Spy School Goes South Page 9

  Something disturbing now occurred to me.

  When I had first come upon Murray, he hadn’t been looking quite in the direction of the trees he had pointed to. Instead, he’d been looking slightly to the right.

  I glanced that way myself. To my surprise, there was a tiny clearing in the forest with a dirt road leading to it. A pickup truck was parked in the clearing. It was an old, weather-beaten, dust-caked truck, but it was still a vehicle. A vehicle that could get us back to civilization. It was partially obscured by the trees, but it wasn’t hard to spot, either.

  Which meant Murray had certainly seen it.

  Yet he hadn’t mentioned it to me. Instead, he had tried to distract me from it, pointing into a stand of trees where he couldn’t possibly have seen Erica. . . .

  If I’d had another fraction of a second, it might have also occurred to me that Murray had led me right to the edge of a man-made cliff.

  However, I didn’t have another fraction of a second. Because Murray suddenly rushed me, slammed his shoulder into my side, and sent me flying over the edge of the pyramid.

  9

  PURSUIT

  Chxtxclub Settlement

  Somewhere in Quintana Roo

  March 29

  1430 hours

  The world spun around me as I went over the edge.

  I saw jungle, stone, sky, then jungle again. Somewhere in there, I caught a glimpse of Murray racing back toward the steps of the pyramid. I also saw the ground far below me. The ground I was about to plummet into.

  Thankfully, I also saw one other thing.

  A vine. It was thick and green and close enough for me to grab on to. I lashed out with both hands and seized it, hanging on tightly as though my life depended on it.

  Which, in retrospect, was actually the case.

  The vine snapped taut in my grasp, and my arms were wrenched upward as my body jerked to a stop. I felt as though I had nearly dislocated both arms, but despite the searing pain, I didn’t let go. Instead of falling, I swung back into the pyramid, slamming face-first into the rock wall.

  It hurt. But not nearly as badly as doing a swan dive into the ground below would have.

  “Mike! Zoe!” I yelled. “Murray tricked us! He’s getting away!”

  From the far side of the small stone hut, I heard them gasp with surprise.

  “Ben!” Zoe yelled back. “Where are you?”

  “Don’t worry about me! I’m fine!” I called out, hoping that was true. “Get Murray!”

  I heard footsteps on the opposite side of the pyramid, my friends and enemy racing downward, along with Zoe yelling, “Murray! Get back here, you jerkwad!”

  I took stock of my situation. I was about ten feet below the edge of the top of the pyramid, dangling from a vine, my face smashed up against the rock.

  A few feet to my left, a large iguana clung to the steep stone face, regarding me curiously.

  In theory, I should have been able to climb back up to the platform at the top. Only, my arms were already killing me—it wouldn’t be easy.

  Meanwhile, Murray had a jump on my friends and was in better shape than them. He was probably going to beat them down the pyramid. I also had an idea where he was going, whereas they didn’t.

  I looked down. The vine I was clinging to dangled most of the way down the pyramid.

  It was always easier to go down than up.

  I kicked off the wall, bracing my feet against the stone, and began to walk backward down the pyramid, lowering myself along the vine hand over hand as quickly as I could go. With each step, the vine strained, and the branches it dangled from juddered ominously, but now that I was committed to going down, I couldn’t change my mind. I simply had to hope the vine and trees were sufficiently strong to hold me long enough to safely reach the ground.

  In the distance, I heard the distinct sound of someone losing their step and tumbling painfully down the pyramid. I really hoped it was Murray.

  My shoulders were aching. My palms were getting rubbed raw on the vine. I was relatively sure I had a bloody nose. But I ignored all the pain and continued downward as fast as I could go.

  I reached the canopy of jungle below. Leaves brushed against me, and branches scraped my back. I forced my way through it all, heading down, down, down. . . .

  Now the shouts of my friends had grown faint. The pyramid was much wider at the base than it was at the top, and they were on the far side. I heard what might have been the sound of people running through the trees, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

  My vine ended abruptly twenty feet above the ground. I hung there for a second, trying to work out a safe way down from that point, then decided there wasn’t time. I looked for a soft spot below, swung out from the rock face, and let go.

