by Sam Hay
“There’s still time,” Quigley said. “Look, that’s the microphone.” He twisted it toward Jackson. “Speak into it.”
Jackson took a deep breath. “This is, um—Control Hub to Bryn Rockflopper. Stop robbing that safe immediately!”
Instantly the flippers on the screen froze.
“It’s working,” Quigley whispered.
“Put all the money back in the safe!” Jackson said, holding his breath and staring at the screen.
“He’s doing it!” Quigley said. “Look! His buddies are helping, too.”
More loud thumps on the truck sled doors made him and Jackson jump. The penguins outside were yelling and cursing now. They began to rock the truck sled.
Jackson braced himself against the control desk, then leaned into the microphone again. “When you have put the money back inside the safe,” he told his uncle, “close the safe door and return to the truck sled. Hurry!” he added as the truck sled bounced wildly again.
“Jackson!” Quigley shouted. “Your backpack’s bleeping.”
“What? No, not the FBI radio!” Jackson grabbed the bag. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Disaster!” Jackson gasped. “If the FBI comes now, they’re going to think we’re part of the robbery. No way will they believe that we’re trying to stop it.”
“That means Blow Frost will get away with everything!” Quigley said. “What are we going to do?”
Jackson ran his flipper through his crest. He stood up from the control panel and gritted his beak. “The only thing we can do—escape!”
18
“You can drive, right?” Quigley said, as he and Jackson peered over at the front seats of the truck sled.
“Not exactly.” Jackson scratched his crest. “But, hey, how hard can it be? Grown-ups do it all the time, and I haven’t played one adult at Flipper Cart Racing on the Icebox who can beat me. I never crash— Whoa!” he yelled as the truck sled rocked sideways again. “Sheesh! Those penguins must be super mad.”
“Here comes your uncle!” Quigley said, pointing out the window. He leaned over to unlock the doors. But before Uncle Bryn reached them, the two baddie penguins barged in. “Hey—no, get off me!” Quigley yelled as the one with a curly crest grabbed his flippers.
The second penguin, smaller but stockier and smelling of krill chili, dived for Jackson. “Gotcha!” he growled.
Jackson managed to slip out of his flippers and grab the microphone again. “Agent Rockflopper!” he shouted into it. “Come to the truck sled immediately! You and your colleagues need to flipper-cuff the two rotten Frosters penguins attacking me and my friend! And whatever they say, DO NOT listen to any more instructions from any penguin wearing a Frosters cap— Ahhh! Get off!”
“I’ll teach you to try and steal our truck sled,” the stinky penguin muttered.
Jackson felt a bubble of anger balloon in his belly. Got to use some moves from the Secret Agent’s Guide to Unarmed Flipper-to-Flipper Combat, Jackson told himself. Time to unleash the “peck, flick, and run” move.
The peck part worked. Jackson pulled off his clothespin and beak-biffed the baddie in the belly. The flick bit was pretty awesome, too. Jackson flipper-flicked him in the eye. But the run part was an epic fail on account of the bad-breathed penguin being so angry by then that he clamped his flippers around Jackson and squeezed.
Jackson yelped as the breath shot out of his lungs. “I’m not a tube of beak paste!” he wanted to shout, but there was no air left in his chest to speak. But then—
“Unhand that hatchling!” Bryn and his two colleagues dived into the back of the truck sled and began wrestling with the two Frosters baddies.
Jackson felt a wave of relief wash over him. This was the Uncle Bryn he knew—fighting bad guys, making everything better.
“Wow, this is some party!” Lily said, peeking in through the door. “I think we’re going to go now. Hey, what’s that noise?” She glanced behind her. “Um—Jackson, there are some serious-looking sleds heading your way.”
Jackson dodged around the wrestling grown-ups and poked his head through the truck sled door. Six shiny black sleds were speeding into the parking lot. “The FBI! We’ve got to go! Thanks so much for your help, Lily. I promise we’ll make it up to you.” Jackson ducked back inside and slipped into the front seat of the truck sled. He turned the ignition key and the engine chugged to life.
“Yeah, thanks, Lily. You guys were awesome,” Quigley said, pulling the door of the truck sled closed. He slipped past the grown-ups, who were still shouting and wrestling and bouncing around in the back of the truck.
