The 39 Clues Unstoppable Book 3 Countdown (4 page)

“We’ll handle this, Amy!” Jake yelled. “Just fly this thing!”

Amy concentrated on the control panel and tried not to look back to see what was happening behind her. But it was hard. The sounds coming from the backseat — grunts, groans of pain, heavy thuds — terrified her. She couldn’t see, but she felt each thud like a punch in the stomach.

Dan felt every muscle in his body exert itself, from his straining eyeballs to the toes that curled around the leg of a seat. The pilot hung out the cabin door, bent at the waist, head dangling, still clutching Atticus. Jake was tugging on the pilot’s legs and Dan held Att’s feet, bracing his legs against a seat. Atticus’s eyes were huge with terror as he strained to grab Dan’s hand. He was panting, his breath fast and shallow like a terrified rabbit’s.

The pilot gave Jake a mighty kick in the chin, knocking him backward. “Ugh!” Jake’s grip loosened, and the pilot tumbled out the door.

“Att!” Dan screamed. Atticus’s little body seemed to float out into the air over the jungle below. Dan clutched Att’s foot, but his sneaker slipped off in his hand. Jake lunged for his brother and caught him by the torso. With a huge effort he heaved his body back into the cabin, Atticus in his arms. They collapsed on the floor.

Dan looked down just before yanking the cabin door shut. The pilot’s chute opened as he floated into the jungle and disappeared among the treetops.

The chopper was flying a little steadier now that no one was dangling out the open door, but it swerved left and right. Amy had no idea how to keep it going straight.

“Is everyone all right back there?” she screamed.

Atticus rubbed his legs as if they hurt, but he swallowed and nodded. “I’m okay.”

“Amy, can you fly this thing?” Dan asked.

“No!” She scanned the control board in a panic. She knew they were supposed to head north toward Tikal. But which way was north? “Which one of these things is the compass?”

Jake jumped into the copilot’s seat. “That’s it. I think.”

“Maybe we can talk to a control tower or something?” Amy said. “And they could tell me what to do?”

Jake strapped on the pilot’s mic and headphones and toyed with the controls until he made radio contact with someone speaking Spanish.

“It’s the control tower at Tikal!” said Jake. He fired off something in Spanish to them. They answered back with something that sounded like a question, and disbelief. Jake replied. Over the radio came shouts of shock and horror.

“What are they saying?” Amy asked Jake.

“They keep asking to speak to the pilot, and when I told them he bailed and a teenage girl was trying to fly to Tikal, they kind of lost it.”

“Okay, but what should I DO?”

Jake spoke over the radio in Spanish again. A tidal wave of panicky Spanish flooded back. “Keep your sights about half a mile ahead if you can,” Jake translated. He showed her what each of the controls did and how to work the two pedals on the floor. “Head north-northwest, so keep the compass pointed at this number 33.” He pointed to the spot where the compass should point.

“What?! How do I do that?”

After another exchange in Spanish, Jake told her how to adjust the cyclic and collective controls and the throttle. She pushed on the cyclic too hard and the chopper started to nosedive.

Dan and Atticus screamed. “Not so hard!” Jake shouted. “Light pressure!”

“Okay, okay!” She could hardly think. Spread out below them was nothing but smoking volcanoes and the thick cover of jungle. No place to land that she could see. And if she couldn’t keep this chopper in the air, they’d crash. Their lives were in her hands, and her hands felt about as useful as two bricks.

“Steady,” Jake said. “A little more pressure on the right pedal. Now just keep us going like this . . . .”

She pressed too hard on the pedal and the chopper lurched again.
No, stop it, stop it!

“Whoa!” Dan shouted.

“Ease up! Ease up!” Jake cried.

She snapped her foot off the pedal as if it had suddenly become burning hot, causing another lurch. She tried touching it lightly, and the chopper steadied again. Her heart raced, her hands shook, but she willed herself to focus on the controls. She felt as if she were wrestling with a shark, a big, uncontrollable, dangerous creature; one false move and it could chew you to bits. She glanced at Dan and Atticus in the seats behind her, clutching each other.
I won’t let them die
, she told herself.
We won’t crash, we won’t crash . . . .

A strong hand gripped her shoulder. She knew without looking that it was Jake’s. She didn’t say anything, didn’t have time to think about it, but it calmed her just a little.

The radio barked Spanish. “The tower’s got you on their radar. They’ll guide us in,” Jake said. “We’re almost over the Tikal National Park now. If you can find a clearing, they’ll tell you how to land this thing. Head due west.”

“A clearing?” Amy scanned the land for an opening in the jungle. She saw nothing but thick vegetation for miles around. But then the trees began to get patchier, as the ruins of temples became visible.

“Lower your altitude to three hundred feet,” Jake translated.
“Slowly.”

Amy lowered the collective lever slowly. The front of her forehead throbbed with tension. The three lives in her care — Dan, Jake, Atticus — weighed on her heart so heavily she was afraid it would pull the helicopter down. But the strong hand still gripped her shoulder. That helped.

