Lifter: Proton Field #2

by Laurence Dahners

  “That’s enough,” Massoud said angrily, putting his hand in front of the phone for a moment. He appeared enraged, but not quite sure what to do. After a moment, he stepped closer to Nina and held out a hand to one of his men. He said, “Did you really think it would be okay to describe us as murderers?! That I wanted you to speak kind words about that proselytizer?! Did I tell you to ask for rescue?!”

  Massoud’s man handed him a length of split bamboo that had been shaped like a narrow paddle. Before Mark realized what was about to happen, Massoud had brutally grabbed Nina by the arm and begun whaling at her buttocks and thighs with the paddle.

  To Mark’s own surprise, as Nina twisted and turned, desperately trying to get away, Mark dove forward, tackling Massoud to the ground. It was only then that he remembered how many of Massoud’s men were standing around with their weapons ready. Minutes later, Mark had been stretched over a fallen tree with four men gripping his ankles and wrists. Now Massoud began beating Mark’s back and buttocks with the paddle. The pain was excruciating, but he could do no more than writhe helplessly in their grip while it went on and on and on.

  When they let him go, he sank to the ground holding his buttocks and gritting his teeth to hold in the blubbering moans that threatened to escape. He turned his face into the dirt so no one could see his tears. Behind him, he heard Massoud say, “Remember that the next time you defy me.”

  There was a pause while everyone stood silently. Uncertain as to what’d caused it, Mark rolled to see what they were doing. The Abu Sayyaf fighters all stood with their heads cocked as if listening. Mark realized he could hear what sounded like a helicopter in the distance. Suddenly Massoud said, “Under the trees, now!”

  Mark pretended he was unable to walk in the hopes that he could delay leaving the clearing until the helicopter might pass overhead. However, two of Massoud’s men lifted him by the arms and dragged him under the trees.

  The helicopter didn’t pass directly overhead anyway.

  Mark expected Massoud to make them film the video again, but he didn’t. After some thought, Mark wondered if Massoud thought it was good for them to show a little spunk on their first day. He might think it would be more powerful to reduce them to a state of pitiful begging in later videos.

  ******

  Myr stopped in to visit Dr. Watanabe again. This time, when she arrived, he was waiting in the parking lot. Startled, she said, “Dr. Watanabe! I can find your lab without any trouble. You shouldn’t waste time coming out to meet me!”

  He gave her a tiny bow and said, “That wouldn’t be respectful.”

  She bowed back, grinning. “I’m just a young woman. You don’t need to be respectful to me. Besides, I like casual.”

  He smiled as they turned toward the building, “Aha, a clash of cultures which will never be resolved.”

  Myr rolled her eyes and changed tacks, “So, does the field damage the blood cells?”

  “Yes,” Watanabe said, then smiled at her dismayed reaction. “At higher powers it does.” He tilted his head questioningly, “When the power’s high, I think the electrostatic suppression effect becomes large enough to damage some of the large, delicate molecules on which life depends. But at the degree of compression we would need to support the heart, the cells aren’t injured.” He shrugged, “Or, if they are, it’s below the level that we can detect.”

  “And you subjected them to a lot of cycles?”

  “Well, yes, though not as many as I would like. The blood we’ve been testing’s out of the body, so it isn’t very long-lived even if it isn’t compressed by a proton field. We can only test it for a few weeks.”

  Myr couldn’t suppress her concern, “What if the cells are being damaged in a way that we wouldn’t be able to notice for a year or two?”

  Watanabe shrugged, “Red blood cells only live for about four months. We haven’t tested for that long yet, obviously, but we will when we can do it in vertebrate animals.”

  “What about white blood cells?” Myr asked.

