All in Good Time

by Mackey Chandler

  “That’s not how it works now,” Chen assured her. “We don’t even have to have him alert and responsive to read his brain. In fact, we can clear some lists with him better while he is sleeping. You read a list of three letter agencies to him while he’s in deep sleep and his primary association lights the right brain centers up like a light shining.”

  “And then you make lists of the minor associations to build a pattern?” she asked.

  “Of course, but we have names from public sources too. We can name who we know and then fish. There are only so many names, and lots of them can be had from other government databases, by running lists of property owners against travel times from their facilities, only looking at certain price ranges and security situations. You can work from both the high end of the organization they can’t hide, and the bottom end they didn’t think important to hide. If you really need a confirming link there are things like traffic cameras and license plate readers. They’d be horrified to see how their own tools can be used against them. Sometimes it is as telling if somebody isn’t in a database of driver’s licenses, insurance records or credit card lists as it would be finding them plainly listed.

  “The brain responds much faster than a verbal interrogation where he has to vocalize the answer. You can learn as much in five minutes as an hour would yield if he were cooperating fully and answering everything. We have an organization chart of his agency that may only have ten percent of their people listed, but it has several unbroken lines of command clear across their ranks. I think even he’d be surprised how much he knew.”

  “What is he then? CIA or military?” April guessed.

  “CIA and something I never heard of, the TLA. I asked around and couldn’t find anyone who had a clue what they are. Except for Jan Hagan.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He choked on his coffee, went into a laughing fit, and waved me off because he couldn’t regain his composure. He disconnected without explaining but obviously, he knew of them. That’s sufficient to my purposes. I’m sure of our scan, however. He clearly identified it with the CIA in his scan, but it must be some kind of specialty group or deep black command.”

  “What are you going to do with him?” April wondered. “I don’t suppose the Ranger wants to take him back?”

  “The Ranger has zero interest in anything but the data we extracted. I rather thought you might offer to trade him for Irwin,” Chen suggested.

  “Oh. Do you think they might go for that?” April asked.

  “No, but it would make them look terrible to refuse,” Chen told her.

  “Why even bother then? They already look terrible with no extra effort on our part.”

  “They look terrible to you. This is a chance to make them stink to every soldier and agent who can picture himself captured and they can see they would be abandoned like trash even when a straight swap was offered.”

  “I guess that’s another way to give them grief. As long as it doesn’t take over my life and become an ongoing thing,” April worried.

  “They will be working hard to bury the story even faster than you want it to disappear.”

  “OK, if you think it is worth pursuing,” April agreed. “Let’s post his pix and biometric data and all the professional associations you are certain about and offer a straight-up trade, no bickering, no other side deals, or payments.”

  “That’s not how these things are usually done. You make a quiet offer on back channels and do the actual trade in a public but uncrowded venue. Word it was rejected still gets around to insiders who matter,” Chen said.

  “Bah. If you want to embarrass them don’t do it by half measures. Post it as a news release. Get video of the Texas Ranger taking him down and include that.”

  “I’m pretty sure he didn’t want credit,” Chen reminded her.

  “Well, start the segment when his back is turned, and cut it off as soon as he holsters his Taser and starts to turn back to us,” Stop before you can see too much of his face. Even if you drop the top of the frame to hide his face, be careful not to show his badge,” April said.

  “That would work. You do know they will go absolutely ape?” Chen warned.

  “Good. I sure can’t get a rise out of them any other way.”

  * * *

  “Talk about a target-rich environment,” April said. “Almost all the Federal agencies that jumped on the bandwagon to arrest Irwin are housed together in one building in Miami.”

  “Are you going to take down the whole building?” Chen worried.

  “No, tempting as it is it’s too big to be personally horrifying,” April said. “I want to take one connected official at a time down and make the rest of them sweat. Unless they are incredibly stupid they will see I’m going down the list of the arresting agencies and they will wonder in what order the list is written and if they are next. The Secret Service acted for the Treasury, and I like the financial connection again. They probably think I’d go directly for the Secretary of the Treasury. Going for their goons first will throw them off. I have the head of their office in Miami identified and his house. I’m betting he’s too important to drive himself or trust an automatic car. I expect to see an official limo pick him up in the morning. The next day he’ll be targeted.”

  “You realize they will scatter like roaches and be harder to find and target the next day?” Chen asked.

  “Sure, but that makes it even more terrifying if I can find one after they try to hide. If I can’t find one from the Miami FBI office, there are other FBI offices and even his boss in Vancouver. I’m not that picky, it’s all the same infestation.”

  That made Chen unhappy he’d made the vermin reference.

  “So you are going to give them a day off without being hit while you prepare a video about the assassination attempt?” Chen asked.

  “Good point. They may think I am getting soft,” April said nodding. “Give me those right of way easements for Vancouver. I’ll cut a bunch of those and give them an hour notice I am cratering their civilian airport with some rods,” April decided.

  “They’ll have those filled and covered in hours,” Chen said.

