Mission Atomic

by Sarwat Chadda

  All those who’d sided with Nathaniel had abandoned the Cahills. Maybe they were worried about reprisals, that those they’d betrayed would come looking for revenge. Nathaniel had done his work well. He’d recruited the jealous, the envious, the bitter. Those who had grudges, big and small, against the Cahills. Those who couldn’t accept that the young had a place at the table.

  None of them were here.

  Amy knew there were plenty here who would love nothing better than to smash down a few doors of the once high and mighty and, if she’d been more like Grace, she may have joined in.

  But Grace’s way was not hers, so she’d told the revenge-seekers there would be no retaliations. The right side had won, and that was better than any revenge.

  Then there were the dead. There was a hollow ache, not just in her, but in others, for those the Outcast had killed. The Lucians had lost more than the other branches, and Amy just needed a glance at the faces on the lawn to see how few Lucians there were.

  She thought about Alek Spasky, now buried beside his beloved wife. He’d hunted them, put a gun to her head, and saved them.

  Amy gazed out over the lawn. At her vast, weird, and magnificent family.

  She had no idea who’d rented the bouncy castle but, somehow, it seemed right. What didn’t seem right was Ham jumping around on it like a deranged kangaroo, despite the bandages. No amount of bullets could take the bounce out of a Tomas, it seemed.

  Some Brit DJ, a close personal friend of Jonah’s, was working the decks beside the pool, and it looked like this was going to be the first Cahill meeting where the dress code included bathing suits.

  But the Cahills hadn’t been completely handed over to the under-eighteens.

  Fiske Cahill dominated the dance floor. It didn’t matter what the DJ was playing, El Coyote had the moves for them all. He spun and kicked and clapped and wove dancers in and out, twirling Cara one minute, then whipping Nellie off her feet the next to spin her straight into the arms of the laughing Sammy.

  “Ouch,” said Dan as he saw Sammy stumble to the edge of the pool. “The boy’s hurting.”

  “Mauled by a mutant bear and yet he still dances better than Ian.”

  The pair of them looked over at Ian doing … something. Stomping on imaginary ants?

  “Yup” was all Dan could manage. He looked over at her. “Just relax.”

  “Thanks. Really helpful.” Amy raised her hand. “If I could just say something—”

  The DJ cranked up the volume. Ham double-flipped off the bouncy castle to roars from the crowd. Three Tomas chucked a pinstriped Lucian into the pool.

  “Please, I just need to say—”

  “EVERYONE SHUT UP!” yelled Dan. “BIG SIS WANTS A WORD!”

  A wave of silence rolled out, starting with them and swiftly covering those who now were the Cahill family.

  Ekats adjusted their glasses. The Lucians straightened their ties. The Tomas put down whatever heavy objects they were bench-pressing, and the Janus raised their cell phones to take shots, mainly selfies, but a few snapped Amy up on the patio, overlooking the lawn.

  Amy flexed her fingers. This was it.

  It wasn’t what Grace would have wanted, she knew that, but it was what she wanted.

  And it was what the Cahills needed.

  She cleared her throat and smiled at Dan, beside her as always. Then she looked out at her family. “I know this has been a hard time, for all of us … ”

  The party ended, like so many do, in the kitchen at some very late hour of the night. Or early hour of the morning.

  Dan searched the chip bowl, licking his finger so he could collect the few broken crumbs settled on the bottom. “They still fishing people out of the pool?”

  Ham joined him and took the bowl. “I’ll show you how you do it.” He tipped the bowl into his mouth. He handed it back. “There.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Ian and Cara loitered by the table. Dan could tell they were holding hands under it. Ian had loosened his tie and undone his top button. He hardly seemed the same person.

  Nellie fussed over Sammy, who guarded his own chip bowl with the look of a pit bull whenever Ham strolled by.

  Jonah waved his cell. “You have no idea how many times that clip of Ian dancing has been retweeted. I think you broke the Internet, bro.”

  Ian gave his wince-smile, that frozen look between injured pride and happiness. “I’m sorry? Did you say something?”

  Amy came in. “That’s the last of them. If the gardener finds any more in the morning, they’ll need to make their own way home.” She stopped and looked around. “Thanks for staying behind, guys. There’s one thing left to discuss.”

  Ham groaned. Dan wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to talk more business or he’d eaten too much and now his stomach had died.

  Jonah put his cell away.

  Amy perched herself on the side of the table. She’d kicked off, or lost, her shoes at one point and now swung her bare feet. “We agreed I should run the Cahills, didn’t we?”

  Murmurs of agreement. Why were they discussing this old news?

  “And what happens when I turn into Grace?” she said. “And start building my own list of Outcasts? And what will we do when some of your names are on it?”

  Dan stared at her. “That’s never going to happen.”

  “Bro’s right,” said Jonah. “We’re as tight a crew as ever.” Ham gave him a fist bump.

  “I bet that’s exactly what Grace thought when she married Nathaniel. That nothing would get in the way of their love. Well, we know how wrong she was about that. One ruler of the Cahills is a recipe for disaster.” Amy glanced at Dan. “The Romans had that problem, didn’t they? What was the name they used?”

