Growth (GAIA Trilogy Book 2)

by Morton Chalfy

  "Mean anything to you?" asked Fran.

  "Very well might," Lucas responded. "Please keep digging."

  He took the information to discuss it with Sam who immediately called Helene to get her in the discussion. "Could AR Enterprises be Axel Radnich?" he asked her.

  "Sure looks like it. That's a lot of cash but he certainly has it."

  Lucas asked, "Which 'her' do you think he wants to get?"

  "Maeve," said Helene. "Helene", said Sam.

  "Both," said Lucas. "Whichever one he means we have to protect both."

  Helene and Sam agreed.

  "We're taking care of Maeve so we'll have to put more resources into protecting you," he said to Helene.

  "I think I'm all right. Two guards, lots of aides."

  "No good," rumbled Sam. "You need more guards and a checkpoint away from the office where bombs and weapons could be detected."

  "They do that at all the entrances," said Helene. "I need more freedom of movement for me and my visitors."

  "You need to stay alive," said Lucas sternly. He exchanged a look with Sam and said, "I'm coming there. I'll leave tonight and be there late. Meanwhile put two guards at the elevator and two at the staircase to check all visitors. At least we can physically search for weapons."

  "That's too much," complained Helene.

  "Not nearly enough," interjected Sam. "And when Lucas gets there please do what he says. We need you."

  Lucas added, "And ask your friends Down Below to keep their eyes and ears open. It sounds like they can be a good early warning system."

  At last Helene looked concerned, "You're taking this seriously, aren't you?"

  "It is serious," said Lucas. "And maybe it's time to throw AR to the dogs. He seems to have declared war."

  "I'll think about it," she said. "Get me a little more proof."

  "We're working on it."

  "I'll have our visiting dignitaries apartment ready for you. Anything else?"

  "Yes. I'd like to meet Fran as soon as I can."

  "Okay. I'll see what can be arranged. I'll let you know."

  Lucas and Sam worked out a basic security strategy for Helene and Lucas went to tell Maeve and say goodbye to the kids. Maeve was all in favor of his trip. "We need Helene on the job," she said. "Safe and sound."

  Lucas took two aides with him and boarded the tube train in Denver. The trip from the ranch took two hours, first by slow car over rough terrain then by fast car to the city. The trip to New York took another two hours as inside the tube speeds of over a thousand miles an hour could be achieved.

  A robo-copter waited to take them to the cube where one of Helene's assistants passed them through Security and took them to the VIP apartment. On the side table was a note to call a number. Lucas called and was pleased to hear Fran's voice, "Can you come down now?" she asked. Lucas was surprised but his body time was two hours behind hers and if she was awake he certainly was.

  "Sure. How do I get there

  Fran directed him to the head of the staircase in the lower levels. "Someone will be waiting for you."

  Lucas was excited to see Down Below and decided to go alone. At the head of the stairs he was met by a boy of about twelve whose dirty face and too-short pants legs and oversized shirt made him look like an urchin out of the nineteenth century novels.

  "Whatcha want?" he asked Lucas.

  "Fran."

  "Follow me."

  The boy bounded down the stairs, waited for Lucas at the door and then led him into Down Below. The corridors were mostly deserted but as they moved along Lucas was conscious of people sleeping in makeshift shelters. When they reached Fran's lair the boy called into the room, "He's here," pointed to where Lucas should go and ran off.

  Fran spun around in her motorized chair and beckoned to him, "Pleased to meet you."

  Lucas shook her proffered hand, "Same here. That was good work. Found anything else?"

  Fran nodded, apparently pleased at his no-nonsense-about-social-niceties approach and turned to the bank of screens. "I haven't found traces of the two agents which probably means they're not checking into hotels or using payment cards. The money is still intact in the numbered account and if there's any movement I'll get an alert."

  Lucas nodded, entranced by what he saw on the screens.

  "I did find more trace of AR Enterprises though," she said.

  She rapidly stepped him through several screens, commenting as she went, "established as an off-shore company twenty years ago by an agent of this law firm. " She high-lighted the name of the firm, "with this accountancy firm," she high-lighted another name, "on behalf of this man," she high-lighted the last name, "Axel Radnich."

  Lucas let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Quite an accomplishment, breaking into all those sites."

  Fran beamed at the compliment, "We try," she said.

  "Send that report to Helene," asked Lucas, "and then let's talk."

  For the next hour they discussed the finer points of spy craft. Fran's set-up was one she had constructed herself and Lucas was able to help her streamline some of it. She was able to show him some aspects of the city's network, especially where it connected with others, that he hadn't known of.

  "So by signing in here you have access to all this other?"

  "Not only that, I can sign in on any network that's connected and get to all their connections. Basically I can get anywhere."

  "I'm impressed."

  Fran beamed with pleasure.

  They laid out a series of questions to which Lucas wanted the answers and that Fran thought she could get.

  "Call me anytime," he said, "and I'll be down to see you before I leave."

  "Good. And don't worry about Helene. We've got a lot of people watching out for her."

