The 39 Clues Unstoppable Book 3 Countdown (20 page)

She pulled out her best move, the three-kick special: a roundhouse kick followed by a knee to the chin, finishing with a high front kick. But five serum-enhanced thugs were too much for her. They gagged her and tied her hands behind her back. “Let’s go.”

The goons marched Sammy and Nellie out of the lab and down the hall to an elevator. “Just to be safe,” one guard said, taking two blindfolds out of his jacket pocket. He blindfolded Sammy and then Nellie. “In case you get any clever ideas.”

“There’s no escape from where they’re going,” another guard said. Nellie heard the elevator door open. The guard forced her forward. She stumbled. She heard the door close, felt her insides rise as the elevator dropped.

Going down.

The door opened and she felt a blast of chilly air. She was marched forward a few yards. Keys jangled. A lock turned. A door opened, and she was shoved through it.

Her blindfold was lifted. She and Sammy were in a small, windowless room. A cell, really. The air vent was tiny, rat-sized. The door had no window.

The guards untied her and left, locking the door behind them. Nellie looked at Sammy. “I’m so sorry.”

Nellie knew it was hopeless, but she couldn’t stop herself from trying the door. The knob didn’t turn. She banged and pounded on it, desperate to get out. Sammy slammed himself against the door, hoping to break it down. The door barely vibrated. Through the thick metal, Nellie thought she heard the guards laughing.

They were trapped, with no way out. “They’ve got to come back,” Nellie said. “How can you do their research for them if you’re locked in a cell?”

Sammy’s large brown eyes looked tired. “Believe me, they can do whatever they want.”

She pressed her back against the wall and slid to the floor in despair. Sammy sat beside her and rested his head on her shoulder.

She couldn’t get to Amy. Fiske was dying, too. And now there was nothing she could do.

That knowledge nearly killed her.

Tikal, Guatemala

“There it is.”

Amy and Dan crouched in the brush just outside the poachers’ camp. The full moon was both a blessing and a curse — a blessing because it was so bright that Dan and Amy didn’t need to use their flashlights, which would have given them away. And a curse because it was harder to hide from the park guards swarming the forest. But at the camp there was no sign of life, not even the smoking ashes of a campfire. Where were the blackmailers hiding?

There were definitely poachers here, or had been at some point. Loggers had cleared about an acre of mahogany trees. The wood was stacked on the back of a truck, ready to be sneaked out of the forest. Tents were set up at the far end near a crumbling temple. The poachers had ruined part of the jungle and endangered the habitat of multiple birds and animals.

On top of that, they were apparently eager to accept Pierce’s dirty money and hide his men for him. “Do you remember the instructions?” she whispered to Dan.

Dan nodded, hefting the small sack of cash. Earlier in the evening the blackmailers had e-mailed specific instructions on how and where to leave the money and find the book. “Leave the money at the foot of the temple. There will be a note on the bottom step telling us where to find the book.”

“There had better be.” Amy gritted her teeth. She was itching to get the book and get out of there. The nerves just under her skin prickled with electricity. She wasn’t sure if that was the serum acting on her nervous system or if her sharply honed instincts for danger were trying to warn her of something.

“You give the signal,” she told Dan. He nodded again, scanning the clearing carefully. They watched for any sign of movement. Behind them, the jungle teemed with nocturnal life. But in the clearing, all was still.

They had to cross the clearing to get to the temple, a crumbling, half-excavated pyramid still covered with vines. The poachers might have started excavating it, hoping to find some treasures to sell. One side of the temple looked like a simple mound of dirt, while on the other side some dirt had been dug away to reveal part of a stone step pyramid. The moon lit up the clearing like a searchlight. There was no way to cross it unnoticed, nowhere to hide. That was where they’d be most vulnerable.

Dan watched for another moment. Just as Amy was thinking there was no point in putting it off any longer, Dan tapped her on the forearm.
Go.

Crouching, they crept out into the open. Amy braced herself for attack, but nothing happened. They were a few yards away from the temple when they heard a shout.

“Amy! Dan! Stop!”

Amy whirled around. Pony was streaking toward them across the clearing, his ponytail flapping.

“Pony!” she called. “Get down!”

But he kept running. “The book’s not here!” he shouted.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dan said.

They started back for the cover of the jungle. There was a sudden tearing noise near the temple as the tents burst open and out jumped three large, muscular men.

“Goons!” Dan cried. “Run!” They raced across the clearing for the jungle. But the trees shook in the windless night, and out of the shadows stepped more of Pierce’s men, at least a dozen, blocking their way back to the hotel.

They were trapped. And this time there were more thugs to fight than ever.

The men moved quickly. They were on Amy, Dan, and Pony in seconds.

Amy scanned the area for a way out, but they were surrounded. The soldiers backed them up against the ruined temple. There was nowhere to go but up. “This way!” She tugged on Pony and Dan to follow her as she scrambled up the unexcavated side of the pyramid, a huge mound of dirt with vines and ferns and trees growing out of it.

She could have reached the top of the temple way ahead of the soldiers, but she couldn’t leave Dan and Pony behind. Dan was in great shape, but he couldn’t compete with Amy — the serum had made her as fast as the fastest Olympic runner. Pony was a desk jockey, not used to running for his life. He slowed them both down.

The thugs quickly caught up with them. The sight of their bulging muscles and stone-cold eyes filled Amy with rage, and, as if in response, her muscles flooded with strength. One fighter went after the weak link, Pony, but Amy perched above him on the slippery side of the temple, which gave her an advantage. She kicked him square in the chest and the soldier tumbled off the pyramid. Amy grabbed Pony just before the men could drag him down.

