Masterminds (23 page)

The streets are deserted, so we have no trouble winding up at the foot of the Fellowship hill. We peer through the factory gate. There they are, parked just inside—the three cone trucks. The one with the satellite dish is in the middle.

“Looks like it's wearing a crown,” I mumble.

Malik grimaces. “Let's dethrone it.”

There's no sign of the Surety patrol. Maybe it doesn't even operate on Serenity Day. The Purple People Eaters have other jobs tonight, like setting off fireworks and losing the tug-of-war.

Tools in hand, we scale the fence and run to the center truck. I hoist myself onto the hood and Malik climbs aboard via the payload, kicking dusty cones in all directions. We reach the dish at the same instant.

“Remember,” I breathe, “try to time the blows with the explosions of the skyrockets. That way, there's less chance anyone will hear us.”

“Yeah, you do that,” he tells me. “I've waited thirteen years to beat the snot out of something, and I'm planning to do a good job.”

He means it, too, because his first swing with the hoe misses the end of my nose by about three inches. It makes a gonging sound as it slams into the metal dish, denting it.
I start whacking away with my shovel, all the while searching for some cable to cut. I've brought our meat scissors, which would behead a rhino. But the signal generator is stronger than it looks, and the wiring must be inside it. We're inflicting major damage on the dish, twisting it into a piece of modern art. Shards are breaking off and flying every which way. Yet the heavy base of the thing is almost untouched.

I change my strategy, leaving the hacking to Malik, and concentrating on trying to break the connection between the control box and the truck body. I pound on the roof of the cab in an attempt to buckle it. If I can create a little space, maybe I can get my shovel underneath and lever it off. Then I can slice through the wires, get it on the ground, and Malik and I can pound it into jelly.

Perspiration is pouring off Malik, and he grunts with every swing of the hoe. I must be just as bad, because my eyes are stinging, and I'm having trouble with my grip on the shovel—that's how sweaty my hands are. We battle on furiously. All this as detonations of light and color go off in the sky over our heads.

That might explain why we never hear the golf cart.

“Freeze!” booms a deep voice.

The next thing I know, a purple arm has Malik in a
headlock, and I realize we've been caught. His eyes widen in terror, but he's unable to struggle or even cry out.

Without even thinking, I swing my shovel around and catch Alexander the Grape right between the shoulder blades. He drops like a stone and rolls off onto the ground, where he lies still, gasping for breath. That's when I see the cart parked behind us. Bryan Delaney is out and running toward us, his expression full of fury.

“Hang on!” I yell at Malik, who is dazed but unhurt.

And just like I know what I'm doing, I abandon the shovel and vault into the cab of the truck. There's no key in the ignition, but I flip the sun visor, and the key falls into my lap. I jam it into the slot and twist. The big engine roars to life. Desperately, I take in my surroundings and realize in horror that this is nothing like
Street Racers 2014
. The transmission is a stick shift. I've read about these in books, but since Dad's Lexus is automatic, I never bothered to research how to drive one.

I give it some gas, forcing the handle into the spot marked 1. There's an awful screech, and the truck shudders but doesn't go anywhere.

“The clutch!” hollers Malik. “Use the clutch!”

“I'm clutching it as hard as I can!” I shout back.

“It's the pedal! To the left of the brake!”

Clearly, Malik has a more realistic video game than mine. I press down on the clutch and reshift, and this time the truck begins to crawl out from between its brothers. There's a thump as Bryan jumps on my running board. An indigo-sleeved arm reaches in for me. The hand grabs my hair. It hurts, but it gives me time to roll up the window, catching him just below the elbow. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the hoe handle come around and whack him on the side of the head. His body stiffens, and I lower the window just enough to allow him to fall off.

“Go, go, go!” orders Malik.

“Get in the truck with me!” I shout back.

“I can't. I'm busy!”

I can hear him still hacking at the dish on the roof. He's right. All of this is for nothing if we can't knock out the barrier.

