Hot Time In the Heights - A Hansen Boys Mystery (Part 4)

Now that Jeff and Paul Hansen found the location that the Midnite Express drone vans operated out of, they began to work on figuring out how to bring the building down,destroying the drone vans without endangering the transit company's bus garage and fleet of buses. The boys talked with Fire Department officials and demolition experts, all of whom told them that an implosion of the warehouse the ghost crews and drone vans were using would be the best way to bring down the building and destroy the drone vans.

They were told to place the C4 charges on the side of the building farthest from the side nearest the bus garage. That Wedesnday evening, at around 8 pm, some of the drone vans and ghost crews were already out, with five of the some two dozen drone vans out. The boys sneaked into the building and while Jeff planted the 3 or four charges of C4 plastic explosives they thought would be needed to do the job, Paul started up his cassette player, which had a jazz tape by Vince Guaraldi Trio on it, and that aroused every 'chaser' ball in the place and get them all bouncing wildly, thus making them easy marks to be picked off by the special dart gun that the Hansen boys had. Within 15 minutes, all 19 chaser balls had been popped by the dart guns, leaving the ghost crews without protection at the utility manholes that they made their haunts. Jeff said," five of the vans and their crews are already gone." Paul replied,"yes, I know, but let's do the best we can here and take this facility out.' Jeff responed I'm with you.

Meanwhile back at Broadway and Libby and Lee and Libby, the remaining five 'ghost crews' had just finished setting up. The two Libby-Broadway crews consisted of three pairs of belted light brown khakis each worn by a pair of the alien balls, crouching down with antennae fully extended. The Libby-Lee crews were 3 pairs of light green belted pants also worn by pairs of the alien rubber balls. A total of six chaser balls protected these last ghost crews, which were situated in front of long since closed nightclubs, that were inhabited by 'ghost bands'. The last two ghost bands consisted of light green belted pants (piano),khakies, and beltless white bell bottoms, each worn by pairs of the alien rubber balls, with antennae fully extended plus a single ball bouncing on the cymbals as the ghost bands played ,plus one or two chaser balls with each ghost band.

At about 9 pm, as the ghost crews in the drone vans were getting ready to leave the warehouse on Dunham Road, the first of six small explosive charges went off, thus collapsing a portion of the building on the drone vans as they were getting underway and by 9:30 pm, the building was brought down by implosion and the 18 drone vans caught inside were destroyed along with the ghost crews in them. As Paul and Jeff left after doing their thing to take out the ghost crews that they could, they grabbed several pairs of the pants worn by the alien rubber balls to take for analysis by Sam Fujiama, who, by then had told them that this group of alien rubber balls was far more aggressive than what they had encountered in Buffalo or Rochester. Paul asked," After Sam gets through with these pants, what should we do with them?" Jeff replied," Let's see what Sam Fujiama has to say and we will take it from there.' Paul said," Okay, they look like about our size, too. Must be those alien rubber balls were all the same size." Jeff said, " It sure looks that way." Paul said," Unfortunately, we did not get all of the ghost crews." Jeff said," We sure got enough of them to call it a victory and there are only two ghost bands left, too. Let's tell Bill Healey and his crew how we made out and leave it at that." Paul said, "Amen to that."