“The guy kept a detailed record of each job, 42 of them,” I reply, “and it’s significant that there’s not one for last Tuesday.”
“Now I’m really confused,” she says, her vague face frowning in the dark.
“December 3rd, Vera Young,” I explain. “There’s no log that might be for her, suggesting she wasn’t a job. Not his job at any rate.”
I imagine Neva showing up at the Fort Monroe apartment to get the GOD chip, and when Vera wouldn’t hand it over, things spun out of control. In a rage, Neva garroted her sister with a computer cord, and I assume at some point after this the hitman was there in his Denali to pick up the big boss. He may have given her a hand with staging the scene for all I know. But I have a feeling he didn’t, that he had his pride. It wasn’t his job or a good one, and he didn’t want credit.
“You can’t just take evidence home with you,” Fran says as I set the bags of journals on a seat.
“I’m doing it, end of story,” I reply. “I intend to go through all of them carefully before anybody else does. Maybe we’ll figure out who he was. Maybe we’ll find something that definitely links the victims to Pandora Space Systems.”
I leave out the most important part, the hitman’s own written record of Noah Bishop’s death. My sister had nothing to do with it.
“Seriously?” Fran says cynically. “You’re thinking Neva Rong’s behind every one of his hits?” she drops the cigarette into an ice-watery puddle. “What makes you so sure a scumbag like that wouldn’t do jobs for other people, anybody who’d pay enough?”
“Neva has to control everything and everyone,” I reply. “If he did jobs for other people? Then he didn’t answer only to her, and she wasn’t the center of the universe.”
My Tahoe’s headlights illuminate Pebo Sweeny’s trailer where he was enjoying retirement with his exotic pets, I can only suppose. He was home alone, possibly running a load of laundry when a stranger showed up at his door. “Pretending to be lost,” his killer describes.
They struck up “a pleasant conversation” about car races at the nearby speedway, and what it was like to live so close to NASA. Then the hitman “got around to business,” I recall from the log with its Cracker Jack plastic owl.
“Plain and simple,” I’m saying to Fran, “this is how the hitman did location scouting and acquired habitats that would go undetected,” and I can see faces in the lighted windows of mobile homes across the street, people looking out at what’s going on over here. “He needed a local off-the-grid place to do his work, and a trailer that backed up to the woods was the perfect spot.”
There was no motive other than that, I summarize. There was no competitor or adversary to intimidate or eradicate, no score to settle, just an old man retired from the Air Force who had something the hitman wanted.
“Based on what I saw a few minutes ago, I have a feeling Neva kept her personal attack dog plenty busy. I’m not sure he would have had time to work for anybody else,” and then I tell Fran the rest of the story, that this same assassin who planned to wipe out all of us had victimized her in the past.
The purpose wasn’t robbery then, I explain as she stares at me in cold silence. The goal was to traumatize, to create chaos, and maybe to send a warning. By his own accounting, the plan was to follow Fran home, to wait for an opportune time to disable her vehicle with tire spikes, I paint the nightmarish picture for her.
“And I’m betting he’d put a tracking device on your Land Cruiser long before that,” I add.
“I don’t understand,” she stares off at the trailer, the lights harsh inside, police carrying out weapons wrapped in brown paper. “Why?”
“To destabilize, to create huge distractions and emotional distress,” I emphasize.
“If Neva’s really behind it,” Fran decides, “why sic him on me three years ago? I had nothing to do with her then.”
“But you had everything to do with me,” I remind her. “And I’d just left the Air Force and started with NASA. I’d just started working with you in protective services, you’re my neighbor, my friend, my family. What happens to you, Easton and Tommy happens to me. It happens to all of us.”
“I remember having a funny feeling when I saw his driver’s license,” she means the hitman’s fake one with his bearded photograph and Hank Cougars’s information. “It doesn’t really look like the man I remember. But it bothered me, and I guess now I know why. Except I don’t understand why Neva would go to so much trouble.”
I’m not going to remind Fran of the consequences. She doesn’t need to hear how much time and effort I’ve spent on her raging phobias while helping her hide them from everyone. I won’t mention how often I’ve turned the other cheek when she’s insensitive, rude, and at times barbaric.
These past three years it’s almost as if she’s done everything she can to run me off, alienating plenty of people including Carme, and at times Mom, Tommy’s cousin. But most of all him, the long-suffering husband, driven to renting a getaway in Williamsburg, and at the end of the day, Neva knew what she was doing.
29
“NEVA understands love and human decency well enough to use them as weapons,” I explain as I slide into the blast-resistant driver’s seat, open the window, and turn on the heat.
“Sort of like planting that phone on a 10-year-old if that’s what she did,” Fran’s demeanor has turned as hard as steel. “Creating diversions, ruining lives, well may she get back as good as she gives.”
She calls Neva a few choice names that don’t bear repeating, and in my SPIES I can see my messages, and still nothing from Lex.
“Time to go home,” I fasten my seat belt.
“I’m not leaving until everybody clears out,” Fran says. “Still no luck finding the Cherokee, by the way.”
