Warrior (Freelancer Book 2)

by Irving, Terry

  Rick whistled. "Extremely cool. Where did you get it and what are you going to do with it?"

  "Well, it was over at the Pentagon and they wanted the PDP-8 and so they declared the PDP-6 outdated. You know how they like new toys, so we literally became trash collectors." Scotty rubbed a speck of dust off one of the monitors. "Showed up in a truck wearing overalls, and they handed it to us on the back loading dock. We had to take a wall down to get it in, which was a bit tricky since that particular wall was holding up the rest of the house, but she's all ours now."

  "And I repeat, what are you going to do with it?" "Do with it?" Scotty looked genuinely puzzled. "I

  don't know that we'll do anything with Gidget. It's enough to have her here and let her teach us new stuff." He waved his hand by his head as if brushing away a bothersome fly. "I'm sure we'll find something useful for her to do at some point."

  Scotty led them to another heavily reinforced door. After another lesson on secret latches and booby traps, they entered the garage. "Now, you'll be able to park the van and a bike or two in here but only on the right side."

  He walked over to a tarpaulin-covered shape against the left wall. When he hauled on a rope that ran over a complex series of pulleys, the heavy canvas rose to the ceiling.

  Underneath was a sleek wooden shape made of black-painted wood that looked like some sort of boat. After a minute or so walking around, Rick looked through a Plexiglas panel in the front and exclaimed, "This is a goddamn airplane!"

  Scotty's smile grew to a grin. "A Bowers Fly Baby, homebuilt, open cockpit, single-seat prop plane constructed from the finest aircraft-grade spruce plywood. I bought if off a friend who had spent three years building it and one hour flying. Turned out he was afraid of heights."

  Eve stroked the silky-smooth surface of the painted fuselage. "What a shame. It's beautiful."

  Scotty's eyes sparkled as he released a lever and pulled a wing out from the side until it locked into place reaching almost all the way across the garage. "Yeah, it was a real downer, but I hear he's gotten into spelunking now. You know, exploring caves."

  Eve laughed. "That's much safer, I'm sure." "Probably not but he's having fun," Scotty said. "I learned to fly when I was a kid, so I just renewed my license and put in enough flight hours to solo. I'm going to go out to Warrenton next weekend; they've got a glider port—well, it's just a smooth field—and they only charge five bucks for each takeoff and landing."

  He reached under the wing, released a catch, and folded the wing back. "See, under here? I've got a complete custom trailer already hooked up." He turned to Rick. "All I need is someone with a car to pull me out there and then act as ground team."

  "Ground team?" asked Rick.

  "Well, you never really know where a plane like this will end up," Scotty admitted sheepishly. "It's not as bad as a glider, but it's still a good idea to have someone following you on the ground in case the engine quits or something."

  "I'm in."

  Scotty walked over to what looked like a pile of aluminum rods and nylon sheets along the far wall. "And, in return, I'll teach you how to fly one of these. A hang glider."

  Eve put her hands on her hips. "Are you trying to give me ulcers or just kill my boyfriend? Because I'm telling you right now, I love you a lot, but if he dies, I'll remove your skin with a potato peeler and dump you in salt water."

  Scotty looked worried for a second and then laughed, hoping it was a joke. "These are relatively safe. It's a Rogallo wing, and it's held in shape by the air itself. Of course, they're still in development, so I guess they're a little dangerous."

  Eve stared at him silently.

  "OK, they're quite dangerous," said Scotty. "But only if you don't follow the safety rules."

  Eve headed for the door back to the stairs. "I think the only reasonable safety rule would be to never get in one, but I know I can't convince the trooper of that. You boys keep playing with your dangerous toys. I'm getting some tea."

  Scotty looked at Rick. "So?"

  Rick scoffed. "Of course I want to fly it. It's the coolest thing I've seen in months."

  Scotty smiled. "There's only one thing more to show you."

  "Let me guess. A back way out."

  Scotty stopped and stared at Rick. "How did you know that?"

