Boardwalk Bust (4 page)

When Joe says, “We'll lie through our teeth,” he means
I'll
lie through my teeth.

Joe's a terrible liar. I don't know if he's just too honest, or just a bad actor. All I can say is that somehow, whenever we have to fib our way out of—or into—a situation, it's always me who winds up doing the talking.

I've come to accept this. I used to fight it, but eventually I realized it was no use.

If we wanted our parents to let us fly down to the Jersey Shore for a few days of unsupervised “rest and relaxation,” I was going to have to come up with a good line of baloney. No way could we risk revealing our true purpose.

There's a very good reason why ATAC is top
secret, see. If bad guys knew about it, they might try to get even with us agents—or even our families. On the other hand, you can't get information out of someone who doesn't know anything. So the fewer people who are in on the secret, the better.

Not that Mom and Aunt Trudy don't get suspicious sometimes.

It goes back to the days when Joe and I were kids, solving cases we weren't supposed to even get involved with. We got pretty well known there for a while, but ever since Dad created ATAC, we've tried to keep our activities quiet.

That means a whole lot of lying to everyone we know, except Dad. I don't like it, and neither does Joe, but it's the price we have to pay if we want to fight crime in a big way.

So the next morning I had my bag of lies all ready to go.

“Um, Mom,” I said as I toyed with my scrambled eggs, “Joe and I would like to go down to the Jersey Shore for a week. Could we go?”

“By yourselves?” Aunt Trudy broke in.

She was sitting between us, looking from one of us to the other like we were out of our minds.

“I don't know, Frank,” Mom said. “You boys just got back from a trip, and now you want to go away again so soon? Fenton, what do you think?
Shouldn't they be spending more time at home?”

Dad lowered his newspaper—the one he likes to hide behind whenever there's a family dispute—and looked straight into my eyes.

I tried to signal him that this was important.

He seemed to get it. Turning to Mom, he said, “Well, dear, it is the summertime, after all. I think the boys are old enough to go to the beach on their own.”

“Probably get themselves into more mischief,” Aunt Trudy grumbled.

Aunt Trudy loves us, but she's always afraid we're going to get hurt. And I guess she has reason to be nervous. Joe and I have gotten into more dangerous situations as kids than most people do in their whole lives. “And how are they going to get there?” she continued. “Not on those motorcycles, I hope! Do you know how dangerous those things are? And look at the way they looked last night!”

“It's true,” Mom said, balling her napkin up into a knot. “Fenton, they only just got back—why do they have to leave again? Can't it wait till next week?”

I gave Dad another look. This couldn't wait.

He cleared his throat. “Um, actually, I've got the wood for the new backyard fence being delivered next week I was hoping the boys could help me with that. This week would be better.”

“Well,” Mom said, turning to me and Joe, “I hope at least you won't take your motorcycles this time. I'd feel better if you gave them a rest for a while.”

“We won't, Mom,” I promised. “Right, Joe?”

“Nope,” he said, giving her a smile and crossing his heart.

“They still have buses that go down there from the city, don't they?” Mom asked.

“Um, actually,” I said, “we thought we might fly down.”

I'd been saving this information till we got permission to go. Now I sprung it on them, knowing full well how they'd react.

“Are you
serious
?” Aunt Trudy said.

“What? We're licensed pilots,” Joe pointed out.

“Yes,” Trudy agreed. “But that doesn't make you
good
ones.”

“Now, Trudy,” Dad said, “I've flown with the boys, and they're both perfectly fine pilots.”

“Then why is it that every time they fly, something terrible happens?” Trudy asked.

“Mayday! Mayday!” Playback screeched, flapping his wings. “SOS! We're going down! Mayday! Mayday!”

“Shhh!” Trudy silenced him, giving him a cornflake. “Last time they flew a plane, as I recall, there
was engine trouble—or at least that's what the story was.”

“It
was
engine trouble, Aunt Trudy,” Joe said.

“Really? Well, it just so happens Adam Franklin is an old friend of mine. He swore up and down that he'd looked over that engine six ways from Sunday before you boys took the plane up.”

Joe and I exchanged a glance. We knew we were caught in a lie. That plane hadn't had engine trouble—it literally had a monkey wrench thrown into it. And it wasn't Adam Franklin, our trusty airplane maintenance man, who'd thrown it.

“And then there was the time before that. What was it, a mysterious hole in the gas tank?”

“Look, it's probably just a run of bad luck,” said good old Mom. “I know my boys, Trudy, and they're certainly not reckless pilots.”

“So it's settled then?” I jumped in, before anyone could say anything else about our flying skills.

“Just be careful,” our dad said, putting a merciful end to the discussion. “You boys have enough money for your trip?”

I thought of the cash that had come in the cookie box. I also knew that, thanks to ATAC, the flight down to Ocean Point would be covered separately.

“We'll be fine,” I said.

“All right, then,” Mom said. “When do you mean to go?”

“Right after breakfast,” I told her.

Joe had already shoveled his breakfast down his gullet. I now followed suit, and we got out of there. We had a mission to start, and I didn't want to have to tell any more lies—at least not to our family.

As we left the kitchen, I heard Playback serenading us, displaying his usual sense of humor.

“Mayday! Mayday! We're goin' down, boys! SOS!”

“You sure she's fit to fly?” I asked Adam Franklin as we climbed aboard our two-passenger Piper—Joe at the controls, me sitting behind him to navigate. We'd called about an hour ahead so he could get our plane ready.

