Mission Unstoppable (14 page)

“I’d really like to,” Coke replied, “but I need to get back, y’know, and poke my eyes with hot needles.”

“You should
really
take a closer look.” The guard had pulled his billy club out of its holster and was rapping it against the palm of his left hand. He had a familiar smile on his face.

“You’re not a real guard, are you?” Pep asked.

“No, I’m not.”

With that, the guard reached behind one of the machines and put on a bowler hat.

“It’s the bowler dude!” Coke shouted. “Run!”

“Not so fast!” the bowler dude said. He grabbed both of them from behind and jammed the billy club hard against their necks.

“That wasn’t very nice what you did to my brother,” he said, pulling them toward the giant vat of SPAM.

“Your brother?” Pep asked, trying to get the club away from her windpipe. “Who’s your brother?”

“The guy at Sand Mountain?” Coke asked. “You two are brothers?”

“My brother has a nasty bump on the back of his head, thanks to you kids,” the bowler dude said, tightening his grip on the club.

“Your brother threw us in a pit up there!” Coke said, struggling to break free. “He was going to leave us there to die! And you were the guys who were chasing us to the edge of the cliff in golf carts. You’ve been trying to kill us!”

“And it’s too bad we failed earlier,” the bowler dude said, breathing heavily on their necks, “because now I’ll have to do it myself.”

“What are you going to
do
to us?” Pep whimpered. She was crying now.

“SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM.” The bowler dude started singing the song made famous in the old
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
TV show. He had an evil smile on his face.

“No!” Pep shouted.

“Get in the vat!” the bowler dude instructed.

“It’s disgusting!” Pep shouted.

“I said, get
in
!” the bowler dude insisted. “And don’t try anything funny, like you did with my brother.”

“Hit him, Coke!” Pep yelled. “You know karate! Kick him! Do something!”

But Coke was powerless. When he was taught how to punch and kick in karate, the opponents just stood there and held up soft pads to absorb the blows. They never fought back. This guy had a billy club pressed against his throat. If he tried any of the karate moves he had learned, his windpipe would be crushed in a second.

Pep, on the other hand, had no reservations. She had never taken a self-defense course, but she knew there was one spot on the body where every male is vulnerable to a good, swift kick. The bowler dude had her from behind, but she bent her knee quickly and rammed her foot backward into his groin.

“Ugg!”
the bowler dude groaned.

Pep wasn’t finished. Summoning up a previously unused source of fury, she started kicking, punching, and spitting in the bowler dude’s face. He tried to hit her with the club; but he was in so much pain that he fell backward, pulling Coke and Pep with him. The three of them toppled over; and the next thing any of them knew, they had fallen into the vat of SPAM.

Pep
still
wasn’t finished. She scooped up a handful of the stuff and slapped it against the bowler dude’s eyes, blinding him, at least temporarily. Then she pushed his head down with both of her hands until it was below the surface of the liquefied SPAM.

Coke could only watch, shocked, as he grabbed the edge of the vat to prevent himself from slipping below the surface himself. He had never seen his sister show aggression before.

“That’s enough!” he yelled at her. “You’ll kill him!”

“He tried to kill
us
!” Pep yelled back as she held the bowler dude’s head under. “It’s self-defense!”

“Let’s just get out of here!” Coke said.

He pulled himself up and out of the vat, then reached down a hand to help his sister up onto the metal walkway. The bowler dude’s head was still covered by the SPAM. It wasn’t clear if he was dead or alive.

“Do you think he’ll be . . . ground up and put in cans of SPAM?” Pep asked as they ran out of the room.

“Who would know?” Coke replied.

They ran across the parking lot, trying their best to wipe off as much SPAM as possible. But it was useless. They were covered from head to toe.

“Where did you learn how to do all that self-defense stuff?” Coke asked Pep just before they reached the RV.

“Something just came over me,” she replied. “I was fighting for my life.”

Their parents must have heard them approaching, because they rushed out of the RV to greet the twins, stopping short of any hugs.

“Where
were
you two?” Mrs. McDonald said. “Is that SPAM?”

“What happened?” Dr. McDonald said. “I had no idea that canning SPAM was so messy.”

“You have no idea, Dad,” Coke said. “Let’s get out of here.”

By the time the twins changed their clothes and the family got on the road, it was already dark. They were still almost three hours from Darwin. Everybody was exhausted. The twins tried to forget what had happened in the canning room. Mrs. McDonald looked in the guidebook and found a campground near Owatonna off Interstate 35 North along the way to Minneapolis. Not too far.

They hadn’t made it all the way to the Darwin ball of twine, but they were close. It would be a two-and-a-half-hour drive in the morning.

“You should really do a dump,” Dr. McDonald told Coke as they pulled into their campsite.

“Can I do it in the morning, Dad?” he asked. “It’s really late.”

“Okay, but let’s use the regular bathroom here,” Dr. McDonald instructed the family. “Our holding tank is probably full.”

