"What was that?" I shouted as Rob accelerated.
"A helicopter," Rob shouted back. "Just a little diversionary tactic, to confuse the enemy."
"You'll blow up a helicopter," I said, "but you won't go out with me?" I couldn't believe it. "What is wrong with you?"
I didn't have a chance to complain for long, however, because Rob sped up, and suddenly we were whipping through the darkened lots that made up Crane, heading for the front gates. The night sky behind us was now filled with an orange glow from the burning helicopter. New sirens, evidently from fire engines sent to put out the flames, sliced through the night, and searchlights arced against the low-lying clouds.
All this, I thought, to bust a small boy and a psychic put of an infirmary.
We hadn't managed to ditch the guy in the jeep. He was right behind us, still shouting through the megaphone for us to stop.
But Rob and his friends didn't stop. In fact, if anything, they sped up.
Okay, I'll admit it: I loved every minute of it. Finally, finally, I was going fast enough.
Then, a hundred yards from the front gates, Rob threw his foot out, and we skidded to a halt. His friends followed suit.
For a moment, we sat there, all six bikers, Rob, Sean, and me, engines roaring, staring straight ahead of us. The glow from the fire on the airstrip clearly lit the long road leading to the base's front gates. There were guards there, I remembered from when I'd gone by them on the bus to the mall. Guards with rifles. I had no idea how Rob and the others had gotten past these armed sentries to get onto the base, and I had no idea how we were going to get past them getting off of it. All I could think was, over and over in my head, "Oh, my God, they blew up a helicopter. They blew up a helicopter."
But maybe it was a good thing they did. Because there was no one blocking our path. Everyone was heading toward the airstrip to help put out the fire.
Except for the guy in the jeep behind us.
"Turn off your engines and put your hands up," the guy said.
Instead, Rob lifted up his foot and we lurched forward, heading straight for the gates.
Which were down.
Then someone in a bathrobe came striding across the road, until he stood right in front of the gates. It was someone I recognized. He lifted a megaphone.
"Halt," Colonel Jenkins's voice boomed through the night, louder than the motorcycle engines, louder than the sirens. "You are under arrest. Turn off your engines now."
He was standing directly in front of the gates. His robe had fallen open, and I could see he had on pale blue pajamas.
Rob didn't slow down. If anything, he sped up.
"Turn off your engines," Colonel Jenkins commanded us. "Do you hear me? You are under arrest. Turn off your engines now."
The gatehouse guards appeared with their rifles. They didn't point them at us, but they stood their ground on either side of Colonel Jenkins.
No one turned off their engines. In fact, Greg and Hank let out whoops and started racing even faster toward the gates. I had no idea what they thought was going to happen when they reached the men standing there. It wasn't as if they were simply going to move out of the way and let us by. This was no ordinary game of chicken. Not when the other guy was holding a high-powered rifle.
I guess Colonel Jenkins figured out that nobody was going to turn off his engine, since suddenly he put down the megaphone and nodded to the two guards. I tightened my grip on Rob's waist, and ducked my head, afraid to look. They were only, I was sure, going to shoot into the air, to get our attention. Surely he couldn't mean to—
But then I never did find out whether or not they would have shot at us, because Rob gave the front of the bike a violent jerk. . . .
And then we were sailing off the base. Not through the front gates, but through a wide section of the chain-link fence that had been carefully peeled back to one side of the gates. This was how Rob and his friends had gotten past the sentries. All it had taken was a little determination, a pair of wire cutters, and some experience in breaking-and-entering.
Once we were off the base, the only light we had to see by were the bikes' headlights. That was all right, though. I looked behind me, and saw that the jeep was still behind us, intent on stopping us somehow.
But when I told Rob this, he only laughed. The road that led to Crane was little used, except for traffic to and from the base. All around it were cornfields, and beyond the fields, wooded hills. It was toward these hills Rob plunged, the other bikers following him, veering off the road and into the corn, which this early in spring was only ankle-high.
The jeep bounced along behind us, but it was rough going. The colonel must have gotten the message out, since that single jeep was soon joined by some SUVs. It didn't matter, though. We were darting between them like fireflies. No one could have kept up, except maybe the helicopter, and, well, that wasn't happening, for obvious reasons.
And then we lost them. I don't know if they simply gave up, or were called back to the base, or what. But suddenly, we were on our own.
We had done it.
Still, we stuck to back roads, just to be safe. I'm pretty sure we weren't followed, though. We stopped several times to check, in sleepy little towns along the way, where there was one gas pump attached to a mom-and-pop general store, and where the noise from the hogs' engines caused bedroom lights to turn on, and dogs chained up in yards to bark.
But there was nothing behind us, nothing except long, empty stretches of road, winding like rivers beneath the heavy sky.
Marco.
Polo.
We were free.
C H A P T E R
20
Rob took us to his house.
Not Greg and Hank and those guys. I have no idea where they went. Well, actually, that's not true. I have a pretty good idea. I think they went to Chick's to pound back a few, and to celebrate their successful penetration of a government facility thought by many to be as impenetrable as Area 51.
Obviously those who thought that had never met anybody from the last row of detention at Ernest Pyle High School.
Sean and I, however, did not join in the festivities. We went to Rob's.
I was surprised when I saw Rob's house. It was a farmhouse, not big—though it was kind of hard to tell in the dark—but built at around the same time as my house on Lumley Lane.
Only, because it was on the wrong side of town, no one had come and put a plaque on it, declaring it a historic landmark.
Still, it was a sweet little house, with a porch out front and a barn out back. Rob lived there with just one other person, his mom. I don't know what happened to his dad, and I didn't want to ask.
We crept into the house very quietly, so as not to wake Mrs. Wilkins, who had recently been laid off from the local plastics factory. Rob showed me his room, and said I could sleep there. Then he gathered up a bunch of blankets and stuff, so that he and Sean could go sleep in the barn.
Sean didn't look particularly happy about this, but then, he was so tired, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He followed Rob around like a little zombie.
I was a little zombie-like myself. I couldn't quite believe what we had done. After I'd gotten undressed, I lay there in Rob's bed, thinking about it. We had destroyed government property. We had defied the orders of a colonel in the United States Army. We had blown up a helicopter.
We were going to be in big trouble in the morning.
Still, I was so sleepy, it was kind of hard to worry about that. Instead, all I could think about was how weird it was to be in a boy's room. At least, a boy who wasn't my brother. I'd been in Skip's room—you know, over at Ruth's—plenty of times, but it was nothing like Rob's. In the first place, Rob didn't have any posters of Trans Ams up on his walls. Nor did he have any Playboys under the bed (I checked). Still, it was pretty alarmingly manly. I mean, he had plaid sheets and stuff.