Amy put the call on SPEAKER.
The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And then a voice answered, a man’s voice, one Ian recognized from the day he was tossed from the mansion in Attleboro and lost control of the family. The Outcast.
“Hello, children, good of you to call,” the Outcast said. “I trust you’ve read the poem.”
“Where is Aunt Beatrice?” Amy snapped at him.
He didn’t answer.
Ian took over the conversation. “Why have you sent us this poem?”
“Consider it your next clue,” the Outcast said, chuckling to himself. “The next disaster I have planned for you.”
“We stopped you once, we shall do it again,” said Ian. “Perhaps you would stop wasting our time and tell us why you’re really doing this. If you wanted to undermine my leadership, there are simpler ways.”
“Oh, Ian Kabra,” the Outcast said. “How like a Lucian you are, assuming it is your time to waste. It is my time. I decide how you spend it and how much of it you have. And if you want to prevent a terrible loss of humanity, I suggest you get busy before history repeats itself. He who flies closest to the sun will surely fall burning to the earth. Good-bye now, children —”
“Wait!” Amy pleaded. “Please, where is Aunt Beatrice?”
The Outcast laughed again. He seemed in a merry mood, which annoyed Ian even more. Amy’s hands shook.
“You care so much about that old cow?” the Outcast asked.
“She’s family,” Amy said.
“If only everyone shared your sentimentality, Amy Cahill,” the Outcast told her. “Unfortunately, your Aunt Beatrice didn’t make it.”
Amy swallowed hard and Ian saw her face tighten even as the rest of her body seemed to slump. “The coroner will call it natural causes,” the Outcast continued. “And I suppose he’s right. She was naturally a gossip and it caught up with her at last. Now, get to work, children. As they say, time flies. And so must you. The Karman Line will be crossed.”
With that, the call went dead. Amy stood still as a statue as Los Angeles darkened in the window behind her. The streetlights and the lights of houses flickered on, like a carpet of stars, while the smog above made the sky smooth and blank. Behind Amy, the blimp still floated between the false stars on the ground and the blank sky above, scrolling its poem. Slowly, it turned and began to float away.
“Yo, I don’t want to alarm anybody, but William Carlos Williams was from New Jersey,” said Jonah.
The others looked at him blankly.
“Why should we be alarmed about New Jersey?” Ian wondered, but Jonah didn’t answer him. Amy did.
“The Hindenburg,” said Amy gravely.
“The what?” Dan replied.
Amy seemed to snap out of a trance as she spoke. “I thought there was something odd about what the Outcast said. He told us there would be ‘a terrible loss of humanity.’ Why say it that way? Why say humanity?” She tapped a search into her phone and then held it up so everyone else could see what she’d found.
In black and white, they saw the frame of a giant zeppelin burning, people in a field, running away. The large balloon that held the passenger gondola below shimmered and flickered with flames, tilting to the ground at an impossible angle as it suddenly sank to the earth, smashing apart. The skin of the balloon melted away and the frame collapsed in a heap of burning fabric and scorched metal.
Jonah hit another button and the black-and-white disaster footage replaced the Icarus painting on the large screen on his wall.
Tiny figures in fancy clothes ran from the wreckage of the crashing zeppelin in panic and dismay. Rescuers rushed toward the flames in futile acts of heroism, and the crackly voice of an old-time radio reporter cried out, his voice choked with tears, “This is the worst disaster … Oh … oh, the humanity!”
Amy turned her phone back to herself and read: “ ‘On May 6, 1937, the passenger zeppelin Hindenburg burst into flames while attempting to dock in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people were killed.’ ”
“ ‘Time flies and so must you.’ ” Dan repeated the Outcast’s words as all eyes turned to the blimp floating away over downtown Los Angeles.
“We have to follow that blimp!” said Ian.
“I’m cracking the flight data,” said Cara, flipping open her laptop and typing at the speed of light. “If they’re floating over downtown LA, you can be sure they had to file a flight plan. We can see where they took off and where they’re supposed to land.”
