Early in the morning, Coach grabs his trumpet and starts playing "Take me out to the ball game."
"..Buy me some peanuts and Cracker-jack, I don't care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root for the..."
"Shawn! Shut, up!" Everyone shouts at once.
They start covering their heads with their pillows or burying themselves deeper in their blankets. The door crashes open and Mo steps in. He starts opening the blinds and says, around his ever-present toothpick, "Alright turkeys, I'm in charge of you now..."
After making absolutely sure -in all the rudest ways possible- that they're all up, Mo takes a "Flit Gun" filled with soot and starts pumping it, "... so what I want you to do, is get this cabin clean by lunch! Ha ha ha *cough, cough*... heh."
After thoroughly coating the place, Mo hefts the "Acme tool of mass bug destruction" on his shoulder and leaves with a satisfied look on his face, whistling, "I've been working on the railroad."
One of the Reds picks up a broom and starts sweeping. Two others start taking the sheets off beds and everyone else focuses on brushing the soot off of themselves.
Rod makes a small, difficult to notice gesture with his hand. Across the room, Shawn nods and slowly walks to the screen-window, he cups his hands around his mouth and goes, "CAW CAW! CAW CAW!"
Rod and Leo flinch. Everyone stares at Shawn for a moment, before continuing what they're doing. Rod and Leo breathe a sigh of relief. Outside in the trees behind the cabin, a pigeon calls out.
Rod, Leo and Shawn crouch by the window. Sam and Eric sneak up to the wall of the cabin, below the window.
Rod quietly asks, "So are you guys in, or what? You've had most of yesterday and all this morning to consider whether you'll help us or not."
Sam says, "Yeah. Keep your pants on. We'll help."
Eric adds, "We wanna get back at Mo for what he did yesterday."
Rod asks, "What exactly did he do to you yesterday?"
Sam, "After we got him angry..."
Eric, "...and started leading him to that crazy-stupid trap..."
Both, "...he called our mom ugly!"
"Oh." Rod says.
Rod, Leo and Shawn slowly make their way to the door. Everyone else is so absorbed in what they're doing, that they easily manage to slip out. The twins join them out front and they all run off.
Two Green cabin kids, one twelve, the other thirteen, are surrounded by a few Blue cabin flunkies. Nearby, Mo lounges on a tree-stump, watching.
Rod and company crawl to a nearby bush. Leo pulls out Mark's camera and turns it on.
One of Mo's thugs is pointing an acorn-gun at the twelve year-old, an "Eagle-eye V.10". The older kid hands over all his camobucks, then they let the two of them go.
Sam asks, "How many pictures did you get?"
Leo replies with a nervous look on his face, "The batteries are dead!"
Rod, Sam and Eric all exclaim, "What?!"
Suddenly, they hear Mo's voice from the other side of the bush, "Shush! I think I heard somethin'... over there!"
They hear the sound of one of the other Blue cabiners loading his acorn-gun, then a hail of fire erupts just over their heads. After a few moments it stops.
On one side of the bush, Mo listens intently. While on the other side, they're all frozen like statues.
Eventually Mo breaks the silence, "Eh... must be hearing things."
The gangsters leave, while behind the bush Rod, Leo, Shawn, Sam and Eric look at the leaves full of holes above them. They sigh with relief, all except Shawn, who thoughtfully stares at the leaves and says, "I wonder if bushes look like this in Switzerland."
They all return to the Red cabins and assist in finishing cleaning the place, except Sam and Eric. At the cafeteria, they begin plotting their next move.
Once again, the five of them are crawling across the ground. Ahead of them is Mo, one of his flunkies and someone else who is standing on the other side of Mo, where they can't see. They hide behind a large rock. Leo readjusts his glasses, reaches into one of his pockets, pulls out a tape recorder and presses the record button.
Mo, looking down at a clipboard, says, "Two 'Badger' grenade launchers, four 'Snakes-In-The-Grass,' three 'Scorpion' crossbows and five 'Squirrel' hand guns. Am I missing anything?"
