The Stowaway Solution

  Will she have the mental toughness to handle it?

  His one comfort was the fact that eleven-year-old Meg had more toughness in her pinky toe than he would ever have in his entire body.

  His barrel rattled as the forklift jounced over the uneven tarmac. Desperately, he braced his arms against the sides and tried to push down. The drums were not fastened. They were supposed to be anchored by the weight of their contents. If the bumpy ride knocked over his hiding place, there he’d be, hunkered over on his skid, trying to pass for forty-two gallons of chili oil. It was a mind-numbing thought. He could only hope that Meg knew enough to try to keep her barrel in place.

  All at once, the motion stopped, and a large bump told him that his skid had been set down. He could hear the jokes and small talk of the dockworkers just inches away, and he held his breath and prayed.

  Is this it? Am I on the boat?

  Suddenly, the skid shot up into the sky as if propelled by a jet pack. It soared and rocked as the crane lifted it high over the Port of Los Angeles. When Aiden dared to open his eyes, a horrifying sight greeted them. Light was coming in from below. Through the framework of wooden slats, he could make out small figures on the dock.

  And if I can see them, they can see me!

  He hung there, clinging to the walls of the drum, willing the dockworkers not to look up. Amazingly, none did. The skid swung in a wide arc out over the pier and the Samantha D and was lowered at dizzying speed into a darkened place.

  Heart nearly jumping out of his chest, Aiden realized that he was on board in the ship’s cargo hold. Now all he had to do was wait — and pray for Meg.

  * * *

  Meg crouched in the black prison of the barrel, listening to the thrum of the ship’s engine and the lapping of the sea against the hull.

  The Samantha D had been under way for about an hour, she guessed, but that didn’t mean it was safe to come out. There had been crew members working in the hold up until a few minutes ago, securing the cargo. Now, at last, the coast seemed to be clear.

  She and Aiden had talked a lot about stowing away but not at all about what to do once they’d made it this far.

  Aiden. Had he made it aboard? Was he coming out of his barrel right now to look for her? She had to believe it because the alternative was just too awful to contemplate.

  She needed to see his face, to throw her arms around him and hold him tight. And when she was through hugging him, she was going to punch his stupid head in! The next time he got a half-baked idea to follow in Mac Mulvey’s footsteps, he could count her out!

  She would never forgive him for the misery, discomfort, and sheer terror of being loaded onto the Samantha D. When that crane had yanked her halfway to the moon, leaving her stomach on the ground —

  Let it go, she soothed herself. It’s over. Time to get out from under this thing and find your brother.

  She leaned against the back of the cask to raise the front. It would not budge.

  The explosion of panic nearly took her consciousness. The barrel’s heavy, but not that heavy! Up on the crane, it took all my strength to keep it from falling off!

  She tried again, but there was no movement. It was as if the steel had been melded to the pallet beneath her feet.

  She felt the round walls of the drum closing in on her. She was trapped, stuck in here all the way to Seattle! How many days was that? She had no food, no water! She would have to pound on the side of the barrel and scream for the crew to rescue her! She wouldn’t die, but she’d be caught.

  She lowered her shoulder and rammed it into the steel with all her strength. Nothing. Not even a hiccup.

  How is that possible?

  Sixty feet to her left, on the opposite side of the cargo hold, a drum shifted, then tilted. Two eyes looked furtively out, sweeping the semi-dark area for sailors. Satisfied there were none, Aiden squeezed himself out of the cask, careful to set it back down quietly on its skid.

  He massaged the cramped muscles in his legs, apprehensive and a little disappointed. Knowing his impulsive sister, he’d half expected to find her already tapping on barrels and demanding to know if he intended to stay in there all night.

  I’d better go find her.

  He stepped off the skid — and fell five feet straight down to the steel deck of the hold. He was more shocked than hurt. Looking up, he realized what had just happened to him. The skids had been double stacked. He had just walked off the upper level.

  Look on the bright side, he told himself. It’s a good thing my skid didn’t end up on the bottom row, under a ton of chili oil.

