by Paul Aertker
He was in a small bed in what appeared to be a shed. Old gardening tools and machine parts were scattered around the room. In the corner were a sink and toilet. Horse tack hung from wooden pegs, and blankets were stacked in piles on the floor.
Above him a spider spun a web in the rafters. Lucas watched her spinning her lines back and forth. Near the center of the web a dead hornet curled in a tight ball. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.
Lucas heard the blades of a helicopter outside. He glanced out the window toward the noise and spotted Amigo in the corral where he had left the stallion the night before. Just beyond the fence he could see the helicopter’s tail rotor twirling.
It was time. Lucas swung his bare feet onto the dirt floor. Immediately his butt started killing him. Riding a horse for almost nine hours had taken its toll. He closed his eyes again and let his mind catch up with where he was.
He had arrived at Aleta’s house at the Alhambra gardens. He had a lot to do, and it was already 8:56, he figured.
The door to the shed opened, and the distinct smell of ham drifted in. A stocky and muscular boy with a baby-blue headband stepped into the room. Lucas guessed he was about fourteen years old.
For a long second the kid stared at Lucas’s bed-head hair.
“My name is Rafa,” he said in English. “I’m Aleta’s grandson.”
“I’m—” Lucas started to say.
“I know who you are,” Rafa said. “I met your friends last night.”
“How did you meet them?”
“I clean tables in the hotel, and Ms. Günerro paid me to take food into the dungeon and serve your friends dinner.”
“Are they okay?”
“They’re busy.”
“What do you mean? Busy?”
“They have arranged for the artists to copy the stolen artwork.”
“So the paintings are there?”
“When I took the food,” Rafa said, “one of the girls told me they were copying the paintings.”
Lucas was still groggy. “Why are they helping copy the paintings?”
“The boys told me that Lucas Benes would be coming soon and that you would have a plan to get the original paintings out.”
“I’m glad they have confidence in me,” Lucas said, “but to be honest, I don’t have a plan.”
“My grandmother and I can help.”
“Where exactly are the paintings?” Lucas asked.
“Your friends and the paintings are in the hotel basement, hidden in an old dungeon behind a false wall.”
“¡El barco!” said a woman’s voice from the other room.
“The boat?” Lucas asked.
“You need to get up. It’s nearly nine o’clock, and we have some other news to share with you.”
I’M POSSIBLE
In a few minutes Lucas was standing in the kitchen. Sunlight shone through a window above the sink. A giant ham was perched on a cutting board on the counter. On the breakfast table there were newspapers and a vase filled with flowers.
Aleta made both boys café con leche, and she put a plate of ham and day-old bread on the table. The boys sat and ate and dunked the crunchy bread into the coffee milk.
Lucas got a good look at the woman. She didn’t look old like a grandmother. She was thin and wore dark pants and a leather vest over a white shirt.
“Tell him what I learned,” she said to her grandson in Spanish. “Your English sounds better than mine.”
“My grandmother works with the Spanish Civil Guard,” Rafa said. “This morning she was flying the helicopter around the port in Gibraltar. The ship captains she works with said that two men named Creed and Chapman were at the harbor and had just bought one of Ms. Günerro’s superyachts on the spot.”
“Coach Creed and Rufus Chapman bought a boat!”
Aleta flipped the newspaper over to the business page.
A headline read GOOD COMPANY TRIES TO AVOID BANK-RUPTCY BY SELLING LITERALLY EVERYTHING.
“What was the name of the boat?” Rafa asked his grandmother. “The yacht?”
Aleta said, “The Thimblerig.”
The pieces of an idea fell together in Lucas’s mind. He muttered, “So if the boys in yellow robes, the monks, are also here ...” He paused. “Is the Thimblerig in the port of Gibraltar?” Lucas asked.
“Yes,” Aleta said.
“What about kids?” Lucas asked. “Were there any children with Coach Creed and Rufus Chapman?”
“I didn’t see any,” Aleta said. “But when I refueled at the Gibraltar airport, there was a huge 747 that I had never seen before. Is this the New Resistance airliner?”
“Were there registration marks?” Lucas asked.
“Air traffic control,” Aleta said, “told me the plane was called white bird one.”
“Yes,” Lucas said. “They’re there, and that’s where we’re going too.”
Lucas’s plan gelled. “How far away is Gibraltar?”
Aleta said, “Doscientos kilómetros.”
“Two hundred kilometers,” Lucas said. “One hundred and twenty-five miles roughly. How long does that take by car?”
“In my truck,” Rafa said, “it takes more than three hours to the port.”
“You’re a kid and you have a truck?”
“I drive when I’m working on the farms around here, like at Mr. Romero’s, where you got the horse.”
“By air,” Aleta said, “it takes less than an hour.”
Lucas closed his eyes and thought for a second.
Rafa helped his grandmother clean up from breakfast. He gathered the plates and cups and put them in the sink, where she washed and dried them.
“I have an idea,” Lucas said, “that just might work.”
Rafa turned off the faucet, and he and Aleta turned and stared at Lucas.
“One thing I’ve learned,” Lucas said, “is that sometimes you have to think differently from everyone else. With the Good Company you have to do this all the time.”
