Fire the Depths Page 9

  Alex cringed. “Oh, great. What do we do now?”

  “That boat is the same design as ours, the same engine,” Max replied. “Which means they can’t gain on us. We can do this. We can get to Niemand!”

  Alex stared straight ahead as they neared the cigarette boat. Through the binoculars, Max could make out the two very clear, very shocked, faces of Niemand and Rudolph. “They’ve spotted us!” Max cried out.

  “I want to see their expressions,” Alex said, “when I split their fancy little boat in two.”

  Max watched the men carefully, expecting the boat to start speeding off. But the two men were turning away. They were facing the other direction now, like they had been moments before. And in a moment, Max saw why.

  Just beyond Niemand’s boat, a black shape broke the surface of the water. From this distance it looked like some kind of sea monster. Max felt his fingers tense on the binoculars. But the monster was glinting in the sun. Which meant it was made of metal, not flesh. “I don’t believe this . . .” Max said.

  “What?” Alex demanded.

  The monster had a gyrating dish. And a periscope. And a steel hull emblazoned with these words:

  THE CONCH

  A PROPERTY OF

  NIEMAND ENTERPRISES

  “It’s a submarine,” Max said. “They were waiting for it to break the surface—that’s why they weren’t moving!”

  “They’re using it to escape, Max!” Alex said. “We don’t stand a chance.”

  Max put the binoculars down. They were maybe two hundred yards away now, not going nearly fast enough to reach Niemand.

  But maybe something else would.

  “Air travel is faster than ocean travel, Alex,” Max said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Factoid!” Alex said. “But I can’t fly and neither can you.”

  Quickly he slid his backpack off his shoulders, reached inside, and pulled out Vulturon. “We can’t. But this can . . .”

  “This is a joke, right?” Alex said. “What do you plan to do, Max, drop an apple on their heads?”

  “We don’t need one. Trust me.” Unfolding the drone, Max placed it on the deck and held his remote. “Do your job, Big V.”

  He powered on and pressed Lift. The drone rose slowly, teetering in the strong wind. Using the controls, Max guided it forward. It tilted and hovered for a moment.

  Then it shot toward the cigarette boat.

  With one hand Max held the binoculars to his eyes, and with the other he guided Vulturon. A bearded guy had emerged from the hatch of the submarine, and he was laying out a ladder connecting the two vessels. Niemand stepped up onto the ladder, but he looked scared. Neither of them seemed to be noticing the drone.

  “What do you see?” Alex said.

  “Rudolph has the bag . . .” Max replied.

  Now Vulturon was in the field of vision of the binoculars, dropping from above. Rudolph was still holding the ladder steady for Niemand. The string of the bag lay diagonally across Rudolph’s massive shoulder.

  Rudolph’s arm kept the string tightly in place. Stealing the bag away would be impossible.

  Unless . . .

  Max brought Vulturon down . . . slowly . . . until it just grazed Rudolph’s head. The big guy looked up with a start.

  Up . . . up!

  Vulturon rose, but not too far. Just barely out of Rudolph’s reach. The big guy jumped, trying to grab the drone from the air. Now his arm was pointed straight skyward.

  Perfect.

  Max would have to move fast. He’d have only one chance. He let Vulturon drop quickly—maybe five feet—at the same time activating all four claws. Before Rudolph could react, Claw #4 clasped the bag’s string, and Max yanked Vulturon upward again. The bag moved with it.

  Instead of slamming his arm down, Rudolph tried even harder to grab Vulturon. Which meant he kept reaching upward . . . grasping . . .

  Yes!

  The drone lifted the string up the length of Rudolph’s straightened arm until it was free. In a moment the string bag—and the booklet—were flying high over the Atlantic, back to Alex and Max.

  “Woo-hoo!” Alex screamed. “Remind me never to doubt you again!”

  “Okay. Alex, never doubt me again.” Max put down the binoculars. In the last couple of minutes, their boat had sped much closer to the cigarette boat. They were maybe thirty yards away.

  As Max angled the drone toward him, a gunshot rang out.

  Max nearly dropped the remote in shock. Rudolph was pointing a pistol at Vulturon. On the ladder, Niemand lifted a megaphone to his mouth. “Keep the bag in the air!” he bellowed.

