During the days, the kids made sure that each vehicle's tank was filled and ready to go. Most days they would hang out at the pool for a while, or maybe they played a game of sandlot baseball out on the baseball diamond, shirts (girls) versus skins (guys), and then go to the Steen house to study. Actually, what they were 'studying' was their targets and plans. They would also practice their fighting techniques in the empty living room. Jamie was the sparring dummy for the group.
As night fell, each teenager slipped into the area where their parents worked and "appropriated" various weapons and supplies, and smuggled them out to their old fort in the woods, which was basically a scaled down version of 'the Pit', complete with much of the same technology. AJ and her brother got enough first aid supplies to sink the Bismarck, but they knew that they had to be ready for any contingency.
Jamie had been crawling around in the Pit's air ducts and everything, rigging surprises and playing with the wiring to certain equipment, rigging it to fire on her command and her command only. She'd had some of the younger, smaller teens (Chelsey, Mickey, Adam, Blair, Lindsay, Avery and Greg) helping her. She'd drawn and written diagrams and directions on how to do it, so that she wouldn't have to do it all herself, and wouldn't have to be right there, hanging over their shoulders. It was good to have a degree in electronics engineering before you graduated high school. Thank goodness for night classes.
The race came off as expected, both bikes and riders as skilled as everybody thought they were. It was a tight race, until the last corner. Jamie leaned a little too far over and wiped out. No major damage was done to the bike, and all Jamie had was a bit of road rash on her right leg.
Nobody realized that she had wiped out on purpose. She'd seen something that she needed to take a closer look at and take care of.
She stood up and unbuckled her helmet, slinging it across the road and almost taking out a flowerpot on a windowsill when it shot between two houses. She acted so frustrated that even some of the kids thought that this was one of those rare occurrences where she had finally lost her temper; in reality, she was stone cold, calm and calculating on the inside.
She stomped over and retrieved her helmet, snarling like a mad dog when she crossed paths with another human. Looking at the place where her helmet had come to rest, she realized what she would need to do- set up a couple of mines and tripwires in the alleys. Then she walked back to where the bike had skidded to a stop and picked it up, congratulated Carrie on her win, and walked the bike back to her house.
The Cobras were starting to get suspicious when they realized that none of the kids seemed to be doing anything out of the ordinary. They were just acting like typical teens. This made the commanding officer of the Cobras for this operation- Major Bludd- uneasy for some reason. He ordered some of his troops to infiltrate the house and find out what was going on. None of them ever reported back.
As the Cobra vipers slipped into the house, seemingly unseen, all they find is a group of students studying together, tutoring each other. They even came across a few couples that had separated from the main group, and were making out, like Crispin and Randi, EJ and Christine or AJ and Ritchie, even. Whenever Major Bludd would send one of his lackeys to investigate what was going on, one of the kids would waylay them and knock them out.
One of the Cobra lackeys had been stupid enough to burst in on Jamie while she was taking a shower; the idiot had brandished a weapon and tried for something. Bad move. The kids didn't expect him to live through the night, but they knew that it was self-defense, or Jamie would have held back and just KO'd him.
Major Bludd finally got fed up with it and went in himself after his last goon didn't return with information, only to find himself facing down Lifeline's daughter, AJ, and her boyfriend, Chuckles' son, Ritchie. Utilizing all of the tricks that they had learned over the years, they took him apart piece by piece.
Clutching the keys to the brig closely to her chest, AJ calmly stepped into the room with the others. She holds them up in triumph and tells the others to go get dressed, they move at nightfall. It was Saturday afternoon.