Treasure Hunters--The Plunder Down Under Read online

  Uncle Richie tossed back his head and laughed. “Good one, Mr. Tyler! Jolly good.”

  “Are those boomerangs?” asked Storm pointing to a bucket filled with angled wood wedges, all of them decorated with primitive paintings.

  “That they are. Help yourself to one, if you fancy.”

  Storm rustled through the bucket and pulled out a boomerang with all sorts of colorful art painted on its sides. She tested its heft in her hand and did a few little wrist flicks. She must’ve liked the way it felt because she smiled, something Storm doesn’t do all that often.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No worries,” said Timbo Tyler. “Say, do any of you folks know what you call a boomerang that won’t come back?”

  “Yeah,” said Beck. “A stick.”

  “Good on ya, Rebecca,” said Tyler, with a hearty laugh.

  “How’d you know my name?”

  “Just something we spies are good at. Also, your parents were allowed one phone call this morning at the prison. They called me. Said you lot would be flying down. Needed to get outfitted for an expedition.”

  “Indeed, we do,” said Uncle Richie. “We need the full package, Timbo. A vehicle. Provisions. Camping gear.”

  “Weapons,” said Tommy.

  Uncle Richie shook his head. “I don’t think guns will be necessary, Thomas.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “We’re going up against pirates! They’ll have guns plus knives, swords, and cutlasses.”

  “A cutlass is a sword,” said Storm.

  “See?” I said to Uncle Richie. “They’re so heavily armed, they have two different kinds of swords. And what do we have?”

  “Nothing!” said Beck, finishing my thought. It’s a twin thing. “We have zip, zilch, nada, bubkes.”

  “Tut, tut,” said Uncle Richie. “We will have our cunning, our wits, and, of course, our courage. We won’t need guns.”

  “How about a knife?” said Tommy.

  “Oh, I can let you have this little toothpicker,” said Timbo Tyler, pulling out a blade that had to be at least a foot and a half long.

  “In fact, I can give you everything you need,” Mr. Tyler told us. “For free.”

  “Free?” I said. “That’s awesome!”

  “Too right. I’ll give you whatever you require for your trek. Of course, there is one minor proviso. One teeny, tiny favor I’ll ask in return.”

  “Seems fair,” said Uncle Richie.

  “What is it?” said Beck, who handles a lot of our negotiations for supplies when we’re on The Lost.

  “Just that you take my darling li’l niece and nephew with you. They’re twins. Terry and Tabitha. They’re from Tasmania. In fact, their mum and dad call them the Tasmanian Terrors.”

  CHAPTER 23

  You know, I used to think Tommy, Storm, Beck, and I were the energetic ones, always ready for a wild rumpus.

  Then we met Terry and Tabitha Tyler.

  They were the kids we’d seen earlier—chasing each other around Timbo Tyler’s lodge, bopping themselves with boomerangs. They had a kind of crazed look in their eyes. They also had a band of snarling tattoos ringing their arms—and they were only twelve years old.

  You know those Twin Tirades Beck and I sometimes throw?

  We were amateurs compared to Terry and Tabitha.

  They tumbled around the corner of the house, chasing after a kangaroo.

  Their uncle stuck two fingers into his lips and whistled the kind of whistle people use to call home their dogs, if their dogs are in the next county.

  “Terry? Tabitha? Get over here, you two. I want you to meet your new traveling mates.”

  The two rowdy siblings let the kangaroo run away and kind of scuffled over.

  “Traveling?” said Terry, the boy, spitting on the ground. “We like it here.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Tabitha.

  “I just did!”

  “I thought I smelled something. Your breath is like an emu fart.”

  “Well yours is a blight on my bugle,” said Terry, tapping his nose. When he did, a dried booger fell out.

  The Tasmanian Terrors’ Tirade was such a scorcher, it even woke up the super mellow koala hanging out in a nearby eucalyptus tree.

  “Pack your things, Terry and Tabitha,” said their uncle. “You’ll be leaving straight away.”

