Flashpoint

  The skid of rubber on tarmac jarred him back to awareness, and his vision returned with the sight of the big landing gear touching down just beyond him.

  Mind and body numb, acting on instinct alone, he dragged himself to his feet and sprinted for the cover of the hangar.

  Far out at the edge of the runway, the Pierce plane aborted takeoff and lurched to a halt.

  The copilot burst into the cabin. “Who blew that hatch?” He pulled up on the stairs, and the hydraulic-assist system shut and resealed the door.

  “No!” roared Galt. “We have to pick up the Cahill kid!”

  “Forget it!” Cara exclaimed. “Too many people saw what just happened. The whole airport crew and whoever’s on that other plane.”

  “People can be kept quiet,” Galt spat.

  “You want to take that risk?” his sister challenged, deliberately stalling so Dan could make his escape. “Our father is less than a week away from announcing his bid for president. If we create a scandal here, that could ruin everything.”

  “That kid on the loose is a bigger risk!” Galt threw back in her face. “I’m the one who understands Dad’s plan! It’s me he trusts the most!”

  “You’re operating on old information, little brother.” Cara indicated the three goons. “Just ask them who they take their orders from.”

  The hired muscle looked from Pierce to Pierce, unsure of what their next move should be.

  Dan ran and did not look back, knowing that even a second’s hesitation could mean the difference between escape and recapture by the Pierces.

  He left the tarmac, struggling through thigh-high grass. His body ached — he was probably black and blue from his sudden departure from the moving aircraft. And his face throbbed from the jet wash. Not the agony of a burn, it just felt — hot. He’d been lucky — but only considering how close he’d come to being crushed like a bug by a landing plane.

  Knees pumping to maintain speed, he took in the vast hangar complex that loomed ahead.

  Dan was enough of a World War II buff to recognize that name. Midway was a tiny atoll about halfway across the Pacific Ocean. It was the site of one of the most famous battles of the war. NAF was short for Naval Air Facility. That explained why such an enormous airport seemed so broken-down and empty. Once a location of great strategic importance, it was now a tiny refueling station most modern jets didn’t need. The two planes that had nearly done him in were probably the most traffic this place had seen in decades.

  Back on the pavement, Dan sprinted for the building, scouting for a way in. The hangar doors were shut, but enough glass was missing that he was able to squeeze through what had once been a low window.

  Inside was dark, dusty, and oppressively hot. The space was cavernous and empty, not exactly a formula for good hiding places. The only cover was a corner area of tables and shelving units that might have once been part of a machine shop. He made for it, snatching up a crowbar to use as a weapon if worse came to worst. Galt and the goons may have been pounding serum like Gatorade, but not even that could make a guy strong enough to withstand a crowbar sandwich. As for Cara — the thought of her gave Dan pause. She had clearly helped him get away, but no one could be certain what her real motive might be. Until Dan knew for sure, Cara was still the enemy.

  He ducked behind the tallest shelf, wielding the iron tool like a baseball bat. There he crouched, poised for action, listening for the footfalls of an approaching enemy. The only sound besides his own ragged breathing was the chirping and buzzing of the tropical insects. It was something he’d learned long ago during the search for the 39 Clues — no matter where you were, you were never far from something gross that wanted to bite you.

  Outside, he heard a plane take off, but only one. He had no way of knowing if it was the Pierce jet or the one that had almost run him over.

  Then he heard the footsteps. He tried to peek around the corner and accidentally knocked a few ball bearings off a shelf. The ringing of metal on concrete seemed unbelievably loud in the silence.

  The intruder shuffled closer, heading straight for his hiding place. Well, okay, if it had to be a fight, so be it. He hefted the crowbar and watched for the head to come into view. He could already make out a white shirt on the other side of the shelving unit. Just another few seconds . . .

  Betting on the element of surprise, he leaped out and, like any good Red Sox fan, swung for the Green Monster at Fenway Park. Too late to pull back, he recognized the target of his home-run swing.

  Amy!

