The Hardys picked out boots that fit, while Neal rummaged around for two of his spare snowboards.
Within minutes Neal, the Hardys, and four agents, including Ardis and DuBelle, were heading outside to hit the slopes.
They hiked a few hundred yards away from the lodge to the start of a nice, steep slope that cut between tall rows of pine and spruce trees. Neal pointed down the mountain. “It’s pretty fast,” he said. “Follow my lead the first time down.”
“There’s no ski lift,” Joe said. “Are we going to hike back up?”
Neal laughed. “No way.” He pointed back toward the house. Three agents came roaring out of a storage garage on snowmobiles. “They’ll follow us down and give us a lift back up.”
“This is the life,” Frank said as he clipped into his board and took off down the mountain after Neal.
The snow was fresh, perfect powder, and the three teens cut down the mountain quickly, dodging between trees and popping over small jumps.
When they reached the bottom, the agents were waiting to take them up.
At the top of the run, they huddled together. The agents on snowmobiles idled their engines nearby. “You guys know the hill now?” Neal asked.
Joe nodded enthusiastically. “Let’s race, man. Free-for-all!”
“Hold up, Joe!” Frank hurried to clip back into his board. As he bent down, he thought he heard the drone of an airplane in the distance. He looked up and scanned the sky. Nothing. He must have imagined it.
Then two of the agents slumped over the handlebars of their snowmobiles. The third tumbled off his and lay in the snow.
Frank saw a look of confusion and fear on Neal’s face. What was going on?
Frank looked up again. Two parachutists were dropping out of the sky overhead. One pointed a rifle at Frank. The gun made a sinister, hissing pop, and Frank dove behind a tree.
He peeked out. All the agents were down, including Ardis and DuBelle.
Neal stood out in the open, frozen with fear.
14 Silent Attack
* * *
“Neal! Joe!” Frank shouted. “Dive for cover!”
Frank watched as his brother took a step toward Neal to pull him to safety. Joe stopped, grabbed at his leg, then stumbled and fell to his knees.
He’d been hit!
The two parachutists released their chutes expertly as they swooped in to land. One ran over and pulled the agents clear from the snowmobiles. The other grabbed Neal.
Frank wasn’t about to let them get away—guns or not. With a wild yell, he rushed out from behind the tree, head lowered.
He felt a projectile whiz past his ear. He dove for the gunman, his hands reaching for the barrel of the rifle.
Pain shot through the back of his skull. Frank collapsed in the snow.
He had to get up. He made it to one knee. Everything was spinning. He thought he might throw up.
Frank shook his head to clear the cobwebs. By the time his vision cleared, the two kidnappers had Neal and were roaring off on the snowmobiles.
He looked around. Everyone else was down. Only Joe moved at all. He was trying to sit up but kept falling back.
Frank took a handful of snow and rubbed it over his face to help himself wake up—the guy must have clubbed him on the head with the rifle stock.
He got to Joe. “Where are you hit?”
“The, ah, leg,” Joe said slowly.
Frank checked him out. There, sticking out of Joe’s thigh, was a plumed dart exactly like the one Frank had seen in Salazar’s hotel room. So, he thought. Rick Salazar was the third person who got on the plane with Amanda and Sammy today. That meant Salazar and Fear were the kidnappers. And that they were probably the guys who’d attacked the Hardys with the ice ax and the sled track.
Frank pulled out the dart and smelled the tip. It smelled like the animal tranquilizer he’d seen his friend Chet use when he worked at the zoo.
Luckily, Joe’s snowsuit had kept the dart from penetrating too far. He was groggy, but not totally out.
Frank rubbed some snow on Joe’s face. Joe groaned as he waved his arms in protest.
“Sorry, buddy,” Frank said. “That dart was carrying curare. It puts you to sleep and temporarily paralyzes your muscles. You’ll be okay in a few minutes.”
Then he went around quickly and checked the agents. They were all unconscious except for Ken Ardis, who was rubbing at his upper arm as he lay on the ground.
