License to Thrill Read online

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

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Alamogordo NM.

  In the B box, type Socorro NM.

  Click Get Directions.

  All in all, it had been a good day. To the twins, of course, any day in which they hadn’t been attacked, set on fire, lowered into boiling oil, frozen, kidnapped by aliens, or thrown off a cliff was a good day. Their tormentors—Dr. Warsaw, Evil Elvis, Doominator, Mrs. Higgins, and the bowler dudes—seemed to be a million miles away.

  “Maybe they forgot about us,” Pep said as she turned off the light for the night. “Maybe they’ll leave us alone from now on.”

  Or maybe not.

  Chapter 11

  GROUND ZERO

  At this point, you’re probably starting to feel a little angry that Coke hasn’t been thrown into a volcano yet. I mean, I promised back in chapter 1 that Coke was going to get thrown into a volcano. And here we are in chapter 11, and the twins are nowhere near a volcano. Do they even have volcanoes in New Mexico?

  Again, I ask you to show a little patience. Trust me, by the end of this story Coke will get thrown into a volcano. You can take that to the bank.

  Dr. McDonald put the Ferrari in gear and headed north out of Alamogordo on Route 54. Coke already had his earbuds in and was nodding his head, oblivious to the world around him.

  “Where are we going today?” Pep asked from the backseat.

  “We’ll tell you when we get there,” her father replied.

  “Is it a surprise?”

  “Let’s just say we’re going someplace that everyone should see,” he said.

  “I love a mystery,” Pep said, rubbing her hands together.

  “It’s not that kind of mystery,” said Mrs. McDonald mysteriously.

  The two-lane road cut through the New Mexico desert on a straight line for mile after mile. The most interesting thing to look at was the occasional SPEED LIMIT 55 sign at the side of the road. Pep dozed off for a while, waking up in time to see her mother telling Dr. McDonald to slow down and turn left onto an unmarked road.

  RESTRICTED USAGE ROAD, a small sign said.

  About two hours after they had left Alamogordo, another sign appeared, announcing that they were approaching WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE. Dr. McDonald continued down the road for a few miles until he came to yet another sign. He stopped the car and instructed everyone to get out. Coke turned off his music.

  “This is the Trinity Site,” Dr. McDonald said solemnly. “After years of working on an atomic bomb, this is where we dropped it. Nobody knew if the thing was going to explode, because it was the first time they had ever tested it. But it did. It blew up with the force of eighteen kilotons of TNT. Two hundred miles away, windows were rattling.”

  “Wow,” Coke said, not just pretending to be impressed, but genuinely impressed. “And it happened right here?”

  “Not exactly here,” his father said. “It was a few miles down the road.”

  “Can we go to the actual site?” Pep asked.

  “It’s still radioactive,” her father replied. “Seventy years later, and it’s still radioactive. But I wanted you kids to know about this. It was the birth of the atomic age. A few weeks later, we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and you know what happened there.”

  “Eighty thousand people died right away,” Coke said, remembering an article he’d read, “and something like a hundred and forty thousand died later, from radiation.”

  Mrs. McDonald took a photo of the sign for Amazing but True. She opened her guidebook and read a quote from Robert Oppenheimer, the mastermind behind the first atomic bomb: “‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’”

  For a few minutes, none of the McDonalds said anything. There were no snarky jokes or wisecracks from the twins. It didn’t seem like the time or place.

  “Why did we do it?” Pep finally asked. “Why did we build such a horrible thing?”

  “It was during World War Two,” Dr. McDonald told her. “If we hadn’t built an atomic bomb, Hitler would have built one.”

  “You can imagine what would have happened if he did it first,” said Mrs. McDonald.

  “I always wanted to come here,” Dr. McDonald said, “and I wanted you kids to come here too. Hopefully, in your lifetime, nobody will ever use an atomic weapon again. Okay, let’s go.”

