by Eoin Colfer
There were two guards in front of the main doors. They barely glanced down as Doodah swept past.
“Howdy, sheriff,” said one, grinning.
“Chocolate,” squeaked Doodah. From the little he knew about Beau, it seemed the appropriate thing to say.
He tapped the accelerator to bump himself over the lintel, then drove slowly across a streaked marble floor. The tires spun for grip on the sleek stone, which was a bit worrying—it could cost crucial seconds in the event that he had to make a quick getaway. But at least the corridor was wide enough for a U-turn if one became necessary.
Doodah motored down the hallway, past rows of towering potted palms and several bright abstract works of art, until he came to the corridor’s end. There was a camera mounted over an archway, pointed directly at the front hall. A cable snaked out from the box and into a conduit, which ran down to the base of the wall.
Doodah pulled his little car up to the conduit and hopped out. So far, his luck was holding. Nobody had challenged him. This human security was lame. In any fairy building he would have been laser-scanned a dozen times by now. The pixie yanked a section of conduit away, revealing the cable beneath. It took him mere seconds to twist the length of loaded fiber optics around the video cable. Job done. Smiling, Doodah climbed back into his stolen car. This had been a sweet deal. Amnesty for five minutes’ work. Time to go home and enjoy a life of freedom, until he broke the rules again.
“Beau Paradizo, you little brat. Come over here right now!”
Doodah froze momentarily, then checked his mirror. There was a girl behind him, glaring his way, hands on hips. This, he guessed, would be Minerva. If memory served, he was supposed to keep far away from Minerva.
“Beau. It’s time for your antibiotic. Do you want to have that chest infection forever?”
Doodah started the car and rolled it toward the arch and out of the Mud Girl’s sight line. Once around the corner, he could floor the accelerator.
“Don’t you dare drive away from me, Bobo.”
Bobo? No wonder I’m driving away, thought Doodah. Who would drive toward someone calling them Bobo?
“Eh . . . chocolate?” said the pixie hopefully.
It was the wrong thing to do. This girl knew her brother’s voice when she heard it, and that wasn’t it.
“Bobo? Is there something wrong with your voice?”
Doodah swore under his breath.
“Ches inflec-chun?” he said.
But Minerva wasn’t buying it. She pulled a walkietalkie from her pocket and took rapid strides toward the car.
“Pierre, can you come in here, please? Bring André and Louis.” And then to Doodah. “Just stay there, Bobo. I have a nice bar of chocolate for you.”
Sure, thought Doodah. Chocolate and a concrete cell.
He considered his options for a second, and came to a conclusion. The conclusion was: I would rather escape quickly than get captured and tortured to death.
I am out of here, thought Doodah, and floored the accelerator, sending several hundred horsepower shuddering down the fragile driveshaft. He had maybe a minute before the car fell apart, but by then he could be far away from this Mud Girl and her transparent promises of chocolate.
The car took off so fast that it left an image of itself where it had been.
Minerva stopped dead. “What?”
There was a corner coming up quick. Doodah pulled the wheel in as far as he could, but the vehicle’s turning circle was too wide.
“Gotta bounce it,” said Doodah through gritted teeth.
He leaned hard left, eased up on the accelerator, and hit the wall side-on. At the moment of impact he shifted his weight and stepped on the gas. The car lost a door, but shot out of the corner like a stone from a sling.
Beautiful, thought Doodah as soon as his head stopped ringing.
He had maybe seconds now before the girl could see him again, and who knew how many guards stood between him and freedom.
He was in a long straight corridor, opening onto a sitting room. Doodah could see a wall-mounted television and the top rim of a red velvet sofa. There must be steps down into the room. Not good. This car only had one more impact left in it.
“Where is Bobo?” shouted the girl. “What have you done with him?”
No point in subtlety now. Time to see what this buggy could do. Doodah jammed his foot on the accelerator then made a beeline for a window behind the velvet sofa. He patted the dash.
