“After arguing with it for five minutes...” chortled Lisa. “It was like Abbott and Costello, who's on first, what's on second...”
“Shuttle Lightspeed, pattern is free, you are clear for takeoff, lane right. Observe the deck control.”
Lisa keyed her mic, “Acknowledged, Conquest Control. Lifting off.” She twisted the grip and the anti-gravity lifted the shuttle off the deck as she locked eyes with the deckhand who directed her out of the revetment. “Gear up, please.”
“Gear up,” repeated Maria, toggling the switches. The landing feet withdrew into the belly, locking in with a metallic thump and Lisa nudged the throttle. They coasted across the deck, through the stasis field, over the ship's fantail and out into space.
Lisa keyed her mic, “Lightspeed is clear.”
“I would have loved to have been there for that,” said Maria, resuming the conversation.
“It was touch-and-go there for a minute or two,” joked Lisa. “I thought he was going to rip it off his arm and throw it against the wall...”
“So what was the final verdict?”
Lisa adjusted her sensors, heading for the Westwind. “Jack, if he is alone. Admiral, if there are other people present.”
Maria tilted her head curiously, “How does it know?”
“TESS has all sorts of sensors, so I guess she can tell. She even has an on-screen face if you want to talk to her that way... It's like video chat.”
“Wow, an artificial intelligence...”
“Sort of,” confirmed Lisa. “It does learn through its engagements with the person wearing it... she even has the proper facial expressions when she's talking to you...”
“Sounds a little creepy to me...”
“Y'know, I wasn't really sure about it at first,” admitted Lisa, “but so far it's been pretty cool. The more you interact, the more her personality develops.”
Maria leaned back and pursed her lips in thought. “I wonder if her personality develops differently for each owner with individual nuances, or does it simply mirror the owner..?”
Lisa shook her head inside her helmet, “I don't know... it'll be interesting to see.”
CHAPTER FOUR
CAPE CORAL, FLORIDA : FUN IN THE SUN
Chase Holt lifted up his sunglasses and looked in the rear view mirror to look at the raccoon eyes he'd gotten from a day on the water playing with his Jet Skis. He slid the glasses back down. Man, those aren't going away anytime soon.
It had been a long hectic week and he had needed a break... Firearm classes, security system installations, a few bug sweeps with security assessments for new clients... All in a week's work in paradise. Sometimes the most brutal part was doing his job surrounded by opulent luxury, emerald green water, ice cold drinks and women in bathing suits. Yeah it was tough. He decided Saturday on the water with Penny was a day well spent.
His German Shepherd, Allie, stuck her head between the seats from the back of the extended crew cab, taking a deep whiff and a poke at the big paper bag sitting on the passenger seat - her normal spot to sit. The bag from China Garden was filling the truck with an amazing aroma and Allie was having a hard time containing herself. So was Chase, seriously having to resist the urge to steal one of the egg rolls on the ride back to the house. Mmm, Chinese food, a cold beer and a little face-time with my sweetie... a good way to close a day in the sun.
Some people liked living on the beach, Chase preferred living on the canal off Bimini Basin where he could be on the water but actually make use of it. The floating dock at the back of the house was far more convenient than requiring a trailer to get the Jet Skis in and out of the water at a public launch ramp. His deck's floating PWC Personal Water Craft ramp made it easy get them in and out of the water even with one person. The canal dumped all the local residents out into Redfish Cove and the Caloosahatchee River. From there you could go literally almost anywhere with the Jet Skis only requiring a few inches of water. There were tons of places to explore including the Gulf of Mexico, the Intracoastal Waterway, Peace River, Myakka River, all the border islands... the possibilities were only limited by fuel range and available fuel stops that Chase had methodically marked on his GPS.
Chase moved over a lane, slowing down to let an ambulance pass, lights flashing, siren wailing, prompting a bark and short howl from Allie. He checked his mirror before pulling back out into traffic. “Damn, he's flying...”