  Rick laughed, "After you blew up that Vietnamese hitter and took off through the sewers? Give me credit for learning a few things about the guys I live with."

  "Well, to my surprise, you are correct." Scotty turned and walked through the computer room to a door in the opposite wall. The door opened to reveal a small closet with shelves on three sides filled with spare computer parts, old cans of paint, metal springs, and other things that someone clearly felt might be useful for some project someday. Bending down, he tugged a small bolt fitted into the concrete floor and pulled on a handle concealed underneath a shelf.

  The entire wall pivoted in the middle and revealed another basement.

  "Welcome to our next door neighbors, the Nordheimers. Nice people, and they sleep soundly," Scotty said in a low voice.

  Pointing to a workbench on the back wall of their neighbors’ basement, he said, "That workbench is another door leading to a short tunnel and then to the Porters over on Hamilton Street. Their basement window looks the same as the day it was first installed, but the entire frame now swings out into a window well. That puts you a block away, probably outside any cordon, and we figure it should give us enough of a head start to be useful."

  He pointed to the neighbor's side of the door. "See, we cemented the cinder blocks onto the doors and mounted this section of the wall on heavy-duty bearings."

  Rick whistled softly. "You're pretty proud of this aren't you?"

  "Well, the original idea came from the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. They held off the German SS for three months by connecting every building underground, so they could move without being seen." He closed the door and snicked the bolt back in place. "No one is shooting at us—but it never hurts to be prepared. Speaking of which…”

  Scotty carefully closed the wall and reset the bolt that kept it from accidentally swinging open. Then he bent and, pushing aside a box marked "Pyrotronics, Inc. Anaheim California," pulled out a paper bag. The bag held what looked like a regular sleeveless undershirt but seemed to Rick to be strangely stiff. Scotty looked at the tag and handed it to Rick.

  "It's an extra-large so it should fit."

  Rick held it up. He could see heavy, stiff fabric patches in front and back. "What the hell is this?" he asked. "I don't usually wear undershirts, anyway."

  "Well, you might want to wear this one from time to time." Scotty pointed at the patch in the front. "That's a new material DuPont has just invented called Kevlar. It's not on the market yet—still being tested—but it's supposed to stop bullets."

  Rick swung the shirt and examined it more closely. "This stuff stops bullets? Hell, the 'chicken suits' in Nam were a hell of a lot bigger, and they wouldn't stop shit. Everyone just threw them away." "Yeah, well, that's because they were just metal plates—essentially the same thing knights wore in the Middle Ages. This is completely different. You can thank Dr. George Emory Goodfellow for that."

  "Who?"

  "The doctor who treated the wounded after the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He was one of the foremost experts in bullet wounds at the time."

  "Probably had a lot of practice,” interrupted Rick.

  "Undoubtedly," Scotty agreed. "The point is, in several cases, he saw that multiple layers of silk were quite effective in stopping bullets. Eventually, all the leading mobsters of the 30’s wore the silk vests he invented."

  The big engineer turned and began searching on a higher shelf. "That worked until law enforcement developed the .357 Magnum cartridge. A classic case of the seesaw between offensive and defensive technology. Really, it's a lot like the English longbow at Agincourt—"

  Rick could tell they were heading for a lengthy tangent. "Whoa. Back to this super
t-shirt or whatever it is."

  Scotty gave up on whatever he was looking for and motioned Rick back into the larger room. "It's not a t-shirt. It's a ballistic vest. Like Goodfellow's vests, it's made of dozens of crisscrossed layers of Kevlar, which is similar to silk but far stronger strand for strand. A single layer won't stop a bullet, but when they're combined—"

  He suddenly brightened as a thought struck him, and he reached over the top of the computer cabinet. "Here it is."

  He turned with a small revolver in his hand and said, "Put it on, we'll give it a test."

  Rick thrust the shirt behind his back. "The hell we will."

  "Really? OK." Scotty looked disappointed but put the revolver back where he had found it. "None of us are willing to be the test subject, but I thought that your physical strength would make you better able to absorb the shock."

