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  By this time the Hardys were on their feet. They looked around and saw the man who had saved them. Half concealed by a tree was a dark-skinned man wearing the loose cotton pants and shirt and wide-brimmed straw hat of a local farmer. But the gleaming semiautomatic rifle in his hands wasn't designed for raising crops.

  Joe grinned and waved his hand. "Hey, thanks, pal!"

  The man merely stood and stared at them, his face and dark eyes expressionless.

  Frank looked at his brother. "You expect him to understand you? Let me try my Spanish on him."

  "What Spanish?" asked Joe.

  "Listen and find out," said Frank. He turned toward the man. "Muchas gracias, amigo," he said, almost using up his entire command of the language.

  The man continued to stand and stare at them. Suspicion shone in his eyes.

  "Maybe he thinks we're bandits or something," Frank said to Joe. "I'll straighten him out." He turned to the man, pointed at Joe and then at himself, and said, "Americanos."

  Instantly the man's gun was up, pointed straight at Frank's chest.

  "Uh, Frank, I think you said the wrong thing," Joe muttered.

  The man indicated that they should raise their hands in the air, which they did.

  Then he took a length of cord from his pocket, and gestured to indicate that Frank and Joe should lie face down on the ground, with their hands behind them, to be tied up.

  Again Frank and Joe instantly obeyed.

  It was Frank whose hands the man started to tie first. Which meant that it was Frank who had the chance to kick back with his feet, knocking the man off balance, and sending his rifle flying.

  Instantly Joe was on his feet, finishing the job with a right to the man's jaw.

  Frank stood up and looked down at the unconscious man. "That was almost too easy," he said.

  "Guess the guy wasn't used to people fighting back when he had them under the gun," said Joe, kneeling down to tie the man up with his own cord.

  "Well, not too many people have had the practice we've had," said Frank. He stooped down and drew the man's machete from his belt. "We can use this to hack through the jungle."

  Joe retrieved the rifle. "I don't think even Dad would object to us taking this, too. This is one spot where a gun will come in handy."

  "Right," said Frank. "Jaguars aren't an endangered species around here. We are."

  They tied the man up and propped him against a tree. Then they revived him.

  "He should be able to work himself free in an hour or two," said Frank as he started to slash a trail through the undergrowth with the machete. Then he said, "Hey, what do we have here?"

  "Some kind of path," said Joe. "This trip gets easier and easier. Now we can really make time."

  "What say we try jogging?" said Frank. "See how a sprinter like you can do over the long run."

  "Okay, marathon man," said Joe, breaking into a jog. "First one to run out of steam is a — "

  A burst of semiautomatic weapon fire plowed a line of bullets right in front of Joe's feet, bringing the two of them to an abrupt halt.

  Out of the undergrowth stepped four soldiers in camouflage uniforms and helmets. All carried semiautomatic rifles.

  Frank and Joe didn't have to be told to drop the machete and rifle and raise their hands high.

  "They probably think we're guerrillas," Frank muttered to Joe.

  "Yeah, that rifle I was carrying didn't help," said Joe. "Guess Dad was right, after all. Guns do get you in hot water."

  The soldiers advanced toward them, weapons at the ready. The expressions on their faces made it clear that they were not only ready but eager to shoot first and ask questions later.

  "I'll give the magic word one more try," Frank said to Joe. Then he called out to the soldiers, "Americanos."

  This time it worked. Their faces broke into smiles.

  "Speak English?" Frank asked them hopefully. "Ingles?"

  Still smiling, a soldier with three stripes on his uniform shook his head, but waved for them to follow him, while another soldier scooped up the rifle and machete.

  Half an hour down the trail and then twenty minutes along another trail, they came to a jungle army outpost surrounded by barbed wire and machine-gun emplacements.

  The soldiers led Frank and Joe through the front gate and into a tent where an officer with silver bars on his shoulders was sitting.

  The sergeant spoke to him in Spanish, and then the officer said to the Hardys in perfect, unaccented English, "So you're Americans? What happened? How did you get here?"

  Frank and Joe were happy to tell him, beginning with the man they had knocked out in the jungle.

  The officer nodded. "A local bandit, though they call themselves guerrillas. We're stationed here to try to control them. I'll send a couple of men to pick him up. But you still didn't tell me what you were doing in this jungle originally. And I'm afraid you're going to have to. This isn't a place for tourists, you know."

  "You may have a hard time believing our story," warned Frank. "But you will when you check it out."

  By the time Frank and Joe finished telling him about the ranch and what was going on there, the officer's face was serious.

  "You do believe us, don't you?" Frank said.

  "Honest, we're telling the truth," added Joe.

  The officer nodded. "I believe you. It's too incredible a story for you to have made up. And to think we believed that the ranch was an agricultural experiment."

  Then he stood up. "Please wait here. I have to radio headquarters to find out how to move against this vipers' nest. It's too important for me to decide alone."

