by JJ Aughe
“Yeah,” Bailey answered, with a wink only Melissa saw. “Melissa just stumbled into the hall table knocking the vase off. She is okay and nothing, except maybe her pride, seems to be injured.”
Carol glanced questioningly at each of them. Satisfied everything was alright, she said okay then went back outside. Jessie though was concerned Melissa had reinjured her arm. “Come into the kitchen, Melissa. I want to check your arm.” Still feeling the heat in her neck and face, Melissa said she was fine but Jessie wasn’t having any of it. “I am going to check your arm, Melissa,” she almost growled. “Now, get in there so I can make sure you haven’t re-open either of those wounds! Besides, there is coffee ready. I think we all need some to calm jittery nerves.”
“And other things,” she mischievously whispered to Bailey as they entered the kitchen a few steps behind Melissa.
It was a good thing Jessie insisted on checking Melissa’s wounds. The fall had torn out a few stitches where Eddie had re-sewn the wound on her shoulder. Bailey headed out the door saying he was going to wake Eddie, but Jessie stopped him.
“Don’t wake him, Bailey. He hasn’t stopped working on Sean’s wounds since he arrived. I can use these butterfly stitches he gave me earlier, so re-closing this shoulder wound won’t be a problem.. Eddie can recheck it in the morning.”
“Okay. I’ll leave you to it then and go check on Sean. All this fuss may have awakened him.” With those words he was gone, leaving the women alone.
Jessie looked at Melissa. Melissa looked back and they both started giggling. “Do you think he was a little embarrassed, Melissa?”
“Oh My God,” that woman returned. “If I hadn’t been so embarrassed myself I would have enjoyed that! He looked so darn flustered when he realized I had caught him in the act of mauling you!”
“Ooh! It was my own fault, Melissa,” Jessie confessed. “You should have come in a bit earlier! What I was doing with my tongue was driving him crazy!”
Melissa’s eyes got enormous, her mouth agape, before she quickly retorted, “I don’t even want to hear this, Jessie. Not with my man lying in that room down the hall and not knowing if he is going to pull through. I just hope you are not mad or upset that I spoiled it for you.”
“Not at all,” Jessie replied with a quiet laugh. Mischievously raising her eyebrows a couple of times she continued, “Being interrupted now only makes it sweeter for the next time. I just can’t wait to do that, and more, when this Almed thing is over!” She lifted her eyebrows several times more before finishing with, “But, then again, maybe I won’t wait, either!”
Becoming serious, Jessie took Melissa by the hand. “I can’t guess what you are going through, Melissa. But I can tell you this. We are going to do anything and everything possible to get Sean back on his feet. That is a sacred promise from me to you and it comes from the bottom of my heart!”
“Now,” she continued, reaching for the bandage on Melissa’s elbow. “Let me see if you did any serious damage to this wound too.”
Meanwhile Bailey checked on Sean. Finding the injured man breathing easy, seemingly sound asleep, he wondered just what he should do. Going back to the kitchen was definitely out. If he went back there and Jessie was alone, . . ., Well he just didn’t want to find out what he would wind up doing.
What can I do that will keep my mind off Jessie? Then he remembered he had been planning to check out the storage room at the rear of the laundry room. That sounds like just the ticket to keep me from doing something I might regret for the rest of my life.
He wasn’t surprised to find the cabinets in both the laundry room and storage room well stocked with laundry needs, fishing and hunting equipment and other supplies. When he opened the door of a broom closet his attention was immediately drawn to a long, rectangular crate sitting upright and stuffed back in a corner behind dust mops and brooms. Though the crate was smaller, it looked similar to the crates military rifles were shipped in. When he tried to move it with one hand he found it very heavy.
Immediately wary, but curious as to what might be inside, he carefully carried the crate into the laundry room where there was better lighting and placed it gently on a metal folding table. Three latches on each side of the crate were secured with small, expensive padlocks. Remembering there was also a small toolbox in the broom closet he brought it out and found just what he needed, a small, eight-inch carpenter’s combination finish tack hammer and nail bar. With a few strategic pries and blows with the instrument he had the hasps pried loose and the lid opened. What he found inside amazed him.