  “You still don’t understand how much North Americans are slaves to rules and regulations,” April said. “If it was a military runway yeah, they’d fill it and throw a steel mat over it. A civilian runway has Federal regulations about how it is built or repaired step by step. How the base is prepared, the rebar quality and placement, the exact specs of the concrete and how test samples will be collected, even who is eligible to bid to do the repair and what they must be paid based on the prevailing local wage. They will have specific set-asides for minority contractors and compliance with local programs and environmental studies to be done. If they try to shortcut any of it there will be a dozen restraining orders sought and the unions will shut the project down even without the courts. They will just refuse to work on it.”

  “That’s madness,” Chen said. “In China, they’d fix it or be dragged off and shot.”

  “Uh-huh,” April agreed. “Can your video guy make the release? I know it isn’t as difficult as the fake but you can review and make sure we don’t compromise the Ranger.”

  Chen was getting ready to beg off, but that persuaded him.

  * * *

  April sent video to the news agencies again, this time without a lunar background.

  “Irwin Hall is still held prisoner. Very soon the runways at the Capitol Airport will be cratered. If you don’t want any planes hit I suggest you divert any incoming flights and keep the aircraft already there off them. However, the heads of the agencies holding him are invited to go stand mid-runway. I’ll also be severing some communications infrastructure. I’m really irritated with you North America. I’ll detail why, and how it changes our conflict in a video release tomorrow.”

  * * *

  George Hartman was driving home on manual. He lived that far out in the boonies from Vancouver that the control grid didn’t exte
nd all the way to his place. It kept the rent below half his salary even if it did add an hour of driving time every day but only half of that was on manual. The car drove him nuts every day flashing a warning in the instrument cluster and vibrating not only the steering wheel but also his seat that guidance was ending.

  All the while his navigation software warned him he must resume manual control in a shrill irritating voice. The countdown progressed for five minutes calling off thirty seconds, twenty, and then the last ten second by second. It was easily the worst part of his commute.

  Not only was there no way to cancel or mute it, the law now was that wearing noise canceling headphones was illegal and carried a bigger fine than he could risk. Trying to cut the speaker wires resulted in the computer refusing to start the car. All he could do was lay a slab of sound absorbing foam over the speaker. It was plenty loud enough off the backside through the dash and instrument panel.

  It had been a little easier when he shared the driving duties with his roomie, but Harry got a promotion that took him across town. The fact they both worked the same hours in the Department of Labor had made sharing an apartment and riding together a little easier. Harry was still willing to shoulder his cut of the rent so George was happy not to lose him. He’d heard so many horror stories about horrible roomers who were impossible to get rid of once in. It would take another hour to wait for Harry to battle the traffic across town to still ride together. Traffic would be lighter by then, but not an hour lighter, and public transportation wasn’t reliable enough to trust. He got used to driving every day without any help again. Harry didn’t share the fuel costs now either so it hit both of them economically.

  Harry bought a car, something he’d been avoiding for years. Going directly home he usually only arrived about ten minutes after George. The extra expense more than negated his increase in income, but to turn down the job could dead-end his career. He hoped to be patient and make it up with future advances.

  George started to relax a little. If anyone was going to do something reckless like shift lanes or fail to maintain speed they usually did it right at the transition to manual control, no matter how obnoxious the car was about letting them know. The switch was a good half kilometer back and nobody had drifted from their lane or coasted to stop in the middle of the road. He stopped looking all around, satisfied nobody was bunching up, relaxed his two- fisted grip on the wheel, and started thinking about supper. It was his turn to bring it home or cook, and a pizza and salad was sounding better than standing and cooking.

  A good two kilometers ahead, on the opposite side of the median there was a flash and a huge fountain of dirt and smoke burst skyward. Roadside bombs were rare but not entirely unknown. If he didn’t get past it he might be parked in a solid traffic jam for hours once investigators arrived. There was a significant thump from the explosion and he eased over to the right lane. There was going to be dirt and debris on the road for sure. He might even need to drive off on the shoulder.

  Other drivers were moving to the right with nobody slowing down but one idiot in the far left lane who was braking and apparently intended to just stop without getting off the road. He’d be easy to pass. It looked sweet to get by with everyone funneling to the far right when another fireball exploded right where they were all aimed.

  This was almost opposite the initial explosion, but in the time since the first one, he’d closed half the distance. Finding their side of the road blowing up in their faces destroyed any reasoned maneuvering. Some swerved wildly away back towards the left, some went the other way taking their chances with the shoulder or ditch where at least they wouldn’t be ramming another vehicle. A few braked hard and several not at all. It was inevitable some of them would collide and he saw that happening to several before they disappeared into the expanding cloud of dirt and dust.

  George held his course straight ahead, pretty sure the impact was off the edge of the road. He’d caught just a brief flash of something coming down from the sky. It wasn’t a car bomb or an IED it was some kind of attack. He still had plenty of time to brake to a stop. The debris wasn’t anything his collision avoidance recognized, it was to diffuse and still too far out in front of him to force his car to brake. He was doing that manually.

