Secret Weapons (5 page)

So the three PROs, with Carlos still jacketless, went off around the cul-de-sac, with Bucky bragging all the way about how he was going to make Ari squeal. But when they got to the Pappases’ and knocked at the door there was no answer. Carlos breathed a shivering sigh of relief. He was about to suggest that they go home and warm up, when the door suddenly opened. But it was just Ari’s little four-year-old sister.

As usual, Athena looked like she’d dressed herself out of somebody’s ragbag. She was wearing a huge paint-smeared sweater that came clear down to her ankles, her shoes were on the wrong feet, and her curly ponytail was all frizzled out.

“Hi, Athena,” Carlos said. “Where’s Ari?”

“Hi, dudes,” Athena said. Then she put her head on one side and wrinkled up her forehead. After a moment she said, “Ari’s not here. He went outside.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Yep. Aurora and Kate are not here too. They ran up the sidewalk that way, and then Ari went outside.” She cocked her head again and thought for a minute. “Nick and Diane are in the studio. You want to see Nick and Diane?”

Carlos knew that all the Pappas kids called their parents by their first names but it seemed especially funny to hear a four-year-old do it. He grinned at Athena and said, “No, we don’t want to see Nick and Diane. We just want to see Ari.”

“Outside, huh?” Bucky said as they were going down the sidewalk. “Maybe he’s out back somewhere. Let’s look in the backyard.”

In the Pappases’ overgrown backyard the three PROs stopped for a second to look at the gazebo.

“Holy cow!” Bucky said. “It’s purple now. And look at those crazy monsters!”

“Yeah.” Carlos shrugged. “Ari’s dad made them. They’re sculptures. I guess it used to be just your ordinary gazebo until—” Just at that moment something caught Carlos’s attention. Something had moved down by the old shed at the back of the lot. In fact, he thought he’d seen a face peeking out around the door and then disappearing very quickly. “Hey, I think I just saw someone. Come on.”

By the time they’d reached the old shed the door was closed. There was a latch on the outside and there was no lock on it. But when Bucky banged and then shoved on the door with his shoulder it didn’t open, so it must have been locked on the inside.

“Come on out, Pappas. We know you’re in there” he yelled, but there was no answer.

“Cool it, Brockhurst,” Eddy said. “We might as well go. He’s not, going to open the door. Let’s get out of here.”

“Boy, I’ll second that motion,” Carlos said. “I’m freezing. And besides, this place stinks. Do you smell what I smell?”

They all three started sniffing then and Bucky started making gagging noises and pretending he was going to throw up. After he’d staggered around for a while gagging, he led the way back across the Pappases’ backyard and down the driveway to the sidewalk.

On the other side of the old studio door Ari Pappas gradually began to breathe again. Not that breathing was all that much fun, under the circumstances. He had been in the studio only a few minutes and definitely hadn’t gotten used to the smell, when he’d heard voices and peeked out in time to see the PROs fooling around the gazebo. That had given him just time enough to fasten the dead bolt on the inside of the door before Bucky started banging on it.

Now, with the immediate danger over, he went back briefly to the investigation that the PROs had interrupted. It didn’t take long. Actually, he was a little disappointed. He’d been expecting something a little bit more exciting than fertilizer. He didn’t even take the time to get out his journal, since he couldn’t figure out how to write and hold his nose at the same time. He would do the writing later.

When he was ready to go he peered carefully out around the door. The coast seemed to be clear. He hung the open combination lock back on the outside latch just the way he’d found it, and headed for the house at a dead run.

In the living room, Athena was on her knees on the window seat. “Hi,” she said. “They just left. Carlos and those other dudes just left.”

“Whew!” Ari sank into a chair. “That’s a relief.” Then he sat up straight. “And how about Aurora and Kate? Have they come back yet?”

Athena shook her head. “Nope. Not yet. They all went that way.” She pointed toward the Grants’ and the Wongs’. “Are you going there too?”

“Yeah,” Ari said thoughtfully, “maybe I am. Yeah. I guess I am.”

Athena climbed down off the window seat. “Can I come with you, Ari?”

Ari headed for the front door. “Not today. Today isn’t for little kids.”

