Contents

  1 Kidnapped!

  2 Special Agent

  3 A Worm and a Mole

  4 The Text

  5 An Unlikely Alliance

  6 The Pickup

  7 Bait and Switch

  8 A Boring Expedition

  9 The Worm Turns

  10 Mole Hole

  11 Welcome Back!

  1

  Kidnapped!

  Summertime is the best.

  It’s better than best, actually. In my book, summer is an entire order of magnitude greater than best.

  Hey, I love every season, and yeah, we get all four of them here in Shopton. But how can summer not be the favorite? No school, no homework, extra sleep, tons of quality time in my personal lab. And did I mention the extra sleep? Dude, I’m sixteen. If I could, I’d sleep more than Emma, my sister’s lazy cat.

  But here’s the best thing about summer: Dad’s company always downshifts in July and August, with employees going off on vacations and whatnot. That means Dad has more time to chill with me.

  Example: The first Saturday in July, Dad and I were hiking in Theodore Roosevelt State Park, just east of town. For such a techno-genius, Dad always seemed most relaxed outdoors in natural settings—the wilder the better. Casmir Trent, Dad’s bodyguard, was with us too; Casmir’s a great guy, like an uncle to me. A former international kickboxing champion with a physique chiseled like a diamond, Casmir is the man you want watching your back. As we passed through the incredible rainbow mist at the base of Shopton Falls, I suddenly jogged around a bend, ahead of my companions. Then I pushed the button on a controller I held in my palm . . . and stood stock-still.

  Seconds later Dad and Casmir rounded the bend.

  “Okay, Tom, now where are you?” called Casmir, rubbing the top of his angular, shaved head.

  I stood no more than twenty feet directly in front of them. I didn’t answer. I didn’t move.

  “Come on, Ghost Recon,” said Dad, looking around. “I already told you I’m impressed.”

  I hopped side to side a few times.

  “See me now?” I asked.

  Dad and Casmir both turned toward the sound of my voice.

  “Amazing,” said Casmir with a grin. “No, I don’t.”

  Dad was looking right at me, so I started waving my arms.

  “Ah,” he said. “Now I’m seeing something . . . just a subtle blur in the vision field. Tom, that’s fantastic.”

  I grinned proudly. You see, I was showing off my latest invention to my teacher.

  Most folks know my dad as Thomas Swift, founder and owner of Swift Enterprises, the world-renowned company dedicated to better living through high technology. To me, of course, he’s Dad. But the fact is, he’s more than a dad to me—he’s my mentor, the guy who taught me almost everything I know about science, technology, and using my imagination.

  So whenever I put together something new in my lab, I want to show it to him. I want his stamp of approval.

  That day, I was testing the prototype of my new Chameleon Suit. It’s a full-body camouflage array plus a mask, all made of a special “intelligent” fabric that can change colors in response to local stimuli.

  “So what’s your material?” asked my dad. “Nanoplastic?”

  “Close,” I said. I deactivated the suit and peeled off the mask as Dad and Casmir approached. “It’s actually nanofabric, but it works on the same principle as the Speedster. Instead of shape-memory polymers, I used silicon nanospheres coated in microphotoreceptors.”

  “Could you put it in layman’s terms?” asked Casmir with a wry grin.

  I laughed. “Sorry,” I said. I held out the mask for Casmir to examine the fabric. “The surface isn’t a continuous piece of material. You can’t see it—not without a microscope, anyway—but it’s actually composed of millions of tiny, magnetically linked spheres.”

  “You’re making fun of me, right?” said Casmir.

  “No, no,” I said. “This is for real, man. And each nanosphere is coated with dozens of cell-size, light-sensitive photoreceptors, all linked in a network. This network can detect and code surrounding color patterns and then quickly mimic them.”

  Dad nodded happily, running his hand over the rough, scratchy surface of the fabric. “Casmir, this stuff is similar to the morphing nanoplastic in our Swift Speedster, the SW-1,” he said. “That car uses smart, active materials that magnetically reconfigure themselves on a microscopic level for shape-shifting.”