  Back on the road, it was obvious why this part of New Mexico had been chosen for the first nuclear test. There was nothing around as far as the eye could see. Or maybe it was the opposite—there was nothing around because there had been a nuclear test here. Nobody wanted to get radiation poisoning.

  In any case, it was a good thing they started the day with a full tank of gas. There was no place to fill up.

  Everyone seemed lost in their thoughts when Dr. McDonald suddenly announced, “I think I’ve got it!”

  “What, Ben?” asked Mrs. McDonald.

  “This could be my book! I could write a novel about the Trinity Site!”

  The others had almost forgotten about Dr. McDonald’s recent interest in writing a novel. As a university professor, he had written several nonfiction books in his field of technology. But they were only read by the academic community and had not sold many copies. He wanted to write something that would find a wide audience. He yearned to see his name on the bestseller list.

  “What about the Trinity Site, Dad?” Pep asked.

  “Maybe I could write about a family like ours that was on vacation in 1945,” Dr. McDonald suggested. “What if they were driving through New Mexico at the moment the first atomic bomb detonated? What would happen to them? How would it change their lives? That might make an interesting story.”

  “They would have been incinerated,” Coke said.

  “That would depend on how many miles they were from ground zero,” said his mother.

  “Hey, there’s my title,” Dr. McDonald said. “Ground Zero.”

  The family continued brainstorming ideas about Dr. McDonald’s novel, which helped make the endless New Mexico miles seem to roll by just a little more quickly. After an hour, they stopped for lunch in the town of Socorro at a Mexican place called Armijo’s.

  At that point, the plan was to continue up the highway eighty miles to Albuquerque. But after looking through her New Mexico guidebook, Mrs. McDonald said to turn onto a smaller road—Route 60 West.

  “It will be less than an hour, Ben,” she promised. “It will be worth it.”

  Dr. McDonald wiped the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief and reluctantly pulled off the highway, as his wife suggested. After all, he reminded himself, it was the money from Amazing but True that had paid for the trip.

  It certainly didn’t seem like the detour would be worth it. More desert. More heat. More nothing. A sign announced the approach of Cibola National Forest, but Mrs. McDonald had another destination in mind.

  “Turn here, Ben,” she said at a sign that simply said 52.

  Off in the distance to the right, dozens of white structures came into view, evenly spaced apart. They didn’t look like buildings.

  A few miles closer, the structures could be seen more clearly. They looked sort of like orange squeezers, or maybe giant ray guns pointed at the sky.

  Closer still, and it was clear what they really were—satellite dishes. And they were enormous. From up close, it was an awe-inspiring sight.

  “What is this place, Mom?” Pep asked, staring out the window.

  “These are the most powerful radio telescopes in the world,” her mother said, reading from her guidebook. “Astronomers from all over converge on this spot in New Mexico to scan deep space for sound waves and signals that come from billions of light-years away.”

  At that moment, the giant dish they were looking at began to rotate slowly, swiveling around to the right.

  “Cool!” the twins said.

  Dr. McDonald parked at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Visitor Center. Yes, that’s
what it’s called. An “array,” according to Mrs. McDonald’s guidebook, is a series of telescopes that work together.

  A pleasant lady behind the front desk told them there were twenty-seven radio antennas altogether, each one eighty-two feet in diameter and weighing 230 tons.

  “Put together, they’re as powerful as one regular telescope . . . if that telescope was twenty-two miles in diameter.”

  “Wow,” Pep said.

  “Any questions?” the lady asked.

  “Do those things pick up HBO?” Coke asked, snickering.

  The lady chuckled, the laugh of someone who’s heard a joke a thousand times but doesn’t want to hurt the joke-teller’s feelings.

  “No,” she said, “but they do receive electromagnetic emissions of quasars, pulsars, supernovas, gamma rays, black holes, signals from satellites, things like that. And despite what you may have heard, they are not used to search for aliens.”