  All at once, he realized, or thought he did, why Meg had not been waiting to greet him when he emerged from his cocoon. She was under there somewhere, trapped. And, God help him, he wasn’t even sure he could get her out.

  It took an hour just to find her. He didn’t dare make any noise, so his options were reduced to going from skid to skid, barrel to barrel, tapping lightly, searching for the drum that would tap back.

  Poor Meg was so terrified that she didn’t even dare reply for fear the tapper was not her brother. It was the hollow sound that told Aiden he had found the right one.

  “Meg!” he whispered. “Is that you?”

  “Aiden!” came her muffled voice. “I can’t get out! The barrel won’t move!”

  “I know,” he told her. “There’s another skid piled on top of you.”

  There was a pause, then, “I guess Mac Mulvey never thought of that.”

  Aiden was almost grateful for the jab. It meant that Meg was still Meg.

  “Listen, I’m going to try to push the barrel off the skid. But you’ll have to help me, okay?”

  He heard fear in her voice. “I don’t know which way to push. It’s pitch-black in here, Aiden! It’s like being in a coffin!”

  “Just follow my lead,” he soothed. “When you feel the barrel moving, heave along with me.”

  At first it was like trying to move a building off its foundation. Aiden’s muscles were stiff from twelve hours of crouching in a drum. He was weak from lack of food and water and exhausted from lack of sleep.

  He tried to “walk” the drum forward, the way he and Meg had moved the full ones in the warehouse. But the weight from above made that impossible.

  He threw his head back to howl his frustration to the world and caught himself just in time, almost choking on the sound he must not make. Stark terror flooded over him. He had very nearly brought the entire crew belowdecks to investigate. With the panic came the adrenaline, and that lent him hidden reserves of strength. The barrel began to slide. A few seconds later, he was slumped across it, completely spent. But the mouth of the drum had moved halfway off the skid.

  Meg was thin and lithe, but she would never know a tighter squeeze. There was a six-inch gap between the pallet and the deck. Her feet and legs came through first, and that was pretty painless. Her upper body was tougher going. It took Aiden, yanking on her legs with all his might, to force her head through that tiny space. Her cheek was scraped raw and bleeding. Tears streamed down her face, but she uttered not one whimper.

  In the real world, they would have rushed to the nearest hospital for first aid. Here, Meg just dried her eyes and mopped up the blood with the hem of her T-shirt. They managed to jam the barrel back into place.

  Having escaped from the cargo, they burrowed right back into it. The drums were lined up with almost military precision, but there were still openings between the pallets where a body could lie in hiding. Both had to position themselves on their sides, curled around a barrel.

  “I hope you remember the way out of here,” Meg murmured. “I didn’t go through all this to be lost in a maze of stink oil.”

  “It won’t be forever,” Aiden promised.

  Meg nodded, exhausted. “How long does it take to get to Seattle?”

  “The sign on the pier gave an ETA of noon Thursday. That’s a little less than two days. But there’s no way we can stay down here that long.”
r />   She looked at him dubiously. “Why not? Have we been invited to movie night with the crew?”

  “For food,” he told her, growing annoyed with her sarcasm. “We haven’t eaten in a day and a half. We’ll never make it to Seattle unless we get some sustenance — at least some water.”

  “I’m starving,” she agreed. “But we can’t just raid the kitchen like this is sleepaway camp.”

  “I’ve already thought of that,” said her brother. “A ship has to have lifeboats. That’s the law. And shouldn’t lifeboats be stocked with food and water?”

  She eyed him with suspicion. “Did you think of that, or did it come from Dad’s book?”

  “That one came from me,” Aiden swore. “I mean, it’s only reasonable, right? What would you put in a lifeboat — bricks?”

  “I’d put Frank Lindenauer,” Meg said readily. “And a tape recorder. And as soon as he admitted how he framed Mom and Dad, I’d set the boat on fire.”