  Chapter 39

  The atmosphere in the conference room was gloomy. Harrison, Lucas and Helene were seated around a table facing a full wall screen showing Sam and Maeve. Lucas had increased the general level of security around Helene and the Gaia offices and was now sharing the latest intel reports on Axel Radnich and the remains of A4A. He had just learned from Sam that the three operatives they had captured had been turned loose.

  "How could they do that?" asked Helene.

  "Judge set bail, slick lawyer paid it and off they flew," said Sam.

  "Axel Radnich," said Helene.

  "Who else?" said Sam.

  "I'm ready to bomb him," said Helene.

  Harrison cleared his throat, "I'm not sure that's the best strategy," he said. "Right now he's still trying to stay covered. If you bomb him he'll have no reason to keep the gloves on."

  "But, presumably, he's sending people to kill Helene. Or me," said Maeve. "Surely we should be able to hit back."

  "Yes," replied Harrison," but intelligently. We don't want an all out war. We want to nullify him for now."

  Sam slapped his fist on the table, "I'd vote for all out war!" he said forcefully, "but Harrison is right. We don't need it."

  "And that's not who we are," said Maeve. "We can't forget that."

  Lucas said, "I have an idea I'd like to try."

  "What's that?" asked Helene.

  "He relies on an extensive communications network. I'd like to try and compromise it."

  "How?" asked Sam.

  "Why?" asked Helene.

  "How is still conjectural. Why? Because when your communications are interrupted everything comes to a halt and all your attention is turned to fixing it."

  Everyone nodded in agreement. Sad experience had taught them all the centrality of their own network to their lives and work.

  "I want to give him some more immediate problems to deal with. Problems that cannot go unattended."

  Helene said, "Let's try it, but if we can't nullify him it's bombs away."

  "Okay," said Lucas, "but give me a chance."

  "When are you coming home, honey?" asked Maeve.

  I hope to leave tonight," Lucas answered.

  He called Fran
and said he'd be right down and to send her runner to meet him. He had seen things on Fran's screens that made him think of his scheme of disruption and wanted to look more closely at her set-up.

  She was waiting for him expectantly. "What's up?" she boomed at him.

  He explained the outlines of the problem and said, "I saw that you got onto one of his networks. I want you to find as many ways in as you can and then my crew can begin shutting it down."

  "Whose networks?" she asked, suspicious and excited.

  "Axel Radnich."

  Fran' grin creased her face into mounds of happy fat that obscured her eyes and mouth while she grinned. "That bastard. I'll happily bring him down."

  "Good, but what have you got against him?"

  "He's displaced more people, and more of my people, than Attila the Hun. When do you want me to start?"

  "Now. I'm going back to the ranch tonight and the sooner we can make his networks go dark the better."

  Fran's fingers were flying over the keys.

  "When you find an entry," said Lucas, "send it to my private address by secure means and don't leave a trail."

  "Don't worry, no one's traced me yet."

  Lucas smiled.

  "You'll hear from me before you get home," said Fran.

  `"Good."

  By the time he said goodbye to Helene and Harrison he was feeling pretty good about his plan. He had faith in Fran's abilities to find weakly guarded entry points and in his crew to mount attacks.

  "By tomorrow this time," he thought, "Mr. Axel Radnich will have more pressing problems than Gaia."

  Chapter 40

  Maeve was trying to take full advantage of the ten minutes she had alone before her opening reception of the day. Lucas had arrived just before bedtime and their reunion became unexpectedly passionate which she ascribed to his feelings about keeping her secure. He rose early to "put the team to work on Axel Radnich", and left her to doze for another half hour.

  The children had been seen to, played with a little and sent off with their tutors. Breakfast, when she went over the day's schedule, was behind her and now she had the last few minutes to herself until she took a bathroom break.

  She was troubled by Radnich and A4A and the idea that the world held so many people who were ready, even eager, to turn to violence when opposed. The idea of Helene or herself being considered legitimate targets hurt her deeply. Their work harmed no one and no thing except perhaps for corporate profits which seemed so paltry a reason for warfare, especially when contrasted with the health of the Earth.

  She had to concede to herself that for some people laying waste to the Earth was acceptable if it resulted in wealth for the wasters. A constant refrain from the corporate polluters was population control, birth control, reduction of population and the like. Clearly a world they owned with many fewer people in it, and those people serving the rich masters, was the ideal. The concept made her shudder.

  "New crop of babies every year," she thought, "the babies will save us."

  The thought made her feel more determined to push Gaia's program of free education. Without education humans grew naturally into savages where the obviousness of might makes right ruled. The globe sported hundreds of places where that was still the case. Places where women were treated as inferiors, where strong man rule was still the politics and where ignorance and intolerance held firm sway. It made her queasy. As Cindy came in to open the doors to the Reception Room Maeve was thinking "the babies will save us," and began to put herself in the mood to meet her public.

  Lucas had gone straight to the coders' room and made preparations for the attack on Axel Radnich. As the team arrived for the day shift he explained what he wanted, "I have several entry points we can use but every attack must be disguised as something else. A failure of power supply, a virus from some known source that isn't us, weather caused outages. As long as it's untraceable. I want his IT people scrambling for fixes while his networks are down. And I don't want them up again."

