Or they might have all been holed up in the underground lair. Unfortunately, I had only one way to find out.
I decided not to wait until ten. It was close enough, and I wasn’t going to get a better time to break in. I rappelled down, unclipped from the rope, and checked my surroundings one last time. Then I grabbed the secret handhold and twisted it.
The hidden door popped open.
The lights weren’t on inside, which seemed to be a good indication that no one was in there. I also couldn’t hear any voices from below. The place was quiet as a tomb.
I slipped inside, shut the door behind me, and fumbled around on the walls until I found a switch. The lights popped on, illuminating the staircase.
I descended quickly, wanting to get in and out as fast as possible. The less time in the lair, the less chance I had of being caught. I hurried past the conference room and the frozen yogurt machine into the main control room.
The four large monitors were off. Without them, the room was dimly lit. I could barely make out the safe on the wall, even though no attempt had been made to conceal it. There was no picture hanging in front of it. It was very obviously a safe door, a square foot of thick steel with an electronic combination lock.
I took the safecracker from my pocket. On the back, a thin strip of plastic covered an adhesive backing, like on the flap of an envelope. I peeled the plastic off and stuck the safecracker just beneath the combination lock. Then I turned it on.
The screen took a few seconds to light up. When it did, it displayed three application icons: rotary combination decryptor, electronic combination decryptor—and MP3 player. Apparently, some agents like to listen to music when safecracking. I opted to stay silent and pressed the icon for the electronic combination decryptor.
The safecracker whirred into action. Fifteen separate images appeared in a row on the screen, one for each piece of the combination. Then the safecracker began to spin through all the possibilities for each of them: not just numbers, but also punctuation marks, symbols, and letters from a variety of alphabets.
Every now and then, one of the fifteen images would freeze, indicating that the safecracker had locked in on the correct symbol: a nine, an ampersand, one of those weird O’s with a line through it that the Swedish like so much. But mostly, the images kept spinning. It took a nerve-rackingly long time.
I decided to check out the rest of the room. It beat sitting there, watching the safecracker work. And, should anyone from SPYDER enter, I’d probably look less suspicious wandering about than I would standing in front of the safe, staring at a decoding device.
When I’d been there before, I’d been so focused on Joshua I hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of the room. It turned out, there wasn’t much to it. Short of the monitors and the couch in front of them, there were only some workspaces around the walls. These all had desks, ergonomic chairs, and jacks for portable computers, but the computers weren’t there; being portable, they were probably with the people who needed them.
The only other item of interest was a large joystick that sat on the coffee table in front of the couch. At least, it looked like a joystick. I’d never seen one like this before. It appeared to be custom-made, with more than a dozen buttons in the base.
I glanced back at the safecracker. Thirteen of the icons had been selected. Only two were still spinning.
And then the fourteenth locked into place.
It was a U. With an umlaut.
I hurried back over to the safe, watching the fifteenth icon spin. And spin. And spin. Whatever icon this was, the safecracker was having a nasty time figuring it out.
But then it began to slow down, sifting through fewer and fewer possibilities, as though narrowing in on the final icon. After thirty seconds, it was down to ten, then nine, then eight . . .
And then all the icons vanished.
I was expecting a nice, resounding click from the safe as the bolt slid open.
Instead, a message appeared on the safecracker’s display: SYSTEM ERROR.
I groaned. However, this wasn’t entirely unexpected. The instructions Erica had given me indicated as much: “There’s a twenty percent chance the thing won’t work. After all, it was built by a government contractor. In this case, rather than rebooting (which probably won’t work either), go with Plan B.”
Plan B was a bit simpler than Plan A. The safecracker wasn’t merely a piece of technology.
It was also an explosive.
However, blowing the door of the safe off was much riskier than cracking the code. It was loud, disruptive, and made a lot of smoke, which meant there was a good chance it would set off either the security or fire alarm. However, my instructions mandated that I proceed with it and hope for the best. I’d already squandered too much precious time.
