Counterattack (5 page)

Nate threw the tracking device into the flat-bottom boat, where the pilot was just beginning to wake up from the neuron blast.

“Adios!” Nate yelled at the pilot, then slammed the controls into forward. The boat shot ahead into the channel.

He knew our names. He knew about the hidden tracking device. He'd known where to wait in ambush. He'd been supplied a neuron rifle by someone from the Federation's Combat Force.

Was there an explanation for this on the back of Dad's note to me?

I had a sudden sick feeling.
The note! The note in my pocket!
I'd fallen into the water. What would be left of it?

The boat lurched. I managed to snap open my chest pocket. All I was able to extract was a soggy wad of useless paper.

What had I missed? What had been on the other side of the note to guide Ashley and me? I leaned back in my wheelchair, angry and frustrated.

Nate maneuvered the boat at top speed, throwing Ashley and me from side to side as we followed the twists of the channel farther and farther into the swamp.

Then I watched with horror as he gunned the boat to even higher speeds on the next straight stretch. Ahead was a turn, but there was no way we'd make it at this speed.

The boat charged forward, directly toward a wall of trees and high swamp grass.

Impact in less than three seconds!

Two!

One!

Bang!
The front of the boat hit the shallow bank of land.

The impact threw me out of the wheelchair. If the brakes hadn't been set and if the wheelchair hadn't been tied in place, the force would have thrown the wheelchair into the front of the boat.

We were airborne!

I clenched my jaw, waiting for a bigger bang as the boat slammed into solid ground.

The boat motor still roared as the seconds seemed to stretch into a lifetime.

Splash!
Nate had found a large open area of water on the other side of the land, screened by the vegetation, with a new channel visible at the far end.

Briefly Nate turned back to us from the steering wheel at the front of the boat. “That should lose them. So settle back and enjoy the ride. We've got about another two hours ahead of us.”

I couldn't help the thought that flashed through my mind.

And then what?

CHAPTER 10

The three of us sat in front of a small fire on a small island. The grass was packed down to make sitting more comfortable for Nate and Ashley. (The good thing about being in a wheelchair is that you always have a place to sit.) There were a few large trees with roots visible above the ground, so it looked like they were resting on giant claws.

Three hours had passed since we had left the pilot behind in the flat-bottom boat. Two and a half of those hours we'd spent twisting and turning through the Everglades. Sometimes on open water, sometimes through channels, and often it seemed we were riding tall grass as the boat skimmed in shallow water.

It had been an incredible two and a half hours for me. The first part of the ride my mind had been full of questions chasing questions. When I'd finally realized that I had no hope of answering those questions without more information, I'd forced myself to think of other things. Like the sky and the wind and the smells and the sights.

For the rest of the boat ride, I had simply stared around me in amazement, trying to match what I saw in the Everglades with what I remembered from the DVDgigaroms I had watched all my life on Mars. The boat startled large white birds with long, skinny legs, sending them clumsily into the air. I saw turtles sunning on logs. Dozens of kinds of tiny, colorful birds. Trees that were draped with long, dark moss, so that they looked like hunched-over old women.

Again and again I marveled at the new sights and smells. When Nate finally stopped the boat and cut the engine, I was able to hear bird cries and insects buzzing and the splash of fish jumping.

Amazing,
I told myself again and again. How could anyone live in all this and not believe someone created it?
Just amazing,
I thought, awed. I envied all the people who had grown up on Earth—which meant everyone in the solar system except for me—because they were able to see stuff like this every day of their lives.

I had mentioned how cool I thought Earth was—and everything on it—to Nate when he first helped me out of the boat and set me up in the wheelchair on dry land. He'd given me a strange look, followed by a smile. He said he would be happy to discuss that later but needed to get us supper first.

Then he had disappeared for 15 minutes, returning with three fish, each a little bigger than one of his large hands.

As he started a fire, I watched an insect with wings land on the inside of my arm, just above the place where the old man had jabbed me and left a small scab of drying blood. The insect seemed so delicate, I marveled that it could fly.