  “Where’s my toothbrush?” said Terry as he and Tabitha pushed and elbowed each other up the steps, trying to be the first into the house.

  “In the bathroom, of course,” said Tabitha. “I used it to scrub the toilet.”

  “May your chooks turn into emus,” said Terry, “and kick down your dunny door.”

  They shoved their way inside. We all turned to Storm.

  “That one was something about chickens turning into angry birds the size of ostriches with very strong legs that would kick open the entryway to an outhouse,” she explained.

  “They have a bit of an independent streak, I’ll grant you that,” said their Uncle Timbo with a sly grin. “Pair of fair dinkum scrubbers.”

  “Family meeting?” I said, gesturing with my head that we should all step away from the porch so we could speak in private.

  “Will you give us a minute?” Uncle Richie said to Mr. Tyler.

  “Have at it!”

  We bustled away from the Camp Billabong building in a bunch.

  “Those two Tasmanian Terrors are going to slow us down!” I whispered when we were huddled together, maybe fifteen feet from the porch.

  “They’re horrible,” said Beck.

  “Must be a twin thing,” Storm muttered to Tommy.

  “Chya.”

  “But we need equipment,” said Uncle Richie. “Vehicles. Supplies. We’re running out of time. And Ms. Badger’s lead on us increases every minute we delay. Unfortunately, taking along an extra pair of twins on this expedition is the price we must pay.”

  “Can’t we just use Mom’s credit card?” I asked.

  “He won’t take it,” said Storm. “I have a feeling being temporarily free of his niece and nephew is worth more to Mr. Tyler than all the money in the world.”

  “Oh, by the way!” Mr. Tyler shouted from the porch through cupped hands. “I forgot to mention something.”

  “What?” Tommy shouted back.

  “I know exactly where Ms. Badger is and where she’s headed. Take the Tasmanian twins off my hands, and I’ll gladly share that information with you.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Turns out, Timbo Tyler’s Camp Billabong was the only expert expedition outfitter in the region.

  Charlotte Badger had stopped by to get her treasure-hunting equipment there, less than twenty-four hours ago!

  Because she and Mr. Tyler knew each other from “back in the day.”

  “In my work for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service,” he told us, “I met many nefarious and unsavory characters. Let’s just say I’ve met the dodgy Ms. Badger before.”

  “Do you know her real name?” asked Tommy.

  “That I do, lad. It’s Trouble with a capital T.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I believe Mr. Tyler is making a point,” said Uncle Richie.

  “Oh. Okay. You grown-ups do that a lot, don’t you?”

  “We try,” said Mr. Tyler. “Now then, since you have agreed to take my charming niece and nephew along with you on your adventure…”

  I turned to Uncle Richie. “We have?”

  He nodded. It was a done deal. Because our week to retrieve the opals was disappearing faster than an open bag of potato chips at a picnic.

  “Since you will be taking Terry and Tabitha along for the ride, I should let you know that Ms. Badger has the jump on you lot. She stopped by yesterday. Told me she was interested in doing a little sightseeing with her mates.”

  “How many pirates were traveling with her?” I asked.

  “Two. I believe their names were Banjo and Croc.”

  “Ah, excellent,” sai
d Uncle Richie. “She never did find the additional crew member she’d been searching for in Sydney. That means she wasted time searching for talent and that she won’t be working this treasure hunt as swiftly as she had hoped. I like our chances, children. I like them a lot.”

  Beck and I looked at each other. Both of us would’ve liked our chances better if we had Tasers. Or even a tranquilizer gun.

  “Did she have two velvet pouches tied to her belt?” asked Storm. “One blue, the other green.”

  “She had the pouches,” said Mr. Tyler. “But I don’t recall the colors.”

  “That’s okay,” said Storm. “I do.”

  “That means she still has the two opals we need!” said Tommy. “Good question, Storm!”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anyway,” said Mr. Tyler, “I fixed up Charlotte Badger and her ratty team with a four-wheel-drive Aussie Troopie vehicle, camping gear, excavating equipment, and a box of dynamite.”