Nestled between egg-crate foam was an A-R 15 rifle, a relic of the Vietnam era, mounted with a military night-vision snipers telescope. A compartment at one end of the crate held twelve clips of ammunition and a web ammo belt built for extra clips. Another compartment held light gun oil and cleaning equipment. Bailey didn’t know where Melissa’s grandfather had acquired the rifle, the ammo and the night vision snipers scope or why, but he knew the weapon would come in handy for the patrols he had organized for their safety.
Stepping to the back door he softly whistled three times, the signal for Carol to come in. When she arrived he showed her what he had found and told her where he had found it. “This should make it a bit easier out there,” he opined, nodding toward the outside.
“It sure will,” Carol replied. “Too bad there isn’t a set of night vision goggles in that closet. That would really be what they call ‘the cat’s meow!’ Oh well,” she smiled. “I guess beggars can’t be choosers. We’ll just have to rely on the scope instead.”
Within minutes Carol had silently field stripped the weapon and had begun cleaning it. Minutes later she had the weapon reassembled. She set an ammo clip in place and looked up at Bailey with a grim smile. “Locked and loaded. With this I’ll be ready for anything Almed might try.”
“Now,” she exclaimed as she filled the web belt with full clips, placed two more clips in her jacket pocket and headed for the outer door. “I dare Almed or any of his terrorists to come around.”
She stopped at the door, turned and saluted Bailey. At his questioning expression she explained, “The salute is because I just remembered, Gilmore. You out ranked me when you were in the service. Still do, in my book. Get some sleep. I think I can take care of the patrol until two.” Then she was gone.
Bailey stood looking at the empty doorway for a moment. That is quite a woman, he mused. Considering everything we have been through, except for that one time in the tunnel she hasn’t wavered. Seeing her eyes light up when she saw that rifle was a delight I will remember for the rest of my life. Yeah, she’s quite a soldier alright and tough as nails too!
Getting back to his purpose for being in the storage room in the first place Bailey began to take inventory of the articles stored in the storeroom, the broom closet and on the various shelves along three of the four walls of the laundry room.
The closet contained a few boxes containing odds and ends that didn’t interest him. One large box caught his eye though. The label indicated it contained two, ten thousand linear foot spools of Single mode duplex eight point two micron fiber-optic cable with an enormous retail list price. Curious, Bailey opened the flaps of the box. Inside he found both spools of the wire. One of the spools still had the original cellophane shrink-wrap around it and obviously hadn’t been opened. But the second spool was only about a quarter full. Between the side of the box and the partially used spool of wire he noticed a collapsed box with a logo of some business on it. Curious, he lifted the collapsed box out and was surprised to find it was from a home-satellite dish manufacturer.
At first Bailey wondered what Melissa’s grandfather had bought that much wire for and what he could have used that much for. Then he spotted a folded piece of paper stuck along the side of the unopened spool. He softly whistled when he lifted the paper out and unfolded it.
As an idea of what the diagram on the paper represented formed in his mind he hoped Jessie and Melissa were still
in the kitchen. Hurrying there he caught Melissa just leaving. “Don’t leave just yet, Melissa,” he gruffly ordered. “Sit down at the table. I have some questions I need answered.”
Wondering why he had been so gruff Melissa frowned but did as he ordered. When she was again seated she asked, “What do you want to know?”
“First,” Bailey began in a gentler tone. “What was your grandfather’s profession before he retired?”
Not sure why he would want to know, Melissa answered, “He owned an engineering firm. Why?”
“An engineering firm,” Bailey replied. “What was his specialty?”
“Security,” she quickly answered. “He had a lot of City, State and Government contracts. What is this all about, Bailey?”