“Oh, you bet!” Adam said, taking off his Red Sox cap and scratching his bald head. “Last time your Aunt Trudy gave me what for about it!”

“Hey, that's ancient history,” I said. “Don't worry about it, Adam. Let's focus on this time.”

“No prob,” he said, giving us a wave and patting the silver side of the plane. “She's in perfect shape. Weather's good too. You boys have a nice flight. Take my word for it, it'll be a safe one—long as you don't do any loop-de-loops.”

Soon we were airborne and headed south.

We picked up the Jersey Shore at Sandy Hook and kept it in sight as we went. We passed over Long Branch, Monmouth University, and the Shark River Inlet.

It was right about when we hit Long Beach Island that the fog bank rolled in from out of nowhere.

Within the space of two minutes, we were flying totally blind, relying only on our dashboard compass for direction. These little one-engine jobs don't have radar, in case you were wondering. You're basically not supposed to fly them in bad weather.

“Where did this stuff come from?” Joe asked, frowning at the fog. “I thought Adam said the weather was going to be fine.”

“You know Jersey. If you don't like the weather, wait a minute.”

“I know our luck with airplanes,” Joe replied. “And so does Aunt Trudy.”

“Just keep us headed the right way,” I told him. “This can't last long.”

Mmm hmm. Famous last words.

The fog lasted for a good ten minutes. And when we finally came out of it, there was another plane coming right at us.

5.
Beach Bound

“Bank left!”

I didn't need Frank screaming in my ear to know what to do. In that moment I was all instinct. I pulled on the throttle and my stomach turned as we banked hard left—so hard that we were upside down for a moment before we came back around.

“Whew!” I said. “That was close!”

“Too close,” Frank agreed. I could feel him grabbing my leather jacket for all he was worth. He was holding on so tightly that I couldn't move to maneuver the plane.

“Dude, let go of me,” I said. “I've gotta fly this thing.”

He let go, but the plane kept bucking. “What's going on?” I asked.

Frank looked behind us, then yelled, “There's something caught on our tail!”

Just for a second, I risked letting go of the controls to get a look.

Sure enough, there was a big piece of cloth caught on our tail. It was flapping wildly in the wind, dragging the back of the plane down. If we didn't get it off, and quick, it was going to make us stall out.

Not good.

Neither of us needed to say anything. We both knew we had only one option—one of us had to climb out onto the fuselage and pull the cloth free, or we were going to take a fatal dive into the Atlantic Ocean.

“I'll go,” I said.

“No! You stay put—just try and keep us steady.”

Before I could argue with him, Frank pulled back the cockpit cover and climbed up and out, onto the top of the fuselage.

I couldn't bear to watch, and anyway, I had to keep the plane sure and steady so he didn't fall off We were a good thousand feet up, and as good a high diver as Frank is, there was no way he could have survived a plunge like that.

I happen to be a crackerjack pilot, but this plane was getting almost impossible to control. (
You
try
keeping a small airplane steady with someone climbing on it!) The closer Frank got to the tail, the more he was throwing off the plane's balance, and the harder my job was getting.

I felt a sudden easing of the drag, and a minute later Frank tumbled back into his seat behind me. “Whew!” he said. “That was exciting.”

“What in the world was that thing?”

“One of those banners—you know, the ads planes fly back and forth over the beach?”

“You're kidding,” I said. “That plane that almost hit us …”

Now it was clear what must have happened. We'd avoided hitting the plane, but the banner it was trailing got snagged on our tail. We were just lucky it had snapped off the other plane, or it could have dragged both aircraft down.

“It took a little chunk out of our tail,” Frank told me. “How's she flying?”

“Not too bad,” I said, “but we'd better take her down before we lose anything else.”

“Where are we?”

I looked around and saw the familiar shapes of Atlantic City's many casinos in the distance. “There you go.”

“Atlantic City? But that's forty miles from—”

“I know, dude,” I said. “We'll just have to get
there some other way. I'm not risking it. We've had enough excitement for one flight.”

He didn't argue. I guess we were both a little shell-shocked. First the grain bin and now this—and all in the space of twenty-four hours!

We finally landed at the Atlantic City airport and phoned Adam to let him know what had happened. Adam's in on the ATAC secret, luckily. He said not to worry about it, that he'd take care of it with a few phone calls.

Now the only problem was how we'd get to Ocean Point. We're not old enough to rent a car, and our bikes were back in Bayport. Being stranded in Atlantic City with a bunch of cash may be some people's idea of a good time, but we had a mission to accomplish in Ocean Point, and no way to get there.

“How 'bout a taxi?” Frank suggested. He pointed to a row of cabs parked outside the terminal building.

“No way,” I said. “Ocean Point is forty miles from here. Do you know how much that would run us? We'd be blowing a big chunk of our budget before we even got there! And I am primed for some serious spending.”

Just then I felt somebody tapping me on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, son,” a deep, booming voice said. “Did you say you needed a lift to Ocean Point?”

I turned around and took a good look at this human megaphone. He was a big, brawny guy—I guessed about fifty years old, six feet, maybe 230 pounds, with a bushy head of brown hair that was getting gray around the temples.

This guy looked like he spent most of his time out in the sun. His tanned face brought out the whiteness of his big teeth when he smiled. The smile looked like a professional dental job—a really expensive one.

“Yes, sir,” Frank said. “We were headed there in our plane, but we had a little trouble with it.”

“Oh yeah? What sort of trouble?”

I told him about our near miss. He shook his head and frowned.

“Mmmm, yeah. Some of those banner pilots are real cowboys,” he said. “You boys are real lucky to be alive.”