by Jenny Goebel
Their eyes blinked open. Ian took one look at all the glitter and quickly clambered to his feet, allowing Cara to rise as well.
“Sorry. False alarm,” Dan said.
“Clearly.” Ian shook himself and brushed off the glitter. But when it was all gone, his shaking continued. The trembles seemed to embarrass Ian, and Dan looked away.
Throwing yourself between your friends and gunfire took remarkable bravery. Dan had no doubt that Ian was brave. But as Dan sped down the canal on the way toward violent, open seas and the threat of horrendous calamity, he worried that their leader was cracking under all the pressure.
Mount Fuji, Japan
Nellie had never been so cold in all her life, and navigating in the whiteout was like walking around with a bucket on her head. She couldn’t tell up from down, left from right. Even with the balaclava snug around her face, the wind buffeted her ears. Layers of clothing couldn’t stop the icy chill from leaching all warmth from her body. Magnus was a pussycat compared to this storm.
Nellie had known they were in trouble the moment she and Sammy reemerged from the secret tunnel. One step into the blizzard—just one—and the world had slipped away, obscure and imperceptible through the raging swaths of wind and ice.
A second step and she’d realized that the situation could be fatal. And there was nothing more daunting than knowing they were up against a force as big and insidious as the cold.
She tugged on Sammy’s coat sleeve to make him stop walking. If she lost connection, she’d never be able to find him in the whiteout. Sammy huddled close to her and his body gave off some heat, but not enough. A new plan was in order, but the cold was numbing her brain right along with all her senses.
Think, Gomez, she told herself, and focused her mind. Shelter was their number one priority. They’d never find their way down Mount Fuji through the blowing snow. The huts were all closed, and they’d die of hypothermia if they didn’t find shelter from the elements soon.
No one, save Magnus and perhaps the restaurant owner, knew they were here, so a snowcat rescue was out of the question. And if no one was coming, and there wasn’t shelter to be found, they’d just have to make their own.
She’d heard that snow is an excellent insulator.
“We need to dig a cave,” Nellie said, leaning close to Sammy’s ear so as to be heard over the blaring winds. Already, her lips felt numb and raw. Her muscles protested when she willed them to move, and her bones ached from the cold as she removed a lightweight avalanche shovel from her pack.
Sammy’s eyes took longer than usual to register his understanding. Nellie worried that he was feeling the numbing effects of the cold, too.
But he followed her lead as she dropped to her hands and knees in a place where the snow had naturally drifted into a pile. Her head swam as she scooped and pushed the snow with her hands, mounding the drift higher. Disorientation was one of the first symptoms of hypothermia.
She was close to knife’s edge herself, and she needed to know if Sammy was all right. “Did you bring a corncob pipe, and a button nose, and two eyes made out of coal?” Nellie yelled, her tongue feeling heavy and sluggish as she spoke. It wasn’t a particularly clever joke, but Sammy’s answer would be telling. Confusion was another symptom of hypothermia.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t lost all my senses yet,” Sammy said, equally slowly. “And no, I don’t have coal or a corncob pipe. But I have a synthetic thumb. It might work just as well as a button for the snowman’s nose.”
Nellie’s face was too frozen to smile, but relief swept over her. If only we were merely playing in the snow.
The wind howled and blasted them with a fresh spray of ice. Nellie’s eyelids and the tiny circle of exposed skin around her mouth stung in the frigid air. Their mound diminished in the wind.
Nellie waited until the gusts waned, then shouted, “Help me pack it down!” Sammy nodded and patted a clump of snow on top to hold the drift in place.
When they had a large, packed pile, Nellie used the shovel to carve into the side of it. Sammy labored to remove everything she dug out away from the opening. Together they hollowed a dome, and then Nellie cut a ventilation hole to the surface and they crawled inside.
Digging into her pack, Nellie pulled out extra gear to sit on, a tin survival candle, two canteens, and the greasy sack with the grilled cheese sandwiches they’d ordered from the restaurant. Then she used the pack to block the entrance.
