The Boston Breakout Page 7

Sam took a deep breath. It was almost as if she didn’t want to say what she thought. But she knew she had to. Her voice broke as she tried to explain.

  “Well,” she said. “Remember when we visited the aquarium, and Fahd asked how many creatures they had?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Travis. “The guide said six hundred.”

  “Well, they said they didn’t know for sure, but each year, they do a census, a count – and this week, they said, was when they’d be doing it.”

  “But what about Judgment Day?” Sarah asked. “And what’s all that talk about saints?”

  Sam swallowed. “Remember what Data told us about that St. Francis of Assisi? How he devoted his life to saving animals?”

  “A bit,” said Travis. “But who’s St. Michael?”

  “I googled that,” said Sam. “Michael is the saint who’s supposed to weigh the souls on Judgment Day and decide who was good and who was evil. St. Francis was devoted to him and asked his followers to pray to St. Michael so they’d be ready for Judgment Day.”

  “Sounds weird,” Travis said.

  “Not to lots of people,” said Sarah. “My grandmother has a calendar with all the saints’ days marked.”

  “But this is weird,” said Travis. “Put it all together. We know about her ‘Free the Penguins’ demand. But her texts talk about Judgment Day, say everything has been arranged, and even mention an alarm. They are planning something, aren’t they?”

  Sarah turned to Sam. “Are they?”

  Sam’s lip quivered. She had tears in her eyes again. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t! I like Frances a lot and believe in her cause – but this scares me.”

  “Me, too,” said Travis.

  “What do we do?” asked Sarah.

  “What can we do?” Travis answered. “There’s nothing here but talk. No one would listen to us. I say we go to the aquarium early and see if this is really the day they do the census.”

  “Maybe we can slip out right after breakfast,” said Sarah. “We don’t play until the afternoon.”

  “Okay. Just the three of us,” said Travis. “If we see her and her group, and if we find out today’s the day they do the census, we’d better tell someone.”

  “But tell them what?” said Sarah.

  “Exactly,” said Travis. “Which is why we’d better check things out before we make fools of ourselves. These texts are probably just gibberish.”

  “Or maybe not,” said Sam. She started shaking again.

  17

  Immediately after breakfast, Travis, Sarah, and Sam slipped away. It wasn’t difficult. Nish was telling a bunch of the other Owls that he and Data had a new invention: a hockey bag on wheels that you ran by remote control. Sarah didn’t even waste time rolling her eyes as she hurried to the revolving doors on the side of the hotel closest to the New England Aquarium.

  It was already 9:00 a.m., and the ticket line was lengthy. It was still the height of tourist season in Boston. A juggler was performing on the boardwalk, surrounded by a large group of tourists who frequently applauded, but nowhere else could the three Owls see any sort of gathering.

  They quickly rounded the back of the aquarium. Nothing there, either. Frances Assisi’s text had said nothing about a specific place, just that they should meet at 9:00 a.m. sharp – that “arrangements” had been made.

  They lined up for tickets. The line moved slowly, and Travis was glad of the distraction of the juggler. The juggler was extremely talented, but Travis could think of nothing but those cryptic messages received by Sam. What did they all mean? What was Judgment Day?

  “We’re next,” Sarah said. She sounded out of breath, though for fifteen minutes they’d been almost standing still as the tourists – many of them in large groups – picked up their tickets.

  “We’re also late!” said Sam, who’d been growing ever more nervous.

  “But for what?” Travis reminded them.

  “Maybe nothing,” said Sam. “I hope nothing.”

  So did Travis. From the moment he had met her, he hadn’t liked this Frances woman. He didn’t like the way she spoke to them, as if she was talking to people who weren’t very bright and needed everything carefully explained. He didn’t like the way she seemed to manipulate Sam, who had simply shown a love for the little penguins and now wouldn’t eat meat of any sort and preached to the other Owls about animal cruelty. And he particularly didn’t like the way Frances smiled with just her mouth while her eyes looked cold and cruel and calculating.

  “Let’s move it!” Sarah said, as she handed the tickets to her teammates. She turned and ran from the ticket booth to the aquarium’s front doors, skirting ahead of a few slow-moving tour groups.

  The three Owls were quickly inside.

  It seemed a normal day at the aquarium in every way. The souvenir shop was already packed with people buying stuffed penguins and other mementos. There was a large crowd watching the feeding of the penguins, and one of the guides was giving a talk on the eating habits of the fascinating birds.

  “The census would be done in the tank,” Sarah said, tugging on Travis’s sleeve. She moved quickly toward the ramps that took viewers on a circular path up and down the glass sides of the vast water tank.

  Travis could see creatures swimming long before he got close. He saw a school of herring flash by like a thousand tiny mirrors in perfect time with each other. He could see other flashes of light as camera-carrying tourists chased after Myrtle the turtle, who passed window after window completely unaware of the gawking, excited tourists.

  “We’ll go to the top and then work our way back down,” said Sarah. Travis and Sam nodded in agreement.

  Half-running, dodging at times to get through the thick crowds, they were near the top of the gigantic tank when they rounded a corner and hit a wall of tourists listening intently to the New England Aquarium guide, Jocelyn, who had given the Owls their tour.