  “But if there were aliens out there,” Dr. McDonald said, “this would be a great way for them to communicate with us, right?”

  “I suppose so, yes,” the lady replied.

  Coke looked at his sister.

  “Or, they could just land their spaceship in the back of a motel,” he muttered.

  The lady suggested the family visit the small museum in the next room and watch a short film about radio astronomy. There was no formal tour, she explained, but visitors were allowed to take a self-guided walk around the satellite dishes.

  “It’s a bit too hot out there for me,” Dr. McDonald said, wiping his brow again. “I’ll check out the museum.”

  “I’ll be with Dad,” said Mrs. McDonald. “You kids can take the walking tour if you’d like.”

  As the twins stepped outside, they saw this sign . . .

  WALKING TOUR

  CAUTION

  WATCH OUT

  FOR SNAKES

  “I don’t like snakes,” Coke said, carefully scanning the ground in front of him as the twins tiptoed over to the first stop on the tour. It was labeled WHISPER GALLERY, and it consisted of two white, nine-foot-high, funnel-shaped dishes standing on their sides and facing each other fifty feet apart. In the center of each dish was a small ball attached to a string.

  A plaque explained that the dishes demonstrated how sound waves can be gathered and amplified. When you whisper into the center of one dish, the sound bounces off the dish and directly to the other one, fifty feet away. So two people can whisper to each other even though they’re not next to one another.

  “Go stand at the other dish,” Coke told his sister. “Let’s try it out.”

  “Two other people are already over there,” Pep replied.

  Coke stuck his face close to the center of the dish.

  Suddenly, a male voice whispered, “Don’t turn around.”

  “What? Who said that?” Pep asked.

  “Shhhh!” the voice said. “Quiet, Pep! I said don’t turn around.”

  The twins turned around anyway to see who was standing at the other dish. It was too far away to tell.

  “How do you know my sister’s name?” Coke demanded, in a whisper. “Who is this?”

  “Who do you think it is?” asked another voice, this one female.

  Pep squinted her eyes slightly to get a good look at the people standing in front of the other dish.

  “It’s Bones and Mya!” she exclaimed, pulling her brother’s sleeve. “They’re here!”

  Now, if you’ve been following the Genius Files, you know who Bones and Mya are. They were the ones who recruited the twins into The Genius Files program in the first place, and they had been lifesavers already on more than one occasion.

  “Shhhh!” Mya whispered. “It’s important that you stay quiet. No one can hear us. We must not be seen together.”

  “What is it?” Pep asked, whispering into the dish.

  “I’m afraid we have some bad news,” Bones said.

  “We can take it,” Coke whispered.

  “We’ve picked up some chatter,” said Mya. “According to our sources, Dr. Warsaw is attempting to build a nuclear weapon.”

  “No!” said Pep, taking an involuntary step back.

  “Are you kidding me?” asked Coke.

  “Nuclear weapons are something we never kid about,” said Bones. “This is for real.”

  “The old guy must have truly gone off the deep end,” said Pep. “But why would he want a nuke? What’s the logic?”

  “Logic doesn’t apply to people like Dr. Warsaw,” Mya replied. “We can’t explain why insane people do the things they do. Sometimes they just want attention. Sometimes they want to threaten you, or blackmail you. And sometimes, they’re just crazy enough to harm other people or themselves. We have to expect that’s a possibility, and prepare for it.”

  “Do you mean Dr. Warsaw might set off an atomic bomb?” Coke asked. “Like the one that was dropped on Hiroshima?”

  “Yes, but much more powerful,” said Bones, “and much smaller. These days, it’s possible to build a bomb that would fit inside a briefcase.”

  “He is apparently trying to accumulate enough nuclear material to make one dirty bomb,” Mya added. “We fear he will set it off.”

  “When?” Pep asked.

  “We don’t know precisely,” Mya whispered back. “Soon. Possibly in the next few weeks. Probably in a public place so it will do the most damage.”