  Aiden sighed. Here in the forest of chili oil, Frank Lindenauer seemed as remote as the planet Pluto. Sure, Aiden realized that bringing in the traitor was their ultimate purpose. But there were so many steps between the cargo hold of the Samantha D and that goal — making it to Seattle; sneaking ashore; finding a way to Denver; picking up the trail of HORUS Global; and hoping that it led to Lindenauer. Throw Agent Harris into the mix — he certainly wasn’t going to back off. And Hairless Joe, the mysterious bald assassin who had followed them across three thousand miles —

  One day at a time, he thought. One hour at a time. In the past weeks, it had often come down to minute by minute, second by second.

  Midnight in the hold. Only deep space could be darker.

  The Falconers had tried to get some sleep while waiting for their chance to sneak out to the lifeboat. But Meg had found her eyes simply wouldn’t close. One reason was the uncomfortable position of lying on a hard wooden pallet, squeezed between steel barrels. The hunger pangs and parching thirst didn’t help, either. Most of all, Aiden and Meg were both too keyed up to relax.

  At last they worked their way out of the cargo. Meg was amazed at how much she could suddenly see. A three-quarter moon barely showed through the thick cloud cover, but hours in the black velvet labyrinth of drums had boosted their night vision.

  The only way out of the hold was a metal ladder built into the bulkhead. They climbed with extreme caution, Aiden in the lead. He peered out over the main deck.

  Meg held her breath, waiting for her brother’s report. If the coast wasn’t clear now, with the majority of the crew in their bunks, then it never would be.

  Aiden ducked back down. “I don’t see anybody on deck,” he whispered. “But there must be a team on the bridge.”

  “Will they spot us?” Meg asked nervously.

  “Not if they’re keeping their eyes on the road,” was Aiden’s reply. “But maybe we should wait — ”

  “No chance,” Meg interrupted. “We go now, before we can talk ourselves out of it.”

  Two twelve-foot-long lifeboats hung above the gunwale on either side of the ship, just forward of the hold. The starboard one was closer. Aiden and Meg heaved themselves on deck and scampered through the dark shadows.

  Meg got there first. She climbed up on the rail, threw open the covering tarpaulin, and slipped beneath it. Then she reached down a hand and helped Aiden in beside her. The entire operation, so much dreaded, was over in seconds.

  They crouched there for a long moment, waiting to hear the outcry of “Intruders on board!” It didn’t come.

  “We made it,” Aiden breathed.

  Meg nodded. “Now let’s eat.”

  The lifeboat’s provisions were sealed in a large waterproof duffel in the prow. The half-starved Falconers tore eagerly through the plastic shell, coming up with the bottled water first. They drank greedily. It was warm, and twenty-four hours of breathing chili oil fumes gave everything an odd, spicy taste. But to Aiden and Meg, it had just bubbled straight out of the purest spring at the North Pole. Nothing had ever been so refreshing.

  They turned their attention to the food next. There were a lot of energy bars and high-protein snacks like nuts and raisins. Large shrink-wrapped packages contained prepared meals to serve ten — beef Stroganoff, mac and cheese, chili con carne, and chicken goulash.

  Aiden held up a compact aluminum saucepan with a foldout handle. “There’s a Sterno stove, too,” he whispered. “And matches. I think you put these pouches in boiling water.”

  “Let’s not and say we did,” grinned Meg, ripping into the Stroganoff.

  The Falconers dug into the cold, salty feast, using plastic spoons to savor every bite of unheated meat and congealed gravy. For dessert, they stuffed themselves with M&M trail mix and washed it down with more bottled water.

  Aiden leaned back with a contented sigh and patted his stomach. “Remember Thanksgiving dinner?”

  Meg emitted the kind of rolling burp that was considered a great compliment in many world cultures. “Dad’s roast turkey. Mom’s mashed potatoes. Pumpkin pie — ”

  “Well, this was better,” he said positively. “Not more fun. Just better.”

  “We never appreciated those times,” Meg commented. “The two of us fought through every course of those dinners.”

  “Who knew that your whole life could be taken away with the bang of a judge’s gavel?”

  They lapsed into a melancholy silence, broken eventually by Meg’s yawn. “You never did tell me how Mac Mulvey survived on that ship all the way from Africa.”