There was a small red switch on the edge of the safecracker, with a red pin lodged in it to ensure that I didn’t flip the switch by accident when it was in my pocket and blow my legs off. I pulled the pin, then flipped the switch.
The SYSTEM ERROR message disappeared and was now replaced by a timer showing fifteen seconds.
I ran, dove over the couch, then curled into a ball and jammed my fingers in my ears.
The safecracker exploded with a loud bang that echoed throughout the underground lair. But thankfully, no alarms went off.
I peeked over the top of the couch.
The safe door now hung slightly ajar, charred black with wisps of smoke curling up from it.
I raced back over and swung it open.
The safe was empty.
Almost. The external drive I’d seen Joshua place inside it wasn’t there. Nor was anything else, save for a single piece of stationery.
There was a message on it:
Ben—
I guess we can’t trust you after all.
—Joshua
And then the alarms started ringing.
DEMOLITION
SPYDER Agent Training Facility
Secret Underground Lair
September 17
1015 hours
Erica had given me one final instruction:
“If anything goes wrong, get the heck out of there.”
As if I was maybe going to hang out and fix myself a frozen yogurt.
I grabbed the note from Joshua—after all, it was evidence, and I’d gone through a heck of a lot of trouble to get it—and bolted from the room.
It wasn’t only the security alarm that had gone off. The fire alarm had triggered as well. Klaxons were sounding, red lights were flashing, and the sprinklers were spraying, dousing me with water.
I scurried up the spiral staircase, my shoes skidding on the wet steps, and burst through the secret door into the rec center.
Out the windows, I could see down into the residential area. Klaxons were ringing out there as well, and every streetlamp was now flashing red. A pleasant voice kept announcing “Security breach in central control. Security breach in central control.” SPYDER agents were emerging from their tract homes and racing my way up the path through the tennis courts. Some really had been sleeping in; two were in pajamas, while one wore a robe and bunny slippers. I spotted most of my instructors. Mrs. Henderson and Coach G were leading the pack. Neither appeared nearly as kind or friendly as they had during class. Instead, they looked like they’d be happy to do some harm to me.
I couldn’t see Joshua Hallal or Murray Hill among them, but then, I didn’t have the time to take a very close look.
Mr. Seabrook was already inside the rec center. He raced into the room with the rock wall right after I did. Since he’d come directly from the artillery range, he was heavily armed with a semiautomatic, a bandolier of ammo clips, and an assortment of other knives and guns.
All I had to protect myself with was a piece of stationery.
I ducked into the workout room, then dodged through the exercise equipment. I reached the far side just as Mr. Seabrook entered and opened fire. Bullets pinged off the treadmills and
StairMasters behind me.
I veered through the yoga studio and into the bowling alley. This had only two lanes with a small rack of balls to choose from. I grabbed two, assessed Mr. Seabrook’s probable speed and the rate the balls would roll, given their size and my strength, waited two seconds, and then bowled both of them back toward the door, one after the other.
Then I ran again.
From behind me, I heard the sound of Mr. Seabrook barely avoiding the first ball as it came through the doorway, but then yelping as the second one caught him in the shin by surprise. This was followed by the thwack of him landing face-first on the floor, the swoosh of his semiautomatic skittering down the well-waxed bowling alley, and the clatter as it knocked over all the pins.
I’d bought myself a few seconds.
Beyond the bowling alley was the spa. I ducked past the steam room and the sauna to a door marked: EMERGENCY EXIT. USE ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.
This seemed to qualify.
I pushed through it and found myself back in the sunshine. The main residential area—and thus all the SPYDER agents—were now on the far side of the recreation center. However, so was the only exit from Hidden Forest. The entire area I faced was surrounded by the wall, and there was no way I was getting over that.
But I’d come up with a backup plan.
I ran toward the construction zone, hoping I had time to make it across the open ground before all the SPYDER agents showed up.
