Challenge (18 page)

74.

“Dad?” Steel’s voice echoed in the bottomless chamber of the stairwell.

His father’s face twisted into a knot of pain, where he lay head down on the stairs. His grimace tightened further as his hand jabbed beneath his back. Steel thought he’d torn a muscle or injured himself. But instead, his dad’s hand quickly came out from beneath him,
holding a gun.

“Steel! DUCK!” his father roared.

It took Steel several milliseconds to process the command, but perhaps because it came in his father’s voice, he obeyed without a second thought. He allowed his knees to go weak, and, losing his balance, he tumbled forward.

His father fired two rounds from the gun: right where Steel had been standing.

As Steel rolled, he heard the door thump shut, realizing too late that someone had been standing
right behind him
on the landing. His father had just shot at the man, but the door was shut now, and Steel hadn’t heard the man scream with pain.

His father had a gun. His father…a gun…He had
fired
the gun. His father, the salesman turned FBI agent, acting like Alex Rider.

Kyle Trapp limped up the stairs and helped Steel to a sitting position. What his mother had told him about his father hadn’t fully registered until this moment. It was as if he had to experience it for himself.

“I thought it was you! I nearly called out, but I only saw your back.…” his father said, panting. Beads of sweat ran down his face. “But it
is
you! And I need you to stay here.”

“No!” Steel said, grabbing for his father’s arm. “The woman in the chair…the preacher’s wife…she’s in this building.”

“Okay…I’m on it!” his father said.

“You really are an FBI agent?” Steel said.

His father couldn’t hide his surprise. “Your mother told you,” he said, making it a statement, not a question. “Listen, we’ll get to that.”

His father continued up the stairs.

“I promise!” he called back.

“I am
not
staying here,” Steel called out, stopping him. “Besides, I know which room she’s in.”

His father turned, out of breath. “This is what I do, Steel. It’s dangerous. You’ve got to—”

“Come with you,” Steel said, interrupting, “because I’m sure not staying here alone.”

“Which room?”

“I’ll show you.”

Uncertainty hung between them: his father’s sense of urgency, Steel’s determination not to be left behind by his father yet again.

His father yielded. “Okay, but you stay
behind
me. And if I say drop, you drop.”

“Yes, sir.” Steel hurried up the stairs. “Not there,” he said, seeing his father’s hand on the door handle. “Fifth floor, facing east: the river.” He could feel his father’s eagerness to pursue the man he’d shot at—presumably the man from the train. And there was something else: a flicker of a father’s doubt, not believing Steel. But this was quickly overcome by the fact that it was Steel, not just any boy. His father nodded.

“Fifth floor,” he said, repeating what Steel had said. “Facing east.”

“If he was trying to get up there, we just cut him off. He’ll have to go to the other side of the building. We’ve got the advantage.”

“Run,” his father said, taking off up the stairs at an amazing speed. Since when could his father move like that? It was as if his whole world had flipped upside down: his father an FBI agent, with a
gun,
chasing some gang lord in a bombed-out building in Washington, D.C.

“Is this really happening?” Steel blurted out, wondering if maybe everything from the train ride on had been some mixture of dream and nightmare, and that he was still asleep, still stuck in dreamland.

“Shh!” his father said.

Only then did he realize how silently his father climbed the stairs. He was floating instead of clomping. They’d lied to him! His mother and father had orchestrated a lie that must have gone back years.
A salesman.
The thing about it was, Steel had never pictured his father as a salesman. It had never made any sense. He knew too much about so many things; he had a childlike sense of adventure; he was an expert camper and outdoorsman. Weren’t salesmen supposed to be boring and stuck in a rut? His father was anything but.

“Spy Kids
”! he blurted out. “This is just like
Spy Kids
!” He thought about that for a second.
Only it’s real.

His father had one hand on the door to level five. The other—the hand with the gun—came to his lips and indicated silence.

He pulled open the door, peered out into the hall, and signaled Steel forward. Steel heard it before his father did: footsteps to their left. Steel signaled by pointing furiously. His father picked up on it, nodded, and used hand signals to indicate they would split up: Steel to the right, his dad to the left.

