Unstoppable: Breakaway Part 2

Amy started to say something, but Dan cut her off. "We can't waste time sending them all the way home just to talk to their dad on the phone. The only way we're getting this done in time is if they're here."

There was a roar behind them as another plane lifted off into the skies above Tunis.

"Fine," Amy said. "But as soon as we're done here, they both go back to Attleboro. No arguments. Agreed?"

Dan met his sister's green eyes. For the first time, they resembled stone. "Agreed."

Amy watched as Dan stood by the plane, fending off angry questions from Hamilton and Ian. He must have been convincing, since he managed to talk them all back inside. Dan went up the stairs to help Jake and Atticus with their things, leaving Ian alone at the back of the line.

Amy's heart ached as Ian looked at her across the runway. He was a Kabra, so his hurt was concealed beneath a veil of pride, but Amy could see it as plain as the desert sun burning over her head. She knew she was doing this for Ian's own good, but she also knew how much their mission distracted him from what he had lost. Maybe one day he'd understand.

Amy turned away, fixing her eyes on the terminal and heading for it.

"Amy! Wait!"

She turned back to see Pony rushing up toward her.

"Sorry!" Pony said when he reached her, huffing and puffing. "Almost forgot!" He pulled a small padded envelope out of his pocket and held it out to her. "Some mail came after you left Attleboro. Wanted to bring it to you."

"Thanks."

Pony ran back to the jet, saying good-bye to Jake and Atticus as Dan led them out of the plane. Amy turned the package over. Her name and address were on the front, but there was no return. She tore it open and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

Amy, Sorry again for messing things up with the serum. Took a look around the lab and figured out how to make one more dose. Thought you might need it.

Sammy Mourad Amy dug back into the envelope, heart racing. She found something inside and pulled it out. It was a small gla.s.s vial, half filled with serum.

"Hey, Amy, whatcha got there?" asked Dan.

Amy dropped the vial back into the envelope and stuffed it into her backpack.

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing at all."

Tunis, Tunisia Less than an hour later, they had found themselves a hotel and Atticus was leading the group through Tunis on Avenue Habib Bourguiba. Amy had to admit that Ian was right. The avenue was nothing if not fashionable. She didn't see any discos, but she did see smart-looking shoppers darting in and out of boutiques or lounging in the sidewalk cafes. The street itself was lined with well-manicured ficus trees and ornate black streetlights. All of it sat beneath a shockingly blue sky.

"Att," Jake said. "You're sure Dad's library is this way?"

"Yep. Past here and into the medina."

"The medina?" Dan asked.

"It's like the old part of the city," Atticus said. "Well, the old part of the city that still stands. There's been a major city on this site for nearly three thousand years. The really old part of the city is the ruins of Punic Carthage to the north."

"Puny Carthage?" Dan asked. "Like, little tiny wimpy Carthage?"

"No," Atticus said. "Punic like Phoenician. See. Okay. We don't know much for sure about Carthage, but we think it might have been founded by a Phoenician queen named Elissa. Only, when Virgil wrote about her in the Aeneid, he decided to call her Queen Dido instead. Anyway, what we know about her is kind of a mix of legend and possibly fact."

"That's pretty confidence inspiring, Atticus," Dan said.

"Give me a break! We're talking like three thousand years of history here. Anyway, the legend and maybe sorta kinda fact is that Elissa and her brother Pygmalion were supposed to share the throne of Phoenicia when their father died. But! Pygmalion killed their father and then killed Elissa's husband. Not being suicidal, I guess, Elissa took a bunch of her people and got as far away from her brother as she could."

"Apparently," Jake said, "the locals weren't too thrilled to have her and her people here, so she told the local king she only wanted as much land as could be encompa.s.sed by a single ox hide. When he said okay, she tore the ox hide into tiny little strips and surrounded an entire hill with it. Totally conned the guy."

"Or," Amy said, "she did what she had to do to protect herself and her people."

"Right," Jake said. "The end totally justifies the means."

"I didn't say that!"

"So," Dan cut in as he wedged himself in between Amy and Jake, sending them to opposite sides of the sidewalk. "If Carthage was such a big deal, then why do we know so little about it?"

"Because," Jake said, "Rome completely wiped them out after the Third Punic War."

