by Tom Clancy
“Way to go, Megan!” Matt cheered.
The only problem was, the bus still wasn’t stopping. Megan punched the button again, and again. The bus wobbled, but it didn’t stop. The mutinous computer was apparently fighting the cutoff order. Now the ominous smell of frying circuit boards up front joined the increasingly scary engine noises in the rear.
“Megan, get away from there!” David pleaded.
“Why? So I can put myself into the best position to get hit when the turbine throws a vane?” Megan shouted back. She glared around the autobus interior like an Amazon searching for a weapon. “You guys get up here. These passenger poles are only screwed in place. We could work one loose and ram it into the computer housing. That should kill it.”
And maybe us, too, with who knows how much electricity coming up the metal rod, Matt thought. But it beats dying in a crash and taking out the whole bunch of us and anybody in the way.
“Megan! Come back! We’ll meet you in the middle!” he called. Maybe Megan’s cutoff attempt had enjoyed some success. The autobus changed course again, this time veering to the right across the boulevard traffic. It didn’t seem to be an attempt to self-destruct — at least the autobus wasn’t aiming for a building. Bare trees, bushes, and bleached winter grass showed through the windows. They were heading into a park.
Not wanting to meet a tree trunk firsthand while moving at near light speed, Megan began making her way back from the front window. Matt and David struggled painfully to meet her halfway. David was crawling along the floor, his injured leg trailing behind him. Matt wasn’t all that much better. He felt dizzy whenever he tried to raise himself higher than his knees.
The three friends met just as the bus jumped a curb.
“Hold tight!” Megan yelled, wrapping both arms around a pole.
The front tire bumped onto the sidewalk, turning the autobus at a steeper angle. Ahead was a steel-rod fence. They tore through as if it weren’t there.
“I think we’re slowing down a little,” Megan said, peering out the window. Matt and David were both too low to see anything but tree branches whipping past.
“Probably because the dirt under this grass is soaked from snow melt and rain,” David said. “Pure mud.”
“I think we’re going slightly uphill, too,” Matt added.
“We’re still going too fast to try a jump.” Megan’s face reflected her obvious thought. Especially with the two of you so badly banged up.
Matt pulled himself into a position where he could see through the front windshield. The bus plowed its way through a planting of brush. Then came a clear area, and—
“This may be it!” he yelled. “We’ve got a tree coming up at one o’clock!”
The autobus was still moving at an angle and might have made it past the large, old oak with only a body scrape. But the right front wheel hit a boggy spot, and the whole bus sheered around as it pushed its way out. In the windshield, the tree moved from well to the right to dead center, then slightly to the left.
Megan dropped down to Matt and David’s level. “We’re not going to miss,” she said. “Hold on tight!”
They all climbed between seats in the back, bracing themselves as best they could.
Matt closed his eyes.
The autobus hit the tree with a bone-shaking crash! Then the front windshield shattered, sending shards of glass tinkling all over the place. The bus heeled round as if some giant had punched it in the face. It bounced free, the engine noise rising to a shriek as the wheels revved in thin air. The suspension screamed in protest. Only half the wheels — the ones on the right side — touched the ground.
Like a dog going to lie down, the autobus swung round in a half-circle. Then it overbalanced and toppled over on its side.
Matt and his friends rode out the impact as best they could. The wheels were still spinning mindlessly in the air as Megan pushed her way to the bus windows that were now overhead. She grabbed the red emergency handle on them, pulled, then pushed against the frame. The window flew up on a hinge and fell over.
Megan climbed out, then leaned back inside. “Help David get up!” she shouted.
Though still wobbly on his own feet, Matt managed to get David upright. His friend still clung to his laptop computer.
“Let me hold it,” Matt said. “You’re gonna need both hands to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving without that sucker,” David vowed.
“I’ll hand it up before I even try climbing,” Matt said. “Promise.”
With Matt pushing from below and Megan hauling from on high, they managed to get David out the window. David held Matt to his promise. Matt had to hand up the laptop computer before he began climbing.
Then it was his turn to climb to freedom. For one awful second, his legs buckled. He didn’t think he was going to make it. Two sets of arms grabbed him, holding him in place until he managed to catch a foothold. He made it! He was out!
From there it was a simple job to get away from the crazed autobus. Matt and David helped Megan transfer to the ground. She controlled David’s descent as Matt lowered him into Megan’s arms. Finally Matt slithered down the roof of the bus while his friends tried to catch him.
Then, with Megan bracing David on his bad side and Matt hanging on to the other shoulder, they staggered away from the still-screaming bus.
We probably look like we just lost a war, Matt thought. But this feels like a victory to me.
They made it through the newly torn hole in the bushes when Matt heard oncoming sirens. Megan stumbled, and the three of them went down.
With luck, they were far enough away to survive if the autobus decided to explode.
Matt hoped.
Megan was leaning against the tailgate of the Emergency Services ambulance, watching the paramedics patch David and Matt, when a familiar face passed her field of vision.
“Captain Winters!” she called out in surprise.
Winters wheeled on hearing her voice and came straight over. “I came here as soon as I heard the names of the passengers on that bus.” His face filled with concern as he looked into the ambulance.
