Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19 "I'm telling you," the pilot insisted. "There's not going to be anything there!" "And I'm telling you," Nellie said, standing almost nose to nose with him. "We're paying you tons of money to take us there anyway!" The pilot pointed at the computer screen. "Let me explain again," he said with exaggerated patience. "The map reading of fifty- three north, six west is in the water." He zoomed in on the computer, so the screen showed nothing but blue. "It's off the coast of Ireland, yes, but there's not an island there. There's not even a big rock. There's nothing to land on!" "We'll take parachutes," Nellie said. The pilot snorted. "Do you know what kind of trouble I could get into, dropping two kids and a teenager off in the middle of the Irish Sea?" he asked. "I could lose

“我告诉你，”飞行员坚持说。 “那里什么也不会有！”“我告诉你，"耐莉说，几乎和他鼻子挨着鼻子站在一起。 “我们付了很多钱让你带我们去！”飞行员指着电脑屏幕。 “让我再解释一遍，”他带着夸张的耐心说。 “地图上的读数是北五十三，西六，在水里。” 他把电脑放大了，所以屏幕上只有蓝色。 “是的，它在爱尔兰海岸附近，但那里没有岛屿。 连一块大石头都没有。 没有东西可以降落！”“我们要带降落伞，”内莉说。 飞行员哼了一声。“你知道我把两个孩子和一个十几岁的孩子扔在爱尔兰海中间会惹上什么麻烦吗？”他问道。 “我可能会输

my license!" "I am not a teenager!" Nellie said furiously. "I am twenty years old!" It felt like the two of them had been arguing forever, back and forth, while Dan and Amy ate a very late improvised dinner from the heliport vending machine. Dan crumpled the last bag of Crispy Bacon Frazzles. "What if we throw in an extra two thousand dollars for you to take us there?" he suggested. Everyone turned and looked at him. What? Dan wondered. Can't I be the calm, reasonable one in the room? He realized that he never would have been before the Clue hunt. Of course, before the Clue hunt, he'd also never had access to huge sums of money he could use to bribe people to do what he wanted. "Fine," the helicopter pilot snapped. "I will take you on this crazy mission. Just to look. We will not land on the waves. You will not jump out in parachutes. You will not even unlatch a window unless I say it's safe!"

我的执照!”“我不是青少年了！”内利愤怒地说。 “我二十岁了！”感觉他们俩一直在争吵，来来回回，而丹和艾米在直升机机场的自动售货机上吃了一顿很晚才吃完的临时晚餐。 丹把最后一包脆培根脆脆饼干揉成一团。 “如果我们再给你两千美元，让你带我们去那儿，怎么样？”他建议道。 每个人都转过身来看着他。 怎么啦？丹奇怪。我就不能冷静，理智一点吗？ 他意识到，在寻找线索之前，他是不可能做到的。 当然，在寻找线索之前，他也从未有过大笔的钱可以用来贿赂别人做他想做的事。 “好吧，”直升机飞行员厉声说。 “我要带你去执行这个疯狂的任务。 只是看看。我们不会在海浪上降落。 你不能用降落伞跳出来。 除非我说安全，否则你连一扇窗户都不愿意打开！”

It was a tense flight. Nellie told Amy and Dan to sleep if they could, but every time Dan closed his eyes he saw the mob of his enemies back at the church. He kept dozing off and jerking awake from nightmares about the other Clue hunters chasing him with pitchforks and torches, or nightmares about the coffin from Shakespeare's grave rising up and zooming after him, or nightmares about Isabel Kabra suddenly showing up to… to… "There it is!" Nellie shrieked. Dan jerked upright. He blinked at the sudden light: The sun was just coming up over the sea. And down below in the bouncing waves there was a small black dot. "See? What did I tell you? There is an island," Nellie said, grinning triumphantly. "Oh, no, no, no," the pilot said. "That's just—" He glanced down at his instrument panel. He flicked one of the dials. He glared at a screen that seemed to be the helicopter version of GPS. "This is impossible! There isn't an island there on any map!"

这是一次紧张的飞行。内莉告诉艾米和丹，如果可以的话就睡觉，但每次丹闭上眼睛，他都能看到他的敌人在教堂后面的暴民。 他不停地打瞌睡，从噩梦中惊醒，梦见其他的线索猎人拿着干草叉和火把追着他，或者梦见莎士比亚坟墓里的棺材升起来，在他身后呼啸而过，或者梦见伊莎贝尔·卡布拉突然出现在……内莉尖叫起来。 丹猛地站了起来。突然出现的亮光使他眨了眨眼睛：太阳刚刚从海面上升起。 在下面反弹的波浪中有一个小黑点。 “看到了吗?我怎么跟你说的？ 有一个岛，"内莉得意地笑着说。 “哦，不，不，不，”飞行员说。 “那只是——”他低头看了看仪表板。 他轻弹其中一个刻度盘。 他盯着一个屏幕，似乎是直升机版的GPS。 “这不可能！”在任何地图上都找不到那里的岛屿！”

