Andreo's Race Read Online Free

shift my eyes to the green glow of the computer screen on his chipped desk. High above it, dusty and forgotten, hangs a framed snapshot of his adoptive parents holding him as a baby. They are outside a white-domed building in Bolivia. I take in the whine of his printer, check my watch and leap out of bed.
    â€œEight o’clock?” I say. “Hey, we should be outta here. Caving, remember?”
    â€œYeah, yeah.” He points to his backpack, stuffed and ready to go by the door. I realize he’s dressed already as I race to pull on my clothes. “But this is an amazing news report. You have to read it.”
    â€œBring it along. Let’s grab some breakfast and hit the trail.” We shoulder our packs and head toward the stairs. His dad appears in a rumpled bathrobe, chin grizzled and holding his head as he stumbles to the bathroom.
    â€œMorning, Mr. Jones,” I say. “Hey, thanks for giving Raul permission to do the race in Bolivia.”
    He stares at me and blinks. “Bolivia. Right. Anything for some peace and quiet around here.” And the bathroom door slams shut.
    After polishing off bowls of instant oatmeal and toast piled high with jam, we open the back door to a blast of cold air. Our boots scrunch a dusting of November snow as we head up the frozen trail.
    â€œNot supposed to tell you this,” Raul says, “but your loser brother took two tries to get his caving certificate the other weekend. As in, he flunked on his first round. A certain guide told me.”
    Raul wants to be a caving guide when he turns eighteen, so he hangs out with a bunch of local instructors.
    â€œYou’re right, you’re not supposed to tell me,” I say, slapping him on the back and smiling.
    My buddy pulls the Internet printout from his pants pocket. “Headline is BLACK-MARKET-BABY RINGLEADER JAILED IN BOLIVIA.”
    â€œ
Huh
? Someone’s jailed a baby?”
    â€œNo, stupid. Someone who sells babies illegally got caught. In Cochabamba, Bolivia. Right near where our race is going to be.”
    â€œBlack babies?” I lower my pack at the cave entrance, strap on my helmet and switch on its headlamp.
    â€œNo, Andreo, babies on the black market,” Raul says as we head into the dark. One by one, we grab the anchored rope, attach the aluminum hardware on our harnesses to it and make like we’re firemen sliding down a pole. We land lightly in a sculpted cavern. “When rich North Americans can’t find a baby to adopt, they head to places like Bolivia. They pay lotsa money—it says here fifty thousand—on the black market.”
    â€œFifty grand?!” My voice echoes as we tramp over the stone floor, ducking under stalactites. My headlamp beam picks up bats flying overhead. “No one would paythat for me. And they’d pay a whole lot less for you.”
    â€œ
Ha-ha
. But listen! This ring—these criminals—sold, like, six hundred babies over the past fifteen to twenty years, mostly to Americans and Canadians. Illegally. For the bucks. And now they’ve been busted. At least, the head honcho—name of Hugo Vargas—was arrested Friday.”
    â€œSo?” We drop to our kneepads and crawl into a moist tunnel, Raul first as usual.
    â€œThat could be us,
mon
!” says his muffled voice. “We could be stolen goods!”
    The rotten-egg smell of sulfur attacks my nostrils as we enter a bulge in the tunnel. We sit cross-legged and face-to-face in the cramped space. The packs on our backs are pressed against the walls; our heads are touching the ceiling. My beam exposes a bushy-tailed wood rat scurrying from an oversize twiggy nest down the tunnel from which we’ve come. “First of all, we weren’t adopted illegally, Raul. At least I wasn’t.”
    â€œSays who?” His voice sounds overloud in this cubbyhole, this last alcove before things get really tight in Dead End Tunnel. “You finally