Virtual Vandals

Chapter 18

Rob Falk and his friend James, the warlord of the Buzzards, filled the sudden silence with loud, harsh laughter. Rob lowered his gun.

The young computer genius stuck the pistol in his back pocket. “Oh, we’re not gonna do it now,” he said, as if this should make the prisoners feel better. “But we really have to shut your mouths. After all, you only served two uses for us. You could get into places that my friends and I — well, I guess you’d say we were a little too rough for polite society.”

James laughed again, but Rob went on. “The other use was to take the heat — create big headlines and make the big-time commentators and politicians buzz and moan about the state of young people today.” He sneered. “Why should we go to all the trouble of creating scapegoats if they’re just going to point the finger at us?”

“You got a point there, brother,” James said.

“Besides, if you die, there’ll be just enough tragedy to keep the publicity machine running overtime.” Rob might have been discussing how to talk up an upcoming dance, or how to get the word out about a charity car wash. Matt had never heard something so evil discussed so casually.

“So that’s it?” Cat said in a shocked voice. “You’ve used us up, so now you throw us away?”

Rob turned, grinned, and nodded. “Go to the head of the class! That’s exactly it! Just like you and your so-important friends use people and toss them away. Of course, we have to make it a little more permanent. But then, we’re playing for higher stakes than a good grade in Bonehead Computing.”

His voice dripped phony compassion as he leaned toward the girl. “Oh, I know it’s tough. All this time, you’ve grown up thinking you were a human being with rights and privileges. Well, I’m sorry, honey. But you’ve got to learn it’s different out here in the cold, cruel world. My mom thought she was a human being. But some drunk, rich diplomat saw her as an obstacle — or maybe as a target.”

The false sympathy was gone from his voice. Each word came out as if it were chipped from ice. “We’ll never know what was going through his mind. He hightailed it back to Whatzislavia as soon as his ambassador pried him away from the police. Now, it’s too bad you don’t have an ambassador to go to bat for you. We don’t need another pretty face around here. We don’t need your daddy’s money. We need someone to take the heat for us after this operation goes down. And you’re elected. Grow up and face it, girl. It’s the last thing you might be able to do in this life.”

It was a cruel little speech, but Matt could see Caitlin wouldn’t give Rob the satisfaction of seeing tears. The effort made her shake, but she stood straight and glared at him.

“Good work!” Rob applauded. “See, you’re growing up already.”

He turned his attention to the other prisoners. “Okay, now, I expect you guys to be cool. Keep annoying us”—he looked especially at Serge as he spoke—“and you’ll wind up with marks that will make it harder for us to set the right picture. We want the public to see a bunch of rich, privileged kids who got in with the wrong crowd and came to a sorry end. Behave yourself, and I promise your sorry end will be relatively painless. Give us trouble, and we’ll hurt you before this is over. Then we’ll have to come up with a nasty end to hide what we did. You’ll end up flipping a car and being burned to death. Or maybe even have your cruel gangbanger pals kill you execution-style.”

“And what happens if we’re good boys and girls?” Matt asked, amazed that his voice stayed steady. “What nice way will you use to kill us then?”

“Well, there is no nice way,” Rob admitted. “Maybe we’ll get you drunk or high so you’ll scarcely feel somebody’s home security system taking you out.”

He glanced around. “So, if there are no more questions — and I really hope no more ‘you can’t get away with this’ silliness — it’s time to get to work!”

For one wild moment, Matt was tempted to reveal his Net Force connection and tell Falk that he was working undercover. That would rip away his condescending attitude.

As if he were reading Matt’s mind, Rob said, “Don’t try to threaten me with Net Force, Hunter.” He smiled at Matt’s openmouthed response. “Come on! I’ve been in your computer — and a lot of others. You really thought I didn’t know you’re a Net Force Explorer? Seems to me you’ve gone beyond whatever your Captain Winters had in mind. Perhaps I’ll e-mail him a suggestion about better training for Explorers going undercover. Your effort was pretty…pitiful.”

His fellow prisoners looked at Matt with different expressions. At least his effort had been good enough for them.

Now he’d keep quiet, wait, and try to pull off the duty of every prisoner — to escape.

That, of course, would depend on wherever Rob and his gangbanger friends decided to store their captives.

Since no one had anything more to say, Rob and James declared their little meeting over. The guards closed in around Matt, Caitlin, Luc, and Serge, and began herding them through the door in the far wall of the room — the door the boys had come through earlier.

They went out of the room, then down a short, dark hallway ending at a big, heavy oak door, the kind you couldn’t buy anymore. Not that anybody would want this one, Matt thought. The heavy wood panel was torn and gouged. There were even a couple of bullet holes, as if someone had used it for target practice.

But the door was still able to block out sound. Matt was surprised at the noise level on the other side when the guards pushed the door open. He was even more surprised when he went through the doorway into a huge, high-ceilinged room filled with row after row of scarred wooden pews. They were in a church!