"Then, after the Romans," Atticus said, "this place was conquered again by the Vandals - no, not that kind of vandal, Dan. They were a Germanic tribe that conquered a lot of North Africa and the Mediterranean - and then the Byzantines and then the Arabs. Then the French took over, and now they're on their own."

"Man, everybody wanted a piece of Carthage."

"It was a pretty good strategic location and the farming was amazing, apparently. When Rome was in charge, they called the place the granary of the empire."

"Did they grow any silphium?" Amy asked.

Atticus shrugged.

"Olivia seemed to think so," Dan said.

"All we know is she thinks silphium had some connection to Carthage," Atticus said. "What that is, is anyone's guess. Leonardo da Vinci suggested she look for it on the 'Island of the Athenian,' but since Athens was the capital of Greece and not an island, Olivia figured it was his idea of a joke."

"Hilarious," Dan said.

"So what is silphium, exactly?" Amy asked.

"Some kind of plant," Jake said. "We don't even know for sure what it looked like, since it's been extinct for something like a thousand years."

Amy shook her head. "If we don't know what it looked like, how can we be sure it's extinct? I mean, there could be groves of the stuff and we wouldn't know."

They had moved from the ficus-lined Habib Bourguiba to a broad plaza of what looked like white marble crisscrossed by sharp geometric patterns. Towering in front of them was a great stone edifice with an arched tunnel cutting straight through it.

"Bab el Bahr!" Atticus marveled. "The entire medina used to be surrounded by a stone wall. The wall is gone now but these portals still remain."

The plaza was packed with people moving in every direction. A babel of conversations in French and Arabic mixed with the splash of a fountain and the shouts of the sellers standing at umbrella-covered stalls.

Amy held her breath as they started down the road into the medina. It was incredibly narrow, hemmed in by lines of merchants' stalls stacked up against the two- or three-story buildings on either side. The kiosks were teeming with goods, laid out on tables and hanging from the roofs of the stalls. Everywhere the kids looked, there were glittering stacks of bra.s.s and tin, along with elegantly shaped ceramics and bolts of fabrics in brilliant reds and greens and lapis blue. Dark alleyways and winding arteries shot off the main road in a confusion of directions.

When Amy turned to Dan, she saw he was doing the same thing she was. Scanning rooftops and open windows, examining the faces of the sellers that seemed to be everywhere. It was second nature to them now, to look for an ambush.

Something caught Amy's eye and she veered off the street to a merchant's kiosk.

"What's up?" Dan asked, moving in next to her.

"Look at these, Dan, aren't they pretty?"

Amy picked up one of the man's beaten copper pots and handed it to her brother. "One o'clock," she whispered. "By the rug merchant's stall."

Dan lifted the copper pot up into the light, then turned it like he was examining a defect. Jake and Atticus appeared behind them.

"What's going on?" Jake asked.

"Oh, nothing," Amy said to Jake just loud enough so he could hear. "We were looking at these for Nellie. You know how she loves to be ambushed with gifts."

Dan put the pot back. "Guy in the hat?" he asked. "Doesn't look like any of the ones we've seen."

"Who knows how many guys Pierce has," Amy whispered.

"There's another one," Atticus said. "Near the flower stall. Westerner. New to the area."

"How can you tell?"

"His face is pink," Jake said. "Sunburn."

"What do we do?" Dan asked.

"Follow him," Jake said. "See what we can learn."

Amy thought a second, then backed away from the table. "No. We go back to the hotel."

"But he could lead us right to their base," Jake whispered urgently. "We could see how many of them there are, find out their plans -"

"Get ourselves killed. No," Amy said. "We stick to the plan! Get the silphium and get out."

But Jake was already on the move. Amy reached for his sleeve but he was too fast. Jake threw himself into the river of shoppers and disappeared around a corner. Amy whirled around to find that the man in the hat was gone, too.

"Stay here!" she yelled at Dan and Atticus before diving into the crowd. Did Jake even care that he could get himself killed?

Amy struggled through the crowded medina. Despite her best efforts, she seemed to slam into shoppers at every step, earning her insults in at least three languages. She searched the chaos for a glimpse of Jake or the man with the hat, but all she saw were kiosks and bodies and twisting roads.