“Thanks!” Pony said.

“Don’t thank me,” Amy said. “Get to the top while I fight them off!”

She kicked another thug off the temple, but as soon as one crashed to the ground, another climbed up. She glanced back. Dan and Pony had reached the top of the pyramid. Two soldiers were just beginning to climb back up the dirt mound, so she had a few seconds. She raced to the top, grabbed a vine, and tested it. It was solidly wound around the tall branch of a kapok tree standing twenty feet from the pyramid.

“Use this to slide down!” she told Dan and Pony. They wrapped their hands around the rough vine and slid from the top of the pyramid back to the jungle floor. They disappeared among the vegetation to wait for her.

The soldiers kept coming. Amy kicked one in the chest, her right foot landing clean and hard on his sternum. He flew backward with a yelp. She shifted to her left foot and knocked a second thug to the ground. But a third was climbing up right behind him. He grabbed one of her feet and jerked her off balance. She fell onto her back, her head nearly striking an exposed tree root.

The thug pounced on her, going for her neck. He gripped her throat so hard she couldn’t breathe. Amy tore his hands off her neck and rocked back, lifting her legs. She drove both feet into his stomach, pushing him off. He tumbled down the mound.

She’d nearly been strangled, but she felt nothing, no pain, nothing but fierce energy. She jumped to her feet and quickly climbed down to find Dan and Pony.

Two soldiers were waiting for her in the brush. One gripped Pony by the ponytail, yanking his head back; the other dangled Dan by the scruff of his neck like a kitten about to be drowned. Pony’s eyes were huge with terror. Dan kept kicking his captor in the shins, but the thug didn’t seem to notice. “Let them go,” Amy growled. They couldn’t hold on to Pony and Dan and fight her at the same time. They dropped the boys and dove for her.

She jumped aside, evading them, then knocked each one out with a hard chop to the neck. She heard rustling in the bushes behind her.

“More coming. Run.”

She felt almost animal, supernatural, like the Mayan gods she’d seen in carvings and drawings around Tikal. She was the Jaguar God when she ran, she struck lightning-fast like a serpent, she had the wits of a Jester God. She could have outrun the soldiers. But Dan and Pony couldn’t keep up. She had no choice but to fight to protect them.

She tore through the jungle, dragging the boys behind her, looking for someplace safe for them to hide until she could fight off the army . . . 
if
she could fight them all off. . . .

She shook this doubt away. She’d do it. She had to do it. She scanned the jungle while she ran. Fifty feet ahead, a ruined stone wall, about four feet high, glimmered in the moonlight. If they could get behind it, they could use it for cover and maybe lose the thugs long enough to get back to the hotel.

She pushed Dan and Pony over the wall.

“Amy, no.” Dan immediately crawled back over the wall and stood beside her. “I’ll fight with you.”

“You can’t.” She shoved him back to the other side. “Take cover.”

He pulled himself up to the top of the wall again. “I’m in charge, remember?”

“Yes,” she said. “Just not right now.”

“Amy,” Pony pleaded. “Run for it. Save yourself.”

“Pony’s right,” Dan said. “You can escape. Run for it. We’ll take our chances.”

They were willing to sacrifice themselves — for her. And it infuriated Amy. She saw how the fight looked through their eyes — like a losing battle. Twelve men against one girl. They didn’t understand. She’d taken the serum. She could win this.

“When you see a chance, take Pony and run back to the hotel,” she said to Dan with a note of finality in her voice. Dan might be the leader now. Her judgment might be faulty at times. But every cell in her body screamed,
Protect him!
And she couldn’t ignore it.

She raced along the wall, fifty feet, a hundred, fast as lightning, leading the soldiers away from the boys. Then she turned to face her attackers head on.

She used a judo throw to flip the first over her head. She neatly dodged the next, and a third. She grabbed a fallen tree branch to use as a weapon, fending the soldiers off as fast as she could. But they kept coming. Four of them, six, ten, twelve . . .

She was surrounded. She leaped up to the top of the wall, hoping the extra height would give her an advantage. She swung the branch at a fighter, toppling him like a bowling pin.
You can do this
.

And then it happened.

She felt a sudden weakness in her legs. She paused, gripping the branch-sword, but her hands shook like a tree in a storm.
No
, she thought desperately.
Not now.
The power drained from her limbs. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She felt herself sliding down the wall, the rough stone scraping her arms, dots swimming before her eyes. This episode was worse than before. Worse than anything she’d felt in her life.

“Amy! Amy!”

She could hear Dan calling her, but she couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything but dots and swirling colors. She knew what was happening. This time she knew: another hallucination.
This isn’t real
, she thought.
I can’t let it take over.
Then she heard screeches, terrible heart-ripping cries.
Howler monkeys
, she thought.
I’m surrounded by howler monkeys. Get them away from me!
They jumped up and down, then attacked her, grabbing at her hair and face with their hairy paws.

No!
she screamed.
Stop it! Stop it! It’s an illusion
, she thought.
Make it go away!
She summoned all her strength to clear her mind, to fight the darkness. She heard footsteps pounding toward her. Were they real? They came closer . . . closer . . . then attacked! Hands grabbed her arms. She flicked them away. The colors in her vision faded to black and gray. She felt as if she were staring through a soupy fog, at shadows, while the screaming filled her ears. Something tried to pick her up and carry her off — monkey? Man? She couldn’t tell. She kicked blindly, her foot and knee hitting something hard until the something let her go.