  "Forget it," said Rick firmly. He held out the shirt and examined it again. "What's the deal? It only covers my chest. What if I get shot somewhere else?" "It's all about probabilities," said Scotty. "That's the area where it's the most likely to save your life. If a bullet hits you in the head, you're dead; if you are struck in the arms or legs, you'll probably survive the trauma. Protecting the chest area is calculated to give you a survival rate approximately 60 to 75 percent greater than without it."

  Rick shook his head ruefully. "Why is this somehow not all that comforting? I think I'll just continue trying to avoid people with guns."

  "You can, but your track record on that is far from perfect. I'd suggest having it around in case you change your mind. I'd like to see if it works." Scotty checked his watch and headed for the stairs. "Let's go up. I think our new housemate should be here."

  CHAPTER 18

  May 20, 1973, Ingomar Street NW, Washington, DC

  Everyone was in the living room when Scotty and Rick came back upstairs. Eve was on the sofa, holding hands and talking animatedly with a woman Rick had never met. She was average height, skinny, with mousey brown hair and a face that could almost have been called pinched. Her brown eyes didn't stay on Eve but darted around the room as if someone might attack her at any time.

  It took a moment for Rick to realize that there was a little girl next to her, sitting so close that she almost disappeared behind the woman. Rick supposed that they were mother and daughter. There was a resemblance in the hair and angular features but, more than that, they had the same darting eyes always looking for trouble. He wasn't very experienced with children, but he guessed she was seven, maybe eight, years old.

  When Eve paused long enough to notice he'd come in, she said, "This is Kristee, my college roommate. She's from Wolf Point which makes Lame Deer look like a big city."

  Eve reached around the woman to poke the little girl in the ribs. "And this little hellion is Sage." The girl squirmed even further behind her mother to escape Eve's finger.

  Rick noticed that, even when she giggled dutifully, she never stopped her constant scrutiny of everyone in the room.

  "Hi guys. I'm Rick," waving a greeting as he sat on the floor with his back against the sofa where Eve was sitting. Eve put one hand on his shoulder, still holding the woman's hands with the other.

  "Rick was out at the reservation with me," said Eve. "And then we did a little detour into Wounded Knee on the way home."

  Eps was sitting in one of the old recliners. "Wounded Knee? Cool."

  "What were you doing there?” asked Scotty from the other chair. Steve was lying on his back on the other sofa. His eyes were closed, but Rick didn’t think he was asleep.

  Rick just jerked his head back to indicate it was Eve's idea. "Everything had to be carried in on foot at night, so we volunteered to make a food delivery," Eve said. "It was…an interesting experience."

  "I'll bet," Steve said without opening his eyes. "Kristee and I met at the University of Montana. We were both in Kyi-oh. She was a fifth-year senior but she kept an eye on me in my freshman year," Eve said, squeezing the other woman's hands a little tighter. "Ho-wah, I was so lonely that year. You saved my life."

  Eve stopped for a second and cleared her throat. "She left me a message at the Iron Crows, and I called her before we left for Lame Deer. She said that…maybe she should tell her own story. At any rate, she's a computer tech, so I told her to get in touch with Steve, figuring he could find some work for her."

  "Which I did. She starts at Riggs with Eps tomorrow," Steve said. "The guys agreed we could put them up here for a while."

  "Long as you want," Eps broke in.

  Scotty smiled and nodded in agreement.

  "Eve said you needed help and that's good enough for us. On the other hand, if we knew what the problem was, we might be able to work on a solution."

  The room was silent.

  After a moment, Eve whispered, "Come on, honey."

  Kristee's voice was low with a smoker’s rasp. "I think we'd better get this girl to bed first," She said as she wrestled the little girl out from behind her back.

  "Come on, tough stuff. Stop your hiding back there and get upstairs. Put your pajamas on, brush your teeth, and then I'll be up to tuck you in."

  It took a while, but Sage finally dragged herself up the stairs, one loud step at a time.

