by S. S. Segran
“No. That man was as alert as I ever saw him. Maybe even more so. These were not the ramblings of a dying man.”
“I didn’t say that. But maybe his memory had gone a little fuzzy.”
“Perhaps, but not on this subject. I’m telling you, Marshall, that man was completely lucid.”
“I don’t know what to say, Josh. All I know is that the canister wasn’t down there. Aari went with me. He can vouch for that as well.”
“I don’t understand,” Josh mumbled. Tegan heard the dejection in his voice. We’re all down. We came all the way out here and failed to find the canister.
Marshall tried jogging the scientist’s memory in hopes that there would be some information that he might have missed. Tegan, paranoid that Tony and his men might have repaired their vehicle and were already giving chase, tuned out of the conversation and scanned the road behind them. For a fleeting moment she thought she saw a black SUV but it turned out to be a delivery van. She was lost in anxiety for several moments until she heard Josh exclaim, “Wait! Wait, wait, wait. Wait.”
“Remembering something?” Marshall asked sanguinely.
“Yes . . . Well, maybe. Dr. Branson did mention something else. At that time it didn’t seem significant . . . ”
“What was it?”
“After the plane crashed, they scrambled out onto their life boats. Dr. Branson remembered arguing with a crew member about retrieving the canister but the other man was opposed to it because the aircraft was sinking. The crew member said a lot of the equipment on board had been ejected from the plane when it hit the water and he wasn’t going to risk his life searching for something that might already be gone. It so happened that there was another person in the vicinity, a young man in a canoe who called out to them to make sure they were alright, then rowed away to get help.”
“What happened then?”
“They paddled over to the floating debris but found nothing. He was sure that the canister had gone down with the plane and that they could have retrieved it. Here’s what I’m thinking. That young man with the canoe was the only witness to the entire incident. Maybe, just maybe, he might know something about the canister.”
Tegan turned to Aari; a little bit of hope had crawled back to them.
“Do you have any info on this witness?” the Sentry asked. “Did Dr. Branson see him again after that?”
“Sadly, no. It made the news back in the day, though. I’m sure local newspapers ran the story, and small town papers would have included the names of those who were present. You should be able to find information at one of the libraries around there. They usually maintain records of stuff like that.”
Marshall looked at his watch. “Pretty sure the libraries are closed right now.”
“If we could find a place with Wi-Fi,” Aari said from the backseat, “I can check to see if they’ve digitized their newspaper archive.”
“Good idea, Aari,” Josh praised.
“It’s yet another long shot, though,” Marshall said. “And I mean really long. What’s there to say this kid—or man, now—would know anything about the canister?”
“He’s the best lead we have, Marshall. None of the crew members are alive today.”
Marshall bobbed his head slowly in agreement. “We’ll call back and let you know if we find anything.”
“Please do.”
Tegan ended the call and passed the phone back to Marshall. “Where are we going?”
“I remember seeing a motel around here,” he replied. “The sign said free Wi-Fi, so Aari can use his laptop there. We haven’t picked up a tail, have we?”
“Nope, nothing of concern,” she said.
“That’s a relief to hear.”
They reached the motel half an hour later. As they walked toward the entrance, Marshall said, “Would you look at that. The wound’s almost all closed up now.”
“Sorcery,” Aari whispered jokingly, but both he and Tegan were blown away.
Dema-Ki is amazing, Tegan thought. I really miss that place.
The woman behind the check-in desk eyed the Sentry. He noticed, and shrugged. “Hiking accident.”
While he got a room for them, the teenagers stood back and repressed their snickers as the woman at the check-in desk had to force herself to continuously draw her eyes away from Marshall’s fit, bare chest. The Sentry didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he made a point to ignore it. He paid by cash, took the keycard and led Tegan and Aari to their room. It was small inside, with two beds, a round table, and a couch.
“I’ll take the couch,” Marshall said.