The cone truck plows through the metal gate, leaving a snarl of broken and twisted chain behind it. I wheel onto Fellowship Avenue and shift into second for going up the hill. There's another screech, and for an awful moment the motor begins to cough and sputter.

Don't stall . . . please don't stall
, I beg silently.

In the rearview mirror, I see the golf cart with the two Purple People Eaters working its way through the ruined
gate. They make the turn onto Fellowship and start after us. Bryan is bleeding from the side of his face. I swallow an involuntary wheeze. It's the first time I've ever drawn blood from another person.

Sorry, Mrs. Delaney.

“Drive!” howls Malik in between loud blows.

It hits me in a stab of panic that if the engine dies, I have no idea how to get it started again. It's putt-putt-putting dangerously slow, and then it catches with a smooth healthy sound. We crest the hill and I head for the park, ignoring stop signs. The fireworks display is still going on, which means we're not too late.

The golf cart is just fast enough to keep pace, or maybe I'm slow enough to keep pace with it. The truck can do better, but not in this gear, and I don't dare shift into third. I came perilously close to stalling before. I'm not taking that risk again.

The park is dead ahead of us on the left. “I see them!” Malik calls from the roof.

I do too—Hector and the girls, by the mayor's parking space, where Dad left the Lexus. The surveillance camera that monitors this part of town is at their feet in several pieces—Tori's job. They're waiting for Malik and me to come running back so we can pile into the car and take
off. Now, though, we're in the truck, not on foot. And with two Purples chasing us, there's no time to switch vehicles.

At the sight of the factory truck, the three try to melt into the shadows.

“It's us, you morons!” Malik stage-whispers. “Get on—now! Change of plan—we're not stopping!”

The instruction bewilders them at first, even after they see who's driving. Then they spot the golf cart coming up behind us, and they're spurred into action. Hector and Amber clamber onto the back, joining Malik among the cones. Tori jumps into the cab with me.

In the sky above us, seven big rockets splay out in a cascade of red, white, and blue. It's the beginning of the grand finale. Our twenty-three minutes are almost up.

“Can't this thing go any faster?” Tori asks anxiously.

Mentally crossing my fingers, toes, and heart, I depress the clutch and shift into third.

There's a bit of a screech, and the truck bucks once, but the engine is running smoothly and we take off. I stomp on the gas and we surge ahead. The golf cart grows smaller in the mirror as the speedometer climbs past twenty, thirty, and even forty.

Cheering comes from the back of the truck, Hector
and Amber celebrating our leaving the patrol in the dust.

“They'll never catch us now!” Amber exults.

But it'll be a pretty short-lived victory if we haven't taken out the barrier.

The cab resonates with the crack of Malik's hoe against the dish. He's thinking what I'm thinking. The signal generator is bent and broken, not to mention beaten to a pulp. But we haven't been able to get at the guts. Our only hope is that the damage to the outside is enough to mess up the works.

I take the turn onto Old County Six so fast that I send four or five orange cones flying out of the payload and skittering across the grass.

“Slow down!” howls Hector. “I can't hang on!”

“Slow down?” Malik barks. “Speed up!”

That we definitely are. The speedometer is inching past sixty and I'm starting to feel a little more in control behind the wheel. The
Now Leaving Serenity
sign is upon us and past almost before we think to look for it. Town is gone except for a few sparks from the end of the fireworks. And it's only a matter of time before it begins to sink in that so are we.

“So far, so good,” says Tori in a small voice.

“I'm good too.” Actually, I ache all over, but that's the
tension in my arms and shoulders from hanging on to this big wheel. I don't dare take my eyes off the road, but I'm pretty sure we're getting to the point where the barrier would start acting on us—if the barrier is still in operation.

A whimper from Amber reaches me through the open window, and by the time I process what that might mean, I feel it too—the nauseated stomach, the pain and pressure in my head.

Oh no! The barrier—it's still there!

The onset is sudden and overwhelming—a blinding, searing agony that grips our entire bodies, blotting out everything else.

It's our speed,
I think, struggling to maintain control of the truck.
We're not on bikes this time; we're blasting into the heart of the barrier at sixty miles per hour!