  I crashed through the brush, hit the ground, tucked into a ball, rolled over, and came up on my feet. It would have looked pretty cool if there had been anyone around to see it.

  There was one iguana who watched the whole thing happen, but it didn’t seem very impressed.

  I raced off into the jungle, in the direction of the small clearing I’d seen. There was no trail. I had to plow right through the underbrush. Thorns raked my skin. Branches whacked my arms and legs. I ran face-first into no less than three separate spiderwebs.

  But I made it. I stumbled into the clearing before Murray got there.

  The truck sat right before me. The words MUSEO ARQUEOLÓGICO DE TULUM were stenciled in green on the doors. Some of the mud spattered on the sides was still somewhat fresh; the truck had been driven that day. Junk food wrappers and empty coffee cups littered the dashboard.

  At the far end of the clearing was the worst excuse for a road I had ever seen. It wasn’t just off the beaten path. It was the beaten path. It looked like someone had beat it with a stick.

  But still, it was a road.

  Someone was coming through the jungle my way. I heard the thrashing of them fighting their way through the underbrush, then a scream of fear, followed by “Freaking spiders!”

  Murray. Ironically for someone employed by SPYDER, he had a horrendous phobia of the real things.

  I looked around for something to use as a weapon. A spare tire was mounted on the back of the truck with the tire iron screwed on beside it. I knocked loose the bolt that held it—a movement that sent a shock of pain through my shoulder—then whipped the tire iron free and held it like a samurai sword.

  Murray burst into the clearing, then froze in surprise upon seeing me.

  He appeared to have lost Zoe and Mike in the jungle behind him, although there was also ample evidence that he was the one who had fallen down the pyramid. His body was mottled with bruises, some the size of my fist. He also had a big cut over his right eye and what looked like a lump of iguana poop smushed into his hair above his left ear. Still, he was upright and mobile. The fall, while painful, had probably sped his flight down the pyramid.

  Murray seemed to be considering several different tactics of how to address me. Finally, he opted for the most insulting: acting like he hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Ben!” he exclaimed with a grin. “Great to see you’re still alive! I was worried about you! You just slipped on that iguana and went right over the edge. . . .”

  “Please tell me you don’t really think I’m stupid enough to fall for this crap,” I said.

  Murray’s grin faded, but only a little bit. “Well, I was hoping you’d be stupid enough. But I can’t get anything past you and that big brain of yours, can I?”

  “Stop flattering me. It’s not going to endear you to me.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “So I’ll think twice about beating your face in with this tire iron.”

  “That wasn’t my plan, Ben.” Murray strode toward me confidently. “I know you won’t hurt me for no good reason. You have all those stupid morals that keep you from doing things like that.”

  “I’m considering giving them up. Just this once.” I brandished t
he tire iron over my shoulder in what I hoped was a menacing fashion. “Don’t take another step!”

  “Like this?” Murray tauntingly took another step toward me.

  He was right. I did have a stupid set of morals that kept me from hurting people unless they were directly threatening me. And even then, I wasn’t particularly good at hurting people. Murray was unarmed and merely walking toward me. It was wrong to club him with a tire iron.

  Then again, he had repeatedly double-crossed me and tried to kill me. And now I stood between him and his only means of escape. If I didn’t stop him, he’d no doubt steal the truck and leave the rest of us stranded in the jungle while he raced on to alert SPYDER that we were alive and well, which would probably prevent us from being able to figure out what they were up to and allow them to launch their newest plot, whatever that might be, causing chaos and mayhem on a mass scale.

  Plus, Murray was a real jerk.

  So I swung the tire iron at him.

  I wasn’t looking to cave his skull in or anything. I was only hoping to incapacitate him. Nailing him hard enough in the abdomen to knock the wind out of him for the next half hour would do the trick.

  Only, I didn’t hit Murray at all. To my surprise, he deftly sidestepped the tire iron.