“People pay decent money to stay in hotels made entirely of ice, you know,” Nellie said. Her fingers were clumsy as she lit the candle and handed Sammy his sandwich. “Don’t think I’m going to go to this extreme for all our dates,” she teased.
Sammy smiled as he scooched closer to her and warmed both his hands and the sandwich over the flame. “It is rather romantic, other than the whole we-might-not-make-it-out-of-here-alive part.”
“Yeah, that does put a damper on things, doesn’t it?” Nellie said. “That and knowing that Magnus has probably broken out of the vault by now. I bet he’s getting ready to hand over all the Tomas clues to the Outcast, and we can’t do anything to stop him.”
Nellie didn’t know if it was heat from the candle or from her anger, but her face suddenly felt warmer. “Who knows how many of the clues the Outcast has already? I’ve got to warn my kiddos.”
“Most blizzards last somewhere between four and ten hours,” Sammy said. “Even if the storm does end soon, it’s probably not safe to hike down at night. It’s going to get even colder once the sun goes down.”
“Colder” was unimaginable to Nellie at the moment. Even inside the relative warmth of the snow cave, her mind still felt dull and her extremities were numb.
“One way or the other, we should probably stay put until morning,” Sammy continued.
Nellie didn’t like it, but she conceded. “Okay, we’ll wait until sunrise, assuming the sun breaks through the clouds. You said most last four to ten hours. How long could this blizzard last?”
Sammy dropped his gaze to the tiny flicker of the candle’s flame. “Some blizzards last for days, sometimes even weeks,” he said bleakly.
Nellie glanced at the candle, too. The tin said it had a six-hour burn time. Other than the warmth their bodies gave off, it was their only source of heat. “Let’s just hope that this blizzard is short-lived, and that by some miracle we outlast the storm.”
Hook of Holland, the Netherlands
Dan wasn’t prone to seasickness. Unfortunately, he couldn’t say the same for his friends. Cara’s face had a yellow-green tint to it, and Ian had lurched over the side of the speedboat and vomited three times in the distance between Amsterdam and the mouth of the Schenr River.
If there’d been time, Dan would’ve pulled the boat ashore to give them a break from the vigorous bouncing from one wave to the next. There wasn’t time.
Dan swiveled his head to check on his passengers just as Ian wiped the corners of his mouth with a silk pocket square.
While Dan’s attention was focused on the backseat, Ian’s hand abruptly dropped to his lap and his jaw fell open. Dan’s eyes shifted to Cara, who seemed every bit as awestruck.
When he turned his gaze back over the bow of the boat he saw what they were gaping at. Before them, the Maeslantkering was just coming into view. More than seven stories tall, the curved steel gates sat like a pair of slightly cockeyed parentheses on either side of the river. Behind the gates, triangular steel trusses expanded along the edge of the water for nearly seven hundred feet.
“We’re supposed to move those things?” Dan croaked. The task that could save their lives and all of Rotterdam seemed utterly impossible now that he’d seen the barrier.
“No wonder Anki was so confident,” Cara piped in. “Each arm of the Maeslantkering is as big as a real-life Eiffel Tower.”
Ian moaned as the boat jerked against the top of a wave. “They’re open, of course, and would you look at how many boats are on this side of the arms—the wrong side.
”
Dan reined in his feelings of hopelessness. Nothing was ever accomplished by giving up. “We’ll just have to find a way to warn the boats—get them all to move into port before we shut the gates,” Dan replied, though he had no idea how. Finding a place to dock their boat would probably be a good start. He cut back on the throttle and trawled the boat slowly into the Nieuwe Waterweg, the primary ship canal between Rotterdam and the sea.
As they passed through the open barrier, his eyes were naturally drawn to the Maeslantkering looming above them. From what he could tell, the doors of the surge barrier were essentially gigantic platforms floating in man-made inlets next to the canal.
“The computer tells the doors to swing out into the river, and a hydraulic system fills them with water. The weight of the water sinks the floating arms and then locks them into place,” Cara said.
