The Guardian Collection (End of the Sixth Age Book 2)

by Col Bill Best

  The four of them hugged, and immense joy and peace overwhelmed Roger. And rest. After what seemed minutes with no words being said, or needing to be said, Cindy pulled away, smiled, and looked deep into Roger’s eyes.

  “Sweetheart, we all owe so much to you. And we’re so excited that you’ll be joining us…”

  Frank continued without a beat: “…but Dad, it’s not time yet. You are unique among billions of people, and God’s purpose for your life is not complete.”

  Susan said, “Dad, thank you so much for everything! Now, live, Dad!”

  The light was getting brighter.

  Roger heard Cindy say, “And we mean, truly live, Roger. There’s no marriage here; the least relationship here is infinitely better than the best relationship there. You have a fantastic future in store, my love. It won’t be easy, but you won’t be alone. And we all fully approve!”

  The light was now blinding, painful.

  Roger was looking at a bright light shining into his left eye, then his right.

  A beautiful angelic face, framed in short, pretty red hair, was looking down at him. Her complexion was perfect from her face, down her neck, to the top of a bright green medical gown. Certainly, she didn’t have a speck of makeup, yet she couldn’t have been prettier if Hollywood’s finest had spent half a day with her. She looked to be somewhere in her early thirties, and somehow, she looked familiar…

  “Roger? You with me, friend?”

  He blinked. If he was in heaven, why would he be lying on a table looking up at her? But she couldn’t be in his altered world; he could hear her, see her, and feel the warm touch of her hand on his arm. And they certainly weren’t in Alaska.

  “Hello? Anyone home?” she smiled.

  The…the hangar? On a table?

  Roger tried to get up.

  “Ow!”

  “Not yet. Maybe five or ten more minutes.”

  He took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

  “Welcome back. I was tempted to use tele-surgery on you, but I suspected you were too far gone. I was right. You were in pretty bad shape. Hallucinations and everything. Looked like you were trying to crawl to the aircraft.”

  Roger looked around the hangar and at the strange equipment over to his left. It looked ominous, and he thought he recognized it from a science and technology show he’d seen.

  The lady followed his glance and smiled. “Makes Da Vinci 6.0 look like surgery with a Swiss Army Knife, if I do say so myself. But, there are times when one still needs the personal touch.”

  Roger looked back into her beautiful hazel eyes.

  “Who… how…” he stammered.

  “Over the years, I’ve been known by many names. You will remember me by my real, married…or at least, widowed name.” Her smile broadened and his whole world brightened. “Hello, Roger. I’m Karen Lane Richardson.”

  His mouth dropped open. She continued smiling and gently stroked his cheek.

  He reached up and touched her arm, her shoulder, her face. She held his hand to her face.

  “You’re here…?”

  “I’m here. I’ve converted. Guardian has a co-pilot.”

  + + +

  Friday, 1830 EST:

  “I really think Hawaii would be a cool place to see. Would not want to go there tomorrow though. Some weird airplanes going there. Showing off or something. Probably unarmed. Could not stop them. I would rather have lunch inside and play safe with friends.”

  The text was stilted due to the automatic translation of the social media website, ostensibly between two young teens, and because it was meant to be vague. Since Snowden, some social media sites, like the one President Garcia had set up through Sybil Blalock to communicate with Viktor, were more secure. Some even rivaled NSA and World Bank sites. Still, the two world leaders had to be careful.

  “Something going on around lunchtime tomorrow in Hawaii? Planes that don’t belong there? Probably unarmed?” President Garcia was clearly perplexed.

  Priscilla had finished her lunch. She opened her Multiphone and did some quick calculations.

  “Juan…noon in Hawaii is six p.m. here. You told him to be careful around that time.”

  The President looked at his wife thoughtfully for several seconds. They weren’t always able to have a private dinner due to affairs of state, and even when they did something often came up. Like today.

  “What are the other leaders doing?” he asked.

  “Actually, not much. And I’ve been thinking. It’s hard to control too many variables at one time, honey. Maybe they’re just trying to take out the two main players, apart from China, and stir up the possibility of a nuclear war to bring in their peacemaker.”

  “The man of peace, who will be anything but that. And like Viktor says, never waste a good crisis, right?” Juan smiled.

