Zoobreak (13 page)

They’d been traveling for nearly an hour before the headlamp on Griffin’s prototype illuminated a sign:

LONG ISLAND ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN NEXT RIGHT

“This is it, you guys! Follow me!”

A
zoo was such a daytime place that it seemed eerie and threatening in the gloom. The team wheeled through acres of empty parking lot, illuminated only by the faintest of lights. The ticket windows were shuttered, the front gate barred by a rolling section of fence.

Pitch hopped off her Rollo-Bushel and scaled the barrier with ease. “Piece of cake,” she called softly. “It’s just a latch.”

Griffin helped her slide the heavy fencing aside, and the six vehicles entered the zoo.

From here, Savannah took over the lead role in the operation. Not only was she the animal expert, but she had been here after hours. Dr. Alford had given her an insider’s view.

“There are keepers on call, but they’re not on site,” she whispered. “The only people at the zoo right now are two night watchmen cruising around in golf carts. If we stay off the main paths, we should be able to avoid them.”

“Rollo-Bushels are designed to drive in orchards,” Griffin added. “We can take them on the grass.”

Melissa spoke up. “Where’s the computer that controls the cage locks?”

“In the administration building,” Savannah replied. “It’s just past the food court.”

The procession of Rollo-Bushels drove off the pavement into the cover of the trees. They skirted the compound, their vehicles bumping over stones and roots. The ride was rougher, but the suspension was rock steady. The bags with their live cargo shook but did not fall off.

Their course took them behind some of the zoo’s more famous exhibits. Griffin could make out the tall shape of a sleeping giraffe silhouetted against a moonlit sky. Farther along were two huge hulks, probably the rounded backs of elephants. But this was no sightseeing tour. He couldn’t let
his mind wander now that their goal was so close at hand. He focused all his attention on keeping his scooter right behind Savannah’s and making sure the others were close behind him.

ADMINISTRATION
read the sign in front of a low building constructed in the shape of an L. It lay flat to the ground, its front door protected by a simple padlock.

Griffin stopped his Rollo-Bushel, hopped off the platform, and approached the entrance. From the side pouch of his backpack, he produced the wire cutters he’d used to open the cages in the first zoobreak. He clamped the blades around the lock and squeezed. No progress. Pitch came to lend her strength to the task. The two of them groaned with effort. Still nothing.

Savannah was alarmed. “If we can’t get into the office, we’ll never be able to turn off the electronic locks!”

“You mean we came all this way for
nothing
?” asked Logan, aghast. “No way am I taking that beaver back to my basement!”

Griffin abandoned the wire cutters. “Any good plan includes backup.” He reached into the pouch once more and pulled out a
small hacksaw. “This’ll take a few minutes. Stash the Rollo-Bushels in the bushes just in case the security guards come by.”

He went to work on the padlock, sawing vigorously. It was slow going, and soon he was bathed in sweat despite the cool night. The metal gave way, bit by bit, the shavings raining down on the stoop. Finally, the lock clattered to the pavement. They were in.

Griffin, Savannah, and Melissa entered, leaving the others to guard the animals. The inside of the building could have been the main office at school, with desks and cubicles and small meeting rooms down a hallway.

“Okay,” said Griffin, all business. “Which computer unlocks the cages?”

“They all will,” said Melissa. “The system has to be run on a secure intranet. Any networked station should do the job.”

“We’ll use the one in Dr. Alford’s office,” Savannah decided. “She definitely has the authority.” She led them down the corridor to the door marked
CURATOR.

The door was ajar, the computer still on and humming. Melissa sat down and began to pound the keyboard.

“Do you think she can do it?” wondered Savannah, her eyes full of anxiety.

“I don’t know,” Griffin replied. “But on a computer, if Melissa can’t do it, it can’t be done.”

They stood in silence as the keyboard clattered and data flashed across the screen. The tension was so dense that it was almost visible in the room. The weight of this whole affair was especially heavy on Savannah, since the theft of her monkey had set it all in motion. And as for Griffin, he knew that no hacksaw could save the plan if they couldn’t access the cages. Worse, there was no going back — not to Savannah’s shed, Logan’s basement, Melissa’s closet, Pitch’s garage, Ben’s sauna, or Griffin’s Lego.

