Counterattack (9 page)

Time and again on our journey I stared—and wondered what it would have been like to grow up on Earth and to be able to see this incredible world every single day.

As we reached the other side of the mountains, moving into the western half of New Mexico and finally into Arizona, the red rocks and brown valleys reminded me in a small way of Mars.

When I thought of Mars, I thought about Mom. I wondered if she knew somehow that Dad was in trouble.

And I thought about Dad.

Especially of the fact that, including today, there were only four days left of our countdown.

“There's the Parker Dam!” Nate pointed out the window to our left. “And downriver, the town of Parker.”

He banked the airplane as I checked the map. To our right, a long, narrow lake bounced brilliant blue light from the reds and browns of the desert. This was Lake Havasu, formed by the Parker Dam. On the other side of the dam, the Colorado River was a snake of blue winding through more desert reds and browns. From the air, the town of Parker appeared to be a neatly laid grid of miniature houses.

“Anything look familiar yet?” Nate asked Ashley.

When we had stopped last night, Ashley and I had agreed that we at least had to trust Nate enough to fill him in on a few details. Then he might be able to help us pinpoint our search. And so we had.

Ashley shook her head. She hadn't spoken much over the last few hours. I wondered if she was afraid to return to the place where she had spent most of her life. Now it would seem like a prison to her. But then—among the others who, like her, had been in the Institute as long as they could remember—she didn't know any other kind of life. Then her life had seemed normal.

“I'll take us in a few circles,” Nate said. “I know things look different in the air than from the ground, but you never know.”

All Ashley had been able to tell us last night was that the children could see a strange tall mountain peak from the open area where they were allowed to play. She said all the kids had called it the Unsleeping Soldier because it looked like it guarded them.

Twenty minutes later we were still circling. The red mountains threw dark shadows into deep canyons.

“I'm going to have to take us down,” Nate announced into our headsets. “We'll find a place to stay for the night. Tomorrow we'll drive around in a rented vehicle and keep looking.”

Tomorrow. One more day closer to the deadline.

“Hang on!” Ashley shouted. “There!”

Sure enough, one of the peaks did look like a tall, skinny man.

“There?” Nate repeated.

“There!” Ashley insisted.

“Check it out, Tyce.” Nate motioned toward the map.

I studied the map briefly, then circled a place with my pencil. “Makes sense. Abandoned military base,” I said, reading the map. “No trespassing.”

“Exactly. I think we've found it,” Nate said enthusiastically. “First thing tomorrow, we'll check it out.”

Which would have been a great plan.

Except as we were watching TV in our motel room late that evening, there was a sharp crack of breaking glass.

I caught a glimpse of a small ball as it tumbled across the floor.

Nate dived for it, but it was too late.

The flash of light and the boom of the explosion came at the same time.

And when the bitter smoke hit my face, I gagged once, then sank into blackness.

CHAPTER 19

I woke up in my wheelchair with a dry mouth and a slight headache.

A breeze came in through the broken window. It was still dark outside, and the clock in the motel room read 3:15 a.m. The TV was still on, with the volume turned down. Its dim glow showed that Nate had been duct-taped to one chair. He was blinking himself awake too. Ashley lay on the floor, where she had fallen out of her chair in front of the TV. She was still unconscious.

A large man in army fatigues stood against the door. Shaved bald, he had a square face with a bent nose. The neuron gun in his right hand was pointed at Nate. “You're getting soft and old. I really expected you to be somewhere in the desert, in a camp guarded by trip lines. This is the price you pay for wanting a place with beds and showers. The Wild Man I remembered from the platoon never would have made the mistake of bunking down where he could be so easily trapped.”

The man continued to speak as he shrugged. “But then, the Wild Man I knew never would have turned traitor. Who paid you and how much?”

“Why would I need to be paid to keep you from getting your hands on these kids?” Nate answered in a level voice.

“It's obvious now that
you're
the one who means them harm.”

“Me?”

“Give me a break, Cannon. These kids have robots. And they're on the run from a Combat Force base and prison. That alone tells me they have something so valuable that they need help. Somehow I don't think you represent official channels here. Otherwise there would be Combat Force soldiers with you and we'd already be outside and loaded into a military truck. You wouldn't have come to me in the Everglades with your little plan to steal them as they escaped from that prison either.”

Nate paused.

“Ashley, Tyce, pardon my manners for beginning a conversation without letting you know who this is,” Nate said, spreading his arms wide, making a mockery of his elaborate introduction of the man with the neuron gun. “General Jeb McNamee. Known as Cannon, because when we were friends—
when
we were friends—I liked to call him a big shot. But I guess our friendship is now over, because I refuse to like anyone who would mean you two any harm.”

So this was Cannon, the general who had first approached Nate and given him the equipment and timetable to capture us from the swamp boat.

“
Me
mean them harm? I'm trying to
rescue
them from the Combat Force,” Cannon snapped. “Something that would have been a lot easier if you hadn't run with them. So let me ask you again. Who paid you? The Terratakers? Because if I find out you had anything to do with my son being taken away from me—”

“General, somewhere you've been out in the sun too long without a hat.”

Without warning, the general pulled the trigger of his neuron gun.

I saw and heard nothing. Neuron guns don't make noise. But Nate tilted in his chair and groaned slightly as he fell back into unconsciousness. The neuron blast would have paralyzed half his muscles. I doubted he'd wake for a while.

“You okay?” Cannon asked me.