  After he left, Joe said, "Hope the captain lets us come along when they go after the ranch. I'd really love to see the chief's face when they close him down."

  "I just want to get my hands on Tanner and take him back to the States," said Frank. "I hate to think of Marcie's dad sweating it out in jail."

  There was a smile on the captain's face when he returned. "Good news. They're sending a helicopter right away to take you to headquarters. Then, after you give them the details of how the ranch is set up, they'll move in on it immediately."

  "Great," said Joe. "Think we can go along?"

  "I'm sure it can be arranged," the captain said, "considering all the help you've been. Now, perhaps you'd like a bite to eat while you wait."

  "Wouldn't mind," said Joe. "I could eat a horse."

  "Or even a jaguar," seconded Frank with a grin.

  "I'm afraid you'll have to settle for steaks," the captain said. "But I don't think you'll find them bad."

  The captain's promise was an understatement. When Frank and Joe sat down in the mess tent, the steaks that were set before them were filtmignons, three inches thick, tender and juicy. With them came baked potatoes and salad. And, afterward, chocolate ice cream.

  "Great," said Joe, spooning up the last of his dessert in a hurry, since he had just heard the sound of a helicopter descending outside.

  "Sensational," said Frank. "Thanks a million, Captain."

  "It's the least we could do," said a voice from behind them. "Condemned men are entitled to a hearty last meal."

  They didn't have to turn their heads to recognize who had spoken.

  Alex.

  They turned to see Dimitri standing beside him. Both men were holding .45s.

  Frank was the first to say what he and Joe realized at the same moment.

  "You're in on this," he accused the captain.

  The captain shrugged and leaned back in his chair, a lazy smile playing across his face. "I like to think of it as hardship pay. Jungle duty is no picnic. Earning a little extra from the chief eases the discomfort, and catching idiots like you relieves the boredom. Besides which, the ranch furnishes us with those excellent steaks that you so enjoyed."

  "You'll earn an extra bonus for these two," Alex promised him. Then he said gloatingly to the Hardys, "I told you there was no place to go. We warn everyone about all the dangers of
fleeing the ranch without mentioning the captain here. That way we can weed out the ones like you who refuse to abandon hope of escape."

  Dimitri gestured with his gun for Frank and Joe to get to their feet. "Come on. The chopper is waiting—and so is the chief," he added with a nasty grin.

  Prodding them with his gun barrel, Alex steered Frank and Joe into the helicopter. The Hardys took seats, trying not to think about what was in store.

  The trip back to the ranch passed in silence except for the roar of the motor and the thump of the blades. Frank and Joe sat between Alex and Dimitri. Each of the Hardys had a gun barrel pressed against his side the whole way.

  Waiting for them at the helicopter pad were ten guards with their guns drawn. The chief was taking no chances that Joe and Frank might spoil his fun again.

  "You don't know how glad I am to see you boys," the chief said. His jaw was tight, his face pale with anger. He looked like a spoiled child who'd had his toys taken away.

  Frank and Joe looked around at Joe's destructive handiwork. A pall of smoke still hung over the ranch from the burning trucks. The locomotive lay alongside the tracks like a toppled giant. When they looked back at the chief, he appeared even angrier than before. The chief waved the guards away and drew his pearl-handled revolver to cover Joe and Frank.

  "Boys, we're going to have us a party. And you're going to be the entertainment," the old man said bitterly. He gestured back at the house. "Everybody'U be here. Because every last one of them has got to learn that nobody crosses me and lives."

  As the boys watched, the guards began driving the men — all the men—from the house, from the barracks, in from the fields to the clearing beside the helipad. The prisoners formed a semicircle around the trio. Behind the prisoners stood the guards, guns up, ready for anything.

  "We don't need trouble here," the chief shouted. "And these boys are trouble. Every once in a while, I think that you people need to be shown just exactly what can happen if we think that you're trouble!"

  He stepped close to the two brothers, an evil glint in his eyes, and spoke softly, so softly that only they could hear him. "You two have any last words before I put a bullet through your brains?"

  Frank looked at his brother and said, "Joe, it's been — " But he never got to finish that sentence. Joe finished it for him, shouting, "Fun!" And then the world seemed to explode around them.

  Chapter 15

  FRANK WAS ALIVE, but he didn't know why. He kept trying to walk until he realized that he was lying flat on his back, deaf and dizzy. All he could see was dust and smoke—and Joe sticking the muzzle of a pearl-handled revolver in the chief's ear.

  What he could see of Joe's face was grim. As Frank got to his knees, he saw that the prisoners and their guards were as confused as he. But when he looked back at the ranch house—no, where the ranch house had been — he began to understand. And when Frank looked at Joe and the chief, Joe nodded happily. The chief simply stared, stunned by the blast and the loss of his little kingdom.