  “Dynamite?” said Beck.

  Mr. Tyler just nodded.

  “I also gave her a piece of equipment she didn’t ask for and I’ll wager she doesn’t even know she has.”

  “What is it?” asked Beck.

  “A GPS tracking device. Secretly secured to the undercarriage. Here you go.”

  He handed Uncle Richie what looked like a tracking device.

  “That blinking red dot? That’s your opal thief.”

  Uncle Richie took the tracker and shook Mr. Tyler’s hand. “We have a deal, Timbo. But, we’ll need two vehicles. I’ll drive one. Tommy, here, the other. After all, there are seven of us now.”

  Yep.

  Tabitha and Terry were coming with us.

  I figured they could be our dynamite.

  CHAPTER 25

  When Uncle Richie and Tommy walked over to the garage with Mr. Tyler to check out a few vehicles, Storm immediately jumped on her laptop, watched a few YouTube videos, and, in a flash, became an expert boomerang flinger.

  “I’m throwing right-handed with a cradle grip which means my left arm is my dingle,” she told us. “Once I analyze wind direction and velocity, my throw will be no more than forty-five degrees from vertical, forty to sixty degrees off the wind, and I won’t sidearm it or the boomerang will climb too high and crash. Of course, spin will be key. Just like tossing a football!”

  Beck and I just stood there gawking as she flicked the sleek, angle-armed wing of wood exactly like she said she would.

  “You know,” said Storm, as she waited for her twirling boomerang to complete its circuit around the property and come back to her, “a boomerang is actually a type of throwing star that originated in Australia as a hunting weapon used by its Aboriginal people.”

  “Awesome,” I said. “It’s like going hunting with a Labrador retriever that brings stuff back to you.”

  “The boomerang doesn’t retrieve stuff, Bick. It just knocks it down.” Storm reached up and made a two-handed grab of her returning boomerang. “The boomerang is also a rare example of a non-ballistic missile.”

  “Huh?” Beck and I said together.

  “It doesn’t go up and down in an arc like a spear or arrow or a cannonball. The boomerang flies parallel to the ground and, if it’s rotating fast enough, can fight gravity.”

  “It would also hurt if it hit you, right?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” said Storm. “You could even break someone’s leg. They’re also excellent at clipping things—like fruit or nuts off branches in a high tree.”

  “You guys?” I said. “We should grab a few more of these boomerangs. They’re weapons! And we might need weapons when we go up against those pirates.”

  The three of us hurried back to the porch where we each pulled a heavy wooden wing out of the bucket. They were all painted with what Storm called “traditional Aboriginal designs.”

  “What exactly does Aboriginal mean?” I asked.

  “The people who inhabited this land before the first European settlers showed up,” explained Storm. “Aboriginal peoples are the first peoples of mainland Australia and many of its islands, such as Tasmania.”

  That’s when we heard a really weird sound.

  A rolling drone—like a foghorn from outer space.

  The noise warbled on and on.

  I wondered, “Did some kind of UFO just park on that Camp Billabong landing strip?”

  CHAPTER 26

  “If I’m not mistaken,” said Storm, “that music is being made by an indigenous wind instrument known as a didgeridoo!”

  “Music?” said Beck, covering her ears.

  “Storm uses the term loosely,” I said. “It sounds more like a really long elephant fart.”

  “Or a dump truck stuck in a tunnel with a broken air horn,” said Beck.

  Storm ignored us and shoved open the screen door. We followed her into the Camp Billabong Lodge.

  Terry and Tabitha, the Tasmanian Terrors, were sitting on squat stools, blowing into long wooden tubes decorated with more of that traditional Aboriginal Australian art. The twins were breathing in through their noses and blowing out through their mouths to keep each long tube vibrating one very deep and rumbly note. They were also rattling all the glass in the building. And some of the furniture. I could hear jars jiggling inside a refrigerator.

  “Those carvings along the sides of the didgeridoos are fascinating,” said Storm, scanning a stack of the wooden tubes propped up in a corner. She dug deep into the pile to study one didgeridoo even more closely.

