• Does the prison have a back entrance? Down those dark tunnels? We'd need to have light to operate the drones. Would the drones have the power to activate the light switches in the office?
• We still have nothing from B.C. on a map of the prison. They will send us a map of the area, but we have a panoramic view of the area already.
• The drones saw no signs of the cell area being booby-trapped. In a worst case scenario, could we enter the prison from the rear by lasering out a tunnel and have them escape that way? We'd be revealing a lot about our capabilities if we did that. It could take days or even weeks. But how could we do that before FF and the winning bidder arrived? We'd have to capture FF and the winning bidder first. Only as a very last resort?
# # # # # # # #
Nobody had any suggestions how to mount an effective rescue. Mac ordered all teams to scout the area looking for a secret back door. Everyone would comb the area physically, searching for holes, crevasses, and hidden passages. They had until night fall. But at 5 p.m., when everyone was convinced that the mine had no back door, Mac circled one of the bulleted points and told everyone to eat, drink, and rest.
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Chapter 37
Saturday evening, March 10, 8 p.m.
The drones taping FF's dinner conversation with his guest did not turn up any gems of information that were going to help Mac rescue Will and Izzy from that mine. Everybody figured that the guest would be Rick and they were right. He had disguised himself with some body dye so that he had the same coloured skin as B.C. aboriginals, but there was no disguising the nose. However the following tidbits of general information caught everyone's attention – the spiders' output being thrown into the Wilizy's command center for all to see.
Rick said that he wouldn't be using the White Rock entry point any longer. It only made sense to do so when FF was living there. When FF asked how he'd sneak in, FF was reluctant to say. "Now that you're going into retirement, you don't need to know," he said brusquely.
The reason for Rick's bad mood was revealed when he asked if FF had found any potential replacements in the B.C. government who could provide them with inside information. FF said No. With FF retiring, Alberta was losing its only spy and from now on Zzyk would be blind and deaf as far as the B.C. government was concerned. This was the first time that had been the case in twenty odd years. As to Zzyk's sleepers, they had been planted in B.C. to do harm, not to spy. FF said that they were still undetected and living anonymous lives – safe from discovery. Nothing further was said that would give anyone a clue as to who they were or where they were hidden.
FF suggested that if Alberta wanted inside information, they might tap into the sleeper that Alaska had inside the B.C. government. "He's better placed than I was to influence military matters." FF said. "That's not a good idea," Rick replied and the topic was dropped.
Rick warned FF about his intention to sell the B.C. government files that he had taken with him. "We paid for them once and we're not going to pay for them again," he said. When FF suggested that the other bidders might be interested, Rick replied. "When we bought those secrets we did so on the assumption that we would be the only ones to see them. You never said that you'd spread them around. Zzyk's rather annoyed with you right now. Perhaps he'll try to have you killed for real this time."
"I arranged to have all those police spotters murdered in the Biker Wars," Franklin replied. "And even before the war started, I was feeding Zzyk confidential information that his bikers used to find and kill police in the isolated detachments. Zzyk owes me. But he did pay me for stealing B.C.'s secrets, so I'll take them off the market and destroy them."
Rick asked if two certain people were alive and healthy. FF said that they had been given ample food and water. Rick asked if it was possible for either of them to hurt themselves where they were. FF asked, "Why do you care if they're hurt? You're just going to kill them anyway." Rick asked why Alberta had to bid on the right to kill them. FF asked, "Do you really want Alaska getting their hands on Will?"
Rick asked idly about FF's plans for retirement. FF said that he was going to reconcile with his family by revealing that he had always been on their side, but that he had had to operate secretly. He'd use the money to help the family prosper. FF didn't mention that Izzy would be taken off the auction block, nor did he reveal that he was going to start his own family.
# # # # # # # #
After the spiders had left the prison, Will and Izzy just sat on the stone floor, back touching back, the long iron bars of Will's cell between them. At one point, Izzy asked if Will had any ideas for getting out of the cell.
"Easy with the braided ring." Will said.
