that Baloo and Rebecca were tied up and that there was dynamite sticking out over the top of the basket. His pulse began to throb in his ears. “Oh, jeepers!” he whispered sotto voce.

Molly was thinking the same thing. She pressed closer to Kit, hanging onto his shirttail.

“Can I use your radio, Mr. Khan?” Kit said, a glimmer of an idea spinning in his head. It was a long shot, but it was the best that he could devise. “I need to contact a friend. Please?”

Following a long, tension-filled pause, during which Shere Khan glared at the pirates’ backs, he said, “Mmm...yes. Right this way.”

The threesome returned to the elevator.

Out on the Ledge

“Don’t forget your old rag. Catch!” Mad Dog tossed the sack. It ricocheted off Rebecca’s stomach and fell on top of the dynamite that was packed to the basket’s brim.

“Wear it in good health,” Dumptruck added.

The air pirates chortled as angry tears filled the bearess’s eyes.

Clasping his hands together and batting his eyes, Karnage said mockingly, “It’ll be so romantic - floating through the blue sky, up through the clouds, getting blown into a million pieces. Pow! Boom-boom! Bye-bye!”

Rebecca shivered with the thought of it.

Baloo turned his head to look at the pirate captain. “C’mon, Karny, be a sport. Let Becky go. She ain't done nothin' to ya."

“Did you call her nothing?”

“Huh? No, I...”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Don’t you know it’s not polite to talk about people behind their backs?” Karnage giggled with self-satisfaction. “I make a joke. As for letting her go...” nose to nose with the big bear, he barked, “NO!” causing Baloo to flinch. “This way I get rid of both of you nasty nuances at the same time.”

Mad Dog brandished a matchbook. “Can I light it, Captain? Can I? Please, oh, please, can I?”

Magnanimously, Karnage replied, “For any other electrocution, I would let you perform the honors, Mad Dog, but this is an extra-special occasion, isn’t it, Bahloo?” He shot an ugly leer at the two bears. “We will use a timer this time.”

“But ve don’t have a timer,” Dumptruck pointed out.

“But, yes, we do, Dumptruck,” Karnage replied. He procured an alarm clock attached to a small bomb from his pocket. As he wound up and set the clock, he said, “You have exactitutely ten minutes until you will spend eternity together, but that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He put the ticking clock into the basket. “This is the beginning of the end of your pathetic lives.” Whipping out his sword, Karnage severed the balloon’s restraining rope with one savage slash. “Enjoy your up-close and personal view of the fireworks!”

However, the balloon didn’t move. Baloo’s bulk and the dynamite weighted it down.

Karnage repeatedly kicked the basket, but didn’t gain anything except stubbed toes. “Float! Go up! Fly away, you estupid balloon! Don’t just stand there, you eediots! Push this balloon off!”

Dumptruck and Mad Dog put all of their combined might against the basket. Finally, it slid off of the ledge with a loud scraping sound.

The balloon dipped down, then began its slow ascent. Dumptruck and Mad Dog hung from the basket by their fingertips, yelping.

“Let go of that balloon, you dangling dolts,” Karnage ordered.

They immediately did as they were told. They were suspended in mid-air for a second with distressed looks on their faces before falling with twin ‘thumps’ onto the ledge below.

“Bon voyage-y, Bahloo, and don’t come back!” Karnage called out cheerfully as he waved his sword.

“Hey, Captain?” Mad Dog whined, rubbing his sore backside.

“Yes, yes, yes, is there something that you inquiring minds want to know?” Karnage snapped, peering over the ledge. He kicked chunks of plaster down onto them.

“How do ve get back inside?” Dumptruck asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. You have dynamite. Blast your way in,” Karnage replied unconcernedly.

“Oh, yeah, dynamite. Ve’ll blast it good.” Dumptruck pulled out his last stick and propped it against the large window.

Mad Dog struck a match and held it to the fuse. When the flame started towards the TNT, they ducked behind a gargoyle.

“But don’t you dare singe or put a single scratch in my beautiful plane of glass!” Don Karnage warned.

“Yumpin’ yimminy!” Dumptruck quickly extinguished the flame by pinching it between his fingers. Then, he caught sight of the long crack that was already etched in the window. He pointed it out to his colleague.