He probably did the same thing with his Marines, Megan thought. Taking care of his men. Once a military man, always a military man.
“The kids all came through this surprisingly well,” the paramedic stanching Matt’s bleeding forehead assured the captain. “I’ve got the worst of them, and there’s no signs of concussion here, although we’ll have to check and make sure later. Otherwise, a few butterfly clips to close the wound, and the boy should be fine.”
“We’ll need an X ray to make sure that this young man’s bone hasn’t broken again,” the young woman setting the pressure cast around David’s leg said. “But I think it’s fine, just bruised.”
“I lost my cane in all the excitement,” David said. He held his laptop computer cradled in his arms.
“I will personally see that you get a replacement cane,” Winters promised. “What I’d like to hear now is — what in the world happened on that bus?”
“It went nuts,” David said.
“Tried to break the land speed record back to my house,” Matt put in. “When the on-board computer saw that wasn’t going to happen, it apparently tried to take a short cut through the park.”
“Another accident,” Winters said grimly.
“Nuh-uh,” Megan told him, remembering what happened right before the bus went haywire. “I don’t think so. We were rolling along, just another boring Saturday ride, when this car came up beside the bus. I thought we were going to get sideswiped, but someone in the back of the car had a gizmo.”
Winters leaned forward. “What kind of gizmo?”
“I only got a quick glance. It looked like some sort of flat antenna grid. That’s all I saw — except it was shoved out at the front of the autobus.”
“At the front — where the computers are. I’ve heard of experiments being done — the effects of a localized electromagnetic pulse�
��” Winters’s eyes grew sharp. “Did you see anything to identify the car? The make? A look at the license plate?”
“It was black and had dark tinted windows, so I couldn’t see anybody inside it. Sorry. What can I say?” Megan spread her hands. “That’s when things began to get a bit exciting.”
“Oh, yeah,” Matt agreed. “The computer said, ‘Wahoo! We’re off to the races.’”
The captain pulled out his wallet-phone. “We have a technical crew down here, and there’s a team coming from the manufacturers. They expect to see some sort of accident. I’m going to pass along what Megan saw. Let’s see if they find any—”
“Evidence,” Matt finished for him. His pale face had a stony expression. “Otherwise, this will be just another accident.”
“It might also explain one of the earlier ones,” David said slowly. “What if the truck Harry Knox was driving got a taste of EMP? There’s so much drive-by-wire control circuitry in those big rigs, it could have gone wild.”
“And who’d really notice after the electronics took a nice dunk in the Potomac?” Megan added.
“Interesting question,” Winters said, punching a code into his wallet-phone. Apparently it was to the central offices of Net Force, which in turn routed him to the tech crew at the wreck. The captain sketched out what Megan had seen, listened for a moment, then said, “Yes, we’re at the ambulance.”
A few minutes later they were joined by a short, balding guy with a big nose and glasses — he looked like a geek, not a Net Force agent.
Megan found herself wondering how the guy ever survived the combined FBI-Marine physical training course for Net Force officers. When he turned cold gray eyes on her, she began to suspect how.
“You saw some sort of aerial?” the man barked.
“It was flat, like a grid,” Megan said. “Whoever was holding it needed both hands to keep it steady. I could draw it for you if that would help.”
“Later,” he said.
She closed her eyes, trying to reenvision the moment. Another detail came. “The person holding it had gloves on. Shiny gloves. Not leather. Something like — rubber? Plastic? Maybe for insulation?”
The technical guy made a disparaging noise and turned to Winters. “I don’t know how much we’ll be able to recover from the vehicle. Most of the circuit boards were damaged by the impact with the tree. Others had already burned out. Someone had activated the emergency cutoff.” He made it sound like an accusation.
“Well, excuse me for trying to save our lives!” Megan flared. “That vehicle was doing something like ninety on the straightaways when it wasn’t playing bumper cars with everything else on the road. If you don’t believe us, check with Metropolitan Transit. I’m sure you’ll find that we got here well ahead of schedule. Or you can check with all the motorists who almost got nailed, traffic control, and I’ll bet we passed enough building security cameras to give you quite a show! Besides, the stupid cutoff button didn’t work. We wobbled a bit, but we kept going.”
“Is that the usual effect of an emergency cutoff?” Winters asked. “I always expected it to bring a bus to an instant stop — at least as instant as the brakes and the occupants could handle.”
“What happened here was definitely anomalous,” the techie said stiffly. “But, given the state of the hardware, I’m not sure we’ll ever identify the exact nature of the failure.”
He gave Megan an affronted look — an expert faced with an impertinent layperson.
The little guy was surprised when Matt’s sarcastic voice rang out from the ambulance. “Sure, pal. Some failure! One that caused a nearly fatal accident.”
16
On Monday afternoon the stream of students coming out of Bradford Academy generally moved quickly — happy to escape the first day of the school week. Matt Hunter was at the tail end of the rush. While he was glad that classes were over, he wasn’t exactly eager to face another ride on an autobus.
