The Threat

  Meanwhile, the holographic emitter we'd seen would project an image of the head of state continuing his walk up to the podium. He would seem to reappear on the far side of the pillar, walk up, and calmly deliver his speech.

  92 By the time the speech was over, the real head of state would be ready to emerge. The switch would then be done in reverse.

  "Tony, the White House protocol guy, is the man with the slash on his shoe," I told the others as we gathered in the barn. "That was the whole purpose behind grabbing the helicopter. It wasn't the President they were after right then."

  "They want a grand slam," David said. "They want all these guys at once. So they snagged the second helicopter, the one that always accompanies Marine One to throw off possible terrorists."

  "Exactly," I agreed. "They needed the chief of protocol, the guy who would decide how the banquet was laid out. So Visser Three acquired him. Replaced him."

  "What about the real guy? The actual chief of protocol?" Cassie asked.

  "Probably still alive," Marco offered. "Visser Three has him drugged, takes his clothes and shoes, goes out and does his stuff. Then later the real Tony wakes up and doesn't realize anything has even happened."

  «Why not just make Tony a Controller?» Tobias asked.

  "I don't know," I admitted.

  But Ax spoke up. «The buildings where these heads of state work and live are carefully

  93 guarded? And all of the employees carefully watched?»

  "You know it."

  «Then there may be a simple reason: Kan-drona rays. If the President and the others are made into Controllers, they won't be able to get away from the President's security people long enough to secretly visit a Yeerk pool every three days for their needed Kandrona rays. So we have to assume the plan will be for the President to have a Yeerk pool and Kandrona placed within the White House itself.»

  Rachel made a rude, dismissive noise. "How would they keep something like that secret?"

  David supplied the answer. "Only the President could order something like that done in the White House. And even then, only if most or all of his Secret Service guys and a lot of his staff were Controllers, too."

  "The big goal is to get the President and the others," Marco agreed. "They need to get the President under control and he'll then make it possible for them to install a Kandrona in the White House itself. They need a Kandrona right there. They can't have well-known White House personnel secretly running around to Yeerk pools. So they didn't make this Tony guy a Controller because if the whole scheme fails,

  94 he'll be stuck in Washington without access to a Kandrona."

  Cassie shook her head. "Very clever, boys, but as usual you've overlooked a much simpler explanation."

  "What simple explanation?" I asked.

  "Ego," Cassie said. "You have to look at who we're talking about here. It's Visser Three. It's his biggest scheme ever! If it works, the battle for Earth is won. He'll be the big hero of the whole Yeerk Empire. And if it fails, he'll look like a fool. So what's he going to do? Stay aboard the Blade ship and watch? Uh-uh. Not Visser Three. He wants to be there. He wants to be able to say, 'Look, I did it all. Me, me, me!'"

  I nodded. As usual, Cassie had seen what I had missed.

  Cassie grinned. "Typical males," she said airily, self-mocking. "All you think about is plot. You always forget it's about personality. It's about character. Visser Three has to be there, see. He's an egomaniac."

  Marco, David, Ax, Tobias, and I all looked at one another, feeling a little disgruntled.

  "I still like our explanation," David said, speaking for all of us.

  "Well, I assume this banquet is tonight," I said, looking at my watch. "And if I'm right, we

  95 have very few hours to figure out how to bust up this plan."

  "I need to spend some time at home," Rachel said. "You probably do, too, Jake."

  "Actually, I'm pretty free for now," I said. "You heard about Saddler, right?"

  She hadn't. So I told her about our injured cousin. About my parents going to help out. And about the fact that Saddler was not necessarily going to survive.

  Everyone made the right noises of sympathy. So did David. But while his mouth was making the right words, I saw something disturbing in his eyes. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

  I glanced at him and he looked at me with a face that seemed to be shining with restrained excitement. Like someone who had just figured out how to win the lottery.

  And I heard an echo of Cassie's words in my mind: "It's always about character."