Steel figured the footsteps were the man from the train—hurrying to beat them to the preacher’s wife. He got his bearings, recalling with absolute clarity the layout of the building from the outside. The tall panel of brick that rose in the middle of the east-facing wall would be the staircase they’d just left. The windows that matched the photograph were to the right. The same direction his father was sending him. Steel took off down the hall. His father ran off in the opposite direction.

He reached a door and pushed it open:
empty.
No, not empty, he realized. Fresh cigarette butts on the floor; fresh fast-food litter and empty soda cans on the table. Another door to his right. He hurried over to it and—
yes!
—it was secured with a padlock. He shouldn’t have been so excited to find it locked, but the lock was
new,
and that could mean only one thing.

He kicked at the door, but the lock and hasp didn’t budge. Again, but with the same results. He thought back to science class: leverage. He needed something long and strong to pry the lock’s hasp off the door. There was an old wobbly chair by the table—but it was too big and bulky. There wasn’t much else to the room—some junk piled in the corner.

Bam!
A gunshot from down the hall. Then loud noises like a chase. Steel froze at the sound of the shot, briefly unable to breathe, much less move. But then that gunshot served as a starter’s pistol for Steel. He raced to the far end of the room, kicked up at a broken window, and ripped a metal divider from the frame. He couldn’t believe the thing was in his hand—but there it was. He shoved it between the hasp and the door and pulled against it. The hasp bent like a coat hanger. He shoved the metal prod deeper between the hasp and the door and pulled again. The screws began to show. Again. The screws grew in length, literally ripping from the wood door. At once, a piece of the doorjamb broke off, the wood frame splintering. The lock—still locked—and the hasp tore free, and Steel threw open the door.

The woman from the photograph, the preacher’s wife, was bound to the chair exactly as he’d seen her. The same geometrical pattern of broken windows were behind her on the wall. The room smelled of sewage—a disgusting bucket of filth next to a roll of toilet paper in the corner. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t seem to see. Then she blinked, and tears ran from her eyes.

Steel said, “Don’t worry, it’s only me, Steel. My dad…he’s back there. He’s got a gun.” He immediately went to work on the duct tape on her forearms, not understanding why he was saying what he was saying, but his mouth just gushing all this stuff. “I found the briefcase. I have this dog, Cairo. We came on the subway. My friend Kaileigh and me.” He got her left arm free and started on her right, as she worked on the tape that covered her mouth.

“My prayers…my prayers…” she muttered. She was crying something fierce, coughing and gagging in a wet, disgusting display, while Steel was on his knees clawing at the duct tape that bound her ankles.

The noise from the hall grew closer: someone running.

Steel worked furiously. The last piece of tape came free.

When he pulled her out of the chair, the woman fell, and Steel caught her. He found himself hugging this older woman—his face in her chest, her skin all blubbery and soft. He nearly puked. She found her legs and came to standing, using Steel to support her.

The men came through the door in the other room: his father and the guy from the train. A tangle of limbs. Fists flailing. They rolled on the floor. Steel saw his father take a bad blow to the face. Then another. Steel didn’t mean to do it—it was nothing he thought about—but all at once he let go of the preacher’s wife. She sank to the floor like a balloon sculpture losing air. He crossed into the room and headed straight for the wobbly-looking chair, picked it up and, as the man from the train wrestled into a position where he sat on top of Steel’s father, delivering one fist after another into his father’s swollen face, Steel hoisted the chair high over his head and lowered it onto the man’s back with all his strength. The man sagged and fell, then raised to his elbows and dragged himself toward the windows. He rocked his head once in Steel’s direction, his eyes filled first with rage and then disbelief as he seemed to gain focus.

“You?” he said.

Steel’s father struggled to his feet. So did the man from the train, who looked once at Steel and the chair, then at Steel’s father. And then, totally unexpectedly, he turned and dove out the window—glass shattering in an enormous splash.