The water inside the channel was calmer, and Dan was pleased to see that Cara’s skin was returning to a more natural hue. He nodded his head. Then he searched the banks for an open slot, swerving the boat into the first one he found.
Once he’d glided the boat into the slot, he hopped out and hitched it to a post. He gave Ian and Cara both a hand as they scrambled out after him and onto shore.
Ian listed back and forth on the dock, having not yet found his land legs. “We’ve got to find someone to help us shut the gates,” he sputtered. Then he planted his feet and stabilized his legs with a hand on each knee.
Dan’s eyes darted from person to person, combing the area for anyone with authority. What he saw chilled him. It was nothing but moms and dads pushing strollers down the sidewalk, cyclists, and tourists taking photos with their cameras.
His eyes finally rested on a small building with aluminum siding just a short distance away. “There,” he said, and read the words off the side of the building:
“Publiekscentrum. Public Center. It has to be some sort of visitor center. Perhaps we can find someone to help us there.”
Ian rose to his full height and, having regained his balance, charged forward. The three of them raced down the sidewalk, past several flagpoles, and through the sliding glass doors of the visitor center.
A man with a ruddy beard and chin-length ginger hair was giving a guided tour to a group of ten just inside the door. “One of the busiest seaports in the world, Rotterdam is a vibrant, international city on the water with an impressively modern skyline,” the tour guide said. “The Maeslantkering has allowed commerce to thrive in Rotterdam and at the same time offers a world-renowned level of flood protection.”
Dan browsed the entryway and noticed two stacks of fliers beside the door. He passed over the stack with fireworks clip art at the top of each page and picked up a piece of paper displaying the artwork of two lions holding a shield beneath a golden crown.
Ian and Cara continued to move forward, but Dan froze in his tracks. The artwork on the flier he’d picked up represented the royal coat of arms of the Netherlands. And what he read sent a shiver down his spine.
“Hold up.” He whispered so as not to disturb the guided tour. He glanced at a digital clock sitting on top of a reception desk near the front of the room and then back down at the flier.
“Well?” Ian said impatiently.
Dan felt his face grow hot, his nerves tingling. He turned a wide-eyed gaze back on his friends. “We only have forty-one minutes until the nuke goes off.”
Cara blanched. “What makes you say that?” she asked.
He pushed the flier beneath their noses. “This says King Willem-Alexander is touring cities across the Netherlands for King’s Day. He’s expected to make an appearance at Oude Haven, Rotterdam’s historic old harbor, at noon today. It’s 11:19 now.” Dan gestured toward the clock.
“ ‘The Gateway floods when autonomy fails. The torrent erases the Dutch king’s trail,’ ” Cara recited. She shook her head. “Oh, no!”
Dan’s stomach revolted. The boat ride may not have made him sick, but the thought of the surge coming, and what little time they had left to stop it, did him in.
A storm seemed to be brewing inside Ian as well. He clenched his jaw and made a beeline for the tour guide, the only employee in sight.
“The tour is over,” Ian announced to the sightseers. “Your lives are in danger. I suggest you find higher ground!” When the tour group just stood there, stunned, Ian added, “What is wrong with you people? Posthaste! You’re all going to die if you don’t listen to me.” He clapped his hands at them. “Get out of here at once, I say!”
There were a few murmurs of surprise, followed by an older gentleman calling out, “Eh, what was that?”
“He said we’re going to die if we don’t leave,” a younger man standing next to him answered in a decidedly skeptical tone.
“We’re going to have pie when we leave?”
“No, die.”
When the elderly man cupped his ear, the younger one rolled his eyes and shouted, “HE SAID WE’RE GOING TO DIE!”
“Humph. Well, I’d rather have cake,” the old man grumbled.
“Let’s just go, Dad,” the younger man said. “We’ll come back for a tour later—after we’ve replaced the battery in your hearing aid.”
“Who said anything about lemonade? I said I want cake!”
Ian scuttled after the tour group, herding them like a little Welsh corgi snapping at the heels of livestock. Then, momentarily looking quite pleased with himself, Ian tapped the bearded tour guide on the shoulder. “Not you. You are going to close the gates for me.”