“You can do it, you little junk box. One jump. Your chance to be a thoroughbred.”
The car didn’t answer back. They never did. Though sometimes in times of extreme stress and oxygen deprivation, Doodah imagined they shared his cavalier attitude.
Minerva came around the corner. She was running hard and screaming into a walkie-talkie. Doodah heard the words apprehend, necessary violence, and interrogation. None of which boded well for him.
The toy car’s wheels spun on a long rug, then caught. The rug was shunted backward like a length of toffee from a roller. Minerva was bowled over, but kept talking as she went down.
“He’s headed for the library. Take him down! Shoot if necessary.”
Doodah grimly held on to the wheel, keeping his line. He was going out that window, closed or not. He entered the room at seventy miles per hour, flying off the top step. Not bad acceleration for a toy. There were two guards in the room, in the act of drawing their weapons. They wouldn’t shoot, though. It still appeared as though the car was being driven by a child.
Suckers, thought Doodah. Then the first bullet crashed into the chassis. Okay, maybe they would shoot the car.
He flew in a gentle arc toward the window. Two more bullets took plastic chunks from the bodywork, but it was too late to stop the tiny vehicle. It clipped the lower frame, lost a fender, and tumbled out through the open window.
Someone really should be filming this, thought Doodah, as he clenched his teeth for impact.
The crash shook him all the way from his toes to his skull. Stars danced before Doodah’s eyes for a moment, then he was in control again, careering toward the septic tank.
Mulch was waiting, his wild halo of hair quivering with impatience.
“Where have you been? I’m running out of sunblock.”
Doodah did not waste time with an answer. Instead he extricated himself from the all but demolished car, prying off his Mongocharger and mirror.
Mulch pointed a stubby finger at him. “I have a few more questions.”
A bullet fired from the open window ricocheted off the septic tank, throwing up concrete splinters.
“But they can wait. Hop on.”
Mulch turned, presenting Doodah with his back, and more besides. Doodah jumped on, grabbing thick hanks of Mulch’s beard.
“Go!” he shouted. “They’re right behind me!”
Mulch unhinged his jaw and went into the clay like a hairy torpedo.
But fast as he was, he and Doodah wouldn’t have made it. Armed guards were two paces away. They would have seen the gently snoring Beau and riddled the moving tunnel mound with bullets. They probably would have tossed in a few grenades for good measure. But they didn’t, because at that precise moment, all hell broke loose inside the chateau.
As soon as Doodah had twisted the loaded fiber optics around the video cable, hundreds of tiny spikes had punctured the rubber, making dozens of strong contacts with the wiring inside.
Seconds later in Section 8 HQ, information came flooding into Foaly’s terminal. He had video, alarm systems, waffle boxes, and communications all flashing up in separate windows on his screen.
Foaly cackled, cracking his knuckles like a concert pianist. He loved those old fiber-optic twists. Not as fancy as the new organic bugs, but twice as reliable.
“Okay,” he said into a reed mike on his desk. “I’m in control. What kind of nightmares would you like to give the Paradizos?”
In the South of France, Captain Holly Short spoke into her helmet mic
rophone. “Whatever you have. Storm troopers, helicopters. Overload their communications, blow out their waffle boxes. Set off all the alarms. I want them to believe they are under attack.”
Foaly called up several phantom files on his computer. The phantoms were one of his own pet projects. He would lift patterns from human movies—soldiers, explosions, whatever—and then use them universally in whatever scene he chose. In this case he sent a squad of French army special forces, the Commandement des Opérations Spéciales, or COS, to the Paradizo’s close-circuit system. That would do nicely for starters.
Inside the chateau, the Paradizo chief of security, Juan Soto, had a little problem. His little problem was that a couple of loose shots were being popped off in the house. This can only be seen as a little problem in relation to the very big problem that Foaly was sending his way.
Soto was speaking into a radio.
