Crossbow had pulled the toothpick back out and again ordered her to clean up the mess. Instead she’d resumed looking for a means to escape or communicate with the outside world. After two more toothpick episodes Crossbow had given up. He’d had Art clean up the mess and then they’d chained her back into the chair with water but no food. Crossbow had pointed out that she could afford to lose a few pounds.
The old battle-axe was tough though, you had to give her that.
Art sure had more respect for her now. Crossbow had wanted her to read his manifesto and order the government to do some things, but she’d held out despite some more toenail and then a fingernail’s worth of torture. She’d read Arquette’s speech without much of a fight though; Art suspected she was happy to let the world and the FBI know she was still alive.
The drugs they shot her with when picking her up off the course were ones that typically prevented transfer of short term memory into long term memory. This strategy seemed to have successfully kept her from remembering what happened on the golf course. She’d asked several times how they managed to capture her with all the Secret Service agents around her. She seemed to think that there must have been some traitors in her protection detail. Crossbow had told them not to tell her what happened for fear she might put up more resistance if she knew that every other member of her golf party had been killed.
***
Ell closed her eyes.
She couldn’t seem to concentrate on her modified ports. Her mind kept tripping back to the fact that the FBI was having trouble tracking down President Stockton. I should have offered the Secret Service some implantable ports so they could GPS her! Though, admittedly, a successful kidnapping, rather than assassination of the president seemed so unlikely. She doubted that they guarded very much against kidnapping. In fact, it seemed bizarre that anyone would actually believe that they could pull it off.
Ell pulled up the speech that Fallon had broadcast through WAKF. The smoothly authoritative baritone voice and the hypnotic cadences made the oration surprisingly compelling. But compelling to what? Ell had to go to the text version to try to understand the thrust of Fallon’s speech and, even after reading it, didn’t feel sure she understood what he wanted people to do. Well, he obviously wanted to stop abortions and generally minimize government. Otherwise his tirade contained a lot of hate and general direction but few specifics.
However, she came away from her listening with a feeling that he could easily talk many people into doing what he wanted, a talent he had obviously used to arrange the attack and kidnapping at Shalimoore. The broadcast on WAKF lacked thrust she decided, because Fallon himself didn’t know exactly what he wanted them to do at present. She listened and read some of his previous diatribes available on the net and concluded that they were much the same.
A little reading on the subject convinced Ell that it wouldn’t be forever before some members of his SCDF would fall out from under his thrall and somehow provide the FBI information which would break the case.
However, she couldn’t be comfortable that this would happen in time to save the President.
“Allan,” Ell said, “find me the info the FBI gave Vivian on the port that the SCDF used to distract the dogs before the attack.”
A moment later Allan displayed the model number of the port they’d used with its specifications. It was a 12.5 millimeter port designed to resist transport of flammable liquids.
Ell sat staring at the specifications for a while wondering, why would they use a 12.5 millimeter port to drip odorants through? Surely a smaller port would have done the job and been harder for the FBI to find! She had Allan pull up all the data he could find on the attack.
Ten minutes later Ell still sat looking at the available information. The FBI had strictly limited dissemination of specifics regarding the massacre and kidnapping. However, numerous speculators on the net had gone over every bit of information available, analyzing it. From the brief period of weapons fire and the numbers of dead, estimates ranged between fifteen and thirty shooters in the woods. They had apparently lain quietly in port cooled ghillie suits each day, waiting for Stockton to play Shalimoore.
Wait! If it was a commercial ghillie suit and they bought a bunch of the suits at the same time…
“Allan, contact Vivian.”
Ell pondered the grip Fallon had had on those men to convince them to lie there day after day, moving little and eating… Hmm, they were probably getting water at least delivered by port. Maybe they even had ports to deliver ammo?
In her ear Vivian said, “Hey Ell.”
“Hey. Call your friend at the FBI…” Ell stuttered to a stop. “Sorry, I’ll have to give this some more thought. I’ll call you back if I work it out.” Ell had been about to point out that if the company that made the ghillie suits had the cooling ports’ serial numbers and the ports were bigger than ten millimeters, Portal Tech could tell the FBI where the suits themselves were from the GPS locators in the ports. In their effort to prevent port terrorism Portal Tech manufactured all ports ten millimeters and above with GPS location built into them so that they could be turned off if they entered restricted areas around the White House or the Pentagon or other terrorism sensitive sites. But… pointing out to the FBI that this kind of data could be extracted opened up a huge morass of legal and ethical problems regarding invasion of privacy. People were bound to be upset if they found out that Portal Tech could determine where they were. Especially if law enforcement realized they could do it and started subpoenaing the information.
On the other hand, Ell thought, we should do it if it would save the President. But maybe there was another way?
Ell leaned back, thinking and getting back to her ported ammo idea. “Allan, what are the dimensions of the cartridge for the AK-47?”
“Fifty six millimeter length, bullet diameter 7.92 mm, cartridge diameter at the base 11.35 mm.”
