The 39 Clues - "The Sword Thief"

[tirepanted3]

“Stop them!” Dan and Amy ran toward the tunnel, shouting as loud as they could.

Quickly, the flight official stepped into their path. “Boarding passes, per favore?” he asked, his face a mix of bafflement and annoyance.

Amy watched helplessly as Ian and Natalie slipped into the tunnel’s long shadow.

They could hear the plane’s hatch shut with a dull thump.

“They’re—they’re the Kabras!” Dan said. “Evil Kabras. Famoso, evillo, Kabritos! They are holding our au pair hostage!”

As a crowd of curious onlookers gathered, the official repeated, “No boarding passes?”

He was looking straight at Amy. Dan glanced frantically her way, his eyes screaming, You’re the older one—do something!

The thoughts were firing around in Amy’s brain like a broken laser-light show. How could the Kabras be here? She and Dan had left them unconscious in a smoldering room in Venice. Who had rescued them? How had they recovered so fast? How had they stolen the tickets?

Everyone was looking at Amy now. The whole airport. She hated when people stared at her. She hated it even worse when it involved being humiliated by the Kabras. They were always one step ahead, always one Clue closer to the Cahill secret. No matter how hard Amy and Dan tried, the Kabras were smarter, faster, cooler—and ruthless. They were impersonating Dan and Amy. They were about to ambush a defenseless au pair. How could Amy possibly communicate all this? She opened her mouth to try, but it was too much. Too many eyes. She felt as if someone had tied off her vocal cords. Nothing came out.

“Ohhh- kay, thank you, Amy,” Dan said. “Um, look, dude—officer—these guys? The Kabras? Well, actually, they’re a guy and a girl? They ripped us off, okay? Comprendo? The tickets say Cahill and they’re not Cahills—well, technically they are, but it’s a different branch of the family, they’re like Janus, I mean Lucians, and we don’t know what we are, I mean what branch, but we’re related—anyway, we’re all kind of involved in something, sort of this battle about our grandmother’s will, you could say, but it’s kind of a long story and THEY HAVE TO BE STOPPED! PRONTO!”

“Sorry,” the official said, “if you have no boarding—”

Amy grabbed Dan by the arm. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. They needed to find Ms. Rinaldi—or the supervisor who had summoned her. That person would rank higher than anyone here. Maybe there was still a chance. Maybe they could stop the plane from taking off.

She and Dan ran toward the corner again and rounded it. They raced past the place where they had collided with the Kabras, and immediately they emerged into the main corridor. In the distance they could see a line of shops. To their right was a supply closet and a glass door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

To their left, a knot of onlookers surrounded the entrance to the women’s room, where a group of EMT workers emerged, carrying a woman on a stretcher. Police were running in to join them from all directions.

Chaos. Total pandemonium. Amy strained to see around the rush of people as she ran, hoping to find a familiar face.

There.

A flash of blond hair, tossed over a shoulder, drew Amy’s eyes to the right. “Dan, look!”

“Oh, now you can talk,” Dan said. “What?”

Winding swiftly through the crowd was a tall woman in a Japan Airlines uniform about a size too large.

The sight of the familiar figure was enough to unlock Amy’s loudest outdoor voice. “IRINA!” she blurted out.

There was no mistaking Irina Spasky—the stiff military bearing, the bladelike motion of the shoulders as she walked. Irina was another of the Cahill family bent on finding the 39 Clues. Like Ian and Natalie, she was ruthless. Unlike Ian and Natalie, she had been trained in espionage by the KGB.

Irina did not turn. She showed no outward signs of hearing Amy, aside from a quickening of her step.

Then she disappeared into the throng as if she’d never been there.

“Stop her!” Dan sprinted forward, nearly colliding with a rather sour-looking man in a wheelchair.

“Polizia!” the man shouted, lifting his cane as if to whack Dan over the head.

Dan ducked. Amy pulled him away, trying to keep an eye on Irina. They plowed forward, elbowing their way around passengers.

When they emerged into a less crowded area near the end of the terminal, Irina was nowhere to be seen. “She’s gone,” Dan said.

“I—I don’t believe this,” Amy said, catching her breath. “She was working with Ian and Natalie. They sabotaged us together.”

“Are we sure that was her?” Dan asked. “I mean, how would Irina manage to get that uniform?”

Before he finished the question, a voice shouted in Italian over a bullhorn, and the crowd quickly parted. A small ambulance made its way through the airport, siren blaring.

Murmurs were passing through the crowd, mostly in languages Amy didn’t understand. But she spotted a couple with sunglasses, lots of cameras, awful Hawaiian shirts, and vapid smiles. “Look, Dan—Americans,” she said. “Let’s listen. . . .”

They both wandered closer until they could hear snatches of conversation. The people were talking about the woman on the stretcher.

Dan looked confused. “She was salted in the ladies’ room?”

“Assaulted,” Amy said. “She must have been the flight supervisor, Dan! Irina knocked her out and took her uniform.”

“Wow,” Dan replied, looking almost impressed.

Amy glanced toward the window, where she saw the jet slowly backing away from gate 4 and onto the tarmac.

They were leaving. Detached from the tunnel, taxiing for the runway.

Amy panicked. “Don’t look now, but they’re going!”

“Where’s the door? We can still run after them!”

“Right. You do that, Dan. Meanwhile I’ll try to talk my way onto the next flight—a ticket for one, while they’re scraping your remains out of the jet engine that sucked you in.” Amy began running again, back toward the reservation desk. “Or you can come with me!”

Outside, the windows of flight 807 were dull silver-black holes in the distance. Amy knew that behind one of them was Nellie, in a situation no human being should ever have to face.

She was alone with the Kabras.