  “Where?” Pep asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “How?” Pep asked.

  “We don’t know that, either.”

  “You don’t know a whole lot, do you?” Coke said, annoyed.

  “We know that we’ve got to stop him,” Bones replied.

  “And where do we fit into all this?” Coke asked. “In case you didn’t notice, we’re thirteen. We didn’t sign up to save the world.”

  “No, but the two of you are very mature, and quite capable,” Mya said. “You’ve proven that time and time again.”

  “Don’t you think we’ve done enough?” asked Pep. “Why don’t you ask somebody else to save the world? There are plenty of kids in The Genius Files program. Why can’t one of them stop Dr. Warsaw?”

  “Yeah, we want out,” Coke added. “We just want to get back to California and live our normal lives again.”

  “It’s too late for that, I’m sorry to say,” Bones told them. “You have a relationship with Dr. Warsaw. Your aunt was even married to him before she died. You’re related. You’re involved. We need you.”

  “The fate of the world may depend on this,” said Mya.

  Coke and Pep looked at each other, communicating silently. How did we get sucked into this? What would happen if Dr. Warsaw was able to set off a nuclear bomb? When does it all end?

  “You’re certainly not giving us much to go on,” Pep whispered.

  “We’re working on that,” said Bones. “A lot of people are working on it, believe me. I do have one piece of information to give you. I don’t know if this might be helpful. It seems to be some kind of code. The letters don’t mean anything to us. It may mean something to you . . .”

  Bones took a piece of paper out of his pocket and read it—letter by letter—to the twins . . .

  NEZVES YZTRIH TNEETEN ZINHTH GIEYTZ NEWZTYAM

  “Got it,” Coke said.

  “Don’t you need to write those letters down?” asked Mya.

  “He memorized it,” Pep said. “He has a photographic memory. He remembers everything.”

  Pep turned around to see if Bones and Mya had a reaction to that. But they were gone.

  Before we close this chapter, dear reader, I know what you’re thinking—Where are the snakes?

  Any time you’re reading a story or watching a movie and the characters are warned about something, that very thing is sure to threaten them later on.

  It was the great Russian author Chekhov who wrote, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it ab
solutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

  You’ve probably noticed that if a character in a movie coughs, later on they’re sure to get lung cancer or some other horrible disease. Nobody coughs in a movie just because they have a tickle in their throat.

  These are common devices used in storytelling. When Coke and Pep walked by the sign warning them to watch for snakes, you probably figured it was only a matter of time before they were attacked by snakes.

  Please, reader, don’t assume anything. You know what they say—to ASSUME is to make an ASS of U and ME.

  Trust me. There are no snakes.

  Chapter 12

  THE FIRST CIPHER

  “How was the tour of the satellite dishes?” their father asked when the twins got back to the visitor center.

  “Bo-ring.”

  “Bo-ring,” of course, was Coke and Pep’s default reply whenever their parents asked them about anything. They didn’t mention anything about the meeting with Mya and Bones.

  Once they were back in the car, Mrs. McDonald gave each twin a souvenir she had purchased in the gift shop—a package of freeze-dried ice cream like the kind astronauts eat. Coke stuffed the package in his pocket. Pep opened hers right away and munched it as she copied down the cipher that Bones and Mya had delivered, in neat handwriting on a clean page of her notepad.

  NEZVES YZTRIH TNEETEN ZINHTH GIEYTZ NEWZTYAM

  What could that possibly mean?

  Dr. McDonald retraced his steps back to the town of Socorro and then turned north on I-25 toward Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico. Of course, that isn’t saying much, considering that the entire state only has about two million people living in it. As a comparison, more than thirty-six million people live in California.

  Worry lines wrinkled Pep’s forehead, and she truly had something to worry about. Not only was Dr. Warsaw back on the radar, but now that lunatic was building an atomic briefcase bomb. And he just might be crazy enough to use it.

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