Countdown to Terror Read online

  They found the park easily enough, perched on top of a high hill. But they didn't find a fort — just a brass plaque, indicating that a fort had once stood there.

  Joe stared around. "Somehow, I don't think this is the fort Dundee meant. I'd have a hard time imagining the bad guys hanging out here," he said, gesturing to a playground.

  Frank was looking at the strange monument that stood in the middle of the park, a thirty-foot-long cement wall with an arch and old-fashioned church bells hanging from it. He and Joe went over to check it out.

  "It's a monument to the Imo disaster," he said, reading a plaque. "Back in World War I, a ship full of artillery shells collided with a ship, the Imo, in the harbor here." The park had a perfect view of the waterway out of the harbor.

  "According to one of the guidebooks I read last night, a quarter of the city was destroyed. The whole area behind us was blown flat."

  Joe looked back along the quiet streets lined with neat houses made of concrete block. "Yeah — those houses all look like they were built at the same time," he said. "That must have been quite a blast."

  Frank nodded. "It was the biggest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb went off over Hiroshima." He shook his head. "They found pieces of wreckage twenty miles away."

  "Well, that's interesting, but we are looking for a fort," Joe said. "Where do we go now?"

  Frank told him and then led the way down Gottingen Street to central Halifax. It must once have been a bustling shopping area, but now many of the stores were boarded up, and others looked pretty seedy. Then they began climbing again, a different hill, steeper than the first. Joe read a sign that said The Citadel.

  "This is the biggest of the old fortifications," Frank said. "I think we should check it out."

  "But wouldn't he have said citadel instead of fort?" Joe asked.

  The wound their way up a path that climbed the hill. Slowly the fortress came into view. The outside of the wall was a grassy hill, which protected the inside granite wall from cannon fire. Frank and Joe joined a stream of tourists entering through the only gate, a thin bridge across a ditch.

  "Quite a place," Joe said, looking around the stone walls, which butted up to the hill.

  "Complete with Hungry Guardsmen," Frank said, watching as a file of red-coated young soldiers in kilts came marching up. Another young soldier not in formation walked by just then and stopped beside them.

  "You've been to the Hungry Guardsman?" he asked, smiling. "It's one of our favorite hangouts—out of uniform, that is." He glanced down at his finery. "When school's on we go there for lunch."

  "School?" Joe asked.

  "You didn't think we were full-time soldiers, did you?" the young corporal asked. "This is a summer job, to help pay for college." He grinned under his jaunty Scots highland bonnet. "We study the drillbooks from 1869 and our routines are completely authentic. Watch us put on our show." He pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch. "And you should stay for the firing of the noon gun."

  Another officer strolled over. "Corporal Bell, shouldn't you be at your post?"

  Bell snapped to attention. "Yes, sir!" He trotted off to join the marching troops.

  Lining up, the summer soldiers went through the drill of loading and firing their weapons like well-trained professionals. The crowd was firing away, too, clicking cameras like mad.

  "That must take a lot of practice," Joe said, watching as the troopers reloaded and fired again. Even though they were firing blanks, the sharp crack of the volleys was pretty deafening.

  "There sure is a crowd," Frank said. "I don't think the guys we're looking for would hang around — "

  He bit off his words suddenly as he recognized a face and turban at the edge of the crowd. It was the guy from the airport and the pursuit car, Mr. Mustache.

  Apparently, he realized he'd been spotted. As the Hardys tried to push their way to him, he was already moving across the drill grounds, heading for the ramp up to the earthen parapets of the fort. Once on top he ducked to the left, disappearing behind the roof of the powder magazine, the room where explosives were stored.

  Frank and Joe ran after him, but when they reached the top of the ramp, they didn't see the white turban.

  "He can't have gone far," Joe said. "But those crowds are blocking the way around to the other walls."

  Frank nodded. "Looks like the noon gun is about to be setoff."

  More student-soldiers had appeared, these in dark blue uniforms with pillbox caps. They were wheeling back a cannon at the far edge of the wall, preparing it to be fired.

