Capture the Flag (13 page)

The man put a finger to his chapped lips, and his meaning was clear.

Quiet.

Or else.

The ceiling lights reflected off the blade of his knife.

Anna took a shuddery breath. She could feel her kneecaps pressing into the concrete, the grit under her palms. The camera was just out of her reach. But maybe if she could creep forward a bit. Could she grab it and run fast enough to get away?

Snickerbottom's security guard sniffled again.

Anna looked back into the shadows.

And it happened all at once.

“ACHOO!!”

“Hey! Who's there?!” boomed a voice from over where they'd come in.

And when Snickerbottom's guard ducked back into the shadows, Anna lunged forward, closed her hand around the video camera, floundered to her feet, and ran.

She circled back, ducked under baggage belts, stumbled over golf clubs that still littered the floor from earlier. She gripped the camera tight in her hand and pumped her arms, willing herself to move faster.

But this wasn't the abandoned baggage cave it had been before. Heads turned. Heads of baggage handlers in bright orange vests. Was one of them Snake-Arm? Anna wasn't about to slow down to find out. She had to get out of here with the camera. That camera was the key to everything.

She lunged under one of the belts and paused. Where was José? Was he still waiting where they'd come in? Where the baggage handler had caught them and told them to stay?

She couldn't go back that way. She couldn't risk losing the camera to some bossy suitcase lugger before she got out and had a chance to show her father — or someone — the truth.

She climbed out from under the belt. She'd have to go out the way they'd escaped before — through the tunnel on the far side of the room.

Anna slipped between a couple of luggage bins just in time to disappear before two orange-vested baggage guys jogged by.

“Tucker thought she went this way,” the first man panted.

“She couldna got too far.”

When their voices faded, Anna ducked out from her hiding place and ran in what she hoped was the right direction. But who knew? Where
was
she in this twisting, looping maze? Noises crammed together in her ears — engines, bags thumping against one another as they switched from one belt to another, rusty wheels creaking whenever one of the big carts filled up and rolled down a ramp.

Anna needed it all to stop so she could think. She felt like she was going in circles.

Where was the tunnel? It had to be near this belt where the —

Whoooaa!!

Anna's foot hit something slick on the concrete and flew out from under her. She reeled, twisting and flapping her arms to keep her balance, and slammed her wrist on the metal edge of a belt before she went down hard, right on her tailbone.

The camera flew from her hand, and her head slammed back on the concrete floor. Tiny lights danced as the pain radiated through her head.

She could smell shampoo. Sticky sweet. Her stomach churned.

“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.”

Someone was standing over her. Anna couldn't make out the face. Too blurry. She closed her eyes and hoped he would go away.

He didn't.

“You know, with all the dangerous machinery, this is no place for children. Hand over that camera, and we'll get you out of here safe and sound.”

Anna opened her eyes and blinked until the weaselly face of Snickerbottom's security guard came into focus. The knife's blade still glinted in his hand.

“S'gone,” she mumbled. She hoped it had flown far, far away from him.

“Gone?” The man narrowed his eyes and inched closer to her. Then Anna saw another shape rising behind him. A big Henry-shape. It was holding something high in the air. Getting closer and closer.

Anna lifted her head. It pounded. “Yes, gone.”

The man took a step toward Anna, but before his foot even hit the floor, Henry swung the Big Bertha golf club right at the man's head.

Snickerbottom's security guard collapsed like a scarecrow off its pole. Anna had to scramble out of the way so he wouldn't fall on her.

“Come on!” Henry reached to help her up, but she pulled back.

“No! The camera!” She dropped to her hands and knees, but the only thing on the floor was shampoo. Where could the camera have gone?

Anna peered underneath the belt. Her head throbbed, and her eyes were still blurry, but there — a flash of silver — there it was!

Anna snake-wiggled her way under the luggage belt to reach the camera, tucked in a dusty corner. She wiggled back and leaned against Henry. “I'm kind of woozy.”

“We need to get the other guys and get out of here.” Henry started pulling her deeper into the room.

“Where
are
the other guys?” Anna whispered.

“I thought José was with you.”

“
Was
. I lost him.”

“We'll find him. Sinan is hiding back there,” Henry whispered, climbing over a duffel bag that had fallen off one of the belts. “We were looking for Hammurabi, but then I heard you and José and saw you were in trouble. I made him promise not to come out until I got back.”

Henry slowed down when they got to a wall lined with big black cases and wooden crates. “He was back here.”

Anna waited, keeping watch over her shoulder, while Henry stepped up to one of the crates. “Sinan, it's me,” he whispered. “We gotta go.”

Anna's head pounded, especially right behind her eyes. She closed her eyes and reached up to rub them, and a hand clamped around her wrist.

“Have a little accident?”

She gasped, and the sick, sweet smell of stale cocoa filled her nose.

Tootsie Rolls.

It was Robert Snickerbottom himself.

“And
you
— back in the crates — stop right there!”

Henry's head popped up from behind a crate, and his eyes widened, round and scared.

Snickerbottom growled, “You come here nice and slow, young man, if you want things to go all right for your friend.”

Henry stepped forward. “Okay, okay. I'm not going anywhere.” He pulled his GamePrism from his pocket and poked at a few buttons.

Anna's mouth dropped. How could he even think of playing a video game right now?

“That's good,” Snickerbottom muttered. “Play your little game and stay put.” He turned to Anna. “I know what you saw before, missy, and you are not going to ruin this for me. You have no idea what I went through to steal that flag. The Star-Spangled Banner is staying right where it is, and I am getting on a plane for Vermont. You are going to tell me where you put that camera, and then you're going to keep your mouth shut.”