  “They only live for a few days, so we’re already pretty sure they’re going to be fine. We’ve tested the fields on some earthworms. They don’t have a skeletal system and squeezing them with a proton field doesn’t appear to bother them. At least they don’t react to it. They do have a circulatory system that carries blood, but, while they do have white cells in their blood to fight infection, the hemoglobin isn’t contained in red blood cells. Instead, the molecules float free in their circulatory fluid. From the earthworm experiments, we can tell you that being squeezed cyclically by a proton field doesn’t seem to damage their white blood cells or shorten the entire organism’s lifespan.” He shrugged, “It’ll be a while yet before we’ll have approval to test in vertebrate animals.”

  “Hmm, I guess we’ll have to wait on that then. How’s it been going with using ultrasound transducers to localize the heart?”

  Watanabe gave a regretful shake of his head. “We have a serious difficulty there. As you will recall, you hoped we could use ultrasound to determine when the ventricle was beneath the proton field generator. Then we would simply activate the generator whenever the ventricle had expanded sufficiently to be directly beneath the generator.

  “Unfortunately, as a person moves around, the heart shifts its location within the chest. This’s evident in the pigs that we were going to use as our test model. When they’re standing, the heart’s in one position, when they lie on one side it shifts a little, and when they lie on the other side, it’s in a third location. The movement isn’t large, but I suspect it’s enough to cause us trouble. Also, there are even more problems in humans because we spend part of our time upright which moves the heart to even one more position. I’m hoping you will tell me that there’s some way for you to electronically shift the location of the field relative to the field generator?”

  Myr sighed, “No, so far the field’s always coaxial to the generator. We can control how far away it is but can’t generate angular deviations.”

  Watanabe gave her a dismayed look, “Oh, that’s sad. I suppose that a good engineer could build an electromechanical device that’d move the generator around on the chest wall, but I’m sure it’ll be big and lumpy.”

  Myr shook her head, “My brother would hate that. I’m sure any other patient would as well. I suppose it’d be better than dying of heart failure… but still… It shouldn’t be difficult to use the ultrasound to determine how deep in the chest the heart is and adjust the depth of the proton field focus, if only we could find a simple way to move the generator from side to side, and up and down.”

  Watanabe smiled, “Now that you understand the problem, I’m sure you’ll find a solution!”

  He said this with great certainty, as if he had complete faith in Myr’s ability to solve any problem.

  She wished she had as much faith as he did.

  ******

  Ellen went into the den of their house. Ardis Quan had arranged another video conference so that all the families could listen to the ransom video together, but it was falling at a time when she and Jeff usually worked as a team to get the kids into bed. Jeff was putting the kids to bed by himself since they didn’t want to disturb the children’s routine. They especially wanted to keep the little ones from learning about what was happening to their uncle—at least for now.

  She had her AI put the conference up on the big screen in the den and moved closer to the display so she’d be able to see people’s expressions.

  Ardis said, “Everyone’s logged on now, so I’m going to start this by telling you that the ransom video was put up about an hour ago on a site Mr. Chua established for that purpose. That would’ve been very early morning in the Philippines. The editing’s rough and the content’s disturbing—you might want to have your AI disable the video.”

  No one said anything, so Ardis said, “Okay, here’s the video. We’ll talk more as soon as it’s done.”

  Ellen steeled herself for the worst. The video image abru
ptly cut in, showing the six hostages standing in the sunlight at the edge of a clearing in the jungle. They all looked frazzled, but Ellen’s eyes immediately tracked to her brother who, with the other man, Greg, knelt in the front of the four women. Mark’s eyes were focused just to the left of the camera with which the hostages were being viewed. A voice cut in from someone off camera who, as expected, claimed to be a member of Abu Sayyaf. With disgust Ellen heard the man claim that he and the other members of Abu Sayyaf were the victims, merely fighting to protect their religious beliefs from Christian proselytizers. The fact that Ellen knew Mark was agnostic put the lie to that statement. Other than that claim, there wasn’t much to what the man said until he got to the demand for $1 million for each hostage.

