All-American Adventure

by James Patterson

  “We wanted to demonstrate the slash and burn techniques being used by too many loggers,” explained Dad. “We are striving to totally immerse our guests in that experience.”

  They were doing a good job. The room smelled like a wet bag of charcoal.

  “Demonstrating the smoke is super-important,” said Storm, jumping in. “NASA satellite reports suggest that the heavy smoke from Amazon forest fires inhibits cloud formation and, therefore, reduces rainfall. That means all this deforestation could change the Amazon rain forest into the Amazon no-rain/no-forest.”

  “Once our visitors complete their journey through the rain forest,” said Mom, “they’ll enter the main hall and see… this!”

  “Whoa!” said Tommy (again) as we stepped into a wide-open circular space. “It’s the volcano crater. The lake where we finally found the Lost City of Paititi. And there’s the stone table where the bad guys almost, you know…”

  Storm slid her finger across her chest in a slashing X. “Cut out your heart for an ancient Incan-style human sacrifice?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “We’re going to skip that episode in our exhibit,” said Dad. “Keep it rated PG.”

  Tommy nodded. “Smart move. Fer shure.”

  “We’re still working on the mechanics to topple the dam and drain the water out of the lake,” said Dad. “But here’s what we have so far.”

  He went to a wall and bopped a flat red button.

  “Whoa!” This time we all said it with Tommy.

  Miniature boulders mechanically toppled away, opening floodgates. Gushing water sluiced out of the fake lake to reveal a miniature model of the shimmering gold city of Paititi that would’ve been right at home on a model train set. It looked just like the real thing, only eighty-seven times tinier.

  “We’ll be ready to open to the public in two—” Mom started. But she didn’t get to finish that thought.

  Because a fire alarm went off.

  Sprinklers started twirling and spritzing in the ceiling.

  That smoldering log pile? It must’ve been too realistic for the smoke detectors. Because all of a sudden, it was really raining inside Mom and Dad’s fake rain forest.

  CHAPTER 5

  “We need to push back the opening date,” Mom told us over dinner that night in our short-term DC rental apartment.

  “We also need to rethink the whole ‘smoking logs’ effect,” added Dad.

  This was not good news. As long as Mom and Dad fussed over their make-believe diorama of our last adventure, we wouldn’t be going out on any new adventures. And we were itching for action. We Kidd kids wanted to jump back into the field and hunt some new treasures.

  Mom and Dad?

  They thought it was their job to “educate and enlighten the public” on the plight of the rain forest.

  Yep. That’s what’ll happen when both your parents are super-genius professors with multiple PhDs (in addition to their mad spy skills). They want to educate everybody they meet.

  Meanwhile, we were stuck. In a city. In an apartment! We’re used to sleeping on boats or in tents or under the stars.

  “You guys,” groused Beck, slamming down her knife and fork dramatically, “we haven’t been on a real treasure hunt in months.”

  “We’re bored,” I added.

  “Have you finished all of your homework?” asked Mom because she’s also the professor in charge of our homeschooling.

  “We had homework?” said Tommy.

  “Washington, DC is full of history,” said Mom. “You four should get out and explore it.”

  “It’ll give you kids something exciting and thrilling to do,” said Dad. “School groups come to DC all the time. There’s so much to see. The Lincoln Memorial. The White House. The National Gallery of Art.”

  “They do have a da Vinci and a Raphael,” said Beck, softening. She, of course, is our resident artiste so she’s a sucker for art galleries.

  “I’d like to visit the Library of Congress,” said Storm. “See if they need any help cataloging their collection…”

  “I want to go to the International Spy Museum,” I said because, hey, I did.

  So, we all agreed to stop whining. We’d take a break from treasure hunting. We’d give DC a chance.

  The next day, while Mom and Dad reworked the “smoldering logs” section of their Smithsonian exhibit, we checked out all the major tourist attractions. Storm, of course, was our walking, talking guidebook.

  “George Washington never lived in Washington, DC. There’s a bathtub in the basement of the Capitol building. The White House has thirty-five bathrooms and until 1901, it used to be called the ‘Executive Residence’.…”

  By the middle of the afternoon, three of us were seriously bored. There’s only so much white marble you can stare at. There’s only so much trivia we can listen to our big sister blather.

  “Here’s an interesting tidbit of little-known history,” said Storm, the only one of us still enjoying the sightseeing. “Right before World War Two, curators at the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art feared that Washington, DC would become the target of a bombing blitz, just like the one over in London.”

  “So?” I said grouchily (because my feet were tired).

  “So,” said Storm, “they came up with a plan to build a super-secret bomb shelter vault underneath the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Memorial to hide the country’s most valuable treasures.”

  Treasures?

  Okay. Storm definitely had our attention again.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Who’s this Oliver Wendell Holmes dude?” asked Tommy. “Any relation to Sherlock?”

  “Um, no,” said Beck (because she and I went to more homeschool history classes than Tommy). “He was like a major Supreme Court Justice. 1902 to 1932.”

  “Oh, right,” said Tommy. “The scowling dude with the walrus mustache.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Storm, “the secret treasure vault was never built.”

