Trouble in Paradise Read online

  ATAC BRIEFING FOR AGENTS FRANK AND JOE HARDY

  MISSION:

  The son of Don Ricardo, the UN Ambassador from St. John, has gone missing—and we are sending you to locate him.

  LOCATION:

  St. John, USVI

  POTENTIAL VICTIMS:

  Esteban Calderon, the son of the ambassador, and whoever else his kidnappers have harmed.

  SUSPECTS:

  We have very few clues. The police on St. John have hit a wall in their investigation.

  THIS MISSION REQUIRES YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION.

  THIS MESSAGE WILL BE ERASED IN FIVE SECONDS.

  WATCH OUT FOR OUR NEXT CASE: #13: The Mummy’s Curse

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover designed by Lisa Vega

  Cover photo copyright © 2006 by

  Jeff Rotman/Iconica/Getty Images

  Ages 8-12

  kids.simonandschuster.com

  1006

  Caribbean Crimes...

  “You’ll find everything you need in the package,” Q went on. “Since St. John is part of the United States, you won’t need international cell phones—just bring your own. You have reservations at the Buccaneer’s Lair Hotel, right in the heart of Cruz Bay. You can walk there from the ferry dock. It’s where Esteban was staying when he disappeared.”

  “Don’t worry, boss,” Frank said to the screen, “we’ll find this guy for you.”

  “That’s about it, boys,” Q finished. “Good luck, and happy traveling. If you get lucky and wind up the case quickly, you’re, ahem, free to spend the rest of your week on the beach.”

  “Cool!” we both said at once.

  “Oh—and this disc, as usual, will alter itself in five seconds … four … three … two … one …”

  The screen switched to a pattern of onrushing stars, and the pounding reggae music of Insane Generation blasted out of the speakers.

  #1 Extreme Danger

  #2 Running on Fumes

  #3 Boardwalk Bust

  #4 Thrill Ride

  #5 Rocky Road

  #6 Burned

  #7 Operation: Survival

  #8 Top Ten Ways to Die

  #9 Martial Law

  #10 Blown Away

  #11 Hurricane Joe

  #12 Trouble in Paradise

  Available from Simon & Schuster

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Aladdin Paperbacks edition October 2006

  Copyright © 2006 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Designed by Lisa Vega

  The text of this book was set in Aldine 401BT.

  THE HARDY BOYS MYSTERY STORIES and HARDY BOYS UNDERCOVER BROTHERS are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006926057

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1178-4

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-1178-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4424-6533-6 (ebook)

  Chapter 1: Bats in the Belfry

  Chapter 2: Surprise Package

  Chapter 3: Welcome to Paradise

  Chapter 4: The Buccaneer’s Lair

  Chapter 5: The Shadows Creep Closer

  Chapter 6: Jaws of Death

  Chapter 7: Undercover Agents

  Chapter 8: The Chase Is On

  Chapter 9: The Pirates’ Lair

  Chapter 10: Surprise, Surprise

  Chapter 11: The Worm Turns

  Chapter 12: Walking the Plank

  Chapter 13: The Deep

  Trouble in Paradise

  1.

  Bats in the Belfry

  I was hanging in midair, dangling from a rope. Flames roared up at me from below, singeing my brand-new, fur-lined winter boots.

  Next to me, my brother Joe hung from an identical rope under a pair of huge, cast-iron church bells that rang out every time we squirmed. And we had to squirm a lot, to avoid getting burned by the intense heat coming up from below.

  The smart thing to do in a situation like this is to climb up to the top of the belfry. But when your wrists are firmly tied to the rope, and they’re holding up all your weight, that’s easier said than done.

  “Any ideas?” Joe asked me, raising his knees to his chest so his feet wouldn’t get burned.

  “I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Give me a second, will you?”

  “I would, if we had a second to spare. And aren’t you supposed to be the one with all the bright ideas?”

  It’s true. Between Joe and me, I’m the brother with the brainy reputation—although Joe’s grades are mostly as good as mine. But I’m a year older, and Joe always looks to me for inspiration when we’re in trouble.

  But let me tell you, it’s tough to come up with bright ideas when your foot’s cooking!

  “Start climbing!” I shouted over the noise of the bells, which was unbelievably loud. (No wonder the Hunchback of Notre Dame was deaf.)

  “Right.”

  Using our knees to grab hold of the ropes, we moved like inchworms, lifting ourselves higher one handhold at a time.

  “That’s it!” I yelled. “Faster!”

  Joe looked down, and I followed his gaze through the choking smoke. The floor of the belfry was a leaping, dancing inferno. The fire was climbing toward us a lot quicker than we could shimmy upward.

  Still, it was the only way we could stay alive long enough for me to think of a better plan.

  We kept it up, coughing and struggling to breathe. The ropes burned our hands and wrists as we climbed.

  “Hot for December, huh?” Joe cracked between coughs.

  He just can’t help himself. It doesn’t matter if we’re facing imminent death—a good one-liner is too tempting for Joe to pass up.