Ell felt prickles at the base of her neck. They might have purchased a lot of those 12.5 mm ports to deliver water, food and ammo to their men, then just used one of the ports they had on hand to deliver their odorants. “Allan, do you have the serial number for the port they contacted Vivian about?”
Allan read it to her. He was connected to the Portal Tech database and picked it out of the query she’d made when the FBI contacted her.
“OK, get me GPS data on ten ports with the preceding serial numbers and ten with the following serial number. Map them up on the big wall screen.”
By the time Ell had turned her head to look at the big screen Allan had projected a map of the eastern United States that had four pips in Atlanta Georgia, fifteen scattered in South Carolina and one in North Carolina.
Near Pinehurst.
Ell narrowed her eyes at the map, then said, “Are the four in Atlanta all at the beginning or the end of the list of serial numbers?”
“Yes, they’re the last four.”
“OK, project ten more with serial numbers preceding the ones that are up already. Remove the ones in Atlanta. Fit the map to the pips that we have now.”
Now the map showed three more pips scattered around South Carolina. But it also showed seven more in North Carolina. All at a single location just west of Pinehurst. Ell had Allan zoom the map in on it. It was a house on a golf course at the Foxfire Resort.
Ell had Allan keep adding earlier and earlier serial numbers until pips started showing up in other parts of the United States again. It appeared to Ell that the SCDF had purchased a box of one hundred 12.5 mm ports. Twenty of them were located in that one house at Foxfire. Twenty-four were at a wilderness location in the Sumter National Forest in South Carolina. The rest were scattered around South Carolina. Well, except for the one that was co-located with the FBI’s temporary command post in Pinehurst.
Ports came in pairs. The 100 paired members of the ports she had just looked up were all at the wilderness location in Sumter.
After studying the map a while longer Ell decided that Stockton was most likely unde
r heavy guard at either the Sumter location or the Foxfire location. Presumably, each of the men guarding her still carried a port through which they could be delivered food, water and ammunition.
Should she give the locations to the FBI? If so, how would she explain…?
Even worse, how would the FBI safely extract Stockton from a presumed group of twenty men armed with AK-47s who had absolutely demonstrated their willingness to use them? Oh yeah, and had a bomb bolted around the President’s neck.
Ell sighed and got up. Thinking, this is probably a bad idea, she turned to her workbench where she’d been building curved ports.
***
Stockton gritted her teeth wondering where the hell the FBI was. How can this sorry bunch of rednecks be holding the President of the United States on what appears to be U.S. soil without the FBI and the Secret Service turning them inside out?
With a sigh she turned back to doing what she could to help herself. She’d been talking to her guards pretty much constantly while she was awake. She wanted them to see her as a human being that they’d therefore be less likely to kill. Besides, she was a politician. Perhaps she wasn’t the most gifted speech maker, but still she should be far better than the average person. If she worked at it, perhaps she could sway them.
Well, probably not Dupree Fallon. They called him “Crossbow,” but he was the same Fallon she’d seen in her FBI briefing photos. When that bastard spoke to the other guards they looked mesmerized.
When Stockton spoke to Fallon, his frenetic eyes told her she’d never convince him of anything.
___
Redman came down the stairs. “Brick, you’re relieved.”
Art got up off the couch where he’d been listening to Stockton talk to him almost endlessly. He shook his head, this must be what a filibuster sounds like. To Redman he said, “Thanks, be good to stretch the kinks out.”
Upstairs, Art went in the kitchen and got a snack, taking it out to the big game room where the off duty crew were relaxing. The big house had six bedrooms with two guys each and they had eight cots set up in the large living room. Only he, Crossbow, Redman and Salem spent time with Stockton, the rest of the guys spent their time guarding the house. He turned to one of the other guys sitting there, “Where’s Crossbow?”
“Said he was going to check the guards.”
They had guards by the doors, but probably Crossbow was most worried about the guys watching out the windows upstairs and scrutinizing the net to detect FBI activity that regarded them. When Crossbow “checked on” someone, he mostly talked to them, more motivating them to be on their toes than trying to catch them slacking.
Art hoped that Crossbow would come talk to him. Stockton talking at him endlessly when Crossbow wasn’t in the room made him uneasy. When it came to persuasion she couldn’t hold a candle to Crossbow, but she had raised a few doubts here and there. He’d like it if Crossbow put him back on track.
Chapter Nine
At midnight Ell slipped off the side of the hoverbike and started spooling down to check the Foxfire house. She would have waited until two in the morning, but if Stockton wasn’t here, she wanted to fly to the Sumter site tonight. Using the air jets on her harness she compensated for the breeze that threatened to blow her off course and successfully came down along the side of the big house, gently pushing off with fingers and toes to avoid the windows.
Landing gently in the grass next to some shrubbery, she knelt beside the foundation and pulled out a one way “observer” port as she called it. It had a lens behind it that shot video Allan could play on her HUD through the new contacts. Right now she had the port “fish eyed” so it bulged outward. When she opened the port a fisheye lens popped forward and shot one second of video covering the entire basement room it had opened in. The floor plan for the house she’d downloaded from the net didn’t give very good indications what the different rooms in the basement might be used for so she’d only been able to rule out one of the four which looked to be the utility room. She studied the room revealed on her contacts’ HUD. The dark room appeared to be empty on her IR image. Her port had opened right in the upper corner, right where she’d hoped to have placed it.