  “Says who?” I asked.

  “History,” replied Storm.

  Tommy nodded. “History. It knows everything that ever happened.”

  “Or, maybe,” I said, “the phrase ‘it was never built’ is just super-secret spy lingo for ‘it was built!’”

  “Exactly!” said Beck. “That’s how you guard treasures. You deny that you’re guarding them!”

  “Seriously?” said Tommy.

  “It’s the old deny-it-to-hide-it trick,” I said.

  “That is so clever,” said Tommy. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

  “You guys?” said Storm. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s time for another treasure hunt. A real one!”

  “First stop,” said Beck, “the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Memorial!”

  “Let’s go!” I hollered. “Lead the way, Storm.”

  Our big sister didn’t budge.

  “Um, I couldn’t find one on any map of DC.”

  “Wow!” I said. “It’s that big of a secret? That means it has to be the classified entrance to a clandestine treasure vault!”

  “Not really,” said Beck.

  I glared at her. She glared at me. Maybe it was because we were tired of walking around Washington. Maybe we were hangry because we’d passed up several hot dog carts on our wanderings. Maybe it was just time for us to explode.

  Because, right there, in front of Abraham Lincoln and a tourist group from Boise, Idaho, we launched into Twin Tirade number 2001. Our TTs, in case you’ve never witnessed one, are rapid-fire outbursts of anger between Beck and me that evaporate faster than a spilled droplet of canteen water in the Mojave Desert. We sizzle for a few seconds, let off a little steam, and then, POOF, there’s nothing left. Usually, we even forget what we were so steamed up about.

  “If the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Memorial was real,” shouted Beck, “it’d be on a map!”

  “Not if the people who built the national treasure
vault underneath it wanted to keep it a secret!”

  “You mean like how Mom and Dad should’ve kept you a secret?”

  “Kids don’t go on maps!”

  “Yes, they do,” insisted Beck. “They’re called family trees!”

  “Oh, you’re right,” I realized. “Those are genealogical maps.”

  “And you and I are right next to each other.”

  “Hanging out on the same branch.”

  “Like two leaves.”

  “Or two nuts,” said Storm, who usually doesn’t get involved in our twin tirades. She and Tommy know to hang back and let Beck and me just tantrum it out for a few seconds.

  But this was different.

  Tourists were staring at us.

  So was a young park ranger in a Smokey Bear hat.

  She had her eyes on us.

  Meanwhile, Tommy had his eyes on her.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Well, hello, there,” Tommy said to the cute park ranger. “I bet George Washington would cross the Delaware all over again if you were on the other side.”

  The ranger grinned and rolled her eyes.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “That depends,” said Tommy. “Do you believe in love at first sight or should I leave and come back?”

  Yep. There’s a reason Mom and Dad call our big brother Tailspin Tommy. Whenever he sees a pretty girl he nosedives hopelessly into love faster than a paper airplane made out of soggy cardboard.

  The ranger laughed and said, “Are you Tommy Kidd? Member of the famous Kidd Family Explorers?”

  “Chya,” said Tommy, wiggling his eyebrows proudly, like he wasn’t surprised that somebody actually recognized him (which, hello, nobody ever does). “Guilty as charged.”

  “I’m so looking forward to your exhibit at the Smithsonian.”

  “Huh?” said Tommy.

  “The thing Mom and Dad are doing?” I said, trying to help Tommy out. He’s really good at first lines with girls. The second and third? Not so much.

  “Oh, right. The exhibit. Peru. The quest for the city of gold. Paititi. We found it. We hunt treasures. That’s why they call us treasure hunters.”

  Yes, Tommy was babbling like an idiot.

  “Tommy was almost sacrificed to the ancient Incan gods,” said Storm. “Me, too. It was a fun trip. Special.”

  “Hey,” I said, “you’re a National Park Ranger!”

  “Really?” said the girl, whose nametag ID’ed her as Rachel G. “What gave me away? The floppy hat or the stylish khaki clothes?”

  “We need help!” said Beck.

  “You mean like a counselor or school psychiatrist?”

  “Huh?”

  “I saw you two screaming at each other.”

  “Oh, that was just a twin tirade,” I said. “We do those all the time. They’re no biggy. No, what we need is some information. Where exactly is the Oliver Wendell Holmes J. Memorial?”

  “It’s not on the map,” said Storm.

  “Because it doesn’t exist,” said Park Ranger Rachel.

  Beck licked her finger and marked an invisible 1 in the air. Okay. She was right. Score one for team Beck.

  “They were supposed to build it but never did,” Rachel explained.

  “Oh,” I said, defeated. “Guess they didn’t build the other thing, either.”

  “What other thing?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “No,” said Beck, “it’s a joke.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Hey,” said Rachel, “you guys like quirky adventures, am I right?”

  “Totally,” said Tommy. “What kind of movies do you like? The ones with singing troll dolls? Because we’re not really busy and I was thinking maybe you and I—”

  “Sorry,” said Rachel. “I’m super-busy. But since you guys like secrets and hidden treasures, you might have fun looking for this.”