“Yes, but—”

“Hang on.” He stepped past me and returned from the motel bathroom with a glass of water. In my thirst I reached for it, but he was already past me again. He knelt beside Ashley, who was struggling to sit up. He put his arm behind her back and helped her stand. “Sorry about the punch of that sleeping gas, but I couldn't see any other way to neutralize Nate without putting you both in danger.”

Ashley gulped back the water.

“I trust you're here because it's close to the Institute?” Cannon asked. “I mean, when Nate stopped to refuel the airplane yesterday, he didn't go to the trouble of buying a van like he did here.”

Like I was going to answer this man?

“I wouldn't mind some water myself,” I said from the wheelchair. I had a plan. Not much of one. But the best I could think of.

The general walked into the bathroom again. I rolled forward to block the doorway and turned my head back to Ashley.

“Run!” I whispered to Ashley. “Get the motel manager to call for help!”

Ashley was groggy as she got to her feet. She took a step to the door as Cannon came out of the bathroom with a full glass of water.

“Hey!” he said from behind my wheelchair as she reached the door. He dropped the water and tried pushing my wheelchair out of his way.

I grabbed his belt. “Go!” I shouted at Ashley. “Go!”

She struggled to unbolt the door.

The general swept my hand and wheelchair aside and dived forward. He yanked her away from the door.

“Are you guys crazy?” he said, gently pushing her back toward the center of the room. “Why are you trying to escape when I finally managed to rescue you?”

“Rescue us? You sent Nate to kidnap us,” I pointed out. “He's helping us run away from you.”

“What?”

“I doubt you have good intentions. There's no way you should have known when and where we were leaving the prison,” I continued. “You must be working with Dr. Jordan.”

“Now you're telling me you don't even trust your own father.” When this man with the huge ugly face frowned, it was not a sight that would help little children sleep better.

“Of course we trust him.” Ashley put her hands on her hips in her trademark pose. It was clear she wasn't scared by the general in his army fatigues.

“Then why run with Nate?” Cannon said. “You know that your father and the supreme governor set this up.”

Silence.

The general studied my face. Then Ashley's. “I said,” he repeated, “you know that your father and the supreme governor set this up. Including the tracking device in your arm. And the money cards that would let us watch your progress if anything went wrong. It was in your father's letter. It had instructions telling you that it was safe for Nate to deliver both of you to me. And I was to help you keep out of the hands of the Combat Force as we found the Institute.”

The letter.

“Nice try,” I said sarcastically. My dad's cell
had
been wired. The Combat Force knew Dad had given me a letter. This man could easily be making this up.

“Nice try? Now I need to convince you that your father …” Cannon shook his head. “Kid, how else would I have known when you would be released? The supreme governor set all this up. Including insisting on visiting your father personally in his cell. That way he could quickly explain to your father what he needed to do, through a handwritten note that couldn't be picked up on the audio, and then get your father's help. The supreme governor allowed himself to be taken as your dad's hostage, securing your release from the base.”

Is that why Dad had the dull edge of the blade pressed against the old man's throat?

“And while you were in your dad's cell, the supreme governor jabbed a tracking chip into your arm. That allowed me to pick up from there, once you were away from the base and in the boat.”

I remembered the old man grabbing my arm and the stabbing pain. I remembered wondering why Dad had pretended to be angry. All of that to plant a tracking chip? My face must have been an open book of confusion.

“Tracking chip. That's how I found you,” Cannon explained. “I've been following you guys for two days, just waiting for the right time to move in. Come on. All of it was in the letter. You did read your dad's letter, right?”

Only two people knew I hadn't read that letter. Me. And Ashley, whom I had just told a few hours ago, while Nate was taking a shower and Ashley and I were watching TV.

Besides Ashley, only one person knew the letter had been destroyed by water. Me.

Which meant the general had no reason to bluff me. He really thought I had read the letter. He really thought I knew all the stuff he was telling us.

My words came out as if my tongue were a block of wood. “You mean that you were sent by my dad? And that Nate was sent by you?”

“Stop playing games. I had to send Nate because there are too many Terratakers in the Combat Force. If any of them found out I was behind this mission to rescue you, it was too possible for this information to reach the Terratakers. And with them holding my son hostage, there was too much danger he would die.”

He pointed at Nate, disgust on his face. “It was a good plan, until Nate turned traitor and took off with you both. That cost us a lot of time. Now we're down to a few days before all of it happens.”

“All of what?”

Now it was Cannon's turn to be confused. “That's part of it. We don't know quite what, just that Jordan has planned something big. And bad. You know that, too, otherwise—”

My face must have looked blank.

“You did read the letter, didn't you?”

“It, um … fell into … the swamp when we were being chased.” I stopped. “No, I didn't read it.”

Comprehension smoothed out the concerned wrinkles on the general's face. “No wonder Nate believed he was rescuing you from me. No wonder you have no idea what is waiting for us.”

“Waiting for us?” I gave him a weak smile. “Is there any chance you can prove my father sent you?”

He nodded. “It's about time you asked. Does the phrase ‘Twinkie Nose' ring a bell?”

I winced. “Yes.”

“Twinkie Nose?” Ashley asked. “Isn't a Twinkie a—?”

“Yes, yes,” I said quickly. “But that's all I'm telling.”

When I was too little to remember, my mom said she'd catch me picking my nose so often it was like I was trying to eat a Twinkie, which she'd explained was an Earth snack. When I was old enough to be embarrassed about this, if I misbehaved in public, she would threaten to call me Twinkie Nose and explain why to everybody listening. That always settled me down.