A quick glance told him that it had to be an abandoned church. Leaks from the steeply angled roof had caused huge smears down the dingy walls, rotting the plaster away from the red brick beneath. Most areas were thick with dust, except for the pews. They were thick with people, but these people hadn’t come to pray.

The congregation consisted of hard young men, many younger than Matt, the rest ranging in age on up to a couple of guys who looked to be in their late twenties. Beefy or rail-thin, black-skinned, brown, or pale and freckled, they all had the same wary, street-smart hardness. And whatever they wore — most were in jeans and shirts with the sleeves torn away — their outfits mixed the colors green and black.

There had to be a couple of hundred of them, smoking, laughing, checking their guns. Yes, each young man was armed. Hunting rifles, stolen armory weapons, and every variety of pistol Matt had ever heard about seemed to be on display. There were even a couple of antique Beretta M9s like the one Rob Falk had waved around.

This was Rob’s strike force, the fighting strength of the Buzzards called together at their warlord’s orders.

They fell into a dangerous silence for a second as they saw strangers coming through the door. But James came in after them, and the warlord was definitely in a cheerful mood. “Be nice to these people, now,” he warned his troops. “They’re the ones who’re helping us get into the Gardens at Carrollsburg!”

A roar filled the air like nothing that had been heard in that church before — half ironic cheer, half wolf’s snarl at sighting red meat.

James gestured to Matt and Caitlin. “Put these where you kept the others. And no foolin’ around with ’em! We want them all in one piece for when we need them.”

Matt and the others were marched down the aisle to the rear of the church, and Matt thought they were going out. But before they reached the church doors, the lead guard turned aside, to the gaping entrance of a dusty stairwell.

Are they sticking us in the choir loft? Matt wondered. But the stairs kept going up, until Matt realized they were climbing inside the church’s steeple. Then they came to a moldy wooden ladder leaning drunkenly against the lip of a trapdoor overhead.

Matt climbed, and found himself in a space a little larger than his bedroom — but a lot taller. Once bells had hung here, rung on feast days and to celebrate marriages. They were gone now, probably taken when the church was deconsecrated. A bell was a valuable thing, even if it was only melted down for its metal.

This space was empty, except for dust, the remains of a couple of bird nests, and what looked like mouse droppings on the floor. Four reasonably clean folding chairs were scattered around. Apparently, they’d been brought up for the comfort of the prisoners.

Caitlin, Luc, and Serge had all reached the upper story now. From below came a scraping sound. Their guards were removing the ladder!

“Y’all just sit quiet up there,” Willy’s voice echoed up the steeple. “We’ll come fetch you when we’re ready to move.”

As soon as the guards were out of sight, Matt snatched up one of the chairs and pushed it against the wall. The belfry had no windows, but above their heads, the enclosure was open to the air. This was where the sound of the bells had rung out in the old days.

At some point, though, there must have been a problem with intruders. Iron bars, spaced five inches apart, wouldn’t have blocked the tolling of the bells. But they’d keep anyone out of the belfry — or in.

The bars didn’t block the view, though, as Matt pulled himself up on his improvised step stool. He looked out — upon a vista of empty, crumbling buildings. The roofs of the surrounding stone and wooden row houses seemed to sag as if the weight of too many years pressed down on them. Paint peeled off the siding boards like diseased, scabby skin, revealing the gray of moldering wood. Obviously, it hadn’t been a great neighborhood even when people lived there. Scattered among the houses were square, raw brick buildings. They’d housed auto-body repair shops, chemical warehouses, all the parts of a city that get shoved into out-of-the-way corners where nice people didn’t have to look at — or live with — them.

It did keep the rents down, of course. Poor folks were expected to put up with the noise and the corrosive smells. This was a neighborhood that had been hard-used. And once it was deserted, the buildings, both old and new, began quickly falling into ruin.

To Matt, it looked like a town abandoned in the face of an enemy army’s advance. No-man’s-land. But where would you find such a desolate area in the middle of a teeming cityscape like greater Washington?

No-man’s-land! The words seemed to echo in Matt’s thoughts as he scampered down from the chair and dragged it to another wall. Nearby, he saw a similar blasted landscape. But farther off, he saw apartment towers rising over the rooftops. And right in front of the church steeple ran an elevated expressway with cars zipping along. Rays of late afternoon sunshine streamed between the bars. That way had to be west.

Matt dropped to the floor and hauled the chair so he was facing south. More devastated buildings, and a muddy scar where old houses had been bulldozed. Beyond that, however, rose a wall of rosy brick, enclosing expensive-looking brick and paneled buildings that looked like they’d escaped from colonial Williamsburg. Expensive cars stood in driveways surrounded by brilliant green lawns.

Letting go of the bars, Matt dropped back to the belfry floor again.

“What did you see?” Caitlin demanded.

“Bunch of pig-houses,” Serge replied in his broken English.

“Slums,” Luc Valery translated.

The Balkan boy nodded. “Like Cernograd after the shelling. Nowhere I seen before.”