“I—I got hit in the arm,” he said, sounding as if he’d just had a shot of novocaine.
“Can you stand?”
Ardis tried to get up but collapsed again. “Stay here,” he mumbled. “Let me call the house with my radio. They’ll take the chopper up.”
“Call it in,” Frank said. “Tell them that Joe and I are going after those guys.”
Ardis shook his head. “No, stay put.”
Frank ignored him. He ran to the one remaining snowmobile and pulled it up next to Joe. “Get on!”
Joe climbed on and held on tight.
Frank gunned the engine and tore off down the mountain.
“They’ve got a big head start,” Joe shouted. His head was starting to clear.
“We’ll follow their tracks in the snow,” Frank said. “We’ve just got to keep contact until Ardis can call in the helicopter.”
Frank had the sled up to twenty miles an hour. He swerved left, just missing a tree. Low-hanging branches dumped snow on them as they flew through them.
“Where do you think they’re headed?” Joe asked. He ducked down as Frank zoomed under a fallen tree trunk that had wedged itself against another tree.
“Don’t know,” Frank yelled. “I think I remember seeing some kind of deep ravine on the maps in Salazar’s room. It was about ten or twenty miles from the lodge.”
“Are we headed in that direction?”
Frank lost the tracks for a second, then swung back over to them. “Yeah. I think so.”
They reached a small clearing and Joe looked up. A clear, cloudless sky, but no helicopter.
They drove back into the thick woods, bouncing over a snowdrift, then arced neatly between two trees. The snowmobile engine howled like a big-bore motorcycle.
They drove on for ten minutes or so, working hard to travel fast and stay on the tracks.
As they zipped past another tree, a big section of bark exploded, sending splinters into Joe’s face. He flinched and looked back over his shoulder.
He tapped his brother on the back.
“What!”
“Somebody’s tailing us,” Joe yelled. “And he’s not shooting darts—he’s firing real bullets!”
Frank glanced back. There was another snowmobile all right, and it was gaining on them. The rider wore a dark ski mask and held an automatic pistol in one hand while he steered with the other.
“Hold on, Joe!” Frank said, zagging hard to the right.
“Don’t lose the tracks,” Joe warned. “We’ll never find them again.”
Frank yanked the wheel back to the left, almost throwing Joe off the back.
A bullet sang off a small boulder. “He’s gaining on us!”
“This is no good,” Frank said. “With both of us on here we’re too slow. He’s going to catch up at any second.”
“We’ll have to ditch it!” Joe shouted.
“No way!” Knowing it was almost impossible to hit a moving target while trying to control a bouncing, bucking snowmobile, Frank decided there was only one way to end this chase.
He threw the handlebars to the left and hit the hand brake. The sled went into a one-hundred-eighty-degree spin.
Now they were facing their attacker. He was only forty or fifty yards away.
Frank revved the engine and raced forward.
“Frank! Are you crazy?” Joe cried.
“Hang on!”
Like knights jousting, Frank and the other rider headed directly at each other.
Bullets ripped through the air over Joe’s head. He looked past
Frank’s shoulder. The two sleds were only twenty yards apart now. Then fifteen, then ten, five . . .
A bullet crashed into the nose of the snowmobile, sending shards of plastic and fiberglass up at Frank.
Joe waited for Frank or the other driver to swerve.
The masked driver changed course, and not a second too soon. Joe dove at him as he passed, trying to slam a shoulder into him and knock him to the ground.
He made contact, but it wasn’t solid. He rolled to a stop in the snow. Looking up, he saw the rider swerve but stay on board.
The guy hit the brakes and swung around. Again Joe was the prey. The rider bore down on him, gun blazing.
Joe lunged clear. The rider flew past. Joe expected him to spin and make a second pass, but the guy kept going and zeroed in on Frank.
They were playing chicken once more, but this was no game.
It looked to Joe as if the two sleds would merely graze each other this time. Then he saw the expression change on Frank’s face. His brother steered his snowmobile right into the other rider.
Frank jumped off as the two machines slammed into each other like runaway trains. The sound echoed through the woods.