"A way that wouldn't reveal our secret weapon."
"Then, no."
"Do you have anything on you that could have gotten you out in time?"
"All I had were my boots and the Zorro sword inside the boots," he said.
"Were your boots off when you woke?"
"Yah. He searched me. Found my secret weapon – a rubber sword."
"Let me see?"
# # # # # # # #
"You look like you have a plan," Will said. He was wandering around the cell. Izzy had given him back the sword, a look of satisfaction on her face.
"Part of one. But we need to have our braided rings."
"The Spiders can't carry any weight. TG will figure that out in any test run."
"Is it possible to increase their power?"
"Not without a complete re-design."
"Let's pretend that Hank finds a way to smuggle our weapons into the prison. We're out of our cells in a way that will satisfy Zzyk's curiosity. How do we hide from FF and the people buying us without revealing any of our secrets? Then, how do we escape?"
# # # # # # # #
The first part to the question had been easy. Izzy suggested that they could hide in the tunnels that the spiders hadn't been able to explore. The prison had masses of tunnels and FF wouldn't be able to bring in enough searchers to explore them all. Eventually he'd give up and lock up the prison.
"Still leaves us with having to escape from a secure prison," Will concluded. "Say that we do that with the slings or braided rings, and we reappear in the outside world. Rick's going to wonder how we escaped. We need to have an explainable way."
# # # # # # # #
"How many prisoners do you think were in here at one time?" Izzy asked Will. She was chewing on a food bar and alternately sucking on a bottle of water.
"No idea. Two prisoners per cell? How many cells?"
"Lots. The place is a huge maze. I had to drop papers on my way here so that I wouldn't lose my way."
"Why do you want to know?"
"Just wondering. Hundreds of prisoners; three meals a day. They would have needed a lot of food bars and water."
# # # # # # # #
"How are you doing on that book of humour Wizard gave you for Christmas?" Izzy asked.
"It's interesting. I liked the chapter on clowning. I like being goofy."
"You like making people laugh?"
"Especially little kids. Like Winnie and Liset. I was reading the chapter on pranking when we were kidnapped and then, I was going to move on to puns. Not sure that I like pranks. Kind of mean, sometimes."
"I don't like the mean tricks. Hip checking you into the woods is about as far as I like to go. "
# # # # # # # #
"You ever think about babies, Will?"
"Ours?"
"Yah, ours."
"I thought that I'd like to have two boys at least, and one girl at least."
"You actually thought of that?"
"I did. When I was playing with Winnie, and when Theo and Lucas were trying to outsmart me with their games."
"I'm surprised that you'd ever think of having babies with me; we're always focused on not having any babies."
"I didn't used to. I do now. Do you think of how many babies you'd li
ke?"
"I'd want lots of babies. Like Hank and Yolanda. Did you dream up any baby names?"
"With three kids, I'd name them Franklin, Franklin, and Franklin."
"You have to stop reading that joke book, Will. It's corrupting your mind."
# # # # # # # #
They were back to sitting on their pads, blankets around their shoulders, backs up against the cell bars, and talking. Izzy had retrieved her own blanket some hours ago.
"Do you think this war is going to end in time for us to have babies, Will?"
"This war could be over for us tonight, you know that Izzy."
"If Franklin has a bunch of explosives in the mine, and somebody makes a mistake, he could bring the mountain down on us. We shouldn't talk about that, Will."
"I did think about it though. Also thought about me being taken off somewhere and you being killed. They'd give me my own physics lab. There are lots of ways to have fatal accidents in a physics lab. They'd never be able to stop me."
"You'd do that?"
"Yah. Did you think about the mountain falling?"
"Not the mountain, but I knew that lots of people would want to buy you. I thought of a way I could bargain for your life to be spared."
"How?"
"Franklin likes me, Will. He really, really likes me."
"You'd do that?"
"Yah. He'd take me away somewhere, but you'd be alive."
"I wouldn't want to be alive without you with me, Izzy." Will's left hand snuck through the bars and found Izzy's right hand. She squeezed it.