“Well, I know where we are,” Matt said. “Remember that map Rob Falk showed us? We’re in the middle of the orange splotch, the houses waiting to be knocked down and turned into expensive condos. Back that way”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“is the Gardens at Carrollsburg. In the other direction, if we go far enough, is the Mall and all the museums. To the west, once you get past the parkway and the dead neighborhood, are the luxury high-rises along the Potomac. East of here—” Matt frowned, trying to recall the maps he’d seen of the area. There’d been a large blank spot….

Then he remembered. “The Washington Navy Yard. They haven’t built a boat there in seventy years, but they use the land for offices and stuff.”

“How nice,” Luc said in a snotty voice. “Now we know exactly where we’re going to die.”

Matt shook his head. “Only if we let that happen.”

“Let it?” Luc said. “How do you expect to stop it? It’s not like we can call your cops. Those pigs took our wallet-phones. I don’t think we’ll find any phone-kiosks out there.” He gestured to the desolation surrounding them. “Besides, we’re trapped at least four stories off the ground with no way down and bars around us—”

He was interrupted as Matt’s hand shot out to grab his tie. “Real silk?”

“W-what?” The French boy sputtered. “My cravat? Yes, it’s silk.”

“Heavy silk,” Matt said, yanking at the knot in the tie.

Luc said nothing. He only stared at Matt as if the American had gone out of his mind.

Matt yanked the tie free of Luc’s collar, then turned to one of the chairs. He brought it up over his head and smashed it against the wall.

“What are you doing?” Caitlin yelled. She, too, had become convinced that Matt had gone out of his mind.

Matt grabbed another chair, and the other prisoners cringed back. But this one he leaned against the east side of the bell tower and began climbing.

Carrying the tie and a broken leg from the first chair in one hand, Matt hauled himself up. He looped the tie around two bars, tied it tight, then stuck the wooden stick into the loop and began twirling it. The heavy silk wrapped around the stick, making the loop tighter and tighter. Something had to give — and it wasn’t the tie. With a deep, rasping creak, the two bars of old iron began to bend together.

A second later, Serge was pulling a chair up beside Matt. He tucked another broken chair leg under his arm while he undid his belt. “Real leather from the homeland,” he said, looping it around the bars next to where Matt was working.

The work didn’t go quickly or easily. Matt’s face was streaked with dust and rust as he levered against the raw wood, trying to twist his loop tighter. Serge’s belt broke from the mistreatment of the leather, and they had to replace it with Matt’s.

As they worked at bending the bars, the prisoners also argued over the next part of their escape. At least it helped pass the time. Luc had friends in the Gardens at Carrollsburg, and had visited the area several times. “The hovercraft does not run all day,” he said. “Last boat is at eight o’clock.” He glanced from the setting sun to his wrist-watch. “Which is not so far away. We must get to the guards at the gate and warn them!”

“If we run that way, we’ll be stuck right where Rob and his pals want us,” Matt objected. “All they have to do is move up their timetable, and we’ll be trapped with all the other people in the development.”

“We should be trying to get out on the other side,” Caitlin said. “Get the attention of the people driving on the parkway.”

“Luc and I tried that,” Serge replied. “We shouted. I even waved my shirt. Nobody notices. They go by too fast.”

“Our one hope is the Navy Yard,” Matt insisted. “There are military people there, and a Marine base nearby. If anyone can derail Rob’s crazy plan, they’re the people to do it.”

He heaved against the wooden stick, thinking that Luc’s tie would never be the same again. With a final grating shriek, his two bars came together.

They’d done it! The bars had been bent apart enough that a kid — even a stocky kid like Serge — could squeeze between them. Matt pushed his way through, then swung himself around until he was hanging by his hands. He stretched out his feet, searching with his toes for a hold. There! Matt rested his weight on the questing foot. The roof tiles held. Balancing against the wall, he slid down until he was sitting astride the peak of the roof.

Matt looked up at the three worried faces peering down at him. “So far, so good,” he reported. “Send down the chair leg.”

Luc leaned out, extending one of the legs from the chair Matt had broken. It was an L-shaped piece of wood, with part of a bracing piece sticking out.

Matt knew the next part wouldn’t be easy. The steep roof slanted down for a good two stories. If he could worm his way down to the rain gutters at the edge of the roof, he should be able to leap the rest of the way to the ground. If he lost control and slid down, he’d probably crash and break his neck.

While he’d been working on the bars, Matt had noticed that there were gaps among the roof tiles. That was why he’d brought his crude wooden hook. If he began to slide, he’d jam the hook between tiles and catch himself.

Above him, Luc was already squeezing his way out. Cat would follow, then Serge. Matt let himself down so he lay on top of the sun-warmed tiles, trying to spread his weight as widely as possible.

“Here goes,” he whispered, letting go his hold of the rooftree.

The angle was too steep! He began to slide down the roof tiles, faster and faster! He was out of control, and heading straight toward certain death!