I felt a tiny pinprick. Had this tiny thing actually bitten me? I kept watching the insect. It began to swell.

“What are you doing?” Nate the wild man asked me. “Slap it. It's sucking your blood.”

“Acck!” I slapped it. Blood spread across my arm.

“What planet are you from?” he joked. “Haven't you seen a mosquito before?”

So that's what the little flying thing was. A mosquito. I'd read about them. I sure wasn't going to tell this man why I didn't know what it was. Dad's note had urged strict secrecy. From everyone.

Nate threw me a small can. “Spray this repellent on yourself. As the sun sets, they'll come out in droves.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Thank me by trading with me,” he answered.

“Trading?” Ashley echoed. “What do Tyce and I have that we can trade?”

“We'll trade information.” Nate knelt beside the fish he had dropped on the grass. “You tell me things. I tell you things. Simple, right?” He yanked loose his huge knife from his belt.

“Easy for you to say when you've got the knife,” I told him. “Plus, you're easily 30 years old. I'm only 14 and in a wheelchair. At this point I'd be dumb to disagree with you.”

Nate laughed. “Thirty-two. Which has nothing to do with this knife. Because you don't understand. The way I was raised, a man pays his debts. You saved my life twice. From here on I'm your protection. And from what little I can figure, you're going to need it.”

He picked up one of the fish and held it upside-down. With a quick movement, he slit the fish's belly from the tail to its gills. He reached into the fish and pulled out a stringy clump of gleaming, colored tubes.

“What's that?” I asked. I was torn between two curiosities. What he'd meant by what he'd said. And what I was seeing.

“Fish guts,” he said. “How can you be as old as you are and not know that?”

He must not know I've grown up on Mars,
I thought.

Ashley poked the guts with her finger. “Hmm.” She had spent a lot of her life in a secret institute. Evidently this was new to her, too. She sniffed her finger and made a face.

It took less than a minute for Nate to take the guts out of the other fish too. He left the guts in a neat pile beside him. “Dinnertime,” he announced.

“People eat fish guts?” I asked, startled. I could smell them from where I sat. I didn't know if I was that hungry just yet.

Another strange look from Nate. “Where
exactly
are you from? Mars or something?” He chuckled, then punched me on the shoulder.

I shrugged as an answer. I doubted he'd believe me anyway.

“I save those to use as bait to catch a turtle or two,” Nate said. “Turtle soup tastes great. And you can boil and eat it right out of its shell. God's made it an animal that provides its own bowl.”

Nate rose and rinsed the gutted fish in the water beside us. He stopped at a bush and cut loose a green branch. “See. This is our frying pan.”

He poked the branch through one of the fish and held it above the fire. “Now, while these fish cook, let's talk.”

CHAPTER 11

“I've got some questions, then,” I said. The smell of the roasting fish made my mouth water. I wondered what “real food” would taste like. That was the kind of thing you could never experience on DVD-gigarom. Sure, I'd had a few meals in the prison. But they had been pretty tasteless, just like the nutrient tubes I'd had all my life on Mars. The only difference was that the prison meals had been served on a tin plate rather than in a tube.

“I'll give you what answers I can,” Nate replied. The fire popped and sent ashes and sparks upward, hitting him in the chest. He absently wiped the ash off. I now understood why his clothes smelled the way they did—wild and smoky.

“You had a neuron rifle programmed to allow you to shoot our pilot. I don't think you're a soldier. Even if you somehow stole or found the rifle, it takes a Combat Force computer to program it for you. Which means someone high up arranged it for you. So I'd like to know who gave you the rifle.”

I stopped long enough to try the fish. Nate had instructed me to peel the meat back from the skin so I wouldn't eat any scales. As promised, the white meat fell from the bones. With hesitation, I placed some in my mouth.

Wow! I'd never tasted anything so good in my entire life on Mars!

Nate smiled at my reaction. “More questions?”