  They had no choice but to stop. It would be too rude to push through. Sam bit her fingernails.

  “So each year, we do a full count,” Jocelyn was saying. The guide had clearly been answering a question like the one Fahd had asked about the number of creatures in the tank.

  “In fact,” she continued. “This is day one of the annual census. Soon you will see divers entering the tank, and they will be conducting the count. It’s very difficult work – can you imagine trying to count that school of herring accurately? – but it has to be done. They begin by category. Turtles are easy, and the divers get a totally accurate account of the larger fish, which they can tag. When it comes to the little guys, though, and the schools of fish, we do the count through photography and make certain calculations. We think we are pretty accurate.”

  “When do they start?” a young boy asked.

  The guide turned to the window and looked down as well as she could through the curved glass into the lower depths of the tank.

  “They’ve started,” she said. “If you look down, you’ll see quite a few divers are now in the tank.”

  The tourists pressed hard to the closest windows. The three Owls raced off to the side to find their own window.

  Travis pressed so close to the glass his forehead left a mark.

  “I see them!” said Sam.

  “So do I!” said Sarah.

  Travis watched, fascinated, as the divers, clad in wet suits and wearing fins and goggles and air tanks, slowly moved about the bottom of a reef-like structure that filled much of the tank, often picking up rocks in search of hidden creatures. They carried small counters, and a couple of the divers held what looked like computer tablets. Travis hoped they were waterproof.

  The divers worked methodically, mostly staying at the bottom of the tank as they conducted their annual count.

  But four divers were rising up from the bottom. Up and up they rose, carefully keeping it slow, their air bubbles racing ahead. Travis knew that ocean divers had to be careful not to come too quickly to the surface. Otherwise they could get
the decompression sickness divers called the bends.

  Travis watched them rise, the divers passing right by his window. He could see their equipment, including the gauges on their tanks that measured the amount of air time remaining.

  Then he saw something that made his heart stop.

  The diver passing closest by him, a woman, judging by the long hair flowing in the water, had her head turned slightly. She could not see him.

  But for a brief moment, Travis could see her neck.

  And there it was. The tattoo of a flying penguin.

  18

  The three Owls ran down the ramp as fast as they could. Several times they bumped into groups of tourists, some of whom yelled at them to slow down.

  But Travis Lindsay couldn’t slow down, any more than he could stop his heart pounding. He had an emergency message to deliver – just like Paul Revere!

  They were almost at the bottom of the circular ramp when they saw a security guard. The man had seen them coming and was holding up his hand for them to halt.

  But before he could say anything, the three young hockey players were sputtering and spewing out their story. None of which seemed to make the slightest sense to the guard.

  “Hold on! Hold on!” he pleaded. “I can’t make heads or tails of what you’re saying. One at a time, please.” He pointed at Travis. “You!”

  Travis swallowed hard. He knew he’d have to be good. “We think there are people in your tank who shouldn’t be there,” he began.

  The guard laughed. “You mean fish that shouldn’t be there?”

  “No, sir. We know one of the divers – and we don’t think she should be there.”

  “Only authorized personnel are involved in any diving,” the guard said. “So I doubt that very much.”

  Sam broke in. “She’s Frances Assisi. The protester. The one behind the Free the Penguins movement.”

  This caught the guard’s attention. He reached out and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. She was shaking, starting to cry again.

  “You’re certain of that?” he asked.

  Sam nodded. “Yes. I know her very well. And she said she was planning something.”

  The guard took off his cap. He was sweating profusely under it, and his bald head shone in the lights of the aquarium. He seemed to be deciding what to do.

  “Come with me,” he said finally. “All three of you.”

  He turned and ordered the crowd behind them to make way for them to pass. Some of the people snickered to see the three youngsters being led away. They recognized them as the three who’d been running so recklessly down the ramp and were pleased the guard was doing the right thing by throwing the troublemakers out.

  The guard was doing the right thing, sure enough – but it had nothing to do with giving the three Screech Owls the boot. He took them straight to the security office, where several guards were watching every area of the aquarium on video cameras, both inside and out.

  The guard took them to a woman who appeared to be the senior officer, and when Sam mentioned Frances Assisi’s name, the woman’s eyebrows jumped. They had her attention.

  The senior officer turned to a bank of cameras focused on the tank itself. They could see sea creatures and divers moving about.

  “Where?” she said to Travis. “Where in the tank did you see this?”

  “Near the top,” Travis said.

  The senior officer nodded to another guard who had come over. “They go bottom to top for the census, don’t they?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She turned to another guard operating the cameras. “Give us a view of the top of the tank, Peter.”

  Peter nodded. He pushed some buttons to control a camera positioned above the massive tank.

  The four divers were working on something near the top of the reef-like structure. It did not look as if they were counting.

  “Move in tight on this one,” the senior officer said, tapping her finger on a figure with long hair flowing out of the hood of her wet suit.

  The guard controlling the camera did so. The picture was a bit murky, but the Owls knew it was Frances.

  “That her?” the senior officer asked.