“I’m going to do what?”
“Are you deaf? I demand you shut the arms immediately! Close the Maeslantkering. I shouldn’t have to chivy you along, too. Just do as I say!”
“I can’t. What is going on here? Is this a practical joke?” The tour guide brightened and looked around. “Is someone filming me?”
“No, it’s not a joke! I’m dead serious.” Dan and Cara watched helplessly as Ian grew more flustered by the second. “We don’t have time for incredulity, you twit. If you don’t know how to shut the gates, find someone for me who does.”
An unidentifiable expression flitted across the man’s face and he began speaking in a low, pacifying voice. “You must understand, we only close the gates for testing once a year. You can come back at the end of September if you care to view the event. It really is quite impressive.”
“I’m not a tourist!” Ian staggered on his feet. “Listen to me. In forty minutes, a powerful surge will breach the Maeslantkering unless you shut the gates.” Ian took the man by the shoulders and began to shake a little too forcefully. “You. You can save Rotterdam.”
The tour guide gave Ian a long, measuring glance, and then nodded his head. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “I probably should make a phone call. If you’ll just excuse me for a moment … ” He cautiously took one step back, then another, and then he turned and bolted.
“What did I say?” A pained and utterly flummoxed look crossed Ian’s face. “This is impossible,” he lamented before chasing after the man. “Wait a minute. Exactly whom are you calling?” he shouted. “I demand you tell me at once!”
Cara began to follow, but Dan grabbed her by the arm. “There has to be another way.” He scanned the visitor center, taking in the sight of a tiny replica of the Delta Works, which included a scale model of the Maeslantkering, and then all the black-and-white photos hanging on the walls, cataloging the North Sea flood of 1953.
He wished like mad that his sister were there. Amy would have a solution to this mess, or at least be able to talk Ian into getting his head back in the game. Dan could hear him pounding on a door. The tour guide must have locked himself in a room at the back of the center.
With both Ian and Amy out of the picture, Dan knew it fell on him to make the hard decisions. And that was like being handed a giant lead ball and being told not to drop it. He inhaled deeply and continued to canvass the room. His gaze flicked from the clock, as another minute ticked
away, to the desktop computer situated next to it on the reception desk.
“That’s it!” Dan cried. Ian’s flip-out had created the perfect diversion. “Cara, there’s a computer and no one to stop you. It might be tied to the same network as the computer that controls the surge barrier. Do you think you can crack it?”
Cara perked up. “What do you have in mind?”
“You tell me. There must be a way to trick the computer into triggering a closure. You said it ran on algebra or something.”
“On an algorithm.”
“Right! Can’t you feed it false data or something? Make it think there’s a storm raging outside even though it’s bright and sunny?”
“Maybe. Or I might be able to change the parameters altogether. I’ll figure out something,” Cara said, a confident smile blooming on her face. “As long as Ian keeps the guide occupied.”
Just then, Ian’s voice came screeching from the back of the visitor center. “By security, I do hope you mean the naval forces!”
“No worries there,” Dan said, and they both sprang into action. As Cara slid into place behind the keyboard, Dan made a mad dash for the sliding doors. Beyond the glass, he caught a glimpse of a pontoon boat lingering outside the gates of the barrier. A family was laughing and barbecuing onboard, out for a leisurely day on the water.
“Where are you going?” Cara called.
“I have to find a way to warn the ships.”
Nieuwe Waterweg, the Netherlands
If Dan was going to die today, at least he’d go out with a bang.
He snagged a flier from the other stack as he fled the visitor center.
The fireworks on it had caught his attention before, but, as with any disaster, things had to be taken one step at a time. Now that Cara, he hoped, was on her way to activating the gates, Dan could focus on clearing the busy waterway.
The text beneath the image of fireworks exploding in the sky was written entirely in Dutch. Dan flipped the flier over.
Dan liked fireworks every bit as well as the next thirteen-year-old, but it was the last line that got him really excited.