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  “Thank you, Mr. Who Cares,” Pep said.

  “Don’t be mean to your brother,” said Dr. McDonald.

  I know what you’re thinking, reader. You’re guessing that a major scene in this book is going to take place at the Grand Canyon. It’s been a few chapters since anyone tried to kill Coke and Pep, and the Grand Canyon would be the perfect location for another attempt on their lives.

  It’s almost too perfect. Despite warning signs all over the place, more than five hundred people have died at the Grand Canyon.

  Let me count the ways.

  There have been lots of hikers who didn’t bring enough water and died from dehydration. People have drowned in the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon after getting caught in a flash flood. People have been struck by lightning and falling boulders. There have been numerous snakebite victims.

  Then, of course, there are all the people who have fallen from a ledge. Surprisingly, a number of tourists have died while posing for photos. The photographer told them to take a step back, and, well, you can imagine what happened after that. There have even been reports of men who slipped and fell to their deaths while they were merely trying to pee into the canyon. Look it up if you don’t believe me. And I haven’t even mentioned all the people who died in airplane crashes and freak accidents.

  It’s a no-brainer, right? It would be so easy for the twins to become separated from their parents and get lost on a hike in the canyon. And then Dr. Warsaw, John Pain, the bowler dudes, or some other lunatic could conveniently be right there to give them a gentle shove over the edge.

  But of course Coke and Pep would miraculously survive the fall somehow, right? Coke’s T-shirt would rip in the process, and the chapter would end with their clueless mother complaining that he doesn’t take better care of his clothes.

  That chapter would practically write itself!

  Well, forget about it. It didn’t happen that way. Remember what I said about assuming things?

  That’s right, nobody dies at the Grand Canyon in this book. No bad guys show up with evil intentions and unnecessarily complicated devices. There aren’t any preposterous accidents or incidents.

  No, starting at Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim, the twins and their parents have a simply lovely time hiking and enjoying the spectacular scenery and multiple switchbacks on the Bright Angel Trail. Then they enjoy a sumptuous dinner at the El Tovar Lodge dining room and a leisurely, restful night’s sleep.

  Sorry to disappoint you.

  By the way, isn’t there enough mayhem in this story already? I mean, really, you should be ashamed of yourself for hoping to read about somebody trying to kill the twins at the Grand Canyon! Is that all you care about it? What does it say that you get so much pleasure out of the misfortunes of others? You’re probably the kind of person who goes to NASCAR races just to see the cars crash into each other.

  Even though there was no attempt on the lives of the twins, something significant did happen while Coke and Pep were at the Grand Canyon. The next morning, when they got in the car to leave, Pep opened her notepad and found this. . . .

  CIPHER #4:

  ATLEDOEMORAHPLAAMILMRO

  FINUOVARB

  And it was written in someone else’s handwriting.

  “Did you write this?” Pep asked, showing the page to her brother.

  “No,” Coke replied.

  “It’s not Mom’s or Dad’s handwriting.”

  The twins looked at the page again, and then at each other.

  “Somebody was in our car,” they both said.

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Grand Canyon National Park AZ.

  In the B box, type Hoover Dam.

  Click Get Directions.

  Chapter 18

  HOOVER DAM

  A shiver went down Pep’s back. She was angry, frightened, and just a little freaked out that some creep had broken into their car while the family had been hiking in the canyon. Not only that, but he—or she—had been sitting in her seat, writing in her private notepad, and possibly messing around with her other stuff. What if somebody put a bomb in their car? She looked through her backpack to make sure that nothing had been disturbed.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Pep told her brother.

  But she didn’t mention anything to her parents. Dr. McDonald pulled out of the Grand Canyon Village parking lot and got back on the highway.

  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?”

  A - ALPHA

  B - BRAVO

  C - CHARLIE

  D - DELTA

  E - ECHO

  F - FOXTROT

  G - GOLF

  H - HOTEL

  I - INDIA

  J - JULIETT

  K - KILO

  L - LIMA

  M - MIKE

  N - NOVEMBER

  O - OSCAR

  P - PAPA

  Q - QUEBEC

  R - ROMEO

  S - SIERRA

  T - TANGO

  U - UNIFORM

  V - VICTOR

  W - WHISKEY

  X - X-RAY

  Y - YANKEE

  Z - ZULU

  “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 th
em 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.

  Chapter 19

  A FREE TOUR

  “Keep 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.

  “The bowler dudes!” Coke yelled. “Not again!”
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  “At your service!” said the snickering, mustachioed bowler dude. “Long time no see!”

  Yes, once again the twins were being hassled by the pair of moronic, sadistic brothers who had already buried them in a sand pit, attacked them with bowling balls, and assisted in several other attempts on their lives over the past five weeks.

  “How did you get past security?” Coke asked John Pain.

  “We are security,” he replied.

  “Good one, boss,” giggled the clean-shaven bowler dude.

  “Shut up, you idiot!”

  “You want us to kill ’em now?” asked the mustachioed bowler dude.

  “That ain’t gonna be necessary, boys,” Pain drawled. “Their daddy was too cheap to pay for the full tour, but we’re gonna give it to ’em for free. They’ll get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the insides of the dam.”

  “We don’t want your dam tour!” Pep shouted. “Let us go!”

  Both twins thought about making a run for it. But it was so dark in the tunnel, they were sure to injure themselves if they ran into something.

  “There are four trillion gallons of water in Lake Mead,” John Pain informed them. “That’s a lot of water pressure.”

  “We don’t care!” Pep barked. “Leave us alone!”

  “Oh, you will care,” Pain said. “’Cause right now we’re inside one of the four intake tower pipes of Hoover Dam. It’s thirty feet in diameter. At regular intervals, they open a gate and ninety thousand gallons of water comes shootin’ through this pipe. That’s ninety thousand gallons of water each second. It would fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in less than seven seconds.”

  “Help!” Pep screamed. “Somebody help us!”

  “They can’t hear you through the concrete,” Coke said sadly. There was no fight left in him. He was a beaten man.

  “You kids ever been on a waterslide?” asked John Pain. “This is gonna be a lot like that. Except at the end, you don’t land on your fanny in a nice little pool. You land in the spinning turbine of a hydroelectric generator. Ha-ha-ha!”