by Stuart Gibbs
“Er . . . yes,” Shang admitted.
Jessica turned to Zoe and said, “I just want you to know I had nothing to do with all this. I didn’t even know my father ever had people killed. I am so embarrassed.”
“That’s the helicopter Erica blew up,” I continued. “Epic Heli-Skiing ought to have detailed information about where it was at exactly nine thirty this morning. We can use that to get a better bead on the bomb.”
“Good thinking,” Cyrus said to me. He pointed to Alexander and told him, “Call them right now.”
“Yes, sir!” Alexander replied, thrilled his father had trusted him with something. He stepped aside to make the call.
Cyrus returned his attention to Shang. “What’s the make and model of this bomb?”
“It’s a Soviet Stalin-class X-43 fusion model.”
Cyrus whistled through his teeth.
“Is that bad?” Mike asked.
“The X-43 is an old-fashioned model,” Cyrus replied. “A leftover from the Cold War. Probably pilfered from a stolen nuclear missile. It’s not very easy to defuse.”
“Then let’s forget about it and just get out of here!” Shang cried.
“That’s not such a bad idea,” Warren pointed out.
Zoe fixed him with a harsh stare. “Tell me you’re not actually siding with the bad guy.”
“I’m not siding with him,” Warren mewled. “I’m just saying he has a valid point.”
Cyrus turned his attention to Mike. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that, since Ben says we can trust you, that means we can trust you.”
“You can trust me,” Mike agreed.
“Good,” Cyrus replied. “I want you to stay here with Zoe and Warren to hold these men prisoner and keep an eye on Jessica until the police get here. I’ll leave Woodchuck to help. He should be much more useful once he warms up a bit more.”
“Sure thing,” Mike said. “Although if you need me to help defuse the bomb, I’m happy to do it.”
Cyrus gave him a slight smile, like he was impressed. “That won’t be necessary. You’ve done enough service as it is. Ben, Erica, Alexander, and I can handle it, though.”
I turned to Cyrus, startled he’d named me. Alexander seemed equally caught by surprise. He nearly dropped his phone in shock. “Really, Dad? You think I can help?”
“Maybe,” Cyrus said, and started back toward the helicopter.
That single word lifted Alexander’s spirits like nothing I’d ever seen. He was beaming like a kid who’d just received a bicycle for Christmas. “All right! Let’s do this!” He raced back to the helicopter and hopped into it.
“This is crazy!” Shang yelled. “It won’t work! We’re going to die because of your foolishness!” He started after Cyrus, but Zoe stepped into his path, aiming one of his own guns at him.
“Take one more step or say one more word and I’ll shoot you,” she warned.
“Get out of my way, you little brat!” Shang ordered, then tried to storm past her.
Zoe shot him. But only in the foot.
Shang howled in pain. He hopped around, clutching his foot in his hands and whimpering.
To my surprise, Jessica didn’t seem too upset by this. In fact, she seemed kind of pleased by it.
“I only took off the last knuckle of your little toe,” Zoe informed him. “You won’t miss it. But try anything else and I’ll aim higher next time.” She then leveled all the guards with a gaze that made her look just as scary as Erica could be. “That goes for all of you. Anybody else want to call my bluff?”
The guards all shook their heads and backed away from her respectfully.
“Good,” Zoe told them. “Now sit down.”
The guards and Shang all sat like a bunch of well-trained golden retrievers.
Only Jessica remained standing. She raised her hand politely, like a kid in school.
“Do you have a question?” Zoe asked.
“Yes. Can I say something to Ben?”
I stopped on my way to the helicopter and turned back to her.
“I suppose,” Zoe replied. “Sorry I shot your father.”
“He obviously deserved it,” Jessica said, glaring at Leo. Then she turned to me and yelled across the tarmac. “I’m sorry about all of this! I had no idea what Daddy was plotting, I swear.”
“It’s not your fault,” I yelled back to her. “Sorry I had to lie to you.”