Melissa’s quiet voice startled both of them. “Okay,” she said, “which cage do you want to open first?”

The judge’s gavel came down like a pistol shot. “I sentence you to fifty years in juvenile detention!”

“No-o-o-o!
” cried Darren, devastated. “I’m innocent!” He wheeled in the courtroom to face Mr. Nastase, who was laughing loudly in the front row, Klaus at his side. “You know I’m innocent!”

“You should have thought of that before sending us on a wild goose chase to the Long Island Zoo!” Mr. Nastase jeered.

“It’s Bing’s fault!” Darren babbled. “He and Slovak set me up! They dropped that fake plan out the window because they saw me spying on the house!”

“Bailiff!” thundered the judge. “Take him away.”

Darren tried to escape, but strong hands grabbed him, shaking him.

“Let me go!”

“Darren — Darren, wake up! You’re having a nightmare.”

Shocked, Darren opened his eyes. The arms that held him tightly were his mother’s. His father was by the light switch, looking worried.

His relief that the fifty-year sentence had been only a dream evaporated when his mother asked, “You were spying on
what
house?”

Uh-oh
. “I don’t know. It was just a dream. I don’t even remember what it was about.”

“You were babbling about Griffin and Ben,” his mother informed him. “And you kept saying you were innocent. I know you, Darren
Vader. You’re
never
innocent. What are you mixed up in this time?”

Darren was too sleepy and too rattled to think up a good lie. He blurted out the whole ugly truth.

His father was horrified. “Are you telling me that six kids are all the way out at that zoo at one-thirty in the morning, and you sent two thugs after them?”

It sounded bad, even to Darren. “I had no choice! They were going to call the cops on me because I had a hot owl!”

Mrs. Vader cast her husband a stricken look. “We have to call those other parents —
and
the police.”

G
riffin and Ben parked their Rollo-Bushels in the shadows behind the Small Mammal House. Ben unloaded the pet carrier containing the rabbits and the laundry bag with the prairie dog. Griffin hefted the drawstring sack where his meerkat lay sleeping.

“Team One to Base,” he said into his walkie-talkie. “Melissa, we’re at Small Mammals. Pop the door.”

“Got it,” came Melissa’s voice. “Let’s hope this works.”

They stood, barely daring to breathe, and almost broke into wild celebration when they heard a loud click. Griffin reached for the handle and pulled the door wide.

“We’re in.”

Logan’s voice came over the speaker from Base. “Tell me when the beaver’s gone.”

“The beaver’s with Team Two at North American Wetlands,” Griffin said briskly. “Savannah and Pitch are dumping him with the duck and the loon.”

They found themselves in a long corridor with glassed-in habitats on both sides. Most of the animals were asleep, their displays dark. The main hall was in night mode, bathed in reddish light.

Ben radiated anxiety. “How do we get them into the habitats? If we break the glass, we’ll have the whole zoo on our necks!”

On the other side of the grounds, at North American Wetlands, Savannah overheard them on her own walkie-talkie.

“There’s a hallway in back that lets you get into the displays,” she advised. “Look for an entrance marked ‘Staff Only.’ ”

“Got it,” Griffin confirmed. “It’s locked. Melissa?”

“Hang on.” A moment later, there was a telltale click.

Ben pushed the door open, and they hustled their bags inside. This hallway was a thin passage that extended the full length of the building behind the row of habitats. They
could not see into the displays, but each one had an access panel that was clearly marked. It identified the animals inside, their food and water requirements, and maintenance instructions.

Griffin went along, reading the signs. “Here — Eastern Cottontail Rabbit.” He opened the panel just a crack, and they peered inside. There in the middle of the tall grass and pebbly sand of the habitat slumbered two gray-brown bundles of fur.

Ben was dismayed. “Our guys are white! We’ve got the wrong rabbits!”

“They’ll do,” Griffin decided. “Savannah said it doesn’t have to be a perfect match. They just have to avoid killing each other before the zoo people notice them in the morning.”

They took the three rabbits out of the carrier and placed them gently into the habitat. The new arrivals, their sleep disturbed, looked around with bleary eyes but soon settled down. If they were agitated by the move, it didn’t show.