  Rick was surprised that Eps and Scotty, who were usually blissfully unaware of social tension, filled what could have been an awkward silence with a long and involved story about a recent Spacewar tournament they'd hosted on the Riggs Bank mainframes. In the end, it turned out that MIT had won, but later Scotty proved that they had tweaked his game program and made gravity a variable instead of a constant. Steve joined in and the three discussed how they planned to introduce reverse gravity in the next game.

  The conversation was animated but stopped when Kristee returned from her post at the bottom of the stairs, satisfied that her daughter was, if not in bed, at least out of sight. Eve had gone to make coffee but quickly returned and ordered Eps to come with her and do whatever one did with what she called their "unholy" collection of beakers and distillation coils to make coffee.

  She emerged with a cup for Kristee and handed another to Rick.

  "I think it's coffee," she said. "It could be almost anything."

  "Hey, who needs kitchen equipment that only does one thing?" Eps came out with his own cup. "That's a great setup. Just this afternoon, I made a batch of rocket fuel with it."

  Rick who was just about to take his first sip stopped, thought for a second, and then drank. It tasted like coffee.

  Kristee carefully, gingerly, put her cup down on the battered table beside the sofa. Eve settled in beside her. "OK, no more stalling. What's the problem?"

  "Well, you remember Gary."

  "Unfortunately," Eve replied.

  "Yeah, you never did like him." Kristee sighed. "But he was my boyfriend since forever, almost before I can remember. Then, when I got pregnant, he did the 'right thing' and we got married. My God, I was fifteen! What were our parents thinking?"

  Eve laughed. "It was a different world back then."

  "That's for sure. One day, I'm going to sleep with 17 stuffed animals and the next, I'm standing in my pajamas in the bathroom at Gary's parents' place and so scared I'm throwing up. Seven months later, there was Sage."

  She smiled and nodded her head toward the stairs. "It's funny. She ruined all my plans, and I'd guess you could say she pretty well screwed up my life; at the same time, she's the best thing I've ever done, and I wouldn't give her up for a million dollars. How can something be so good and so bad at the same time?"

  Eps said, "It's like Madame Curie and radium. I mean, her research into radium enabled her to become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, but it also ruined her health and eventually killed her."

  Steve and Scotty smiled in agreement, but Eve glared at them. "It's not even remotely like Madame Curie and radium."

  She turned back to Kristee who was smothering a laugh. "Go ahead, sweetie."

  "You know, on a bad day, I think that
having a child is a little like radium poisoning but…well, back to the story. So there I am, a high school junior with a baby. The high school decided I could continue, but I couldn't come to class. They got this weird little phone device that Sophie McAllen would carry from class to class and plug in. I could hear everything, and if I pushed the button on top, it lit up a light and that was me raising my hand."

  The thin woman made a face. "It was so lame. I mean, I wasn't contagious. No one was going to catch a baby from me!"

  Everyone laughed. "Anyway, that's how I got through junior and senior years. It wasn't so bad; we'd listen to a lot of classes while Gary and I were just sitting around the kitchen table smoking cigarettes and feeding Sage. Hell, she probably learned more than I did."

  "Anyway, Gary dropped out of school and worked nights stocking at the Valu-Mart. I thought he was an idiot—"

  Eve nodded vigorously.

  Kristee waved a dismissive hand at her. "I know, I know. So somehow, I managed to graduate by remote control and went to Missoula.”

  "I can remember passing Sage around at the Kyi-oh meetings like a talking stick," Eve said and then seeing the blank looks on the men’s faces explained. "'Kyi-oh' is an Indian student organization. Mostly just social—keeps us from dying of homesickness—and at the meetings, a 'talking stick' is passed around; if you're holding it, it's your turn to talk and no one can interrupt."

  Steve said, "Do you think we could get one? We—“

  "—could really use—," Scotty interrupted,

  "—one in this house," Eps finished.

  Scotty and Steve nodded in solemn unison.

  Eve laughed and then turned serious, "OK, that's all ancient history. Where's Gary, and why do you and Sage look like hunted rabbits?"

  Kristee said slowly, "That's a pretty apt description. I feel like I'm always trying to make sure I've got a good deep hole to hide in."