Athena glared at Ari’s back and went on glaring as the door slammed shut behind him. “I’m not a little kid,” she yelled. “Little kids can’t write their names. Little kids can’t—” She stopped yelling then and ran across the room to the front door. Standing on tiptoe, she turned the big metal knob and pulled the door open. “Little kids can’t open the front door,” she whispered as she ran across the lawn and out onto the sidewalk.

W
HEN KATE AND AURORA
got to Eddy’s, Mrs. Wong came to the door. “Why, hello, girls,” she said. “Did you want to see Eddy? He’s gone over to see Carlos.”

“Well, actually, we’d like to talk to Web for a minute,” Kate said with her best mature-and-responsible type smile. “Is he at home?”

Mrs. Wong looked surprised. “Web is home,” she said. “But he’s out in the workshop. With Carson. They’re working on their project for the science fair.” She smiled. “And they’re being awfully secretive about it. They may not want to let you in.”

So Kate said they’d give it a try anyway, and then she and Aurora went around the house to the room at the back of the garage. But when Kate knocked on the door Web told them to go away.

Kate tried to argue. “Look, Web, this is Kate Nicely,” she said. “Carson’s sister. And Aurora. We won’t tell anyone if you let us see. Hey, Carson! Tell Web we don’t tell secrets.”

Carson’s funny squeaky voice said, “Kate says they don’t tell secrets, Web.”

Rolling up her eyes, Kate gave Aurora a “wouldn’t you know it” type grin. Then she thought for a moment before she put her mouth as close to the door as she could and started a new approach. “Hey, Web,” she said, “it’s just that there’s this rumor going around that you guys are doing something that might be dangerous. Everyone’s kind of worried. Can’t we just see enough so that we’ll know that it isn’t dangerous? Can’t we just see that much?”

Kate and Aurora were waiting for an answer when right behind them a voice said, “Yeah, that’s all we want to see too. We just want to see how dangerous it is.”

And when Kate and Aurora whirled around, standing right behind them, not more than three feet away, were all three of the PROs, Bucky and Eddy and a shivering, slightly blue-looking Carlos Garcia.

Kate put her hands on her hips. “Okay, you jerks. You better get out of here. We were here first. And besides, we’ve got a good reason to be here. I mean, Carson’s my little brother. I’ve got a right to see if my little brother is about to blow himself up, or …” Aurora was tugging at her sleeve.

“Kate. Kate,” she was whispering. Even before she noticed the grin on Eddy’s face Kate suddenly realized what Aurora was trying to tell her. Aurora was probably trying to remind her that Eddy could say the exact same thing. After all, Eddy’s little brother was in there too, besides which they were, all of them, on Eddy’s property. Kate was trying to decide whether to apologize or just start yelling louder, when Bucky started yelling first. But not at Kate.

“There he is. There’s the little twerp,” Bucky was yelling as he charged around behind a bush and then backed out dragging someone behind him. The someone was Ari Pappas.

Ari’s pale big-eyed Pappas face was all screwed up. “Don’t hit me,” he squealed. “Kate will chop you if you hit me. Chop him, Kate!”

Bucky was holding Ari by the back of his jacket with one hand and pulling the other one back and turning it into a fist when suddenly he said, “Ouch!” and looked down at his left leg. Looked down at Athena Pappas, who was getting ready to kick again, aiming her right foot—the one with the left shoe on it—right at Bucky’s shinbone.

“You stop that,” Athena said. “Don’t you hit Ari, you creep.”

For a confused split second everyone froze. Everyone was staring at Athena, wondering where she’d come from. And at Bucky, wondering what he’d do in a situation like this. Would he really hit a four-year-old girl? Aurora started to move forward to try to protect her little sister but Kate held her back—because Bucky seemed to be wondering too. And then, right into the middle of that frozen split second, a new person appeared on the scene.

The new arrival was Susie Garcia and her dark eyes were big and wild looking. “They’re here,” she hissed in a loud whisper. “The terrorists have come back.”

“What are you talking about?” Carlos asked.

“Those guys.” Susie was pointing back over her shoulder. “Those same two guys in the black van. They’re out there again. In front of the Andersons’.”

F
OR A MOMENT AFTER
Susie whispered that the terrorists had come back, everyone just stood around looking at each other. And then all at once, as if they’d been given a signal, they all turned and looked toward the street. Even Ari, who was still more or less dangling from Bucky Brockhurst’s fist, turned his head to look too. It was Kate who spoke first.