Reaching Tower Drive, Chase pulled off Coronado Parkway into his neighborhood surrounding the Bimini Basin and idled down the street, his heartbeat quickening when he spotted the smoke a couple streets away in the direction of his house. That was more than someone's over zealous backyard cookout. His mind raced ahead, connecting the ambulance with the smoke and he punched the accelerator, the big pickup chirping the tires as it leapt ahead, charging down the street. He wheeled it hard, manhandling it around the corner, the big tires howling, Allie sliding across the back seat struggling to stay off the floor and maintain a position as close to upright as possible.
Halfway down the block the street was clogged with emergency vehicles of all kinds, resembling the organized chaos of a Tetris puzzle. Police vehicles parked up on lawns, fire trucks, and the ambulance that had passed him moments before parked curb-to-curb. Three black SUVs and a SWAT vehicle sat on the far side of the fire trucks. Flying down the street, time slowed, his eyes scanning for details, his mind trying to catalog the information and make sense of the movements of neighbors and emergency personnel. It wasn't until he jammed on the brakes that he realized all the action revolved around his house. “Penny...”
The tires howled as the truck shuddered to a stop, inducing smoke and the smell of burnt rubber. Throwing the door wide, Chase jumped out shouting Penny's name, a flood of adrenalin pumping through his body. Following closely, the German Shepherd jumped down to the pavement behind him, staying on his heels. Chase cleared the front fender of the truck making a beeline to the front door, his tunnel vision focusing on the form laying on the gurney escorted out of the front door of his house. The person in black body armor, helmet and balaclava that entered his narrow field of vision was pointing at him and he suddenly realized he was being converged upon. Allie raced past to cut them off...
“Dog, dog, dog!”
Chase dove to catch Allie and felt the Tazer darts hit him in the back sending him plank rigid, driving him into the grass face-first arms extended, teeth clenched. “Nooooo!” he snarled, watching them shoot at his dog, the rounds kicking up grass and dirt as she weaved past them, running full out and cutting past the paramedics into the house. A neighbor ran past, attempting to catch her only to be blocked by a uniformed police officer. “Leave her alone!” grimaced Chase, “She won't bite...!”
“Shut up, asshole...” Whomever was holding the Tazer squeezed the trigger again, and Chase felt the fire race through his muscles. Managing to roll on his side he attempted to tear out one of the probes, only to be shot with two more darts in the stomach by someone else with a Tazer. “Where d'you think you're going?”
“Hands behind your back! Hands behind your back!” they screamed at him.
“Gun! Gun, he's got a gun!”
While under juice from both Tazers, Chase had little chance of moving anything. And the armored men that pounced on him, wrestling with his arms, were having little success moving them for him. “Penny..?!” he grunted. A neighbor tried to get close enough to talk to him and was stiff-armed by an officer, knocking her to the ground. “Karen? Karen, what's going on, where's Penny?”
“They shot her Chase, they shot her...”
“Why? Why..?” His eyes burned and his vision blurred with tears. Tears of fury. He saw red, he wanted to start killing people. At six-foot-three and two-hundred-thirty pounds, Chase was not a small man, but size doesn't have a lot to do with the effectiveness of the electronic Tazer devices. But to some extent and in some cases, sheer determination and rage can. The combat-hardened soldier in him was calculating the moment
and the rage was overwhelming. Finally handcuffed, the assault team stood him up. To do that they had to release their triggers. He spun himself, tearing free from their hands and bolted forward, breaking the connection on one set of darts, colliding with one team member and bulldozing him into the ground with a shoulder to the face. He felt the Tazer fire from the remaining set of darts and he powered through the burn, lashing out and catching another member in the face with his bare foot, sending him sprawling. Tackled bodily, he head butted the agent on top of him, breaking the man's goggles and his nose.
It was a messy free-for-all with witnesses from up and down the block that had gathered to investigate the action in their neighborhood. Covered in grass stains, Chase's next door neighbor, Karen, slid up next to her roommate, Pam, gathered in a group with other neighbors.