Aari fell onto one of the beds, connected his laptop to the motel’s Wi-Fi and soon all that was to be heard from him was the patter of his keyboard and some muttering. “Maybe Boulder City newspapers . . . And Overton. Hmm . . . ”
Tegan kept vigil by the windows in case their pursuers turned up but as time wore on, she calmed down and paid more attention to Aari as he spoke to himself.
“Okay, forget local newspapers . . . How about high school papers? Maybe he was still in school at the time . . . ”
Tegan lurched toward the window as a car pulled into the premises. When she saw the occupants get out, she thought, Just a couple . . . Good.
Aari was still muttering. “So not Boulder City, then. Overton?” He went quiet for a few minutes, then yelled out, startling Tegan and Marshall. “Got it! Right here in the school newspaper, they ran a small article about the B-29 crash and the student who went for help!”
Tegan forgot about her vigil and practically cannonballed onto the bed beside him. Marshall peeped over her shoulder. Aari pointed at a black-and-white photo of a thin but athletic-looking teenager on the screen.
“His name is Elwood McAllister,” Aari said. “Let’s see if we can find out where he lives.”
He typed the name into the search bar and included the name of the state and county. He scrolled down a few links before one in particular caught their eyes. Marshall rested his forehead against the edge of the bed as Tegan fell back and clawed at her face.
“Are you kidding me?” she cried. “He’s dead?”
Aari clicked on the link. “It says in the obituary here that he served in the Vietnam War as a pilot. His jet was shot down, so he was KIA. They mention his loved ones here . . . ”
Marshall looked at the laptop again. “Does he have any kids?”
“No kids, no. Uh, it does mention that he was survived by his wife who . . .”
“Where does she live? Wait, better question—is she still alive?”
“I’ll check . . . ” More taps on the keyboard. “Yes, she is! Oh. She remarried. And you’re not going to believe this—she’s right here in Overton. Looks like she’s lived most of her life in this town.”
“Get the address,” Marshall instructed. “We’ll see her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“You really think she’d know anything about the canister?” Tegan asked doubtfully.
“As long as we have some kind of lead, we need to pursue it.”
Aari keyed the address into his phone, then shut his laptop down with an air of success and called Jag to tell him of the day’s events. After completing the call, he relayed what Jag had told him to Tegan and Marshall over a takeout dinner the Sentry had ordered, paid for with cash. Exhausted, they bade each other good night then turned off the lights and promptly went to bed. Despite Tegan’s fear of Tony finding them, she fell into a night of restful sleep.
52
Jag parked the pickup truck in front of the Sanchez farm house just as the sun was setting and hopped out, mulling over his conversation with Aari. He picked up three shopping bags from the back and walked toward the front door. Jag had been relieved to hear that his friends and the Sentry were okay, but it bothered him that Tony had been able to track them to Lake Mead so quickly.
Does that mean they know the rest of us are in Kansas?
Jag stepped into the house and passed the living room on th
e way to the kitchen. As he was putting away the groceries, Kody trotted in. “Yo. What did you get for dinner?”
“Tuna salad. There wasn't much available.”
“Oh.” Kody peered into the two bags that Jag had left untouched. “I see the gizmo and hardware stores were open. Got everything you need for your plan?”
“Mmhm.” Jag put away the last of the groceries. “You know, I never figured we’d use our vacation money to buy these things.”
“Hey, if things go well, these could be considered souvenirs.”
They headed to the living room where Mariah was sitting beside Lady on a large throw rug, hugging her. She looked up at the boys as they walked in. “Hey. Got everything?”
Jag stretched out on one of the couches. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You okay? You seem a little preoccupied.”
“I was on the phone with Aari on my way here. They had a pretty big incident.”
“What happened?”
“Tony and his men came after them but they managed to escape. Marshall suspects that they traced his credit card transactions somehow. But that’s not the only thing. Marshall was . . . shot.”
Mariah, horrorstruck, pulled away from Lady. “What—how bad is he hurt?”
“It went right through his arm so it’s a clean wound, but he’s refusing to go to a hospital. Says he can patch himself up for now. Aari says he doesn’t look anywhere near out of the game, which is good.”
