License to Thrill (15 page)

There aren't a lot of roads leading into or out of Grand Canyon National Park. To continue heading west, you have to drive south on Route 180 for 50 miles, and then get on I-40. For a while, Dr. McDonald veered off onto historic Route 66 for a change of scenery, but then got back on I-40 at the town of Kingman. From there, he took Route 93, which goes out to the tip of Arizona. If you look on the map, he drove in a big U shape.

It was a long drive, more than three hours, and there wasn't a whole lot to look at along the way. Spectacular mountains were in the distance and there was something beautiful about the desert. But everybody was starting to feel like they just wanted to get home.

Dear reader, in the course of this series, I fear that perhaps I haven't conveyed the mind-numbing boredom that goes with sitting in a car for a 3,000-mile trip across the United States and back again. Needless to say, for most travelers, it's not a nonstop thrill ride of visiting goofy tourist traps, solving indecipherable ciphers, and getting attacked by crazed bad guys
every few days. A
real
cross-country trip involves a lot of staring out the window for hours and wondering how long it will be until “we're there.” I've taken the liberty of leaving out the boring parts to spare you the drudgery of reading a book that would be as dull as an actual cross-country drive. You're welcome!

To pass the time, Pep examined the strange new handwriting in her notepad. She stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out what it could possibly mean . . .

ATLEDOEMORAHPLAAMILAMILMRO

FINUOVARB

None of her usual intricate strategies seemed to work on this one. After an hour or so, Pep found her eyes feeling heavy, and soon she dozed off, her notepad dropping to her feet.

Coke picked it up and looked at the cipher. Just for the heck of it, he wrote it out backward, something his sister usually tried but had neglected to do this time. . . .

BRAVOUNIFORMLIMALIMA

ALPHAROMEODELTA

Coke's eye widened. Wait a minute! There were
words in there! He drew slashes in the obvious places. . . .

BRAVO/UNIFORM/LIMA/LIMA/ALPHA/ROMEO/DELTA

Then he poked his sister awake.

“I
got
it!” he whispered after she opened her eyes. “Look! There are words in there. And Alpha Romeo is a kind of car. Just like Volkswagen.”

Pep took the notepad to see what he had written.

“It's not the car, you dope!” she said. “This is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet.”

“The
what
?”

“It's a simple code the military uses so they can relay messages clearly,” Pep told him. “You know how in war movies they're always talking into headsets and saying, ‘alpha,' ‘bravo,' ‘charlie,' and stuff like that? They're using words to represent letters to make sure the person at the other end is hearing them right.”

“How do you know that?” Coke asked.

“Everybody knows that,” Pep replied.

“I didn't know that,” Coke said. “So you're saying that BRAVO means B, and UNIFORM means U . . .”

“Right,” Pep said. “And LIMA means L. ALPHA means A. ROMEO means R. And DELTA means D. So BRAVO UNIFORM LIMA LIMA ALPHA ROMEO DELTA is . . . B-U-L-L-A-R-D.”

“Are you sure that's right?” Coke asked. “BULLARD?”

“That's what it says,” his sister replied. “Now all we need to do is find out what BULLARD means.”

“Google it,” Coke said.

“Mom!”

Mrs. McDonald handed her laptop back to the twins.

“I'm so pleased to see you kids working hard on your summer homework assignments,” she said.

Coke and Pep rolled their eyes at each other. Their parents were hopeless.

Coke did a search for BULLARD. It turned up a company that makes protective equipment, such as hardhats for construction workers and helmets for firefighters.

“Where are they located?” Pep asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Kentucky.”

“How could that possibly tie in with Volkswagen?” Pep asked.

“Maybe there's a Volkswagen factory in Kentucky, and they have to wear hardhats,” Coke replied.

“They have to wear hardhats in
any
factory,” his sister said. “And what could that possibly have to do with the fireweed plant?”

Pep sighed, closed her notepad, and stared out the window. The twins were as confused as ever.

You probably are too, reader. But you know one thing for sure. BULLARD is important. If it weren't, there would have been no reason for somebody to break into the car and write it in Pep's notepad.

She added to her list . . .

CIPHER #1: MAY 28, 1937, VOLKSWAGEN IS FOUNDED

CIPHER #2: 49:08. 28:40.5

CIPHER #3: FIREWEED

CIPHER #4: BULLARD

“We're going to a
dam
?” Pep asked when Dr. McDonald pulled off at the next exit.

“It's not just
any
dam,” said her mother. “It's the biggest dam in the world.”

“It's dam big,” Dr. McDonald said, chuckling at his little joke.

“It's still a dam,” Pep said, unimpressed. “Beavers build dams.”

