I helped Will limp to the front of the carrier, averting my eyes from the burned bodies of the two guards by the rear door. There were three other carriers about two hundred meters distant, and men hustled about, unloading supplies and equipment. No one had noticed us yet, but our absence wouldn’t go undetected for long.
Will pulled himself into the driver’s seat, and I swung around to the other side of the front cab. The instrument panel was complicated, packed with levers and switches. There was no steering wheel; just two paddles thick with buttons. It didn’t look anything like our father’s car. Will flipped a switch on the front panel, but nothing happened; then he pushed another one, and the panel lit up.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“I know,” said Will, sounding annoyed.
“They could shoot us.”
“Not if they want their desalinator.”
Will was right. If PELA destroyed the carrier, they would destroy the desalinator and all the weapons in the hold. They might be able to replace the weapons, but a portable desalinator was extremely rare and would literally keep them alive. Nasri and his men would think twice before risking its loss. They didn’t know, of course, that Will had already dismantled it.
The engine made a whirring noise that sounded promising. Then the carrier lurched forward a couple meters and stopped suddenly with a force that threw me to the floor.
“Sorry,” said Will. “Buckle up.”
I brushed myself off, and this time I buckled myself into the passenger seat. Will flipped a couple switches and gently squeezed both paddles. The hover-carrier lifted into the air, hovering about a meter above the ground.
“Now what?” I asked.
Will pulled back on one paddle while pushing the other forward, and the carrier rotated slowly in a circle. Then he reversed direction, and the carrier spun the other way. “Just like Death Racer,” he said. When he brought the paddles back to the middle, the carrier stopped spinning and hovered above the ground. “Cool,” he said.
Just then a man emerged from one of the other carriers. He was tall, with white hair that stood straight up, and he wore a scientist’s white lab coat. Nasri followed closely behind him. The two men walked about ten meters, and then Nasri withdrew something from his pocket and waved it at the man.
“He’s got a gun,” I said.
The first man stopped, and Nasri walked two steps closer to him, leveling the gun at his back. The man turned, faced Nasri, and bowed his head toward the ground.
“It’s Dr. Tinker,” I said.
“I see him.”
“They’re going to kill him!”
Nasri stood before Dr. Tinker, his gun arm extended. I couldn’t believe it, but it really did appear that Nasri was going to shoot the doctor in cold blood. “Will!” I shouted.
The hover-carrier bolted forward, pressing me back into my seat. Nasri looked up at the same time, momentarily perplexed by the carrier bearing down on him. He stumbled backward just as the carrier stopped. “Get him!” Will shouted to me.
Will had positioned us between Nasri and Dr. Tinker, with the rear cargo door facing the doctor. Through the front viewscreen I could see Nasri looking at us, his eyes turning into slits that promised violence. I knew I had only a handful of seconds before he acted.
I dashed to the back of the carrier and flung open the doors. Dr. Tinker was still looking down as if he expected to be shot. “Quick, into the truck!” I called. He looked up but didn’t move, and I extended an arm. “Get in! Get in!”
He moved as if in a daze and grasped my hand as if unsure what he was holding. When he took his first steps into the carrier, I heard a pistol shot, and then Nasri appeared around the corner. He charged at me, raising his arm to fire a second shot. I shut my eyes. But the shot never came. Instead I heard Nasri scream, and I opened my eyes to see Will spraying him with hot steam from the desalinator. “The doors, Vera!”
I slammed the cargo doors shut while Will scrambled back into the driver’s seat. We took off with a jolt that sent both Dr. Tinker and me to the floor. But I didn’t mind. We weren’t dead. In the bulletproof hover-carrier, moving at two hundred kilometers an hour, it would be difficult for Nasri to hurt us.
I helped Dr. Tinker into his seat. He let me fasten his buckle and adjust the headrest.
“Who are you?” he asked when I was seated.
“Who are you?” asked Will, turning slightly from the driver’s seat.
“Doctor Augustus Tinker. Hydrologist.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said. “I’m Vera. And this is my brother, Will.”
Dr. Tinker looked at us as if I had just told him Will and I were Martians come down to perform experiments on his brain.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” I added.
The hover-carrier dipped suddenly in the air, and Dr. Tinker’s head jerked forward then banged backward against the headrest.
“Sorry,” said Will.
“My brother’s never driven a hover-carrier,” I explained.
“I’m doing a pretty good job.” said Will sullenly. “Considering.”
“But who are you?” Dr. Tinker repeated.
I told him our names again, and said we had been kidnapped by pirates, then by PELA, taken to Minnesota and then into Canada, and had escaped when Will rewired the portable desalinator. “We were trying to find Kai,” I explained.
“Kai?”
“You know, the boy whose father works with you. The driller.”
“Rikkai Smith?”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Rikkai?” he repeated.
“Tall, blond hair, about Will’s age?” I asked.
The doctor nodded. “His father Driesen and I have been friends since before the Great Panic. But what made you think he was with me?”
“It’s what the pirates said. They were coming to find you.”
