CHAPTER 69

“New plan!” Dad shouted.

“Chya,” said Tommy. “We totally need one.”

Dad, with Storm’s arms still wrapped around his waist, leaped up and came down hard on his starter. His ATV’s engine sprang back to life.

“Reverse course,” said Dad. “Skirt the edge of the lake. Bick, Beck, take the lead. There has to be another way out of this valley!”

“On it!” I shouted, since I was on the bike in the rear, which would now be the lead.

I did a 180 doughnut, spewing pebbles as I went.

“Thanks a lot, Bick,” said Beck, who was behind me, eating my dust and pebbles.

She swung sideways, too, and pelted Tommy with gravel. Tommy’s backwash hit Dad and Storm. Like they always say: The family that sprays together stays together.

When we were relined up, I saw that Supay had sheathed his knife and was taking care of the high priest. I guess Beck’s jump had nearly given him a heart attack, which was kind of ironic since he wanted to attack Tommy’s heart. Meanwhile, Collier’s goons raced forward. They didn’t have rifles, just rocks, which they flung at me.

A stone the size of a softball dinged me on the shoulder.

“Ouch!” I hollered as I popped a wheelie and went flying forward on my rear wheels, turning the ATV undercarriage into a shield and a wedge. It protected me from being beaned by any more stones. It also split the bad guys apart because none of them wanted to be run over by a seriously enraged Kidd kid they’d just whacked on the shoulder with a jumbo-size rock!

“Ride along the edge of the lake, Bick,” shouted Beck from behind me once I’d cleared the field. “I see an opening on the far side.”

“I see it, too!” I said.

(Note to self: In the future, try to schedule all getaway chase scenes during daylight hours.)

We were whipping around the shoreline of the moonlit lake. I was kind of marveling at how this rocky crater seemed to appear out of nowhere in the middle of the Peruvian rain forest. It was almost as if it were man-made, like a lagoon at Disney World.

I didn’t get to marvel for long.

I heard a bong, like a rubber band snapping.

The bong was followed by a thwick. Then another bong. More thwicks. A few boing-bongs and then a shower of thwickety-thwick-thwick-thwicks!

Tiny darts shot out of all the crevices in the craggy rock walls lining the lake. I dodged a bunch of them but at least four of them punctured my tires.

I stood up and whirled around.

Beck was getting nailed by flying darts, too. The barrage was so thick, it looked like a swarm of angry wasps. Tommy and Dad were bobbing and weaving on their dirt bikes, trying to avoid the pointy projectiles, but they weren’t winning the darts game either. Before long, all of us were bumping along on nothing but rims, our tires totally deflated.

And then another mosquito bit me in the neck.

Except that this time, I realized it wasn’t a blood-sucking winged insect.

I knew it was a wooden dart dipped in something nasty.

In a flash, I fell asleep at the wheel.

Literally.

The last thing I remember is toppling off the ATV seat and landing in the dirt with my head resting on a flat tire.