Coke gathered his toiletry bag and found the nearest bathroom, a little outhouse not far from their RV. He opened the door, looked in the mirror, and saw this written on it in lipstick:

At first, he thought it was just a bunch of random numbers or a prank played by some kids. But then he realized it was something else. It was another cipher.

“You gotta be kidding me!” he said out loud.

Quickly, he memorized the order of the numbers and then smudged the mirror to obliterate the message.

Chapter 19
Process of Elimination

A
s soon as Coke got back to the RV, he wrote out the new cipher for his sister.

“Numbers?” she asked. “Now we’ve got to figure out
numbers
?”

“
You’re
the queen of the ciphers,” he replied. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Pep looked at the cipher for a few minutes. It was incomprehensible. The only pattern she could recognize was that the top row had higher numbers than the bottom row. Whoever was tormenting them with these ciphers was making each one harder than the last. Finally, she decided the best thing to do would be to sleep on it. Maybe the answer would come to her in the middle of the night like the last time.

It didn’t.

Breakfast was cold cereal eaten out of cardboard bowls with plastic spoons. Nothing fancy. Everybody was anxious to get up to Darwin, Minnesota, and see the largest—or maybe second largest—ball of twine in the world. As they were getting ready to leave the campground, Mrs. McDonald suggested they all go out to the movies that evening. She had checked the internet and seen that there was a theater in Litchfield, just a few miles from Darwin.

Dr. McDonald pulled the RV onto Interstate 35 heading north toward Minneapolis. They had only driven a few miles down the road when he snapped his fingers.

“We forgot to do a dump back at the campground!” he exclaimed. “The holding tank is filled to the brim!”

“I’ll do it today, Dad,” Coke said. “I promise.”

“You’d better!”

To get to Darwin, you drive up I-35, and before you get to Minneapolis, you jump on I-494 briefly and then west on the smaller Route 12. From there, it’s about an hour—a straight shot into Darwin.

The town looked a little like Cawker City, Kansas, where the
other
giant ball of twine was located. Small-town America. Driving down the main street, they started to see signs:
The Twine Ball Inn. Twine Ball Antique Shop. Souvenir Twine Balls Sold Here.
Dr. McDonald made a left onto First Street. He drove by a park and a water tower, and then they saw a large gazebo covered by Plexiglas panels.

“Thar she blows!” Coke yelled.

Dr. McDonald went a block farther, turned the corner, and parked the RV on a side street.

“Be careful now,” Coke whispered to his sister as he grabbed their backpacks. “Something’s gonna happen here for sure. Something bad. We’ve got to stop it. Keep your eyes open.”

“But we don’t know
when
,” Pep whispered back. “It may not even be today.”

They walked around the corner and joined the group of people mingling around the ball of twine. It was, of course, enormous—just about filling the gazebo.

“Behold,” Mrs. McDonald said. “The largest ball of twine in the world!”

But once you’ve seen one gigantic ball of twine, you’ve pretty much seen ’em all. It was still interesting to look at, but some of the novelty had worn off.

“It looks pretty much like the other one,” noted Dr. McDonald. “I can’t believe we drove so far out of our way to see this.”

“I think this one is a little bigger than the one in Kansas,” Pep said. “It was definitely worth the trip.”

“Think of it this way, Dad,” Coke said. “Now we’ve seen the
two
biggest balls of twine in the world! How many people can say that?”

Dr. McDonald shook his head sadly and went to sit on a bench nearby to read a book. He had seen enough giant balls of twine to last a lifetime.

Mrs. McDonald seemed to be just as fascinated with the Darwin twine ball as she had been with the one in Cawker City. She insisted on reading every pamphlet and the wall plaque about the ball’s history.

Apparently, a few years before Frank Stoeber started rolling his ball of twine in Kansas, a farmer named Francis A. Johnson began rolling one in Darwin. Johnson even used a crane so he could lift the ball to continue rolling it properly.

For years, the two men had a sort of long-distance dueling-twine-ball race going as their respective balls got bigger and bigger.

After Frank Stoeber died in 1974, you would have thought Francis Johnson would have claimed victory and retired. But he kept right on going, rolling twine four hours a day, every day, until he died in 1989. By that time, his twine ball was 17,900 pounds and thirteen feet in diameter.

Mrs. McDonald went across the street to interview some locals about the twine ball
.
Coke and Pep walked among the crowd looking for suspicious characters.

Most of the people standing around looked fairly normal, but one couple caught their eyes. With clunky cameras around their necks and Minnesota guidebooks in their hands, they were obviously tourists. The man had a bushy mustache and the woman had on round, oversized sunglasses. They spoke in loud German accents.

“Vee have a ball of twine in Düsseldorf much bigger zan zees vun,” the man said to nobody in particular.

“Oh yes,” said the woman. “Our twine ball makes zees vun look like a little marble.”

A few of the locals shot glares at the German couple, but nobody argued with them. Minnesotans are known for their politeness. Coke and Pep sidled over to the couple so they could hear better.

