The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2 Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Kidnapped In Sweden

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Terror in Florida

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  The Quebec City Crisis

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  The Screech Owls’ Home Loss

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Also Available

  About the Author

  Copyright

  "EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!"

  The moment Travis Lindsay heard the ridiculous yell, he closed his eyes and shook his head. It meant the Screech Owls’ big defenceman, Wayne Nishikawa, had come up with a new call.

  “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  Nish had certainly been this loud before. He’d screamed worse when he fell through the ice on his snowmobile when the Owls had gone up north, and he’d yelped in real terror that day at summer hockey camp when he’d gone skinny-dipping with the snapping turtle. But the biggest difference was that this time Nish’s call was filled with joy rather than horror.

  Nish, stripped naked again in the middle of a lake, was having the time of his life.

  “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  This time, however, the lake was frozen solid, and Nish wanted the world to see him! This time he was fully expected to have absolutely nothing on, and this time he didn’t have to worry about drowning or an attack from a snapping turtle!

  Did they have snapping turtles in Sweden? Travis wondered.

  He shivered. He, too, was bare naked, and on a day so cold he couldn’t even breathe through his nose. If they did have snapping turtles, Travis thought, there was nothing to worry about today. If one was hiding anywhere around here, it would be suffering from lockjaw, frozen solid!

  Travis couldn’t believe how quickly the air could change from unbearable heat to unbearable cold. A moment ago the sweat had been pouring off his face so fast it seemed as if Lars Johanssen, the Owls’ nifty little defenceman, had dumped the bucket of water over Travis’s head instead of over the white-hot rocks of the club sauna. The water had sizzled and steamed and the temperature had risen so dramatically that Travis had trouble breathing.

  Now, standing outdoors, naked and skinny as the birch trees that grew down to the edge of this frozen Scandinavian lake, he had trouble breathing again. Travis’s nostrils were frozen shut. He was breathing through his mouth and the air was coming out in a fog as thick as the exhaust from his father’s car when they headed out for an early-morning practice back in Canada.

  Travis looked around him. Except for Nish and Lars Johanssen, most of the Screech Owls–Data Ulmar, Willie Granger, Andy Higgins, Jesse Highboy, Dmitri Yakushev, Gordie Griffth, Derek Dillinger, Fahd Noorizadeh, Jeremy Weathers, Wilson Kelly, Mike Romano, the new third-line winger–were all still huddled next to the sauna building, their hands wrapped around their naked bodies like too-small blankets.

  The Owls looked ridiculous. They were trying to use the building to shield themselves from the wind. Steam was rising from their heads and shoulders the way Travis had once seen it curl up from the team of horses that had drawn the Owls around the maple-sugar bush that belonged to Sarah Cuthbertson’s grandparents.

  Sarah was here. Well, not here–not now, with crazy Nish standing bare naked out in the middle of the lake. But she was here in Stockholm.

  Sarah would return to her own team after the tournament. Her parents thought the trip would be an excellent opportunity for her to get a feel for the larger Olympic-sized ice surface, where Sarah hoped to play for the Canadian women’s team one day.

  Sarah and the other girls on the team–Liz Moscovitz, Chantal Larochelle, and Jenny Staples–had all gone off with the Stockholm women’s team. For all Travis knew, the girls were going through the same strange ritual.

  “Normally,” Sarah had said on the bus ride out into the countryside from their hotel near the Globen Arena, “it would be boys and girls together.”

  “Naked?” Nish had asked, his eyes widening.

  “Of course, naked,” Sarah had laughed. “You think they wear full hockey equipment into the sauna?”

  “No, but…”

  “You’ve got to loosen up, Nishikawa. You’re too uptight about everything.”

  It would be hard to call Nish uptight at the moment, Travis thought. Crazy, maybe. Or insane.

  Nish was standing well out from the shore, a pink hamster in a sea of white. He was using one hand to cover himself and the other to wave at the cars driving by on the far side of the bay. They were, Travis thought, too far away to see him–fortunately!

  Lars, who used to live in Sweden, had been the first to break from the pack and go running, barefoot, across the lake and jump straight into the freezing water through the gaping hole in the ice.

  Nish, of course, had to be second. One steaming, churning bare-naked butt hurling across the open ice, still waving at the passing cars.

  “It’s a breakaway!” Wilson shouted.

  “Go, Nish! Go!” they called.

  Nish ran towards the open water, where Lars was already splashing about. He leapt and screamed once more before landing, like a pink beluga, in a mammoth splash of black water.

  “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  Travis felt incredibly alive–which was quite odd, because only a few moments earlier he had been convinced he was dead.