  “Listen to him, Max,” Alex said.

  Max pressed Hover. Vulturon stopped in midair, about halfway between the two boats. The bag swung back and forth with the momentum.

  “Now cut your engine and bring the bag back to us, or Rudolph shoots the drone to smithereens!” Niemand said.

  “Fine!” Alex shouted. “Go ahead and shoot it! You’ll never see the booklet again!”

  “Alex, I spent weeks working on that drone!” Max snapped.

  Rudolph swung the gun toward Max.

  “Duck, Max!” Alex pushed Max off his seat. As he fell to the deck, she let go of the throttle. The engine sputtered and died. “Now listen to me, cousin. Do as they say. We won’t do any good by dying.”

  Before Max could react, he heard Niemand’s voice from the cigarette boat. “Rudolph, what has twisted your feeble mind? He’s a child. We do not shoot children!”

  As Max peered over the gunwale, Rudolph pointed his gun at Alex, who gulped back a shriek. “I think the girl is a grown-up,” the big man said.

  Max leaped up and stood in front of his cousin. He held the controller in the air for them to see. “Stop! You can have the booklet!”

  “Thank you,” Alex whispered.

  “But you have to put the gun down first!” Max insisted.

  Rudolph hesitated, then slowly lowered the gun. Max glanced quickly over his shoulder. The rescue boat was coming nearer by the second. In a few minutes they’d be here. And Max and Alex would be headed back to the SS Sibelius—without the booklet, without Vulturon, and in big, big trouble for stealing a boat.

  While Niemand would be on his way to the greatest treasure known to humankind.

  Max carefully moved Vulturon closer to the cigarette boat. The string bag swung lightly. Niemand and Rudolph were there looking up, mouths open, like baby chicks in a nest. Behind Max, Alex was silent but he could feel her frustration like a heat wave.

  When the bag was close, the two men reached up. “I got it, boss,” Rudolph said.

  “No, this time I shall do it, thank you,” Niemand replied, shoving the big man in the chest with both arms.

  Off-balance, Rudolph windmilled his arms and slipped off the boat. As he splashed into the sea, Max released Vulturon’s claws. Niemand pulled the bag close to his chest. He didn’t smile, didn’t say thanks, didn’t look Max’s way at all. Instead, he crossed over the ladder and disappeared into the submarine.

  Alex let out a groan of disappointment.

  Rudolph floundered in the sea, the current taking him past their lifeboat. “I can’t swim!” he bellowed.

  The other boat was only a few yards behind Max and Alex. Alerted by Rudolph’s screams, one of the cruise ship guards was tossing him a life preserver.

  Max turned back toward the sub, keeping a careful eye on the hatch. He heard a thick rope thump down onto the stern of his boat.

  “Hold on to that towline, kids!” shouted a familiar voice through a megaphone from behind them. “We’re pulling you all in!”

  “Great, it’s Bubbles,” Alex murmured.

  Ignoring Robles, Max guided the drone over the sub. “Alex, get ready to move,” he said softly.

  “What?”

  “When I say Aronnax, we go full throttle.” Slowly he guided Vulturon until it was hovering directly over the sub’s open hatch. Inside, the bearded man was pulling in the ladder.
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  Max waited until the last inch of the ladder was sinking into the hatch. Then he jammed the controller hard. Dive.

  Vulturon free-dropped. Max could feel sweat pouring down his face. The bearded guy’s hand was pulling the hatch shut. Go . . . GO . . .

  With a sickening metallic crunch, Vulturon smashed into the hatch door’s opening. The rotor blades whined and spun, stuck in, keeping the hatch from shutting.

  “Aronnax!” Max shouted.

  Alex pulled the throttle so hard, Max fell back. As they sped toward the sub, Max kept his eye on Vulturon. It was mangled and broken beyond repair, but Max couldn’t be happier. As long as the hatch was kept open, the sub would have to stay above water. And if it was at the surface, the bad guys weren’t getting away.

  Now the SS Sibelius lifeboat was close behind them. Mr. Robles was shouting through the megaphone, but Max’s eyes were fixed on metal handholds attached to the hull of the sub. “Pull up to the hatch!” Max shouted.