“Just give me a second,” Jackson said as Quigley slid into the seat next to him. He was gazing at the driver’s panel, a wave of panic sweeping through his feathers. If only he had an Icebox controller.
“Hey, isn’t that your mom out there?” Quigley said.
Jackson glanced through the windshield and felt his feathers freeze. There, head down, feet flapping, flipper-cuffs swinging from her belt, was Jackson’s mom, coming straight for them. Jackson gulped. Please don’t spot me, please don’t spot me. He shimmied down into the footwell of the driver’s seat, scrunching himself as low as he could go to avoid her glare.
“She looks mad!” Quigley said. “But don’t worry, I’ve got a plan to get us out of here. I just igloogled ‘How to operate dangerous criminal ice cream truck sleds’ and found a video on my icePad. See?” He turned the screen around to show Jackson, then flipped it back. “Just hit the right-hand pedal and put the gearshift into drive—yep, exactly like that— Whoa!”
The truck sled lurched forward, nearly knocking Jackson’s mom over. Jackson spun the wheel hard to the left, and they just had time to see her face go Great White as she locked eyes with Jackson before they whizzed past her and out of the parking lot.
“Maybe she didn’t see you,” Quigley said.
“She saw me!” Jackson gasped, spinning the wheel to the right and screeching around the corner. “Didn’t you see her face? Sheesh!” He shuddered. “She’s gonna go off the Shark Scale when she catches up with me. What’s happening back there?” he added. “It’s awfully quiet.”
Quigley twisted around and leaned into the back to check. “Good news,” he said, slid-ing back into place a moment later. “Your uncle’s got them cuffed and strapped in, and he even put clothespins on their beaks to keep them quiet.”
“Awesome,” Jackson muttered.
“Yeah, but I think we’re being followed,” Quigley added, pointing to the side mirror. “Looks like the FBI is on our tail, and hey—is that your mom?”
Jackson glanced in his mirror and felt his belly turn to liquid. “Festering fin feathers!” he spluttered. “She’s riding my bike!” He hit the accelerator pedal and the truck sled shot forward.
“Err, where exactly are we going?” Quigley asked, holding on to the door handle because the truck sled was whizzing along like a Formula 1 racer.
Jackson shrugged. He hadn’t quite worked out that bit of the escape plan yet. Driving in a straight line seemed to be enough of a battle right now. “Sorry!” he shouted as several old-age penguins in a pedestri-penguin crosswalk had to jump back onto the sidewalk to avoid being mowed down.
“I don’t want to worry you,” Quigley said. “But I think two more FBI sleds have joined the posse.” Quigley peered in his mirror again. “And I have no idea how your mom is keeping up.”
“Bionic legs,” Jackson muttered. He’d always suspected his mom was part cyborg.
As they whizzed around the next corner, a loud buzzing came from the dashboard and a crackly voice sounded:
“This is Frosters Control Room to Truck Sled X. Can you hear me? We seem to have lost contact; please confirm your position.”
Jackson’s eyes narrowed. “Frosters!” he breathed. “Of course! Frosters Factory! That’s where we’re going!”
“We are?” Quigley raised his eyebrows.
“Yep.” Jackson gripped the steering w
heel more tightly. “And we’re taking the FBI with us. We’re going to lead them straight to Blow Frost. Once we’re inside the factory, we’ll be able to show them the secret laboratory and the weird brain-freezing ice cream and prove Uncle Bryn is innocent!” Jackson pointed to a walkie-talkie on the dash. “Can you hold that thing up toward me?” he said. “Yeah, a bit closer.” He took a deep breath: “THIS IS TRUCK SLED X,” Jackson shouted into the walkie-talkie. “We’re on our way back to base and we have an urgent delivery for Mr. Blow Frost. Please have him standing by for our arrival!”
“Wow!” Quigley flipped off the walkie- talkie. “Neat plan—” Then, “Uh-oh,” he added, glancing out of Jackson’s window. “We’ve got company!”
Jackson followed his stare and looked straight into the face of an FBI penguin. The FBI sled he was riding in had pulled up level with them.