“Somebody said he was a national security risk... maybe he's a terrorist.”
“Who said, that?” snapped Karen. “I'll kick your fucking ass. Chase is a decorated soldier who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan...”
“Didn't you see him fight with the cops?”
Karen pushed past a few of her neighbors to get closer to the woman from up the block. “They're not cops, they're FBI and they raided his house, shot his girlfriend and tried to kill his dog. Are you really that damn stupid?”
Pam grabbed Karen by the elbow and drew her back, “Ignore the stupid people, K. Where's Allie?”
“I locked her in our bathroom.”
“Is she hurt?”
Karen shook her head, “I don't think so. She has some blood on her but I can't find anything.” She stood with her hand on her hips, glaring at the stupid woman in the group as the agents with FBI on the back of their armor, dragged an unconscious Chase Holt across the grass toward the SWAT truck.
“Let's clean Allie up and take her to the vet.”
Karen was enraged, she wanted to be able to do more but she had no idea where to start. She couldn't believe this was happening in her neighborhood. To her neighbor, a person she knew to be of high integrity and ethics. Could it be possible he was a risk of some kind? She refused to believe it.
■ ■ ■
Hunched over, speaking on the phone with both elbows on his desk, Sheriff Naywood suddenly leaned back in his chair and tossed his reading glasses on his desk in disgust. “Are you kidding me? So they had a no-knock warrant then... They had no warrant? Not in my county, dammit! I want a team of investigators at the house now. Yes, right now, they should be out the door five minutes ago. And send another team to the girl's hospital room. I want someone with her the moment she wakes up. And I want a twenty-four hour guard on her, I don't want her disappearing. Nobody sees her without one of our investigators present, understand? Good.” He waved a plain-clothes detective passing his door into his office as he continued his phone conversation. “I'm tired of these federal clowns running their games on our citizens. National security risk? That's a bunch of bull and you know it. If they had anything of substance, they would have had a warrant. So where's the guy they picked up? What do you mean you don't know? The PD didn't ask? Oh for the love of Pete...” he slapped his forehead. “Let's see if we can find this guy, shall we?”
He dropped the phone into the cradle and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Looks like the Feds rode roughshod over the Cape Coral PD that showed up to the scene. Played the national security card and told them they didn't need a warrant.
Any idea where the FBI would drag some poor sap they picked up in a warrantless raid?”
“Tampa,” replied the detective. “Probably... Suppose it could be Miami, but I doubt it.”
“Why... Why do they want this guy? Who is he?”
“He's a security specialist and an NRA firearm instructor. Ex-military. I heard he's a friend of Detective Dan Murphy...”
■ ■ ■
When Chase Holt came-to he was lying on the concrete floor of a featureless room barely ten foot by ten foot, the only light coming from a small window in the steel door on the other side of the room. Still dressed in the cargo shorts and t-shirt he was abducted in, his entire body ached and he was slow to rise, tasting copper from the blood in his mouth. His lips were swollen and he instinctively knew both of his eyes were black and blue, though he could tell his nose wasn't broken. He felt the puffiness around his eyes and his fat lip. Running his tongue across his teeth he determined that although sensitive to pressure, they were all there. Peering through the door's small window he could only see a small swatch of an empty corridor, a door like the one he was standing behind, on the opposite wall. “What the hell is going on..?” he muttered, pressing his face against the glass, trying to see further down the corridor. Anxiety and hopelessness welled up inside of him when he thought of Penny's form lying motionless on the paramedic's gurney. How bad was it? Was she dead? The thought knotted his gut. What about Allie? He thought he saw her make it into the house but he had no idea if she had been hit or not. His stomach rolled and he pounded on the door. “What the fuck is going on here..?! Who are you people?!” He tried to think if he saw any markings on their uniforms but it all happened so fast it was splintered in his mind.
“You don't need to shout,” came a voice from a speaker above him, “we can hear you...”
