Hardy Boys The Children of the Lost (Book one in Lost Mystery triology)

A NEW YORK MINUTE

Joe:

Here's something funny about the mole people who live in New York's subway system. You'd think they would be weird antisocial types, but they're not. Together, they've constructed this amazing underground city using things they've found on the street and the electricity that runs the subway system. For example, this evening our host, Martha, made my brother, Frank and me some excellent English-muffin pizzas for dinner-using a toaster oven she found in a trash can at the Times Square station.

Hands down, these were the best English-muffin pizzas I've ever had. Better then anything Frank's ever made me, with the benefit of a full kitchen and fresh ingredients from the grocery store.

Frank:

Frank here. I would use this opportunity, Joe, to dog your cooking, too-if you had ever cooked anything in your entire life.

Joe:

Touché, Frank. In any case, on a typical Friday night in May, my brother and I found ourselves in black pants and black hooded sweatshirts, soot rubbed all over our faces to cut down on glare, and crouched in an unused subway tunnel just south of City Hall station in Manhattan. We were on the lookout for M3, which is the code name for the secret money train that runs the whole system at night, collectin money from the MetroCard machines and ferrying it to an office in Brooklyn.

For the last month, large amounts of money had mysteriously gone missing off the money train. This was pretty weird, see, because the money train travels with an insane amount of security. Think about it: If you had to transfer money through the New York subway system-which never shuts down, by the way, so there are always passengers waiting in every station-wouldn't you be super careful about it? That's why M3 is a state-of-the-art vehicle. It's completely computarized- there's no way you're getting near that thing without twenty different security codes. Plus, it travels with atleast two security guards. I'm just saying, if you're thinking of ripping off the New York subway to buy an Xbox or something, you might want to come up with an easier plan.

But the weird thin was, someone was ripping off the New York subway. Which meant that someone had devised a way past all security to get to that cold hard cash. And after two long weeks spending our nights in the dark tunnels below New York- while our mom and aunt Trudy thought we were house-sitting for a co-worker of my dad's- we'd fingered a likely culprit. Doug LaFayne, a middle-aged janitor at the City Hall station, was a secret computer genius. And Frank and I were pretty sure that after twenty years on the job, he'd devised a way to outsmart M3.

"Here it comes," whispered Frank, as the familiar whine and squeak of a train approaching at slow speed filled the tunnel. We both turned around: Sure enough, the shining silver, ultra-armored M3 was slowly pulling into the station.

I turned back to face the platform in the station. Sure enough, Doug LaFayne was loitering there, lazily pushing a mop around the tiled floor-but really his attention was focused on a tiny controller device fastened to his wrists.

The train pulled into the station and stopped without making a sound - a rarity among New York subway trains, believe me. Frank and I had learned real fast that earplugs were a necessity in this tunnels. After a few seconds, a door in the middle of the train opened, and three people got out- the MTA officer in charge of emptying machines, one guard to follow her to the machines, and one guard to stand at the entrance to the train.

Doug perked up, silently watching the officer and the guard walk through the turnstiles to the MetroCard machines. Sure enough, as soon as they were through the turnstiles, his right hand moved to the controller on his wrist. He began typing. Frank and I had discerned that he'd written a code to override the lock on a trapdoor that led from the bottom of M3 to the tracks below. By hacking into the train's security system and entering a simple four digit code, Doug had gain access to the money train.