The gunman flew over his handlebars. Frank’s sled rose straight into the air, then flopped down on its side and slid into a tree.
Frank was on his feet quicker than a gymnast. He sprinted toward the fallen rider. The guy appeared to be out cold.
As Frank got close he saw the gunman move. The guy rolled over and leveled his gun right at Frank’s head.
“You’re dead, kid!” he snarled.
15 Cliffhanger
* * *
Frank stopped in his tracks and put his hands up. He watched as the guy squeezed the trigger.
The pistol jammed—it was packed with snow.
The thug sprang to his feet just as Frank rushed him. This time Frank wasn’t about to get cracked in the head. He pretended he was going in for a tackle, but then stood up straight and nailed the guy in the chest with a powerful front kick.
The gunman staggered back, still trying to get the pistol slide to work.
Frank cleverly circled to his left until his attacker’s back was to Joe.
Seeing his chance, Joe slashed in and cut the guy’s legs out from under him with a rolling block. The gun flew into the air, landing at Frank’s feet.
He kicked it into the underbrush.
Joe was on top of the thug immediately, throwing quick punches to his ribs.
The guy rolled to one side. When Joe tried to put him in a headlock, he found himself staring at the tip of a six-inch dagger blade.
“Get off me, punk!” the man spat through the ski mask.
Joe backed away.
The thug scrambled to his feet. He jabbed the knife at each of the Hardys as they circled in close. It was obvious to Frank the man had both martial arts and weapons training.
“Stay back, Joe,” he warned.
“That’s right!” the man yelled, obviously trying to make his voice sound lower than it was. “Stay back or I’ll gut you like a fish.”
He went to his snowmobile and tried to start it. When nothing happened, he kicked it in anger.
He jogged over to the Hardys’ sled and rolled it upright. It started with no problem.
The thug tucked the knife back into his ski suit and got on. “Have a nice long hike back to the house,” he said. “Neal Jordan will be long gone before you get there.”
He zoomed off into the woods.
“Who was that?” Joe asked. “Did one of the parachutists circle back and get behind us, or are we dealing with more than two people?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said. “I thought I recognized his voice for a minute, but now I can’t place it.”
Joe went over to the man’s wrecked sled to see if he could use his mechanic’s skills to get it running.
“Frank, take a look at this,” he said, pointing to a small backpack strapped to the back of the snowmobile. “Our friend forgot something.”
Frank unhooked the pack and opened it. “Maps,” he said, pulling things out. “Maps just like the ones I saw in Salazar’s room. A set of crampons, and here—two folding ice axes.”
Frank tossed an ax to Joe, dumped the crampons, and stuck the other ax in the pocket of his jacket. He opened one of the maps and traced his finger along a red line.
“Looks like I was right,” he said. “They’re headed for this deep gorge. We’re not that far from it now.”
“Then I say we keep following the tracks,” Joe said firmly. “There’s no way I’m retreating to the house while there’s still a chance we can rescue Neal.”
Frank looked out into the woods. “I agree. We’ve got two or three hours of daylight left. Let’s go.”
Together they fell into a jog, staying to one side of the snowmobile tracks. They kept their eyes and ears open in case of another ambush.
A few snowflakes began to weave their way through the trees. Then, minutes later, the sprinkle turned into a heavy snowfall.
Frank picked up the pace. “We’ve got to hurry,” he said. “This snow will cover the tracks in no time.”
Around fifteen or twenty minutes later the Hardys came to the edge of a large clearing.
Frank held out his hand, motioning for Joe to stop. The brothers slowed to a walk and crept up behind a big pine with low-hanging branches.
Frank slowly pulled one branch down a little, creating a small window between two limbs. He saw a clearing that extended fifteen or twenty feet up to the edge of an enormous ravine. The rock face on the far side was nearly vertical and dropped down at least two hundred feet.
Frank waved Joe up. “We have our kidnappers,” he whispered.