  Her hand shot forward at lightning speed, grabbed the iron bar, and plucked it out of his grasp like it was a drinking straw.

  He threw his arms around her. “I didn’t mean to hit you! I mean — I meant to hit you, but I didn’t know it was you!”

  Amy tightened her embrace. “The important thing is we’ve got you back.”

  “My ribs!” he rasped, and she loosened her grip. “You’re getting crazy strong, Amy.”

  The euphoria of their reunion vanished as they both remembered the reason for her newfound might. These days, happiness could never be more than a fleeting impression before cold reality returned.

  Amy tried to put on a brave face. “The serum’s amazing — if it wasn’t for the part where you drop dead.”

  Conflicting emotions surged through him: fear for his sister’s life, chagrin at nearly braining her, relief at being rescued, joy at seeing Amy. Dan had resolved to walk away from this Cahill craziness as soon as the Pierce affair was over, but that calculation never quite worked where his sister was concerned. Ever since their parents’ death, the bond between the two orphans had been almost scary. Sometimes it seemed as if they could read each other’s minds. “How did you find me?”

  “We were following Pierce’s plane. So when our pilot said there was some idiot on the runway, I figured it was probably you.” She hugged him back, choking with emotion. “How did you get away?”

  “That’s the weird part. Cara Pierce saved me. At least, she sprang my arms and made it really obvious what I had to do to get out of the plane. You think she wants to change sides?”

  Amy stared at him. “Pierce’s daughter? She’d never change sides! She was born on the wrong side.”

  “I know all that, Amy,” Dan returned. “I also know what I saw.”

  “She’d have to turn against her family and everything she’s been taught to believe since the day she was born,” Amy insisted. “That’s not the Cara Pierce who’s been fighting us tooth and nail since all this began. What else happened on that plane?”

  Dan hung his head. “I messed up. Galt shot me full of truth juice and I sang like Lady Gaga. I let everybody down.”

  “You didn’t —”

  He could not meet her eyes. “Pony sacrificed his life for us, and I couldn’t even keep my big mouth shut.”

  “You were drugged,” Amy said sternly. “Besides, you didn’t tell them anything Pierce didn’t already know. He’s got Olivia’s book and more than enough brainpower to decode it. And if he can’t figure something out, he’s got the world’s greatest hacker on his payroll.”

  “April May. I almost forgot about her — or him.” The notorious computer genius represented herself as female, but online identities could be easily fabricated. “Amy, sometimes I think about what we’re up against, and it’s not fair! I mean, we might have been a match for April May when we still had Pony, but —” The words caught in his throat and he could say no more.

  “I miss him, too,” Amy whispered, squeezing his arm. “Now let’s get back on the plane. Atticus hasn’t stopped yammering since you got kidnapped. He’s really scared.”

  “We all are,” Dan told her meaningfully. “And with good reason.”

  “I’m not afraid anymore,” his sister said honestly. “Maybe that’s just the serum talking — the stuff’s awful, but it definitely clears you
r thinking. The two of us have been squabbling ever since this began, and here’s where it ends. Stopping Pierce is too important. When we fight, we weaken ourselves and strengthen the enemy.” She held out her hand. “Truce?”

  “Truce,” Dan agreed, and they shook.

  She nearly crushed every bone from the wrist down.

  Chapter 5

  A prison was still a prison, regardless of whether or not your jailers appreciated your baking.

  Nellie Gomez stood behind the counter of the commissary of Trilon Labs, Pierce’s secret facility in Delaware, her hair stuffed inside a tall chef’s hat and latex gloves on her hands. She placed a small dessert dish on the tray of the scientist in front of her.

  He regarded it with approval. “Nellie, I’d walk a mile barefoot on broken glass for your tiramisu.”

  “Bon appétit,” she replied brightly. Keep smiling, kiddo, she told herself. Never let them see that you’re plotting against them.

