Spy Ski School (29 page)

Minturn, Colorado

December 30

1350 hours

The car-tank sped across the
parking lot after us. Whoever was driving didn't even bother swerving around the parked cars. He plowed straight into them, sending them skidding wildly across the icy lot.

Luckily for us, however, the town was built more for snowmobiles than for cars. At the edge of the parking lot, the asphalt ended, but a track across the snow continued on toward the mountains. Ahead of us, my friends veered onto it, though Mike and I still had a few yards to go.

The car-tank sped up behind us. More cars were crumpled
as it bore down, aiming to turn us into roadkill.

Mike gunned the engine and we hit the snowy track, leaving the parking lot behind.

The car-tank tried to follow us. It lunged a dozen yards into the snow, almost catching our snowmobile before sinking helplessly up to its headlights.

“Ha!” Mike yelled as we raced away. “Sucks to be you!”

Mike hadn't ever gone to spy school, so he didn't know Twomey's Rule of Premature Gloating: Never taunt the bad guy until you're sure the chase is over. Because it probably isn't.

Dane Brammage shot around the car-tank on a snowmobile. One of the other goons had given him a submachine gun.

“Uh-oh,” Mike said. “What now?”

“Let's lose him,” I suggested.

“I'm doing my best.” Mike gave the snowmobile everything he could. We churned along the snowy track. I had never been on a snowmobile before. In addition to being incredibly loud and vibrating like a blender set to high, it had no seat belts. All I could do was wrap my arms as tightly as possible around Mike's chest and hope that we didn't fall off.

This made it hard for me to see what was going on ahead of us, though my friends seemed to be faring all right. Zoe and Warren were in the lead. Next came Woodchuck, who
had to drive with Erica in his lap, propping her up between his arms. Somehow, despite being on a noisy, rattling snowmobile, she was still unconscious.

“How'd you get away back at the restaurant?” I asked Mike. I had to yell at the top of my lungs so he could hear me over the snowmobile's engine, even though we were only inches apart.

“I went to call my uncle!” he yelled back. “I wanted to tell him I was okay. When I came back, everyone was gone! I thought they'd ditched me until I saw all of you out in the parking lot. Who was that kid with the gun?”

“Murray Hill. He's my nemesis.”

“You're only thirteen and you already have a nemesis? That's kind of awesome.”

“How'd you get the keys to the snowmobiles? Did you steal them?”

“No!” Mike sounded offended. “I'm not a thief ! I asked the other diners for them!”

“And they just gave their keys to you?”

“I told them it was an emergency. They were all super-nice. Of course, I didn't realize we'd be getting chased like this!”

Shots rang out. Bullets plugged the snow around us.

“Or shot at!” Mike added.

Dane Brammage was gaining ground on us. And behind
him
, Shang's men had commandeered some other
snowmobiles. I presumed they had simply stolen theirs, rather than asking for them nicely.

We reached the edge of town. The track we were following veered into a forest of aspen trees and we all followed it.

“I heard everything you said back there!” Mike yelled to me. “About the nuclear bomb and all. What's your plan for dealing with that?”

“Er . . . ,” I said. “I haven't really worked things out much past ‘get away from the bad guys.' ”

“You haven't?”

“I was really hoping Erica would have come around by now! She's much better at this stuff than I am!”

A creek came up so suddenly that we didn't even see it until we were soaring over it. We barely made it to the far bank, landing so hard that I was nearly bounced off the snowmobile.

“So . . . ,” Mike said, a little awkwardly. “Are you still really into Erica—or is it okay if I ask her out?”

“You want to talk about this now?”

“I was just wondering! Because I definitely got a good vibe from her the other day. And she seems pretty amazing. But if you're still into her, then I'll back off.”

Normally, I would never have admitted to having a crush on a girl in front of Mike. It was way too embarrassing. But at the moment, denying it seemed pointless. “I'm still into her.”

There was a moment's hesitation before Mike asked, “Really?”

“Yes!”

“Okay. Just making sure. Are there a lot of other girls at this spy school like her?”