"I wouldn't want to be alive without you with me, Will." The other two hands found each other.
They stayed that way for a while.
"Is this what true love is?" Izzy asked.
Will started to speak, couldn't, but choked out these words. "Some day I'm going to propose to you, Melissa Stanley. Not here. Not now. But some day."
Izzy managed to strangle out her reply. "I'll say, Yes."
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Chapter 38
From Izzy's journals: Sunday morning, 2 a.m.
I was reading Franklin's manifesto while Will was hanging off the bars in his cell, grunting like a gorilla.
"How's this?" the gorilla asked.
I looked up. Will was hanging from the top of the wall of his cage and facing towards the hallway. Two hands were on one of the bars while one foot was placed squarely on a bar to the left, the other foot was placed squarely on a bar to the right. He was resting for the moment. Previously he had been tugging and pulling on the center bar; the sound effects were for my entertainment.
"Not bad," I said. He was asking about the bar. I was talking about the view. Will had stripped off his white Zorro shirt some time ago and sweat was poring off his face and chest. I hadn't realized that Will had kept up with his gymnastic exercises. He said that whenever he had a moment or five, he'd throw a bar into the sky and have a work out. His chest is big now; thick muscles. It wouldn't surprise me if he could actually pull that bar out of its socket in a month or two. He wouldn't have to if we had our weaponry. We were just painting a picture of how he had escaped from his cell. If we ever figured out how to get him out of the cell. Speaking of pictures, I'd like to have a picture of Will right now.
"The bars, Izzy?"
I looked further up. I could see little gaps around the top of the bar and its rock ceiling that it was drilled into; could see crumbles of rock on the floor of the cell. "That should be good now, oh gorilla friend of Tarzan." For the life of me, I couldn't remember Tarzan's gorilla friend's name. Cheetah, I remembered. This was not a Cheetah moment.
Will climbed down and wiped himself off with his shirt. That shirt is toast, I thought. Everything we were wearing was toast, but that shirt was going directly into the fire. Both of us were sticky and smelly. Our breaths reeked. I hadn't noticed it when we had kissed after Will had said that he'd propose. New definition for true love: True love is when you can exchange deep searing kisses with your almost-a-fiancé after more than a week of not brushing your teeth and not notice a thing. Really. Not a thing. Will had said the same.
Will picked up his shirt, planning to put it on I guess, but smelled it and thought better of it. He threw it down on top of the rubber handle that I had pulled off his sword. The rubber blade itself was in a corner of the cell. "You should read this manifesto, Will. FF has actually signed every page."
"You've probably read every page to me already, haven't you?"
"Pretty much." I had left out the stuff about Yolanda. I wasn't going to allow anyone to read that.
I had discovered the manifesto when I had gone back to my cell for my blanket. On the way there and back, I had wandered around a bit, wondering how we could get up to ground level and saw the basket elevator that appeared to be the only way out of the mine. If we had our slings, we could fly up to the ground floor easily. For a regular prisoner, that basket elevator was impossible to reach from below. The ground floor was a very long way up. And you couldn't climb up to the ground floor. You could climb part way up a wall if you were lucky to find hand and foot holds, but when it came time to cross the dome, forget it.
I had found the manifesto in an open cell. Franklin had just tossed things into it as he went by which is why I never heard any change in his footsteps. The cell had the manifesto, all the B.C. secrets he had stolen, plus Franklin's money. Big heavy bags of gold coins. Some paper currency as well.
In his manifesto, Franklin had said that he had been able to figure out when Yolanda became pregnant from their regular reports. He had given me those reports for my reading pleasure when he left. I studied them carefully. Saw lots of stuff that had been misunderstood. I put the reports in a pile that I was going to take with me. Tossed the manifesto on that pile too. Saw some lights coming towards me from way down in the dark tunnel that lead to who knew what. Somebody now knew. "The tooth fairy is arriving," I said to Will.
"Hope she brought some toothpaste," he said.