"No, I don't believe so." Replies a voice they couldn't easily tell if it belonged to a boy or a girl.
Rod and the gang realize that Mo is smuggling weapons to someone outside of the camp. Suddenly, Rod notices a squeaking sound. He looks over at Leo and sees the tape coming out of the cassette.
"Um... Leo?!" Rod urgently whispers.
Leo looks at the recorder, stops it, and tries to wind the tape back up.
"Alright, I'm sure I heard something that time!" Mo says. Then he grabs one of the guns laid out for his mysterious customer, loads it and marches toward the rock.
Everyone, on either side of the rock, freezes. From somewhere nearby they can all hear a large, low growling sound.
That mysterious, half-boy, half-girl voice shrieks, "It's a bear!"
As Mo, his flunkie, and the owner of the strange voice - who turns out to be some person wearing a large, black trench-coat with a deep hood - run off, everyone looks in the direction the sound came from, and they see Sam and Eric, texting! (With the same phone.)
The twins notice the looks on everyone's faces and take on rather shameless ones.
Rod says, "Um, if you hadn't noticed, there's a bear nearby!!"
Eric explains, "Actually, that's our 'message-alert', tone."
"The sound of a bear growling?!" Leo says incredulously, while scratching his mole, located on his left temple.
Sam says, "We recorded it the time Joe had a peanut-butter and honey sandwich. A grizzly bear came and tried to get it from him. Suffice to say, that bear won't come within half a mile of Joe even if it's life depends on it!"
Rod gets up and announces, "Well, no use sitting here 'til Mo notices that we - who are close friends of Mark - are gone."
Eric chimes in, "Technically, we aren't his friends."
Sam, "Yeah, he's blackmailing us!"
Rod, "You're helping us. In Mo's mind, that qualifies."
The three Reds start running back to their cabin, and after looking at each-other and gulping, the twins follow.
When they get there, Mo is there as well. He turns around to glare at them as they enter the cabin.
"Alright, what have you boys been up to?"
"Oh that's simple, we've been trying to sp..." Shawn manages to say, just before Rod and Leo slap their hands over his mouth.
Rod forces himself to meet Mo's blizzard-cold stare - not quite perfectly - with a nervous grin, and says, "Nothing... just... getting some fresh air."
"Uh huh... I see." Mo says with a face that reads, "Imminent doom approaching, abandon ship now, or else!"
At that moment, Rod discovers what it's like to swallow nervously... when your mouth is as dry as the Sahara!
For the next few minutes, Mo scrutinizes each of them one at a time, first Leo, then Rod, then Shawn, then Leo again, then Shawn, and finally back to Rod.
At this point, the look on Mo's face changes to one that makes the earlier one look tame. The kind of look a headsman might adopt just before the stroke!
Mo begins raising his hand and says in a low, grim tone, "Alright." And the three of them can practically hear the ominous music playing, *Dun, DUN-DUN, Duuun!*
Mo points at Rod, and says, "You. Come. Wit'. Me."
Rod, with a combination look of, "terrified" and "vacant," points at himself.
Mo's eyes narrow and says, "Yesss, yoooou."
Mo leaves Red Cabin One, with Rod shuffling behind, and leads him to Blue Cabin One.
Mo, none-too-gently, shoves Rod through the door, and closes it slowly to make sure that it creaks as intimidatingly as much as possible.
"Alright, Randy, Richard, or whatever your name was, to make sure that you're not sticking your nose where it don't belong, you are going to clean. My. Collection!"
To punctuate what he says, Mo points at the far wall and Rod sees what "collection" Mo means. Hanging on the wall near Mo's bunk, a dozen frames hold pictures of all the most infamous gangsters from the past fifty years or more: Al Capone, John Dillinger, Machine-Gun Kelly, Baby-Face Nelson, Lucky Luciano, and some Rod has never even heard of.
"Dust the frames, straighten the photos, polish the glass and when you hang them back up, make sure they are level!" Mo says. He then marches out and shoves Brent, his number-one bruiser, into the cabin and says, "Watch him! I've got some 'business' to take care of still."