Tori is half out of her seat, doubled over and retching. Above me I hear Malik hacking furiously at the dish in a last-ditch effort to destroy it before it destroys us. Hector is screaming; Amber is moaning. It's a nightmare moment of total chaos, but even worse than our suffering is the crushing reality that we've lost. The choice we face is grim in the extreme: We can turn around and be dragged back to live the rest of our lives as prisoners and
lab rats. Or we can go forward and die.

Total failure. We were in such a hurry to get Malik out of town by Serenity Day that we patched together a plan without really thinking it through. How could we be so crazy as to believe that we could knock out a sophisticated high-tech barrier system with
gardening tools
? Even now, through the waves of nausea and torture, I hear the
whack, whack, whack
of Malik relentlessly pummeling the dish, never giving up, although the hoe in his hand is inadequate to get the job done.

He fights valiantly on. The hoe may be puny, but it's the only weapon we've got . . .

All at once, through the fog that's coming down over my eyes, it dawns on me that we
do
have another weapon.

We have a speeding truck!

I scream at Tori, “Get me an orange cone!”

She's so lost in her misery that it takes a few seconds before she realizes I'm talking to her.

I scream again. “A cone! Now!”

Moving like a ninety-year-old, she eases her upper body out the window. There's some shouted conversation over the engine noise, and when she comes back into the cab, she's holding out a traffic cone. I take it and scan the road ahead in the high beams. To my right is a deepening
valley; on the left, desert pines announce the edge of the Carson National Forest.

“Get ready to jump,” I tell Tori.

“What? Jump? Why?”

There's no time for an explanation, because up ahead the lights illuminate exactly what I was looking for. A weather-beaten sign warns of a sharp left turn directly ahead. Just beyond it, a line of white-painted wooden posts follow the curve of the road.

I grab the cone and jam it into the gas pedal, wedging it against the front of my seat. The truck surges forward, the speedometer leaping past seventy.

“Now!” I bark at Tori.

With a terrified cry, she throws open the passenger door and hurls herself out. I try to make sure that she's clear of the giant tires, but she's already far behind, and whatever happened, happened.

Still keeping one hand on the wheel, I open my own door and step out onto the running board. “Jump!” I howl at the three in the payload. “Do it! Now!”

At this speed, the simple act of dropping from the truck is like being hurled violently backward. I count two jumpers not three. The smallest figure is still there—Hector,
frozen in fear, hanging on to the mesh gate at the rear.

“Hector, ju-u-ump!!”

I can't be sure if he goes or not, because at that instant, I'm out of time. The warning sign flashes past. The white-painted posts are hurtling toward me; beyond them lies the drop into the valley. It's now or never.

I fling myself into the night. I feel the pull of the slipstream as the truck barrels past. My momentum carries me to a gravelly shoulder, and I'm slammed down as if by a giant hand. I look up just in time to see the cone truck bashing through the line of posts and sailing over the precipice. It has a rough ride. I can hear it bouncing off boulders and crashing through underbrush, taking out trees. I've lost sight of it now, but I know when it hits bottom. An enormous explosion rocks the countryside, and a huge fireball rises up into the sky, momentarily turning the valley bright as high noon.

This is
our
Serenity Day fireworks,
I think to myself with a stab of savage satisfaction. They definitely saw it from town. It was probably visible from the International Space Station.

I am scraped and bruised and bleeding all over. Everything hurts, and yet for some reason, I feel terrific.
It takes a moment before I realize why. The paralyzing headache and nausea are gone. When the truck blew up, it took the barrier generator with it.

A rush of exhilaration comes over me. The walls of our prison were never brick and mortar, but they were just as real. For the first time in our lives, we're free.

We
. The word snaps my mind back to the others. I hope they're okay. I made it, so surely they did, too, didn't they?

My sense of triumph goes cold as I think of Hector. Did he get off in time? And even if he did, a lot can go wrong jumping from a vehicle moving at seventy miles an hour. You could break bones; you could slip under the wheels; you could hit your head on a rock.