Ian stood over her shoulder, watching her type, while the others stared out the window at the blimp making its way across their view of the Los Angeles sky.
“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Ham asked. “If the Outcast is going to re-create the crash of the Hindenburg and there’s a blimp floating over LA right now, couldn’t that be the one he’s going to blow up?”
“We can’t simply call the authorities without proof,” Ian told him. “The police might think that we are the ones making bomb threats. And, if you’ll recall, I am not a United States citizen. Your Homeland Security agents are suspicious chaps.”
No one could argue with that logic, so they let Cara continue to work with Ian breathing over her shoulder.
Amy and Dan stood side by side at the window.
After a long silence, punctuated only by the clicking of Cara’s keyboard and her occasional grunts and mutterings, Dan spoke. “The Outcast killed Aunt Beatrice.”
Amy nodded. Beatrice hadn’t ever been kind to them, or generous or loving or any of the things one would want a guardian to be, but still, she’d always been around, and now she wasn’t. She was dead. Amy wasn’t actually sure how she felt about that.
“Beatrice didn’t even want to be involved in the Cahill family,” Dan added. “It’s our fault she’s dead, isn’t it?”
Amy turned to her little brother and saw the serious look etched across his face. However confused she felt about Beatrice, she didn’t feel at all confused about her brother. “It is not our fault,” she told him firmly. “We didn’t want to be involved, either, remember? It’s the Outcast. It’s his fault. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget that for a second.”
Dan studied her. “You’re right. I won’t forget it again.”
“You believe me, don’t you?” Amy looked him in the eye. He was still shorter than she was, but barely. He was growing, and fast. He was quickly becoming her not-so-little brother.
“I believe you,” said Dan, setting his jaw. “We’ve got to stop him. He’s a murderer.”
“We’re going to stop him,” said Amy.
Dan glanced over his shoulder. “You think Ian’s up to it?” he whispered. “Leading this family like Grace did?”
Amy shook her head. “No one could lead this family like Grace did. She was … special. But I think Ian can do it, if we help him.”
She hoped it sounded convincing.
“I got it!” Cara cried out. “The blimp is owned by a company called Daedalus Entertainment — and before you ask, Ian, yes, it’s a shell company and no, I can’t find anything else out about it. The blimp took off from a private hangar only five miles away! And it’s scheduled to land there again in half an hour.”
“We need to get there right away,” said Ian. “The Hindenburg exploded when it was docking after a flight. If that’s what he has planned, we don’t have much time. We’ll take two of Jonah’s vehicles.”
Jonah had only gotten his driver’s license a year ago, but he’d already filled an eight-car garage with luxury vehicles.
“Ham,” Ian instructed. “You will drive Dan, Amy, and Jonah in the armored BMW. Cara and I will take the Aston Martin Q series.”
“Oh, we will?” Cara raised her eyebrows at him.
Ian immediately blushed. “Well, I mean, I thought you could, perhaps, well, tell me more about this, you see, the … eh … shell company while we … er … drove?” he stammered.
Cara
patted him on the back. “Don’t get all flustered, Kabra. I’ll go with you in the Aston Martin. But I’m driving. No offense, but I don’t trust you to drive on the right side of the road.”
“I know how to drive an automobile!” Ian said back to her, his blush turned to red anger.
“Yo, Kabra, why do you get to take my Aston Martin Q?” Jonah asked him. “That’s the sweetest ride I own. There are only five of them in North America.”
Ian narrowed his eyes. “Leadership is a grave responsibility,” he told Jonah. “Therefore it comes with commensurate privileges.” He looked at his watch and then at the group. “Now, let’s go stop a disaster!”
The black BMW peeled out in front of them, and Cara jolted the sleek silver Aston Martin Q from the garage in its wake, careening around the marble fountain in front of Jonah’s mansion. She sped through the front gate, and the engine purred like a wildcat.
“I texted you the GPS coordinates of the hangar,” Cara said over the speakerphone.
