Kingdom Keepers V(35)
“H…o…l…d on!”
He held on to the tube’s handles. If Amanda clung to him any stronger she would break his ribs. They did a full flip in slow motion. Then they were upside down in the wave, Amanda’s back in the water, then Finn’s, then the tube over them like a blanket. Finn leaned right. The tube took off, slowly rising back toward the towering curl.
“What just happened?” she said.
If Finn had tried that a hundred times, he wouldn’t have been able to duplicate the flip and recovery. They’d gotten lucky, but he wasn’t about to admit it.
He shouted over his shoulder. “Aim for the gate.” Still clutching the grips, he pointed with his index finger. But the wave was rapidly dispersing, no longer contained by the Surf Pool. They sank lower and slowed. Finn called out a series of turns that steered them clear of obstructions. They settled in a froth of white, bubbling foam, and the tube skidded to a stop only yards from the gate. Knee-deep water flooded out past the ticket booth and then was gone, leaving only wet concrete.
Behind them, the wave retreated into the river and the Surf Pool and myriad drains carefully hidden and disguised. As Finn and Amanda clambered to their feet and looked back, the waters calmed as suddenly as if none of it had ever happened.
* * *
Green Army Men. Six were bunched tightly together, their backs pressed against a shipping container in an area that included the parked trams for the back-lot tours.
Maybeck could not see them clearly enough to spot a leader, but he knew they were like roaches. If there were six, there were sixty. It meant only one thing: this was no drill. Tonight was the assault on the Base they’d been expecting. This was it. There would be other clusters of Army Men out there, and thanks to Jess, Maybeck knew where to find them.
He backed out and away from the container and cut across the back lot. There were six indoor/outdoor workshops side by side on the back of the boxlike building that housed the Engineering Base. Maybeck slipped into a screened area marked PAINT SHOP, where Jess and the six volunteers were sitting on props, crates, and sawhorses. Behind them wide strips of murky plastic hung in a row.
“Okay, here’s the drill,” Maybeck said, taking charge. “Looks like Jess’s map is accurate. I found a bunch of Army Men behind the container here,” he said, angling Jess’s sketch into the faint light cast from spotlights mounted high on the building’s corners.
“How are we supposed to fight Army Men?” Kenny Carlson asked, his red hair practically neon. “Don’t those guys carry guns?”
“They do,” Maybeck said. “And they fired their guns at Willa once.”
“Then?” Kenny said, speaking for the others.
“The thing about cockroaches,” Maybeck said. “You need for them to come to the bait. If you go after them, they just scatter and regroup somewhere else.”
“O…kay…” Ken said, sounding dubious.
Looking around the area, Maybeck moved to the plastic curtain and peered inside. “I take it none of you ever took wood shop or got a wood shop merit badge or whatever.”
“Ah…”
“I built a model of an Avatar personnel carrier,” one boy said proudly.
“My aunt runs an art shop,” Maybeck said, parting the curtain wider and now spotting what he was after. He disappeared inside, returning a minute later with what looked like a huge hypodermic needle in his left hand and a box cutter in his right.
“You going to give them all shots?” one of the girl volunteers asked. “Knock them out or something?”
“Epoxy,” Maybeck said. “Fast-drying, permanent epoxy.”
“I don’t follow you,” Kenny said.
“But you will,” Maybeck said. “Follow me, that is. You and you and you.” He pointed. “You’re all with me. The rest of you are with Jess.”
“They are?” Jess said.
“Here’s how it’s going down,” Maybeck said, holding the glue-tube squeeze tool across his chest like it was a sawed-off shotgun. “Listen up.”
* * *
The multipurpose building housing the Engineering Base offices was awkwardly located at the edge of where backstage met onstage—a line easily crossed at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Two massive steel exoskeletons supporting imitation movie sets built for the tram tour were its neighbors on one side while a variety of nondescript, cream-colored support buildings crowded the back side. A narrow access road defined by a barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence meant there was one side Maybeck didn’t have to watch or worry about. The workshops where Maybeck and the others had planted themselves made for an excellent hiding place. They were cluttered with mechanical parts, broken props, tools, and construction equipment.