“The problem is, if someone, probably a maintenance worker, wanted to plant a homemade bomb on the outside of an elevator car, we’d have no way of detecting it, except to pick up something suspicious on the external cams. Even then we wouldn’t know it was a bomb without sending someone out to inspect the object. And if the bomber knew what he or she was doing, it wouldn’t be all that hard to position the bomb where it was hidden from the cams. They weren’t really intended to watch for crazed bombers. They’re there for the safety of the workers and to help with repairs. When we don’t have authorized workers outside we don’t monitor the cams.”
Cousins frowned. “That’s simply not good enough, Chandra. After we get this mess cleaned up, I need you to draw up a plan for preventing anything like this in the future. We’ve got nearly two thousand people here on any given day depending on us for their safety. We’ve already let them down once and I’ll be damned if we do it again!”
Mason nodded curtly. “You got it boss.” She turned and closed the door behind her.
Administrator Cousins massaged her temples to try to dispel an embryonic headache. She looked up at the stern visage of her predecessor, hanging on the wall in an ornate frame and seeming to stare down at her with scorn. She frowned at the lifelike holo image.
What are you looking at, you pompous ass? You think you and your clique of good ‘ol boys could have done any better? You got yourself booted out of here, remember?
Despite the big words, Cousins felt insignificant at the moment; unable to cope with the magnitude of the potential situation.
What if there are bombs all over the facility? We could all be about to die.
She imagined Raymond Pressler, in his frame above her, shaking his head and saying in a dismissive tone of voice, “Welcome to the big leagues, rookie!”
Cousins rubbed her temples again. When this is all over, I’ve gotta remember to take down that damn picture.
* * * *
After giving their statements, Daniel, Kim and James decided to get some synthcaf in a nearby caf-house. As James put it, “It doesn’t look like I’m getting down to Mars anytime soon.”
They sat at a small table near the edge of the “open air” establishment, adjacent to a public square, watching the news on a five-meter holoscreen overhead. The scrolling text hovering in front of the screen revealed that external cameras had detected simultaneous explosions destroying all of the magnetic restraints holding the elevator car to the ribbon cable. The blasts weren’t enough to destroy the super-strong cable itself, but they were plenty big enough to doom the elevator car and shake up that section of the ODF.
Kim shook her head in amazement. “I don’t understand why anyone would do something like that. Why kill innocent people traveling to visit friends, or returning to work? What’s the point?”
Daniel shrugged. “Who can fathom a deranged mind? Maybe he was after the guy who was fooling around with his wife and thought taking out a bunch of people would confuse the investigators. Or maybe he’s just loony.”
“Hey!” James pointed up at the screen. “It looks like they’re chasing a suspect.”
The live feed showed a man in a green jumpsuit being pursued by three security personnel. The remotely operated overhead holocam followed the path the suspect took.
“Look! They’re in Blue section. They just passed McGillicuddy’s Pub. Let’s go see if we can help!” Kim was already out of her chair and charging across the square.
“What, are you insane?” Daniel demanded as he, too, rose. “If he blew up the elevator car, he’s probably armed. Let Security do their job.” But Kim was already across the square and heading for the passageway to the next quadrant. Daniel chased after her, with James not far behind.
“Kim, wait up!” She had a head of steam going and the two men were running hard to catch up.
She reached the end of the passageway and turned right. Before James and Daniel reached the same point they heard a commotion ahead: glasses crashing, silverware clattering and people shouting. The two rounded the corner to confront bedlam. Security officers in tan uniforms were shoving aside tables full of food and drink and scattering patrons of the Italian restaurant as they rushed toward the back. “Move, move!” the lead guard shouted.
Daniel called to an onlooker. “What happened?”
The pale-faced man sputtered. “Th-the man…the man they’re chasing. He just grabbed a girl, a pretty brunette, and ran into the restaurant.” He pointed to where the backs of the Security officers were disappearing into the kitchen area.
“Pretty brunette?” Daniel looked around wildly, shouting, “Kim? Kim! Damn it, why doesn’t she ever listen to me? Come on!” The latter was directed at James. Daniel took off for the kitchen, forcing James to do likewise.
“Um, Daniel,” James called out as he raced to keep up. “Is this such a good idea? You said yourself, the man is probably armed.” He slipped on what looked to be a plate of soy-veal marsala dropped in his path, and almost fell.
Daniel didn’t bother to look back as he answered. He was too busy pushing past the restaurant workers that seemed determined to get in his way. “That was before. Now he’s got Kim! We’ve got to stop him before he hurts her.”
They were through the back of the restaurant now, and into the service accessway behind. There was no one there to see, just the usual back-of-store debris; but a moment’s hesitation allowed Daniel to hear pounding footsteps receding to the left. “Let’s go!” He took off in that direction, again forcing James to follow.
Just ahead, they saw a door on the right swinging shut. Daniel dashed through, closely followed by James. Piles of scattered clothing revealed the path of the pursued and the pursuers ahead. The guards were slowed by a rack of trousers toppled in their path.
“Why isn’t she resisting?” James called to Daniel. “She could easily slow him down.”
“It might have something to do with that big knife he’s holding.”