  96 X didn't know David. I realized that now. I hadn't really had time to get to know him. It had been one crisis piled on top of the next since we'd first learned about David finding the blue box.

  I knew each of the others. Name any situation. I could tell you exactly how Cassie or Marco or Rachel or Tobias or even Ax would react. But David remained unknown. Unpredictable.

  He'd been brave, mostly. He'd done what he had to do, mostly. But there had been things . . . the way he'd been in eagle morph and attacked some passing bird for no reason. The way he'd gotten weird in the lion morph. And the thing with breaking into the hotel room.

  97 All totally understandable. Nothing really awful. Not given how his entire life had been ripped apart.

  He seemed to get along with Cassie and Rachel and Tobias okay. He mostly ignored Ax, like he was afraid of him. Which was easy to understand. Andalites take some getting used to.

  He and Marco obviously did not get along. But that was easy to understand, too. Marco is my best friend in the world. But, like Ax, he can take some getting used to.

  We made our plans for the banquet that night. And after we were done, with the sun just going down, I gave Cassie a private "follow me" look. We went outside, leaving the others in the barn.

  I led her a little distance away, beyond the range of Tobias's sharp hawk hearing.

  "You want to ask me about David," Cassie said.

  I think my jaw dropped open. "Okay, how did you know?"

  "You've been watching him all afternoon like you're trying to figure him out."

  I nodded. "Okay. So what do you think? About him?"

  Cassie shrugged and looked back toward the barn. "I don't know. I can't seem to figure him out. He's lost his family, his life, his home. He

  98 doesn't seem upset enough for that, you know? I mean, sometimes he acts upset, but... I don't know."

  "Well, that's helpful," I said, making a deprecating face. "You're supposed to be the insightful one. I'm just a moron when it comes to figuring people out."

  Cassie laughed. Then she put her arm through mine. "Take one worry at a time, fearless leader. We have the mission tonight. We have to save the world. Let's do that, then figure out the new kid."

  "What do you think of the plan?"

  Cassie rolled her eyes. "Ax says it can be done and Marco says it's insane. I agree with both of them."

  The plan was pretty simple and straightforward. But it was ambitious, too. See, we didn't just want to save the heads of state. We wanted to force them to confront the truth: that there were aliens among us and that we were under attack.

  If we could do that, the world really would be saved.

  Ax had explained the way the hologram of the pillar and its force field were created.

  A ship, probably Visser Three's Blade ship, was parked maybe ten thousand feet above the hotel. It was cloaked so it would be invisible to

  99 radar and eyesight. It had to hold its station perfectly, never wobbling. It beamed the holographic picture and the force field down through the roof of the banquet hall.

  It took enormous, unimaginable amounts of energy.

  «Especially with inferior Yeerk technology,» Ax had said snidely. «Andalite technology would do it better, of course.»

  "But Erek and the other Chee use holograms constantly," Marco pointed out. "Their visible bodies are holograms."

  «Yes. Obviously in that one
area, the technology the Chee possess is somewhat superior even to Andalite technology.»

  "Waysuperior," Marco had said, deliberately busting Ax and grinning the whole time. "Way, way superior. I mean, just so I have this straight, you're saying the Chee technology would be to Andalite technology like human technology is to ... oh, say, chimpanzees?"

  That brought a laugh from everyone. All except David. David's gaze was somewhere else. He was looking at us, but from far off. Like we were each animals at the zoo. Like he was sizing us up.

  Ax got the best of Marco in the end. Actually, the gap would have to be even wider, since there really isn't all that much of a difference be-

  100 tween human technology and chimpanzee technology^

  "Oooooh, score one for the Ax-man," Rachel said.

  The basic plan was simple enough. According to Ax, the beams from the Blade ship were focused to be strongest at ground level. The higher you got, the easier it would be to penetrate the beam and get inside the hologram.

  From that point on, you could drop straight down to the hidden Yeerk pool.

  Just a few major problems. We would have to instantly take out any Controllers who were stationed within the hologram column. And if any of us stepped outside the hologram, there would be security guys on us before we could blink.