  Three days ago, she’d been posing as a researcher in this place to rescue Cahill scientist — and total hottie — Sammy Mourad. Now she was a prisoner here, exposed as an imposter and forced to serve as Sammy’s lab assistant, manufacturing serum for J. Rutherford Pierce. It had been sheer luck that the cook had gotten sick, and she had volunteered to take over the kitchen. Once the scientists realized they had a French-trained chef on the premises, the job was hers. She could already feel the letup in the security that had smothered her and Sammy. True, the guards were still there. But the guns were holstered instead of pointed at her temple from point-blank range. Now the weapons hung at the sides of men who were hunched over servings of chocolate soufflé. It was a key difference.

  A good soufflé can perform miracles. That was the motto of her cooking mentor in Paris. Nellie had never wanted to believe it more. If a soufflé or a pastry or even a twelve-course dinner could help Amy, Nellie would move heaven and earth to provide it.

  Poor Amy, with only a handful of days left to live. Only the antidote could save her, and the ingredients for that lay scattered to the four corners of the globe. Nellie was powerless to aid her kiddo, and the mere thought of that was soul-shattering. Yet it also strengthened her resolve. Maybe she couldn’t produce the antidote, but she would do her part in this fight against Pierce. And anyone who got in her way would be flattened.

  Another tray slid along the rails, but when Nellie offered a plate, it was rejected. She looked up into Sammy’s dark eyes.

  “What are you doing, Nellie?” he hissed. “They lock us up like rats, and now you’re cooking for them?”

  “Shhhh,” she warned. “The way to people’s hearts is through their stomachs.”

  “Who cares? The squints around here don’t call the shots, Pierce does. And he has no heart.”

  “The more they like my food, the more they’ll trust me. And it’ll be easier for us to — you know” — she scanned the room, noting the various scientists, their assistants, and the guard du jour, who, although focused on his dessert, never completely took his eyes off her — “sterilize the test tubes.”

  Sammy nodded. Sterilize the test tubes was their private code for their ultimate goal — to destroy the lab. It was bad enough that Pierce had been using the Cahill serum to enhance himself, his rotten kids, and his muscle-headed bodyguards. But as the lab accelerated production of the stuff, he’d soon be able to juice thousands of his goons instead of just dozens. That was the purpose of Trilon — the top secret installation in the basement, anyway — and the reason why Sammy had been kidnapped in the first place.

  Lately, though, the scientists had been experimenting with a new formula. The principle involved combining the serum with certain properties of the antidote to create a kind of super-serum. “Franken-serum,” Nellie called it. It would be one-dose, extra powerful, and would avoid all the usual side effects. If the Cahills were to have any chance of derailing the Pierce freight train, Nellie and Sammy had to knock out the lab before the Franken-serum became a reality.

  “We’ll talk later,” she hissed, forcing the plate on him.

  As Sammy headed for a table, she turned her attention to the next person coming along the line. His name was Dr. Jeffrey Callender, head of the Callender Institute in New York City, where Fiske Cahill was a patient. The elderly Fiske was not doing well, and Dr. Callender was the reason why. His institute was testing the serum on poor Fiske — exposing him to dangerously high doses and monitoring the side effects. Callender was in cahoots with Pierce all the way, and the two of them were using the old man as a lab rat.

  “Don’t skip dessert, Jeffrey,” Callender’s lunch partner advised. “Our Nellie is Paris trained.”

  Dr. Callender peered down his long nose at Nellie. “Miss Gomez and I are already acquainted.”

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Doctor,” Nellie said sweetly. It would be an even greater pleasure to take a baseball bat to your lousy head.

  Of course, she couldn’t say that aloud. So when no one was looking, Nellie discreetly spit in a dish of tiramisu before placing it on Callender’s tray. “Enjoy.”

  That was something else she’d learned in Paris.

  According to the tracking beacon on Pony’s computer, the Pierce jet was heading for Siem Reap in Cambodia, the closest airport to the ancient ruins of Angkor.

  “It’s too dangerous to follow them there,” Jake decided. “They’ll arrive with just enough time to set up an ambush.”

  “Let them try,” Amy said brashly. “We can take them.”