“I’m not really sure,” he replied as he handed the paper to her. “Take a look at this and tell me what you make of it.”
Melissa studied the diagram on the paper for only a few seconds before exclaiming, “Why this is a hand drawn map of this property!” After a few more seconds of studying the map-like diagram she looked up at Bailey. “I helped him lay out enough of his security diagrams to know that all these small red X’s with the small letters o slash c beside them are observation points, places where he would normally have installed security cameras. This one zero with an X over it designates a satellite dish placement. You see this dot and dash line just inside the property line? That indicates where he would eventually install the special experimental perimeter laser guard he had been working on. Where did you get this?”
“It was in the storage closet stuffed in a box of two spools of ten thousand foot spools of Single mode duplex eight point two micron fiber-optic cable. But that’s neither here nor there right now. The question, Melissa, is did he ever install those cameras or that perimeter guard? And, if he did, are they still functional?”
Melissa was quiet for a moment as she glanced first at Jessie then looked squarely at Bailey. Bailey thinks this is important. He may be right, too. If those cameras are out there, and are functional after all these years, it would mean we would be that much safer. But there would have to be some type of control room somewhere. But where would it be?
She thought about it for a bit before she vaguely remembered something her grandfather had once told her. Jumping to her feet, she cried, “Come on! I think I know how to find the answers to all of those questions.”
They followed Melissa upstairs to her bedroom as she needlessly re-explained that the room had been her grandfather’s room. He had once told her that the closet was more than it appeared but, other than a place to hang his clothes he had never explained another use.
Once in her grandfather’s bedroom she strode to the closet and opened both sets of bi-fold doors. She glanced around the enclosure for a second, pushed some clothes on hangers to the side then turned back to them with a big smile. “Bailey,” she said. “See those faint marks on the floor in the corner over there? That looks like where a roller under a heavy object turned sidewise. I think what we are looking for is behind this wall. Do you want to do the honors? Or shall I?” Bailey readily obliged.
Though dated, the equipment they found behind the false partition was very impressive.
Mounted on the hidden wall above a multi-functional keyboard console were five fourteen inch LCD monitors. Each monitor was labeled for the direction and area it covered. Directly under each monitor were sector maps and diagrams showing the placement of each camera covered by that screen and numbers reflecting which sectors of that area each camera covered. A second keyboard/control panel with an ancient desk microphone on a stand beside it sat on the narrow counter under the monitors.
Quickly scanning the diagrams, Bailey counted twenty camera emplacements. He was opening his mouth to exclaim his amazement to the others when behind them Eddie indignantly interrupted.
“What in thunderation are you . . .!” Ending his intended tirade in mid-sentence, his voice became confused, his brow furrowed as he exclaimed, “What in blazes is all of this?”
Turning toward the Doctor, his right arm extended toward the consoles and bank of monitors Bailey innocently replied, “Evidently, this set up was Melissa’s grandfather’s way of keeping an eye on everything around his property.”
“Well, I’ll be!” Eddie replied, surprise showing plainly on his face. “I always wondered why it seemed he knew I was coming over. He’d always have coffee ready or if I were stopping by after taking a long hike or had gone fishing, he would always have a roast beef sandwich or something sitting on the table to go with the coffee.”
“Do you think the equipment still works?”
“Well.” Bailey answered. “We’ll soon find out!” Grabbing a ladder-back chair sitting in front of a small desk by the bedroom window he set it in front of the keyboard/control panels and began studying the wires running from it to the monitors. Scanning the myriad of buttons, F keys and the toggle switches on a separate module strip behind the keyboards, he finally settled on a toggle switch on the right hand corner, he flipped it to the ‘on’ position and the monitors flickered on.
Scanning the monitors Bailey noticed that one had a red number seventeen flashing on its lower right hand corner. Behind the number he could see a very dark image of someone moving across the screen. Quickly scanning the console he located a button marked ‘Night/day and pressed it. All the monitors immediately went to night vision mode and he saw Carol on a trail leading through a stand of small fir saplings. Glancing at the console again he spied a calculator with ‘Audio’ stamped into the plastic and hard wired to the keyboard. He quickly punched in the proper numbers and pressed enter. The monitor began flashing ‘Audio on’.