  The size of the demand formed a lump of ice in Ellen’s stomach that made her miss the next few words. On the screen a woman stepped forward from the back of the group of hostages and came around to the front, limping and leaning heavily on a walking stick. Ellen’s eyebrows rose as she realized both how surprisingly pretty the woman was, and that, by her appearance, she had to be Ardis Quan’s sister. She, in fact, introduced herself as Nina Quan, then began by saying kind things about Steve Hansen, the leader of the group who’d been murdered. She pointed out that they’d come to the Philippines to help, not hurt, the people there and that Steve had been a major contributor to that goal. Then she introduced the captives. To Ellen’s astonishment, she heard Nina introduce “Mark and Wendy McGregor” as if they were married. There seemed to be another married couple and a married woman who was there without her spouse. Ellen felt confused because she had been fairly certain all the people who’d been captured were single. Then Nina said, “We hope and pray for rescue or ransom…” before she was cut off by an angry shout and a hand that briefly blocked the video camera.

  The hand disappeared from view and the man who’d been speaking stalked out toward Nina. Another Filipino handed him something that looked like a lath, though Ellen recognized by the fact that one surface was curved and green that it must be made from bamboo. The man had been screaming at Nina for describing them as murderers and asking for rescue. For a second Ellen couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but then realized Nina was presumably only supposed to ask for ransom, not rescue.

  The man roughly grabbed Nina by the arm and started whipping her with the narrow bamboo. The way it whistled through the air, and the violent cracks it made as it struck Nina made Ellen cringe at the violence. She couldn’t help but think how bad each of those blows must hurt.

  Suddenly the man went down.

  Ellen was both proud and dismayed to realize that Mark had tackled the son of a bitch! Then a whole group of men jumped on Mark. Nina had been released, but was crouching and grasping her buttocks and thighs as tears ran down her face. Mark was dragged kicking and struggling to be draped face down and spread-eagled over a fallen tree. With men pulling on his arms and wrists Mark was held in that position as the Abu Sayyaf leader began whipping him instead.

  As Ellen watched aghast, Mark’s beating went on and on. She wanted to close her eyes and put fingers in her ears, but felt she owed Mark the consideration of being fully cognizant of what happened to him.

  So she sat and watched in mounting horror.

  When they let Mark go he curled up into a ball, holding the areas they had beaten the worst while he trembled and sobbed. The man loomed over him and said, “Remember that the next time you defy me.”

  The video cut off, leaving Ellen feeling stunned.

  The voice of Steve Olson, Greg’s father, cut in, “What the hell?! Did Greg marry that Penny Garcia woman? Why haven’t we heard about this?!”

  Olson had evidently forgotten that Penny Garcia’s mother would be on the video conference and Ellen found it bizarre that he was focused on that, rather than the ransom demands or the horrific beating of Nina and Mark. Ardis spoke calmly and, though Ellen wondered whether that was because of his Special Forces background, she also had to remind herself that he’d already watched the video before the conference. Ardis said, “I believe, although I can’t be sure, that Nina has advised Greg and Penny to pretend to be husband and wife. Although these Philippine Islamic groups routinely rape female captives, they’re reluctant to rape married women, believing it to be against their religion. I assume that the same’s true of Mark MacGregor and Wendy Bannon and is also the reason that Nina introduced Linda Simons with the title of ‘Mrs.’” He paused for a second, then said, “That aside, I think we should mostly focus on the ransom demand.”

  Olson said, “Chua needs to pay that damned ransom. He’s the one who got them into this.”

  Rather than reacting strongly, Ardis continued to speak calmly. “Mr. Chua’s not wealthy in the way you may be thinking from what you’ve read about philanthropists. He is a moderately successful businessman, but he’s committed much of his wealth to helping poor people in the Philippines. He does not have the financial wherewithal to pay those ransoms without destroying his company and the people who depend on him for jobs here in the United States. I would also point out to you that your family members knew that Mindanao was a risky place to go. Rather than Mr. Chua being the one who ‘got them into this,’ he merely provided the opportunity—they got themselves into it. You must also recognize that Mr. Chua has not hurt anyone, he has only helped people. Blame should fall solely on the terrorists of Abu Sayyaf.”