“I’m guessing it’s out of sight in a garage somewhere,” I suggest.
“You probably won’t be up by the time I get home. The babysitter dropped off Easton at your parents’ house a little while ago for a sleepover. He’s watching TV with George,” she’s looking at everything but me the way she does when she gets emotional.
“A lot of trauma for one day,” I say kindly. “And when’s Tommy coming home?”
“Next weekend maybe. Or whenever I’m not a grizzly bear with PMS, as he puts it,” and for an instant it sounds like she might cry.
“You gonna be all right?”
“I’m fine,” in a dead flat tone, and she steps back from my window. “See you in a little while,” turning her back to me, Fran watches where she steps, headed back toward the trailer.
I drive off, and ART turns on the displays and audio as law enforcement vehicles continue arriving at the trailer park. No doubt there will be quite the investigation into the hitman’s illegal weapons, and at least I can trust that Fran will keep it to herself about the 42 journals in my possession.
At almost 11:00 p.m. the winds are calm, the moon and stars showing. The temperature is 8.8°C (48°F) and the roads have cleared considerably. As I approach Lex’s street, I decide to make a wellness check, parking where I did before.
I’m unable to tell from the gift wrap–papered windows whether any lights are on. But I can hear the TV playing inside, and I rap on the aluminum storm door. Nothing, and I try again, louder. Still nothing.
Then, “Who is it?” Nonna’s distrusting voice.
“It’s Captain Chase again, sorry it’s so late. You don’t need to open your door,” I don’t want her having another spell.
“I’d rather not.”
“Best to leave a shield between us.”
“I agree.”
“I was driving by, are you and Lex all right?”
“He’s in his room out like a light. I couldn’t sleep, got up a bit ago to watch T
V.”
“Sorry to disturb you,” and I tell her good night, oddly disappointed that I didn’t see him.
But it’s good to hear that Lex is sleeping as he should be at this late hour. Back inside my Tahoe, I stop at Commander Shepard Boulevard, waiting at a red light as a Hampton Roads Transit bus glides past. I’m reminded of what he said about running errands, taking care of everything, a little man who never really had the chance to be a normal boy.
“Are there any updates I should know about?” I ask ART, and I’m back to multitasking, monitoring flat-screens, and data in my SPIES. “Anything earthshaking in the past few hours?” and he replies by displaying the Langley sitemap.
As late as it is, I’m surprised there are any outside contractors left on our campus, some of them the same engineers I saw at the Gantry earlier. Other ID numbers lighting up are from NASA and the military, a total of 8 people working in the hangar where the test model was hauled late afternoon. Dick isn’t among them.
“What’s going on in Building 1119-A?” I inquire.
I fully expect ART to reply that he’s not authorized to show me. Instead, I’m connected to a live video feed from inside the spacecraft test model. Snap the crash test dummy is decked out in a launch-entry pressure spacesuit made of an iridescent-blue smart material, the soft hood equipped with a visor.
My purloined mannequin has assumed the position, on her back, knees bent, strapped snugly in a carbon fiber seat liner, her artificial arms folded across her zipped-up torso.
It occurs to me ironically that considering my implanted intricate network and all that goes with it, I may be more of a full-scale anthropomorphic test device than she is.
It’s hard to tell very much else about the spacecraft itself since none of the avionics and other bells and whistles are present. But based on openings in the test model’s aluminum sides and flooring, I suspect there are atypical components including ports for deploying miniprobes and satellites, and other autonomous devices.
I’m seeing real estate for powerful engine pods and thrusters. I recognize the slots for retractable landing skids like we have on many of the drones we build in the autonomous incubator and test on our ranges.
“Do we know where Dick is?” I’m grateful ART and I are back to talking freely. “And I’m wondering what his interest in the space vehicle might be exactly.”
“What is your question?”
“Also, I’m wondering who decided to put Snap inside the test model. No one should have laid a finger on her, frankly. Especially after all the time and resources I’ve devoted to overhauling her. She was in very bad shape when I first met her. I realize that was before your time.”
“I don’t understand,” ART says as I retrace my steps, following the same route home that I took 4 mornings ago during the blizzard.
“Do we have any further data on the drop test that was conducted at the Gantry earlier? More to the point, what’s being done to Snap as we speak?” and when it comes to my hand-tooled and personally engineered mannequins, I’m as fiercely protective as my mother is toward Carme and me.
“The drop test was considered a success,” ART answers blandly, reminding me of Dad’s dry way of talking. “All test devices performed as designed, the results within normal limits.”
“But what is this spacecraft supposed to be? It appears to have all sorts of atypical features?” I monitor the live feed as I drive, not expecting ART to answer beyond reminding me I’m not authorized.
“A reusable combination rescue vehicle and space ferry that can both land and take off,” he surprises the hell-o out of me.
Echoing the very details Dick and I have discussed for years, what ART’s talking about is a spacecraft with a retractable landing gear. It can set down on legs or skids in environments with little or no atmosphere such as the airless moon where wings won’t fly with no wind beneath them.
00:00:00:00:0
“An M-O-B-E, a Manned Orbital Ballistic Escaper,” ART spells it out, the very acronym Dad and I came up with one summer while Dick was visiting us.