I nodded but ate all my fish first, then licked my fingers clean. “All right. How did you know our names? How did you know there was a tracking device on board and where it was? How did you know we were going to be coming down that channel at that time? How did you get the little black box to jam the electrical currents?”

Ashley jumped in. “You knew there would be boats chasing us. How? How did you know where to escape? What did you mean when you said Tyce cost you a million dollars? And that now all three of us would be on the run?”

“And,” I added, “you said you guessed we needed protection. What made you guess that?”

“You mean aside from the obvious?” he responded, grinning. “That you've escaped a Combat Force prison on the space base?”

“How could you even know that?” Ashley asked him. “Unless someone told you ahead of time. So who was that?”

“Even if someone didn't tell me,” Nate returned, “there are the prison uniforms that are too large for each of you. Before you fall asleep tonight, I'll give you the clothes I got for you. You can change, and we'll burn the prison outfits.”

“So you did know ahead of time,” Ashley said.

“Yup.” Nate took his knife out of his sheath again. I hoped he meant what he said about protecting us.

He slid the knife under the fish on the branch. With the fish balanced on the blade, he handed it to Ashley. “Eat carefully. I'd hate to see you burn your fingers or your tongue.”

Nate propped the next fish on a branch so it would begin to cook. Ashley prayed quietly before she ate.

“I never used to do that myself,” he said, waiting respectfully until she finished before he spoke. “But after a few years here in the swamps, I've learned a whole new appreciation for the nature of creation.”

A few years in the swamps? No wonder it seemed like he was as comfortable living in the dangerous wildness of the Everglades as I had been living under the dome on Mars.

“I'll get to your questions first,” he said next. “Most all of them are answered by telling you how I knew you'd be on this swamp boat on that channel when you were. But my answer is going to lead to my own questions, so be ready to return the favor.”

I wasn't going to make promises, so I kept my mouth shut. Ashley was too busy eating to speak.

“As you might guess,” Nate said, “I live here in the Everglades. About five years ago, I retired from the Combat Force. I was so tired of the fighting and the politics and the way the world was going that I decided I was done with it. So I ran—as far away from everything as I could. This natural preserve was as far away and wild as I could get.”

Ashley spit some fish bones out, then smiled an apology at me.

“Yesterday, at the cabin I'd built 50 miles from the nearest road, my former commander dropped in on me. Literally. By helicopter. Turns out I hadn't hidden myself as well as I thought. But then I was a fool to believe they wouldn't keep track of me. Not after the kinds of jobs I'd been given during my military service. I used to be part of an elite commando group. We'd be sent into places when the government wanted a problem solved quickly and quietly. …” His voice trailed off and he stared into the fire.

It didn't seem like the kind of silence to interrupt. I gazed above him at the late-afternoon sky. The smudged clouds glowed with pinks, reds, and purples as the setting sun bounced light off them.

“Cannon—”

Ashley interrupted. “Cannon?”

“My former commander,” Nate explained. “I was part of an elite platoon of the Combat Force. Called the EAGLES.”

“Eagles?” I asked. “You flew?”

“EAGLES. I won't even try to explain what it stands for. In short, we were trained to fly anything, pilot any kind of boat, drive any vehicle. We were experts in things that now give me nightmares. Everything. Cannon is no longer in the EAGLES platoon. He's now one of the top-ranking generals in the Combat Force. Imagine my surprise when he offered me a million dollars and the guaranteed privacy of a new identity for the rest of my life to help him with one last simple job. It didn't seem smart to turn him down. Not when it was obvious he could find me whenever he wanted.”

“The simple job was to get us,” I said.

“Yup, again. He told me who you were and gave me descriptions and some clothes he promised would fit. He told me that you would be released from prison because of a hostage taking. He provided me with the neuron rifle, the black box, and the time and location to wait in ambush. He warned me about the tracking device on the swamp boat. And he told me that once I stopped the swamp boat, because of the tracking device, there would be very little time before more soldiers from the prison began pursuit.”