“Take the shortest route,” Ian added from the passenger seat. Cara gave him a side-eye look, which he did not believe he deserved. He was simply being thorough. He’d found, when managing Hamilton Holt, it was best to be specific.
“You know I trained in evasive driving when I became Jonah’s bodyguard, right?” Ham told them over the speakerphone from the car in front.
“I am aware,” Ian replied.
“So try to keep up,” Ham snapped back, and then the BMW took a sudden sharp left, and Cara had to slam the brakes and spin the wheel not to miss it. They broke the speed limit immediately, hitting 65 miles per hour on a quiet street through the hills. Hamilton wove into the opposite lane to pass slower-moving cars, and Cara followed. Ian tried not to clutch the armrest too tightly. He wanted to impress Cara with his calm in the face of danger and his faith in her driving, but in his chest his heart thumped so loud it was a wonder she couldn’t hear it.
Hamilton turned left and then a quick right and another left, avoiding the rush hour traffic on Sunset Boulevard.
“Don’t lose him,” Ian told Cara.
“Roger that, Captain Obvious,” she replied.
He decided to keep his mouth shut. In truth, he was relieved she’d insisted on taking the wheel. Ian always did forget which side of the road Americans drove on.
At the next turn, Cara slammed on the brakes, barely stopping in time to avoid smashing into the back of Ham’s car. In front of them a wall of red brake lights blocked their path.
“LA traffic,” Ham said over the speakerphone.
Ian checked his watch again. He glanced up at the sky but couldn’t see the blimp overhead. “There is simply no way we can make it to that hangar in the next fifteen minutes,” he said. “It’s not possible.”
“I got Jonah from the premier of RoboGangsta to an after-party in Pasadena in less than twenty,” Ham said.
Ian had no idea if or why that was supposed to impress him, but it didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was getting to that hangar.
“Cara, you ready to do some real driving?” Ham asked.
Cara revved the engine in response. She ran her hands along the leather-covered steering wheel.
“Yo, don’t break my ride,” Jonah piped in, and then the BMW took off, turning hard toward the parking lot of a large glass building. Cara followed him. They wove between parked cars, then stayed right behind Ham’s car, knifing down an alley and onto a sidewalk, and then took a hard left into oncoming traffic.
Brakes squealed and cars honked, but Ham’s car accelerated.
Cara pressed the gas. “No guts, no glory!” she said, speeding over the top of a hill and turning into a parking garage after Ham. They raced up one side of the parking garage, down another, and burst onto the neighboring street where she had to do a jackknife turn to spin the car 180 degrees in place, then shoot like a bullet down another hill, which took them under an overpass. Ham sliced his car from side to side, passing a bus by pulling halfway onto the sidewalk, then reversing when he hit traffic on a crossing avenue to take a different route the wrong way down a one-way street. He turned into a narrow alley, which threw sparks off the doors of Jonah’s car as it scraped through.
Ian could hear Jonah groan over the speakerphone.
Cara kept up, her hands gripping the wheel at ten and two o’clock. Her eyes scanned the traffic, the streets, the sidewalks, and kept Ham’s car in sight. What a remarkable person, Ian thought. She was mesmerizing and unbelievable, able to hack a government database and drive in a high-speed pursuit through Los Angeles. He felt fairly useless in the passenger seat, like he was cutting in on a dance between Cara and the car. He had to assert himself if she was to remember him at all.
“Watch out for that rubbish bin,” he said, as she swerved around a trash can.
Foolish! He had to offer her more than that! As he formulated something else of value to say to her, it took him by complete surprise when she hit the brakes. His body slammed against the seat belt and then jolted him back into his seat, whiplashing his neck in the process.
“Why are you stopping?” he cried out, looking at his watch in a panic.
“Because we’re here,” Cara pointed out.
Ian looked up and saw they had stopped at the perimeter fence outside a large hangar with a parking lot and a concrete landing pad in front of it. The fence was topped with barbed wire and only had one gate all the way on the opposite side.