“It appears to have landing gear similar to helicopter skids,” I point out. “Only for space landings in little or no gravity. When the vehicle returns to Earth, it splashes down in the ocean like most crew capsules. Sort of a getaway car.”
“A MOBE isn’t designed to be used for criminal activity,” ART takes me literally.
“An escape car,” I restate what I mean.
Pronounced MOBY like the whale, its powerful propulsion system can blast away from a damaged spaceplane, a failing inflatable habitat or other trouble. Then AI-assisted telemetry would rendezvous the vehicle with the most direct descent profile to return to Earth.
Or the MOBE could power its way to the safety of the International Space Station, the Lunar Orbital Platform, and other gateways and facilities already in the works up there. I envision the huge unmarked wooden crates that arrived on an Air Force transport Globemaster C-17 several weeks ago.
There’s little doubt what was on those pallets tucked out of sight inside the aviation hangar, a MOBE high-fidelity test model and whatever might go with it. As I think of the blue-luminescing spacecraft wing I saw inside the full-scale wind tunnel, I suspect that whatever was going on in there might be related.
“Thanks for answering because I didn’t expect you to,” I say to ART while noticing that Papa John’s Pizza is open as was Hardee’s a moment ago, my stomach growling as if it might lunge. “Not so coincidentally, I wasn’t unauthorized this time.”
No response.
“Not that I believe in coincidences. So, it sounds to me that Dick or whoever’s editing you thought it okay to tell me about the MOBE test model, one that hasn’t been mentioned before you just did. A concept I’m all too familiar with since I worked on it with Sierra Nevada Corporation a few years ago, and before that brainstormed about it with Dick.”
ART has no comment.
“Anyway, I didn’t know anything had gone into production, and it shouldn’t be you breaking the news to me. He should have. And you can tell him I said so.”
Silence.
“I hope Dick isn’t taking sole credit or much at all really,” I admit, and the thought irks me more than I let on.
Truth be told, very little about the MOBE was his doing. It was Dad and me. Also, Mom always adds her creative touch just as my fighter pilot twin has her hawkish ideas. But it would sound petty to point it out.
“So, what happened?” I resume quizzing ART. “Why did you answer me this time?”
“Unauthorized.”
“Dick or somebody must have changed the algorithm since I asked about Snap earlier? When I didn’t see her in the hangar and got worried? Remember? Because you wouldn’t answer me then.”
“Unauthorized.”
“Well, you didn’t tweak your own algorithm unless you’re now self-programming. What a scary thought, and that will probably be next.”
Silence.
“Who gets to decide what I can and can’t know?” I keep pushing, and the 7-Eleven glowing up ahead makes me want a Big Bite hot dog something awful.
I imagine drowning it in chili and cheese, extra mustard, and my mouth waters.
“Unauthorized,” ART always says it in a monotone.
“Because it’s not you who’s deciding,” I add, “that’s for sure. Or at least I hope not. And never mind why certain topics are off limits because I know you won’t tell me.”
Crickets.
“It’s like trying to get something out of Mom. Well forget it,” as I reach the Hampton Hop-In, lights out, no sign of the pearl-white Cherokee with its damaged front bumper.
There are no cars at all, the plowed parking lot empty, and I find it strange that the convenience
store would be closed on a weekend night when the snow’s melting, the weather good. There have been plenty of people shopping, in restaurants, getting ready for the holidays, catching and cleaning up after the evacuation and storm.
“Do we know why the Hop-In is closed?” I ask ART as if he’s an oracle with the answer to everything even if he doesn’t tell me.
“I’m sorry,” his voice through my truck’s speakers. “I have no information,” and it’s probably my imagination that he sounds chagrined.
“But what about the Jeep we saw earlier at Bojangles’? You ran the plate and also located a traffic video of it traveling east on I-64 near Richmond yesterday, remember?” as if he might not. “It has a scrape on the right front bumper,” he doesn’t need me to remind him, and immediately I’m seeing a recording captured three hours earlier.
On Patch Road near a brewery, turning onto Pullman, the Cherokee heads in the direction of the Chesapeake Bay. This was soon after Lex and I had been sitting behind the damaged SUV in the drive-through line. Presumably, it’s driven by the woman wearing pearly nail polish, a black leather coat, and flashy silver rings similar to ones the hitman had on when I saw him dead inside his car.
The Cherokee weaves in and out of dark side streets, and moments later disappears into the labyrinth of the sprawling Dog Beach Marina & Villas apartment complex. It’s not far from Fort Monroe or the Point Comfort Inn, and I suggest that ART alert Fran immediately.
“She needs to send in units to check the area for what else might be back there,” I explain, reminded of the weird man inside the Hop-In when I drove past in the snow, thinking of Neva’s dead assassin and his rental boats.
“Would you like me to contact dispatch directly?” ART asks.
“No. We don’t want anything going out over the radio,” I remind him firmly. “We don’t know who else is listening, and whoever the driver of the Cherokee is, I worry she already knows we’re watching.”
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 24