  My momentum spun me around, like a batter whiffing at a baseball.

  Murray then lunged at me, pile-driving me into the door of the truck. The sudden hit knocked the wind out of me, and the jolt of pain in my already aching shoulders made me drop the tire iron. It clanked uselessly into the dust.

  Murray had gotten much better at fighting over the past few weeks.

  The last time I had faced off against him, Murray had been weak, lazy, and out of shape, and I had still barely beaten him. Now he hadn’t merely bulked up; he’d also sharpened his reflexes and somehow honed his fighting skills.

  For one thing, he had never been able to throw a punch before. Professor Simon had once remarked that Murray “hit like a dead wallaby.” But now I got a firsthand lesson in how he’d improved.

  He punched me right in the stomach. I folded like a hinge, and Murray drove his knee into my chest.

  My head clanged off the door of the truck, and I went down, seeing stars.

  “Sorry about that, Ben.” Murray’s grin had returned to its full strength. “I hate doing things like this, but the fact is, I really need this truck.”

  He then casually stepped over my prone body and opened the door.

  Before he could climb inside the truck, though, something slammed into him hard enough to send him flying.

  Erica.

  The two of them tumbled through the dirt, then sprang to their feet, ready to fight. Unfortunately for Erica, Murray had landed right next to the tire iron. He snatched it off the ground and swung it around threateningly.

  Unfortunately for Murray, Erica was the best fighter at spy school. It didn’t matter how much Murray had trained over the past month; he still couldn’t hold a candle to her. Even if he had a tire iron and she didn’t.

  Erica simply reached down and grabbed the closest thing off the ground that could possibly be used as a weapon.

  Not surprisingly, the closest thing to her happened to be an iguana.

  It was a good-size male, and it had been lolling in the sunny clearing, lazily watching us fight. Erica snatched it up in a second and whipped it at Murray.

  This caught both the iguana and Murray by surprise. The iguana reacted by going into a defensive posture, even though it was sailing through the air: back arched, teeth bared, claws extended.

  It landed right on Murray’s face and promptly dug its claws into his scalp.

  Murray screamed in agony. He dropped the tire iron and tried to pry the lizard off his face, but that only angered it. It dug its claws in farther, and then, for good measure, bit down hard on Murray’s ear. It then rode around on his face as he flailed about, like a rodeo cowboy clinging to a bucking bronco.

  As Murray staggered past me, I did the only thing I could manage from my prone position. I tripped him.

  Murray went down hard in the dirt. The iguana quickly released him and scuttled into the underbrush. Before Murray could recover and get his bearings, Erica was on him. She pounced onto his back and wrenched both his arms behind him.

  Murray wailed in pain.

  “Hey,” I said to Erica, struggling to a sitting position. “How long have you known we were here?”

  “Only a few minutes,” Erica said calmly. “I heard you all yelling from the top of the pyramid.”

  “Why didn’t you yell back?”

  “I had my suspicions Murray wasn’t with the program. I wondered what he’d do if he thought I wasn’t around.”

  “He tried to kill me!” I exclaimed.

  “Doesn’t look like he succeeded,” Erica observed. She then turned her attention to Murray, smashing his clawed-up face into the dirt. “You’ve been a bad boy. And I’m guessing that, since you made a beeline for this truck, you’ve known exactly where SPYDER is hiding out all along and were going to head directly to them. Am I right?”

  Murray didn’t say anything.

  “I asked you a question,” Erica said, anger creeping into her voice. “So let’s try this again. Am I right?” She twisted Murray’s arms, making him writhe in pain.

  “No!” he cried. “I was only trying to escape! I have no idea where SPYDER is!”

  Erica calmly flipped him over, then sat on his chest, pinioning his arms to his sides with her legs. “Murray, remember when I knocked your tooth out last summer?”

  Murray’s eyes widened in fear. “Yes.”

  “I’m going to knock the rest of them down your throat unless you tell me where SPYDER’s hiding.”

  Murray gulped. It was evident that his loyalty to SPYDER didn’t go as far as losing his teeth. “Deal,” he said.