  “But in my Chameleon Suit,” I said, “the materials don’t change shape. Instead, they change color—but they do it very fast, in the blink of an eye.”

  “This all sounds suspiciously like magic,” said Casmir, raising his bushy eyebrows.

  “Well, you’ve heard the old Arthur C. Clarke quote, of course,” said my dad, eyes twinkling.

  “No sir, but I get the feeling I will now,” said Casmir.

  Dad laughed and gestured to me.

  “It’s my favorite quote of all time, Casmir,” I said. Then I cleared my throat and deepened my voice dramatically. “Mr. Clarke said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ ”

  Casmir Trent nodded. “I like that,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  We started hiking again. The park trails were wide, so we walked side by side. Theodore Roosevelt State Park is one of my favorite places in the world. Tucked between Mount Shopton to the north and a jagged ridge called Blue Crest to the south, the valley is full of wildlife and tall, old pines. The place just totally and seriously rocks.

  “Anyway,” said my dad, “I imagine a garment that lets you blend into your surroundings will be a very popular item. We could sell a lot of these. Have you tested it in other types of environments?”

  “A few,” I said. “It works well in trees or bushes, as you just saw, and against any monochromatic background—an adobe wall, a rock cliff, any snowscape, places like that. And it’s awesome in dark areas or deep shadows; you totally vanish. But it doesn’t do as well in a really dynamic environment, like a crowded street or a mall or something.”

  “Yes, that makes sense,” said Dad.

  We were still a good mile from the trailhead where we’d parked our Land Rover. A path fork was just ahead. One fork led back down to the trailhead; the other ran north up Mount Shopton in a series of switchbacks. As I glanced at the trail marker, a white wooden post, I heard the rumble of an engine.

  Casmir frowned. “This area is off-limits to vehicles,” he said, stepping instinctively in front of us.

  “Maybe it’s a ranger patrol,” I said. “They drive up here sometimes for trail maintenance.”

  “You’ve seen this?” asked Casmir sharply.

  Casmir’s job is to be suspicious, so I didn’t take his tone personally. “Yeah,” I said.

  Casmir visibly relaxed. He turned to me with a smile and started to speak.

  And of course, that’s when it happened.

  A big black Jeep Liberty suddenly roared around the trail’s curve, kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel. Casmir barely had time to spin around when the Jeep veered into him, clipping him with its front fender and knocking him a good ten feet through the air. I didn’t see Casmir land because the Jeep swerved into a crazy power-slide between us. While still moving, its doors burst open.

  Four guys in ski masks leaped out.

  “Run, Tom!” shouted Dad.

  I didn’t need a second warning; I took off like a shot. My camo suit was floppy and heavy and difficult to run in, so I figured I was toast. But all four of the masked men went straight for Dad. When I glanced back, they were hauling him into the Jeep.

  I skidded to a halt.

  “Don’t stop, Tom!” cried my dad. “Run! Run!”

  It was one of the worst moments of my life. I knew I couldn’t save Dad. But I couldn’t just . . . flee. Almost without thinking, I punched the controller button in my hand. The Chameleon Suit activated.

  I could hear strips of duct tape being torn off a roll as the kidnappers secured my father in the back of the Jeep. Then two of the masked men leaped out.

  “He was right there!” growled one.

  “He disappeared!” cried the other.

  Then the driver’s window rolled down. Another masked face leaned out.

  “Forget sonny boy!” snarled the voice—of a woman! “Ya’ll get back in the car. Let’s get gone!”

  I was shaking with adrenaline, fear, and anger, as you might imagine. But among all the other things he taught me, Dad always stressed how important it is to observe things carefully, especially when you’re excited.

  Learn the art of observation, Tom, he always said. Make it a habit.

  So I remained just rational enough to note the woman’s strong Southern drawl. And I noted that the Jeep took the upper trail toward the Mount Sharpton switchbacks, not the one heading downhill toward the trailhead.

  Then I ran to Casmir Trent.

  He was unconscious, crumpled in a heap, and his left leg looked broken or dislocated. His face was scraped and bleeding, too. It looked bad.