  Ever since the sauna and the plunge into the freezing lake, Travis felt as if every pore of his skin had been drilled and flushed and buffed. He sizzled with energy, sparked with new life. Just as Lars had said he would. He felt like he was wearing a brand-new skin, and it was a skin with so much jump in it that, well, he couldn’t possibly be the same old Travis Lindsay.

  In a way, he figured, he wasn’t. The Travis Lindsay who had landed at Stockholm’s international airport the day before had come to doubt his own courage, especially when it came to hockey. He had always worried about his own bravery; he still preferred a night light when he was home. But a month ago, in a league game, he had gone down to block
a shot from the point and the big shooter had held on too long so that, by the time he shot, it was Travis’s face, not his shin pads, that blocked the way to the net. The shot had ripped the cage right off his helmet, and one of the broken screws had cut him just over the eye for two stitches.

  Now he was afraid. He flinched whenever anyone took a hard shot in his direction. He was afraid to go down and block the puck. No one–with the possible exception of Muck Munro, the Screech Owls’ coach–suspected anything, but Travis knew something was different. And he was secretly delighted that he’d been able to race across that ice bare naked and jump into the open water. At least he still had some guts.

  Maybe this trip was just what he needed to get right again. So far, it was going perfectly.

  Mr. Johanssen had come to the team with the idea. Sweden was hosting the first International Goodwill Pee Wee Tournament, with games in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Mr. Johanssen’s lumber manufacturing company was one of the main tournament sponsors, and it had been suggested to him that a team from North America might give the tournament a truly international feel. Almost like a mini-World Cup!

  Mr. Johanssen’s company agreed to sponsor the Screech Owls, and the head office in Stockholm was able to arrange a special deal with SAS airlines. Before anyone quite realized what was happening, the Owls and most of their parents were all packing for Sweden.

  Even Muck was going. The parents went to him with a proposition: if he could arrange the time off, they’d pick up the cost of his flight and accommodation. He couldn’t refuse, even though Travis and Nish and some of the other long-time Owls thought he’d like nothing better. He kept grumbling about what his old hockey buddies would say if they found out he was going to Don Cherry’s least-favourite hockey country.

  No one paid the slightest attention to Muck’s protests. Mr. Lindsay booked him on the flight and that was that. There would be no turning back. The team was delighted: no way did they want to play anywhere, not even practise, without Muck as their coach.

  Teams were coming from Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and from Oslo in Norway. A German team was entered, a team from the Czech Republic, and, as a last-minute entry, a team was coming all the way from Russia.

  Not only that, but the Russian team was from Moscow, and from the same CSKA club that had produced such superstars as Pavel Bure and Alexander Mogilny and Sergei Fedorov. What’s more, it would have Dmitri Yakushev’s first cousin playing on it. According to Dmitri–and later confirmed by Mr. Johanssen, who checked into it–his cousin, Slava Shadrin, was considered to be the best peewee player in all of Russia. Or, as Dmitri, who rarely, if ever, bragged, put it: “the best peewee player Russia has ever produced.”

  “Hardly,” said Travis, who was a great fan of Bure’s.

  “That’s what my uncle says–and he should know.”

  Dmitri’s uncle was Alexander Yakushev, the great scoring star of the 1972 Summit Series between the Soviet Union and Team Canada, so perhaps he would know. But still, Travis found it hard to believe anyone could say something like that about a kid.

  “How old is he?” Travis had asked Dmitri one practice before they boarded the plane that would fly them to Copenhagen and then on to Stockholm.

  “Thirteen, I think.”

  “Well, how can they say such things about a thirteen-year-old? How can they know?”

  “You’re Canadian, aren’t you?” Dmitri had asked.

  Travis was caught off guard. “Yeah, of course. What’s that mean?”

  “Didn’t you ever read any books about Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Well, when they were thirteen, people knew, didn’t they?”

  Travis supposed they did. He could hardly wait to see this new Russian sensation. He was half excited at the prospect of seeing someone who must certainly be headed for the NHL, half terrified at the thought of having to play against him. What if he was also a centre? What if Travis had to take the face-offs against him? No…Sarah was back. Travis would be moved back to left wing.

  The boys were getting ready to head out to the bus when Muck and Mr. Lindsay came in.

  “Let’s go!” Muck shouted. “You’re on in an hour!”

  “On the bus?” Fahd asked.

  Muck rolled his eyes.

  “You’re on the bus in five, mister. You’re on the ice in an hour.”

  “Ice–where?” Travis couldn’t help himself. They hadn’t skated since they got there, and everyone was excited about checking out the big European ice surface.

  “Globen rink,” Muck said, giving away nothing.

  The Screech Owls couldn’t believe it. One day in Sweden and they were off to skate in the magnificent Globen Arena.

  Where the Maple Leafs’ Mats Sundin had played for Djurgårdens.