  “Don’t ask,” Aiden replied, his words slurred. The forces of fatigue acting on the brother and sister were all coming together — sleeplessness, a place to lie down, and suddenly-full stomachs after a long fast.

  The onset of drowsiness was so unexpected, so overwhelming, that neither could even think to fight it.

  “You wouldn’t believe it anyway …” Aiden tried to continue.

  By the time the mumbled sentence trailed off, both Falconers had fallen into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  * * *

  The side of the hanging lifeboat lurched, tossing Meg up against her brother. Their heads connected with a sharp thwack, and they both came awake with a start.

  “What the — ?”

  Aiden clamped a hand over his sister’s mouth.

  Full daylight streamed in through the draped edges of the tarp. They had slept all the way through the remainder of the night. Now they were trapped in this lifeboat, suspended above the deck of a busy working ship.

  But why are we bouncing around like Ping-Pong balls?

  The answer came in the form of a gust of wind that plucked at the tarp covering them. Stealthily, Aiden peeked out of the canvas on the ocean side. Whitecaps were everywhere, reaching up for the lowering sky. The Samantha D bucked like a bronco, riding the breaking swells. A cascade of spray hit Aiden in the face. He dropped the tarp and backed away from the edge.

  “What’s going on?” Meg demanded.

  “Rough seas,” Aiden whispered. “It probably feels worse to us because this lifeboat’s hanging on pulleys.”

  She was alarmed. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Shhhh! We can’t. There are sailors all over the deck.” She looked terrified, so he added, “It’s not the end of the world. We can hide here as easily as in the hold. We just can’t make any noise — and that means none.”

  The boat heaved again, and she groaned. “I can’t stay here — I get seasick!”

  Aiden, who had known her all her life, looked dubious. “Since when?”

  “Since the fifth-grade boat trip on the Chesapeake. I was the only kid who barfed.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that while we were still on dry land?” he demanded.

  “Would it have made any difference?” she hissed back. “This was the only way out of LA.”

  “Listen,” said Aiden. “The minute it gets dark, we’ll sneak back to the hold. Meanwhile, hang on tight. And try not to throw up.
Somebody might notice the smell. There’s a first aid kit in here. I’ll see if there’s anything for motion sickness.”

  The kit had no seasickness remedy. It did, however, contain an antibiotic cream, which he applied to the scrapes and cuts on his sister’s face.

  As the ship pitched and tossed, they settled in to do battle with landlubbers’ nausea — knowing all the while that a little queasiness was the least of their worries.

  The crash came just after thirteen hundred hours. It was followed by a random clatter, all coming from the hold.

  Seaman Emilio Lopez was the first down the ladder, noting with some relief that the cargo seemed well battened down. So what was the noise that sounded like a bull had gotten loose in a china shop?

  The clatter came again, and Lopez ducked his head just in time. A loose barrel came flying through the air, missing him by inches. Lithe and quick, he cornered it against a bulkhead and held it there, shouting for assistance.

  Crewmen came climbing down into the hold and helped secure the wayward drum.

  First Mate Rod Bergeron was the last one on the scene. His observation cut right to the heart of the matter: “Why is that barrel empty?”

  They searched the hold but could not find the missing lid or any spilled chili oil.

  “Take a stick and tap on all these barrels,” Bergeron instructed. “Make sure we don’t have any other empties. I’m going up to the comm room.”

  “What is it, Mr. B?” asked Lopez.

  “Probably just a cargo snafu,” the first mate replied. “But I’m going to radio the company. See if anything of ours got left behind.”

  Twenty minutes later, Bergeron was in the conning tower, talking on ship-to-shore with the manager of storage facility 13-Bravo in the Port of Los Angeles. Sure enough, his crew had located two full drums of chili oil, labels removed, among the empties.

  “Two drums?” Bergeron repeated. He reached for a walkie-talkie. “Mr. Lopez, we think there might be another dummy down there.”

  “Just found it, Mr. B. Same as the first — empty, with no lid. We’re looking for more.”