“I understand why you did it. I hope defusing that bomb is simple as cake.”
“You mean ‘easy as pie’?” I asked.
“Yes! That’s it! Good luck.” Jessica blew me a kiss.
Despite the fact that I was pretty much scared out of my wits, this made me feel slightly better. “Thanks,” I said. Then I turned back to the helicopter.
Erica was now standing beside it. Since we’d captured Shang’s men, she didn’t need to hold the jet anymore. She was glaring at Jessica angrily.
Mike dropped in beside me. “Whoa,” he whispered. “Looks like someone’s jealous.”
“No, she’s not,” I said, still not ready to believe this.
“Trust me,” Mike said. “I know that look. She wants Jessica to back off. ’Cause she’s into you.”
We arrived at the helicopter. Cyrus had already climbed in and taken the controls. Alexander was still on the phone with Epic Heli-Skiing.
“We’ve got coordinates!” he announced. “This morning, starting at nine twenty-eight, their helicopter hovered at the same point for two minutes and thirty-five seconds, 39.4102 degrees latitude, 106.2256 degrees longitude.”
“Sounds like our spot,” Cyrus agreed, then fired up the rotors.
Erica looked at me expectantly.
I turned back to Mike. I had the disturbing feeling this might be the last time I saw him—or any of my friends—ever again. “Thanks for everything,” I said. “You’ve been the best friend I could ever ask for.”
“Why are you talking all sappy like that?” Mike asked. “This isn’t the end of the world.”
“It could be,” I pointed out.
“Nah. You can handle it.” Mike gave me a big, confident grin. I could tell that, beneath it, he was actually really worried—but I appreciated the vote of confidence anyhow. “Now go take care of business.”
“Okay,” I said, and hopped into the helicopter.
Erica followed me in and shut the door behind us. Cyrus lifted off before we were even strapped into our jump seats.
I looked out the window, watching my friends and enemies drop away beneath us. All of them were looking toward us with a mixture of hope and fear, wondering if we’d be able to save the day.
I wondered that myself.
Cyrus pulled on the stick and we banked toward the mountains, heading straight for a live nuclear bomb.
NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
White River National Forest, Colorado
39.4102 degrees latitude
106.2256 degrees longitude
December 30
1450 hours
It was easy to spot the Climax Mine from the air. It was a great big scar on the landscape. A massive chunk of wilderness more than a mile wide was simply gone. Where there had once been snow-capped mountains and green trees, there was now only brown dirt, industrial machinery, and tailings ponds, huge pools of water stained disturbing colors by unnatural chemicals. It looked as though a tiny piece of New Jersey had been transplanted to the middle of Colorado.
I could also make out several dozen people at work in the mine, going about their jobs like it was any other day, completely unaware of their impending doom.
Spotting the bomb wasn’t quite so easy. Even though we knew the exact location of the helicopter during the drop, right down to the inch, the bomb wasn’t sitting out in the open at that very spot. Instead, it had tumbled down the snowy slopes and was now at some other, unknown point on an awfully big mountain.
Alexander, Erica, and I stood at the windows of the helicopter, scanning the g
round below with binoculars while Cyrus hovered over the drop zone. Unfortunately, all any of us could see were rocks, trees, and snow.
“Maybe we should have brought some of the other guys,” I said to Erica.
“Like Warren?” she asked dismissively. “That kid couldn’t find a bomb if it was taped to his butt.”
“Zoe could have helped,” I replied, and then added, “Mike, too.”
Erica gave me a sideways glance, then returned to her binoculars.
“He helped a lot today,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for him, we’d be dead. He saved us while you were unconscious. Hopefully, your grandfather understands he’s not a threat anymore.”
“He’s even more of a threat now,” Erica pointed out. “He knows the truth about us. He knows we’re spies. And he knows about the academy. That’s a huge risk.”
“So what’s Cyrus going to do, kill him?”