  Ellen expected Olson to bark at Ardis, but he remained silent.

  Penny Garcia’s aunt spoke up next, saying plaintively, “We don’t have enough money to pay a million dollar ransom!”

  Ardis said, “I’m not sure that any of us do. But, in the history of previous kidnappings, I can’t find an incident where people were known to have been ransomed for the initial asking price. That’s why we hired a negotiator. The man we found at least claims to have successfully negotiated two ransom situations, both for less than fifteen percent of the initial ask. However, you should be aware that such negotiations often take many months…” He paused, “During which time your loved ones will continue to suffer.”

  Penny’s aunt said, “We don’t have $150,000 either.”

  “I suspect many of the families don’t,” Ardis said. “Certainly my family doesn’t. It’ll seem self-serving on my part, but I would like to propose that we try to ransom all six of the hostages as a group for a single lump sum payment. I and the negotiator both believe that we can get a better deal that way.”

  Simons spoke up, “My AI’s just sent each of your AIs the deposit information so you can contribute money to the fund we’re establishing to try to free our people. Remember, the more you contribute, the more votes you have in deciding how to use that money.”

  Penny’s aunt said scathingly, “So, a family rich enough to have a majority by themselves could decide to spend all our money to ransom their relative, leaving the rest of our people over there, right?”

  Simons said, “I think this money should only be spent on things intended to bring all of our people back.” He paused to let people digest his statement for a second, then continued, “If someone decides they want to back out of the group effort and try to save only their loved one, they should be able to withdraw money pro rata. In other words, if they made twenty percent of the total contributions, they should be able to take back twenty percent of what hasn’t been spent to that point.”

  After some discussion, the group approved Simon’s proposal. With some trepidation, after the videoconference had closed, Ellen put $178,000—almost all of her savings and cash from the sale of stocks—into the account Simons had established. It sounded like her contribution was going to be much bigger than some of the others which felt unfair, but she thought to herself, This is war and all’s fair in war… we need a war chest.

  ******

  As Massoud trudged along, he shook his head in dismay at how many problems they’d been having. The National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force had been much more effective at tracking Mas
soud’s group than they’d expected. So far, his team had been forced to move from location to location every 3 to 4 days.

  The beautiful girl, Nina, the one who’d been Massoud’s main inspiration for this whole kidnapping endeavor, had proven to be much more trouble than she was worth. She’d begun limping the first night, claiming a leg injury and slowing them down. She’d soon begun demanding help for even the most routine tasks. The beating he’d given her after her performance on the video had not dissuaded her from continuing to cause trouble. He’d tried being nice, but that hadn’t worked; instead, he’d found himself whipping her again. That had also failed to dissuade her.

  Massoud’s plan to reward his men by allowing them to fornicate with the heathen women they’d captured had foundered on the fact that apparently three of the women were married. Unbelievably, two of them were actually married to the two men who’d been captured. Massoud hadn’t thought their marriages would be an impediment since they were heathen marriages, but that pesteng yawa (devil parasite) Nina told him he needed to re-read his Quran! She claimed the Quran specifically forbade sleeping with another man’s wife, whether the other man was Islamic or not. When Massoud told her that the Quran allowed a fighter to take another man’s wife if she was his captive, the woman demanded loudly that he show her those passages in the Quran.

  Massoud hadn’t ever actually read the Quran, relying instead on what he’d been told by various self-proclaimed scholars. He didn’t have a Quran with him, and neither did any of his men. Besides, he despaired at the thought of trying to sort through the thick book, looking for the specific passage he’d need to justify himself. In the meantime, without the written proof of a Quranic passage to salve the conscience of his more religious fighters, he feared that trying to give the women to his men might backfire. He suspected that some of his men wouldn’t care at all, but that most of them wanted to at least be able to claim that the Quran had given them permission for what deeds they did.