“Another few circles and we might have lost him.”
Nish was under the care of the President’s own personal doctor. He had come running down onto the ice immediately after Travis and Sam and Sarah had forced the Zamboni driver to stop.
The driver had been furious. No one was to come onto the ice when the machine was resurfacing, he yelled at them. It was dangerous.
And then he, too, had heard the banging.
He had reached up and pulled a lever. There was the sound of valves moving and gears shifting, and slowly, like some yawning prehistoric monster, the Zamboni had opened up. Inside, half covered in snow and ice chips, was Nish, still screaming and pounding his skates against the insides of the huge machine.
“Either the snow would have smothered him,” the doctor was saying, “or the fumes would have killed him.”
“He’s used to fumes,” said Sam. The doctor looked at her, but he didn’t get it.
The Screech Owls were all in the dressing room, waiting. Nish was in the corner, his skates kicked off and his face beaming red, but he hardly looked ill. He had two Cokes going at once and seemed, once again, delighted with all the attention.
But the big news story was unfolding outside the dressing room. The television crews that had come to get some footage of the President at a hockey game were now going live with a much different story.
A threat on the life of the President!
Travis was stunned by how quickly the Secret Service had moved. The building had been cleared at once. Both teams dispatched to their dressing rooms with guards on the doors. A complete investigation had taken place in less than an hour.
Two older men, one Secret Service, the other a presidential aide, had come around to the Owls’ dressing room to explain.
Nish had come across an act of sabotage. The plan had been to assassinate the President as he was stationed in the Zamboni chute waiting to present the championship trophy – presumably to his son, Chase.
High-tech plastic explosives had been smuggled in past security and wired to explode when a signal was transmitted from a hand-held device by the assassin, who was also in the building.
The security camera in the Zamboni area had been tampered with so that it failed to cover that small space in the corner where the explosive had been planted.
The worst part, the Secret Service man said, was that the suspect in custody was “one of our own.”
But Travis already knew that. He knew now why that little block of wood had been placed next to the security camera in the Zamboni chute.
He knew now why a certain person had seemed so nervous.
He knew now why there had been such yelling and screaming about a silly flood.
Only one person knew that Nish had been bundled into the Zamboni, and that once the Zamboni was back on the ice it was only a matter of time before Nish would be discovered, alive or dead, and the opportunity to kill the President would be lost.
The assassin was Earplug.
“Why would he?” Fahd asked the men.
The answers were shrugs. “We have no idea,” the Secret Service man said. “We hope to find out. He might well have been acting alone. Obviously, he had become a very sick person without us noticing. And it’s our job to notice.”
There was a knock at the door and a man walked in, another of the President’s aides. He smiled at the Screech Owls and nodded appreciatively to Nish, who had helped avert a terrible disaster. Had they not discovered him and then checked the chute, they would never have found the explosives.
“President Jordan has asked that the game continue,” the man said. “The ice is ready.”
The Owls cheered.
Nish reached down and picked up his skates. He handed them to Mr. Dillinger.
“Can I get a quick sharp,” he said. “I think I took a bit of the edge off them.”
Mr. Dillinger took the skates, his eyes wide in shock. Nish was going to play? Not even an hour ago he had been facing death!
Mr. Dillinger looked questioningly at the doctor, who smiled back.
“Probably the best thing for him,” he said.
“Can I play?” Nish said to Muck.
Muck seemed to think about it awhile. Then he nodded. “You were on the game score sheet. Nothing says you have to see ice before overtime, I guess.”
“LET’S GO!” shouted Sam, who slammed her stick into Nish’s pads as she jumped up.