Red Thunder

“It would have been a trillion-to-one shot to hit it,” Travis said. “That doesn’t worry me. No, the thing that worries me is that our bird would [181] have showed up on their radar. Also this satellite, and this one. Not to mention ground radars. Now some people in our government know there’s something out there that can outperform any rocket in their arsenal. I mean, our bird was accelerating at twenty gees, and it would have kept it up until it was out of radar range. When they lost it, it was traveling faster than any man-made object has ever traveled. Ever, in the history of the world.”

We all digested that for a while. Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry.

“Now our government knows there’s somebody out there with a powerful new technology. I’m sure they’re going to want it. And what I worry about is our alphabet soup of intelligence agencies. FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA.”

“What about SMERSH?” I asked, joking. Travis didn’t laugh.

“I’ve often asked myself that question,” he said. “Is there a super, super secret agency in the government, accountable to no one, licensed to kill, like in a James Bond movie? I hope not, but there’s no way for us to know. By its nature nobody would ever have heard of it.”

“ ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ ” Dak said.

“Exactly. So it’s a waste of time to worry about something like that. I’m worried enough about the ones we do know about.

“By triangulating the radar signatures they know where we did it. I can’t think they would learn much from the launch site. It’s hard digging in the ’Glades. That hole in the ground filled up with muddy water before we even left.

“What worries me most is that I stupidly let us drive into a small, isolated town in three of the most memorable vehicles in Florida.”

I looked at our little automotive fleet. It was so obvious once he’d said it, but it hadn’t occurred to me. Even now, there were half a dozen neighborhood kids standing around the vehicles, gawking.

“They’ve got satellites that can read a license plate from orbit, and it was a clear day, but I strongly doubt they took any pictures. Why would they?”

“But people will talk,” Kelly murmured.

“You said it. Old man McGee saw us, and so did those tourists. As for McGee, he wouldn’t be apt to have much to say to a federal agent, [182] on account of the five years of federal time he did behind a marijuana smuggling conviction back in the ’70s. Not to mention that he’d assume they were revenuers out to find his still.

“We drove straight through town. Those folks aren’t inclined to gab, but it will come out, and it may be linked to Caleb.”

That was the worst news I’d heard so far. How far would those snoops go, if they suspected Caleb and his family had something to do with the launch?

“What’s done is done,” Travis said. “We can’t take it back. But we can lie as low as we are able for a while, and we can be more careful in the future. Deal?”

We all agreed… and pretty soon Dak wished he hadn’t.

“Kelly,” Travis went on, “I guess you’ll be putting that Roman firebomb back in your father’s lot. Not much we can do about it, I guess. I’m hoping that anyone comes snooping around won’t figure a Ferrari demonstrator was likely to be the one showed up in Everglades City today.”

Kelly looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I can probably do better than that. Let me think on it.”

“Good enough. Dak…” I could see Dak hadn’t gotten it yet. “Dak, could you… could you garage that blue beast for a while?”

Dak’s eyes widened with surprise, then he gave a deep sigh.

“Sure, Trav. For a while. You got a bicycle I could borrow?”

“No, but I’ve got another bike somewhere. You could use that.” Dak looked a lot happier. “Ma

“Oh, gosh, do I have to?”

“Such a sacrifice,” Alicia laughed, and slapped my back.

Kelly held out the chicken wishbone, hooked around her greasy pinkie finger, I took the other end and pulled.

Oh, please, let us build this thing.

Short end.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” she said. “Maybe we wished for the same thing.”

18

“JUBAL THINKS AMERICANS ought to be the first people to set foot on Mars,” Travis said. “I agree with him, but before a few weeks ago it was impossible. Now it is possible, with something Jubal has made, and I’m going to tell you how it can be done.”

Travis, who had been pretty much on the wagon for several weeks, had told us he had to have a shot or two… or three, before facing an audience scarier than any he had ever faced in his life: Mom, Aunt Maria, and Dak’s father. Alicia had doled the whiskey out to him, and he had walked into the lion’s den.

The three of them sat in Mom’s living room on the old sprung couch and easy chair that qualified as a “family heirloom” in my poor family. It was after midnight, the vacancy sign had been turned off and the office door locked. It was now just the six of us and the three of them. Travis was going to explain how he and Jubal proposed to build a spaceship and take their precious sons to Mars.

You couldn’t find stonier faces on Mount Rushmore.

Sitting on the coffee table along with a couple open two-liter bottles of generic cola and some Dixie cups was a pitiful torn bag of stick pretzels and a small plastic container of cold supermarket guacamole dip. I [184] swear, if Fidel Castro himself climbed out of his grave and came to visit, Aunt Maria would have at least heated up a little refried beans and salsa.

Travis sighed deeply and started in on his spiel. I squeezed Kelly’s hand and said a silent prayer to Ares, the God of War.

THE NIGHT AFTER we launched the test rocket we all pulled into the lot behind Strickland Mercedes and parked. Travis and Jubal got out of the Hummer and squeezed into the backseat of Blue Thunder. Dak beeped the horn once as he pulled out, and Kelly and I went to the back door. One of her keys opened it, and she hurried over to the security control on the wall and punched in a five-digit code.

Kelly’s dad was the kind who liked to keep a close eye on his employees, even when he was busy with other things. Therefore, he’d had his office located above and slightly behind the salespeople’s cubicles. He could look down through a glass wall onto the tops of their desks, and beyond them to the showroom floor.

“Master of all he surveys,” Kelly said as we climbed the broad spiral staircase. Another key got her into his office, and another five-digit number entered into another keypad got us secure access.

I couldn’t help feeling like a burglar, and like a goldfish in a bowl. I knew I hadn’t done anything illegal, Kelly had a perfect right to invite me in, but I also knew I was emphatically not welcome by her father. And what Kelly was going to do was illegal. I hated it that I could see right outside to the new cars parked out in front, and the road, and the I-95 freeway just beyond it. Traffic was light at three A.M.

She booted the computer and I pulled up a chair to watch an artist at work.

“Enter Daddy Dear’s security code, right out of the book… done,” she muttered. “Password… oh, my, now whatever could his password be?” She looked at me, and I shrugged.

“Let’s try something…” She typed, her fingers moving too fast for me to get any of it. In the password box ************ appeared, then the security page disappeared and a menu came up.

[185] “Pretty good,” I said. She smirked at me, and pulled out a flat wood panel above the side drawers on the big executive desk. She turned it over. Taped to the bottom was a piece of paper with the word ferraristud in ballpoint, and several numbers.