Griffin felt a faint stirring of hope. The first animals had been unloaded. This could work. It
would
work….

A few displays down, they deposited the prairie dog into a dusty enclosure with tumble-weeds and two others of its species.

Switching to the other side of the hall, they located the meerkat exhibit. The heat was cranked up so high that it baked the moisture right out of their eyes as they placed the former tenant of Mrs. Bing’s greenhouse into its natural habitat.

“You know,” said Griffin in a subdued voice, “I’m going to miss that little guy. I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I felt he was the only one who really understood me.”

“You’re right,” Ben told him. “It sounds crazy.”

That left Ferret Face. In the very last enclosure, they found a community that included a black-footed ferret, two stoats, a European polecat, and a weasel.

Ben reached into his hoodie and pulled Ferret Face out. “Okay, buddy, this is your stop.”

It was one thing to find a home for Ferret Face; it was quite another to make him go into it. It took every ounce of strength the two had to disconnect the ferret’s claws from the fleece of the hoodie. Even then,
the creature tried to wrestle his way out of Ben’s hands, wriggling and spitting. He was just a few inches from the opening when he suddenly froze, eyes fixed inside the display. There, looking out at him, displaying similar markings, was another ferret — a little larger, but otherwise identical.

Seizing the moment, Ben placed Ferret Face onto the grass, and the two new friends scurried off together. Ben stared after them for a long moment.

“They grow up so fast,” he commented, only half joking.

Griffin was speaking to Melissa over the walkie-talkie once more. “Team One — all done here. Next stop, Rodent World.”

They let themselves out of the building and were almost instantly pinpointed in approaching headlights. Desperately, Griffin grabbed Ben around the shoulders and hurled the two of them off the doorstep and into the bushes. They huddled there, watching in trepidation as a golf cart rattled slowly up, a uniformed security guard at the wheel. When he stopped his cart, the front tire was barely a yard from their hiding place.

Griffin switched off his walkie-talkie. If
one of the others tried to make contact now, the jig would be up.

A shiny black boot stepped right in front of his nose.

Oh, please, don’t look down!

The guard walked over to the Small Mammal House and tried the door. In that heart-stopping instant, Griffin realized he had no idea if the electronic lock had reset itself. If the building was open, the guard would know something was wrong.

Locked!
He and Ben exchanged a very quiet high five.

The guard got back in his golf cart and drove off.

Savannah and Pitch lurked in the shadows, waiting for the familiar click that would tell them Melissa had released the aviary door. They entered the structure, a huge open area, landscaped and treed, enclosed by mesh fencing. It was a boisterous place by day, but now the birds were merely dozens of dark shapes perched on the branches, asleep.

“This makes no sense at all,” complained Pitch. “Why would you leave a chicken that can’t even fly in an aviary?”

“Because they don’t have a henhouse,” Savannah replied. “At least here there’s birdseed and no predators.”

“Unless you’re a worm,” Pitch agreed. She opened a laundry bag, and the hen emerged in a ponderous chicken-gait. The bird let out a slow, squawking cluck, as if testing to see if her vocal cords still worked in these strange surroundings.

The sound provoked an instant response from another bag. The fabric began to undulate in Savannah’s arms. A split second later, the piglet exploded out of the drawstring opening. He hit the ground scrambling and rushed over to cuddle up to the hen.

“I guess Melissa’s closet was their first date,” Pitch commented.

“I was going to let him loose in the butterfly exhibit,” said Savannah, “but he’d have no one to talk to.”

“You should seek help,” Pitch advised, matter-of-factly.

“He’ll be fine here till morning,” Savannah concluded. She took out her walkie-talkie. “Team Two. We’re all done. How are you making out, Griffin?”

“We’re finishing in Rodent World,” Griffin
replied. “We’re a little behind schedule. We got hung up by a security guard.”

“We saw one, too,” Savannah confirmed. “He was heading out toward the Monkey House.”

“We’ll be done after the Reptile Center,” Griffin promised. “Meet you back at Base.”

In Dr. Alford’s office in Administration, Melissa set down her walkie-talkie and scrolled through screens until she found the controls for the Reptile/Amphibian Center. This would be the last drop-off. Operation Zoobreak II was almost complete.