  Then we'd have to be ready to snatch the various world leaders as they were pushed toward us and convince them to play along. Despite the fact that most of them didn't speak English.

  And oh, by the way, Erek had warned us that one of the men, one of those world leaders, was already a Controller. At least one of them.

  It would be a very strange game.

  101 «Have I mentioned that this is insane?» Marco said.

  «Yeah, I think you may have,» I said.

  «Have I mentioned that of all the insane things we've ever done, this is so insane that it makes all previous insanity seem sane?»

  «l don't think you've mentioned that more than, oh, nine billion times,» I said.

  «Well, as long as we're clear on the fact that this is INSANE. In. Sane.»

  «Marco, shut up or I'll squeeze harder,» Rachel said.

  Here was the situation. We were all in birds-of-prey morphs. We were flying high. Too high for birds of prey at night with no thermals to lift us

  102 up. We were working at it, I can tell you that. We were flapping like idiots, fighting for every foot of altitude.

  And to make things worse, we were carrying things. I was carrying a teardrop-shaped lead weight. It wasn't all that big, maybe four ounces, but try carrying even four ounces when you're a peregrine falcon. Falcons aren't all that big.

  Tobias, Cassie, David, and Ax were all carrying similar weights: plumb bobs, fishing weights, and even an awl. We'd found them with some old tools and fishing tackle in Cassie's barn.

  Rachel was carrying Marco.

  And Marco was a snake.

  In fact, he was the cobra David used to own. David's snake had been made safe by the removal of its poison sacs. But since Marco morphed from the DMA, the surgery was irrelevant.

  Marco was a fully functional cobra, with venom that could knock a horse down in seconds and kill it in minutes.

  Rachel, as the largest of us with her bald eagle morph, drew the task of carrying Marco.

  We were high above the beach, following the surf line so we wouldn't get lost. There was no moon. Even if there had been, we'd have never seen it because clouds - big, black, rain-soggy clouds - covered the sky.

  103 It felt like those clouds were right on top of us. Actually, they were. As I flew, I'd pass through wisps of their lower edges.

  The surf below was bright enough, though. It was a wavy, silvery line, advancing, retreating, but always pointing the way for us. Just in case we had trouble with the darkness, Cassie had gone into a great horned owl morph. Our birds-of-prey eyes were not nearly as good at night as they were in the day. But Cassie could see the individual sand crabs scuttling around hundreds of feet below us.

  Ahead and far below, the lights of the Marriott resort were blazingly bright. It was lit up like a Monday Night Football game.

  We passed silently over the line of trees that marked the edge of the compound.

  «0h, wow!» Cassie said suddenly. «lt's him! Cool!»

  «lt's who?» I demanded in alarm.

  «The President! He's walking from that cottage over to another cottage. Can't you see him? He's wearing shorts.»

  «Hey, let's go see if we can get an autography David suggested, and then broke up laughing at his own joke.

  «Ax-man?» Tobias asked. «Are we high enough up to be able to penetrate this force field?»

  104 «l believe so,» Ax said. «Probably. Most likely.»

  «Well, that's reassuring.» Marco, of course.

  «l will go first,» Ax said. «lf I appear to run into an invisible wall and am knocked unconscious and fall toward the ground, you'll know the force field is still too strong at this height.»

  Was that Andalite humor? I could never be sure.

  Ax pushed a little extra power into his harrier wings and pulled ahead. We watched him fly over the banquet hall, directly over the place where we knew the hologram/force field entered the roof.

  He seemed lost for a moment, going this way and that, then . . .

  «1 am inside!» he said. «Hah! We're only two hundred feet up! An Andalite force field would be ten times this strong at this distance from the focus point.»

  He flew in a very tight circle, staying within the beam. We flew to catch up with him. There was an itchy, creepy-crawly sensation as I flew through the perimeter. Like ants covering my feathers. But then I was in. And now, looking down, I could see straight through the perfect circular hole in the roof. It was light down there. Light enough for me to see the heads of three Controllers.