  All three Owls nodded at once.

  The woman took one more look, straining to see what the divers were doing.

  “Clear the building,” she said.

  The guard named Peter seemed unsure he’d heard correctly. “Ma’am?” he said.

  “You heard me – clear the building. Now!”

  19

  Travis expected pandemonium, perhaps even people being trampled on the ramps. But there was nothing of the sort. A very calm announcement went out over the New England Aquarium’s public-address system:

  Security has detected a malfunction in the tank system. There is no need for panic, but all visitors must now clear the building temporarily. You will all be issued tickets for readmission as you leave. Please exit the building immediately in an orderly fashion. We repeat: there is no need for concern.

  The three Owls were also taken out, by the security guard who had first stopped them. They watched people leaving, lining up neatly outside for their readmission tickets, and already Boston police were on the boardwalk ensuring that the crowds dispersed quickly and without incident.

  Travis could tell from the passing voices that there was indeed some concern – “A leak?” “A break in the glass?” “Something wrong in the water filtering system?” – but no one seemed to consider that this was any sort of a Judgment Day.

  The uniformed Boston police moved the crowds back as a large armored bus rolled up and a heavily armed police SWAT team poured out of it and took up position around the outside of the aquarium building. The security guard told the Owls that SWAT stood for Special Weapons and Tactics. This was the law enforcement unit that handled only the most high-risk operations.

  When the SWAT team was in place, a signal was given and they all entered the building at once, several of them going through the open side of the aquarium where the construction was taking place.

  Sarah turned to the other two.

  “What if we’re wrong?” she asked, her face reddening.

  Sam answered, “We’re not.”

  20

  “We have to go.”

  The security guard looked baffled. These three youngsters had caused one of Boston’s top attractions to be evacuated and a SWAT team to storm the building. No one outside the New England Aquarium except them knew why, and now they had something more important to do?

  “We have to,” Sarah pleaded. “We play our final game of the tournament in an hour.”

  Quickly they explained to the guard, who had never even heard of the Paul Revere Peewee Invitational Hockey Tournament. He took down their details – their names, where they were staying, their home numbers – and raking a hand over his sweaty brow, he nodded that they were free to go.

  They raced back to the hotel, arriving just as Mr. D was loading his portable skate-sharpening equipment onto the back of the old bus.

  “There you are!” he shouted. “You three are running late! Grab your bags and get them down here. We leave in five.”

  The three Owls looked at each other. There was no time to tell anyone what had happened.

  Besides, who would believe them anyway? And they didn’t really know what had happened.

  “Where the hell were you?” Nish said, as Travis sank into his stall in the dressing room at the TD Garden.

  “We went to the aquarium again –”

  “Bor-ing!” Nish said before Travis could continue.

  Travis just smiled. He had no idea how to describe his morning, but boring was not one of the choices.

  He put on his pads, right, left. All was quiet. He pulled his jersey over his head, kissed the Screech Owls crest from behind, and sagged in his stall. He was exhausted – and the final game still had to be played.

  Travis could not recall a time when he’d been so out of it in a tournament.
Was it just because it was summer? No – he’d been wrapped up in something else entirely. He had to get his focus back. Had to. He was captain, after all. He was Travis Lindsay, captain of the Screech Owls, and his teammates depended on him.

  Their opponents in this final deciding match would be the Mini-Penguins. The Pittsburgh team, who’d been defeated by the Owls on Travis’s goal and Nish’s Hail Mary pass, had gone on to beat the Chicago Young Blackhawks 5–2, proving Muck’s point that the Owls had found their game following that resounding opening loss to the Young Blackhawks.

  Muck had little to say. His pregame talk set a new record for brevity.

  “Have fun.”

  It was exactly the right thing for Muck to say. From Game 1, when the Owls had been humiliated, they had grown in confidence with every game, every shift. They were still far from mid-season form, but they were playing real hockey again, the game they loved so well.

  And it was fun. It was fun when Travis pumped through that first corner on the fresh ice of the TD Garden. It was fun when he thought about being on the same ice that the Stanley Cup champions played on. It was fun when he hit the crossbar on his first warm-up shot. Fun when both Sarah and Sam slammed their sticks into his shin pads before the opening face-off. Fun when he and Nish did their ritual taps with Jenny, who’d be playing nets for the Owls. Fun when he came off from his first shift and looked down the bench to see Nish leaning over hard, his head buried between his knees. Travis didn’t need to see any more to know the defenseman had his game face on.

  The Mini-Penguins were going to be tough again, perhaps even tougher than in the previous match. The big center – the Lemieux-Crosby clone – was in brilliant form, leading rush after rush up the ice. Travis loved watching how effortlessly he stickhandled, but he also knew it was his job to ensure that the center’s stickhandling didn’t end up with a puck in the net behind Jenny.

  There was no score in the first period and, amazingly, no score in the second. Muck always argued that there could be nothing better than a 1–0 game in hockey, but Travis had never agreed with that. Virtually every legendary game ever played – the 1972 Summit Series, the 1987 Canada Cup finals – had had the same score, 6–5, and he figured any game with eleven goals had to be superior to a game with only one.