“Okay. Let’s go,” she said. “Anybody else want to see what these terrorists look like?”

“Yeah. I’m with you.” Bucky dropped Ari and motioned to the other PROs. “Come on, dudes. Let’s go see what this terrorist junk is all about.”

“O-k-k-kay,” Carlos whispered between his chattering teeth. “Let’s g-g-go.”

So Kate went first, with Aurora right beside her, as always. And then came the three PROs with Susie Garcia right behind them.

“Come on, Ari.” Athena grabbed Ari’s hand. “Let’s go too.” Ari shook off his sister’s hand, pulled down his jacket where Bucky had jerked it up around his ears, and joined the procession. At the rear.

As they marched down the Wongs’ driveway, close together in an eight-kid clump, Ari began to feel excited without knowing exactly why. As a reporter he knew he was supposed to stick to the facts, and the one
fact
that he knew for sure and certain was that he, himself, had made up the whole terrorist story. With a little help, of course, from one of Carson Nicely’s crazy ideas. So what was there to be excited about?

However, although that fact was the only thing he knew for sure and certain, there were some other things he knew, or almost knew, in a different kind of way. There had been, for instance, the strange way Aurora had acted when she heard about the two men in a big black van, and what she had said about them being “evil.” Ari had never been entirely sure whether his sister’s mysterious feelings could be classified as facts or not. Sometimes he was pretty sure they couldn’t. But at other times he wasn’t so sure. Like right now, for instance.

The clump of kids had almost reached the sidewalk when Ari began to notice that Athena was talking to him, and had been talking to him for quite a while. Jerking on the back of his jacket, she had been saying the same thing over and over again. “What’s a terrist? What’s a terrist, Ari?”

“Shhh,” Ari whispered. “Terrorists are bad people.”

Athena went on jerking on his jacket. “Why? Why are they bad? …” she was beginning again when Kate, at the head of the clump, stopped so suddenly that everyone ran into each other.

“There they are,” Kate whispered.

Ari sidled sideways until he could look around the fifth-grade part of the clump and on up the sidewalk toward the Andersons’.

And there they were. A big black van had pulled up in front of the Andersons’ house and two men were getting out. One of them, a short, round-headed guy with a bald spot, was standing near the door on the driver’s side. And the other one, a taller guy with long stringy hair and a weird woolly-looking vest, was opening the back.

Ari was still leaning out around Carlos’s elbow when he began to be aware that Athena was peeking around him. She was talking again, too, jerking on his jacket and saying, “Is that them? Is that the terrists, Ari?”

“Shhh!” everybody said at once. “Shh.” And then some people added other things like, “Be still, Athena,” and “They’ll hear you,” and “Shut your mouth, kid.” As Ari jerked his little sister back behind the big kids and put his hand over her mouth, he bumped into Carlos, and Carlos must have bumped into someone in front of him because all of a sudden they were all moving forward again. On around the cul-de-sac passing Dragoland and heading toward the Andersons’ and the black van. They went on moving, kind of oozing forward, stopping and getting bumped from behind and moving forward again until the man who had opened the back of the van straightened up and looked right at them.

The tall, stringy-haired man had been bending over, reaching into the back of the van and lifting out something that looked large and heavy, like an extra-big backpack. But when he saw the bunch of kids coming down the sidewalk he suddenly froze. And then the short, round-headed guy turned around—and he froze too.

The tall terrorist moved first. Putting down the big backpack, he strolled around the van, slowly and casually as if he was trying to act extra relaxed and unconcerned. When he was standing right next to the short, round-headed guy he began to talk. Ari couldn’t hear what they were saying but after a minute the short guy strolled, also casually, back to the back of the van, closed the doors, and then came on down the sidewalk. Down the sidewalk toward where the clump of kids were still standing.

Nobody moved. At least nobody turned and ran down the street, although it did occur to Ari that it might not be a bad idea. Instead they all just squeezed into a tighter clump.

When the short, round-headed guy had almost reached them he stopped suddenly and looked up, and did a kind of surprise thing, as if he’d just noticed that they were there.

“Well, well. Hello there, gang,” he said in a friendly voice. A too-friendly voice, Ari thought. “What’s up? You playing some sort of neighborhood game? Hey, I remember neighborhood games that we played when I was a kid. Kick the can and things like that. Bet that’s it. Bet you’re playing some sort of a game.”