Dr. Tinker sniffed. “Instead those PELA thugs found me first.”
I considered this. “What did they want from you?”
“The same thing the pirates wanted.”
“Water,” I said.
“Yes. Everyone wants water.”
“But not everyone knows where to find it.”
“Driesen has a special talent,” said Tinker.
“Kai told us.”
Dr. Tinker looked at me with a puzzled expression, as if he didn’t understand what I had said. But his mouth was a thin, grim line, like a man who knew exactly what I meant. “What did he tell you?” he asked.
“A secret river with plenty of water, and no one has to get sick or fight anymore.”
“Is it true?” asked Will.
But the doctor was silent and wouldn’t say anything else. The hover-carrier sped over the ground, leaving the environmentalists behind. Will was getting the hang of driving now, and the ride was smooth and quick. Outside, the desert zipped past in a blur of sand and rock, with no green to be seen. Whatever water the Canadians owned, they had diverted it from this rocky and forlorn area.
“Do you have a plan to cross the border?” asked Dr. Tinker.
“Of course we do,” I said. I looked at Will, wondering if he did. The hover-carrier was fast, but I doubted it could outrace border interceptors. For the first time, I also noted the fuel gauge was dangerously close to empty. This explained why the environmentalists had stopped before reaching their destination. But Will drove like it didn’t matter.
“Those environmentalists were going to kill you,” I said to Dr. Tinker.
“Yes,” he said.
“You’re lucky we found you.”
“If we get across the border, I will see to it that you are adequately compensated.”
“We’ll get across,” Will interjected.
Dr. Tinker did not sound like a man who was grateful his life had been saved. He seemed weary and slightly peeved, as if he had been interrupted in the middle of a game or favorite wi-cast.
“Did you work at the dam?” I asked.
“I worked at the laboratory powered by the dam.” He explained that the research lab was in a different location than the turbines. It reduced the chances of sabotage.
“A lot of good that did,” said Will.
The doctor nodded. “We knew it was vulnerable. But we thought security was adequate.”
“Is that where you met Kai?” I asked.
“I’ve known Driesen for years, as I’ve explained.”
“Were they visiting you?”
Dr. Tinker allowed himself a smile. He looked a little bit like a gnome, his hooked nose splitting his grin in half. “You’ll not get any more information from me. These days even children are spies.”
“Uh-oh,” said Will. “Trouble.”
“What?”
“We’re out of fuel.”
Indeed the carrier was slowing, and the ride was getting bumpier. One of the engines had quit, and the carrier listed to the right.
“Was this part of your plan too?” asked Dr. Tinker.
Will fought for control as we veered off the road. “Hold on,” he said.
The carrier hit the ground with a bone-rattling thump. It threw me hard against the seat, then snapped my head back against the headrest. But it was nothing next to the earsplitting shriek as the carrier’s bottom raked against the rocks.
“Wheels down, Will!” I shouted.
“They are down!”
We spun in a grinding arc, the shredding, screeching sound of metal against rock like a cacophonous symphony. Finally we came to a halt. There was a ragged gash where a side panel had been ripped open. Dust motes danced in the shards of sunlight that streamed through the gap.
“Well, I don’t think we’ll be doing much more driving,” Dr. Tinker muttered.
Will looked at him sourly, then unbuckled his seat belt.
“Where do you think we can find some fuel?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” Will snapped angrily. “What do I look like, a hydrogen diviner?”
“Now children,” said Dr. Tinker.
Will slammed shut the carrier door, leaving me behind with Dr. Tinker.
“He’s not really angry,” I explained. “We’ve been through a lot.”
“Remarkable. Did your parents recruit you?”
I wasn’t going to waste breath trying to convince Dr. Tinker we weren’t spies. He didn’t intend to give us more information anyway, and I liked thinking of myself as a spy.
The door banged open, and Will jumped backed into the driver’s seat. “They’re coming!”
“Who?”
“PELA!”
Sure enough, through the cracked viewscreen I could see the dust kicked up from three hover-carriers about five kilometers down the road.
Will pressed the starting buttons on the instrument panel. The carrier’s engine whined, but it failed to lift even a centimeter from the ground.
“We’re doomed,” said Dr. Tinker.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“You should have left me back there.”
“Shut up!” said Will. He turned to me. “There’s still a charge left in the desalinator.”
I nodded and unbuckled my belt. I went to the back of the carrier while Will continued to try to start the engine. The desalinator’s battery showed it had stored energy for perhaps two more bursts. It would not be enough to stop PELA, but if we could draw them outside, we might have a chance to steal another carrier.
After several more failed tries at the engine, Will joined me in the cargo hold. He took the hose from my hand, and we hunched near the doors.
“I wish we had bullets for the guns,” I said.
“I don’t want to kill anyone else.”
“You had to kill those guards,” I whispered.
Will carefully inspected the end of the hose, turning it over and over in his hands. “I’m sorry I yelled at you before.”
“That’s okay.”
“I’m scared, Vera.”
“So am I.”