  Where Peter Forsberg’s MoDo team from Ornskoldsvik had come to play.

  Where the World Championships had been played.

  Where the Screech Owls were on in an hour.

  The Screech Owls were lined up to go on. The ice was glistening in the bright lights of the Globen Arena. Travis looked up through his mask: the building was a perfect circle, the roof high and white and domed, the walls curving down, and bright red seats everywhere. It was the strangest hockey rink Travis had ever seen.

  “It’s like the inside of a golf ball,” Sarah said. She was also looking up.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Travis.

  And huge. Muck explained to them that the ice surface was only fifteen feet–five adult steps–wider than they were used to, and that there was no difference at all in length. “But it will feel longer,” he said. “The nets are farther out from the boards, and the corners deeper.”

  But even Muck’s warning had not prepared them for the sensation of the bigger ice surface. Travis hit the fresh ice, did his special stutter step to pick up speed, leaned down to stare at his skates as they marked fresh ice, and felt as if he was skating once again on James Bay, with the ice stretching as far as the eye could see.

  He could hear his blades. It was almost as if they were thanking him for the magnificent ice. All he had to do was take a stride and he could feel the blades dig in; all he had to do was push off and he could sense the light snow spraying as his skate dug deeper and flicked.

  Travis lifted his head slightly so he could see the traffc ahead of him. Sarah Cuthbertson was skating so effortlessly her blades seemed to sigh while everyone else’s sizzled. She floated over the ice surface, somehow capable of picking up speed even when she was gliding.

  Travis smiled to himself as he watched her skate. Often, the Owls played teams whose best skaters–always boys, always the team stars–would seethe with such envy they would throw their own games off as they tried to show Sarah up. They would chase her around as if the game were tag, not hockey. And when they couldn’t catch her, they would trip her. Sarah was really like two players in one: one to set up the goals for the Screech Owls, and one to draw the penalties from the opposition.

  Travis passed Muck, who was skating in his old windbreaker and wearing the old gloves that some of the Owls figured dated from Columbus’s discovery of America, or whenever it was that Muck played junior hockey before a broken leg shattered his dreams of playing in the National Hockey League.

  Muck was skating with a man Travis had never seen before. He was tall and blond and was wearing a blue-and-yellow track suit with three small golden crowns on the front. He was a big man, and rocked on his skates as he moved, the blades effortlessly tossing a spray of ice on every lift–the sign of a very, very strong skater. He was wearing his hair in a style Travis had never seen before. He could tell it was gelled, for it glistened in the Globen lights, and it stuck up in a series of odd spikes. It was different, Travis thought, and kind of, well, neat.

  Muck and the blond man skated to centre ice, where Muck blew once on his whistle.

  The Owls converged on centre ice.

  Muck might as well have bee
n in the arena back home. He had his same old clothes on. Same old gloves and stick and whistle. And, as usual, he had the Owls’ full attention.

  Muck was unlike any coach Travis had ever known. No shouting “Listen up!” No fancy clipboards or plastic ice surfaces and felt-tip pens. Only Muck, talking.

  “This here is Borje Salming,” he said.

  The man smiled. His smile was crooked, his lips and face heavily scarred, as if he’d been carved out of a tree with a chainsaw. But the smile was warm, and the blue eyes danced with friendliness under the gelled hair.

  “You want to tell the boys who Mr. Salming is, Lars?”

  Lars cleared his throat. Even he had been caught off guard.

  “F-former Toronto Maple Leaf and Detroit Red Wing. Defence. First Swedish player named to the Hockey Hall of Fame.”

  “That’s pretty good!” laughed Borje Salming.

  Willie Granger, the team’s trivia expert, pushed forward and spoke up.

  “Six times named to the NHL All-Star team–150 goals, 637 assists, 787 points.”

  Salming’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s very good!”

  “Mr. Johanssen’s company has arranged for Mr. Salming to spend a practice with each of the teams playing in this tournament,” Muck explained. “He and his assistants will be working with you this afternoon.”

  “ALL-RIGHHHTTTTT!” Willie shouted.

  “YES!” shouted Lars.

  No one had to turn to see who it was calling loudest from the back.

  “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  Travis had never thought a practice could be like this. He had been playing now for six years and had been skating since he was three. But today he felt he knew nothing.

  There were three other Swedish coaches to help Borje Salming. One of them, an older man with glasses and a beard, had a clipboard that held a book containing the drills they were doing.

  They skated for several minutes. None of the counterclockwise circuits with whistled speed changes that they were used to in Canada, but intricate crossovers and shifts in direction.

  Borje Salming blew his whistle at centre ice, and all the Owls skated out to form a circle around him. Nish and Sarah arrived at almost the same time, and stopped at the edge of the circle.

  “Nice hair, eh?” Nish giggled.