  "I don't see him in the crowd," Joe said. "So where is he?"

  Frank was staring thoughtfully along the top ridge of the earthen fortification. Two holes broke the line of the wall. Apparently they were dugout rooms that burrowed down into the hillside.

  Joe followed his brother's gaze. "Let's check 'em out."

  The entrance to the first dugout was locked, but the door to the second one lay open. They went down a couple of steps, through a doorway, and into a cramped stone room like a cellar. There was a large sign warning troops not to smoke or carry lit matches into this ammunition room. Joe was just peering into a separate chamber beyond when the door slammed shut behind them.

  Frank pounded once on the door before realizing that it opened inward. But when he pulled the latch, the door didn't open either. It had been jammed shut.

  Still heaving at-the door, Frank said, "Joe, look in that other room and see if there's anything we can use for a tool."

  Joe was in and out of the room in a second, his face white.

  "What's the matter, old gunpowder storage areas make you nervous?" Frank kidded.

  But after he spoke, he realized he was seeing some sort of blinking red glow from the other room.

  "The ammunition in there is not old," Joe said. "Not unless they had digital timers back in 1869."

  Chapter 6

  FRANK FORGOT ABOUT the door and rushed into the other chamber. It was a bare, chilly, whitewashed room, with empty old gunpowder barrels.

  But sitting on one of the white-painted shelves was something a lot newer. At first, all Frank saw were the flashing red numbers on the timer, ticking down from the three-minute mark. Then he saw the wires leading into a small metal box. A little bit of grayish-yellow gunk that looked like clay oozed out one corner.

  Frank knew it wasn't clay—it was plastic explosive.

  He moved to the bomb. "This is my job," he said quickly to Joe. "You work on trying to get that door open."

  Joe ran for the outer door, yelling back, "Can you disarm that thing?"

  "Do my best," Frank said. "But there's not much time. Whoever set this wants us to go off with the noontime gun."

  "That guy must have been hiding on the far side of this dugout, then sneaked back and pulled the door closed." Joe's voice was full of disgust as he tugged at the door. "He suckered us just fine."

  Frank was busy trying to follow the wires from the timer to the plastique. Some of them didn't seem to have any purpose. He took a deep breath and wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. They had to be decoys or booby traps. Two minutes, thirty seconds left.

  He quickly traced a red wire into a complicated loop, where three other wires, black, yellow, and blue, twined in. Were they spliced in or just wound around it? Frank took a deep breath. "A Fellawi loop," he muttered out loud, startling himself.

  "A what?" Joe asked. He'd given up trying to pull the door open and was now on his back, attempting brute force. He was kicking at it. But the thick old panels resisted him, and the noise of preparing to fire the gun covered any other noises he made.

  "Omar Fellawi is the dean of terrorist bomb makers," Frank said, gently probing at the rat's nest of wires. "If the stories about him are true, he taught himself, and doesn't follow any of the usual methods." It calmed Frank to talk—it made it seem that he had time to kill. But he only had two minutes to detonation.

  "I didn't know there were rules for making bombs."

  "Oh, there are, and they're very strict," Frank said. "I've seen some of the manuals, and there are rules you have to memorize. 'Blue before yellow can kill a fellow.' That's one of them. It means if you disconnect the blue wire before the yellow one, it could set the bomb off." Frank sucked air in through his teeth. A wire had come away in his hand — a blue one.

  "And you're saying Fellawi doesn't care what colors he uses?" Joe had jumped to his feet again, scraping away the paint from the door hinges with his pocketknife. But it didn't seem likely that he'd loosen the hinges before time ran out.

  "A lot of bomb squad people died before they figured out what he was doing," Frank said, glancing at the timer. One minute, thirty seconds. "Not only that, but he uses these big loops of wire with colors twined together. It's his signature."

  "But I guess now that they know about his tricks, they know how to get around them." Joe bit back a curse as the largest blade on his pocketknife snapped when he tried to wedge it under the hinge to lift it off.