  “Dictator,” answered Dan. He might not have been an Ekat but he knew something about history. “Then, when the Republic collapsed, they called him ‘emperor.’ ”

  Cara frowned. It had to be serious, because she wasn’t holding hands with Ian anymore. “So you’re quitting again? Why didn’t you say earlier?”

  Amy smiled. “No, not quitting. I’ll run the Cahills for a while. But only for a while.”

  “How long?” asked Ian.

  Amy shrugged. “How does four years sound? Then I’ll hand it over to one of you guys. After four years you hand it over to the next. Each branch gets its turn before it comes back to … someone new.”

  “Why?” Dan shifted forward. She hadn’t said anything to him!

  “Running the Cahills destroyed Grace, Dan. It’s obvious. She stayed in it too long. In charge and all alone. You would think we’d be smarter than that but maybe that’s the problem with smart people: They think they should stay in charge.”

  For some reason everyone looked at Ham. He put down his triple jelly-and-cucumber-and-mackerel sandwich. “What?”

  Ian smiled and nodded slowly. “I like it. What shall we call it?”

  Dan looked over at his big sis. He’d never been prouder of her, and of being a Cahill. “Democracy?”

  Calling All Cahills!

  Announcing a 39 Clues Superspecial adventure—the gang is back, and called to investigate one of their own: Sinead Starling. Turn the page for a sneak peek of Outbreak.

  Boston, MA

  Dan Cahill knew a thing or two about collectors.

  When he was younger, he had collected baseball cards, autographs of famous outlaws, Civil War weapons, rare coins, and charcoal rubbings of tombstones. For a while, he had even collected his casts, but he he’d broken so many bones that the size and smell of that particular collection had become, to quote his big sister, Amy, “disturbing.”

  However, the collector he was tracking through the streets of Boston was a different sort of collector entirely. Dan collected stuff he could geek out on—meteor fragments, memorabilia from obscure sports, creepy photos he found at flea markets.

  The guy he had his eye on collected stuff he could sell for millions of dollars, stuff that w
as stolen from archaeology sites around the world and smuggled away from the countries to which they belonged: Buddhist relics from Cambodia, Zoroastrian statues from Iran, religious carvings from Egypt. The artifacts were priceless, sacred, and irreplaceable. They should’ve been in museums or left in the temples or tombs where they’d been found. They were the sort of things that someone might kill for.

  In fact, in this case, someone had. Hundreds of thousands had died because of the artifact this man was carrying in the rolling suitcase currently handcuffed to his wrist, and more might die if he figured out that he was being followed.

  But Dan’s team was good. The collector didn’t have a clue. Dan smiled the smile of a mastermind and wondered if his cousin Jonah Wizard, international pop star, might write him a secret-agent theme song. Dan totally needed a theme song.

  “The target went right at Quincy Market,” Cara Pierce’s voice whispered through Dan’s earpiece.

  Dan stopped writing lyrics in his imagination and whispered his next orders into the microphone on the cord of his earbuds. “Ham, when he hits Congress Street, execute Operation Bouncing Hammer.”

  “Gladly,” Hamilton Holt replied.

  Ham wasn’t the most nuanced secret operative in the world, but when something—or someone—needed to get knocked down, he was just the guy to do it.

  Dan Cahill still looked like your average American teenager. His hair was messy and in need of a cut, his wrinkled T-shirt was an ironic nod to a long-forgotten boy band, but the pen he had tucked behind his ear was actually a CO2-powered injection syringe loaded with a nauseating toxin perfectly calibrated to the body mass of the smuggler.

  Your average American teenager didn’t usually have one of those. Although he was just fourteen years old, Dan was the leader of the most powerful family in the world and regularly did things that would make Special Forces soldiers gasp.

  Dan glanced up from his phone just as his target appeared at the intersection across from his bench. At the same moment, burly, blond Hamilton Holt, wearing a New England Patriots football jersey and bright blue plastic sunglasses, came barreling out of a gift shop, his fist pumping the air.

  “Yeah! Go Pats! Woo!” he yelled, a genuinely enthusiastic cheer for his football team. Never mind that their season hadn’t actually started yet. In Boston, no one needed a reason to be loud about their team at any time of year. “We’re gonna slay! YE-AHH!”

  Ham turned his back to the smuggler to give a double fist pump to the street, and slammed his shoulders into the man as hard as he could.

  The smuggler’s feet left the ground as he tumbled backward. A smirk flitted across Hamilton’s face as the man crashed onto the sidewalk with a sickening thump. The rolling suitcase bounced and wrenched the man’s arm but stayed attached.

  “I really hope that case is padded on the inside,” Amy whispered over the radio.

  Dan was already on his feet, rushing to help the guy up.

  “Sorry, little man,” Ham said to the smuggler on the ground, bending down and yanking the guy to his feet, jostling him as much as possible in the process. “Ya hit tha pahvement wicked hahrd.”

  “Don’t try to do an accent,” Dan whispered to Ham over the microphone, then spoke to the smuggler on the ground. “I know first aid!” he said cheerily. He grabbed the smuggler by his other arm. He and Ham pulled him in opposite directions. “Careful! He might have a concussion!”

