The Spanish Kidnapping Disaster (11 page)

"Where's the driver?" Amy whispered as I peered through the open door of the bus.

"I don't see him," I said. "Maybe he went in there."

I pointed across the square at the cafe. Its doors were open now. From inside, I could heard voices. The delicious aroma of hot rolls and coffee wafted through the cool air, and my stomach rumbled so loudly I thought the old men would hear it.

"Do you have any money?" Amy asked.

I felt in my pockets and pulled out some coins. A five-peseta piece, a one-peseta piece, and four twenty-peseta pieces. "Eighty-six pesetas," I said. "That probably won't even buy a cup of coffee."

Amy held out an even smaller amount of coins, totaling fifty-five pesetas. "We don't have enough money for tickets," she said. "What will we do?"

We didn't have time to think about it because just then I saw the Volkswagen coming around the corner.

"Quick!" Grabbing Amy's hand, I yanked her into the bus. Dropping to the floor, we crawled to the back and hid behind the last row of seats.

"Did they see us?" Amy whispered.

"I don't think so." Cautiously I raised my head and
peeked out the window. To my horror, I saw Charles and Orlando walking across the square. I dove to the floor beside Amy, praying they would keep on going.

"We'll have to stay here now," I told Amy. "Just hope nobody wants to sit in the back seat."

At first, I was really scared because I expected Charles and Orlando to get on the bus. But, as time went by and they didn't appear, I started feeling bored and restless. It didn't help to be hungry and thirsty.

Every now and then I popped up and looked out the window, but I didn't see the bus driver or Charles and Orlando. Just the unfriendly old men playing checkers and the boys doing wheelies around and around the fountain.

"Suppose this is the end of the line?" Amy whispered. "And the bus is parked here till tomorrow?"

"Do you have to be so optimistic about everything?" I frowned at Amy, but I couldn't help thinking she might be right.

I raised my head for another peek and saw something that made my stomach lurch. I hit the floor and grabbed Amy's arm. She was staring at me wide-eyed, but for a moment I couldn't force myself to tell her what I'd just seen.

"Charles and Orlando," I croaked, "just came out of the cafe with a man who looks like a bus driver."

After a few seconds of heart-thumping silence, I heard Charles and Orlando talking in Spanish. Without Phillip, I had no idea what they were saying, but I got the feeling they were standing by the open bus door.

Then someone else spoke. His voice was warm and
friendly as he stepped into the bus. Clink clink—money dropped into the fare box, and Charles and Orlando sat down in the front of the bus, probably right behind the driver judging from the sound of their voices.

A few more minutes passed, and several other people got on. A couple of women, a few children, a baby, at least one man, and a couple of teenage boys. To Amy's and my unspeakable relief, all the other riders sat near the front.

As the bus began to move, Amy and I looked at each other. "Why do you think Charles and Orlando are riding this bus?" Amy whispered. "Why aren't they in the Volkswagen with Grace and Phillip?"

I thought about that and then, feeling sort of sick, I said, "Maybe Grace stole it. First she found Phillip, and then she started looking for us."

Amy's tears left white tracks on her cheeks. "Then we shouldn't have hidden from them?"

"I guess not," I mumbled.

As the bus bounced and jolted up a steep road we left the fog behind, but the sunlight streaming through the dirty windows didn't cheer me up. Why had I listened to Amy? If she hadn't pulled me back into the alley, we'd probably be safely on our way to Segovia with Grace and Phillip instead of hiding on a bus with Charles and Orlando.

Just as I was about to tell Amy what a dope she was, there was an outburst of yelling and screaming. The bus swayed hard, and I thought we were about to crash until I heard Orlando shouting. Peeking between the seats, I
saw him standing in the aisle and pointing his gun at the passengers. Behind him, Charles had shoved the driver aside and taken control of the bus. Ahead of us I caught a glimpse of the Volkswagen.

Heeding Orlando's orders, the passengers were scrambling over each other in an effort to move to the rear of the bus. In the confusion, two old women tried to slide into the rear seat. They were so busy watching Orlando they didn't notice Amy and me on the floor till they tripped over us.

"
Las niñas
," one cried, and I recognized the old lady who had mistaken Amy and me for gypsies earlier.