The blimp itself hovered over the concrete, slowly lowering over the landing pad. Its giant silver balloon rippled in a light breeze, and dust kicked up from its landing rotors, which stabilized the descent.
“It’s coming in now,” Ian gasped, popping out of the car. He turned back quickly to Cara. “Lovely driving, by the way.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and he regretted immediately that he’d said anything. He meant it as a compliment, but it had, of course, come off as sarcasm.
No time to explain, though. It was time for action. He slammed the car door and turned to to Ham. “Can you get us through this fence?”
Hamilton gave a quick nod, bent at the knees, and gripped the metal wire with his bare hands. He grunted and heaved, and the wire gave, bending just enough from the ground for them to slip underneath.
The airship dropped six lines and a ground crew ran out to hold them, to help bring in the blimp. If it exploded now, they would surely all be killed. Ian knew he had to save them. It was up to him, lives in the balance, and he had no time to dillydally.
“Jonah,” Ian barked. “You stay here with the cars. I don’t want anyone recognizing you. Everyone else, come with me.”
Ian sprinted ahead toward the landing pad, hoping the others would follow. This, he felt, was leadership, running first into danger, come what may. Still, he glanced over his shoulder to double check that they were, indeed, behind him.
The ground crew was so busy bringing in the flying machine that they didn’t notice Ian and the other kids running toward them until they were in shouting distance.
“Back away!” Ian warned them. “She’s going to explode!”
But by the time they heard him, the blimp had touched down, its engines whirring to a stop, and the crew stood face-to-face with Ian as he caught his breath.
“How did you get in here?” one of the men demanded.
“We have … to get the pilot … off the blimp …” Ian panted. “It’s going to blow!”
“There is no pilot,” the crewman told him. “It’s remote controlled. We were hired just to fly it around for an hour….” He pointed to the gondola on the ground beneath the rippling silver oval above. “Who are you kids?”
Ian ignored him and rushed forward to look inside the cockpit.
The crewman was right, there was no pilot. The cockpit was just a control board with gears and levers and transmitters linked to a computer terminal for the remote pilot on the ground to control the blimp. But Ian went pale when he saw what was attached to the control bo
ard.
There was another bright LED screen with a picture of a bright blue sky and puffy white clouds rolling by. In front of the clouds, a clock counted down. Wires led from the clock to a row of neatly bundled bright white plastic explosives.
“Bomb!” he shouted.
Amy, Dan, and Ham turned to run, waving their arms for the crewmen to back off. “Bomb!” they repeated. “Bomb!”
The crewmen ran.
Cara, however, paused. She pulled out her phone and snapped a photograph, just as Ian dove at her, wrapping his arms around her waist and hauling her onto his shoulders.
“What are you —?” she objected, but he ran with her as fast as he could, making it about twenty yards before there was a flash of light, followed by the roar of the blimp exploding behind him.
Dan had tasted plenty of dirt in his life, from his elementary school days getting picked on by bigger kids to the countless falls, chases, and explosions he’d survived during the Clue hunt and its aftermath. If he had to pick, though, he’d say that the Los Angeles dirt was the worst tasting, and now he had a mouth full of it. He spat out the gravel and scraggly brown grass that he’d taken full in the face and sat up.
Amy was beside him, rubbing her head. The others were spread around the parking lot, where they’d taken cover or been knocked down, slowly getting to their feet. Cara was tangled with Ian for some reason, and Ham had two crewmen pinned beneath his massive arms, where he’d probably thrown them for protection from the blast. He was like that, always putting himself between danger and other people.
Right in front of Dan, the blimp burned on the landing pad. The explosion had ripped the gondola to shreds, and there were sizzling shards of metal scattered all the way to the hangar. Orange flames danced and crackled where the cockpit had once been. The gas had burned off fast and left a thick black cloud rising into the heavy Los Angeles sky. It probably wouldn’t make much difference with all the pollution already in the air, Dan figured, but still, the smell was pretty bad.
Mission Hindenburg Page 2