James could now see that the man had a grip on Kim’s collar with one hand and held a butcher knife in the other. He must have snagged that as they went through the kitchen. Damn it! Why weren’t we quicker?
They hurdled the clothing rack and were right behind the Security officers; close enough to the kidnapper that they could see the fear on the slender man’s face whenever he looked back at his pursuers.
“He looks more scared than she does!” Daniel said. “That’s a mass murderer?”
One of the guards looked back over his shoulder after dodging yet another obstruction and shouted to James and Daniel. “You two! Stay out of this! It’s a Security matter.”
Daniel shouted back. “No way! That’s my girlfriend he’s taken.”
The kidnapper yanked Kim around a corner and down a short passageway, where he pulled her through a hatch and dogged it. The red light on the bulkhead above the hatch indicated that the hatch now was sealed.
The guards stopped short and Daniel nearly ran into the trailing one. “Where did they go?” Daniel asked.
“That’s the bay where the observatory shuttle is docked. Damn. How many times have I told those people to always secure the shuttle?” The apparent head of the guard detail grimaced in frustration. “Boss,” he subvocalized for his radio implant, “he’s in the Sagan shuttle and he’s got a hostage. What do you want to do?”
Mason replied, “Guard the hatch so he can’t double back. I’ll try to reason with him.”
“Roger. Good luck.”
“That’s it?” Daniel shouted. “You’re just going to stand here while he’s doing God-knows-what to her behind that hatch?”
“Sir, there’s nothing else we can do from this end. If we try to blow the hatch we might kill the hostage. Is that what you want?”
“No, of course not!”
“Well then, just step back and let us do our jobs. Please.” He nodded to the guard that spoke to Daniel earlier. “JoJo, please escort these gentlemen back out into the square, so we have
some room to work.”
“Yes sir.” He turned to Daniel and James. “This way, gentlemen.” His words were gentle, but his expression brooked no argument. The three headed back the way they had come. “Look, I know this is tough on you, but you have to let us do our jobs. Give your names to the Security office and we’ll keep you apprised.” JoJo’s countenance softened to match his words. “I’m serious. You can’t do anything here but get in the way, and I’m sure that’s not what you want. The best thing you can do is go back to your quarters and wait.”
Daniel opened his mouth as if to retort, then closed it. He sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Thanks.” He turned and headed toward the middle of the square. James followed.
“‘You’re right?’ ‘Thanks?’” James was incredulous. “What happened to ‘He’s got Kim. We’ve got to stop him before he hurts her.’?”
Daniel stopped walking and turned. “I’m not about to stop trying to help her, but it was obvious that arguing wasn’t gonna help. It might have even gotten us thrown in the brig to ‘keep us out of trouble.’ We wouldn’t be doing Kim any good that way.”
“Okay, you have a point. So what’s your plan?”
“I…don’t exactly have one yet. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
“Well, look. They’re trapped inside the observatory shuttle. I’m guessing it doesn’t have any weapons in there scarier than the knife he already has, so he probably won’t be making a charge through the hatch. The shuttle isn’t capable of landing on Mars, so that leaves two possibilities as far as I can see: One, he can take the shuttle and head for one of the other docking bays on Barsoom. But then he has to hope he can get there, dock, and escape before the command center tracks the shuttle, figures out where he’s going, and sends a security detail to stop him. Or two, he can head for the observatory. It’s small and has very few people there, none of them Security as far as I know. That gives him a better chance to negotiate a deal. He wouldn’t be running out of food or water or air anytime soon, the way he would in the shuttle.”
“That makes sense,” Daniel said with a thoughtful nod.
“If Security has half a functioning neuron in their collective heads, they’ll think of that too and try to get a ship up to Sagan before the kidnapper. Maybe they can stop him there.”
“Yeah, maybe. And maybe they’ll end up in the same stalemate as here: Kim and that murderer in the shuttle and Security officers outside the docking hatch.”
“Good point. But there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t have access to a ship, so there’s no way we can get up there to help. All we can do is wait, like the guard said.”
Daniel’s eyes went unfocused for a few seconds, and then a slow grin spread across his face. “I think I know a way we can get there without a ship, but we’ll have to hurry.”
“Without a ship? Are you insane? Phobos isn’t exactly a hop, skip and a jump from here.”
Daniel’s eyes acquired an odd twinkle. “You’d be surprised.”
* * * *
“Are-are you going to kill me?” Kim was doing her best to keep from panicking. It looked like her kidnapper was doing enough of that for the both of them.
“Shut up! I need to think.” The man’s thinning, mousy brown hair dripped with perspiration as he paced back and forth on the shuttle’s small bridge. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this! I was just supposed to plant the bombs and get out of there. No one was supposed to know. Quick and easy he said. No one would get hurt, he said. We just want to send a message, he said. The shuttle was just supposed to float free for a few hours. It wasn’t supposed to blow up! I didn’t plant any bombs that would destroy the car, only the magnetic clamps. Now they’re calling me a mass murderer!” His frantic pacing was making Kim dizzy.
“Wait a minute, are you saying someone else put you up to this?”
