If he made a run for the generator room and slammed the door, the tiger could leave the building. There were people in the square. The church door was open. The orphanage door was open. The tiger could go wherever it wanted.
The loading-dock door was a roll-up with a pull chain on the side. If he managed to get there without getting mauled, the tiger would be between him and the open generator door. Cindy was sound asleep. And Tomás might not understand if Chase shouted for him to close the door. Besides, Chase knew him well. Tomás wouldn’t close the door without an explanation. If he thought Chase was in trouble, he would step out into the open and take on whatever it was.
Not even Tomás’s clever hands can stop a tiger.
“What are the chances of this happening twice?” he asked himself. “About as likely as being struck by lightning twice. Paranoia. I’m being ridiculous.”
Just then he heard the crunch of something heavy stepping on empty plastic bottles. He turned his headlamp in time to see the flash of a striped tail disappearing into the shadows.
They managed to get everyone into the church without too much panic. Most of the villagers believed they were being herded inside because of the volcano.
It was crowded, with the injured taking up most of the pews. Father Al closed the double doors and started up the center aisle to the pulpit. Nicole and Mark stood at the back.
“What about John?” Mark asked.
“I guess he’s going to have to wait until we get this figured out. I doubt anyone is going to want to go outside with a tiger loose.” She tried to spot Chase or Tomás in the dark church, but it was nearly impossible to see anyone in the candlelit room. “As soon as Father Al’s finished, we’ll look for Chase, Tomás, and Cindy. Between the five of us, we’ll be able to get John down here.”
Father Al spoke in Spanish. Nicole translated for Mark.
“Thank you for being calm,” he said, his deep voice filling the large church. “I believe that Popocatepetl has gone back to sleep. It was a terrible day. I am sorry for your losses. But right now we have another problem. I have asked you to come in here because we believe there is a circus tiger loose in the village.”
Alarm and disbelief spread throughout the church. Father Al let them express their dismay for nearly a minute before holding up his hands to silence them.
“We believe everyone is in here, or inside the orphanage. We are safe as long as we stay inside and stay calm.”
“How will we get the tiger?” a man shouted.
“We are working on that,” Father Al said. “I’m going to go over to the orphanage to talk to the circus people and find out what we can do about our visitor.”
“The only circus people who are healthy are clowns!” another man shouted.
“There is an animal trainer among them,” Father Al said.
“A poodle trainer,” someone else shouted.
Some people wailed. Others laughed.
“This is not going well,” Nicole said. She started toward the aisle.
Mark caught up with her. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to talk to the congregation,” Nicole answered. She reached the pulpit and whispered something in Father Al’s ear. He nodded and stepped aside.
Nicole waited for everyone to quiet down, which didn’t take long. They stared up at her with curiosity and confusion. Public speaking had never been Nicole’s favorite subject in school. Now she had to speak to over a hundred people in Spanish.
“My name is Nicole Rossi. My parents own the Rossi Brothers’ Circus. There was a terrible accident on the road to Puebla. Two trucks went off the road. Five of my friends were killed, along with all of our elephants and our lions and tigers … except one. He managed to escape. I am sorry for this. I am also sorry for the loss of my friends and the animals.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. She paused and gathered herself before continuing.
“The clowns and the dog trainer have been with the circus for many years. During those years, they have seen many things and worked with many different animals. If the tiger is in Lago, we will find him and contain him before he harms anyone. You have my word.”
She looked out into the dark church. No one said a word. She turned to Father Al and said quietly, “I need to talk to my friends.”
“They are in the orphanage with your mother and sister,” Father Al said. “I haven’t had time to tell them about the tiger.”
“I’ll tell them,” Nicole said. “I assume that Chase, Tomás, and Cindy are over there too?”
Father Al went a little pale. He shook his head. “They are in the bottling plant, trying to fix the generator.”
Chase needed to make up his mind. The rattling of the bottles was getting louder. Tomás was going to hear the noise and come out to investigate. Chase turned around very slowly and faced the generator door.
“Tomás!” he yelled.
The rattling stopped. He wished it hadn’t.
Tomás appeared in the doorway, looking concerned.
“You need to close the door! The tiger is in here. I am going to make a run for the loading dock.”
Tomás took a step out.
“No!” Chase shouted. “Stay where you are!”
Tomás hesitated.
A sleepy-looking Cindy appeared behind him. “What’s going on?”
“The tiger is in the building. You need to close the generator door. I’m going to try to get to the loading dock and close that door so it doesn’t escape into the village. You cannot come out until I tell you it’s safe.”
“But —”
“I’ll be fine, and so will you if you stay where you are. Close the door. Now!”
Cindy quickly explained the situation to Tomás. After a long moment’s hesitation, he closed the door slowly. Now the only light in the plant came from Chase’s headlamp. What he had not told Cindy was that the dock door could be closed only by the chain from inside. He would have to pull the heavy door down, then find the small door to the side to get out.
The ground floor of the orphanage was chaotic. Poodles barking, children crying, people talking over one another.