  “And if there isn’t a convenient one coming along, create one.”

  He looked again at the message, then back at his wife of over forty-two years, his best friend, a world-class academician and analyst in her own right. She was also the proud mother of their three children and the grandmother to six, with number seven on the way.

  “I guess the social media link is working for now. I’ve got a call to make about this thing in Hawaii tomorrow. And I do want you to go to that concert tomorrow evening.”

  Priscilla’s attendance at an international cultural event allowed Juan to diplomatically request that his head of security lead her security detail. That allowed Juan to make sure that Chet Rowland and the personnel he recommended were the key part of the primary detail to watch over him at the conservative off-site. The site of the meeting was the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. If there was trouble, he wanted the most important person in his life to be far from it.

  + + +

  Friday, 2045 EST:

  “I expected a lot more pain from the carbon dioxide in your laparoscopy,” Roger stated quizzically, as he walked back from the latrine.

  Karen smiled. “If you can do your work quickly, you can use different gasses. I use a mixture of carbon dioxide along with nitrogen, nitrous oxide, a little helium, and even some good old-fashioned air. The body tolerates it very well and absorbs it quickly. Less pain, faster recovery.”

  Her phone alerted. It was Tamika. She read the message to Roger.

  “How’s Roger? A couple of hours ago, someone tried to commandeer Justin’s car’s software while we were on I-95. He parked it in time and we abandoned it. Took a taxi to his apartment. Suspect Matthews.”

  Karen responded immediately. “Leave now! Only take what you absolutely can’t live without. No more than a carry-on bag. His motorcycle should be safe. Tamika, do NOT go to your place. Immediately go to an ATM and each of you get out as much cash as you can. If your accounts aren’t already frozen, they soon will be. Everything by cash until I set you up with new IDs and accounts. Don’t worry; you’ll each have over 100,000 dollars available within a week. Just get out of there. Your lives as you knew them are over. Take this seriously. You are both in extreme, imminent danger. Send.”

  “Karen?”

  “Yes, Roger?”

  “How in the world did you get a Multiphone to link up in this Transdimensional state?”

  Karen smiled.

  54. DEEPENING DARKNESS

  Friday, 2050 EST:

  “Justin!” Tamika called.

  “Just a moment,” he replied from his bedroom, about the same instant they heard a car horn sound and tires screech. A moment later they heard several car doors slam.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here now! Karen says we’re still in danger!”

  They heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and coming up the walkway.

  “The glass door!” Justin said, but she was already there. Six flights up and only small balconies; no one in sight. Whoever was after them apparently didn’t think they would or could try to escape out the back. Justin did have a small bag packed, having reached th
e same conclusion as Karen. He tossed it down to the ground. He and Tamika swung and jumped from balcony to balcony like Cirque du Soleil acrobats. Thanks to their mutual love of extreme workouts and pars course training, they were safely down on the ground within seconds.

  Justin grabbed his bag in time to hear his heavy steel apartment door blown out of its frame. They quickly dodged around a corner so they couldn’t be seen from the sliding glass door. Justin was grateful that he thought to close it. That might buy another five or ten seconds while the intruders searched the empty apartment. They quickly worked their way to the garage.

  Justin looked around carefully to make sure nobody was watching for them. The path looked clear, although he suspected that the intruders would be hacking into the security cameras within seconds.

  Those few seconds were all he and Tamika needed. He switched his hybrid motorcycle to silent full-electric mode, and they quietly rode out of the garage at a normal speed so as not to attract attention. Justin had a thought. He knew they would be coming after them and that it would be critical to get his next move just right. He signaled and casually turned south onto the main road. A few minutes later, he stopped at a local gas station to fill up the tank and purchase some snacks and a few other items. He continued south and drove to the next available ATM as Karen had advised. Both he and Tamika withdrew as much cash as the ATM would allow. Then Justin continued south for a few more minutes, passing through numerous traffic lights. He turned into a rundown shopping plaza.

  Justin drove around to the back of the building, then turned onto a side street. He then turned around and headed back north on a long, circuitous route through little-used back roads. Knowing that security cameras would lock down the locations and times of the gas station and ATM transactions…and maybe traffic cameras through some of the traffic lights…Justin hoped their pursuers would keep heading south. After they had driven well north of his apartment, he pulled over briefly.