  "Fellawi thought of that. He keeps changing the colors he uses." Frank stopped trying to separate the wires and called in to Joe, "Bring that knife in here, please, and use this key for attacking that hinge."

  Joe traded his knife for Frank's key. But when he returned to the door, he changed tactics and probed the oversize keyhole to see if he could knock loose whatever was jamming it.

  Frank delicately traced along each wire with one of the knife's smaller blades. The yellow wire went from the loop to circle around the box containing the explosive, tying it up like a Christmas present. There was no way into the box without cutting the wire. Frank looked at the timer. His vision was blurred with sweat running off his forehead. A finger cleared it. Less than a minute left. He'd have to chance
it.

  Heart thudding against his chest cavity and blood roaring in his ears, Frank scraped away the insulation on the yellow wire in two places. He wrapped in the piece of loose blue wire. That gave him a bypass circuit — maybe. He slipped the knife under the yellow wire, took what could be his last breath, and slowly raised the knife and snapped the wire.

  He didn't even look at the timer as he slipped the box free and frantically dug his way through the plastique.

  One deft probe with his fingers and an electrical lead came out of the gook. More careful digging, and a walnut-size metal ball was uncovered. "Booby trap," Frank said. "It's a mercury switch. Any attempt to move the box around would have set it—and the bomb— off."

  Just then the noon gun went off far over their heads. Frank loved the quiet inside the bunker. No bomb exploded. It was disarmed. Frank smiled, slapped his brother on the back, and remembered to breathe.

  "How does it feel to deface Parks Canada property?" Joe asked as they finally removed the hinges and the door.

  Frank cocked an eyebrow at him.

  Frank and Joe headed down the ramp, then across the drill field toward the exit. "I think an anonymous call to the cops should take care of what's left in there," he said. "And if our friends try to remove the evidence, all the better. Maybe they'll be caught in the act."

  They took a different path away from the Citadel, going down a flight of stairs cut into the hillside.

  "How come we're leaving the bad guys' headquarters?" Joe wanted to know as he trailed Frank.

  "That's not their headquarters," Frank said. "I started to say that when we saw our friend with the turban. There's too much staff and too many tourists around for any funny business. That bomb there just confirms it."

  "I don't get it," Joe said.

  "Would you set off a bomb in your base of operations? An explosion would be sure to focus too much attention."

  Joe frowned. "Then how come that guy— and that bomb—were there?"

  "We had to be followed. They brought something up to take care of us and led us right to it." Frank struck off on a downhill street, heading back to Halifax Harbor.

  "You think this guy is still tailing us?" Joe asked, glancing over his shoulder.

  "I hope so—and don't try to warn him off," Frank said. "Our next stop will give us a chance to isolate him."

  They came down on the far side of the ferry terminal, out onto some docks where excursion boats were moored. Frank stepped up to a wooden shack to buy two tickets as a guy with sandy blond hair came screeching up on a bike.

  "You guys are lucky that I held up our departure to go to the bank."

  They pocketed their tickets, then followed the man to one of the excursion boats already filled with tourists. He led them across the deck, up a staircase, onto the top sundeck, then into the deckhouse. "Ready to cast off!" he called to his two crewmen.

  Joe stared. "You're the captain?"

  The guy grinned back. "Of the McNab's Island Ferry.

  Joe turned to Frank. "So that's where we're going."

  Frank smiled at Joe. "There're a couple of forts out there." Then he turned to the captain. "Can you hold off for a few more minutes?"

  "Why?" the captain wanted to know.

  Frank smiled. "I think you'll be getting one more customer."

  Sure enough, the turbaned guy with the mustache came tearing down to the pier. The bad news was, there were about six other guys with him. Frank and Joe recognized most of them from their marathon to the ferry the day before.

  "Well, you wanted to isolate him," Joe whispered to Frank.

  "Looks like I've isolated us instead." Frank asked the captain, "Mind if we stay up here? We'd like to see you work the harbor."

  The captain grinned. "I'd like that. Most people are a little shy about coming up here."

