boiler had some sort of safety mechanism. Come on, let’s take a look.”

I was still twenty feet away from the building when the windows in the boiler room blew out. It wasn’t much of an explosion.

“That’s it?” Martin asked.

“I guess.”

“Uh oh …” he said.

“What?”

“They make ammunition, right?”

The sight of all those boxes and barrels flashed through my mind.
“Run!”

Before I could even turn around, the whole side wall exploded with a blast so loud I didn’t even hear the second half of it.

I barely had time to close my eyes before the debris smacked my face. Martin and I both got knocked flat. As we were falling, I gave him a shove, to try to get him as far away from the building as possible.

There was a series of smaller explosions that I felt more than heard. I stayed down until I was sure it was over.

“You okay?” Martin asked. He brushed bits of glass and wood off his forehead as he walked back over to me.

At least, I think that’s what he said. My ears were ringing. I nodded. “You?”

He nodded back, then pointed to the car.

That seemed like a very good idea.

“Wow …” I said as Martin started to turn the car around. “That was big.”

“Yeah.” He stopped to swear as he hit the curb with the left front tire. After backing into the other curb with the right rear tire, he finally got us headed toward the highway. “That was definitely big. Someone is going to pay attention”

“For sure. I think that’s enough for one night. We should bring the car back to where we got it.” I didn’t want to leave evidence that this was anything other than a bunch of experiments going bad. “If you drop me off where I can get a cab, I’ll come pick you up in the parking lot.”

“Yeah.” Martin glanced over his shoulder toward the building we’d just destroyed. “We might be saboteurs, but we aren’t thieves.”

“Speaking of which, I wonder how Torchie and Flinch are doing?”

meanwhile …

“
POT IT OUT!
”
Flinch shouted.

“I’m trying.” Torchie clenched his teeth and gave the fire all his attention. The first part had been easy enough. From the hill behind the warehouse, they’d been able to spot a room with the equipment Trash had described. Torchie had set the room on fire and kept the flames from spreading. But he hadn’t been able to put out the fire. It was all over the room. Worse, he heard fire engines in the distance.

“Concentrate,” Flinch said.

“I can’t concentrate when you’re telling me to concentrate. And I’ve never done this through binoculars before.”

“Just work on one part at a time.”

Torchie squinted his eyes and focused on one wall. The fire dimmed and died. He turned his attention to the floor, but the wall burst into flame again, kindled by the heat in the room. Then the eye pieces of the binoculars fogged up.

Three fire engines raced to the building. Firemen leaped out and started pulling equipment off their trucks.

“Try doing the whole room at once,” Flinch said.

“That won’t work,” Torchie said. “There are too many parts.”

“You put out a bunch of fires at Edgeview,” Flinch said.

“Those were all little ones.” Torchie wiped sweat from his forehead. “These are big.”

“I got it,” Flinch said. “You can put out a single fire, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So let them merge into one fire.”

“But the firemen are coming.”

Flinch took the binoculars from Torchie. “It won’t take long. Hang on. We just need it to spread across the whole wall and meet the floor. Just a second or two. Okay. Try now.”

Torchie took the binoculars back, grasped the fire in the room, and made it become not-fire. The flames died, and stayed dead. By the time the firemen broke in, there was nothing to fight but some smoldering wood.

“Good job,” Flinch said. “I knew you could do it.”

“That makes one of us.”

They headed back up the hill toward the street that would lead them, after a long walk, to the cabstand.

“I wish I could drive,” Flinch said.

elsewhere …

BOWDLER SLAPPED THE
swagger stick into his open palm. He wanted to smack Dominic, but he knew that wouldn’t be productive. The boy didn’t want to talk. They’d made little progress all afternoon. He just kept saying something about an oath. But he didn’t even seem to know where he was. Maybe he wouldn’t know who he was talking to.

“Dominic,” Bowdler whispered, standing behind him. “It’s Eddie.”

No reaction. He tried another name. “It’s me. Philip.”

Still nothing.

“It’s Martin.”

The boy jerked his head. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

“Good. I knew you’d keep our secret.” Bowdler pulled up a chair and sat behind the boy. It would take a while to extract information. But that was part of the fun.

BY THE TIME
the boy passed out that evening, Bowdler felt he had learned every detail of the group. He got up and stretched his kinked muscles. What a discovery—telepathy, mind reading, fire-making. And all of that power would be
under his control. Maybe he’d return to active duty. They’d promote him now. They’d have to.

He fell asleep and dreamed of moving the world.

Bowdler woke at 5:00
AM
. The phone rang an hour later. It was Santee again. “There have been sufficient sightings to narrow their location to an area south of route six-seventy-six and west of Broad Street. Probably north of Chestnut.”

“Chinatown is in that range,” Bowdler said.

“Affirmative.”

“Give me a minute.” He checked the data he’d amassed about Dennis Woo and got the names of his parents. “See if there is anyone cross-linked in any way with William Woo or Sarah Woo. Keep me updated on any progress.”

The phone didn’t ring for two more hours. When it did, Bowdler was greeted with information he’d never expected.

“There’s been a problem with that experiment you installed on the cargo ship,” the man said.

Bowdler listened to the report. “I’m sure it’s a simple malfunction. I’ll have it taken care of next week.”

He hung up the phone. It rang again within minutes, bringing more bad news.

response

IT WAS AFTER
2:00 in the morning when we got back. I was so tired, I just made sure Torchie and Flinch were okay, then passed out in bed. I woke around eleven—about the same time as Cheater. Martin and Flinch were up by noon. Torchie finally woke after one. My arm still ached, and the rest of my body didn’t feel much better, but at least my mind was clear.

“No calls?” Torchie asked when he got up.

“Not yet. It’s going to take a bit of time. Things move slower on Sunday. But the people in charge of the companies have probably already been to the accident sites. They should be able to figure out right away that Psibertronix was involved.”

“If they’re smart enough,” Cheater said.