“So what’s your plan?” Rafa asked.
“When I was at the Reina Sofía a few days ago, the Good Company broke out of the museum by knocking down a wall,” Lucas explained. “Then Romero who gave me the horse told me that the stones on the south side of the Alhambra palace were old, like thirteenth-century old to be exact. Maybe we could do the same. We could use the Good Company’s backward thinking against them and break into the hotel just like they broke out of the museum.”
“That would be nearly impossible,” Rafa said. “We only have gardening tools here. It would take forever.”
Aleta shook her head. “When I was a child, I wanted to be a pilot. My father told me that it would be difficult for a woman to get a flying license, but he also told me this,” she said. “The impossible ceases to exist the moment you go beyond the borders of possible.”
Lucas thought about this.
“If you want to make it happen,” Aleta said, “then make it happen.”
CALL IT EVEN
The side-view mirrors of the scooter rattled in the wind.
Lucas held on to the chrome bar in the back while Rafa twisted his wrist, gassing the moped through the old town of Granada.
The boys bumped down cobblestone streets and past tiny cars parked on narrow lanes. It was still morning, and there were not many people out. Near a park with green football fields Rafa pointed at a roundabout. At first Lucas didn’t quite understand what was here. Rafa nodded and Lucas knew the spot was a backup meeting point, just in case.
After a few minutes Lucas and Rafa arrived at the train station parking lot.
Before he hopped off the scooter, Lucas glanced at the mirrors again and spotted two blurs of Day-Glo yellow moving toward them.
“I’m going to need a distraction,” Lucas said. “For just a few minutes.”
“You’re going to go straight across the tracks?”
“More or less,” Lucas said. “The Good Company train is parked off to the side. But I’ll have to get past tho
se guys in yellow jackets.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Rafa said. “I’m a teenager too, and I know how to draw attention to myself.”
Lucas left Rafa in the parking lot and made his way to the train platform. It was the first time all day that he noticed he was still wearing the riding clothes Romero had given him. He still looked like a Spanish cowboy. He was about to rob a train, and the outfit gave him an extra burst of confidence.
The passengers expecting trains didn’t seem to pay Lucas or his fashion any attention. He tapped his boots and surveyed the scene. He only had to wait for maybe ninety seconds.
A high-pitched whine came screaming through the station. On his scooter, Rafa rode a wheelie straight through the middle of the lobby, around the benches, and out to the back, where he skidded to a stop on the platform.
Lucas and the passengers moved out of his way. The guys in yellow jackets stopped their work and dropped their tools. With a swarm of Day-Glo chasing behind him, Rafa spun the scooter around and blasted down the platform toward a storage building.
While everyone focused on the speeding scooter, Lucas jumped down onto the track bed and sprinted across the rails. He hopped up on the next platform and climbed between rows of parked locomotives until he came to the Good Company train.
Bleach and her clique were in the café car sitting at several tables. Lucas crouched under the windows, hugging the side of the train all the way down. Heat radiated off the metal containers.
The smell hit him before he got there. Stinky armpits. Lucas dropped to tracks and crawled underneath Hircus’s compartment. With little trouble he jimmied the loose sheet metal out of the way and was back in the car with the old goat.
“Hey, buddy,” Lucas said, patting Hircus on the head.
“Baa.”
It wasn’t the time to sit and chat it up with his former roommate though. Lucas moved from this car through the train, past the compartment that used to hold the paintings, and into the tool section. He could hear the Curukian girls giggling in the café car.
Bleach and the others had nearly killed him a few days earlier. The girls were beyond brainwashed. What Lucas was planning to do that afternoon would take time, and he didn’t need Curukian girls getting in the way. He would have to contain them.
Moving as quickly and as quietly as he could, Lucas grabbed two small jackhammers and scooped up a spool of extension cords.
He scurried back through the middle of the train and dropped his borrowed equipment through the hole and onto the tracks below.
Then he untied Hircus. “Just keep saying baa,” he said. “Okay, buddy?”
“Baa.”
Lucas tiptoed back to the café car. He wrenched opened the metal lock and stuck his head inside. Most of the girls were now behind the bar, eating candy.
“Hey, girls,” he said. “That’s not vegetarian. That candy is made with beef!”
“It’s Lucas!” Bleach screamed. “I knew he’d come back. Get him.”
The girls lunged at Lucas, but he slammed the door in their faces and rocketed through the train. Bleach and company followed. Lucas leaped into Hircus’s stinky train compartment. He left the door slightly ajar and then slipped down through the slot in the floor. He twisted the piece of metal back into place, blocking the opening.
From above his head he could hear Hircus braying, “Baa, baa.”
Bleach yelled, “Turn on the light.”
Lucas crawled under the train. Above him he heard the other Curukian girls speak for the first time.
“Ah,” one said. “What’s that smell?”
“It’s awful.”
“There’s no light in here.”
“I hear Lucas in the corner,” said another.
Bleach yelled. “Don’t let him get out!”
Lucas climbed up between the two train cars and slammed the door to Hircus’s compartment closed. He looped a padlock through the metal bar and clicked it to lock the girls inside.