  Some chunks of concrete and gravel dented his hood and cracked stars in the windshield before he drove into the dust and dirt. He sucked in a deep breath, flying blind, still braking for another three seconds before he came to a full stop. There was a layer of dirt on his hood and a thin film of pale yellow dust across his windshield. Outside was a fog of dirt but not really dark like night time. He reached to turn the wipers on and somebody hit him from behind, slamming him into his seat and propelling the car forward. The impact lifted his foot from the brake too, letting the car roll forward unrestrained.

  Behind him was another metallic thump and the car that had just hit him was pushed forward by an unseen vehicle and hit him again, if not as hard. Several more thumps of differing loudness happened behind him and a white pickup truck went past on the left so close he couldn’t believe it didn’t take his outside mirror off. It had a mangled rear end too.

  At least twenty or thirty seconds went by with no new impacts. George wasn’t about to get out and chance being run over or crushed between vehicles. He’d sit right here until the authorities showed up to sort out the mess. The fog of dirt was cleared quickly, but there was a new haze in the air of smoke. Somewhere behind him, at least one car was on fire. He tried to call Harry to let him know that there was no telling when he’d get home. The car wouldn’t relay the message. When he pulled out his phone and tried to do it directly it said no service. The little graphic showing signal strength showed nothing. That was weird.

  When the air cleared George was sitting with two wheels still on the concrete, but fifty meters ahead the pavement was bulged up with jagged blocks of concrete where the edge of a crater on the shoulder intruded into his lane. There was dirt on the road but piled higher to the southeast side of the crater. The wind was blowing dust and smoke away to the east, and a medivac fan platform went past headed to a point behind him. The craters on both sides of the highway reached clear to the boundary fence and beyond. It didn’t make any sense to him. Was somebody’s aim that bad to miss all four lanes of the road? Like most people, George had no idea what ran underground along the major roads, or that those data cables and fiber were the real targets, cut a score of other places around the capitol. The massive traffic jam wasn’t even intended.

  * * *

  On the north side of the Fraser River, the newer spaceport got a line of rods down the runway before the old airport to the south received the same treatment. Maybe the bridge between them would have been a logical target too but April left it unmolested. Somebody was smart enough to realize knocking any of her rods off target would endanger much more valuable assets like aircraft hangers and passenger terminals. The after-action analysis would go on for weeks between those praising his insight and those accusing the officer in charge of cowardice for failing to launch.

  April’s hope for a protracted repair was dashed by the North American President declaring an emergency and ordering the military to repair the runways immediately. Her warning was taken seriously and no aircraft were lost. The impact was all out of proportion to the damage because it was right in the seat of power, not some backwater halfway across the continent. The breaks in the com networks weren’t total by any means, but it disrupted a number of Federal offices so it was politically sensitive. The firestorm that ignited on the news compared to her other much more damaging strikes surprised April but her mind was on her announcement tomorrow.

  Chapter 16

  The Foys woke up to that silence that comes with a really deep heavy snow. Eileen looked out the window and came right back to bed.

  “Wake me up when it is May,” she demanded.

  “You didn’t tell me you hibernate,” Vic said.

  “I’m willing to give it a try. I
’m not ready for it to be winter.”

  “From a practical viewpoint I think we’re pretty well set,” Vic insisted, “better off than a lot of folks.

  “Yes, I wonder if Alice is scared of the winter? She lost her parents in the wintertime. She never said if it was to illness or if they starved. One can lead to the other of course. Not that it sounded like things were much better at the Olsen’s. I’m a coward. I didn’t want to make her tell me that story or detail how badly the Olsens mistreated her,” Eileen admitted.

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea to pry. I bet if she wants to talk about it she’ll bring it up in her own good time. About all we can offer is an sympathetic ear and better treatment. It’s not like she’s been with us long enough to build a depth of trust.”

  When Eileen looked hurt at that Vic reminded her, “We agreed to wait until spring to show her some stuff, so even we have some trust issues this early.”

  Eileen nodded. That made sense but wasn’t how she felt.

  Vic selfishly hoped if Alice decided to unburden herself that she’d go to Eileen.

  * * *

  Chen’s man had the video ready. April didn’t make it her business to ask who Chen used for a lot of things. There was a fuzzy boundary there somewhere between normal research and information services and his connections to his spooky past. April really didn’t want to make him tell her she’d slipped over that line. If she wanted a person to do something, or a service rendered, she always made a distinction at the start.

  “I’d use this in split screen mode,” Chen suggested. “It wasn’t composed to put you in front of the frame and not obscure anything. It was hard enough to include everything we need and keep the Ranger anonymous without doing that too.”

  “OK, and I’ll run it on a screen by the camera so I know what it is showing and can pause it if I want,” April said. “I’ll watch it now and decide if I need notes to narrate it.”

  The opening scene started with the second time the assassin sat down. The Texas Ranger was only an elbow and shoulder intruding on the frame. The camera slid off-center to hide the Ranger’s identity when he stood. The picture didn’t expand so his head was cut off the top of the frame as he turned and made the assassin scowl.