Dr. McDonald followed the Hoover Dam signs until he found the parking lot at the visitors' center.

“We want to take the dam tour,” he said with a smirk when he got to the ticket window.

The lady behind the glass had heard so many dam jokes, she gave no reaction at all.

“Which dam tour do you want to take?” she asked.

It turns out there are two dam tours. The Powerplant Tour is a half hour and costs fifteen dollars. You take an elevator down into the power plant and see the huge turbines that turn rushing water into electricity. The Hoover Dam Tour is twice as long and allows you to see more of the labyrinth of tunnels that wind their way throughout the dam's mass of concrete. It costs thirty dollars.

“Thirty bucks for each of us?” Coke said to his father. “Sounds kinda high to me, Dad.”

“Four tickets to the Powerplant Tour, please,” said Dr. McDonald.

As they followed the signs for the start of the tour,
Coke and Pep noticed the security guards and cameras everywhere. Ever since 9/11, national historic sites like Hoover Dam have been on increased alert against terrorist attacks. The beefed-up security makes some people feel nervous, but it made the twins feel safe. Dr. Warsaw and his flunkies wouldn't dare try to hurt them
here
. Coke and Pep could relax and enjoy themselves for a change.

The family was ushered into a room where they watched a short film that explained how Hoover Dam was built and how it changed America. They learned that the dam, which is actually larger than the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, generates billions of kilowatt hours of electricity and distributes billions of gallons of water to people and farms all over the west. Without Hoover Dam, life in this part of the country would be impossible.

When the film ended, the tour guide—a short woman—introduced herself and escorted everyone
into an elevator, which took them 530 feet down through the rock wall of the canyon.

“More than three million cubic yards of concrete was used to build the dam,” the tour guide informed the group. “That's enough concrete to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. If the dam was built in one continuous pour, the concrete would take over a century to cool and harden. That's why it was poured in blocks, some as large as fifty feet square and five feet high.”

Dr. McDonald was fascinated, as he always was by technology. Mrs. McDonald took notes for
Amazing but True
. The trivia and statistics pretty much washed over Pep, but Coke absorbed it all, whether he wanted to or not.

The McDonalds exited the elevator to walk through a construction tunnel drilled in the 1930s that led to the Powerplant. It was mostly dark in the tunnel, except for a thin row of lights on both sides. It led to a platform, where visitors could see the guts of the dam—seventeen gigantic, two-story-tall turbines that generate electricity.

“In simple terms,” the tour guide explained as she walked through the tunnel, “Hoover Dam holds back Lake Mead, and at regular intervals we release some of the water. The water makes the turbines spin, and
that generates electric power. Then the water exits and continues on downstream. Follow me to the Penstock viewing platform so we can watch these babies in action.”

But the twins, lagging at the back of their group, never made it to the Penstock viewing platform. Because at that moment, they were grabbed from behind by two men who put knives to their throats.

“K
eep your mouths shut, or we'll slice your necks like Wonder Bread.”

The whispered voice sounded familiar, but Coke and Pep weren't about to turn around to find out who was doing the talking. The twins were pulled backward through a doorway, and then it slammed shut. That door led to another tunnel, this one not open to the public.

Still holding knives to the twins' throats, the two men dragged Coke and Pep down a long corridor and through another set of iron doors. It was pitch-dark in
there and perfectly quiet, except the echo of the door slam seemed to go on forever. Pep didn't dare speak. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, and her own heartbeat.

“We got 'em, boss,” one of the men grunted.

“Good,” said a voice ten feet away. “Now let 'em go. If they try to run, they'll smash their heads into the wall.”

“Who
are
you?” Coke demanded after the knife was removed from his neck. “Are you Dr. Warsaw?”

“Nope,” the man said simply.

He lit a cigarette with a match, and it illuminated his face just enough to make it partly visible.

“John Pain!” Pep shouted.

“I
told
ya you'd see me again.”

Yes, it was John Pain, the long-winded cowboy they had encountered at the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque. He clicked on a flashlight and pointed it at his own face from below. It created an eerie, shadowy image.

“Let us go, Pain!” shouted Pep.

“I
already
let ya go,” said John Pain.

“Then let us out of here!” she demanded.

“Oh, I can't do
that
, little lady,” Pain said. “I need to finish up the job I started.”

“What job was that?” Pep asked.

“Killin' you,” John Pain said matter-of-factly. “That was purty clever, the way you took care of that rattlesnake. You really rattled 'im.”

The two men who had grabbed Coke and Pep started to giggle like schoolboys.

“Knock it off, you cackling morons!” shouted John Pain, shining his flashlight at them. The two men were dressed like Hoover Dam security guards, except for one thing—they were both wearing bowler-style hats.