When Mo said "business" the way he did, images flashed into Rod's mind of hitmen, concrete shoes, and matters that are dealt with "real permanent like."
So for the next half an hour, Rod does the best he can to make things orderly: dusting, polishing, et cetera.
After a while, Mo returns, with a blank expression he looks over what Rod has done so far, nods and then leaves. As Rod tosses out his third disinfecting wipe, he sees something familiar. Crumpled up, at the bottom of the trash bin, is the checklist - in Mo's handwriting - of the weapons smuggled out of the camp!
Quickly, Rod thinks up a way to distract Brent. Rod opens one of the screen windows, Brent's eyes narrow and his fists clench. Brent has blond hair though it's hard to tell because it is buzz-cut, his eyes are gray and he wears jeans and a blue football jacket.
After opening the window, Rod sticks his head out. Waits and then finally shouts, "Hey, Leo what are you doing out there?!"
Brent dashes out the door. Rod reaches down and picks a large rock off the ground. As soon as Brent is just about to come around the corner, Rod tosses the rock toward the trees and under-brush. Brent hearing the sound, rockets its direction to pursue the elusive intruder.
Rod swiftly pulls the checklist out of the garbage, folds it and stuffs it in his pocket. After that he quickly finishes re-hanging the pictures. By the time he's done, Brent comes back, picking twigs and leaves off his clothes.
Seeing that Rod is done, Brent checks his wrist-watch and says, "Okay, boss says that once you're done you can go."
Rod nods meekly to hide his smug grin and starts for the door. As he walks down the steps, Brent plucks the evidence out of Rod's pocket, shaking his head. He wags his finger at Rod, saying, "Oh no you don't."
Rod stares at him with an expression of shock. This is the guy who easily fell for the "Whatever in the world could that be?" trick.
Brent makes a shooing motion with his hand and says, "Best that you not be getting into what you can't see going on." He then sniffs the paper, makes a sour face and mutters to himself, "Did he seriously dig this out of the garbage?"
Brent walks back into the cabin, leaving Rod standing there wondering how much intelligence is masked by that tough, jock-ish face.
By the time Rod finishes lumbering back to his cabin, Mo has already dished out another half-dozen things for the boys in the Red Cabins to slave away at, sometimes twice over, including but not limited to the chores of every member of Mo's gang, known and unknown.
Leo, from his spot on one of the top bunks, asks, "Say, uh, Rod? What exactly did Mo do to you?"
Rod emerges from his brooding and replies, "Nothing much different from you guys' treatment."
Leo ponders for a moment and asks, "Hey! Did you manage to get something, anything incriminating?"
"Almost." Rod says in a sulky, whiny, self-disappointed tone.
Mark, sitting against the back wall of the rather shoddy cell in the room at the back of the manager's cabin with his eyes closed, contently hums "Eye of The Tiger."
The door to the cell-block room opens and Coach sticks his head in. Wearing the humble look of a man who feels guilty about what he's done to a boy he feels like a father towards, he says, "Mark, th-there's... someone who wants to see ya."
Coach withdraws, leaving the door wide open. Just outside is someone wearing a black trench-coat with a deep, concealing hood. Talking to the stranger is Brent from Blue Cabin One, who slips what appears to be a folded piece of paper into a gloved hand, which disappears into the stranger's pocket.
Brent, surprisingly for a guy of his build, slinks away. After a moment, the stranger turns and walks into the room, shutting the door behind themselves.
The figure crouches by the bars and says in whisper, "All is prepared for tomorrow. Mo won't know what hit him 'til it's too late!"
Mark says, "I'm not sure I want to talk to someone who works for Mo. I saw you talking to Brent."
The stranger replies in an amused tone, "Who said him or I work for Mo?"
Mark raises an eyebrow and asks, "Who are you? And what are you talking about? Tomorrow?"
"You'll find out soon enough." Then the stranger giggles in what can only be a girl's laugh.
Marks eyes go wide as dinner-plates when he realizes who that laugh belongs to. Then, he smiles.
