Free The Diamond War by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

vest was a phone book tied around his neck by some shoe-strings so that it hung down and covered most of his chest.
    Aurora looked at the phone book doubtfully. “That’s a bulletproof vest?” she asked.
    “Sure,” Ari said. “You know how people are always getting saved because the bullet hits the Bible in their pocket? So—a phone book is even thicker than a Bible and a whole lot bigger.”
    Aurora smiled faintly. “It does look pretty—big,” she said. She looked around the room nervously. “I left a note for Mom,” she said. “They’re still asleep. But I think we’d better go. I called Kate but her mother said she and Carson had gone out already. For a walk, she said.”
    “To the grove?” Ari asked.
    “Probably,” Aurora said and started toward the back door. Ari followed her.
    “Where’s Athena?” Ari asked. “She wanted to come too.”
    “She’s gone to visit Prince. I told her we wouldn’t be going to the grove for quite a while, so she could take her time. I don’t think she ought to be there anyway. Not if there are really going to be guns and things like that.”
    “Yeah, I guess not,” Ari said, but what he was thinking was that Athena probably should be there. After all, she got away with taking the note to the PROs without any trouble, which was pretty amazing. Maybe she could do something like that again. “But I thought you said Athena was going to be the one to save the grove?” he said.
    “I know.” Aurora shook her head. “I thought so. It was so clear for a second. But I can’t get it back. I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. Anyway, she said she’d meet us there later,” Aurora said. “At the grove. After she’s finished taking Prince his carrot.”
    They had reached Dragoland by then and as they went down the path, through the Pit and out into the Weedpatch, they saw nobody at all. It wasn’t until they had started pushing their way into the bamboo thicket that they saw Kate and Carson—and Susie too. Actually they heard them first.
    “Halt. Who goes there?” they heard Kate’s voice saying just before they got to the clearing.
    “Kate?” Aurora said. “It’s us. Ari and me.”
    “Oh, okay. Stay right where you are. We’ll come and get you.” A minute later Kate appeared. She was wearing a karate tunic over her shorts and two of her karate belts around her middle. Susie and Carson were right behind her. There was no sign of Slinky.
    “Where’s Slinky?” Ari asked.
    Carson just shook his head and let Kate answer for him. “He’s not here. Carson wouldn’t bring any of his snakes. But he came himself, anyway, because I’m doing something for him. Carson helped with the booby trap. Didn’t you, Carson?”
    Carson nodded. Then he leaned forward and pointed at Ari’s chest. “Phone book?” he asked in a puzzled tone of voice. But Ari was too busy thinking about booby traps to explain.
    “Booby trap? You guys made a booby trap?” he asked in his best reporter’s tone of voice, polite and not too nosey. His hand was already reaching back for his notebook when he realized it wasn’t there. In the excitement he’d forgotten to wear his fanny pack. He’d just have to remember all the important details. “Is something going to explode?” he asked politely.
    “No.” Kate shook her head regretfully. “Nothing actually explodes. It’s just a string that pulls a bunch of tin cans down on your head if you trip over it. See—there it is.”
    Ari saw it then, a thin black string stretched across the path into the clearing—and up above, a bundle of tin cans dangling from a limb.
    “Mostly it’s just to warn us that they’re coming,” Kate was saying. “So we can load our slingshots.”
    “Yeah,” Susie said. She held out a big wicked-looking Y-shaped piece of wood with a wide strip of rubber attached to it. “We got lots of slingshots. And lots of rocks. I’ve been collecting rocks down in the creek. They’re piled up over there behind