Will looked back up, and his eyes were red-rimmed and gray. I offered my brother my hand, and he grasped it like a last chance. “We’re going to get home,” I said. “Remember? You promised.”
“I did,” he said.
A concussive boom shook the carrier, knocking us both to the floor. It was followed by several smaller booms and then the sulfurous tang of torn metal.
“They’re shooting at us!” I screamed. I was on the floor, my hands covering my head. Hot pieces of metal singed my hair and stung the backs of my arms.
“Stay down!” Will yelled.
Two more booms shattered the viewscreens inside the carrier. Glass rained onto the floor, and the cargo doors blew out. Small arms fire followed, the bullets ricocheting off the carrier’s broken hulk. Smoke and dust swirled around the interior, making breathing nearly impossible. A single glass canister slipped from a shelf and smashed into a thousand pieces. I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t speak. All I could do was keep my head covered and pray it would end.
Then all fell silent. I raised my head. I was alive, and so was Will. I could not see Dr. Tinker.
A loudspeaker broke the silence.
“Come out with your hands raised!” said Nasri’s amplified voice.
I looked over at Will and knew our situation was hopeless. Yet we lay there for several minutes until Nasri repeated himself and threatened to open fire again. Will raised his arms first, and I followed. We stepped over pieces of shredded metal and exited the carrier through a gaping hole where the driver’s side door used to be. Dr. Tinker was already outside with his hands clasped above his head.
“If it isn’t our little adventurers,” said Nasri.
He smiled, but he was armed and angry. One side of his face looked burned and raw, and his neck was swathed in bandages. He hopped from one foot to the other. Even his men looked frightened. He waved his gun at the three of us and indicated we should move away from the carrier and stand out in the open.
“You’re fools,” he said. “No good will come of this.”
“If you shoot us,” I said, “you’re throwing away good money.”
Nasri raised his pistol. A shot rang out. When I opened my eyes, Dr. Tinker was dead on the ground.
CHAPTER 12
This time Nasri took no chances. He tied us up in the back of the carrier, then locked us to the door. He huffed, stomped, hopped, and grumbled about how he would make us pay for destroying the other carrier and his desalinator. He didn’t seem to care at all for the men he’d lost, the man he had killed, or even his own injury—but the destruction of his machines was more than he could bear. Both Will and I knew enough to keep quiet.
We traveled until nightfall, then camped beside a rocky bed that once held a sprawling river. Now it was a gully with earthen walls, the rocks worn smooth and flat, forming a natural barrier to the east. Although there was no water, the way across was still treacherous and slow. Nasri said we would wait for morning to continue the journey.
He didn’t feed us, but one of his men took pity and gave us a few scraps and two bottles of water. We ate with our hands tied behind our backs, chewing at our food like animals. Because Will’s leg hurt worse than before, I held his bottle between my knees and opened the top with my teeth. We were too tired to talk and fell asleep huddled against each for warmth.
In the morning Nasri brought us breakfast, along with two pills for Will’s injury. His mood had improved, which made me worry. Sure enough he announced we were heading to an auction where we would fetch top dollar—not enough to replace the carrier, but more than enough for a new desalinator.
“And with the money Bluewater owes us, we’ll have another carrier in no time,” he declared.
I felt the prickly tendrils of unease on my neck. There was something unholy about the relationship between the corporate desalinator and the environmental group.
“Why does Bluewater owe you money?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he
cackled.
“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“Should be!” He was hopping again.
“You had their desalinator, but you said they owed you money.”
“Genius! It’s a shame we had to take you out of school.”
“I thought environmentalists believed desalination was bad for the environment.”
A scowl crossed his face but then passed. “Haven’t you learned anything by now? What’s good for the environment isn’t always good for environmentalists, and vice versa.” He was in a fine mood, hopping from one foot to the other as if he were standing on hot coals.
Will had been watching our conversation carefully, like a spectator at a gaming match. Now our eyes locked, and I could see he was truly frightened. I was frightened too, but I plunged ahead. Talking was the only way I knew to keep fear at bay.
“So you’re hypocrites,” I said.
“If there’s money in it.” Nasri cackled again.
“Did you kill Dr. Tinker for money?”
“Of course. Why else kill a man?”
Then it came to me in a moment of clarity. “Bluewater paid you to kill Dr. Tinker.”
“Not enough.” Nasri stopped hopping. “Let’s just say there was some renegotiating once we had him.”
“But why?”
“Ours is not to question why,” said Nasri. “We just cash the credit chips.”
“And the dam?”
“A diversion. To spirit the good doctor away.”
“You killed all these people for a diversion?”
“Oh, and to save Earth, of course.”
The pirates, PELA, and now Bluewater all wanted Dr. Tinker. But it wasn’t Tinker they had really wanted; it was what they had thought he would lead them to. And now he was dead, which meant only one thing. I felt like I had been kicked in the heart.
“I’d rather kill a man than kidnap him anyway,” Nasri continued. “Simpler, and you don’t have to deal with grieving relatives. Just dump the body and move along.”
The Water Wars Page 10