Training for Trouble Read online

  “Of course, Mom,” Frank said. “Don’t worry.”

  Laura Hardy said she would try not to, but other parents didn’t seem to be able to. By the time the Hardys arrived at the training facility, a group of seven or eight reporters and twenty or thirty parents had cornered Geneve Montreux on the front steps.

  As the Hardys approached the giant, clam-shaped building, they could hear people shouting questions.

  “Ms. Montreux! Did you rush to open the complex too early?” a reporter yelled.

  “No. I don’t think so,” Montreux said.

  “Is it true someone’s going around shooting arrows at people?”

  Montreux backed up toward the glass doors. “No. No, that’s not true at all.”

  A parent’s question got cut off when Allen Frierson burst out of the front doors, almost knocking over Montreux.

  “Th-there’s… inside!” he stammered. “Ms. Montreux, there’s an emergency inside!”

  Montreux stared at him in shock and horror. “What?”

  “Some kid. He’s stuck… he’s going to fall any second!”

  Someone gasped.

  The reporters and several parents rushed to the doors, trying to shove their way in.

  As the doors swung open, desperate cries rose from inside.

  5 Rafter Rescue

  * * *

  Once inside, the Hardys both knew there were only a few moments to spare. A boy, thirteen or fourteen years old, was desperately hanging from a rafter.

  “He must be twenty-five feet off the floor,” Joe said.

  “Thirty,” Frank corrected.

  An area of the huge main gym behind the judo mats had been designated the Upper Body Conditioning Center. It included a steep climbing wall, a wooden peg board, and the climbing rope to the steel beam rafters.

  The rope had obviously broken. It lay on the floor under the boy in a tangled coil.

  “He’s barely hanging on!” a man shouted.

  A woman pointed to the ceiling with one hand, while she covered her mouth in horror with the other. She turned when they all came rushing in.

  “Someone call Nine-one-one!” she screamed. “The fire department! We need the fire department!”

  “There’s no time!” Joe said.

  The boy kicked his legs wildly, trying to maintain his grip on the hard metal.

  “Hurry!” he shouted. “I’m slipping!”

  Beckoning for everyone to help, Frank began dragging the judo mats over to place them on the floor under the boy.

  Joe sprinted out to the van. He wrestled the sliding door open. Tossing things aside—hockey stick, walkie-talkie headset, motorcycle helmet—he finally found what he needed.

  Joe slung the rope of his grappling hook over his shoulder and hefted the three-pronged grapnel. “This is that kid’s only chance,” he muttered to himself.

  In the distance Joe could hear sirens. The fire department was still minutes away as he rushed back inside.

  “Hurry, Joe!” Frank shouted. The stack of judo mats was about a foot high, enough to break the boy’s fall, but not enough to prevent serious injury.

  Frank waved everyone back to give Joe room.

  Holding the slack rope loosely in his left hand, Joe began spinning the grapnel in his right.

  “No way this will work,” someone said.

  The kid tried to hoist himself up, but he was way too tired. “Hurry!” he cried.

  Joe had to get the rope close enough so the kid could grab it, but… Joe’s stomach suddenly did a tumble as he imagined himself hitting the boy with the heavy steel hook and bringing him down. That would be a terrible disaster.

  Everyone around him seemed to take a deep breath.

  Joe released the hook. It hummed through the air. Perfect… be perfect, Joe thought.

  The hook clanged off the rafter and dove to the floor like a wounded bird.

  “No!” someone gasped.

  Quickly Joe yanked the grapnel back. He didn’t have time to worry about neatly coiling the rope. He took a step back and spun the hook again, concentrating on the empty space above the rafter. He let go.

  The rope sang through his hand as the grapnel arced toward the ceiling.

  A cheer went up as it sailed over the rafter and bounced loudly off the floor.

  “Okay!” Joe shouted to the kid, anchoring the rope. “Grab the rope and climb down!”