  Alex steered the boat alongside the sub and cut the engine. Grabbing the handholds, Max hoisted himself up to the hatch. He looked down through an inches-wide gap to see Niemand, the bearded guy, and two other strangers staring back up, their jaws hanging open. One of them had climbed the ladder and was trying to dislodge Vulturon. But the blades were spinning too fast and he couldn’t see how to get his hand in without losing a finger or two or three.

  “The SS Sibelius security will be boarding in one minute!” Max called down. “Good luck explaining why you were pointing guns at kids.”

  “You are deluded!” Niemand snapped.

  “You are, if you think you can escape now,” Max shot back. “I built Vulturon. I can turn it off and pull it loose. But I’ll only agree to do that if you agree to let us inside.”

  “Max, they’re here!” Alex cried.

  “This is security—” Mr. Robles announced, as the boat pulled alongside them.

  At the sound of Robles’s voice, Niemand stiffened.

  “Your choice, dude,” Max said.

  “All right!” Niemand snapped, sweat gathering on his forehead. “Do it, then—and hurry!”

  Alex scrambled up next to Max, who dug his fingers into the guts of Vulturon and pressed the collapsible switch. Instantly the drone stopped buzzing and folded inward. With a quick heave, he and Alex lifted the drone out of the hatch.

  “You go first,” Alex said, holding tight to Vulturon.

  As Max climbed down into the sub, Alex turned. Rudolph was standing in the boat now, glowering at her, whispering into Robles’s ear. “On behalf of the SS Sibelius,” Robles said, “and in accordance with international maritime law—”

  Alex lifted Vulturon high over her head. Then, with all her strength, she tossed it directly at Rudolph. With a scream of surprise, he lost his balance, slipped, and fell into the water again.

  “Nice catch,” Alex said, as she scrambled into the sub and shut the hatch behind her.

  20

  “TELL me why I shouldn’t kill you now.”

  Niemand sipped from a steaming mug of coffee. He was pacing back and forth in a small, oak-lined study crammed with bookshelves and an antique globe. Through a porthole, the sea was a murky olive green, and the only sound was the hum of the submarine engine and faint tinny music from the next room. Niemand had already changed out of his wet clothes into a black silk T-shirt, black pants, and narrow black boots, with a black-and-orange silk scarf around his neck.

  “Of course you won’t kill us,” Max said. “Because you didn’t when you had the chance.”

  Niemand’s body twitched. Coffee spilled from his cup and landed on the carpet with an audible ssssss.

  Alex elbowed Max. “My cousin can be very logical,” she explained.

  “Also,” Max barreled on, “the SS Sibelius now has Rudolph. And in case he lies, well, they saw the name of your company on the sub. Additionally, you and Rudolph bought tickets, which means the ship has your record on file. So two missing children will look bad. But two dead ones will look worse.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, her expression brightening. “That.”

  Niemand swigged down the scalding coffee and walked to the porthole. Outside, the slippery shape of an eel floated by. “Do you have any idea what you have stumbled into?” he said.

  “A submarine,” Max said.

  Niemand spun around. “You offer sarcasm?”

  “I will never understand that,” Max said.

  Alex felt her muscles tense. “He didn’t mean it that way.”

  Squatting next to Max, Niemand leaned in so close that he could count the pimples on his face. “Tell me, what is your personal dream, lad?” he demanded.

  Max gulped. He looked uncertainly at Alex. “To understand sarcasm?”

  “Bigger!” Niemand stood, turned, and pounded the top of a wooden bookshelf. “Your life’s dream! Tell me!”

  “He’s nuts,” Alex whispered into Max’s ear. “Keep him happy.”

  Max nodded. “OK . . . my dream . . . um, to keep my family from being evicted. Also to save my mom’s life.”

  “Oh?” Niemand’s face softened.

  “My aunt is very sick,” Alex explained. “My uncle had to take her away for treatment. That’s why I came to take care of Max.”

  “Ah.” Niemand nodded, his forehead furrowed. “So your attempt to sell the chest was . . .”