Physically he was okay. The cut on his head was bandaged, and had developed a Technicolor bruise that pained him whenever he touched it. The good news was that David hadn’t broken his leg again. David’s recovery was still on track, and he now had a much fancier cane, courtesy of Captain Winters.
While the media had kept the kids’ names out of the fairly sensational story of the autobus run amok, the Bradford rumor mill had been working overtime. According to the rumors, not only had Matt, Megan, and David been passengers on the mad bus, but apparently they were supposedly responsible somehow for the disaster. If the questions he was hearing were any guide, the kids at school thought they had somehow reprogrammed the bus into believing it was a race car. They also seemed to think that doing so was really, really cool. Nobody seemed to realize how close to getting killed they’d come — or to be able to explain why something that stupid would be cool.
Matt had kept his own opinions away from his new fan club — that anybody who tried that experiment while riding the bus deserved a broken head for their efforts. The only thing he regretted was that none of his new friends had offered him a lift home.
On the other hand, who’d want a ride from someone who admired people who destroyed safety interlocks?
Matt’s mother had given him a lift to school this morning. But now Matt had to face the autobus alone.
It’s just like the guys at the rodeo, he told himself. You’ve got to get back on the horse that threw you.
That didn’t quiet the little voice in the back of his head that whispered, What if another car comes by with one of those trick antennas?
The thought of going through the same adventure, this time on a bus jammed with students, made him shudder. On the other hand, waiting for an empty bus didn’t seem like the answer, either.
What I really need, he thought, is for Nikki Callivant to come by and—
His thoughts were interrupted by the beep of a car horn. Matt turned to see the now-familiar bronze car. Behind the wheel, Nikki Callivant had reduced her disguise to a baseball cap and sunglasses.
She pushed the shades up on her forehead to get a good look at him. “What happened to you?” she asked.
Matt came around and got in the passenger door. “Did you hear about the suburban autobus that went on the fritz? I was riding it. Quite a coincidence, huh?”
Nikki took her glasses off to stare at him. “I saw that on the news. What—”
“Here’s something that never made the evening report. I was riding home with two friends. We’d spend the afternoon poking around in a computer that belonged to Harry Knox. You remember Hard-Knocks Harry? The truck driver whose big rig decided to take a dive?”
The rich girl continued to stare.
“By the way, I think he’s the one your family had the problem with. He must have obsessed on you Callivants. Had all sorts of crap he’d gotten off the Net — in addition to material he must have hacked.”
“And now you have it—?”
“No, we’ve spread it out as much as we could,” Matt told her. “It seemed a little safer that way.”
“Safer,” she repeated, sounding almost dazed.
“I’ll share one of the less earth-shaking tidbits he collected,” Matt went on. “What does the Cowper’s Bluff Nature Preserve mean to you?”
Nikki blinked. “It’s a — well, it’s a major Callivant cause. The Senator — my great-grandfather — started it. Years ago he saw the way things were going with the Chesapeake Bay. He bought some shoreland that was little more than a dump, fenced it off, and started the preserve. He used our family prestige to recruit other wealthy contributors. Some have even donated adjoining parcels of land. Now the preserve is a major bird sanctuary.”
She spread her hands. “It’s one of the reasons I was at the Junior League event where I met your friend Megan. Quite a few socially prominent families support Cowper’s Bluff.”
“How nice for the birds,” Matt said.
“Why would that man have anything about the preserve in his computer?” Nik
ki asked.
“You’ve got me there,” Matt admitted. “But he had all sorts of stuff. Publicity. Maps. Pictures. We were looking at them on the autobus — before things got exciting.”
“What—” She stopped to swallow. “What happened?”
“The unofficial version?” Matt asked. “We think somebody came up in a car and scrambled the bus’s electronic brains. Net Force is looking into it.”
“Net Force?”
“Anything weird that happens with computers brings Net Force in,” he explained. “Even if you might expect the National Transportation Safety Administration instead.”
“How did you manage to keep the media people away?” Nikki asked.
“Easy,” Matt replied. “We’re not Callivants, and we’re underage. The underage part is also good for court records. You can ask your grandfather about that.”
A faint reddish tinge crept onto her cheeks when she heard that. But Nikki shrugged and started the car. “I guess you’d be glad of a lift all the way home this time,” she said. Then, touching on Matt’s last verbal dart, “I think Grandpa Clyde could talk more about youthful offenses.” Nikki managed a grin. “To listen to him, he had a pretty colorful time growing up.”
Matt shook his head. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading too many detective novels lately,” he said. “But you make Clyde Finch sound like the Great Detective’s butler — the reformed safecracker.”
Nikki’s grin faded. “What do you mean?”
“I hear how you speak about the Callivant side of your family. Your great-grandfather is still the Senator, capital S. And Walter G. is Grandfather. But when it comes to Grandpa Clyde — you sound more like you’re talking about a servant than a relative.”
A full flush came to Nikki’s cheeks. “You mean I’m a snob? Maybe. But so is Grandpa Clyde, in his own way. He told me years ago, ‘Every family has its in-laws and its outlaws. I know where I fit — I’m definitely the Callivant outlaw.’”