“Good Lord, he’s crazy.”
“Are they safe now?” Kody fretted. “Away from Tony? I’m telling you, when I get my hands on that piece of—”
“They booked it out of there, yeah.” Jag traced the contour of his pendant. “They’re lying low in a motel some ways away from Lake Mead.”
Kody sat down heavily on the other couch. “Did they at least find the canister?”
Jag’s face tightened. “No. It wasn’t there.”
Kody seemed to teeter on the edge of a fit. “Oh, great! Great! What are we gonna do now, then? Can Marshall’s friend in Goleta create some kind of explosive that we can toss into the nanomites’ hideout?”
“About that . . . Aari says that the nanomites are nearly indestructible. That’s kind of why they went searching for that canister. There’s an extremely rare material inside that may act as an anti-nanomite. But”—Jag sat up—“just because we can’t destroy them doesn’t mean we can’t figure out a way to at least disrupt them.”
Mariah pushed her copper-blonde hair over her shoulders as she laid down beside Lady. “Not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
Jag picked up a pencil and a small sketchpad from the coffee table. “We said we were gonna figure out a plan to get into the nanomites’ base. Look, I’ve had an idea in mind and I’ve already got the tools we’ll need tonight. Come up here.”
His friends joined him on the couch and watched with growing curiosity as he drew out his plan on the sketchpad. “Awesome art skills,” Kody said.
Jag hit his friend on the arm with his pencil. “I get it, I’m not Tegan. Bear with me here. I think we’ll be able to get into that garage tonight.”
* * *
The three walked up the street toward the blue house at the end of the road. It had been a restless drive to Ransom and the friends were glad to have finally arrived at their destination. They carefully peeked through the narrow-barred gate. The property looked as vacant as it had the night before.
“You ready?” Jag asked Mariah.
She removed her knapsack and pulled out a heavy black cloth. “All I need are Kody’s eyes.”
The aim was to render blind the middle of the three cameras that watched over the garage. Once Kody had recalled what model they were, it took a few quick keystrokes to find out that the cameras had a viewing angle of a hundred-and-thirty degrees. Taking out the camera in the center would give the friends a narrow blind spot to tread through. The trick was for Mariah to drop the black cloth over the camera fast enough so it would seem to anyone monitoring as if the camera had a temporary malfunction.
Once Kody pointed out exactly where the camera was on the garage’s crossbeam, Mariah took over and Jag watched in wonderment as she levitated the cloth high above them and guided it toward the back of the target camera. She lowered the fabric over the camera with the precision of a surgeon.
Jag gave her a small grin. “I didn’t know you could move things that accurately.”
“Neither did I,” she responded quietly. “I guess the crystal’s really helping.”
Kody tapped their shoulders. “The cam’s covered. You’re up, Jag.”
Jag nodded and backed up to the opposite side of the road. He bounced on his toes a couple of times, then ran toward the gate. When he was a few steps away, he leapt and sailed over the eight-foot tall obstacle, landing lightly on the other side with a roll. Turning around, he saw Kody and Mariah staring openmouthed.
He jogged back to the gate. “You two are gonna let flies into your mouths.”
Kody picked up his jaw. “Sorry. It’s just neat seeing you jump like ten feet into the air.”
Jag cracked his knuckles as he assessed the chain that held the gate closed. “This is a huge padlock they have . . . ” Taking the lock in his hands, he placed his thumbs within the shackle’s gap and gave a mighty tug. The lock didn’t break. He tried again without any success.
“C’mon, bud,” Kody murmured. “It’s just a lock.”
“It’s a pretty strong padlock,” Jag grunted. He tugged at the device with all his strength a few more times before letting it go in defeat. “I can’t do it. It won’t break. It’s built too tough.”
Mariah looked at him firmly through the gate. “Speed. Agility. Strength. Those are your gifts, Jag. You’re not going to be stopped by a petty lock. Try again.”