"Typical Cahill setup," Amy muttered beside Dan. She was speaking too softly for the pilot to hear her over the whir of the helicopter blades. "They've probably been bribing mapmakers for five hundred years to keep that island secret. Wonder how many ships have crashed into it because of that?" "It's like with Lester," Dan said softly. Staring out at the roiling water, Dan could imagine shipwreck victims reaching up desperately from the waves, just as Lester had reached from the quicksand back in Jamaica. "This is why we have to win," Amy whispered back. She'd said the same thing the day Lester died: That they had to finish the hunt on behalf of all the ordinary people who'd been hurt or killed by Cahills fighting to take over the world. Dan agreed, but… he didn't want to be ordinary himself. It was more fun to be in control, to have thousands of dollars to throw around to get his own way. It was easier not to think about any of it.

“典型的卡希尔式安排，”艾米在丹身边喃喃自语。 她说话的声音太小了，飞行员在直升机叶片的嗡嗡声中听不见。 “五百年来，他们可能一直在贿赂制图师，让他们保守那个岛的秘密。 不知道有多少船因此撞上了它？”“就像莱斯特，”丹轻声说。 丹凝视着汹涌的海水，想象着沉船的受害者绝望地从海浪中伸出手来，就像莱斯特在牙买加从流沙中伸出手一样。 “这就是我们必须赢的原因，”艾米小声回答。 莱斯特死的那天，她也说过同样的话：他们必须代表所有在卡希尔统治世界的斗争中受伤或被杀的普通人完成追捕。 丹同意了，但他不想自己成为普通人。 掌控一切更有趣，有几千美元可以随意挥霍，随心所欲。 不去想这些都比较容易。

And, Dan told himself, it didn't matter what their reasons were— for Lester, for the Madrigals, for the memory of Grace or Dan and Amy's parents, just to keep the other teams from getting too much power…. No matter what, Amy and Dan had to win. "And look, the island is big enough to land on." Nellie was gloating in the front seat. Without saying a word, the pilot let the helicopter drop toward the island. Dan's stomach lurched upward— he had a feeling the pilot could have made a much smoother descent if he'd wanted. "Wait!" Dan yelled. "There! That's where we need to land!" The island consisted of a broad, flat, pebbled beach leading up to a field of tall grasses, and then one huge, sheer cliff with only a narrow flat space at the top. Dan couldn't begin to imagine what weird natural forces could have created that setup— maybe it wasn't anything natural. Maybe the layout of the island was a Cahill invention. Dan knew that what he'd seen wasn't natural: a metal

而且，丹告诉自己，不管他们的理由是什么——为了莱斯特，为了牧歌，为了纪念格蕾丝或丹和艾米的父母，只是为了防止其他球队获得太多的权力.... 无论如何，艾米和丹必须赢。 “看，这个岛大得可以登陆。” 内莉在前排座位上幸灾乐祸。 飞行员一句话也没说，就让直升机向那个岛降落。 丹的胃猛地往上一跳——他有一种感觉，如果飞行员愿意的话，他可以做一个更平稳的降落。 “等等!”丹喊道。“有!那就是我们要降落的地方！”这个岛有一个宽阔平坦的卵石海滩，通往一片高高的草地，然后是一个巨大的悬崖，山顶只有一小块平坦的地方。 丹无法想象是什么奇怪的自然力量创造了这样的场景——也许这不是自然的。 也许岛的布局是卡希尔的发明。 丹知道他看到的不是天然的东西：一种金属

framed doorway at the top of the cliff. And, beside the doorway, a metal panel with pushbutton numbers. "Land beside that door!" Dan yelled. The pilot let out an exasperated burst of air. "Do you know nothing about helicopters?" he asked. "If I try to land there, my blades will hit the door and we will topple off the cliff and die." "Then lower us down to the door on one of those little rope-ladder things people always use in the movies," Amy said. Dan couldn't believe it was Amy suggesting this. "Don't you know how long people have to train to do that?" the pilot asked. "Someone like you, without experience, you would be caught in the draft and blow away and die." "If we don't hit the cliff and die that way instead," Dan muttered under his breath. This guy was just a bundle of laughs. "Then the idea of parachutes—" Nellie began. "You would be blown out to sea," the pilot said.

悬崖顶上的门框。 在门边，有一块金属板，上面写着按钮号码。 “停在那扇门旁边！”丹喊道。 飞行员气急败坏地吐了一口气。 “你对直升机一无所知吗？”他问。 “如果我试图降落在那里，我的刀片会撞到门上，我们会从悬崖上摔下来，死在那里。” “那就用电影里经常用的那种小绳梯把我们送到门口，”艾米说。 丹不敢相信艾米会这么说。 “难道你不知道要训练多久才能做到这一点吗？”飞行员问道。 “像你这样的人，如果没有经验，你会被抓去送死的。” “如果我们不摔到悬崖上，那样死去的话。”丹低声咕哝着。 这家伙就是一堆笑料。 “那么降落伞的想法——”内利开始说。 “你会被吹到海里，”飞行员说。