Free Valley of Death by Gloria Skurzynski

anybody hear me?” but it wouldn’t work—no surprise. “Rats!” he muttered. There was no way for him to send a radio message, and his dad hadn’t given him a telephone number where he could reach the command post at the hangar. He tried to talk into the handset for a while longer, then gave up.
    Stacked on the dresser were several Death Valley publications including another map, larger and more detailed than the one they’d had in the Cruiser.
    Jack unfolded it and spread it out on the bed. He turned on every light in the room so he could read the map better.
    For a long time he studied it, mulling over the worrisome idea he’d had when he was in the Cruiser. If members of The Unit had started out from Darwin Falls, they could drive along Route 190 past Stovepipe Wells, then park their vehicles off road and cross the desert on foot. Heading south, under cover of darkness, they might be able to reach the kidnappers. And coming from that direction, it was unlikely they’d be noticed by the SWAT teams, which were deployed to the east of the barricade where Ashley was being held prisoner. That much he’d learned from the short blasts of speech coming over the broken handset.
    By now it was completely dark outside, so Jack thought he’d better close the drapes on the sliding glass doors that led to the patio outside his room. As he walked toward the doors his heart lurched. Someone was out there, looking through the glass at him. “Geez!” he yelled.
    Scratching the glass with her fingernails, Leesa mouthed, “Let me in!”
    Leesa! What was she doing out there on the patio? After rolling back the sliding door, Jack demanded, “Why’d you come this way? You nearly scared the spit out of me. You could have knocked on the door from the hall, and I’d have let you in.”
    â€œI was going to, but when I looked through that little glass hole in my door, I saw a man standing there. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you first, so I came around the patio side.”
    â€œA man?” As Jack went to his own hall door and peered through the peephole, he wondered what she meant by “first”? Then he said, “There’s no one there.”
    â€œThere was!”
    â€œI think you’re just spooked,” he told her.
    Leesa took a deep breath. “I don’t care whether you believe me about the man being in the hall, but I want you to listen to what I have to say. I’ve been thinking and thinking, rolling it around in my head ever since I got in my room….” She paused then, glancing nervously at him, appearing uncertain.
    â€œAnd?” Jack prompted.
    â€œI want to give myself up. To The Unit.”
    Now it was Jack’s turn to take a deep breath. “Sit down,” he told her, gesturing to one of the twin beds. He sat on the other one, facing her. “You already said that once to my mother, and she told you it wasn’t an option. So why are you bringing it up again?”
    The distance between the beds wasn’t that large, and when Leesa leaned forward, her big, dark eyes stared straight into Jack’s. “She’s your parent, not mine. You have to do what she tells you, but I don’t. If I go to the men who have Ashley, they’ll let her go. They’re not killers, they’re not terrorists, they just have their own beliefs about how the U.S. government is destroying our way of life. If I turn myself over to them, they won’t hurt Ashley. They’ll just let her go, honest. I’m sure of that.”
    She made it sound so simple. Even reasonable. But it wasn’t. “What are you planning to do?” he asked. “Just walk from here to the place where the kidnappers are barricaded in the desert? It’s miles away, and it’s dark outside. Even if you managed to hitch a ride with someone and you got as far as the Old Harmony Borax Works, the rangers would stop you. The road