18 Hoover Dam

Chapter 18 HOOVER DAM A shiver went down Pep's back. She was angry, frightened, and just a little freaked out that some creep had broken into their car while the family had been hiking in the canyon. Not only that, but he—or she—had been sitting in her seat, writing in her private notepad, and possibly messing around with her other stuff. What if somebody put a bomb in their car? She looked through her backpack to make sure that nothing had been disturbed. "I have a bad feeling about this," Pep told her brother. But she didn't mention anything to her parents. Dr. McDonald pulled out of the Grand Canyon Village parking lot and got back on the highway. There aren't a lot of roads leading into or out

of Grand Canyon National Park. To continue heading west, you have to drive south on Route 180 for 50 miles, and then get on I-40. For a while, Dr. McDonald veered off onto historic Route 66 for a change of scenery, but then got back on I-40 at the town of Kingman. From there, he took Route 93, which goes out to the tip of Arizona. If you look on the map, he drove in a big U shape. It was a long drive, more than three hours, and there wasn't a whole lot to look at along the way. Spectacular mountains were in the distance and there was something beautiful about the desert. But everybody was starting to feel like they just wanted to get home. Dear reader, in the course of this series, I fear that perhaps I haven't conveyed the mind- numbing boredom that goes with sitting in a car for a 3,000-mile trip across the United States and back again. Needless to say, for most travelers, it's not a nonstop thrill ride of visiting goofy tourist traps, solving indecipherable

ciphers, and getting attacked by crazed bad guys every few days. A real cross-country trip involves a lot of staring out the window for hours and wondering how long it will be until "we're there." I've taken the liberty of leaving out the boring parts to spare you the drudgery of reading a book that would be as dull as an actual cross-country drive. You're welcome! To pass the time, Pep examined the strange new handwriting in her notepad. She stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out what it could possibly mean... ATLEDOEMORAHPLAAMILAMILMRO FINUOVARB None of her usual intricate strategies seemed to work on this one. After an hour or so, Pep found her eyes feeling heavy, and soon she dozed off, her notepad dropping to her feet. Coke picked it up and looked at the cipher. Just for the heck of it, he wrote it out backward, something his sister usually tried but had neglected to do this time...

BRAVOUNIFORMLIMALIMA ALPHAROMEODELTA Coke's eye widened. Wait a minute! There were words in there! He drew slashes in the obvious places. BRAVO/UNIFORM/LIMA/LIMA/ALPHA/ROM Then he poked his sister awake. "I got it!" he whispered after she opened her eyes. "Look! There are words in there. And Alpha Romeo is a kind of car. Just like Volkswagen." Pep took the notepad to see what he had written. "It's not the car, you dope!" she said. "This is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet." "The what?" A -ALPHA B -BRAVO C -CHARLIE D -DELTA E -ECHO F -FOXTROT G -GOLF H -HOTEL

I -INDIA J -JULIETT K -KILO L -LIMA M -MIKE N -NOVEMBER O -OSCAR P -PAPA Q -QUEBEC R -ROMEO S -SIERRA T -TANGO U -UNIFORM V -VICTOR W -WHISKEY X -X-RAY Y -YANKEE Z -ZULU "It's a simple code the military uses so they can relay messages clearly," Pep told him. "You know how in war movies they're always talking into headsets and saying, 'alpha,' 'bravo,' 'charlie,' and stuff like that? They're using words to represent letters to make sure the person at the other end is hearing them right." "How do you know that?" Coke asked. "Everybody knows that," Pep replied. "I didn't know that," Coke said. "So you're saying that BRAVO means B, and UNIFORM

means U "Right," Pep said. "And LIMA means L. ALPHA means A. ROMEO means R. And DELTA means D. So BRAVO UNIFORM LIMA LIMA ALPHA ROMEO DELTA is B-U-L-L-A-R-D." "Are you sure that's right?" Coke asked. "BULLARD?" "That's what it says," his sister replied. "Now all we need to do is find out what BULLARD means." "Google it," Coke said. "Mom!" Mrs. McDonald handed her laptop back to the twins. "I'm so pleased to see you kids working hard on your summer homework assignments," she said. Coke and Pep rolled their eyes at each other. Their parents were hopeless. Coke did a search for BULLARD. It turned up a company that makes protective equipment,