“Let’s call it even,” Lucas muttered. “You tried to drown me the other day, and today I’m giving you some free hot yoga classes.”
With the Curukian girls banging on the door, Lucas scooped up his borrowed tools from underneath the train and headed out. Now toting the jackhammers and extension cords, Lucas circumnavigated the train station. He cut through the park with the football fields and waited for Rafa at the roundabout he’d pointed out earlier.
The scooter sounded like a chain saw buzzing up the street. In a moment Rafa came into view and skidded to a stop in the crosswalk.
Still shouldering the jackhammers, Lucas straddled the seat and held on with his legs. From there the boys rode straight to the hotel at the Alhambra.
The sun was blazing hot and the boys kept a low profile as they sneaked under a canopy of trees. They made their way to the south side of the hotel. On the far corner, just like Romero had said, was an ancient wall that looked like it was ready to crumble.
“Perfect,” Lucas said.
Rafa unraveled the extension cords and strung them around the building to an outlet. By the time he got back, Lucas had borrowed a sheet of the green fencing used to protect the new trees. The boys put stakes in the ground and set up a makeshift work tent.
“This is going to make a lot of noise,” Rafa said.
“We’ll have to take our chances.”
Now mostly hidden from the outside, they fired up the jackhammers. The two boys worked side by side, chipping away at the concrete grout around the stones. It did make a lot of noise but it took a lot less time than Lucas had imagined. As soon as there was space around one of the rocks, Lucas decided to give it a nudge.
Both boys pushed the boulder with their feet, and to their surprise the stone clunked down into the room.
Thud.
The hole was about as big as a pet door. With his head upside down Lucas peered through the opening in the wall.
“I hope you’re breaking us out,” Travis said.
“Something like that,” Lucas said.
Lucas knew he had to do more than just get his friends out. He had to get the paintings, too. But at that moment, he had run out of ideas.
ART EXCHANGE
Lucas knelt and looked through the hole he had just created in the stone wall.
Jackknife looked up from the opening. “Who’s that with you?” he asked.
“This is Rafa,” Lucas said, gesturing behind him. “He’s my new friend, and he says that you’re making copies of those paintings?”
“That’s true,” Travis said. “Mostly it’s our new friends, these monks, who painted them.”
New friends? Lucas thought for a second. Friends really are the most important things in life.
The smell of paint and chemicals blasted Lucas in the face.
“Is that why it stinks in there?” Lucas said.
“We’ve been busy painting, mate,” Alister said. “We’ve got linseed oil, turpentine, acrylics, watercolors. You name it.”
Jackknife waved a brush. “You want me to paint your picture?”
Nalini punched him. “No kidding right now.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Astrid said.
Rafa moved closer to the opening and spoke to everyone on the inside. “It won’t take us that long to make a hole big enough for you to get out of, but it might take us a little while to cut a hole big enough to get the paintings out.”
“I’m not sure it’s the best idea,” Astrid said, “for us to take the paintings with us. At least not right now.”
“We can’t leave them here for Ms. Günerro,” Nalini said. “She’ll either sell them or, worse, destroy the originals.”
“True,” Lucas said. “I think we can do both.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Astrid said.
“Well,” Lucas said. “Coach Creed and Rufus bought the Thimblerig.”
“What!” said the kids down in the cell.
“It’s moored in the harbor at Gibral
tar,” Rafa said.
“If we can get you all and the paintings out,” Lucas said, “Rafa has a truck to take us to Gibraltar where the other New Resistance kids are.”
“How do you know the others are there?” Astrid asked.
“Rafa’s grandmother spotted White Bird One at the Gibraltar airport.”
“Let’s get crackin’, mates,” Alister said.
Still looking through the small hole in the wall, Lucas asked, “What about Ms. Günerro and Goper and Ekki? Where are they?”
Travis said, “They just came into the cell to see what the noise was.”
“What did you tell them?” Lucas said.
Alister held up a mangled paintbrush. “It was this,” he said, then jammed the brush into one of the fans, and the noise rattled like a mini machine gun.
“Whatever,” Lucas said. “Are they still here?”
“They just left,” Astrid said. “Travis made it seem like it was Goper’s idea to start copying the paintings early so Ms. Günerro would make him head of security.”
“Copying the paintings!” Lucas said. “That’s a great idea!”
Jackknife added, “Ekki said they were going to the Generalife Palace for a ceremony and then to lunch.”
“What time is lunch?” Lucas asked Rafa.
“In Spain,” he said, “it’s normally from two to four o’clock in the afternoon.”
Lucas said, “So we have time.”
Kerala said, “But I heard Ms. Günerro say they were going to send Bleach and her girls here to stand guard.”
“Uh-oh,” Lucas said.
“What?” Nalini asked.
“Nothing,” Lucas said. “Are the copies of the paintings ready to go?”
Travis said, “For the most part, yes.”
“I still think,” Astrid said, “that it’s better if we first get ourselves out safely, and then we can worry about the paintings later.”
“I still think we can do both,” Lucas said. “Would you guys do me a favor first?”
“What’s that?” Nalini asked.
“Can you move all the paintings closer to this wall?” Lucas asked.