  Once the team had started devising and preparing their strategies Lucas went to confer with Sam. He brought him up to date and said, "Hopefully we can hit him by later today and hit him hard enough that his attention will be fully occupied with getting his network back up and running."

  "We still have two missing A4A people with cash and motivation to find," said Sam.

  "No leads at all?"

  "None. Which, to me, means they're holed up someplace safe and preparing an attack. Since we don't know the target we have to cover all the bases we can."

  "Well, I think I got Helene's defenses set up pretty well. I increased the number of guards and checkpoints, strengthened the physical barriers and moved the first Gaian checkpoint several floors down. I also enlisted the Down Below folks to guard the entries to their place, which they already do but which now will have this focus."

  Sam nodded and grinned, "The weird guarding against the weirder."

  They worked at Sam's desk going over the plans for safeguarding the venue for the Gathering, trying to imagine attacks they hadn't prepared for when the first indication of results from attacking Axel Radnich came in. The news was brought by a member of Lucas' team.

  "Look at this boss, an unexpected side effect."

  He showed them a tablet with a "Breaking News" banner over a headline saying "North African Stock Exchange Goes Dark."

  Sam and Lucas looked blankly at the screen and asked, "What's this?"

  "Apparently one of Radnich 's networks also ran this stock exchange. And by coincidence this stock exchange has allowed Radnich to manipulate pricing and availability for years. Anyway, we attacked the network with a "power outage" and this is one of the results."

  "That'll get his attention," laughed Sam. "Hitting the money mine. Good work."

  Lucas was pleased, "The more sources of his income we can interfere with the better. Keep it up and keep us informed."

  "Yes sir."

  Chapter 41

  As part of the increase in security around the ranch drones now constantly patrolled the area. By day visual sensors scanned the environs and by night infra-red sensors looked for warm bodies. The feeds were shown on screens in the Security office and alerts sounded when anything out of the ordinary appeared. If someone in Security didn't acknowledge the alert within ten seconds the alert appeared on both Lucas' and Sam's communicators and on their aide's screens.

  On that Friday night, when people's guards were likely to be down a bit, an alert sound at 11:15 p.m. The security person didn't get to his console quickly enough and both Sam and Lucas were awakened and both men dressed and made their way to Security.

  "Sorry sir," said the contrite guard. "I was in the bathroom."

  Sam grunted, "What have we got?"

  "I'm not sure but I can replay the event. I downloaded the drone's memory."

  On the screen a glowing figure shown in infra-red appeared and then another and then blackness.

  "Where exactly is that?" asked Lucas.

  The coordinates appeared and then a view of the spot in daylight.

  "That's the old mine entrance," said Lucas. "They must have entered the mine, and it connects to our tunnels."

  Sam was gathering a squad and getting a weapon from his desk. He sent three armed guards to the mine entrance, "If they come back out we want them alive. Use non-lethal means. If they don't I'll call you to come back in but wait for my call."

  "Yes sir."

  Sam and Lucas and three other guards started down to the tunnels. Before they went through the last door Sam laid down the rules, silence was the first command, non-lethality was second.

  "We'll go slowly," he said, "and we'll use a Dragonfly as forward observer."

  The Dragonfly was a tiny drone equipped with "eyes" and "nose" and controlled by Sam's communicator. The group walked slowly to minimize the sounds of their passage and Sam studied the image on his device intently. Several hundred yards in he held his hand up to halt their forward progress an
d waved them into positions. The guards lay or crouched in the shadows while Sam and Lucas stood behind pillars. They waited while Sam showed two figures on his communicator screen creeping silently toward them.

  Suddenly he motioned one of the guards to his side and pointed to a spot where the intruders could be seen. He tapped the communicator and his voice filled the air, "Halt," he shouted. "One more step or one quick move and you'll be shot where you stand."

  On his screen the two figures appeared to hesitate and Sam said to his marksman, "Warning shot."

  The crack of the weapon and the fountain of dirt it kicked up at the intruder's feet came simultaneously.

  "Lie down on the ground with your hands and feet showing. Do it now!"

  Once more the figures hesitated and Sam said, "Hit their legs."

  Another crack and one of the figures fell to the ground.

  "Get down now," yelled Sam and the other figure slowly complied.

  Lucas began to move forward but Sam held him back with one large paw.

  "They have a bomb, I think," he said.

  "Roll onto your back and strip off your clothing," he shouted at them. "Convince us you're not carrying explosives or you'll die right there."

  His voice was hard edged enough to make believers out of his hearers and they slowly began removing their clothes while having a heated discussion. Sam was about to yell further orders when one, now clearly a woman, screamed "No" and ran back the way she had come.

  Sam yelled "Down" and a huge explosion filled the tunnel. The blast knocked Sam and Lucas to the ground where the guards were lying covering their ears. When their ears stopped ringing and most of the dust had settled they gingerly picked their way forward. The blast happened a hundred yards ahead of them around a curve in the tunnel and most of its force had been directed upward. A good part of the ceiling had collapsed as had one of the walls, and rubble covered where the bomber lay.

  They were still assessing the damage and checking each other for signs of harm when the three guards sent to the mine entrance appeared with a half naked young woman.