Erica made a noise I’d never heard her make before. It took me a moment to realize what it was. To my amazement, Erica had actually giggled.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“There are other ways to deal with someone who’s a threat besides killing him.”
“Like what?”
“Recruiting him.”
I lowered my binoculars to stare at Erica in shock. “You mean Cyrus has been thinking about recruiting Mike all along?”
“I have no idea what Grandpa has been thinking,” Erica admitted. “But I’m sure recruitment is an option. Like you said, Mike did well today. Of course, that won’t mean diddly if we don’t find this bomb and defuse it.”
Before I could pursue the conversation any further, Alexander gave a triumphant shout. “I see it!”
He pointed below us. On the eastern flank of the mountain, something metallic glinted in the sunlight. Unfortunately, it sat in the worst place imaginable. The only way to get down to it was to descend an exceptionally steep slope of snow through a minefield of jagged rocks. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the bomb sat only a few feet from the edge of a cliff, which dropped away into a canyon so deep, it looked like it went straight through the earth.
“They couldn’t have dropped it into a nice flat meadow?” I groaned.
“I’ve got more bad news,” Cyrus announced from the cockpit. “There’s nowhere for me to land the copter. I’m gonna have to keep it in the air. So you’ll have to go down and defuse that thing yourselves.”
“Ourselves?” I had already been nervous at the thought of being anywhere near the bomb, but now my stomach started doing backflips.
As usual, though, Erica took it all in stride. She walked back to the pile of skis and poles in the cargo area and said, “Let’s go.”
I followed her. We were still wearing the same ski boots we’d had on that morning. Cyrus hadn’t brought us a change of footwear. My feet were in agony, but now the boots were finally going to come in handy again. I searched for a pair of skis with the right size bindings to clip into.
Alexander didn’t grab a pair himself, however. “Um,” he said weakly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to join you. I, er . . . I can’t ski.”
Even Erica seemed surprised by this. “Not even a little?”
“No,” Alexander admitted. “All those bedtime stories I used to tell about leading evil criminal masterminds on wild chases down the slopes of the Karakoram Range . . . I made them all up.”
“I knew that,” Erica said flatly. “But I thought you at least had some idea how to ski.”
“No,” Alexander said. “I tried once. But on my very first run I skied into a tree and sprained my groin. So I never did it again.”
“Well, maybe you could walk down the slope somehow,” I suggested. “It’d take longer, but we could still use some help defusing that bomb.”
“Oh, I think that’d be even more of a bad idea,” Alexander replied. “To be honest, bomb defusion was never really my forte. In fact, I’m quite awful at it. I failed every one of my simulations. Ever. I get a little shaky when I get nervous.” He held up a hand to show us. It was trembling like a sapling in a hurricane. His fingers were twitching so badly, I could barely see them.
“If you can’t ski and you can’t defuse a bomb,” Erica said, “then why did you volunteer to come along?”
“Moral support?” Alexander ventured.
Erica sighed and turned to me. “Looks like it’s just us, then.”
I didn’t really want to go either. Heading down to the bomb merely looked like a couple hundred good ways to die. But if no one went, we were going to die anyhow, and it seemed better to die valiantly rather than chickenhearted in front of Erica.
I finally found a pair of skis with bindings that fit my boots and hoisted them to my shoulder. “Have you ever defused an X-43 before?” I asked Erica.
“No. I’ve never even seen an X-43. They’re pretty rare. But Grandpa knows them—and he’ll be on the radio to talk us through it. Then, once we’re done, Dad will hoist us back up on the tether.” She turned to Alexander. “You can work the winch, can’t you?”
“I think so,” Alexander said. He didn’t sound quite as sure of himself as I’d hoped.
“So let’s get moving,” Erica told me.
We carried our skis to the door of the helicopter and clipped them on. Cyrus lowered us as close to the mountaintop as he could get. Alexander threw open the door.
Even though we weren’t too far above the slope, it was still going to be a big leap from a helicopter onto a sheer descent. On skis, no less. It was even more treacherous than the slope we’d attempted before the avalanche that morning.