"..Buy me some peanuts and Cracker-jack, I don't care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root for the..."
"Shawn! Shut, up!" Everyone shouts at once.
They start covering their heads with their pillows or burying themselves deeper in their blankets. The door crashes open and Mo steps in. He starts opening the blinds and says, around his ever-present toothpick, "Alright turkeys, I'm in charge of you now..."
After making absolutely sure -in all the rudest ways possible- that they're all up, Mo takes a "Flit Gun" filled with soot and starts pumping it, "... so what I want you to do, is get this cabin clean by lunch! Ha ha ha *cough, cough*... heh."
After thoroughly coating the place, Mo hefts the "Acme tool of mass bug destruction" on his shoulder and leaves with a satisfied look on his face, whistling, "I've been working on the railroad."
One of the Reds picks up a broom and starts sweeping. Two others start taking the sheets off beds and everyone else focuses on brushing the soot off of themselves.
Rod makes a small, difficult to notice gesture with his hand. Across the room, Shawn nods and slowly walks to the screen-window, he cups his hands around his mouth and goes, "CAW CAW! CAW CAW!"
Rod and Leo flinch. Everyone stares at Shawn for a moment, before continuing what they're doing. Rod and Leo breathe a sigh of relief. Outside in the trees behind the cabin, a pigeon calls out.
Rod, Leo and Shawn crouch by the window. Sam and Eric sneak up to the wall of the cabin, below the window.
Rod quietly asks, "So are you guys in, or what? You've had most of yesterday and all this morning to consider whether you'll help us or not."
Sam says, "Yeah. Keep your pants on. We'll help."
Eric adds, "We wanna get back at Mo for what he did yesterday."
Rod asks, "What exactly did he do to you yesterday?"
Sam, "After we got him angry..."
Eric, "...and started leading him to that crazy-stupid trap..."
Both, "...he called our mom ugly!"
"Oh." Rod says.
Rod, Leo and Shawn slowly make their way to the door. Everyone else is so absorbed in what they're doing, that they easily manage to slip out. The twins join them out front and they all run off.
Two Green cabin kids, one twelve, the other thirteen, are surrounded by a few Blue cabin flunkies. Nearby, Mo lounges on a tree-stump, watching.
Rod and company crawl to a nearby bush. Leo pulls out Mark's camera and turns it on.
One of Mo's thugs is pointing an acorn-gun at the twelve year-old, an "Eagle-eye V.10". The older kid hands over all his camobucks, then they let the two of them go.
Sam asks, "How many pictures did you get?"
Leo replies with a nervous look on his face, "The batteries are dead!"
Rod, Sam and Eric all exclaim, "What?!"
Suddenly, they hear Mo's voice from the other side of the bush, "Shush! I think I heard somethin'... over there!"
They hear the sound of one of the other Blue cabiners loading his acorn-gun, then a hail of fire erupts just over their heads. After a few moments it stops.
On one side of the bush, Mo listens intently. While on the other side, they're all frozen like statues.
Eventually Mo breaks the silence, "Eh... must be hearing things."
The gangsters leave, while behind the bush Rod, Leo, Shawn, Sam and Eric look at the leaves full of holes above them. They sigh with relief, all except Shawn, who thoughtfully stares at the leaves and says, "I wonder if bushes look like this in Switzerland."
They all return to the Red cabins and assist in finishing cleaning the place, except Sam and Eric. At the cafeteria, they begin plotting their next move.
Once again, the five of them are crawling across the ground. Ahead of them is Mo, one of his flunkies and someone else who is standing on the other side of Mo, where they can't see. They hide behind a large rock. Leo readjusts his glasses, reaches into one of his pockets, pulls out a tape recorder and presses the record button.
Mo, looking down at a clipboard, says, "Two 'Badger' grenade launchers, four 'Snakes-In-The-Grass,' three 'Scorpion' crossbows and five 'Squirrel' hand guns. Am I missing anything?"