Erica’s voice spoke in my ear, sounding concerned. Apparently, she’d heard the Klaxons. “Uh, Ben? Has something gone wrong?”
“Yes.”
“On a scale of one to ten . . . ?”
“Twenty-three. My cover’s blown. I’m heading for the eastern wall of the compound with the enemy in pursuit. Can you be there to get me?”
“How soon?”
“Right now would be good.” I was almost to the construction zone.
“We’re on our way,” Erica said. “Er . . . How are you getting over the wall?”
Behind me, Mr. Seabrook staggered out of the rec center. He was armed with one of his emergency backup guns.
“Can’t talk now!” I yelped, ducking behind a newly walled home.
Bullets plugged the stucco behind me.
The construction workers immediately stopped constructing and fled for cover. As Murray had explained, they weren’t evil carpenters. They were merely independent contractors who had no idea they were working for an evil organization. They dropped their tools and scattered. Every one of them steered clear of me, as I was obviously the target Mr. Seabrook was shooting at.
I fled down the dirt path between two unfinished houses, then cut back behind one of them. Through the gaps in the wood frame, I could see several SPYDER agents coming around the side of the rec center, heading my way.
However, directly ahead of me was a bulldozer.
I clambered up the tread and scrambled into the cab. I’d never driven a bulldozer before—or even a normal car, for that matter—but I’d driven some go-karts and at least had a rudimentary idea of how the thing probably worked. Sure enough, there were a gas pedal and a brake along with a trio of joysticks to control it. Most important, the keys were still dangling in the ignition switch. I twisted them, and the engine roared to life.
Through the windshield I saw Mr. Seabrook taking aim.
I dropped to the floor. Bullets shattered the glass above my head and pinged off the metal frame of the cab.
The driver had left his hard hat in the cab. I strapped it on for good measure.
Then I shoved one of the joysticks forward.
The bulldozer didn’t move. Instead, the wide metal blade on the front lifted off the ground.
I hadn’t meant to do this, but it turned out to be a pretty good move anyhow. The blade rose in front of the cab window, deflecting Mr. Seabrook’s shots.
I shoved the other joystick.
Now the bulldozer lurched forward. It didn’t move too quickly at first, only about the speed of my grandmother with her walker. I was momentarily worried—at this rate, the SPYDER agents could catch up to me if they merely sauntered—but then I noticed a switch on the console that had two positions: rabbit and turtle. I flicked it to rabbit.
The bulldozer’s engine revved and the huge machine picked up speed. Not a lot of speed, but at least closer to a run than a crawl.
I twisted the steering joystick toward the wall. The bulldozer pivoted that way.
My intentions suddenly became clear to the pursuing SPYDER agents. They picked up the pace, charging after me.
There was a big, clawlike device on the back of the dozer. I quickly deduced that the third joystick controlled this and raised it to block the back window of the cab. Now, with the blade in front and the claw in back, I was well-protected from gunfire. However, I was also blocking my line of sight. Driving a bulldozer wasn’t easy to begin with. Doing it blind was nearly impossible. Luckily, when you’re driving a bulldozer, it doesn’t really matter if you bang into things, because you can pretty much knock anything out of your way. En route to the wall, I accidentally crushed a wheelbarrow, mulched a pile of lumber, and reduced a portable generator to scrap metal.
Mr. Seabrook was still in pursuit of me, well ahead of the other agents, closing in quickly. Within another fifteen seconds, he’d be even with the bulldozer and have a clear shot into the cab. So I veered into a row of Porta-Potties and flattened them. They popped like water balloons beneath my treads, spewing sewage. Mr. Seabrook was doused by a wave of excrement. He instantly forgot all about hunting me down and ran screaming back toward the rec center, desperate to shower off.
Now all that stood between me and the wall were two newly framed homes. I steered for the gap in between them, which looked wide enough for a bulldozer.