I gulped in fear.
And then Erica put a hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “I know you can do this. You’re a better skier than I am—and I’m good at everything.”
It wasn’t exactly the greatest compliment in the world, but it bolstered my confidence enough. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Erica leapt out of the helicopter. She didn’t even take a second to gather her nerve. She simply jumped, the same way she might have leapt off the bottom step of a staircase.
She stuck the landing on the slope, carved a nice turn around some jagged rocks, and started her way down. Despite her failure on her first run a few days before, she had improved greatly.
Like Woodchuck had said, a great deal of being able to ski something was simply believing you could ski it.
So I jumped out of the helicopter too.
The fall was the worst part. It probably took less than a second, but it felt much longer, and every last bit of it was terrifying.
Then I hit the mountain. The snow was so soft and deep, it was like landing in a giant cushion. The next thing I knew, I was skiing. It was awfully frightening, given that the slope was steep and full of sharp, head-splitting rocks and it ended in a precipitous drop to certain doom—but there was something exhilarating about it as well. As I carved my turns and followed Erica down through the virgin powder, it occurred to me that this was the type of thing people shelled out big bucks to go helicopter skiing to do—minus the cliff and the nuclear bomb, of course—and I suddenly understood why. I was experiencing a physical high, and for a few seconds, the entire mission was quite enjoyable.
And then I wiped out.
One moment I was upright and life was good, and the next I was tumbling downhill toward a cliff and life was about to end very quickly. My skis flew off, my poles sailed away, and a few pounds of snow ended up in my pants. The sheer drop at the end of the slope rushed toward me.
I dug my heels into the snow as hard as I could, forcing them down until my boots hit the hard rock beneath the powder. My feet rattled along the ground, finding no purchase, while I sluiced through the snow and the cliff came closer and closer. . . .
Until, suddenly, my boots connected with a big rock, jarring me to a sudden stop.
The cliff edge was only ten feet away. Now that I was so close to it, I could see that the snow jutted over the edge a bit, like the f
rosting on a cupcake, making me wonder if there was even less solid ground between the cliff and me than I’d suspected.
Just to my right sat the bomb.
It was the size of a microwave oven, housed in a metal shell that was stamped with dozens of words in Russian, all of which appeared to be warnings. For people who couldn’t read Russian, there were also several skulls and crossbones, indicating trouble.
Erica slid to a stop beside me. I’d passed her while tumbling down the slope. “You made that a little more exciting than it had to be,” she said, then tossed her poles aside, shed her jacket, and removed her avalanche vest. Beneath it all, she wore her standard utility belt. She plugged a radio into her ear and said, “Okay, Grandpa. We’re here.”
I inserted my own radio just in time to hear Cyrus reply, “Good. Is there a metal casing on the bomb?”
“Yes,” Erica replied.
“Take it off. And be careful. One wrong move and Colorado gets a new crater.”
“I’m well aware how dangerous this is.” Erica removed two Phillips-head screwdrivers from her utility belt and handed one to me.
Six screws held the casing atop the bomb. Erica went to work on them.
Even though we were surrounded by snow, the sun was out and all my exertion and nerves had already made me start sweating. I took off my jacket and gloves as well, freeing my arms and fingers, and started on the screws.
The snow groaned and shifted around us, tilting slightly toward the edge of the cliff.
Erica popped out the first screw. “Grandpa, tell Dad to get that tether ready.”
“Is there a problem?”
“There’s a decent chance the whole snowpack we’re sitting atop is unstable and about to slide over the edge of the cliff. So yes, I’d consider that a problem.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Try not to get distracted.”
That was easy for Cyrus to say. He wasn’t on the snowpack on the edge of the cliff. But I did my best to focus, pulling out one screw, then another, trying to ignore the groaning snow and the sickening sense that we were slowly drifting with it.
Erica popped out the third screw.
I got another out a few seconds later. “Done.”