"There he is!" Dan called out.

Jake appeared at the other end of an alley, speeding down a street that ran parallel to their own.

"I told you two to wait!" Amy yelled over her shoulder as she took off after Jake.

Amy screamed inwardly as Dan shot past her, pounding down the alleyway that connected the two streets. Jake had disappeared again by the time they spilled into the road, but Amy caught sight of the man with the hat as he headed toward a towering mosque.

"If we take that road, we can get between him and Jake," Amy said.

Bra.s.s and iron clattered against the ground as Amy barreled past more merchants, jostling their stalls. She ignored their cries, keeping her eye on the man as he slipped expertly through the crowds. When they were just feet from the plaza, the man turned down a stone-roofed alley. Half a second later, Jake emerged from the crowds and followed him in.

Amy, Dan, and Atticus stopped at the mouth of the alley, panting. Amy peered down its length. It was long and even narrower than the streets. The harsh sun only managed to light the first few feet, and beyond was a murk so dark it looked like night. Somewhere down there, Jake was alone with a monster.

Amy looked back at Dan wheezing behind her. He nodded and they both began to move. Atticus started to join them but Amy held him back.

"We need a lookout," she whispered.

"But -"

Amy raised a finger to her lips to silence Atticus and then followed Dan into the alley. It was even darker than she imagined and full of the vinegary smell of moldering trash. The sounds of the city and the markets were muted by the alley's walls, filling the tunnel with a whispering hush. Amy crept forward, her body on high alert. Dan had slipped farther ahead and was lost in the shadows. Amy felt panic building up in her. Then a single shaft of sunlight from a gap in the stone roof fell some thirty feet ahead. There was a flash of white as the man in the hat stepped into it.

"Amy Cahill," the man said. His voice was pleasant, but had a flinty British accent. "And Dan and Jake. I believe that's Atticus Rosenbloom watching the alley. Am I right?"

Amy found a loose paving stone at her feet. She grabbed it and held it at the ready. "What do you want?"

"To talk."

"About what?"

The man turned toward her, one hand reaching inside his jacket.

"He's got a gun!" Jake cried as he exploded out of the gloom only feet from Amy. The man was ready for him, though. He pivoted toward Jake, but Amy leaped up and shoved Jake into the brick wall, putting herself between him and the British mercenary.

"Amy! Jake!"

It was Atticus. A tide of bodies was pushing past him and into the alley. More of Pierce's goons. It was a trap! Amy turned back to the man in the hat just as Dan slammed into him from behind.

"Dan!"

There was nothing to do now but fight. The man stumbled at Dan's strike, but managed to push him aside so Dan went reeling farther into the alley. It was the perfect distraction. Jake appeared by Amy's side and together they took the man by the shoulders and flung him around and into the wall. He hit the brick with a satisfying oof, and Jake swung for him. There was a crack as he connected with the man's chin, sending him slumping into the dirt.

Jake looked back at Amy, but they barely had a second to relax before a blast of white light filled the alley. Amy staggered back, shielding her eyes. There was another flash, and another. This time from the man on the ground. His hand had emerged from his jacket and he was holding some sort of a device. Not a gun but . . .

"Smile, kids!"

Everything snapped into focus. Not a gun. A camera. A flash went off and Amy turned toward the charging ma.s.s of people to face a firing squad of flashes. Everyone was shouting. A slight woman in a tan suit pushed a microphone in her face.

"Amy! Do you plan to brutalize any other people while in Tunis or just this innocent reporter?"

Amy's mouth fell open, stunned. The reporters surged forward, crowding the kids deeper into the alley. Dan picked himself up and joined Amy and Jake. The man in the hat got up, camera in hand. There was blood running down his chin, but he was smiling.

"Hey, Jake! How does it feel to join a global criminal conspiracy?"

"Was it hard to bring your innocent little brother into it, too?"

"Dan! Will you ever be able to wipe your nose without your big sister's okay?"

"Leave us alone!" Amy shouted, and ran at them, driving her way through the crowd, which had become as thick as a forest. Hands reached out to her from every direction as the reporters pushed their business cards into her pockets.

"Call me, Amy!"

"How does it feel to be personally responsible for the death of Evan Tolliver?"