  10

  OBSERVATION

  Aquarius Resort

  Tulum Region, Quintana Roo

  March 29

  1600 hours

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Mike said.

  We were standing at a balcony off the lobby of the Aquarius Luxury Family Resort and Spa. From this vantage point, we had a sweeping view of the opulent grounds. The entire property was lushly landscaped with tropical plants and fake waterfalls to give the impression that we were in the jungle. There was plenty of real jungle right outside the resort, but the phony jungle was nicer for the guests, as it had far fewer mosquitoes and much better catering. Directly in front of us was an enormous swimming pool surrounded by hundreds of tourists basking in the sun. Beyond the pool was a fringe of gorgeous white-sand beach, and beyond that was a bay of brilliant turquoise water. The bay was packed with guests trying out various water sports: snorkeling, scuba diving, Jet Skiing, paddleboarding, sea kayaking, and parasailing.

  “This is where SPYDER’s new headquarters are?” Mike asked.

  “They’re renting the penthouse suite,” Murray reported, nodding his head in the direction of the building. “And they have been for the past eight months.”

  “Ever since we blew up their headquarters?” Zoe questioned.

  “Since right before that,” Murray corrected. “Remember, all the higher-ups had evacuated HQ a day earlier so they wouldn’t be around if anything went wrong.”

  “Which is why the CIA didn’t catch any of them,” I recalled. “They were living it up down here while leaving you, Ashley, and Nefarious to do their dirty work and take the fall for them.”

  Murray glowered at the memory of this, then shot a baleful stare at the penthouse.

  The main building was to the left of the pool. It was the fake Mayan pyramid structure I had seen from the top of the actual Mayan pyramid. Each level was bedecked with wide balconies that looked out upon the beach. However, it was hard to get a good view of the penthouse, as the residence itself was set back from the edge of the roof and surrounded by private gardens. A big, muscular man stood at the railing, wearing
sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked like an average, everyday tourist simply taking in the view. But since I knew SPYDER was holed up there, I presumed the man was in fact a trained killer, keeping an eye out for trouble.

  “Staying here fits SPYDER’s modus operandi perfectly,” Erica observed. “You’d assume an evil organization would build a secret hideout down in the tropics, but that takes time and money, and, frankly, they’re probably not going to use it long-term anyhow. It’s a waste of resources. Renting a penthouse suite makes much more sense. Plus, there’s room service. In addition, hotels always provide additional security for high-paying guests. I can guarantee you the elevator to the top floor requires a special key and that there’s already alarm systems built in, though SPYDER has certainly added their own.”

  There had also been guards at the front gate of the resort, though they hadn’t caused any trouble for us. They only seemed concerned with people arriving by car, the idea being that no one would actually ever walk onto the property from the road. But the five of us weren’t normal tourists.

  We had stolen the truck from the Mayan temple site. I had felt bad about that, but Erica had pointed out that tracking down the archaeologists and asking them for a ride would only cause problems. They would probably call the police to report that they’d found some kids lost in the middle of the jungle, and SPYDER was certainly monitoring the phones of the police. Of course, we could beg them not to call the police, but that would be suspicious in itself, as would any story we made up to explain why we were off in the jungle without our parents. Since I was fluent in Spanish, I had left a nice note for the police on the dashboard of the truck after we abandoned it on the side of the road, explaining who the truck belonged to and where they could be found. It didn’t really make up for what we’d done, but when the fate of the world was at stake, you occasionally had to do something uncool.

  Erica had driven the truck. The route back from the archaeological site was more pothole than road, but it was still much faster than trekking through the jungle had been. Even though we had only been able to jounce along at ten miles an hour, we had still made it to civilization well before dark. The dirt road had emerged onto a four-lane highway that served as the major route up and down the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán peninsula. It was lined with resorts on the beach side and eco-adventure tourist spots on the jungle side. Judging from the billboards, the main eco adventures were snorkeling in cenotes, riding all-terrain vehicles, and zip-lining.