Joe instantly recognized all three of the men standing thirty yards or so away in the clearing. “Salazar, Sammy Fear, and . . . Ken Ardis!” he said. “Agent Ardis, man. We should’ve known it was an inside job.” Ardis had Neal Jordan by the collar of his ski jacket.
“No wonder Ardis didn’t want us watching Neal at the Max Games,” Frank said. “Without us around, it would’ve been easy for him to set it up so Fear and Salazar could nab Neal.”
“And no wonder help doesn’t seem to be on the way,” Joe added. “Ardis must have been faking when he said he got hit by a tranquilizer dart. He never radioed the house.”
Frank nodded. “He got himself a snowmobile and came after us.”
They could hear the three men talking, but couldn’t make out the words.
Joe peeked through the limbs in both directions. “Where’s Amanda Mollica? She definitely got on the plane with Fear and Salazar, but I don’t see her.”
“She might be keeping watch,” Frank said. “Be careful.”
Joe pointed to a pile of snow-covered branches a few yards in front of them. “There are the snowmobiles,” he said. “They hid them under those branches.”
The Hardys watched as Salazar dropped a climbing rope over the lip of the ravine.
Ducking down to his hands and knees, Joe crawled under the lowest branches.
“What’re you doing?” Frank whispered.
Joe didn’t answer. Still on his hands and knees, he stole out to the snowmobiles. Keeping one eye on the kidnappers, he gently reached under a branch and disconnected a spark plug wire on one of the sleds.
He was about to crawl around to get to another one when he saw Fear turn and walk in his direction.
He scampered back to cover next to Frank.
Fear carried one more branch over and dropped it on the snowmobiles. He checked his watch. “We’ve got forty-five minutes to meet Amanda at the plane,” he shouted to Ardis.
“Shut up, Sammy,” Ardis yelled. “Keep working.”
As Fear jogged back to the others, Frank turned to Joe. “Now we know the odds. Two of us against three of them. Mollica’s not around.”
The Hardys watched as Salazar, using the rope, started climbing down into the ravine.
When hi
s head disappeared over the edge, Joe elbowed his brother in the side. “Let’s rush them now,” he whispered. “We can take Ardis and Fear while Salazar’s on the rope.”
Frank raised an eyebrow. “Wait,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going on yet.”
Joe ignored him. He burst through the branches of the tree and charged straight for Sammy Fear.
Frank had no choice but to follow. Setting his sights on Agent Ardis, he sprinted forward at full speed.
Joe drove his shoulder into Fear’s thin body, slamming him to the ground. He heard the breath escape from the sky surfer’s lungs.
He didn’t wait for Sammy to recover. Grabbing him by the collar, Joe cracked him in the jaw with two quick jabs. Fear’s body went limp.
A few yards away Frank was having a tougher time with the rogue Secret Service agent.
Ardis immediately shoved Neal aside and went into a tae kwon do stance the second he recognized Frank. The two faced off against each other, circling slowly.
Frank stepped close and whirled into a spinning back kick.
Ardis ducked, landed a quick hook to Frank’s belly, then danced clear.
Frank sucked up the pain. With a loud “Ki-yai,” he faked a straight right hand. The instant he saw Ardis flinch, Frank lifted his right foot high into the air and hacked it down on Ardis’s head—a perfectly executed ax kick.
Ardis dropped to one knee.
His face a grimace of rage, Neal Jordan stepped in and punched the agent in the jaw. Ardis collapsed.
“Nice shot, Neal!” a voice called. “Now get down on the ground—all of you!”
Frank looked over. Rick Salazar had climbed back up the rope and now had a pistol pointed right at Neal.
Salazar waved the gun in front of him, directing the Hardys and Neal to move away from his cohorts and lie facedown in the snow.
A couple of minutes later, he’d revived both Fear and Ardis.
“That was exciting, wasn’t it,” Ardis said, rubbing his jaw. He walked over to Neal and kicked him in the ribs. “I’m through baby-sitting you, kid. This time tomorrow, I’ll be sitting on a beach somewhere with ten million dollars in the bank.”
“My dad will catch you,” Neal said bitterly. “No matter where you go.”
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