  “Fascinating!” she said again.

  “I just wish the music was fascinating, too,” said Beck.

  “It is!” said Storm. “Moody. Mysterious. Marvelous!”

  Tabitha and Terry kept the buzzing hum going for five full minutes, eyeballing each other the whole time. It was like they were having a staring contest, except, instead of blinking, they were trying to see who could keep their drone going the longest without breaking for a breath.

  Finally, Terry threw in the towel. He pulled the tube away from his face, gasped down some air, and shouted, “I want a snack!”

  Tabitha stopped blowing, too. “Ha! I won.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’m just calling a snack break.”

  “You’re a dipstick, Terry!” screamed Tabitha. “You can’t call a snack break in the middle of a didgeridoo duel!”

  “Really? Because I just did.”

  “And I just creamed you!”

  “Did not!”

  “Did, too!”

  “Not!”

  “Too!”

  Storm looked at Beck and me. “Sound familiar?”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t have Australian accents.”

  Fortunately, that’s when Timbo Tyler strode into the room. Uncle Richie and Tommy were right behind him. Mr. Tyler did that loud, two-finger whistle thing he does so well.

  TWEEEEEET!

  Terry and Tabitha froze.

  “Finish packing your kit, kids,” said Mr. Tyler. “You two are taking off for a few days. I’ll miss you, for sure. But, well, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! A real bobby dazzler!”

  “You’re going on a treasure hunt with us!” boomed Uncle Richie.

  “Cool,” said Terry.

  “Lame,” said Tabitha.

  “Cool!”

  “Lame!”

  Yep.

  One thing was clear: Terry and Tabitha’s Twin Tirades never, ever ended.

  CHAPTER 27

  We took off from Camp Billabong in a pair of four-wheel-drive, all-terrain vehicles.

  Beck, Storm, and I bumped along in the lead vehicle with Uncle Richie. The Tasmanian Terrors were riding with Tommy. He had personally strapped them into their seat belts in the back. He also cranked up the road trip tunes. Loud.

  We were following the tracking device that Mr. Tyler had planted under the chassis of Charlotte Badger’s Aussie Troopie vehicle. She was heading to Port Phillip.

  If that’s where she and the opals were, that’s wh
ere we needed to be.

  “We should probably call Mom and Dad,” suggested Beck. “Let them know we are on the move!”

  “And,” I added, “that we’re getting closer to the treasure we need to set them free.”

  “Make the call, Storm!” said Uncle Richie.

  Storm was sitting up front, riding shotgun. She jabbed a number into the secure satellite phone Timbo Tyler had lent us. Mr. Tyler had also given us the unlisted phone number (that none of us knew) to reach Mom and Dad—if one of them was still wearing their top-secret spy watch from “back in the day.”

  “Hello?” whispered Dad. Of course. His dive watch was also a spy watch!

  “Hey! Hi! Hello!” we all whispered back, because Storm had us on speakerphone.

  “How are you holding up, Thomas?” asked Uncle Richie.

  “They’re treating us well.”

  “Except for the Vegemite on toast for breakfast,” said Mom. “That could be considered torture.”

  “On a positive note, they allowed me to keep my watch,” said Dad.

  “They thought it might make us more miserable,” added Mom. “After all, we are in here serving ‘time.’”

  “Hang in there, Sue,” said Uncle Richie. “And know that we have rendezvoused with Timbo Tyler. We are well equipped and provisioned and heading south. As luck would have it, your enterprising friend, that master of espionage, Mr. Timbo Tyler, was able to plant a tracking device on Ms. Badger’s vehicle. It’s leading us straight to her location.”

  “Excellent,” said Dad.

  “So far so good,” said Uncle Richie, “but it seems she has parked her vehicle. Her tracking beacon has remained frozen for quite some time now.”

  “She’s probably on foot,” said Mom. “Searching for Bonito’s treasure up in the cliffs and caves near the bay. Storm?”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “Now would be a good time for you to remember the tale of Stingaree Jack.”