  “To raise money,” Alex replied. “To pay bills. We didn’t realize the significance of the chest. My aunt is Jules Verne’s great-great-granddaughter, so we figured we’d just found some of his random stuff. Until we read the note. Then I realized we had a shot at something bigger.”

  “Really . . .” Niemand pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and daubed his face. For a long time, he stared at a wall bookcase, as if trying to decide something. Then he turned back to them. “This explains a lot.”

  “It does?” Max said.

  Niemand pressed a button on a remote, and a white screen descended from the ceiling. Slowly the lights in the room dimmed, until it was darker than the glow of the sea outside the window.

  “You know, I have dreams too,” Niemand said. “Have either of you ever seen this?”

  The first slide was a giant image of a newspaper article dated 1886, with the headline “Deranged Nephew Shoots French Author Verne!” Under the headline was a line drawing of a neatly dressed, bearded guy cowering in fear as a drooling, shabby-looking young man takes a shot at him.

  “The gentleman we see is Jules Verne,” Niemand said. “The assailant is Verne’s nephew, who shot him but only managed to injure his foot, which was maimed forever.”

  “Why?” Max asked.

  “Why indeed?” Niemand said. “Verne was a quiet, distinguished man. He wrote and traveled. And traveled. And traveled. He would sail for months at a time, several times a year. Poof—he would vanish for an entire summer with no written record. His family relationships began to fray—and quite badly, as we see. What was so important about those trips? What was his nephew’s motive for attempting murder? Had he discovered something that Verne was hiding? What could he have been hiding?”

  “Maybe the nephew was just insane,” Alex said.

  “Many thought so,” Niemand replied. “But in fact, Verne had enemies. One of them was my own Niemand ancestor. He was a visionary man decades ahead of his time. He dreamed of enclosing entire civilizations in bubbles—with perfect weather, farms, businesses, homes. We could have life on other planets! Surely, my ancestor thought, Verne would be the perfect partner.”

  “Right—Verne wrote about an underwater city!” Alex said.

  “Precisely,” Niemand said. “And this is what Niemand Enterprises is all about. That dream. When the earth is a smoldering wreck—when climate change has made it uninhabitable—we will all need places to live!”

  As he picked up the remote again, the image on the screen changed. “Now . . . do either of you recognize this?”

  Alex leaned forward. “It’s the
voyage taken by the Nautilus, the submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

  “Brava,” Niemand said. “This map was found among the artifacts recovered from the Titanic in 1912. It belonged to Verne’s editor, a Frenchman named Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who framed and stored it in a watertight container. After Hetzel died, people remarked about what an unusual fuss had been taken to prevent damage to a simple map. So it was quietly auctioned off in New York in 1913, where it was bought at a bargain price by a wealthy collector . . .” He smiled. “ . . . named Niemand.”

  “You don’t look that old,” Max said.

  “Roland Niemand,” Niemand said, “my great-great-grandfather. He had developed an interest in Verne, for reasons I soon discovered. Inside the frame, he had found hidden notes from Verne to Hetzel. Nonsense rhymes, silly sentences—perhaps plans for a children’s book. It was only years later that I, Spencer Niemand, discovered a message. It described the chest in detail and hinted at a manuscript that would reveal the location of a great fortune. All my life I have been searching for this.”

  “You have a copy of that message too?” Alex said.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Max said. “It’s not the entire manuscript of The Lost Treasures—”

  “Max!” Alex said.

  Max sighed. “It’s not a secret. He has the note.”

  “Smart boy,” Niemand said, kneeling between the two. “Very smart. You remind me of myself when I was young. Well then, now that we’re stuck with each other, I have an idea. You want to find the entire book of The Lost Treasures. So do I. How about creating something historic? Finally, for the first time in generations, the uniting of the Verne and Niemand families in a common cause!”

  Alex leaped up from her seat. “You want us to work for you?”

  “With me,” Niemand said, looking from Alex to Max. “I can help you realize your dream. I have the resources to find the treasure, you have the motivation. Help me, and I’ll make sure all your bills are paid and your mother gets the finest treatment from the best doctors in the world.”

  “But you’re a liar and a violent, nasty guy,” Max said. “Why should we believe you?”