“What are you doing here, Nicole?”
“Which tiger is it?”
“The elephants are dead?”
“Who was driving the trucks?”
“Enough!” Nicole said. “We need to find our friends and tell them about the tiger. Then we need to search the village to find out if it is still here.”
“Yes, we will all go,” Pierre Deveroux, the dog trainer, said. “We will walk in a large group with sticks or whatever we can find. It is unlikely the tiger will attack a group.”
“Unlikely,” Dennis the clown said.
Pierre shrugged. “Nothing is for certain of course.”
“Of course,” Mark said.
Dennis smiled.
“If we can, we will contain him,” Pierre said. “If we cannot, we will try to drive him from the village.”
Chase ran toward the door, but he didn’t get very far. He slipped on the bottles and fell.
This is it! American boy mauled to death by tiger in bottled-water plant in Mexico.
But that wasn’t it. The big cat sounded like it was having the same difficulty negotiating the bottles strewn across the floor as Chase had.
The tiger roared in frustration.
Chase stood back up. He started moving forward again, but this time he went more slowly, trying to be careful about where he put his feet. He risked a glance behind him and wished he hadn’t. The tiger was out in the open now and gaining on him.
Concentrate on the chain!
Chase wanted to head straight through the door and run off into the dark night, but it was too late for that. If the tiger followed him, he would never be able to outrun it. His only hope was the door, and the ruse Momma Rossi had used to confuse Hector the leopard back in Florida.
Chase lunged for the chain and grabbed it with his right hand, hoping the door hadn’t been left
open because it was broken. With his left hand he tore the headlamp off his forehead and tossed it back toward where he thought the tiger was. He was working in complete darkness now. The door began to close as Chase double-handed the chain down as fast as he could. The tiger growled. The light from Chase’s headlamp flashed around the building, which meant the tiger had fallen for Momma Rossi’s trick. The door clicked shut as it smashed into the threshold. The headlamp went out. The tiger had snapped the bulb.
All I have to do now is crawl a dozen feet to my left, find the small door in the pitch dark, and let myself out before the tiger pounces on me.
He started to crawl.
The tiger ran into the big metal door and let out another horrendous growl.
Chase tried to ignore the terrible sound as he felt his way along the wall. The building was made of cinder blocks. He felt the metal doorframe.
Doorknob. Four feet up from the ground.
He reached for where he thought the doorknob should be, but just then the door swung open. A hand reached through and pulled him to the dock. A second later, the tiger hit the door. The door held.
Gasping for breath, Chase looked up at his savior. It was Tomás. He helped Chase to his feet, then took a close look at him as if he were checking to see if Chase still had all of his limbs.
“You okay?”
“No,” Chase said. “How did you get here?”
“Window,” Tomás answered.
Chase started laughing. Tomás joined him.
And that’s how Nicole, Mark, Cindy, and the others found them.
“You two have a really twisted sense of humor,” Mark said.
Nicole looked at the doors. She could hear the tiger on the other side. “Did you catch yourself another cat?”
“Sure did,” Chase said. He looked at Tomás. “With a little help from my friend. Where’s my dad?”
“Up on the mountain,” Nicole said.
“Taking a catnap,” Mark said. “Guess we should go up there and wake him.”
Chase was the first to reach his father.
“Hey, sport,” his father said.
“What time is it?” Chase asked.
His father laughed. “You know what? I have no idea. Apparently, that last bolt knocked the ability right out of me. I guess I’ll have to buy a watch now.”
“You okay?”
“A couple cracked ribs and a badly sprained ankle.”
“Mark said he thought it was broken.”
“I bet you he’s wrong.”
Nicole and Cindy came up next, followed by Tomás, Mark, and several men from the village with a stretcher.
His father’s sat phone rang, startling everyone.
“Excuse me,” he said, and answered it. “That’s a negative. The cavalry just arrived. They’re taking me down the mountain as we speak. Go ahead and evac the circus people. I’ll get an LZ cleared up here and see you at the village at first light. Roger that. Out.”
“Who was that?” Chase asked.
“That was SEAL Team One commander Raul Delgado.”
“The only easy day was yesterday,” Chase said.
His father smiled. “As it turns out, you might be right. I guess I have some explaining to do.”
“Yeah, you do,” Chase said.
“And I promise I will,” his father said. He turned to Nicole. “Most of your people are on army trucks headed back to Mexico City. Delgado is going to move the animals next. Road crews should have the slide cleared and the bridge back up in a few days, and they’ll be able retrieve their vehicles then. Delgado is leaving a couple men behind to keep an eye on things until they can return.”
He handed Mark the video camera.
Mark turned it on and started filming.
Dawn filtered through the window as Tomás tightened the last bolt. He passed the ratchet to Chase, then wiped his clever hands with a rag.
“Fixed?” Chase asked.
“Maybe.”