"Sh, sh!" I begged, grateful for the noise of the baby who was crying loudly. Pointing my finger at my head like a gun, I said, "Bang, bang—
muerto!
"

The old ladies stared at me, but two young women, one holding the wailing baby, were wedging themselves into the seat. Trembling and weeping, they distracted the old ladies' attention from Amy and me.

Then a little boy spotted us. I'm sure he called us dirty gypsies, but Orlando wasn't looking our way. To my horror, he was aiming his gun at the Volkswagen. As he squeezed the trigger, our bus's windshield shattered in a shower of safety glass. Everyone screamed at the noise of the gun, and Charles swerved as if the explosion had scared him, too. In fact, he almost lost control of the bus as we skidded around a sharp curve.

Through the broken glass and dust, I saw the Volkswagen disappear over a hill.

"Bloody hell," Charles yelled at Orlando. "Don't do that again! Do you want to wreck the bus, you fool?"

Orlando shouted at Charles in Spanish and Charles shouted back, this time in Spanish. Again the bus careened, the brakes squealed, and the two men cursed.

When a teenage boy lunged forward, Orlando whirled around and pointed the gun at him. He yelled a sentence that had "
muerto
" in it, and the boy slid down in his seat, trying to shield his head with his arms.

As Charles began gaining on the Volkswagen, the bus swayed and bounced violently. Everybody, Amy and me included, rose up in the air and slammed back down as we hurtled madly over ruts and bumps and slid around curves. A grocery bag burst open, and soon we were ducking flying squash, tomatoes, loaves of bread, cans of food, bottles of milk, and a flounder or two.

"
¡Socorro!
" one old woman cried, and the baby's mother screamed louder than the baby itself.

But the bus continued to pursue the Volkswagen, and Orlando fired at it a few more times, paying no attention to Charles's pleas.

Then two things happened at once. As we slid around a curve, I shot out from behind the back seat, and Orlando saw me. At the same moment, Charles lost control of the bus.

Orlando shouted and started moving toward me, but he slipped on a smashed tomato and crashed to the floor just as the bus veered off the road and skidded down the hillside.

"We're all going to die!" Amy screamed as we bounced over rocks and barely missed a tree.

Somehow Charles managed to stop the bus without turning it over. Inside all was chaos. People were struggling to their feet, screaming and crying. Orlando had dropped his gun and was trying to retrieve it, but the other passengers were crowding the aisles, sheltering us from him.

Dragging Amy after me, I scrambled through an open rear window. Ignoring a voice shouting "
Deténganse,
" we dropped to the ground.

"Run!" I screamed at Amy as we scrambled to our feet outside the bus. "Run!"

Keeping our heads down, we sprinted uphill toward the road, toward the Volkswagen, toward Grace and Phillip who were yelling, "Felix, Amy, hurry!"

"
¡Deténganse!
" Orlando roared from behind us as a bullet hit the earth ahead of me, kicking up a puff of dust.

"Stop!" Charles shouted. "Stop, you little beasts!"

Another bullet whined past my shoulder, but I didn't look back. I kept my head down and raced toward the Volkswagen's open door.

"Come on!" Phillip cried. "Come on!"

Then Phillip was grabbing at us, pulling us into the Volkswagen, and it was moving even before Amy had her feet inside. A bullet cracked a side window as Grace accelerated.

"Get down!" she yelled. "Stay on the floor!"

More bullets hit the Volkswagen, shattering the rear window, but Grace didn't even swerve. She drove like a stuntwoman in a movie, and in a few seconds we were out of range.

"Felix, Amy," she said, glancing over her shoulder. "You are all right?"

I took a quick look at myself. No bullet wounds, just the old gash on my leg, a few more scrapes and bruises on the rest of me, and lots of dirt. "I guess I'm okay," I said, hardly daring to believe it. "But how did you know we were on the bus?"

"We saw you sneak on before it left town," Phillip said, "but we couldn't do anything because Orlando and Charles came walking into the square right after you got into the bus. They just missed seeing us."

Grace nodded. "Now we must get back to Segovia." Turning the van sharply, she roared onto a highway as if Orlando and Charles were still chasing us.

Hanging on to a little loop over the window, Phillip shook his head. "Back home, she'd get a speeding ticket," he said, but you couldn't miss the admiration in his voice.