  106 «Three of 'em,» Rachel said. «No problem-o.»

  We could see the tiny, stainless steel Yeerk pool. And we could see the human-Controllers lurking beside it.

  Three heads.

  Three targets.

  «Ready?» I asked.

  «Let's do it!» Rachel yelled.

  «l am ready, Prince Jake.»

  «Definitely not,» Marco said glumly.

  «0kay, I go first, then David, since we're the fastest in a dive. Then Tobias, Cassie, Ax, and Rachel with Marco, you come last. On the count of three. One . . . two . . .»

  I spilled air from my wings, flicked my tail, and headed straight down. I flapped to build up speed and I rocketed down that tube.

  The fastest thing in the air is a peregrine falcon in a dive. I broke a hundred miles per hour within seconds and kept building speed. Faster and faster, as my laser-intensity falcon eyes watched the head below me grow larger and larger.

  I gripped the lead weight in my talons.

  I was a dive-bomber. And I was doing well over a hundred miles per hour when I released my bomb.

  Now you know why we were carrying the weights.

  105

  Down, down, down like a diving fighter plane!

  I released the weight, flared my wings just a hair, slowed, and swept aside as David's own bomb dropped past me. My lead weight dropped. David's dropped. Then, more slowly, three more weights.

  Thunk!

  Thunk!

  The first two Controllers went down like someone had . . . well, like someone had dropped a very fast-moving lead weight on their heads.

  I mean, they just dropped. The third guy was gaping at them when a near miss hit his shoulder. He jerked aside, avoiding the next bomb.

  107 But the final bomb caught him square on his head, and he fell over the other two Controllers.

  We all inscribed tight circles inside the beam as Rachel went blazing past, trailing Marco from her talons.

  She flared and killed her speed at the last minute, then dropped expertly down through the hole.

  We followed. One of the Controllers was moving, trying to roll over. Rache
l released Marco. He dropped directly onto the moving Controller and sank his fangs into the man's leg. He delivered a very small dose of toxin. Enough, we hoped, to keep the guy down but leave him breathing.

  One by one, we landed.

  It was bizarre beyond belief. We were invisible to everyone else in the banquet hall, but they were not invisible to us.

  The place was jammed. Hundreds of people, men in tuxedos, women in gowns. They were sitting at the long tables, and milling around and talking, and leaning over to whisper to one another, and nibbling appetizers and sipping white wine.

  And these weren't just people. These were people of the seriously important, powerful variety.

  The main table extended straight out from us. The man closest to us could have reached out

  108 and touched us. Only if he had, he'd have felt what he thought was a cool, marble column.

  I noticed that one of the lead weights had bounced out of the hologram. It lay at some woman's feet. Fortunately, no one had seen it come flying out of a seemingly solid pillar.

  We were all demorphing rapidly, but I think we were all busy being a little awestruck, too. Three places down along the table was the premier of Russia. Down from him? The French prime minister.

  I had to resist a powerful temptation to just step out of the pillar and say, "Hey, look at my man Ax, here! Get a clue! Aliens are real and we're being invaded!"

  I had to resist because there were an extreme number of guys in dark suits with sinister bulges under their jackets and very, very serious expressions.

  If I stepped out of the pillar with Ax, there would be about five hundred bullets from five different nations in our bodies before we could say, "Hello."

  The subject of this whole summit meeting was the Middle East. I guess people get jumpy when that's the topic under discussion. And the guys in the dark suits and shoulder holsters were probably jumpy to start with.

  We demorphed and stood there, crammed to-

  109 gether around the stainless steel Yeerk pool. Ax had to keep his tail held close to keep it from showing. I didn't even want to think about what would happen if that tail blade suddenly appeared from the middle of a marble pillar.

  "Now what?" Rachel mouthed silently.

  "We wait," I said just as quietly. Although as noisy as the room was, we probably could have yelled and not been heard.