“Our German twine ball is so large zat it exerts its own gravitational force,” boasted the man. “It influences zuh ocean tides, you know.”

“Yes,” the woman agreed. “Zare is some concern zat zuh gravitational pull of our twine ball might cause zuh moon to crash into Earth.”

The German couple looked directly at Coke and Pep as they spoke. And then the woman took off her sunglasses and the man pulled off his mustache.

“Bones!” Coke said.

“Mya!” Pep said, a little too loud.

“Shhhhh!” Mya said, putting the sunglasses back on. “We’re looking to prevent an attack. We’ve been here for two days. We’re exhausted.”

“How did you
get
here?” Pep asked. “The last time we saw you, it was at the Bonneville Salt Flats. You guys were almost dead!”

“It’s a long story,” Mya said. “The important thing is that we’re here and the twine ball is safe. So far, anyway.”

“Have you seen anything suspicious?” Coke asked.

“No,” said Bones. “But we intercepted another text message that said somebody’s gonna try something here any day. So we can’t let down our guard for a second.”

“Why don’t you take a break?” Pep said. “We’ll relieve you for a while.”

Bones and Mya looked at each other as if they weren’t sure the twins could be trusted to handle whatever might happen in their absence. But they
were
tired, and the idea of taking a break sounded good.

“That would be wonderful,” Bones said. “We’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

“Auf Wiedersehen,” Mya said.

“Do you think those two are boyfriend and girlfriend?” Pep asked her brother after Bones and Mya walked away.

“How should I know?” Coke asked, irritated. He always found gossip to be annoying.

They walked around the twine ball for a long time, pretending to look interested. In fact, they were looking at the people who really
were
interested. And then, suddenly, Coke stopped and tugged at his sister’s sleeve.

“Hey, you see that lady over there?” he whispered. “Does she look familiar to you?”

Pep looked at the tall woman on the other side of the twine ball. The scarf over her head made it hard to tell what her face looked like.

The woman was taking pictures of the ball like all the other tourists. But then, for a moment, she reached out and pressed her hand against the ball.

She was wearing white gloves.

“It’s Mrs. Higgins!” Pep exclaimed. “Our health teacher!”

“Shhhhhhh!” Coke clapped a hand over his sister’s mouth. “Be cool.”

“What’s Mrs. Higgins doing here?” Pep whispered. “Do you think it’s a coincidence?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Coke said. “Do you think it was a coincidence that the school burned down right after she locked us in the detention room?”

“Maybe she’s going to try to kill us again,” Pep said.

“I don’t think so,” Coke replied. “She doesn’t even seem to realize we’re here.”

At that moment, Mrs. Higgins took one last look at the ball of twine and walked out of the gazebo.

“Where’s she going?” Pep asked.

“I don’t know,” Coke replied, grabbing his sister’s hand, “but wherever it is, that’s where we’re going. Come on!”

Pep took out her cell phone and sent a quick text to her mother.

Mrs. Higgins crossed the street, turned the corner, and walked briskly down the same street where the RV was parked. Coke and Pep followed, ducking behind cars and bushes so they would not be seen.

Mrs. Higgins walked right past the RV and got into a red convertible parked three spaces in front of it. The car started.

“She’s leaving!” Pep whispered.

“Get in the RV!” Coke barked.

“Why?”

“Just get in!”

The RV door, as usual, was unlocked, and the key in the ignition. The twins climbed into the front seats. Coke turned the key.

“What are you doing?” his sister shouted. “You’re not old enough to drive!”

“Sez who?” Coke asked. “Look! She’s getting away! Fasten your seat belt!”

He put the RV into gear and pulled out of the parking space.

“Are you crazy?” Pep yelled. “You don’t know how to drive this thing! What if you damage the RV?”

“It’s okay,” Coke told her as he put his foot on the gas. “It’s a rental.”

The red convertible made a left at the corner and drove slowly down the street. Coke followed, keeping a respectable distance between them.

“Mom and Dad are going to
freak
!” Pep complained.

“Relax, they’ll never find out,” Coke said. “Look, we know that Mrs. Higgins is an assassin. We’ve got to find out where she’s going.”

The red convertible drove a few blocks and then turned down a short, steep hill and into the parking lot of a pizza place at the end of a strip mall. There were only two other cars in the lot, and Coke didn’t want to attract attention by joining them. Instead, he stopped at the top of the hill and drove near a guardrail that overlooked the parking lot.

“Where did she go?” Pep asked as she scanned the lot.

They got out of the RV to look around. When they glanced down, they could see the red convertible parked directly below.

“Shhhhh,” Coke said.

The twins watched as Mrs. Higgins took off her seat belt and removed her gloves. She opened the driver’s side door and got out of the convertible. Then she opened the trunk and took something out of it. It looked like a plastic container of some sort with straps on each side. She went around to the front of the convertible and began to tie the straps to the bumper.

“What’s she doing?” Pep whispered.

“I don’t know,” Coke replied. “Why would somebody strap something to the bumper of their car?”