They had been in the generator room since they’d dropped Chase’s father at the church to have his ribs and ankle looked at. When Chase wasn’t handing Tomás tools, he was at the metal door peering through the safety glass. It was too dark to see the bottling plant, but he could hear the tiger prowling, slapping plastic bottles across the cement floor.
Tomás hit some switches and the generator came to life. The tiger roared.
Chase hurried over to the door. The tiger had his front paws on the conveyor belt and was looking up at the fluorescent lights.
Contained, Chase thought. And bigger than he looked last night.
He walked back over to Tomás.
“Everything good?”
“I think.”
“I’m going over to the church to check on my dad.”
Tomás nodded. “I will watch the generator.”
“Don’t open the door,” Chase said, smiling.
Tomás laughed.
Chase climbed through the window. The sun was rising over the top of Popocatepetl. The slopes were covered with ash. A wisp of white steam curled up from the crater. The mountain was peaceful once again, but the memory of its violence was everywhere as Chase made his way to the village square.
He arrived just as the first chopper touched down on the cobblestones in a swirl of ash. His father was on crutches, waiting for it. Mark had his camera rolling. Cindy stood by him, jotting something down in a notebook. Chase stood at the edge of the square, out of the worst of the ash, and watched.
A big man in a black uniform jumped out, walked up to Chase’s father, and saluted. John returned the salute.
Commander Delgado.
Chase shook his head. I guess I had to see it to believe it, he thought. Dad really was a Navy SEAL.
Several other men jumped out of the chopper, carrying stretchers and supplies. The last two men to climb out were not dressed in uniforms. One was tall and thin. The other was squat and heavy. They carried a large crate between them.
Circus roustabouts.
Nicole came out of the church alongside the stretcher carrying her mother. Leah’s stretcher was right behind them. Chase waved, but Nicole didn’t notice. She was talking to her mother. The men loaded the stretchers onto the chopper, and Nicole climbed in after them.
I should go up and say something. I can’t just let her fly off. Chase started forward, but stopped. More stretchers were arriving. He didn’t want to get in their way. He looked at his father, who was laughing about something with Delgado and Cindy. Mark was still filming. Nicole wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye. Another chopper appeared over the lake and hovered, awaiting its turn. Two more stretchers were brought out to the first chopper. Now or never. He started across the square. Nicole jumped off the chopper before he had taken ten steps. He stopped again. She waved to someone inside and hurried out from beneath the rotors.
“Nicole!”
She ran over and gave him a hug.
“You’re not going with your mom and sister?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want to take the space from someone who’s injured. I’m taking the last chopper out with the poodles and the tiger.” She raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t think I’d leave without saying good-bye, did you?”
“Well …”
Nicole took his hand. “Let’s go down to Lago de la Montaña. I haven’t seen it yet.”
Nicole and Chase walked along the shore, holding hands.
“So your mom’s okay,” Chase said.
Nicole nodded. “She woke up last night, wanting to get out of bed to check on the animals. It took three of us to hold her down. Leah wasn’t much better. Rossis aren’t very good at lying around. The doctor had been worried about spine or neck injuries, but he revised his prognosis after seeing her trying to get up. He suggested she stay in the hospital for several days. I predict it will be one day at the most. I talked to my dad. He’s on the same flight we took to Mexico City. With any luck, he’ll beat them to the hospital and try to keep them in the
ir beds for a couple of days.”
“Who’s taking care of the farm?”
“The Stones. I talked to Rashawn. Pet and the calf are fine. The only problem they’re having is with her little brother. He’s so excited to be around the animals that Momma Rossi’s threatening to lock him up in one of the cages so he doesn’t hurt himself.”
The second chopper took off and a third landed.
“Have they picked up the people on the road?” Chase asked.
“They’re all at the fairgrounds with Arturo. As soon as I show up with the tiger, we’ll head back to the States.”
“Then what?”
Nicole shook her head. “I don’t know. It could be the end of the Rossi Brothers’ Circus. But you never know. We’ve been through bad times and the show still went on. We have all winter to see where we’re at.” She stopped and picked up a piece of pumice. “What about you?” she asked. “What are your plans?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to talk to my father. It’s up to him.”
“You’re welcome to come back with me to the farm. We could use your help and I …” She flushed and looked away. “So tell me about that tiger.”
Chase smiled, but it wasn’t about the tiger. He was pretty certain that Nicole felt the same way about him as he did about her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Not a thing.”
Chase leaned forward and kissed her.
The last chopper had landed. They were standing outside the bottling plant.
“I guess it’s tiger time,” Nicole said. She looked at Chase. “So you think I can tranquilize it from the generator room?”
Chase nodded. “There’s a small safety window in the door. It will have to be broken out to get the rifle through, but Tomás is there. He can break it out for you.”
“All right,” Nicole said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Commander Delgado looked at Nicole and scratched his stubbled chin. “I’ll just come out with it,” he said. “You can say yes or no. It’s totally up to you. You’re the expert. You’re the boss. But I have always wanted to dart a big cat. Can I dart the big fella?”