“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t have any political agenda. I just needed some money. My ex-wife is bleeding me dry. I figured as long as the car wasn’t damaged seriously, no harm no foul, right? I didn’t count on this! What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”
Kim eyed the large knife the man had laid on the console to her left. She wasn’t tied up, but her kidnapper blocked her path back to the docking hatch.
If I grab the knife I can end this. On the other hand, if he attacks me when I have the knife one of us will probably die, and that wouldn’t be good either way.
It sounds like he’s a patsy in some sort of conspiracy. I have to make sure he stays alive long enough that Security can find out who else is involved.
Wonderful—now I have to protect my kidnapper to keep Security from possibly killing him!
“Look—” she began. “I just realized, I don’t know your name.”
“Oscar. Oscar Ramirez.”
“Oscar. You’ve got to turn yourself in. I’m sure if you tell what happened you can work a deal in return for giving Security the name of the person who hired you.”
“But I don’t know his name. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s a him. It was all done electronically.”
“Well, then there must be a way to track him down that way.”
“I don’t think so. I tried myself, and there was no trace of the sender that I could find.”
“Security might have more luck.”
“Face it, I’m screwed!”
The more they talked, the more convinced Kim became that the man was being used. Someone is making him the fall-guy. Get him to blow the external clamps and have someone else plant a bomb aboard or outside the car to blow it up later. But why not blow it up at the station, rather than after it drifted away?
Probably to give the real killer time to escape. Who knows? Maybe the fatal bomb was placed there days ahead of time. So now everyone assumes that the person who planted the bombs on the clamps must be the one who blew up the car. It makes perfect sense. After all, who would expect there to be two separate bombers? I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever planted the other bomb also made an anonymous call to Security, implicating Oscar. Clever.
The radio chirped to life for at least the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. Ramirez had ignored the previous calls. This time the message was different. “Attention aboard the shuttle. This is Security Chief Mason. I’m losing patience. Talk to me, or we’ll be forced to take action. Look, Ramirez, you’re trapped. Give yourself up and I promise you won’t be hurt. Try to escape and I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Ramirez froze, eyes wide. “¡Dios mío! They’re gonna kill me!” He looked around frantically.
Seeing Ramirez’s gaze alight on the knife, Kim said, “Oscar. Oscar, listen to me! Just give yourself up. I won’t let them hurt you, I promise. Then you can tell your side of the story. Help them catch the real murderer and you’ll probably get off with a lighter sentence.”
“No way! They’re sure I killed all those people—” His voice devolved into a sob. He swallowed hard, then spoke quickly. “They’re not going to let me walk away from this. There’ll be some sort of ‘regrettable accident’ and I’ll end up dead and the investigation will end there. The real killer will never be caught.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way! I’ll speak up for you. I won’t press charges for kidnapping. I’ll tell them what you told me. We’ll find the people who hired you. We’ll make them pay for their crimes.”
“I-I need time to think. I can’t do that with them breathing down my neck. I have to get away, go somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else? Where can you go?”
He hesitated for a moment, then reached for the docking controls. “There’s only one place—Sagan Observatory.
* * * *
“I’ll say it again, Daniel, this is insane! You’re just going to get us both killed.”
The two men were suited up in a maintenance bay, on the far side of Barsoom from where the kidnapping occurred.
“There’s no other choice, James. I can’t leave
Kim’s fate up to a bunch of low-paid, knuckle-dragging security guards who probably couldn’t negotiate their way out of a soggy bowl of cereal. I know we can do this!”
“Oh sure, launch ourselves into space without a ship and land on Phobos as it flies by, then somehow sneak into the observatory unnoticed, and miraculously overpower the kidnapper without getting Kim killed in the process. Sure. Piece of cake!”
“Sarcasm aside, I’ve done the calculations. Using the centrifugal force of Barsoom to hurl us outward, we’ll have enough acceleration to get us to where Phobos will be in less than an hour—”
“Leaving us no margin for error. These suits barely have an hour of air left in them.”
“I know, I know, but we don’t have time to get the tanks refilled.”
James continued as if Daniel hadn’t spoken. “Not to mention that if your calculations are off by even one percent, we could go sailing right past Phobos, never to be heard from again—at least, until we reach Alpha Centauri or somewhere, in a few millennia! To top it off, we don’t even know if they’re going to Phobos. Maybe the man will turn himself in and we’ll kill ourselves for nothing.”
“Such a pessimist. We have radios, right? If we miss we can call for help.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do us when we run out of air! No one will be able to reach us in time.”
Daniel shrugged. “What choice do we have? If we wait until we know for sure they’re heading there, we might be too late to do any good. We have to strike fast. Look, if you want to stay here, fine. I’ll go by myself. She’s my girlfriend, not yours. You don’t have to risk yourself. I’ll understand.”
“Don’t go playing the martyr, Daniel. You’re terrible at it. All right, all right! I’ll go with you. Someone has to keep you out of trouble.”
Daniel clapped him on the shoulder. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, buddy. We’d better get going. According to my calculations, we have less than four minutes to get into position. It’s a good thing they already gave me the security codes for the cargo bays. I was expecting to use them for storing and retrieving cargo, but whatever works.”
The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative Page 10