  The kid tried to slide along the rafter to the rope. “I… I can’t,” he stammered. “I can’t make it.”

  Without hesitating, Joe handed the rope to his brother and started climbing. At the top, he glanced down for a second. At least twenty faces were staring up at him in silence.

  Holding on with one hand, Joe reached over and pulled the kid toward him. The boy shook with fear. With Joe’s help, though, he was able to make it to the rope and hang on.

  Slowly, resting every few feet, the two of them made it safely down. As their feet hit the ground, firefighters came bursting in the front doors.

  The boy’s mother ran up and hugged him. Frank slapped Joe on the back. “That was amazing, man!”

  Geneve Montreux fought through the crowd. “Thank you, Joe,” she said. “Your quick thinking probably saved that boy’s life.”

  “It was nothing,” Joe said modestly.

  With everyone gathering around to shake Joe’s hand and thank him, Frank quietly walked over to the climbing rope to take a look at it.

  He knelt down and stared at the lower end of the rope. Carefully, he checked it for fraying. Everything was fine until he got to the metal cap and hardware that secured the rope to the rafter.

  This is where it broke, he said to himself. Scanning the floor, he found the locking hook, similar to a mountain climber’s D-ring, that had been at the top of the rope. It had failed, breaking open and bending so much that it had slipped from the eyebolt in the rafter.

  Frank rubbed his thumb over the cracked end. He couldn’t be sure, but it might have been tampered with.

  Someone snatched the D-ring from his hands. Frank looked up. Rachel Baden stood over him, holding the hardware aloft.

  “I found it!” she said loud enough for everyone to hear. “This is why that kid almost died. More faulty equipment.”

  Frank stood up and grabbed the D-ring back. “Quiet!” he said. “We don’t know why this happened yet.”

  It was too late. Parents and other reporters swarmed around the coiled rope like ants attacking sugar. Rachel had her mini-recorder out and was holding it under Geneve Montreux’s nose. “This place has been open for only two days,” she said, her voice hard with accusation. “And there have been at least two accidents, maybe three. What’s going on?”

  “We need time to figure this out,” Montreux said weakly. To Frank she appeared tired. Worry lines creased her forehead, and her voice was hoarse.

  In all the commotion, Frank pocketed the metal part and pulled his brother from the crowd.

  “I say we take this opportunity to have a look around,” he whispered.

  Joe nodded. They slipped through the gym doors leading to the long, office-lined hallway.

  “So, what did our friend Rachel find?” Joe asked.

  Frank made a wry, half smile. “She didn’t find anything.” He pulled the D-ring from his pocket. “I found this.”

  Joe took the part and examined it. “Could those be file marks?” he asked.

  “That’s what I was wondering. We’ll need to take a closer look later.”

  They passed a series of poster-size black-and-white photographs from previous Olympics. One was an action shot showing Coach Sokal standing behind an opponent who was kneeling on a mat. Sokal had his left arm hooked under the other guy’s left armpit and snaked around the back of his neck. He had his right arm clamped across his opponent’s throat.

  “Take a look,” Joe said. “That’s a brutal single-wing choke hold.”

  “Not something you escape from,” Frank said. “Come on. Let’s check these
offices.”

  Sokal’s office was on the left side of the hall, just before Montreux’s, which was at the end of the hall.

  “Here,” Joe said, pointing to the nameplate on the office one door before Sokal’s.

  Victoria Huntington, it said.

  Frank glanced back down the hall. It was empty.

  “Locked,” he said.

  “I’ve got sweat pants on,” Joe whispered. “I don’t have my lock picks.”

  Frank stepped to the next door, Sokal’s office. “Locked.”

  “Not this one,” Joe said. He stood smiling by Montreux’s open door. “With all that’s happened this morning, she must’ve forgotten to lock it.”

  The Hardys silently sneaked inside and closed the door. Frank headed for the antique desk, while Joe rifled through some files in an expensive-looking cherry filing cabinet.

  “I’ve got something!” Frank said, standing up from the desk. He was opening a file of papers.