Bailey leaned close to the microphone. “Carol! This is Bailey. Stop moving if you hear me.” When she froze Bailey continued. “Come back in, Carol. I think you’ll be of more use here in the cabin.”
“Where,” Carol asked in surprise as she glanced all around. How? What?”
Bailey chuckled at her look of confused astonishment and replied. “Just come on back to the cabin, Carol. You will not believe the equipment Melissa just found here. I think it is right up your alley! I’ll meet you at the door.” Bailey waited until Carol started back to the cabin then hurried out of the room. Eddie watched him leave, told the women if they needed anything they could find him downstairs with his patient, then followed Bailey down the stairs.
Five minutes later Bailey met Carol at the rear door. He almost chuckled when he saw her expression of confusion. Before she could say anything though, he put his right hand up, palm out in a gesture for silence. “Follow me,” he smiled.
“Oh my God!” Carol exclaimed at first sight of the equipment in the closet. “You were right, Bailey. I don’t believe this! This is incredible! How could your grandfather have equipment as sophisticated as this, Melissa?”
Before Melissa could answer Carol turned back to Bailey. “Do you know what this is?”
“Yeah,” that man answered. “It’s surveillance equipment.”
“Right, it is. But, if I’m right, and on this subject I am an authority. This is not just your every day surveillance equipment. I believe this equipment is the forerunner of all that modern computerized equipment you saw in my cubicle back at the safe house. Only, this set up, even being as ancient, technology-wise, as it is, is even better. It is more thorough, in a way more sophisticated even than that setup! See that little button that has been added to the top center of the keyboard there?” she asked and went on before he could answer. “That is the key button we should have had at the safe house. It powers up what nowadays we call Wi-Fi to a real time satellite feed. Watch,” she ordered as she tapped the button. There was an immediate response from the monitor on the bottom, far right side of the bank of surveillance screens as it changed to an infrared night vision aerial view of the surrounding area for miles around. Carol smiled as she went on to explain that if the safe house had been equipped with just the set-up in front of th
em there would have been no way on earth anyone could have ever breached the compound.
Complete silence followed until Carol turned her attention back to Melissa. A thought crossed her mind and she couldn’t stop from voicing it. “Melissa. Your last name is Calahan-Hough, right?” When Melissa nodded, Carol asked, “Was your grandfather by any chance, Charles G. Hough, owner of Hough Engineering?”
Melissa, dumbstruck because she had never mentioned her grandfather’s name to anyone here, again just nodded her head.
“I didn’t make the connection when Dennis introduced you, Melissa. But I do now. Your grandfather was a genius! You can be proud to have had him as your grandfather.”
“How would you know anything about my grandfather, Carol?”
“I never met him personally, Melissa. But I sure know about him!” Carol answered, then went on to explain. “I had only been in the Army a year when, in the spring of nineteen ninety-eight, my company Commander, informed of my special interests and extraordinary abilities in computer technology and my two years of communications engineering courses at the University of Washington, called me to his office. I was almost speechless when he asked if I would be willing to go on special assignment to MIT to finish my education in communications engineering. I couldn’t turn that offer down and spent the next two years at MIT.”
Professor Jon Moreland, her instructor at MIT, had not only required, but had insisted his students study and emulate Charles G. Hough’s electronic surveillance designs. He explained his reasoning for using Hough’s designs and manuals as teaching materials was so that his students would know the methods of deduction and reasoning the master electronics genius used to implement his ideas and designs.
“So I was right a while ago when I said I thought this equipment was the forerunner of the advanced surveillance equipment we used at the safe house. I’m here to tell you right now that this equipment is almost the exact same as the units we were trained on back in Ninety-eight and nine at MIT.”