“Well, there's plenty of other girls . . . but there's no one like Erica.”

We shot out of the aspen trees onto a wide-open plain of snow. It seemed surprisingly flat to me—and then, to my dismay, I realized why. I glanced down at the snow beneath us and saw something bluish glimmering beneath it. “Mike! We're not on land anymore!”

“What?”

“We're on a lake!”

Mike glanced down, then said, “Oh, nuts.”

A loud crack rang out. For a second I feared it was a gunshot. But it turned out to be something even worse.

The ice was breaking apart.

Ahead of us, Zoe and Warren's snowmobile suddenly pitched forward as a large section of ice sank beneath it. Both of them were thrown off. They slid across the frozen lake like hockey pucks while their snowmobile toppled onto its side, cracking the ice even more.

Woodchuck was too close behind to avoid it. Instead, he bailed out, taking Erica with him. His snowmobile slammed into Zoe's
so hard it flipped into the air, then smashed down, embedding itself nose-first in the ice.

A web of cracks quickly spread from the wreckage, fracturing the lake's surface like a window beaned by a baseball. Bits of the ice broke free and sank, revealing the frigid black water beneath.

Mike veered away, avoiding the worst of this, but the ice was disintegrating beneath our treads as we went. We raced across the lake, hoping it would stay solid long enough for us to reach the far side.

Zoe and Warren had slid to the far side of the lake. They were far enough from the break that the ice was still sturdy enough to hold them, and now they scurried across it to the shore. Woodchuck wasn't so lucky. He was much bigger than them and he was carrying Erica's weight as well. He was doing his best to run with her, but the ice was coming apart under his feet.

“They're not going to make it!” I yelled.

Mike instantly angled toward them, even though this put our own safety at risk.

Woodchuck saw us coming and sprinted our way.

The ice groaned and shifted beneath the upended snowmobiles. They began to sink, gasoline forming a slick in the dark water around them. The cracks in the ice widened and lengthened.

We were only a few feet away from Woodchuck when the surface beneath him heaved. With what seemed to be the last of his strength, he flung Erica toward us.

Mike slowed down so I could catch her.

It's not easy to catch a teenage girl from a moving snowmobile on top of a disintegrating sheet of ice. At spy school, they tried to prepare us for all sorts of dangerous scenarios, and yet I don't think anyone had ever even thought of this one. It was probably a blessing that I only had about half a second to prepare for it; otherwise I might have started obsessing about the thousands of things that could go wrong. But in the few moments we had, I simply reacted, making some quick mental calculations about her trajectory, reaching out as we skidded across the ice, and doing my best to snag the flying unconscious girl. I probably didn't look very suave or debonair while I did it, but I got my arms around her torso and managed not to have her sudden weight knock me off the snowmobile. Then I clung to her as tightly as I could, although her legs still dangled limply off the side.

“Go!” Woodchuck yelled. “Now!” Then the ice beneath his feet gave way and he plunged into the freezing water.

Mike gunned the engine—but we didn't go anywhere.

We'd gained weight and lost momentum. The treads of our snowmobile simply spun uselessly on the breaking ice.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Dane Brammage arrived.

He roared onto the ice, saw the wreckage in the middle, and skidded to a stop. Then he whipped out his gun and took aim at us.

For a horrifying moment, we were right in his sights.

At the last moment, our treads caught. Our snowmobile leapt forward and rocketed across the lake.

Dane's bullets pinged off the ice right where we'd just been.

“Can't you do something about him?” Mike screamed at me. “Shoot him before he shoots us!”

“I'm not very good with guns!” I pointed out.

“Well, try anyhow! He's a big target!”

I pulled out the gun I'd taken from Murray. Even though Dane was about as big as human beings got, I knew there was still relatively little chance I could hit him all the way across the lake.

But then I realized there was a closer target that was a lot bigger.

Zoe and Warren's snowmobile had almost sunk by now, disappearing beneath the water's surface. But Woodchuck's was still sticking upright like a tombstone.

I blasted away at it until I'd emptied the clip.