It turned out, the gap was almost wide enough for a bulldozer. But not quite. The blade caught the wooden frames on both sides—then tore right through them. One wooden strut after another splintered, and without their support, the houses quickly began to buckle. The second floors tilted, sending anything that had been stored upstairs tumbling my way: boxes of nails, toolboxes, toilets that hadn’t been installed yet. Some clanged off the metal roof of the dozer, while others fell into its path and were quickly pulverized beneath the treads.
Most of the SPYDER agents who had been racing after me now stopped, fearing that pursuing me through the gap between the tilting homes had become a very bad career move. Only Coach G kept coming. “Move it, you cowards!” he bellowed at the others. “He’s getting away!”
The wall was getting closer, but I still had a few more yards to go, and on both sides of me, the houses were on the verge of collapse. The remaining struts were warping and twisting as they struggled to support the second floors. The wood screeched as it torqued. Some struts ripped free of the foundation while others exploded into toothpicks. Electrical wires snapped. A staircase tore apart. An opossum who’d been living in the rafters of one home tumbled onto the dozer roof and screeched at me angrily.
“Ben! What’s happening over there?” Erica shouted.
“I’m almost to the wall,” I reported. “Just a few more seconds.”
Coach G raced into the gap between the homes behind me. He was taking careful aim with his semiautomatic when a bathtub tumbled out of a second floor and landed on him. Luckily for Coach, the tub landed upside down, so instead of getting crushed, he merely ended up entombed beneath it in the muddy ground.
The bulldozer tore through the last of the struts lining the gap. The moment they went, the houses seemed to give up any hope of remaining upright. Dozens of other struts immediately blew, and the structures came crashing down. They collapsed into the gap with a cacophony of shrieking wood and rending metal. A huge cloud of dust billowed out, enveloping me like a sandstorm. The wall vanished from sight, so I didn’t even see it until the bulldozer slammed into it.
The impact was so hard, I was thrown forward. My hard hat clanged off
the steering wheel. Thankfully, the bulldozer was merely slowed, not defeated. A web of cracks quickly spread through the wall where the blade had hit it. I pressed forward on the joystick, giving the engine all the power it had left.
The wall trembled, then collapsed. The entire section in front of me crumbled like a saltine. On either side, the severed electric wires writhed and sparked like flaming snakes. I was safe inside the bulldozer, though. It rumbled through the hole, and just like that, I was outside the compound.
I’d emerged onto the farm. A field spread before me, rows and rows of lettuce, which the dozer quickly began churning into coleslaw.
Behind me, the SPYDER agents were obscured by the collapsed homes and dust cloud, though I was sure they’d be coming for me soon.
To my left, on the shoulder of the closest road, a recreational vehicle was parked with the engine running. From it, Erica and Alexander Hale were racing toward me. Alexander looked completely stunned by how I’d come through the wall. Erica looked as though she were trying her best not to look stunned.
“Jump!” Erica yelled. “But leave the dozer going!”
I did exactly as ordered, leaping from the moving bulldozer. I tumbled through the lettuce, rolled to my feet, and ran toward the Hales. They grabbed me by the arms and hustled me toward the RV. Behind us, the dozer kept on churning slowly across the field.
Alexander looked very different than he had when I’d last seen him. He’d ditched his usual three-piece suit to go for a tourist vibe, wearing cargo shorts, a baseball cap, and a Hawaiian shirt—even though he was in New Jersey. However, the biggest change was how happy he looked. He seemed invigorated by being on a mission once again, now clean-shaven and grinning from ear to ear. “Well done, Benjamin!” he cried. “Very original! Even I never used a bulldozer to escape an enemy compound! Wasn’t that clever, Erica?”
“It was a bit flashy,” Erica replied. She was wearing her standard outfit, all black and ready for action. Her clothes were skintight, save for her utility belt. As we ran, she kept an eye on the hole I’d made in the wall, waiting for SPYDER agents to emerge through it.