  Joe stepped over and peered over his brother’s shoulder. The first page was titled “Letter of Official Dismissal.”

  Frank read parts of the letter in a low voice.

  * * *

  “Dear Victoria,

  “Though you are an extraordinarily gifted fencer, I feel you have left me no other choice than to dismiss you permanently from the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team.

  “You claim that the recent injuries suffered by other athletes were accidents. I disagree and hold you personally responsible.”

  * * *

  “And blah, blah, blah,” Frank said. “It’s signed by Geneve Montreux.”

  “Wow!” Joe exclaimed. “Sounds like Victoria’s a troublemaker.”

  “Sure does,” Frank agreed. “I wonder what kind of injuries she caused.”

  The file also included Victoria’s appeal to the United States Olympic Committee. But they had sided emphatically with Montreux, calling Victoria’s actions “dangerous.”

  “Appeal denied,” Joe said.

  Frank placed the file back in the desk.

  “So we know Victoria and Montreux pretty much hate each other,” Joe said. “What now?”

  “We check out Victoria’s office,” Frank said matter-of-factly.

  “You want me to go back through that crowd to get my lock picks?” Joe whispered. “That’ll take forever. And besides, Montreux, Sokal, or anybody could come down the hall and catch us red-handed.”

  “Don’t freak.” Frank pointed at the ceiling. “Why go through a door when you can drop in from above?”

  Joe looked up and saw a brand-new drop ceiling. All they had to do was push aside one of the tiles, climb up through the hole and over the wall to Sokal’s office.

  “Good call,” Joe said. He rolled Montreux’s office chair close to the wall Montreux shared with Coach Sokal.

  While Frank climbed up on the chair, Joe peeked out the door to make certain no one was coming.

  “We’re still clear,” he whispered.

  A loud noise made Joe turn around. He expected to see that Frank had taken a tumble off the chair.

  Frank was fine, though. He was still standing on the chair, his arms poised over his head. There was a dark gaping hole in the ceiling where he’d moved a tile aside.

  The objects that had caused all the noise lay on the floor beside the chair legs.

  “The fencing equipment from Iola’s accident?” Joe said.

  “Yeah,” Frank agreed. “But what is it doing hidden in the ceiling?”

  6 Foiled

  * * *

  Frank jumped off the chair. With his toe he pushed away the cardboard box the equipment had been in and knelt down.

  “What exactly do we have here?” Joe asked, kneeling next to his brother.

  Frank pushed his brown hair away from his eyes. “Evidence.”

  “What’s this thing that looks like a giant electric train transformer?” Joe asked, poking at a white plastic box with a couple of switches and a voltmeter on top.

  “The junction box. Be careful how you touch it,” Frank added. “We’re going to have to try to put all this back exactly the way we found it.”

  “Junction box?”

  Frank nodded. He pointed to the two fencing vests that lay crumpled on the floor and the long, very thin black wires that would connect them to the white box. “The retractable wires are attached to circuits in the box,” he explained.

  “But I didn’t see any box when Iola got shocked.”

  “It sits under the scorer’s table,” Frank said. He gently untangled two more, shorter, wires. “These wires go from the box to the red lights on top of the table.”

  “But how do the lights go off?”

  “You know how one of those big flashlights works, right?” Frank asked. “You’ve got a battery with a positive end and a negative end. A wire runs from each end to the lightbulb.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Joe said. “If you pull one of the wires off its end of the battery, the light goes out.”

  “Right. The circuit is broken.”

  “This works the same way?”

  Frank nodded. “Each fencer has his or her own lightbulb, right? Your vest is hooked into the positive end of your circuit, and my foil is connected to the negative end.”

  “When I touch your vest with my weapon, your light goes off because I completed your circuit.”

  “You got it,” Frank said.

  While Joe checked the door again, Frank rummaged around in Montreux’s desk until he found a dime he could use to open the transformer box.