"No, I don't believe so." Replies a voice they couldn't easily tell if it belonged to a boy or a girl.
Rod and the gang realize that Mo is smuggling weapons to someone outside of the camp. Suddenly, Rod notices a squeaking sound. He looks over at Leo and sees the tape coming out of the cassette.
"Um... Leo?!" Rod urgently whispers.
Leo looks at the recorder, stops it, and tries to wind the tape back up.
"Alright, I'm sure I heard something that time!" Mo says. Then he grabs one of the guns laid out for his mysterious customer, loads it and marches toward the rock.
Everyone, on either side of the rock, freezes. From somewhere nearby they can all hear a large, low growling sound.
That mysterious, half-boy, half-girl voice shrieks, "It's a bear!"
As Mo, his flunkie, and the owner of the strange voice - who turns out to be some person wearing a large, black trench-coat with a deep hood - run off, everyone looks in the direction the sound came from, and they see Sam and Eric, texting! (With the same phone.)
The twins notice the looks on everyone's faces and take on rather shameless ones.
Rod says, "Um, if you hadn't noticed, there's a bear nearby!!"
Eric explains, "Actually, that's our 'message-alert', tone."
"The sound of a bear growling?!" Leo says incredulously, while scratching his mole, located on his left temple.
Sam says, "We recorded it the time Joe had a peanut-butter and honey sandwich. A grizzly bear came and tried to get it from him. Suffice to say, that bear won't come within half a mile of Joe even if it's life depends on it!"
Rod gets up and announces, "Well, no use sitting here 'til Mo notices that we - who are close friends of Mark - are gone."
Eric chimes in, "Technically, we aren't his friends."
Sam, "Yeah, he's blackmailing us!"
Rod, "You're helping us. In Mo's mind, that qualifies."
The three Reds start running back to their cabin, and after looking at each-other and gulping, the twins follow.
When they get there, Mo is there as well. He turns around to glare at them as they enter the cabin.
"Alright, what have you boys been up to?"
"Oh that's simple, we've been trying to sp..." Shawn manages to say, just before Rod and Leo slap their hands over his mouth.
Rod forces himself to meet Mo's blizzard-cold stare - not quite perfectly - with a nervous grin, and says, "Nothing... just... getting some fresh air."
"Uh huh... I see." Mo says with a face that reads, "Imminent doom approaching, abandon ship now, or else!"
At that moment, Rod discovers what it's like to swallow nervously... when your mouth is as dry as the Sahara!
For the next few minutes, Mo scrutinizes each of them one at a time, first Leo, then Rod, then Shawn, then Leo again, then Shawn, and finally back to Rod.
At this point, the look on Mo's face changes to one that makes the earlier one look tame. The kind of look a headsman might adopt just before the stroke!
Mo begins raising his hand and says in a low, grim tone, "Alright." And the three of them can practically hear the ominous music playing, *Dun, DUN-DUN, Duuun!*
Mo points at Rod, and says, "You. Come. Wit'. Me."
Rod, with a combination look of, "terrified" and "vacant," points at himself.
Mo's eyes narrow and says, "Yesss, yoooou."
Mo leaves Red Cabin One, with Rod shuffling behind, and leads him to Blue Cabin One.
Mo, none-too-gently, shoves Rod through the door, and closes it slowly to make sure that it creaks as intimidatingly as much as possible.
"Alright, Randy, Richard, or whatever your name was, to make sure that you're not sticking your nose where it don't belong, you are going to clean. My. Collection!"
To punctuate what he says, Mo points at the far wall and Rod sees what "collection" Mo means. Hanging on the wall near Mo's bunk, a dozen frames hold pictures of all the most infamous gangsters from the past fifty years or more: Al Capone, John Dillinger, Machine-Gun Kelly, Baby-Face Nelson, Lucky Luciano, and some Rod has never even heard of.
"Dust the frames, straighten the photos, polish the glass and when you hang them back up, make sure they are level!" Mo says. He then marches out and shoves Brent, his number-one bruiser, into the cabin and says, "Watch him! I've got some 'business' to take care of still."