  She handed us a business card. There was a shiny silver eagle embossed in the corner and a photo of a pyramid in a hole.

  “Huh,” I said, when it was my turn to check out the photo. “It looks like the top of a miniature Washington Monument.”

  “Yep,” said Rachel. “Because that’s exactly what it is!”

  “Where is it?”

  “Ah, you’ll need to figure that out.”

  CHAPTER 8

  There was a riddle printed on the back of the small card.

  “It’s an old riddle,” said the park ranger. “Been around since the early 1940s, I’m told. Not many people know about it. But, well, I figure I can trust you guys. You Kidds are national treasures.”

  “Really?” said Tommy, blushing. “We are?”

  “Totally. I’ve been super-impressed by all your adventures.” The National Park Ranger gave us a crisp salute off the brim of her hat. “Happy hunting.”

  “Wow,” said Tommy, meekly. “I think she likes me.” He tucked the card into a zippered pocket on his safari vest. “I’m going to keep her card close to my heart forever.”

  “Can we crack the riddle first?” I said.

  “The first line is easy,” said Storm, who didn’t need to reread the card because she’d already memorized the clue. “The Washington Monument is a five-hundred-and-fifty-five-foot-and-five-eighth-inches tall obelisk honoring number one—George Washington, the first president of the United States.”

  “Seriously?” said Beck. “You knew that?”

  Storm shrugged and tapped her temple. “I mentally photocopied the guidebook in our hotel room.”

  “So, we need to be south of the Washington Monument,” I said.

  We raced down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, along the sides of the reflecting pool, past the World War II memorial, and onto the looping sidewalks south of the Washington Monument.

  “Now what are we looking for?” I asked.

  “Something that has to be round,” replied Storm. “Not square.”

  “A pizza!” blurted Tommy.

  “Sicilian pizzas are rectangles,” said Beck.

  “Rectangles aren’t squares,” said Tommy.

  “But all squares are rectangles,” I reminded him.

  “Maybe. But a pizza would taste good right now. Regular or Sicilian.”

  “It’s a manhole cover!” said Beck.

  “Exactly,” said Storm. “Manhole covers need to be round. If they were square, you could, potentially, drop the lid down the hole.”

  “There!” I said, pointing to a manhole cover in the grassy lawn.

  We hopped over the low chain fence and ran to it.

  It took several grunts, but the four of us pried open the manhole cover.

  There it was. Right under the lid. A replica of the Washington Monument, hidden in an underground brick chimney.

  “What about that line in the riddle about keeping things level?” I asked.

  “Of course!” said Storm, who must’ve flipped through the stack of mental note cards in her head. “This five-foot-tall model of the monument is officially known as Benchmark A, a geodetic control point used by surveyors.”

  “Huh?” Beck, Tommy, and I said together.

  “Geodetic control points provide starting points for maps. This mini monument was probably placed here in the 1880s as part of a transcontinental leveling program!”

  “Hey, check it out,” said Tommy. “It looks like you can twist the top…”

  He reached down into the hole but froze the instant somebody shouted, “Vandals! Leave that alone!”

  It was another park ranger. An older guy. Maybe in his eighties. Maybe older.

  He came charging across the grass. Actually, he was chugging. He was also wheezing.

  It didn’t seem like the old guy thought we Kidds were national treasures. More like national nuisances.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Dude,” said Tommy, as he let the old guy lean against his chest to catch his breath. “Are you seriously a park ranger?”

  “Semi-retired!” snapped the ol
d man. “But I’m still on the lookout for troublemaking whippersnappers like you four young hooligans!”

  “Another park ranger told us about this hidden treasure,” I tried to explain.

  “Where are your parents?” snapped the ranger.

  “At the, uh, Smithsonian,” said Tommy.

  “What?” said the old man. “Who are they? The Lindberghs?”

  “No,” I said, “we’re the Kidd Family Treasure Hunters. We’re doing an exhibit about our time in Peru.”

  “Is that so? What’d you kids break down there in South America?”

  “A dam,” said Tommy. “And a lake, I guess.”

  “But,” I said, sort of defensively, “we found Paititi, the lost city of gold.”

  “Well there’s no gold down there,” he said, gesturing toward the open manhole. “Best you forget you ever found this little DC secret.”

  “But the other ranger gave us a card,” said Storm. “Surely, if you folks didn’t want people to find this mini monument, you wouldn’t have a riddle about how to find it printed up on business cards.”

  “What was her name?” asked the ranger.

  Tommy was about to blurt it out (because he’s super-innocent that way). I cut him off.

  “None of your beeswax!” I shouted.

  “Strange name,” said the old man, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “We’re treasure hunters,” I told him. “We don’t reveal our sources.”

  “Except in matters of vital national security,” said Storm. “Which, we must assume, this is not.”

  The old man’s eye began to twitch. “There’s nothing to see here. Nothing at all. Move along. Move along.”

  “But I wanted to twist the pyramid top,” said Tommy.

  “I said, move along!”

  “What seems to be the trouble, Gus?” asked a uniformed DC cop who strolled over to us.

  “Nothing, Latoya. Just some rug rats poking their noses into places where they ought not to be poking them.”