Snickerbottom's stale cocoa breath was hot on Anna's face, and his fingers tightened around her wrist, but somehow, he still hadn't noticed that her other hand was closed around the camera. If she could get it to Henry, maybe he could run and get help. Someone running for president wouldn't really hurt her, would he?

But then she remembered the voice she'd heard from high up on the luggage belt, when the two men had Sinan.

A busy place like this, all kinds of bad things could happen. It'd be mighty easy for a kid to get lost. Or hurt real bad. He might even go missing.

“Hey!” Snickerbottom jerked his head toward Henry, who was easing out from amid the crates and cases, still holding his GamePrism. “Get over here.” This Snickerbottom sounded so different from the kindhearted, smooth-talking man on the TV commercials, as if he wasn't the man who had saved the boy from the well at all. “I want you where you can't pull any funny business.”

As Henry stepped forward, Anna caught a flash of motion behind him. The top of a crate lifting open. Two dark eyes peering out. Sinan again.
Oh, no! Stay put
, she thought.

“Listen,” Henry said. He held his GamePrism in front of him and moved closer to Snickerbottom very slowly, the way you walked if you had a very full cup of water you didn't want to spill. “You have this all wrong. We don't have any idea what's going on here. We don't care if you stole the flag. We just came to find our friend who wandered away. We need to get back to —”

“You're not getting back anywhere.” Snickerbottom let Anna's hand go roughly but grabbed her by the elbow so hard she was sure that she'd have finger-shaped bruises tomorrow. Her arm throbbed, and her head felt as if someone was boring into it with a dull screwdriver. Why had they ever come back here?

Then she felt the cool weight of the camera in her hand and remembered.

It was as if her thought slid right under Snickerbottom's white cowboy hat and into his brain. His eyes snaked down her arm, and a slow smile spread over his face when he spotted the camera. “I'll take that.”

“Henry,
catch
!”

In a single twisting motion, Anna wrenched herself away from Snickerbottom and flung the camera in Henry's direction.

Still holding his video game in one hand, Henry snatched the camera out of the air with the other hand and took off. He glanced back at Anna over his shoulder.

“Run!” she screamed, even though Snickerbottom had both her arms pinned behind her back. “Go!”

“Earl!” Snickerbottom's voice echoed off the room's cool walls. “Get that kid!” He turned to Anna. “You.” He was so close she could see the brown stains on his teeth. “You want a news story, do you?”

Anna tried wrenching away again, but Snickerbottom's grip on her arms tightened, and she winced.

“If you think you're going to destroy everything I worked for — everything I …” Snickerbottom tipped his head to the side. Anna thought she'd heard something, too. A weird
scratch-thump
.

“If you think …”

Scratch-thump.
There it was again. Coming from the direction of Sinan's crate.

Scratch-thump.

With his fingers still digging into Anna's arms, Snickerbottom took a step back from her, toward the crate, and tipped his ear toward it.

Scratch-thump.

Keep quiet, Sinan.
She didn't need him in trouble, too.

Scratch-thump.

Snickerbottom dragged Anna along behind him and stepped up to the crate.

It was quiet.

He waited.

Anna heard thumping, but this time it was her heart, fighting to get out of her chest. Fighting to get out of this awful place with this awful, awful man.

Snickerbottom tipped his head.

Still quiet.

He turned back to Anna.

“If you think —” Snickerbottom stopped again.

Scratch-thump.

“What in the dad-blabbit is that?” He turned to Anna, unwrapping his fingers from her arm. “Don't even think of making a move,” he growled, and stepped toward the crate.

He held his ear to the side of it.

Quiet.

He ran his hand up the edge, to the rim, and tipped his head again.

Quiet.

He pulled a smaller case over to the big one and stepped up on it —
thunk
— with one big cowboy boot, then pulled himself the rest of the way up. He flicked the latch on the case —
click, click, click, click
— closed, then open, closed, then open again, and braced his hands to lift it up.

But the lid flew open on its own.

“BarrRROOWF!”

Hammurabi bounded from the crate and leaped at Snickerbottom. His giant paws thumped against Snickerbottom's shoulders, and his jaws snapped at the big white cowboy hat as Snickerbottom teetered off the crate and tumbled to the floor.

“Stop! Licking! Me!” Snickerbottom sputtered. “Get off!”

But Hammurabi was hungry.

And one Tootsie Roll was left on the hat.

Anna scrambled over to the crate. Sinan was already doing a sort of chin-up on the edge, trying to pull himself out.

“Hurry!” She grabbed his arms and tugged until he could fling a leg over the edge and clamber the rest of the way out. “Come on! Our flight's going to be leaving any second. We need to get back to the gate!”

They started running.

“What about Hammurabi?” Sinan looked back at his dog straddling the still-struggling Snickerbottom, chomping on a Tootsie Roll, and dripping brown drool onto the senator's crisp white shirt. “Chocolate's not good for him! And we can't leave him!”

“Hammurabi's a big dog. One Tootsie Roll won't hurt him. And he's taking care of himself fine. Let's go!” Anna took Sinan's hand and pulled him toward the tunnel she hoped Henry had gone through with the camera, the tunnel she hoped José had somehow managed to find, too.

“Watch out for the shampoo!” She caught Sinan just as he started to slip, gave him a boost up onto the belt, and climbed up after him. They rode the flat black belt into the tunnel until they could barely hear the sounds of barking and cursing on the other side.