19 A Free Tour

Chapter 19 A FREE TOUR "Keep your mouths shut, or we'll slice your necks like Wonder Bread." The whispered voice sounded familiar, but Coke and Pep weren't about to turn around to find out who was doing the talking. The twins were pulled backward through a doorway, and then it slammed shut. That door led to another tunnel, this one not open to the public. Still holding knives to the twins' throats, the two men dragged Coke and Pep down a long corridor and through another set of iron doors. It was pitch-dark in there and perfectly quiet, except the echo of the door slam seemed to go on forever. Pep didn't dare speak. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, and her own heartbeat. "We got 'em, boss," one of the men grunted.

"Good," said a voice ten feet away. "Now let 'em go. If they try to run, they'll smash their heads into the wall." "Who are you?" Coke demanded after the knife was removed from his neck. "Are you Dr. Warsaw?" "Nope," the man said simply. He lit a cigarette with a match, and it illuminated his face just enough to make it partly visible. "John Pain!" Pep shouted. "I told ya you'd see me again." Yes, it was John Pain, the long-winded cowboy they had encountered at the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque. He clicked on a flashlight and pointed it at his own face from below. It created an eerie, shadowy image. "Let us go, Pain!" shouted Pep. "I already let ya go," said John Pain. "Then let us out of here!" she demanded. "Oh, I can't do that, little lady," Pain said. "I need to finish up the job I started."

"What job was that?" Pep asked. "Killin' you," John Pain said matter-of-factly. "That was purty clever, the way you took care of that rattlesnake. You really rattled 'im." The two men who had grabbed Coke and Pep started to giggle like schoolboys. "Knock it off, you cackling morons!" shouted John Pain, shining his flashlight at them. The two men were dressed like Hoover Dam security guards, except for one thing—they were both wearing bowler-style hats. "The bowler dudes!" Coke yelled. "Not again!" "At your service!" said the snickering, mustachioed bowler dude. "Long time no see!" Yes, once again the twins were being hassled by the pair of moronic, sadistic brothers who had already buried them in a sand pit, attacked them with bowling balls, and assisted in several other attempts on their lives over the past five weeks. "How did you get past security?" Coke asked

John Pain. "We are security," he replied. "Good one, boss," giggled the clean-shaven bowler dude. "Shut up, you idiot!" "You want us to kill 'em now?" asked the mustachioed bowler dude. "That ain't gonna be necessary, boys," Pain drawled. "Their daddy was too cheap to pay for the full tour, but we're gonna give it to 'em for free. They'll get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the insides of the dam." "We don't want your dam tour!" Pep shouted. "Let us go!" Both twins thought about making a run for it. But it was so dark in the tunnel, they were sure to injure themselves if they ran into something. "There are four trillion gallons of water in Lake Mead," John Pain informed them. "That's a lot of water pressure." "We don't care!" Pep barked. "Leave us

alone!" "Oh, you will care," Pain said. "'Cause right now we're inside one of the four intake tower pipes of Hoover Dam. It's thirty feet in diameter. At regular intervals, they open a gate and ninety thousand gallons of water comes shootin' through this pipe. That's ninety thousand gallons of water each second. It would fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in less than seven seconds." "Help!" Pep screamed. "Somebody help us!" "They can't hear you through the concrete," Coke said sadly. There was no fight left in him. He was a beaten man. "You kids ever been on a waterslide?" asked John Pain. "This is gonna be a lot like that. Except at the end, you don't land on your fanny in a nice little pool. You land in the spinning turbine of a hydroelectric generator. Ha-ha-ha!" "Ha-ha, good one, boss," said the clean- shaven bowler dude. "Quiet!" barked John Pain. "You're ruining

my flow." "Sorry, boss." "It's an engineering marvel, ain't it?" asked John Pain, pointing the flashlight beam left and right. "The water rushin' through here generates enough 'lectricity to power millions of homes and businesses. And think of it. When your bodies get sliced up by those giant turbine blades, you'll become part of the history. Thanks to you, America will be green. You'll become an alternative source of energy." The bowler dudes couldn't stop themselves from giggling.