Turning a little to her left, Ell opened a port where she thought the next room should be, but couldn’t see anything but sheetrock. Apparently it had opened inside the wall. She moved four inches to the left and opened it again rather than trying to adjust the port’s distance.
The lights were on and Ell could see someone lying in a recliner. Focusing on the face, Ell could see it was Stockton all right. Two men were in the room with her, one sitting on the couch and another at a small table watching a little screen. No one moved in the one second video loop the port’s camera had provided her.
Staying crouched, Ell considered her options. She could still call the FBI and report this location, but couldn’t think of a safe way for the FBI to extract the President without significant risk that the SCDF boys would use the President as a hostage or just kill her.
After a bit she composed a message to the FBI with the location and situation, then put it on hold to be sent at a command, or if she were injured.
Next she inflated her body armor and told Allan to keep her joints covered but free to move. Then she reached back and pulled up her new hood of inflatable graphene armor that covered her entire head. It had cameras on the outside that fed images to the HUD in her new contacts. Allan was completely capable of feeding her a corrected image from those cameras that made it look like her vision was unobstructed. Cameras inside the hood told Allan which direction she was looking and he fed her an image from that direction.
Looking up, Ell tugged the graphene cable to the hoverbike free from where it had caught on the shrubbery and moved a little to her right, where the kitchen was supposed to be according to the floor plans. Moving with the armor inflated felt a little odd as the rigid sections moved and shifted over one another around her joints, however she could almost move completely freely. She’d tried extreme movements such as gymnastics at home and sometimes at really large joint angles the shifting plates pinched her or blocked actions, so if she needed to do something truly athletic she’d need to deflate the ports around her major joints at least.
When she opened a port down low in the kitchen she saw no one. Moving around the side of the house she opened one into the living room. There were eight cots with five figures on them. Plus six bedrooms on the floor plans. If they have two guys per bedroom and one of those 12.5mm ports per guy, it would add up to the twenty ports that are located here, one per SCDF member. Damn! That’s a lot of guys.
___
Cable padded down the stairs in his socks. He was the “roving guard” this watch and had just checked the upper floor. Just as he reached the main level he saw a tiny flash of light from the living room. It was the kind of flash that some electronics made, just to tell you they were OK, but it had come from a spot along the wall where he didn’t see any electronics. Cable unholstered his 9mm and stepped carefully into the living room.
Nothing was going on in there. Five guys asleep, his cot and two others empty just like they were supposed to be. He looked around a little longer, then moved on to check on the game room, family room, dining room and kitchen.
Everything copacetic. He turned to the stairs into the basement. He wasn’t supposed to check on the President herself, just the basement rooms and knock on the door to the room they had her in to get the code word from them.
___
Ell peered down at herself using IR to be sure that the cooling ports in her clothing were keeping her infrared signal to a minimum. She needed to get past the front door, but suspected that they were monitoring its AI’s cameras. She considered going around the house the long way, but there might be cameras at the back door too.
Glancing up she twitched the graphene cable to be sure it hadn’t caught on anything again. Then she had Allan spool her up and used her harness jets to lightly swing across the
roof so she could descend on the other side. A quick glance down low through the wall with her observer port showed the big air handlers for the central air conditioning unit that the floor plans had said were in that part of the basement. She was hoping that if anyone heard the whooshing of her digger they would think it came from the air handlers.
She reached into the big pocket on her jacket and her waldo in its mountain hideaway passed her a big singleport tunneler. Turning it on, she began digging down along the foundation, careful to make the hole in the relatively soft dirt wide and shallow enough that it couldn’t collapse in on her. Once she had a large, step sided, bowl shaped depression about six feet deep she took another look through the cinderblock foundation wall, then cut a hole in the blocks about two feet wide and five feet high.
___
Cable checked the last of the rooms in the basement then knocked on the door to the room they had Stockton in. “Cabbage,” he said.
A muffled voice from the other side said, “Root beer.”
Cable nodded to himself and started back up the stairs.
___
Putting away the tunneler, Ell took off her lifting harness, then stepped through the hole in the wall into the big utility room. She crossed to the door, quickly peeked through it with her port to be sure no one was in the hall, then opened it and moved across the hall to the wall adjoining the room they had the President in.
Not wanting the flash of its opening to catch the guards’ attention, Ell reached up high to put an observation port into the room that had the President.
___
Most of the way up the stairs, Cable heard the door gently creak open back down behind him in the basement. He wondered, Do the President’s guards want something? The stationary guards often asked the rover to fetch snacks or drinks which was pretty irritating. He didn’t like being a gofer, feeling that it was beneath his dignity. However, Crossbow encouraged it because he thought it built camaraderie and helped the watch standers stay awake.
Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11) Page 18
