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A Coming of Age can now add an attempted murder charge to Martel's list when
we nail him. You didn't happen to check out the direction his gang was headed,
did you?"
" 'Fraid not I was afraid to poke my head more than half a meter off the
ground." Tonio frowned as he glanced around. "Say, where's Jarvis? Didn't he
get out with you?"
"No. The shoe, as they say, is on the other foot." Tirrell waved southeast.
"He's now been kidnapped by Martel."
Tonio snorted. "Serves him right," he said; but to Lisa his voice lacked real
conviction. "I suppose we've got to get him out, though."
"Yeah and we're going to have to call in some help to find them."
"Maybe they just went back to the temple site," Lisa suggested.
Tirrell shook his head. "No. It's clear that most of his kids aren't in on
this with him, and that makes the temple site too public a place to keep
Jarvis. Besides, he left under the impression that Tonio was already on his
way with reinforcements, so he wouldn't go anywhere that Tonio knew about.
However " He paused, a thoughtful frown beginning to crease his Face. "He
doesn't know we're on to what the temple site really is and he'll need to have
a refinery somewhere where he can separate out his gold."
"You think he might go there?" Tonio asked.
"It's worth checking on. Lisa, we're going to need more of your help, I'm
afraid. We're going to fly over to Plat City and drop Colin off at the police
station there. Then we'll get some detailed maps of the region and I'll want
you to show us exactly where the dump site is. With luck, Tonio and I may be
able to find Martel's refinery on our own and determine whether or not he's
there."
"What if he is?" Lisa objected. "He'll probably have kids on guard, and if he
catches you, you'll be in the same situation we just got out of."
Strangely enough, Tirrell smiled. "Not really," he said. "I think I know how
to even the odds a little.
Let's get going we can talk more on the way."
Chapter 26
The dump site was in a grassy valley three or four kilometers from the temple
site, an unexceptional place with a handful of trees, a narrow yet
surprisingly gentle river, and two or three barren hills poking through the
scrub weed. It was only as Lisa guided them to one of the latter that Tirrell
could see it was in actuality an immense pile of broken stone.
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"They dug all this stuff out of that mountain?" Tonio asked, eyeing the rocks
with obvious amazement.
"This isn't half of what they've actually mined," Tirrell told him. "Loose
rock always looks bigger than the hole it came out of." Sliding his backpack
onto the ground, the detective found a relatively flat slab at the edge of the
pile and unfolded the small-scale survey map he'd obtained from the Plat
City police. "They've probably been quietly hauling the stuff away, most
likely during weekdays when all the kids are at work. Probably leaving this
much here on purpose so no one'll realize any of it's missing."
Fiddling with one of the smaller stones, Tonio flew over to land at his side.
"You figured out where we are?"
"I think so." Tirrell was actually somewhat more certain than that, having
followed their course on the map all the way from Plat City. "We're on the
southern edge of the De Sable Plateau, next to the main branch of the Rashoni
River. Flows generally south, then goes southwest down the far side of the
mountains and off my map."
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"Is that why the water's moving so slowly?" Lisa asked. "Because we're on a
flat area?"
"Basically. The size and number of tributaries and the channel dimensions are
important, too, but you basically can't have anything this slow in mountains
except on a plateau."
"Makes it nice and easy to anchor their boat while they load up, doesn't it?"
Tonio commented. He teeked his stone hard into the side of the heap, causing a
minor rock slide. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's head on down and find
him."
Tirrell was already folding up his map when something in his righthand's
voice overconfidence? made him pause.
Let's head on down and find him.
It was a perfectly reasonable and obvious statement... but this was
Martel they were dealing with, and Martel had stayed free this long precisely
because he worked hard at avoiding the obvious. Still, shipping the ore via
water was the simplest and cheapest method available. Why bother teeking the
stuff to the riverside if all he wanted was to leave a false clue before
carting it away overland again?
Unless...
Unfolding the map again, Tirrell studied it closely. Yes... yes; it was
possible. And right or wrong, it wouldn't take long to check out.
"Stan?" Tonio asked impatiently. "We going or not?"
"We're going," the detective answered slowly. "But we're going to start by
heading upstream. The current's slow enough that even a heavy boat shouldn't
have any trouble fighting it, at least for a few kilometers."
"You think he's set up a refinery way up here in the mountains?" Lisa asked,
looking puzzled.
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Wouldn't that have been the hard way to do it?"
"No, to both questions," Tirrell told her, taking one last look at the map
before folding it to show only the region immediately upriver of them. "What
I'm thinking might be crazy, or it might be brilliant and I won't know which
until we check it out on the actual terrain."
"Well, let's do it then," Tonio said. "Don't worry, Lisa," he added to the
other preteen. "He gets these brilliant hunches all the time. You just have to
learn to put up with them."
Tirrell smiled, and a small tight place in his stomach relaxed for the first
time in hours. The resurgence of Tonio's sense of humor was a good sign, an
indication that the righthand was finally catching up with the emotional
shocks and stresses that had been pummeling him all day. To capture
Martel at the cost of damage to Tonio's personality was not a trade he
would've liked having to make. "So skip the noise and give me a lift," he
said, scooping up his backpack with one hand and holding out the other. "You
can explain to Lisa on the way that my hunches usually come out right."
They found it a bare kilometer upriver not the refinery, but the clue that
Tirrell, despite his outward confidence, had only half expected to find.
"What are they?" Lisa asked as they hovered over the grooves cut into the
narrow band of moist ground separating the riverbank from the harder rock
beyond.
"Tread marks," Tirrell told her. "Almost certainly those of a heavy amphibious
vehicle."
"This doesn't make any sense," Tonio complained, squinting in the direction
the tread marks pointed.
"There's nothing but rock over there. No trees, no possibility of a decent
cave how's he going to hide a refinery out in the open?"
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"Let's go see, shall we?" Tirrell said.
"But they'll see us," Lisa objected, looking around nervously.
"Don't worry; Martel's still kilometers away," Tirrell assured her. "Let's
go you'll understand in about a hundred meters."
The two preteens exchanged glances. Then Tonio shrugged and they were airborne
again, flying low. The ground swelled up into a low rise, and they topped it
to find
Another river.
"Are you going to tell us," Tonio demanded as they landed, "that Martel carts
his rocks up one river and across dry land just to ship 'em down another
river? Why?"
"I am indeed," Tirrell nodded. "And the why is twofold: first, because this [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]