“Yes, Miss Paradizo,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “I realize that your brother may be missing. I say may be because that may be him in the toy car. It sure looks like him to me. Okay, okay, I take your point. It is unusual for toy cars to fly that far. It could be a malfunction.”
Soto resolved to have strong words with the two idiots who had actually fired on a toy car at Minerva’s command. He did not care how smart she was, no child was giving orders like that on his watch.
Even though Miss Minerva was nowhere near the security center and could not see him, Chief Soto adopted a stern face for the lecture he was about to give.
“Now, Miss Paradizo, you listen to me,” he began. Then his expression changed completely as the security system went ballistic.
“Yes, Chief, I’m listening.”
The chief held on to his radio with one hand, with the other he flicked numerous switches on his security console, praying for malfunction. “There seems to be a full squad of COS converging on the chateau. My God, there are some in the house. Helicopters, the rooftop cameras are picking up helicopters.” Transmissions suddenly squawked through the band monitor. “And we have chatter. They’re after you, Miss Paradizo, and your prisoner. My God, the alarms have all been tripped. Every sector. We’re surrounded! We need to evacuate. I can see them in the tree line. They have a tank. How did they get a tank up here?”
Outside, Artemis and Butler watched the chaos Foaly had created. Sirens ripped through the Alpine air, and security men sprinted to ordained spots.
Butler lobbed a few smoke grenades onto the grounds to add to the effect.
“A tank,” said Artemis wryly into his fairy phone. “You sent them a tank?”
“You’ve hacked into the audio feed?” said Foaly sharply. “Just what else can that phone of yours do?”
“It can play solitaire and minesweeper,” replied Artemis innocently.
Foaly grunted doubtfully. “We’ll talk about this later, Mud Boy. For now, let’s concentrate on the plan.”
“Excellent suggestion. Do you have any phantom guided missiles?”
* * *
The security chief nearly fainted. The radar had picked up two tracks spiraling from the belly of a helicopter.
“Mon Dieu! Missiles. They’re firing smart bombs at us. We must evacuate now.”
He flicked open a Perspex panel, revealing an orange switch below. With only a moment’s hesitation, he pressed the orange switch. The various alarms were immediately cut off and replaced by a single continuous whine. The evac alarm.
The moment this was sounded, the guards changed course and headed for their assigned vehicles or principals, and the nonsecurity residents of the chateau began gathering data or whatever was most precious to them.
On the eastern side of the house, a series of garage doors opened, and six black BMW four-wheel drives sprang into the courtyard like cougars. One had blacked-out windows.
Artemis studied the situation through binoculars.
“Watch the girl,” he said into the tiny phone in his palm. “The girl is the key. I’m guessing hers is the vehicle with the tinted windows.”
The girl, Minerva, appeared through patio doors, speaking calmly into a walkie-talkie. Her father trailed beside her, dragging a protesting Beau Paradizo by the hand. Billy Kong came last, bending slightly under the weight of a large golf bag.
“Here we go, Holly. Are you ready?”
“Artemis! I’m the field agent here,” came the irritated reply. “Stay off my band unless you have something to contribute.”
“I was just thinking—”
“I was just thinking that you should change your middle name to Control Freak.”
Artemis glanced across at Butler, who was lying beside him and couldn’t help overhearing the entire exchange.
“Control freak? Can you believe that?”
“The nerve of some people,” replied the bodyguard without taking his eyes off the chateau.
To their left, a small patch of earth began to vibrate. Mud grass and insects were thrust upward in a sudden gush, followed by two heads. One dwarf and one pixie.
Doodah climbed over Mulch’s shoulders and collapsed onto the ground.
“You people are crazy,” he panted, plucking a beetle from his shirt pocket. “I should be getting more than amnesty for this. I should be getting a pension.”
“Quiet, little man,” said Butler calmly. “Phase two of the plan is about to start, and I wouldn’t want to miss it because of you.”
Doodah blanched. “Neither would I. Want you to miss it, that is. Because of me.”
Outside the chateau’s garage, Billy Kong popped one of the BMW’s trunks and hefted the golf bag inside. It was the car with the tinted windows.