“Good. Now slow down. Thirty knots. Twenty knots.” Amy eyed the speedometer. “Ease the cyclic back and keep your nose up. UP!” Jake added as the nose began to point downward. Amy’s heart was in her throat, but she swallowed it down —
Think! Think! —
and pulled the nose up. They were skimming over the tops of the trees. Amy spotted a Mayan pyramid near a strange rectangular clearing — a narrow field of grass stretched between two stone structures. It almost looked like a landing strip, but it wasn’t very big.

“I’m going to land there,” she told Jake. Biting her lip, she slowed the chopper to a hover over the grass. She pulled the collective lever slowly to lower it. They dropped down even with the tops of the trees, then below the canopy of leaves, until she could practically see each blade of grass. There wasn’t much room for error.

The hand on her shoulder did not let go.

The control tower gave more instructions. “Arm the parking brake,” Jake translated.

“What does that mean?” Her head was spinning. Everything was strange — the controls, trying to fly, the orders in Spanish, the jolting pain in her belly. . . .

More Spanish. “I think it’s this!” Jake pulled a lever. The chopper’s forward momentum stopped and it began to drop fast. They were thirty feet in the air, falling out of the sky straight down to the ground.

“Crash positions!” Amy shouted. Dan and Atticus bent forward in their seats, Atticus covering his eyes. Amy frantically pulled the nose up to slow their descent, but it didn’t help. The ground zoomed up into her face. She let go of the controls and covered her head.

Slam!
The chopper crashed to the ground, tail smashing against a stone wall. Then the front thudded down. Amy’s forehead punched her knee. All was still.

Jake’s hand still gripped her shoulder. He’d never let go, not once.

She lifted her head. Jake lifted his. She turned and saw Dan and Atticus crouched on the floor. Atticus raised his head. But Dan didn’t move. “Dan! Are you okay?” She reached back and shook him. He sat up, rubbing his temple.

“Is it safe now? Are we on the ground?”

“Yes,” Amy said. She tasted metal, and realized her lip was bleeding where she’d been biting it. “Is everybody all right?” She put her hand on Atticus’s head, then on Dan’s.

Jake nodded at her. “Yes.” It was a miracle that no one was hurt.

Amy’s door had sprung open on landing. She unbuckled her seat belt and tumbled out of the chopper. Jake jumped out of his side and helped the younger boys to solid ground. “Dan, you’re sure you’re okay?” Amy asked. “You too, Att?” They both looked unsteady on their legs.

Atticus straightened up tall, trying to be brave. “Just a few bruises,” he squeaked. He couldn’t hide the shakiness in his voice.

“I feel like I just got poured out of a blender,” Dan said. “But I’m okay.”

It was a skill he’d perfected over the years — masking his fear with jokiness — but her bubbling relief made it impossible for her guilt to take hold. “Thank goodness.”

“Hey, your mouth’s bleeding,” Dan said.

“I know.” Amy pressed her lips together, tasting the blood again. She inspected the damage. They’d landed on the tail and fallen forward onto the landing skids. The tail rotors had broken off and the tip of the tail was smashed. One of the back passenger windows had shattered and a door hung off its hinges, and their backpacks had been thrown out of the chopper onto the grass. Luckily, the chopper hadn’t been too high when they started to crash, or the damage would have been worse.

She took a deep breath and collapsed on the ground. “I’m never doing that again.”

“And I never
want
you to do that again,” Dan said.

Tikal National Park, Petén,
Guatemala

“Where are we?” Atticus asked. They’d landed in the narrow field near a temple. Surrounding the field were rows of steps, sort of like bleachers. Set into one of the walls high overhead was a strange stone hoop covered in glyphs. Dan tried to think of a joke about ancient PE classes, but his brain still felt like it was sloshing in his skull from the crash.

“Wow!” Atticus ran right up to the ring.

“Atticus, how can you care about Mayan ruins at a time like this?” Dan asked wearily. “We just escaped death by a nose hair.”

“But this is amazing!” Atticus said.

Dan, Jake, and Amy rested and caught their breath while Atticus ran his hands over the stone glyphs. Dan was glad Att seemed to recover quickly, but he didn’t trust this sudden enthusiasm. He knew Atticus was coping in his typical way — by immersing himself in history. Maybe that was why he’d become such a prodigy. His life had had its share of trauma, but he found safety in knowledge, the more obscure, the better.

“Dan, look!” Atticus waved at him. “I’ve always wanted to see one of these with my own eyes.”

When his head stopped spinning, Dan sat up. They seemed to have crashed in some ancient stadium.

“Reminds me a little of a tennis court,” Jake said.

“It is,” Atticus told them. “It’s a
pok-a-tok
court.”

“A what?” Dan asked.

“A
pok-a-tok
court,” Atticus repeated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Dan tried to walk, but his legs were wobbly. He let himself plop down on the grass. “I know you’re saying something important, Att, but forgive me if I have trouble caring right now.”

Sirens blared in the distance, gradually getting closer. “I hope that’s an ambulance,” Amy said.

Jake shot a piercing glance at her. “Are you hurt?”

“I can’t tell. I don’t think so, but my arms and legs are numb, and I want you all to be checked out for injuries, too.”

The ambulance arrived, followed by a jeep full of Guatemalan soldiers in camouflage uniforms, with green berets on their heads and rifles strapped over their shoulders. “The army?” Dan whispered. “Isn’t that overkill?”