  “Ha, ha. I’m gonna die laughing,” I said, coughing my guts up. “Keep climbing.”

  “Bro,” Joe said, looking up at the bells, “we’re gonna run out of room pretty soon.”

  He kept talking after that, but by now we were so close to the bells—only about twenty feet away—that every word was drowned out by clangs.

  In about a minute, we’d be right alongside the bells, and they would start smashing into us. With the flames reaching higher along every wall, the metal of the bells would be red-hot, and we’d be …

  Wait a second—that gave me an idea!

  “Joe!”

  He didn’t hear me. I reached out with my foot and tapped him on the behind. He yelled something at me, looking annoyed—but at least he was looking at me now. If he couldn’t hear, he could at least read my lips.

  “I’ve got an idea!” I said, slowly mouthing the words so he could understand.

  He nodded, showing he was with me.

  “The bells will be hot. We can use the heat to burn through the ropes!”

  He gave me a look like I was an idiot, then motioned downward slowly with his head and eyes. I got his drift: If the ropes burned through, we’d plummet to a fiery death.

  “We’ve got to jump sideways, to the balcony, at exactly the right moment—just when the rope burns through!”

  He looked at me b
lankly, shaking his head and shrugging.

  “Watch me first!” I screamed.

  That he got.

  I shimmied up the last few feet, until I was just about inside the bell. Below me, my rope hung in a long loop, doubled up from the slack I’d created. The bottom of the loop was dangling dangerously close to the flames. If it caught fire, I’d be toast.

  I reached over toward the bell as it came my way. The hot metal touched the rope, about a foot above my hands.

  Immediately the rope started to smolder. I repeated the action on the bell’s next swing—then again, and again, until the rope caught fire.

  Now I started to swing myself toward the balcony and away, back and forth, trying to time my leap exactly right. Just as I felt the rope start to give way, I swung at the balcony, putting all my weight into it.

  The rope snapped!

  I landed in a heap—safe on the balcony, but with my wrists still tied to a foot of rope.

  I looked across at Joe, who had already begun the same maneuver. I went around to the other side of the balcony, ready to give him as much of a hand as I could, what with both of them tied together.

  Joe made his leap, but too soon—before his rope snapped—so I grabbed him with my bound hands and pulled, hard.

  We toppled backward—and our combined weight snapped the rope, just as it was about to pull us back over the railing and into the inferno.

  “Ow!” Joe yelled as he landed on top of me.

  “Sorry for saving your life,” I said sarcastically. “And it was you who landed on top. I’m the one who should be complaining.”

  “That’s okay, bro—I forgive you. That was a pretty brilliant idea, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So now what?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are we supposed to do from here? Jump to the ground? It’s, like, sixty feet down!”

  I leaned out of the opening at the top of the bell tower. The full moon was out, and it made the snow-covered ground look blue—except for the reddish glow from the burning church.

  I heard the sirens of the Bayport Fire Department in the distance. You’d think they would have been here by now, what with the bells ringing constantly. But then, I realized, it was Christmas Night. Every church bell in the world was ringing.

  “Frank—the crèche!” Joe shouted, pointing to it with his bound hands.

  The Christmas crèche featured a large manger on the church’s front lawn. Its roof was covered with thick, soft hay.

  A perfect landing spot.

  “Maybe we should wait for the fire engines?” I suggested weakly.

  Joe looked at the floor beneath us, which was already partly on fire. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, swallowing hard. “After you.”

  “No,” he said. “That crèche roof will never hold up twice. We jump together.”

  “All right.”

  We looked each other right in the eye. “One.”

  The balcony exploded in flames. We screamed “THREEEEEE!” and jumped.

  Whumpfh!

  A cloud of snow surrounded me. Everything hurt—but it was good pain, because feeling it meant I was still alive.

  “Joe?”

  “Ooohhh …”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m great. Just great.”

  “Hey, that was an awesome idea,” I said.

  “What was?”

  “Jumping onto the roof of the crèche.”

  “Oh, that.… Was that really my idea? What was I thinking?”

  Now I could see where we’d landed. The statue of the Virgin Mary looked down on me, smiling. Joe was covered by three plastic sheep.

  Suddenly, the soot-covered faces of three Bayport firefighters appeared around the side of the wrecked manger.

  “Somebody in there?” one of them asked.

  “Just us sheep,” Joe said.

  “Hey, Joe, look,” I said. “It’s the three wise men.”

  “Merry Christmas, guys,” Joe said. “Man, it’s good to be alive.”

  They loaded us into an ambulance and took us to Bayport General Hospital for a quick patch-up.

  A couple of hours later Chief Ezra Collig of the Bayport PD showed up, along with our dad, Fenton Hardy, who used to be a high-ranking policeman himself.

  By the time they arrived, Joe and I were sitting in chairs, having our wrists bandaged by a couple of pretty nurses. The rope burns weren’t too bad, considering.

  “You boys could have been killed!” Dad said, frowning. “What were you doing up in that bell tower, anyway?”