Artemis opened his mouth to issue an order, then closed it again. Holly probably knew what to do.
She did. The driver’s door clunked open a fraction, apparently all on its own, then closed again. Before Minerva or Billy Kong could do more than blink in surprise, the 4x4 started up and laid down a twenty foot layer of rubber, skidding toward the main gate.
“Perfect,” said Artemis under his breath. “Now, Miss Minerva Paradizo, would-be criminal mastermind, let us see exactly how smart you are. I know what I would do in this situation.”
Minerva Paradizo’s reaction was a bit less dramatic than one might expect from a child who has just had her prize possession stolen. There were no tantrums or foot stamping. Billy Kong defied expectations also. He did not so much as draw a weapon. Instead he squatted on his hunkers, ran his fingers through his manga hair, and lit a cigarette, which Minerva promptly plucked from his lips and squashed underfoot.
Meanwhile, the 4x4 was getting away, barreling toward the main gates. Perhaps Minerva was confident that the reinforced steel barrier would be sufficient to halt the BMW in its tracks. She was wrong. Holly had already weakened the bolts with her Neutrino.
One tap from the vehicle’s grille would be more than sufficient to barge the gates out of the way.
If it got that far. Which it did not. After she had crushed Kong’s cigarette, Minerva took a remote control from her pocket, tapped in a short code, then hit the SEND button. In the BMW’s cab, a tiny charge detonated in the airflow system, releasing a cloud of sevofluorane, a potent sleeping gas. In seconds, the vehicle began to weave, ramping the driveway bushes and cutting a swath through the manicured lawn.
“Problems,” said Butler.
“Hmm,” said Artemis. “A gas device, I would guess. Fast acting. Possibly cyclopropane or sevofluorane.”
Butler knelt, drawing his pistol. “Should I stroll in there and get them?”
“No. You shouldn’t.”
The BMW was careering wildly now, following the dips and slopes of the grounds’ topography. It destroyed a mini-golf green, pulverized a gazebo, and decapitated a centaur statue.
Hundreds of miles belowground, Foaly winced.
The vehicle finally came to rest in a lavender bed, nose down, rear wheels spinning, spitting out hunks of clay and uprooted long-stemmed purple flowers like missiles.<
br />
Nice action, thought Mulch, but he kept the notion to himself, fully aware that this might not be the time to stretch Butler’s patience.
Butler was raring to go. His gun was out, and the tendons in his neck were stretched, but Artemis held him back with a touch to the forearm.
“No,” he said. “Not now. I know your impulse is to help, but now is not the time.”
The bodyguard jammed his Sig Sauer handgun back into its holster, scowling. “Are you sure, Artemis?”
“Trust me, old friend.”
And of course, Butler did, even though his instincts were not so sure.
Inside the grounds, a dozen security guards were warily approaching the vehicle, led by Billy Kong. The man moved like a cat, on the balls of his feet.
On his signal, the men rushed the car, reclaiming the golf bag and hauling an unconscious Holly from the front seat. The elf was cuffed with plastic ties and hauled across the garden to where Minerva Paradizo and her father stood waiting.
Minerva removed Holly’s helmet and knelt to examine her pointed ears. Through his binocular lenses, Artemis could clearly see that Minerva was smiling.
It had been a trap. All a trap.
Minerva tucked the helmet under her arm, then walked briskly back toward the house. Halfway there, she stopped and turned. Shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare, she scanned the shadows and peaks of the surrounding hillsides.
“What’s she looking for?” Butler speculated aloud.
Artemis did not wonder. He knew exactly what this surprising girl was after.
“She’s looking for us, old friend. If that were your chateau, perhaps you might wonder where a spy would conceal himself.”
“Of course. And that’s why I picked this spot. The ideal location would have been farther up the hill, in that cluster of rocks, but that would also have been the first spot any security expert would booby-trap. This would be my second choice, and so, my first choice.”