  “Here we go,” he said, lifting the bottom panel off.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing,” Frank said.

  “You mean…”

  “Somebody ripped the guts out of this thing,” Frank said.

  Joe pointed at Frank. “As if they were getting rid of incriminating evidence.”

  Frank began replacing the fencing stuff back in the cardboard box. “Montreux is trying to cover up Iola’s accident,” he said.

  “If it was an accident.”

  “If it was an accident, then she’s trying to cover it up to protect her position as director of the training facility,” Frank said. “And if it wasn’t an accident, then something even more serious is going on.”

  “We’ve got to find the missing electrical parts,” Joe said. He steadied the chair while Frank placed the box back in the ceiling and moved the tile back in place.

  The brothers moved the chair below a different tile and scaled the wall to Sokal’s office from there.

  “Wow! This is different,” Joe said as he dropped lightly on to the hard tile floor of Sokal’s office.

  “I’ll say. Warm and friendly aren’t terms that come to mind.”

  The coach’s office was completely different from Montreux’s. Instead of a thick woven carpet and antique furniture, Sokal had a cold gray ceramic tile floor and gray steel office furniture. His office was also a huge mess.

  Joe pointed to a section of judo mat leaning up against the wall.

  “What’s he got that for, I wonder,” Frank said.

  Joe went over and tipped the mat down to the floor. “Sokal must use it to school his athletes,” Joe said with a laugh. “You know. There’s no time to walk all the way out to the gym to show somebody a new move, and words don’t make the point as clearly as you want.” Joe did a one-arm shoulder throw on an imaginary opponent. “That’s what you should’ve done during the match yesterday, you lazy idiot!” Joe imitated Sokal perfectly.

  Frank laughed, then both brothers became silent when they heard a noise from the hall outside.

  Joe put an ear to the door and a hand on the doorknob.

  “Somebody out there?” Frank asked.

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He tilted the mat against the wall again.

  The Hardys began their search. Frank went through a pile of rumpled judo uniforms in the corner. There was nothing hidden underneath them.

  Joe found
a stack of archery targets folded up in one desk drawer.

  “Bull’s-eye,” Joe joked. He held up a target. It had six holes right through the yellow center.

  “Good shooting,” Frank said. “Hey, is that somebody’s name written on the edge there?”

  Joe peered at the border of the target. “Yeah, it is. Your friend William Moubray must’ve shot this bad boy full of holes.”

  Frank and Joe went through the rest of the targets. Each one had an archer’s name and a date on it, recording how well he or she had shot that day.

  “No Milli Le Walt, of course,” Frank said.

  “Nope, but look at this.” Joe pointed to a set of five targets with the initials R. S. scrawled across the bottom.

  “Reid Sokal?” Frank asked.

  “Without a doubt,” Joe said. “He’s aces with a bow and arrow, man. Only a couple of shots in all these goes outside the bull.”

  “He coaches all the junior teams,” Frank said. “I’d expect him to know a little about archery.”

  “Agent Reid Sokal,” Joe mocked. “A black belt in judo, expert archer, fencing master extraordinaire.”

  “Not quite,” Frank said. “Remember, he hired Victoria to coach the junior fencers because he’s no good at it.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Joe said. He put the targets away and went to the metal filing cabinets. Sokal had a file on every athlete he coached.

  Joe thumbed through a few of them. “Hey, Frank,” he said. “Listen to what Sokal has to say about Allen Frierson.”

  “What?”

  “‘Athlete is highly motivated and tough,’” Joe read, “‘but lacks talent. His background in wrestling has helped him gain strength, but he does not have the balance to be successful in judo at a high level. Cut from team before new facility opens this fall.’”

  “Harsh,” Frank said.

  “Yeah, but something happened,” Joe said. “It’s dated six months ago. Obviously he didn’t cut Allen before the training center opened.”

  “Maybe he saw more improvement than he expected,” Frank noted.

  Joe replaced the file. “That’s cool. Good for Allen.”