"Is your ankle okay?" Amy asked him.

Phillip winced a little and shrugged. "Grace says it's broken, but she splinted it the best she could." He extended his ankle, tightly wrapped in strips of torn cloth. "It still hurts," he said. "But I haven't cried once."

"How did Grace find you?" I asked.

"When Orlando came back and discovered we were gone, he was mad at first, then he and Charles got drunk," Phillip said. "Grace waited till they passed out, and then she took the Volkswagen and came looking for us. Señora Perez told her she thought we might be hiding in the hills near her farm.

"Thank goodness she didn't tell Orlando that," Amy said.

"Señora Perez was pretty much on our side by then," Phillip said. "In fact, if she'd seen us, she would've hidden us in her house."

Amy and I looked at each other. Like me, she was probably wishing she'd known that earlier. It would have saved us a lot of agony.

Phillip frowned at Amy and me. "You sure were hard to rescue," he said. "Once we thought we saw you, but you ran away. Then, after you got on the bus, we decided to go to Segovia and get the police, but Charles and Orlando started chasing us. Wow, it was like being in a movie."

While Phillip acted out what had happened, complete with sound effects, 1 looked out the window at the people
in the cars we were passing. I wondered what they'd say if they knew what had just happened to us.

"I hope Orlando doesn't hurt the other people on the bus," Amy said. "None of this was their fault."

"Except for that one old lady," I corrected her. "If she'd listened to us instead of thinking we were gypsies, we'd have gotten to the police station a long time ago."

Just then I noticed a bag on the seat beside Phillip. "Is that food?" He nodded.

Rummaging around, I grabbed a hunk of cheese and climbed up into the front seat beside Grace. "I was right about you all along," I told her through a mouthful of cheese. "You're a true citizen of the world, plus you're the best driver I ever saw."

Grace smiled at me, but her face was pale. One of her eyes was purple and swollen shut, and her upper lip was puffy.

"What happened?" I asked her.

"
Nada de nada,
" she said. "It is nothing. When Orlando came back, he blamed me for your escape. It is the way of a coward to beat up a woman."

She spat out the window to show her contempt for Orlando. "Now the bus is wrecked. Who will he blame for that?"

Looking at Grace closely, I realized her tee-shirt was wet. "You're bleeding," I gasped. "You've been shot."

"Do not worry," Grace said, "it is a mere flesh wound."

"But the blood."

"Just a trickle." She glanced at her arm and bit her lip.
"This kidnapping," she said, "what a great disaster it has been for me."

"The great Spanish kidnapping disaster," I said. "That's what it's been all right. The worst thing that ever happened to me."

"But almost over for you, Felix. Look." Grace pointed at a highway sign. "Five kilometers to Segovia. Very soon you will be safe again. But what of me? I will go to jail, I will be deported. Your disaster is done, but I think my disaster has just begun."

"What do you mean? You rescued us," I said.

"Yes, but before? When I told Charles and started all this. Will you tell that part?"

Amy and Phillip were leaning over my seat, watching Grace and listening. I looked at them and put my finger to my lips. Phillip nodded at once, but Amy hesitated.

"I don't want to seem ungrateful," Miss Perfect told Grace, "but you knew what was going to happen when you took us to the windmills."

"Ah, then I did not know of Orlando and how he would change things," Grace said. "That day in Segovia it seemed fair to get the money for the poor children from the rich American parents."

Grace frowned so fiercely I was worried she might decide to keep us for the ransom after all.

"But you could be dead at this very moment, and it would be my fault," she added. "I feel very bad to have trusted Charles, muy
estúpida.
Never did I intend any harm to befall you, you must believe me."

Grace struck her chest for emphasis and winced as if she had hurt herself.

"I think we should say they kidnapped
all
of us," Phillip said. "Including Grace."

I nodded and leaned toward Grace. "This is how we'll tell it," I told her. "You took us to see the windmills, and Charles and Orlando grabbed all four of us. You knew them, you told them we were visiting the windmills, but you had no idea they would
kidnap
us."

"The police will not believe this," Grace said sadly. "They will see the peepholes."

"Peepholes?" Phillip stared at Grace.

"Loopholes," I said, "she means loopholes."