When Mo said "business" the way he did, images flashed into Rod's mind of hitmen, concrete shoes, and matters that are dealt with "real permanent like."
So for the next half an hour, Rod does the best he can to make things orderly: dusting, polishing, et cetera.
After a while, Mo returns, with a blank expression he looks over what Rod has done so far, nods and then leaves. As Rod tosses out his third disinfecting wipe, he sees something familiar. Crumpled up, at the bottom of the trash bin, is the checklist - in Mo's handwriting - of the weapons smuggled out of the camp!
Quickly, Rod thinks up a way to distract Brent. Rod opens one of the screen windows, Brent's eyes narrow and his fists clench. Brent has blond hair though it's hard to tell because it is buzz-cut, his eyes are gray and he wears jeans and a blue football jacket.
After opening the window, Rod sticks his head out. Waits and then finally shouts, "Hey, Leo what are you doing out there?!"
Brent dashes out the door. Rod reaches down and picks a large rock off the ground. As soon as Brent is just about to come around the corner, Rod tosses the rock toward the trees and under-brush. Brent hearing the sound, rockets its direction to pursue the elusive intruder.
Rod swiftly pulls the checklist out of the garbage, folds it and stuffs it in his pocket. After that he quickly finishes re-hanging the pictures. By the time he's done, Brent comes back, picking twigs and leaves off his clothes.
Seeing that Rod is done, Brent checks his wrist-watch and says, "Okay, boss says that once you're done you can go."
Rod nods meekly to hide his smug grin and starts for the door. As he walks down the steps, Brent plucks the evidence out of Rod's pocket, shaking his head. He wags his finger at Rod, saying, "Oh no you don't."
Rod stares at him with an expression of shock. This is the guy who easily fell for the "Whatever in the world could that be?" trick.
Brent makes a shooing motion with his hand and says, "Best that you not be getting into what you can't see going on." He then sniffs the paper, makes a sour face and mutters to himself, "Did he seriously dig this out of the garbage?"
Brent walks back into the cabin, leaving Rod standing there wondering how much intelligence is masked by that tough, jock-ish face.
By the time Rod finishes lumbering back to his cabin, Mo has already dished out another half-dozen things for the boys in the Red Cabins to slave away at, sometimes twice over, including but not limited to the chores of every member of Mo's gang, known and unknown.
Leo, from his spot on one of the top bunks, asks, "Say, uh, Rod? What exactly did Mo do to you?"
Rod emerges from his brooding and replies, "Nothing much different from you guys' treatment."
Leo ponders for a moment and asks, "Hey! Did you manage to get something, anything incriminating?"
"Almost." Rod says in a sulky, whiny, self-disappointed tone.
Mark, sitting against the back wall of the rather shoddy cell in the room at the back of the manager's cabin with his eyes closed, contently hums "Eye of The Tiger."
The door to the cell-block room opens and Coach sticks his head in. Wearing the humble look of a man who feels guilty about what he's done to a boy he feels like a father towards, he says, "Mark, th-there's... someone who wants to see ya."
Coach withdraws, leaving the door wide open. Just outside is someone wearing a black trench-coat with a deep, concealing hood. Talking to the stranger is Brent from Blue Cabin One, who slips what appears to be a folded piece of paper into a gloved hand, which disappears into the stranger's pocket.
Brent, surprisingly for a guy of his build, slinks away. After a moment, the stranger turns and walks into the room, shutting the door behind themselves.
The figure crouches by the bars and says in whisper, "All is prepared for tomorrow. Mo won't know what hit him 'til it's too late!"
Mark says, "I'm not sure I want to talk to someone who works for Mo. I saw you talking to Brent."
The stranger replies in an amused tone, "Who said him or I work for Mo?"
Mark raises an eyebrow and asks, "Who are you? And what are you talking about? Tomorrow?"
"You'll find out soon enough." Then the stranger giggles in what can only be a girl's laugh.
Marks eyes go wide as dinner-plates when he realizes who that laugh belongs to. Then, he smiles.