“PULL OVER!” the FBI penguin shouted through a megaphone. “Or we will force you off the road.”
Jackson put his foot down on the accelerator and the ice cream truck sled zoomed forward, nearly smacking into the back of a dumpster truck ahead of them. “Ahhh!” Jackson veered onto the other side of the road to overtake it, narrowly missing a bus coming the other way.
“Whoa!” Quigley breathed. “Awesome driving!”
“Thanks. We’re nearly at the docks now— Wait—what’s that sign saying?” Jackson hit the brakes and slowed down. A stoplight was showing up ahead, and traffic had begun to line up behind it.
“Roadwork!” Quigley groaned. He glanced in his mirror. “And here comes the FBI again.”
“But if we stop now, they’ll arrest us and Blow Frost will get away with it all. There’s got to be another way.” Jackson took his foot off the accelerator, looking desperately for a place to turn off the highway.
“Hold on one minute—” Quigley was peering at the dashboard. “If we can’t go around them,” he muttered, “maybe we can go over them! Don’t you remember what my dad said about the gear system he’d installed in a fleet of ice cream truck sleds? The hopper gear.”
“But we don’t even know if it was for Frosters,” Jackson said.
“There!” Quigley pointed to a small red button at the bottom of the dash. “If I was putting a hopper gear into a truck sled, I’d put the control in exactly that place. It’s gotta be the right button.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Jackson glanced in his mirror. The FBI sleds were right behind them now. And so was his mom.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Quigley grinned.
Jackson took a deep breath and wished for the best. “I hope your dad doesn’t put self- destruct buttons on his inventions.” He gritted his beak. “Okay. Let’s do this!”
Then he hit the button.
19
Quigley shut his eyes. Jackson held his breath. And the grown-ups in the back (minus the still-zombified Uncle Bryn and his two colleagues) let out a loud but muffled OMG as the truck sled shot skyward, up and over the traffic, bunny-hop style.
Jackson gripped the steering wheel, his eyes popping. The hopper gear had worked! They were now soaring over the line of traffic. Jackson almost felt like waving to the startled penguins below. Almost—
“My dad’s a genius, right?” Quigley beamed out the window. “We must be forty flippers high.” Then suddenly he stopped smiling. He glanced at Jackson. “Uhh—I wonder how this thing lands?”
Jackson had no time to reply because the truck sled had stopped soaring and was now dropping out of the air—dead-duck style.
KA-THWUMP!
Jackson felt his bones rattle as the truck sled smacked back down onto the road, just missing a digger-flipper ripping up the pavement.
Jackson blinked. He caught his breath and gave himself a thorough shake. Nope, nothing broken. Then he pressed the accelerator pedal. No way was it going to work after that crash— “Huh? We’re still moving,” he gasped. Admittedly, they weren’t going quite as fast as before. In fact, they were crawling now, half-squished-snail style.
“There’s Frosters over there,” Quigley said as they crawled down Drift Wood Docks.
“We’ll need to keep our faces down,” Jackson said, “so the security guards don’t see us.”
But as the truck limped toward the gate, the security penguin didn’t even look up from his clipboard. He just waved the truck sled through.
“This is it,” Jackson said, driving into the loading dock. “Hope the FBI doesn’t take too long to catch up with us.”
Quigley checked the mirrors. “Nope, they’re right behind us—but they’ve been stopped at the gate by security. I don’t see your mom, though. I guess she ran out of puff.”
Phew! Jackson was WAY more terrified of seeing his mom than meeting Blow Frost! Then he spotted Blow Frost standing menacingly in the loading dock with his gull on his flipper, his nasty little eyes glaring out at them, surrounded by a gang of large muscle-penguins, and suddenly Jackson wasn’t so sure. “Okay, here goes nothing.” He pulled up next to Blow Frost and reached for his door handle. “Everyone out!” he shouted, and he and Quigley, Uncle Bryn and his colleagues, and the two flipper-cuffed bad penguins all tumbled out of the truck sled onto the loading dock.
“Sorry, boss!” the stinky, bad penguin tried to mumble through his clothespinned beak.
But Blow Frost silenced him with a stare. He gazed from one end of the line of passengers to the other, then back again. Then his eyes shrank to pinpricks and a rumbling came from his throat. “YOU!” he blasted at Jackson. “I knew you were trouble!”
