Chapter 30: Desert Race
Both guards were stunned by their discovery. "Norton Nimnul?" said one. "The crazy, criminal crackpot scientist from New York City?"
"We'd better call the police," the other one suggested. "But what shall we do about these?" He pointed at eight animals of quite different species escaping the vault beneath them.
"Rats in the vault? Did Nimnul bring them, or how did they get in here?" Neither guard was aware of the fact that another good dozen small animals had been in the best-protected area of the Versailles Palace and escaped the way they had entered it, remaining unseen and not setting off the alarm.
"Look, there are two cats, too, they should take care of the rats!"
"I doubt that. See, the cats are running ahead. C'mon now, the police need to know what's going on here."
Meanwhile, partly in the hallways, partly in the air ducts and in hollows in the walls, the chase went on. Professor Nimnul and the Greatest Thief in the World weren't aware of being chased other than by uniformed law enforcers who would soon arrive at the palace. Nimnul could have suspected that those whom he knew as the Rescue Rangers and their friends were after them, but not that the former pet of his former boss wanted to lay his filthy paws on Roy Clutchcoin's shiny gemstones.
The Rangers were back in the secret alleyways which only small animals knew. This meant they were unable to see what the two humans were heading for. Monty expressed his doubts to the chipmunk who led this party of the chase, although it was him who had removed and replaced the already familiar panel in the air duct wall. "Chipper, this ain't the way after them! Are ya sure o' what yer doin'?"
"Sure I'm sure, Monty," Chip replied, quoting his girlfriend, "don't worry. And in a certain way, this is the way after them."
"But they're running into this direction!" Tammy wondered and pointed against the wall of the tunnel they were in. "We don't even know where they're running, let alone see them!"
"Imagine you were them. An evil scientist and a former spy gone professional thief in the basement of a resort hotel and casino, escaping from the vault and the howling alarm. I know the police will be here soon, you all know it, and they probably know it the best. So where are they going?"
"They're fleeing, leaving the place," Clarice proposed.
"Exactly, Clarice. And if you have to choose between running and your limousine parked in the garage, which one would you choose?"
"The limousine, of course," Clarice said.
"See? They're heading for the garage, getting the limo, and then they'll probably try to outrun the police. And we're going outside and getting the Rangerplane and the Rangerwing."
Being in his first Rescue Rangers case, Todd wasn't free of doubts either. "Chip, do you honestly believe you can pursue a limousine with your planes?"
"Yes."
Outside, a large group squadron of police cars entered the Versailles Palace's broad driveway at high speed. The policeman on the passenger's seat of the leading car, an elder Lieutenant with a lot of experience with robbers, burglars, and the like was the one leading the operation, so it was this particular car in which the radio squawked out a message from the station. "News on the Versailles case. Apparently, you'll have to deal with one certain Professor Norton Nimnul. We're working on identifying the bald man who's with him. They might try an escape in an automobile."
"Norton Nimnul?" his driver asked. "Never heard that name."
"You didn't? Oh, you should. He's wanted in several Federal States for several pretty weird crimes, most of which involve pretty weird science. Furthermore, he's prohibited to use any forms of focused, ray-emitting devices stronger than the headlights of an automobile in all 50 states, in some states even only stronger than a flashlight. We could bust him if we caught him with a portable CD player because of the laser unit in it. And this here might pretty well be beyond a portable CD player."
The police cars went into position in front of the palace, some also behind it. As huge as the building was, it didn't have so many potential safe exits. There were easily enough emergency exists to comply with safety standards, but with the palace's own security and the other clerks being on the lookout, it wouldn't be easy for Nimnul and the Thief to get anywhere. Yet, they had made it to both the garage and the limousine. The police found it out the hard way when they heard the roar of a large engine from the garage's exit.
Then everything went fast, very fast. Headlights appeared on the ramp which led down to the garage. The police had blocked both the exit and the entrance, via the latter of which the vehicle came, but the two cars standing fifteen yards away from the ramp were without a chance to stop the long white limousine which used the slope to not jump, but almost fly over them and touch down on the other side. The lieutenant took a few seconds to grasp what he had just seen and remind himself that this was not a movie before he ordered his team to get back into the cars and follow the limousine.
The thief on the limousine's passenger seat made sure that he way okay and that all his limbs and inner organs were still where he expected them to be. When this turned out to be the case, he asked Nimnul, "Where and how did you learn to drive like this?"
"Oh," Nimnul replied with a grin, "the helium in the tires and some other places of the car did the trick."
The two Ranger aircraft arrived at the scene when the police forces were piling back into their cars. They were both unusually crowded due to four additional passengers. Monty was steering the Rangerplane which was flying ahead with Dale next to him who had Foxglove sitting on his lap. Zipper's place was the bottle cap. On the backseat, there were Todd whose PDA was attached to the suction cups on the landing gear again, Melissa who wouldn't leave Todd alone, come what may, and Allan who under no circumstances wanted to sit in one plane with Chip for his own safety reasons. The rest of the group rode the Rangerwing. Gadget was piloting it, Chip was the co-pilot, LaWahini was squeezed in between them, and Clarice and Sparky shared the backseat with the mobile headquarters equipment which had been loaded into the Rangerwing at Allan's request and a lack of denial from Chip. Tammy rode the fuselage behind them which put her in charge of the rear plunger harpoon.
Dale was most amazed by the limousine's jump. "Wowie-zowie, have you seen this?"
"There they go," Melissa worried, "and the gems with them."
Allan sighed out loudly. "All the effort was in vain..."