“We’re gonna get blamed for that, aren’t we?” Mad Dog said dismally.

Dumptruck nodded sadly.

The Pink Piranha

“You boys are slowpokes!” Aunt Louise shouted to the two CT-37s on her tail as she wove in and out of the downtown skyscrapers. “Snails with broken legs could out race you! Whoo-hoo! Ain’t this a laugh, Louis?”

Louie, a pale shade of green, gasped out, “Oh, yeah, Auntie. More laughs than a barrel of monkeys. Watch out for that building!” He shielded his face with his hands and waited for his life to pass before his eyes.

She yanked the stick back at the last possible second. The airplane’s landing gear drove across the building’s surface. “You mean thisbuilding? Whee-hee-hee!”

One of the CT-37s wasn’t so lucky. It slammed into the building right beneath them.

Watching the pirate pilot deploy his parachute, Louie said, “Shoot! We don’t have parachutes.”

“Parachutes?” she laughed. “What do you need a parachute for? Don’t you have any faith in your auntie’s flying?”

“Faith? Sure I got lots of faith.” He squeezed his eyes shut and hastily murmured a prayer for safety.

Kit’s urgent voice came over the radio. “Come in, Pink Piranha. This is Kit Cloudkicker. Over.”

“Well, darn my socks,” Aunt Louise said, leveling out the plane. “If it ain’ that dapper little best man.” She picked up the microphone. “Whatcha need, cutie-pie?”

“Baloo and Rebecca are in real trouble.”

“We ain’t doin’ so hot ourselves,” said Louie, covering his eyes as they did a roll. “Oh, man, that just ain’t right. Tummy rollin’ with the plane.”

Kit blurted out, “Karnage tied them to a hot air balloon.”

“With lots and lots of dynamite!” Molly added.

“Molly, give that back!” There was scuffling and bumping as the microphone changed hands. “I don’t know how long they have until it explodes, but knowing Karnage, it won’t be long.”

“You gotta help ‘em!” Molly added, panicking.

“I dig you loud an’ clear. Don’t worry, kids. Louise L’ Amour’s got everything under control.” She banked right, steering the plane towards Khan Towers.

“Which is more than I can say for my stomach. Whoa!” Louie screamed as the Pink Piranha went into a pretzel twist. “I want a refund from this five-cent tour!”

Back to the Hot Air Balloon

Carried along by gentle winds, the balloon drifted up, up, up through the brilliant blue sky. As it ascended, the air became cooler and thinner; but the two bears aboard the balloon didn’t notice the air quality. They - tied back to back in a basket filled to the brim with dynamite, not to mention a bomb that was set to go off in a few minutes - had more urgent matters to tend to.

“Becky, honey, I gotta tell ya somethin’,” Baloo said as he fumbled with the knot that restrained their hands. He kept a sharp eye on the alarm clock that sat on the pile of dynamite right in front of him. Only seven minutes left.

Rebecca turned her head towards the sound of his voice. “Yes, darling?”

“I wish...I wish...dang this stupid knot!”

“Yes?” she said expectantly.

“I wish we coulda eaten that cake.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Oh, Baloo, get over the cake already! I’ll make you another cake.” Staring at the waist-high dynamite, she added tremulously, “If we ever get out of this.”

“We’ll get out of this,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster up.

“How? There’s a ticking time bomb rigged up to a ton of TNT in this basket.”

“Yeah,” Baloo said admiringly. “Karny really did his homework this time.”

A sudden heartening thought made Rebecca’s eyes lose their listless look. “Time! That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“Don’t you see, Baloo?”

“How can I see ya when we’re tied back to back?”

“If we can only turn the hands of that clock back, it would give us more time to think of a way to escape.”

“That ain’t a bad idea, Beckers. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself.” He lifted his foot to reach the clock. However, because he moved, the dynamite shifted, causing the clock to slip between the sticks of dynamite and disappear from sight. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s ‘uh-oh’?”

“I, uh...sorta lost the clock.”

“What do you mean, you lost the clock?”

“Just what I said - I lost it.”

“I swear, Baloo, if your head wasn’t screwed on you’d lose that, too. How could you lose a clock in this little basket?”

“It kinda, accidentally did a disappearin’ Whodini act into the pile of dynamite. It’s buried like one of Karny’s treasure chests.”

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