  Their eyes locked. Amy was known for keeping a cool head, but that had changed. Now that she felt she could beat the Pierce goons in a fair fight, she seemed to be spoiling for one.

  The two turned to Dan, who looked up in surprise.

  Like it or not, it was his job to make a call on their next move. “Let’s try to avoid a smackdown until we have the antidote. Maybe we can fly into a different airport and make it to Angkor without Pierce’s goons noticing.”

  “There’s something I don’t quite understand,” Ian ventured. “How was Pony tracking Pierce’s plane? He couldn’t have infiltrated the crew and planted a transmitter on board. He was a hacker, not a secret agent.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t tracking the plane at all,” Atticus suggested. “What if he was tracking somebody on it?”

  “However he did it,” Dan said mournfully, “it wasn’t worth the price he paid.”

  Amy was dabbing cream on Dan’s scorched cheek with her left hand, which was less susceptible to her tremors. She paused, and their unspoken grief and regret bubbled up to fill the silence. Pony had joined them willingly. But there was no denying that the gutsy digital cowboy would be alive today if he’d never crossed paths with Amy and Dan.

  “We should get some sleep,” she said quickly. “We’ve got four hours before we land, and I doubt it’s going to be very relaxing after that.”

  Phnom Penh was Cambodia’s capital, and home to the largest airport in the country. Jonah was held up in Passport Control because the customs agents all wanted autographs. But the star was eventually able to convince his fans that he wasn’t planning any Cambodian concert dates or public appearances.

  “I’m just a tourist, yo, checking out your country’s slamming sights,” he assured them.

  At last, with their famous cousin properly hidden behind sunglasses and a baseball cap, the Cahill party emerged from the baggage claim.

  “Guys!” came a familiar voice. “Over here!” It was muscle-bound Hamilton Holt, a head taller and at least sixty pounds heavier than everybody else at the airport.

  “My man!” Jonah reached his cousin first, and the two shared a vigorous embrace that looked more like a wrestling match. They were unlikely best friends — the brawny Tomas and the flashy, artsy Janus — but each would have walked through walls for the other.

  “We’ll need an SUV to fit all seve
n of us,” Amy decided.

  “Not necessary,” Hamilton informed her. “I got us a boat.”

  “Why?” Ian was flabbergasted. “We’re two hundred miles from Angkor!”

  “It’s just as fast,” Hamilton promised. “And it’ll be good to have it once we get there. We’re looking for the Tonle Sap water snake. Guess which river goes all the way from here to Angkor — the Tonle Sap! I picked up some fishing nets. Maybe we’ll get lucky and nab a snake on the trip.”

  “Except that they’re practically extinct!” Ian pointed out.

  “Really?” Hamilton was floored. “How are we supposed to catch one?”

  “Welcome to the world of the Cahills,” Dan sighed in an exhausted tone. “If it isn’t impossible, it isn’t worth doing.”

  Their boat was listed as a “luxury craft,” which meant it had a canvas sun shield nailed to a rotting frame. Its name was the Kaoh Kong, which Dan and Atticus immediately dubbed the King Kong.

  Phnom Penh was located at the intersection of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers. “The boat rental guy drew me a map,” Hamilton explained as the motor roared to life in a cloud of blue oil smoke. “It’s a no-brainer. You head north and hang a left at the fork. After that, it’s a straight shot to Siem Reap and Angkor. What could go wrong?”

  What went wrong was something the “boat rental guy” hadn’t bothered to mention. The Tonle Sap River was a torrent during the monsoon rains. But this was dry season, when the mighty waterway shriveled to a muddy creek. Even at maximum speed, the trip would take at least eight grueling hours in breathless heat and humidity.

  In order to pass the time productively, they took turns casting two nets over the side in the hope that they might snare a water snake. All they caught, however, were a handful of catfish, and a few dead birds.

  Jonah lay beneath the canopy, his arms and legs spread in an attempt to attract what little breeze there was. “I’m not asking for the Queen Mary, but this is medieval.”