Chase looked around but in the muted light he couldn't see anything. “Can you see me too..?” he asked giving the ceiling the middle finger.
“Nice,” came the response. “Very mature.”
“Fuck you and all your little friends out there... prick bastards. Fucking cowards.”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth...?”
“No, but you can kiss my ass with yours,” spat Chase.
“Do you know why you're here, Mr. Holt?”
Chase was doing his best to push their buttons. He wanted to lay hands on someone and getting one of them in the room was the first step. “Because a bunch of dick gobbling bitches...”
“You're a national security risk, Holt...” interrupted the voice.
“You're so full of shit I can smell your breath from here...”
“We needed a little sit-down with you...'
“SO,” he shouted, interrupting, “breaking into my house, shooting my girlfriend and trying to kill my dog is acceptable in your World? Ever heard of the Fourth Amendment, you sick fucks...” It wasn't really a question, he knew they didn't care about the Bill of Rights they'd trampled on. “You never heard of a phone call or an appointment? Freaking retards...”
“Because you are a dangerous man, Mr. Holt, you have a violent history...”
“What?” snorted Chase. “You mean killing enemy terrorists? Yeah that happens in combat...”
“Did you know you put two of my agents in the hospital? You broke one agent's nose...”
“Hospital? For a broken nose?” sputtered Chase, laughing. “You bunch of pussies. We used to fix shit like that in the Humvee and go back out on patrol...”
“The other agent has a dislocated jaw and you knocked some of his teeth out.”
“Pssh, I'm slipping. It shoulda killed him.”
“You're lucky it didn't.”
“It occurs to me,” said Chase, pacing, “It took five of you... or was it six? In full armor, with me handcuffed and Tazed. You are nothing but a bunch of little bitches... Shooting innocent women and defenseless animals... Does that make you feel like a badass? Jesus, you must have some really tiny dicks...”
“Sort of like you and your platoon running around Afghanistan killing innocent women and children...?”
Chase knew it was a deliberate dig but he wished for the chance to crush his face in anyway. “Innocents in a war zone are few and far between. If we killed them, they needed killing,” he said calmly.
There was no response, only silence.
“C'mon down,” urged Chase, “We'll talk, just the two of us. It's what you wanted, right? A sit-down? We'll keep it all neighborly. I'll tear off your arms... stuff one up your ass and the othe
r down your throat so you could shake hands with yourself... Nice and friendly.”
There was a measurable silence before the voice returned. “The reason you're here is that you're a national security risk...”
“Yeah you said that already - you're starting to bore me...”
“Where were you the night the craft came down on the beach in front of Jack Steele's house?”
“So the chit-chat's over, we're finally getting to the point?”
“Where were you?”
Chase sat on the floor and leaned back against the wall. “At home, watching TV.”
“Have you had any contact with Jack Steele or his family?”
“I taught his sister and her friend how to shoot.”
“What about Jack Steele?”
“He already knows how to shoot,” quipped Chase.
“Have you been in contact with Steele?”
“We all know that's not possible.”
“I don't know any such thing,” snapped the voice coming through the speaker. “How do you know it's not possible?”
“I saw the videos, I've heard the stories. I don't expect he'll ever be coming back.”
“From where? Where did he go, Mr. Holt?”
Alpha Centauri, Proxima Centauri... maybe Andromeda,” replied Chase, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
“And how would he do that?”
“Y'know, you guys make it really difficult to have an intelligent conversation... Your agency might want to reexamine their IQ requirements - set their sights a little higher than absolute moron.”
“When did you and Steele start thinking about overthrowing the government, Mr. Holt?”
“What?” Chase snorted, laughing. “Kiss my ass. While you were running around terrorizing innocent Americans, I was over in the sandbox doing real work.”
“If you're cooperative, we're in a position to help you Mr. Holt.”
Chase shrugged, “And you'll let me go on my merry way and we can forget this whole thing ever happened...”
Wings of Steele: Revenge and Retribution Page 6