# # # # # # # #
Tooth paste had not been on the list. Slings, weaponry and pinky ring computers were on the list. Plus a whole lot of information on what was happening outside. Delivered by Winnie of all people. Mac was in charge now and she had figured that the dark tunnels would be a maze but Fifi's nose would save the day. Patella was in her own sling, top off, and was floating at Winnie's knee when they arrived. Winnie was floating too and pushing Patella forward as necessary. They were wearing a multitude of pinky rings that were illuminating the way. Winnie said that great big deep mine shafts were sprinkled all the way through the tunnels they had used. Some mine shafts were so wide that they took up the entire path. Franklin had mentioned in his manifesto about putting some of his prisoners into the dark part of the prison and they'd disappear. He deliberately left them there, incapacitated, knowing that they'd fall down a shaft.
Winnie was very sleepy. She said that Mac had woken everyone up at 1 a.m. after she had figured out how to get into the mine. Winnie hadn't felt scared about Scout Team #2 being given this assignment because Patella was with her, plus they had all the light they needed. She said that she wouldn't have liked being all alone down in the mine with all the lights off. I agreed. We returned to where she had entered the mine and I repeated my Hansel and Gretel act on the way, but this time from my sling.
When I reached the entrance Winnie had used, I saw why she had been sent. Only tiny Winnie could have gotten in. I waved as she and Patella left to go back to their beds. Tried communicating with the outside world; it worked; spent a lot of time planning with Mac.
Mac had formed a Scout team #2? Really?
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Chapter 39
Narrator, early Sunday morning, B.C. time.
True to her word, Granny had set up a continuous communication feed between her and Lucas during his pirate attack. From this, Lucas' words and the replies of his brother were taped and re-broadcast to the en
tire Wilizy team when they awoke. I have taken those tapes along with the accounts of the battle from the boys' own words to give you the following description of what happened in North Korea. Remember the time difference. Lucas was attacking at night, but it was early Sunday morning, B.C. time.
# # # # # # #
The North Korean freighter had been fully loaded by 6 p.m. North Korean time and had left port at dusk heading out into the Pacific Ocean. The loading hadn't taken long. But, this port was probably the last in a long series of pick-ups. Lucas figured that this would be a good thing; the crates of brain-bands that they were going to steal would be at the top of the hold in case they didn't have time to unload the full cargo.
Theo reported that the light ship was still stationed in the mid-Pacific. Lucas was no longer worried about the ship interfering, but the ship's airplanes were a different matter. If they could fly at supersonic speeds, and if the North Korean freighter had the means to call for help, the planes could be overhead while the boys were unloading the freighter. Lucas figured that the earlier he could attack the freighter, the further they'd be from the light ship and the safer they'd be. There'd be a full moon tonight, rising at 9:00. That's when Lucas would attack. He wanted the moonlight to be sure that the freighter crew and their life boats were leaving the scene. It wouldn't do for the Korean crew to hang around and discover that four boys under the age of 12 were unloading their ship.
Lucas set the invisible Wilizy/Asia down into the water at about 8:30. The waters were reasonably calm and the ship rose and fell gently with the waves. He matched speeds with the freighter and gradually closed the distance so that the Wilizy's broadsides would reach easily. The freighter was a sailing ship, of course, but it might have modern armaments. If anything like that showed up, Lucas had instructed Theo to take out the freighter's defenses with his first shots. Theo had control of bow sweeper cannon that had been adjusted so that it could fire as part of the Wilizy's broadside, or separately if necessary.
All of Wilizy's cannons could be fired from the Wilizy control center. The lids to the gun ports were similarly controlled. Lucas had arranged pinky ring computers in each gun port so that when the lids were raised, the crew on the freighter would see the cannons clearly. The lights were programmed to flicker, like the matches that would light the gunpowder in the cannons. Although the ship would rise and fall with the waves, Lucas didn't have to worry about firing on the up-wave or the down-wave. For the broadsides, the Wilizy was firing lasers that would sound and feel like cannon balls. Theo's cannon balls on the bow sweeper were laser guided.