  “I’m—I’m fine—!” The man tried to shake himself out of Ham’s grip, but Ham gripped him tighter. It would leave a bruise. “You are breaking my wrist, you brute!”

  “Hey! Aye apahlahgized!” Ham yelled into the smuggler’s face. “Why don’t ya watch where yah’er goin’, ya lubber!”

  Ham’s Boston accent had turned into a pirate accent, and Dan frowned at him. Ham closed his mouth and squeezed the guy’s arm harder. He was a better bruiser than he was an actor.

  While the man was focused on freeing himself from Hamilton’s vise grip and getting his face away from the large and obviously disturbed teen, Dan pressed the injection pen against the smuggler’s backside and fired the needle. At the same instant, Hamilton squeezed the metal of the handcuffs into the smuggler’s wrist so hard it made him yelp. “OW!”

  The human body can only pay attention to so many sensations at a time, and the pain in his wrist combined with Ham’s shouting distracted him completely from the fact he’d just been injected with something. Any soreness he felt, he’d blame on his fall.

  Dan stepped back and Ham let the guy go.

  The collector turned and nearly knocked Dan over as he rushed past on his way to the door of the restaurant down the street, dragging the suitcase loudly behind him.

  Once he’d gone inside, Dan looked over at Hamilton.

  “Well done,” he said. “You really sold the whole loudmouth fan thing. Except for the pirate bit.”

  “I never tried an accent before.” Ham shrugged. “Thought it’d be fun. But the Pats really are gonna slay this year. No one’s better than Tom Brady.”

  Dan agreed, but had more pressing concerns than the coming football season. “Phase one complete. Red Team is clear,” he said into his microphone. “Puce Team is a go.”

  “Affirmative,” his sister replied. “But I still don’t forgive you for calling us the Puce Team.”

  “My operation, my team names,” Dan said. “Anyway, puce is cool. It’s the color of a bruise.”

  “Puce isn’t just a color.” Jonah Wizard’s voice came over the earpiece. If he was in the right place, he’d be sitting at the best table in the restaurant, his eyes behind dark sunglasses, with a baseball hat pulled low over his face, looking like a celebrity trying to get noticed while trying not to get noticed.

  Which was, in fact, exactly what he was.

  “Puce is the French word for ‘flea.’ And if the paparazzi find out I was on Team Flea, Imma have Ham give you, Dan, a few puce bruises of your own.”

  Dan laughed. His cousin Jonah was an international superstar, but no matter how many albums he sold or movie franchises he launched, he couldn’t stop worrying about his image. Of course, his image had helped the Cahills out on more missions than they could count, and this one would be no exception. In spite of the potential for embarrassment and/or gruesome death, Jonah never hesitated to do his part for the family.

  “Puce Team is a go,” Dan repeated into the microphone. He loved saying something was “a go.” It was one of his favorite parts of leading a mission. He might start to use it in his everyday life, too. Breakfast cereal is a go. Sleeping late is a go. Playing six hours of video games is definitely a go.

  “We’ve got the target inside,” Amy said. “Jonah’s got a clear view. They put him at a table as far from the bathroom as possible.”

  “Thank Nellie for that one,” said Dan.

  “She’s not gonna like the next part,” Amy replied.

  “I think our smuggler will like it even less,” Dan answered her. His plan was working perfectly. He never felt more relaxed than when all the pieces came together and everyone did what they were supposed to do. It was like playing chess. And now that the guy was inside the restaurant, it was checkmate time.

  Over the earpiece, Amy gasped.

  “Oh, come on,” said Dan. “Don’t be so dramatic. He’ll be fine. The poison’s just gonna make him puke. I mean … a lot. Like, build-an-ark levels of puke … but still, it’s totally safe.”

  Amy didn’t respond. Not even to call him gross.

  Something was wrong. Dan felt the first bead of sweat form at the small of his back.

  “All teams check in,” he snapped.

  “Clear,” said Cara.

  “Clear,” said Ham.

  “Clear,” said Jonah.

  Amy didn’t respond.

  “Amy?” Dan repeated.

  “She’s a little busy right now.” A man’s voice came over the earpiece. “And if any of you do anything to get in my way, I will pull the trigger of the pisto
l I have pressed to her spine.”

  Copyright © 2016 by Scholastic Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, THE 39 CLUES, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934378

  ISBN 978-0-545-76751-4

  Cover, back cover and endpaper photos ©: atoms design: ihor_seamless/Shutterstock, Inc.; equations: Marina Sun/Shutterstock, Inc.; nuclear tanks: Freddie Bethune for Scholastic; blueprint: amgun/Shutterstock, Inc.

  Interior photos ©: 2: Ken Karp for Scholastic; 56 background: CG Textures; 56 main: Ken Karp for Scholastic; 120: Dan Kosmayer/Shutterstock, Inc.; 125: Charice Silverman for Scholastic; 139: Ken Karp for Scholastic; 144–145: Charice Silverman for Scholastic; 209 bee: Alekss/Fotolia; 209 skull on bee: Charice Silverman for Scholastic.

  First edition, July 2016

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-76936-5

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