Steel and his dad ran to the window. The man was facedown in what had once been grass, far below. For a second it looked as if his right leg had disappeared, but then Steel realized it was broken at the knee and bent back beneath the man at an impossible angle. He rose to his elbows and actually started dragging himself toward the river.

“Help her!” his father yelled as he ran, limping, from the room. Steel heard the clatter of metal: his father had retrieved his gun. And then the bang of the stairway door and the thundering thumping of his father descending the stairs.

Steel got his shoulder under the woman’s arm and helped her to standing. “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

75.

Steel, his dad, Larson, and Kaileigh all passed through the office building’s security. Larson and Mr. Trapp were required to remove their guns and run their sport coats through the X-ray machine. The building’s lobby was open and rose several stories overhead so that everything echoed inside, from footsteps to voices.

Steel’s dad had explained that because of his position with the bureau he couldn’t allow his face to be seen by the press, or on TV, and that because of this, neither Steel nor he would receive any credit for what they’d done. There was, in fact, no mention of the rescue in the news. Grym, who was refusing to speak to the authorities or even his own attorneys, was being held somewhere, though Steel’s dad wouldn’t say where. It was all secrets within secrets, as far as Steel was concerned. He’d been disqualified from the science challenge. His mother was packing up at the hotel. It promised to be a long train ride home.

“So, I don’t get it,” Steel said. “How do you two know each other?” There’d been something between Larson and his father from the moment they’d connected—which had been only minutes behind Steel’s rescue of the preacher’s wife. But only now did Steel realize it meant something.

Larson looked over at Kyle Trapp, leaving the explanation to him.

To the surprise of both Kaileigh and Steel, Marshal Larson wanted to explore Kaileigh’s theory about how the lottery might be rigged. And that was what had brought them all to this office building on a Sunday evening, only hours after the rescue, and less than three hours before the end-of-the-week drawing for the forty-five-million-dollar grand prize.

As they rode the elevator, Kyle Trapp explained.

“I was on your train, Steel. From Chicago to here.”

Stunned, Steel couldn’t get out a word.

“Marshal Larson discovered me,” his father continued. “I couldn’t reveal my assignment because technically I didn’t exist. A small plane I was flying to Chicago…But that’s another story for another time. I was on the train to keep an eye on you and your mother because we—the FBI—had learned that Aaron Grym was believed to be taking that train. Marshal Larson was working with the same intelligence.”

“But Mom—” Steel said, as if he hadn’t heard any of this. He wanted to protect his mother, and his father played along.

“I couldn’t tell her. Or you. Wanted to, but couldn’t. I didn’t know about you and the briefcase, or I’d have made you get off the train. Marshal Larson and I…if we’d both been able to tell each other our half of the story…But it didn’t work out that way. And that led me to the challenge. We got word that Grym had lost the briefcase. The rest you know.”

Steel wasn’t sure what to say. Part of him felt angry, the other part relief. It had worked out okay. Grym had been caught and was in jail. So was Natalie Shufman, though his father had told him she was likely to be set free for trying to help Steel.

“You and Kaileigh—” his father said, his eyes filled with appreciation and thanks. He was cut off by the elevator doors opening.

They were met on the eleventh floor by an officious-looking bald man with pale skin and bad breath. He led them into a bland office that had something to do with the District of Columbia’s local government, and found chairs for everyone but Larson, who remained standing.

Mr. Cunningham was his name. He listened intently to Larson’s explanation for the meeting, and then somewhat distractedly to Kaileigh’s nervously energetic description of her science project.

“And your theory would be all well and good, young lady,” Mr. Cunningham said, “except that the Ping-Pong balls we use are all carefully weighed and tested every Friday before closing. We then lock them in a vault until the drawing.”

“But they would test okay,” she said. “That’s the thing…That’s what they would have had to work out. They aren’t going to substitute four or five balls, they’re going to swap out every single one of them. And when you weigh them, they’re all going to weigh the same, so they’re going to pass your test.”