  “It wasn’t like we had a choice,” Joe said. “The Skulls tied us up and set the church on fire.”

  The Skulls are—make that were—a notorious biker gang. They had gotten it into their heads to expand their illegal operations into the Bayport area. That’s when Joe and I were sent undercover to infiltrate their organization.

  It all went really well, too—until Chet Morton, one of our buddies, accidentally gave away our true identities.

  When they realized we were government agents, the Skulls got mad and decided to teach us a lesson. They tied us to those church bell ropes and set the steeple on fire.

  “Can you identify the gang members who were involved?” Chief Collig asked.

  “Sure thing,” I said. “But you’re going to have to find them first. Something tells me they won’t be coming back to Bayport anytime soon.”

  “Thanks to you two,” the chief said. “Fenton, you ought to be proud of these boys, not mad at them. They’ve done the town a great service, considering they’re just a couple of amateurs.”

  Amateurs?

  Ha. If he only knew.

  Joe and I are special agents with ATAC (American Teens Against Crime), a secret organization our dad founded a couple of years back. We go on cases adults can’t handle—say, infiltrating a teen biker gang like the Skulls.

  “You know, Fenton,” Chief Collig went on, “these boys deserve a nice big Christmas present.”

  “How about a vacation?” Joe piped up, giving Dad an innocent smile.

  A vacation?

  “Joe, you’re just full of good ideas tonight,” I said. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  2.

  Surprise Package

  Dad drove us home from the hospital. He was in a really bad mood—not a good sign on Christmas. I could tell something was eating at him.

  “What’s the matter, Dad?” I asked.

  He frowned. “In my day, we didn’t have to go risking our lives all the time just to catch the bad guys.”

  “With all due respect, Dad,” I said, “in your day, they matched fingerprints by hand, and there was no such thing as DNA evidence.”

  Frank leaned forward from the backseat. “Dad, it’s not like we try to get ourselves in trouble. It just happens.”

  “I’d just hate to see you boys get hurt,” he said, his jaw tight.

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We can take care of ourselves. After all, we learned from the best there is.”

  “Oh, it’s not me who’s worried,” he said (not that we believed him). “It’s your mother and your Aunt Trudy. I phoned to let them know why you didn’t show up for Christmas dinner. They’re both frantic.”

  “You didn’t tell them the whole story, did you?” Frank asked.

  Dad frowned again. “You know I didn’t.”

  See, Mom and Aunt Trudy don’t know a thing about ATAC. They think our detective work is strictly amateur, and they keep advising us not to take any foolish chances.

  So you can imagine the fuss they made when Frank and I showed up that night with our wrists bandaged and our eyebrows singed.

  “What in the world have you boys been up to this time?” Aunt Trudy demanded. Meanwhile, Mom fell apart in tears and started hugging and kissing us both.

  “We got caught in a fire over at the church,” Frank said.

 
“Just trying to be good Samaritans,” I explained, hoping that would be enough of an explanation for them.

  “Are you badly hurt?” Mom asked, looking over our bandages.

  “It’s nothing, Mom,” I assured her. “Just minor burns. We’ll be fine in a couple of days. Don’t worry, please.”

  “Awwkk! Medic! Medic!”

  This comment came from Playback, our pet parrot—who was perched, as usual, on Aunt Trudy’s shoulder.

  “Really, we’re fine,” Frank said. “Right, Dad?”

  “You would have been proud of them, Laura,” Dad said. “They’re a couple of brave boys.”

  “Being brave is fine,” Mom said, “but it doesn’t mean you have to put yourselves in harm’s way.”

  Nobody argued with her. What was the point? She was never going to stop worrying about us, and we were never going to stop fighting crime.

  We ate dinner, and Mom’s turkey never tasted better. But Frank and I were both about to conk out. Hanging by your wrists and breathing smoke is tiring!

  Frank let out a big yawn. “Boy, I’m beat.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t you boys like something else to eat before you head up to bed?” Mom asked. “Some dessert? I have plum pudding.”

  “No thanks, Mom, I’m stuffed,” I said.

  “I need to crash,” Frank said.

  “Ditto,” I said.

  “Awwkk! Wanna cracker?”

  “Thanks, Playback,” I said. “Maybe some other time.”

  “Wanna cookie?”

  “Hush now,” Trudy told him.

  And he did. Playback listens to her, and to nobody else.

  The next morning Frank and I both slept late. By the time we came down to breakfast, Dad had already left for his office. (He’s supposedly retired, but he still works pretty hard, making sure everything’s running smoothly with ATAC.)

  “My, my,” Mom said, smiling. “I thought you boys were going to sleep the whole day away.”

  “It’s so quiet,” Frank said. “Where are Aunt Trudy and Playback?”

  “She’s out in the driveway, changing the oil in her car. Playback’s with her, naturally.”

  (That parrot follows her everywhere. He must think he’s her child or something. She certainly treats him that way, even if they have a love/hate relationship.)