Jag massaged his hands. His fingers were hurting from pulling but Mariah had a point. He needed to concentrate and harness the power within himself.
He touched his crystal, letting his fingers linger on it, before clamping onto the heavy metal foe and collecting his thoughts. Then he gave one compact tug and the shackle suddenly snapped. The padlock popped open and he quickly unwrapped the chain securing the gate. He let his friends onto the property and, as they walked in, Mariah gave him a rub on the back. “That wasn’t too hard, right?”
“Quiet, you.” Jag smiled, taking the lead. “Stay in a single line right behind me. We need to keep inside the blind spot.”
The friends wasted no time getting to the regular-looking door right next to the main garage door. Before Jag could stop him, Kody put his hand on the knob. He was instantly thrown off his feet and landed on his back. He let out a shaky groan and remained on the dirt, gasping for breath.
Jag was by his side in an instant and looked over him worriedly. “Kody. Hey, bud, can you hear me?”
“The door . . . it . . . it’s charged.” Kody trailed off, muttering a jumble of curses.
Mariah knelt on Kody’s other side. “You were electrocuted!”
“Seems . . . seems like it. I’ll be f-fine.”
Jag slid an arm behind Kody’s back and helped the other teenager up. “I think it was a warning shock. Not meant to cause serious harm but enough to make you think twice about trying to go inside.”
“Which means they would surely have the inside rigged as well,” Mariah concluded.
“And that,” Kody said, shakily tapping Jag’s head, “is why you were right to create Plan B. Well done, sir.”
Jag let go of his friend when he saw that he could stand, albeit unsteadily. “You sure you’re okay to go on?”
“I’m good. Let’s go.” Kody rubbed his shoulders and nodded at Jag, his emerald eyes shining once again.
The three pressed to the wall and shimmied along to the back of the garage. Kody saw no cameras, which gave Jag a boost in confidence. He chose a spot on the wall and dropped to his knees as Mariah took out the tool he’d bought from the hardware store. It was a cord
less reciprocating saw that could cut through the garage’s exterior siding.
“This saw isn’t too loud. Still, I’d like to get this done quickly.” Jag squeezed the saw’s trigger and let the blade in with a plunge cut, cutting out a two-foot square opening at the base of the wall. He pulled the loose wall section out as Mariah brought out a remote control toy car; it was another gadget Jag had picked up earlier. Fixed to the car’s roof was a wireless camera made to attach to a car’s rear license plate and display a rear view on a dash-mounted smartphone.
Mariah looked troubled. “What if there are motion detectors inside? Won’t this thing trigger an alarm?”
Jag powered the car on with an app on his phone and did a quick test run on the grass. “If I did the research right, no. Motion detectors are usually set to ignore anything less than a foot or so above the ground. They’ve got the tolerance built in so that they don’t pick up pets or pests. If there was a mouse running around, it wouldn’t be setting the alarm off constantly.”
Happy with the way the RC car was handling, he used his phone to guide it into the garage through the hole he’d cut. He moved the car judiciously, spinning it to give the camera a view from every angle. “It’s really dim inside,” he said. “But looks like we lucked out. This hole we just cut is concealed under a row of shelves and, from what I can see, there are only two things to be worried about. There’s a camera on the left corner of this end of the garage but it’s pointed away from us, and there’s a motion sensor across from us, facing our way. It doesn’t seem like an alarm’s gone off, so I think we’re still good.”
Mariah produced two more black cloths. “Guess I’m up again.” She went down onto her stomach and looked through the hole. Jag and Kody could hardly stand the suspense; they prayed that neither the sensor nor the camera would activate a warning system. It felt like too many minutes had passed but Jag understood that Mariah was taking her time to avoid mistakes.
“Done.” Mariah sat back and wiped some perspiration off her brow. “That was stressful.”
“You’re doing good, ’Riah.” Jag brought their spy car back out and tucked it back into the bag. Then, together with Mariah, he crawled through the hole and into the garage while Kody stood watch outside. Jag cleared the metal shelves above their small entrance and gave Mariah a hand up.