“I can’t unlock that vault,” Mr. Cunningham said, “even for the Marshals Service, or the FBI. It would take a court order to open that vault, and I should inform you that the vault itself is on a time lock. From four p.m. Friday, when we last test the balls, to six forty-five p.m. Sunday—fifteen minutes before the weekly drawing—that safe can’t be opened even if we wanted to. And that’s for
exactly
this reason.” He ran a hand across his bald head and looked around his desktop as if expecting a cup of coffee to appear. Or maybe something stronger. “The time lock eliminates any opportunity for sabotage over the weekend. Believe me, we know how important a fair and just lottery is to the credibility of the system. We do everything in our power to see it is kept that way.”

Steel felt a need to speak up. “But what if someone,
on Friday,
switched out the entire group of balls before they were tested? How would you ever know?”

This seemed to perplex Mr. Cunningham. He hummed and coughed and said, “I find that
highly
unlikely.”

“But not impossible,” Steel’s dad said.

Larson said, “We believe this jackpot may end up in the hands of terrorists, Mr. Cunningham. We need that safe opened now. This is a matter of national security.”

“First, I couldn’t open the safe now, even if I wanted to. As I just told you, it’s on a time lock. Second, you will need a court order, perhaps several court orders to get any closer than fifty feet from those Ping-Pong balls. They are
never
handled, touched, or dealt with in any way prior to the drawing. Even the oil from your finger could give weight to one more than another. We’re quite aware of all the pitfalls and opportunities for sabotage. This is a scientific process, sir, and we approach it scientifically. I’m sorry. But in one hour—at six forty-five,” he said, checking the wall clock, “those Ping-Pong balls are going directly from the safe to the hopper—and that’s all there is to it.”

They waited as a group in the hallway while Larson tried desperately to raise the necessary judges to advance a court order and seize the lottery balls for examination. His description of a thirteen-year-old girl’s science project made one judge laugh and hang up, believing it to be a prank. The hands of the clock continued their march around the numbers, and it became clear to all that they were doomed to failure.

At 6:43, Steel’s photographic memory came to their aid. “Security!” he said, breaking nearly five minutes of silence when Larson’s last attempt at a warrant had failed. He won everyone’s attention.

“There are two ways to go with this,” he said. “First, if Mr. Cunningham won’t let us touch the Ping-Pong balls, what if we were to X-ray the case? We could see through the balls—to see if they’re chipped out the way Kaileigh says they’d have to be—
without
ever touching them. Without ever opening the box.”

“I like that!” Larson said.

“Good thinking,” his father said.

“He’ll never let us do it,” Kaileigh said. “There’s a procedure they follow to keep things honest. This won’t fit in that procedure. Besides, there are inks that can be made to carry atomic weight by exposing them to radiation. Did you know that? That would give weight to the Ping-Pong balls, if something like that was being used. He’s never going to allow it.”

“I agree,” said Steel, surprising them all. “Which is what brings me to my second option.” He waited until he had the three of them looking at him and listening. He lowered his voice. “Kaileigh’s project is very simple in execution. A phone chip receives a call. The chip warms, the interior gas expands, and the balloon rises. But a phone signal is required to wake up the chip—to warm the chip.”

“Cell phones!” Kaileigh said.

“Exactly,” Steel said. “Someone has to instigate five calls—one for each ball they want to rise—or the winning number won’t match.”

“And isn’t there a delay in some of the TV broadcasts?” Kaileigh said. “It can’t be someone watching from home.”

“Someone in the room,” Larson said.

“The drawing is done before a live audience,” Steel’s dad said. “Thirty or forty people. That’s supposed to make it look more honest.”

Steel said, “Everyone with a cell phone will have to pass it through security. They’ll be X-rayed downstairs.”

“Doors open at six forty-five,” Steel’s dad said.

“It’s televised live. That means cameras. We can watch the people in the audience…” But Larson was already out of his chair.

It was as if he and Steel’s dad could communicate without speaking.

Mr. Trapp said, “I’ll take the security X-ray. I’ll need Steel—
for his memory.
We will identify every person in the audience who has a cell phone. You take Kaileigh. Get a camera on the audience. Ten minutes!” he said. “We’ve got
ten minutes
!
”