  Quickly I pulled up my sleeve to reveal my wristwatch.

  “We’ve got a serious emergency, Q.U.I.P.,” I said. “This is code red.”

  The wristwatch beeped once, and then a grim voice barked, “I’ve got 9-1-1 on the line.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  My “wristwatch,” of course, is way more than just a timepiece. It’s a full wireless communications center an d, usually, the place where Q.U.I.P. resides. Q.U.I.P. (a.k.a. Quantum Utilizing Interactive Processor) is a chip; it’s also my man Friday, an intelligent PDA that I consider my backup brain.

  The 9-1-1 dispatcher came on, and I gave her a frenzied summary of what just happened. Then with Q.U.I.P.’s help I relayed the coordinates for our location.

  “We’ll have a medivac over you in five minutes,” she said coolly.

  “What about my dad?” I said. I could still hear the Jeep roaring back and forth up the switchback trail above me.

  “We have a police chopper heading for Mount Shopton,” she replied. “Now I’m going to talk to you about the victim there for the next few minutes.”

  “Right,” I said. “Of course.”

  I kneeled next to Casmir, answering her questions and following her first-aid instructions. Minutes later I heard the thrumming of a helicopter. I could also hear sirens in the distance, coming from the direction of the park’s main road.

  Then, abruptly, a massive explosion rattled the branches all around me. As the concussive wave passed, I jumped to my feet and stared up the mountainside.

  Halfway up the slope of Mount Shopton, a huge fireball rose into the air!

  2

  Special Agent

  The next morning, I sat in the executive conference room on the thirtieth floor of Swift Tower, headquarters of Dad’s company. To my right sat my mother, looking calm but a little dazed. My sister, Sandy, sat fidgeting to my right. Around the long oval table, key members of Dad’s staff silently perused copies of the Shopton Police report.

  A tall woman burst into the room.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, briskly sitting on the far side of my mother.

  Dad once called Yvonne Williams, his vice president and chief financial officer at Swift Enterprises, “the most competent person I’ve ever met.” She isn’t a scientist or engineer, but her head for business is scary good. Because of her capable oversight of company finances, Dad had always had more time to focus on his research projects.

  She placed a hand on Mom’s arm. “I’m so sorry, Mary. This is terrible. But you hang in there. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  “Thanks, Yvonne,” replied my mom quietly.

  Yvonne and her husband, Leonard Williams, a patent attorney, were also good family friends. Leonard was a great football player in college; he still held the Colonial Conference season record for quarterback sacks. Dad and I loved talking football with him.

  Yvonne looked around the room. “As you all know, this is more than a company crisis,” she said. “It’s a personal one. And I, for one, am not willing to rely on the Shopton Police to handle it alone.”

  “Hear, hear!” called Harlan Ames, head of security. He sat directly across the table from me.

  “The reason I’m late is that the district attorney is talking to federal authorities now, which is good news, I hope,” said Yvonne. “As a result, however, the FBI plans to issue dozens of fairly intrusive requests for background info on Swift operations. I had to attend to that.”

  Hector Rodriguez, Dad’s personal assistant, shook his head in disgust. “I fielded about eight million phone calls this morning from investigators asking foolish personal questions,” he said. Hector was my dad’s right-hand man, and he was taking the kidnapping news pretty hard. “Why aren’t they out investigating Mr. Swift’s enemies instead of us?”

  “Dad doesn’t have enemies,” I said.

  “Rivals, then,” said Hector. I knew who he was talking about: Foger Utility Group. FUG was never one to shy from playing dirty. But I figured even Randall Foger wouldn’t stoop to kidnapping a competitor.

  “What about TRB?” blurted my sister.

  I started to answer and then had to nod. “Good point,” I conceded.

  The Road Back, or TRB, was a fringe radical group opposed to all forms of modern science and technology. As a result of this belief, they saw high-tech companies like Swift Enterprises and Foger Utility Group as evil.

  “Exactly!” exclaimed Hector. “Instead of snooping through Mr. Swift’s PDA, they should be tracking down those insane fanatics.”