The last bullet actually found its target. It sparked off a metal runner, igniting the gasoline slicked on the water. The frozen lake instantly caught fire. Flames erupted, creating a
haze of smoke that hid us from Dane Brammage.

And then the snowmobile exploded.

A wave of heat rolled over us, briefly making the blustery day feel like summer. Burning pieces of metal flew through the air and clattered across the ice. The frozen surface of the lake shuddered and tore apart. Cracks shot across it like lightning bolts, carving it into pieces.

Zoe and Warren had reached solid ground. Woodchuck, being a master of survival, was swimming through the frigid water. He didn't look
happy
about it—but he seemed to be okay. Mike, Erica, and I made it to a shallower section of the lake just as the ice collapsed under us. Our snowmobile sank, but went only a foot before hitting the bottom. The water lapped at the toes of our ski boots and billowed into clouds of steam around the engine.

Dane Brammage wasn't so lucky. He was a big guy and he'd stopped dead on the ice. He desperately gunned his snowmobile's engine, but before he could get going, the surface split beneath him. He dropped through it, disappearing so fast, it was almost as if the lake had swallowed him.

I kept staring at the water, though, expecting Dane to resurface, stubbornly remaining alive yet again.

“Nice thinking,” Erica said.

I looked down at her in my arms and saw her eyes were open. “You're conscious!”

“Wow, your powers of observation are as keen as ever,” Erica said.

“Good to see your sarcasm is already fully functional,” I replied.

Erica gave me what looked like an extremely fleeting smile, then hopped off the partially sunken snowmobile and started through the ankle-deep water to shore. “What's our situation?”

Mike and I scrambled after her. The icy water seeped into our ski boots, chilling our toes. Normally, this would have been awful, but my feet were already in such pain after hiking so far in ski boots that the numbing cold was actually kind of a relief.

“Dane's underwater,” I said, “but I wouldn't count on him being dead yet.”

“Me either,” Erica agreed. “That guy's tougher to kill than Rasputin. Where are the other bad guys?”

There was a roar of snowmobile engines on the far side of the lake.

“Right there,” Mike said.

Shang's remaining men parked their snowmobiles on the opposite shore. The lake between us was no longer frozen, but they could still shoot across it. We scrambled to some large rocks at the shoreline and hunkered down behind them as the bad guys opened fire.

I took in our surroundings. Except for the rocks we were hiding behind, there was little cover on our side of the lake. Our snowmobiles were useless and our only gun had no more bullets. Plus, Woodchuck was still out in the water. He was nearing the shore now, but the cold water was taking its toll. Every stroke he took appeared to be a Herculean effort for him.

“The situation looks pretty dire,” I told Erica.

“Maybe not,” she replied. “Listen.”

It was hard to hear much of anything over the sound of the bullets sparking off the rocks in front of us, but when I focused, I could hear a distinct whirring noise.

“What's that?” Mike asked.

“The cavalry's coming,” Erica replied. “I didn't have a whole lot of time to talk to Grandpa before Murray chloroformed me, but I at least told him we needed a rescue.” She tapped the avalanche vest she was wearing. “And this is giving him our exact coordinates.”

A military helicopter raced around a bend in the river, keeping low to the ground. Cyrus Hale was at the controls. Alexander sat beside him, manning a machine gun mounted in the chopper's nose. He opened fire on Shang's men, who quickly aborted their attack and fled into the cover of the woods. Alexander blasted away at them as they ran, shredding the trees and blowing bushes apart, keeping them in retreat.

Cyrus landed the copter by the side of the lake. The wind from the rotors whipped up a snow tornado and pelted us with bits of ice.

Woodchuck reached the shallow water, but he was in bad shape. His skin was turning blue from the cold and he was shivering uncontrollably. Alexander leapt from the helicopter, ran to him, and helped him to his feet. Mike and I helped drag him toward the copter. Water poured from Woodchuck's clothes onto us.

We boosted him into the helicopter. Zoe and Erica were already inside, armed with emergency blankets and heating pads. They immediately stripped off Woodchuck's wet clothes and swaddled him in warmth.