  Joe was shouting something at Frank, but all Frank could do was shake his head from side to side and point at his ears. Finally, Joe dragged the chief closer to his brother and screamed at him from inches away. "Look behind you! There's the cavalry!"

  When Frank turned around, he saw three large troop-carrying choppers coming in low over the tree line. They were close enough now that the men on the ground who couldn't hear them could feel them. There was no fight left in any of them. A couple of the men started a dash for the jungle, but when one of the choppers circled around to head them off, they slowed to a walk, then stopped to await their captors.

  As soon as Frank and Joe saw the troops pouring out of the helicopters, they shouted as loudly as they could, "Amigos, amigos!"

  Frank nudged his brother and muttered, "Get rid of that gun before one of these trigger-happy commandos decides to shoot you."

  Joe dropped the gun like a hot potato, but kept the chief well away from it.

  When the two boys saw who was walking alongside the strike force's commander, their jaws dropped. "Dad!" they shouted together.

  "Hello, sons," a grinning Fenton Hardy said. "I thought I was going to get to rescue you this time, but it looks like I'm a little late. Your friend Phil got me up in the middle of the night with a wild story about you sending him somebody's secret files, and I've been flying ever since."

  "Dad," said Frank, "I don't even know what happened here, but I think that maybe Joe has some explaining to do."

  Joe laughed at his brother's amazement, as well as at the sight of the chief being herded into the corral with the rest of his men. He groped inside his pants pocket and pulled out what looked like a miniature walkie-talkie. "Well, when I spotted this in the chief's armory, I figured that if we ran into any real trouble during our escape, we could bluff our way out with this radio detonator."

  Joe stopped for a moment to look at his father and the brother who had been through so much with him. A wide grin spread across his face as he continued, "And I figured it would work even better if it wasn't a bluff, so I rigged a whole case of plastic explosives to go off if I pressed the button. I think that everything in the place went off instead."

  Frank peered at his brother, not yet certain whether he was serious. "Why didn't you tell me about that thing? We could have been blown to bits!"

  "Frank," Joe said a little heatedly, "we were about to be blown to — "

  "Calm down, guys. You can argue later. Right now, there's a gentleman over here who'd like to meet you and thank you." Fenton Hardy took one son under each arm and walked the two of them over to the lead helicopter. Sitting inside was a dignified gentleman in his late fifties. He 150 introduced himself to them as General Juan Rod-riguez of the Special Forces.

  "Gentlemen," he began in his softly accented English, "I bring you personal greetings from my president. We have known about this place for some time, but were unable to move against it. You have cured a cancer on our land."

  He stepped out of the chopper to survey the ranch. As he turned, staring intently at the charred rubble that had been the beautiful ranch house, at the toppled locomotive and the smoking ruin of the ranch's rolling stock, he muttered, "But we did expect to get to help in the treatment."

  "General," Frank said inquiringly, "how did the chief get away with this for so long?"

  "Frank," the general said with a sigh, "men are weak when it comes to money. I am certain that we will discover that a number of our young officers currently in the field have been corrupted."

  "Sir," Joe said, thinking of the captain in the jungle with his juicy steaks, "there may not be all that many bad apples in your barrel. But we can show you one very bad one." He smiled at the thought of that man's arrest.

  "But if you couldn't shut down the chief before," asked Frank, "why now?"

  "Did you read any of the computer files you sent out to Phil?" Fenton asked his son. "They were dynamite — economic, social, and political dynamite for this country and a number of others. The chief had been using them for blackmail or simply selling the information he got out of these men to the highest bidder. The underworld railway was an equal-opportunity corrupter."

  "Let me finish this part of the story," interjected the general. "One of the files that your father shared with me detailed not only the fact that the ranch was the major source of arms for the rebels who have been plaguing our country for years, but also that many of their raids had been planned at this very ranch. One of those raids cost the life of my wife." The general stopped for a moment to collect himself. "So I thank you as much as my country thanks you."

  "It looks like all you have to worry about now," said Joe, trying to lighten the mood, "is whether you have enough jail cells for all these guys."

  The general smiled. He took one more look around and then silently, seriously shook hands with each of the boys. "Now, my young friends, the least that my country and I can do to repay you is to put you on a helicopter and then onto a p
lane and fly you home for Christmas."

  As soon as he said the word "Christmas," Frank clapped his hand to his forehead. "Ouch!" he said. "I just thought of something."

  "What's that?" the general asked, concerned. It was apparent that he was worried that some essential part of the case that they were building was missing. Perhaps one of the important crooks had gotten away.

  "Christmas!" said Frank. "Joe and I still haven't done any of our Christmas shopping!"

  Joe was the first to grin in relief, followed by the other two.

  "Son," said Fenton Hardy, "don't worry. There are still four more shopping days. And besides, this Christmas I think that we'll all be happy with the gift you've already given us — the two of you back home and alive."

  The End.