  “I’m sure they’re checking out all the obvious suspects, Hector,” said my mom gently. She really valued Hector’s loyalty to her husband. “The police are just being thorough.”

  Harlan Ames nodded at this. “You never know where you might find a connection that turns out to be a clue,” he said.

  Hector sighed. “I suppose so.”

  Yvonne Williams nodded at Mr. Ames. “What do you have for us, Harlan?”

  Harlan held up the local police’s report. “According to this, the Jeep was totally destroyed in that fireball,” he said. Harlan looks like a congenial, gray-haired grandfather, but he’s gruff and tough as nails. He was an FBI field agent for twenty years before Dad hired him as head of security for Swift Enterprises. “The good news: Nobody was in the vehicle when it exploded. The bad news: They found absolutely no trace of an escape from the site. Nothing!”

  “And no word from the kidnappers?” asked Yvonne. “No ransom demand?”

  Harlan shook his head grimly. “Nothing yet,” he said. “We’re taping every incoming call, and the Geo-Net Tracer software is running. It should be a good test.”

  Swift’s computer-lab folks were developing an amazing new system that could instantly trace and map the geographical origin of cell phone calls.

  Yvonne looked at my mom. “What about your home phones, Mary?” she asked.

  “Monitored,” said Mom. She held up a cell phone. “All calls from unrecognized numbers will forward automatically to my cell.” I could see her hand shaking a bit, so I wrapped my arm around her shoulder.

  “He’ll be okay, Mom,” I said.

  She gave me a thin smile. “I know.” Then she said, “What’s the latest on Casmir?”

  “I’ve got Q.U.I.P. monitoring the hospital updates,” I said. I held up my wrist unit. “Q.U.I.P.?”

  “Yes, my liege,” he replied in an English accent.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’d better have good news on Casmir Trent.”

  “Oh yes,” said Q.U.I.P. “Mr. Trent is stabilized, conscious, doing quite well, actually. Multiple rib fractures, a broken collarbone, some contusions, and so forth. The concussion was second degree, but motor skills are fine, no memory deficits, no disorientation.”

  “Prognosis?” I asked.

  “Looks good, man!”

  I squinted at my wrist. “Q.U.I.P., you’re programmed to be a data-rich artificial intelligence. Can we get some detail?”

  Q.U.I.P. sighed. “I’m monitoring the hospital’s online report from the care station. Under ‘prognosis,’ it reads, ‘Looks good.’ ”

  “Oh,” I said.

  To my left, Sandy, squirmed. She’s fifteen, just a year younger than me. Sandy’s too smart for her own good, so she gets bored easily. In this case she was anxious to get out and start looking for Dad. She’s a big fan of math puzzles, brainteasers, and mysteries. I knew how Sandy thought: She was figuring she could crack the case on her own if she could just get out and gather a few clues.

  To be perfectly honest, I felt likewise.

  “So have we done all we can?” asked Yvonne.

  Harlan Ames stood up. “I’m taking our security team up to the kidnapping site this morning,” he said. He turned to my mother with a grim, earnest look. “I assure you that this company will use all available resources to find Mr. Swift.”

  Suddenly the conference room door burst open. Mrs. Henderson, Yvonne Williams’s personal assistant, stood in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Williams,” she said. “These folks insisted on seeing you . . . immediately.”

  She stepped aside as three men in dark suits filed in, followed by a very neat and severe-looking woman in a dark blue jacket and skirt. Behind them, two Swift security guards slipped in as well. Yvonne stood up to greet them.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “Are you Yvonne Williams?” asked the dark-suited woman.

  “Yes.”

  Harlan Ames planted both hands flat on the conference table, glaring at his security team.

  “Who are these people?” he barked.

  The woman stepped forward quickly and nodded at him.

  “Mr. Ames, I’m Special Agent Francina Dawson, Federal Bureau of Investigation,” she said. Her speaking style was very clipped and formal. “I’ll be in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Thomas Swift.” Then she gestured to each of the three men with her. “This is Agent Fitzpatrick, Agent Bartley, and Agent Bogenn. They’ll be posted here, effective immediately.”

 

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