"Oh no," Monty said, "the Rescue Rangers've still got some aces up their sleeves." He pulled a lever, a hatch opened in the Rangerplane's front, and out came a plunger harpoon. "I'm glad I could convince Gadget ta keep it in 'ere an' build another one when she put the Rangerwing tagether. Dale?"
"Sorry, Foxy," the secret agent look-alike chipmunk apologized, "but sometimes a 'munk's gotta do what a 'munk's gotta do." His bat girlfriend stood up and let him slip between her and Monty. He didn't just sit there, however. He took the harpoon and shot the plunger on the rope at the nearest police car.
From the Rangerwing, LaWahini watched as the car began to drag the Rangerplane after it. "Wow, that's a form of surfing even I've never seen before. Gadget, does this plane have such a harpoon under the hood, too?"
"Uh, no..."
"Alright, Chip, Gadget, make sure I don't fly overboard!"
"Why," Chip wondered, "what are you—"
He stopped in the tracks when he looked up at LaWahini who had just gotten up and held Gadget's plunger crossbow in her hands, aiming at the Rangerplane's stern with one eye squeezed shut. She pulled the trigger, skillfully countered the recoil, and the plunger dashed forward and attached to the older Ranger aircraft safely. "Bullseye," LaWahini cheered.
The sudden and strong tug did not catch her off-guard, yet she had to balance herself. Once she felt safe again, she planted her feet against the Rangerwing's dashboard, and the other passengers felt the craft accelerate up to what was a break-neck speed for rodents. Firmly clutching the plunger harpoon in her hands and practically steering the Rangerwing, LaWahini shouted out, "You were so wrong, Shaka Baka! The water ski lessons do pay off for me!"
When the eight animal gangsters came out of the giant building, they saw the police leave the place. One car was close enough to catch it, but Mepps tripped and fell over, and Fat Cat and his other three goons stumbled over him. Only Francis, Louie, and Moe managed to jump upon the rear bumper.
"You'd better not get the gems, rat," Fat Cat yelled, "or else I'll get them from you!"
"Sorry, boss," Mepps whined from under him. "Just don't punish me too hard."
"As if any punishment had an effect on you," Fat Cat complained, "it never did. It'd be just another waste of time, energy, and my own precious patience."
With squealing tires, the limousine turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard which mere seconds later was illuminated by the light bars on two dozen police cars. It was easy to tell by the way Nimnul steered the enormously long automobile that he was quite used to being chased by the authorities. He floored the pedal and accelerated down the Strip, but he couldn't bring much distance between his limo and the police. The Rangers in their flying contraptions unseen by the humans were glad that he drove straight on since whatever steering devices their craft had were not designed for such high speeds, and they would drift far off their course in every curve. As it was the middle of the night, there were few cars to evade, and he had plenty of space to do so.
He sped out of the city and stayed on the road for a short while before he suddenly turned left. Not only did this mean another curve for the police to drive and for the Rangers to cope with, but there was actually not the slightest trace of a path, let alone a street, where Nimnul drove. He directed his car right through the desert, and while the Rangers were glad they were the only ones in the chase who were not shaken by the many bumps on the ground, there was still the immense cloud of dust raised by the cars ahead of them which made both breathing and seeing where the journey went quite hard.
All of a sudden, the police cars below the Rangers stopped. Monty and Gadget had to engage the air brakes of their respective aircraft, too. LaWahini fell on her seat as hard as she could fall onto the cushion. "I guess the chase is over," Chip said. "You can reel in the rope again, LaWahini. Dale is doing the same anyway."
When the dust cleared, they saw the limousine with its front doors open. The police had successfully arrested the self-proclaimed Greatest Thief in the World who yelled out, "I've been tricked! I've been double-crossed! I'm going to pay you back, Nimnul!" But the crazy professor was nowhere in sight, his seat in the limo was empty, and despite his shortness, his rage would have made spotting him amongst the policemen rather easy.
"Where's Nimnul?" Sparky wondered.
"We'd better find him," Chip suggested.
Gadget switched on the Rangerwing's headlight and was about to fly into the darkness of the desert night when suddenly two much stronger lights lit up at some distance ahead of the Rangers.
"Nimnul!" Gadget identified the source of the light correctly without even knowing what the pair of lights was mounted on.
"Quick, Gadget turn off the light," Chip shouted, "unless you want him to find us!"
"Okay." The Rangerwing's bow went dark again. "But I'd like to know what he came up with this time." With these words, Gadget directed the Rangerwing towards the unknown object, and the Rangerplane followed. The inventress was not disappointed at all by what she saw in the pale light of the moon. It was indeed Norton Nimnul's latest invention which he had probably hidden away in the desert for a long time.
It had a fuselage similar to that of a one-seat airplane with a canopy on top of it. The similarity went on with the pair of wings which consisted of four segments each and were folded and retracted against the fuselage, but it ended at the tail which lacked any form of fins. Instead, four big swiveling fans were mounted on both sides of the nose and the tail. Ahead of the canopy, two headlights based on white LEDs were built into the fuselage. And the five original Rangers were certain that they had seen the long spire protruding from the nose somewhere before.
After the Rangers' planes had landed at a safe distance and their drives were shut down, the Rangers could hear Nimnul's talking more clearly. He closed a hatch behind the open canopy, climbed down his machine, and cackled madly. "The gems are in their proper places, the energy is up, and the Nimnul Laser Cannon 14 is ready to go!"
"Not if I can help it!" Todd shouted. He jumped off the Rangerplane and made a mad dash for the mobile laser weapon.