  Even the army of seven felt shy. They stayed down on the lower deck, glaring up at the Hardys.

  Meanwhile the captain steered a course through Halifax Harbor to the island.

  "You know, McNab's Island has a lot of history behind it," the captain said as they slipped into a wide cove with a single large pier. To the south, a neck of land jutted out, a lighthouse on its tip.

  "That's Hangman's Beach," the captain said, nodding to the outthrust land. "They used to hang mutineers out there." He shook his head. "There're a lot of bodies — about ten thousand buried under that sand. The French sent an expedition here, and they based themselves on McNab's until storms and sickness nearly wiped them out."

  "Where's the fort?" Joe asked.

  "Which one?" the captain asked. "Fort Ives is at the north end, and Fort McNab is in the south." He grinned. "Fort McNab is the bigger draw."

  Frank asked, "How far to McNab?"

  "About a mile and a half from the pier," the captain said.

  They were pulling up beside the pier now. A gravel road ran beside the beach, and Frank saw a pickup truck heading toward the pier.

  Joe saw it, too. He turned to the captain. "Mind if we help tie up?"

  The captain shrugged and reversed engines. Frank and Joe leapt from the sundeck to the pier, tossed the mooring ropes onto their pilings, and ran for the road.

  They'd reached the beach before their pursuers had even gotten through the crowd gathered at the gangplank to the pier. Frank was already flagging the pickup down.

  "Are you heading anywhere near Fort McNab?" he asked.

  The driver leaned out the window. "I can take you partway," he said. "You in a hurry?"

  Joe glanced at the thugs elbowing their way through people toward them — blood in their eyes.

  "You could say that," he admitted.

  Chapter 7

  THE PICKUP PULLED away as Frank and Joe's pursuers came tearing down the pier.

  When he saw the newcomers, the driver slowed. "They want to come, too?"

  Frank talked fast. "Keep going — please! It's a scavenger hunt — the first team to reach the fort wins the point."

  "Okay." The driver zipped off, leaving the mob behind. So far, none of the pursuers had pulled guns, although the Hardys had noticed suspicious bulges under several of the guys' jackets.

  "Looks like they've been told to take us quietly," Joe said. "No witnesses."

  "Maybe," Frank said. "But where we're going, there don't seem to be many tourists." He stared over the top of the cab as they bounced along the deeply rutted gravel road. Ragged trees leaned over them, and the farther they traveled, the more deserted the island became.

  About half a mile from the pier, another road branched to the left. Their driver pulled up. "I turn off here for the lighthouse. Just keep on the main path," the driver said. "Take the first branch to the right, it'll take you straight to the fort."

  "Let's get going," Frank said. "Those guys aren't that far behind us."

  "They're sure to see the pickup is empty now — and this is the only way to go." Joe pushed their pace to a jog.

  The road skirted the lake and sank, turning downright swampy. Some sections were more mud than gravel. As they slogged along, they could hear the sounds of the tide. "Great," Joe said. "We've got a lake on one side, and what sounds like a cove on the other. All those guys have to do is hang out here and we'll never be able to get back past them."

  "From the looks on their faces, I think we can bet on their coming after us. Besides," — Frank slapped at his neck — "if they stand still, the mosquitoes might carry them off."

  Joe slowed down for a second. "What if they don't want to catch us?" He turned to Frank. "We came here to see if this is the fort Dundee meant. If it is, those guys could just be herding us to our slaughter."

  "I was wondering about that back on the truck," Frank admitted. "But I don't think that mob was pretending to be in a sweat to catch us." He sighed. "In fact, I think we may be heading for another dead end, but we've got to check it out."

  Joe gave his brother a quick look. "Maybe you could find a better way to say that."

  The path began to lead uphill, then they reached the turnoff for the fort. The Hardys picked up the pace. Before their pursuers arrived, they had to investigate the fort and find a hiding place before circling back to the boat.

  The path passed through a clump of trees, then opened out. A big sign read Parks Canada — Fort McNab — Danger.