Jackson gulped. His legs had gone slightly spaghetti under the death-ray gaze of Blow Frost. But then he reminded himself of who he was. You’re a secret agent! You can do this! And he stepped forward, his head held high. “I’m arresting you on behalf of the FBI for using mind-altering ice cream to turn innocent penguins into zombie robbers! We’ve got all the evidence we need.” He pointed at Uncle Bryn and his two buddies, who were all standing, staring into space, still in a trance.
“Ha!” Blow Frost cackled. “Seize them!” And his group of muscle-penguins leaped forward and pinned Jackson and Quigley by the flippers.
“So you worked it all out, did you?” Blow Frost sneered at Jackson and Quigley. “Well, aren’t you clever. But soon I’ll have enough cash from my little robberies to build another twenty ice cream factories full of brain-freezing, mind-altering ice cream, and then every penguin in Rookeryville will be turned into my zombie-penguin slave. Mwha-ha-ha-ha! Take them to the deep freeze!” he added to his muscle-penguins.
“I don’t think so,” Jackson said. “Look over there.”
Blow Frost spun around to see a line of sleek FBI sleds speeding toward them. But the smile didn’t leave his face.
“FREEZE!” FBI agents poured out of the sleds, ice lasers pointing, flipper-cuffs dangling, as they swarmed around the group.
Jackson felt a ripple of joy in his belly. At last, they’d arrest the real bad guys. But then— “No wait! Don’t flipper-cuff Uncle Bryn!” Jackson dodged free from the muscle-penguin who was holding him and darted over to where Senior Agent Frost-Flipper was reading Uncle Bryn and his colleagues their rights.
“We’re arresting you for grand theft,” Agent Frost-Flipper told Uncle Bryn and his friends. “And for violation of the FBI code of conduct, not to mention being all-around bad eggs!”
“Stop! You’ve got it all wrong!” Jackson tried to interrupt.
But Blow Frost pushed past him. “Oh, thank you so much, officer.” He shot a slimy, slippery sort of a smile at Senior Agent Frost-Flipper and stroked his gull. “Fluffy!” he told the bird. “Say thank you to this lovely, kind officer.” The gull let out a squawk and Blow Frost beamed even more. “Those terrible penguins stole my ice cream truck sled.” He pointed to Uncle Bryn and his friends. “Then they kidnapped my workers.” He gestured to the flipper-cuffed bad penguins. And now they’ve come back here to try to rob me at my own factory!”
“That’s
not true,” Jackson yelled at Blow Frost. “It was all YOU!”
Blow Frost’s smile vanished.
“Jackson’s right!” Quigley shouted. “It wasn’t his uncle who did it. Well, it was, because he did technically carry out the robberies, but you see it wasn’t really—”
“Enough!” Senior Agent Frost-Flipper silenced them. “I told you kids to stay out of FBI business. I will be talking to your moms.” She turned back to her agents. “Take rogue agent Rockflopper here and agents Feather-Freckle and Beak-Piddle straight to jail!”
And suddenly Uncle Bryn and his two colleagues were being bundled into the back of an FBI sled.
“No! Stop! You can’t do this!” Jackson wailed. “Please, you have to listen to me!”
But Agent Frost-Flipper had turned her back on him. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Blow Frost,” she said. “We’ll be leaving now.”
“No!” Jackson bellowed.
“Not another word!” Senior Agent Frost-Flipper snapped, and she turned to go.
Jackson felt a wild pulsing in his belly. He was a volcano on the verge of exploding. The lava was churning in his belly. Around and around. Up and down, thrashing his insides. Then he erupted.
“CODE RED!” he yelled to Quigley, and suddenly he was running.
20
“Lock the doors!” Jackson yelled as he and Quigley dived into the ice cream truck sled. “We’ve got to stop the FBI from leaving!” Please work, please work, Jackson begged as he turned the ignition key and the engine spluttered to life. He put his foot down, and the battered vehicle jerked slowly forward.
“So—um, what’s the plan?” Quigley said, sliding into the seat next to him.
“We’re going to block the gate!” Jackson said. “Then go back and make them listen!”