  Justin pulled out one of the purchases from the gas station, a roll of lowly duct tape. Karen had told them that police car cameras were now able to read license plates of vehicles traveling even seventy miles an hour in the opposite direction, in the dark. To remove or cover a license plate would be an automatic traffic stop, but if he just covered part of one letter, he would likely escape notice for a few days. Unless an officer pulled directly up behind him. He applied the duct tape quickly and they started off on the road again.

  Karen assured them in subsequent messages that she would teach them how to alter their appearances to fool facial recognition software and that she would be able to teach them how to travel undetected.

  “Who IS this woman?!” Tamika commented.

  “Exactly who she said she is, and let’s be glad that she’s on our side,” Justin responded. He switched to full-hybrid mode, gunned the motorcycle, and they headed north up US 1 along with the evening traffic. He carefully kept his speed right at the posted limit. Soon, he turned west on 46 toward Sanford, Florida.

  Looks like the proposal will have to wait, Justin lamented, as he wondered what, exactly, the future might hold for him and his beautiful passenger.

  + + +

  Friday, 2100 EST (1800 Pacific):

  Cliff smiled as he watched Guardian off-loaded from the C-17 that had been backed to a hangar. The scene was eerily illuminated by the fading twilight of the stark Nevada landscape.

  He knew that crews would work through the night preparing for the early afternoon test flight. The accelerated test schedule was to commence immediately. After a lengthy pre-flight in the hangar, Tim Cason would engage visual cloaking, perform a standard take-off, and fly System Two subsonically for two hours. If everything checked out, he would light the SRBs and go low-supersonic until the SRBs burned out, then land. After a successful review of telemetry, he’d be cleared for his second test flight a few days later. He would launch, fire SRBs, and go supersonic. This time, he’d light the ion drive and accelerate to Mach Five. After another successful review, he’d be cleared for test flight three. He’d repeat the second test with the addition of the scramjet and an extended Mach Eight high altitude flight. The final planned test was to achieve maximum Mach and engage a re-entering satellite target to finish boresighting the rail gun. The test flights were tentatively scheduled three days apart, assuming no serious anomalies were noted. It was more testing than they originally planned, but they were being thorough.

  Cliff looked over at his test pilot. He knew the cocky Tim Cason couldn’t wait to get into the aircraft, light the SRBs, and finally get to full hypersonic speeds. He never had that chance with System One.

  Too bad he’ll never have the chance with this one either.

  + + +

  Friday, 2130 EST (1930 Grand Forks):

  “Karen…what’s happening to me?” Roger asked in astonishment. He felt completely healed, only a few hours after having his gall bladder removed. But there was something else going on…

  They had just finished eating and were walking around the aircraft.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Well…younger? Strong?”

  Karen smiled, turned toward the “older” man, put both of her hands on his shoulders, and looked straight into his eyes.

  “Roger, I’m now one of two. So are you. This is going to take a while to explain.”

  He instinctively put his hands on her waist for a moment, then quickly removed them and blushed. Karen’s gentle smile was reassuring. She firmly squeezed his shoulders then lowered her hands to her side.

  “Shall we retire to your living room?” she asked playfully as she walked toward the couch near a table to one side in the hangar.

  + + +

  Friday, 2145 EST:

  “How sweet!” Tamika exclaimed as they walked up the porch steps, under the slowly-turning ceiling fans, and into the 19th century Higgins House.

  The quaint Victorian bed-and-breakfast in Sanford was a perfect hideaway, not being a national chain hotel. And Justin had paid cash.

  “Why, thank you kindly, Sir!” She slipped past him as he held the door open for her to the Cedar Room. She felt a little better. While they were riding, Karen had sent several more messages about where to safely shop for essentials—like a change of clothes, toiletries, and food. She also made recommendations on lodging—hence, the bed-and-breakfast.

  The rustic but comfortable décor also helped reduce the tension. She tossed her new backpack on the couch. Justin did likewise with his small bag, and they fell into each other’s arms. After a few moments, he gently pushed her out to arms’ length, looked deep into her eyes.

  “Tamika Stewart, I had some really great plans for what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. But it looks like all that is OBE; overcome by events. Bottom line is, I can’t believe all that’s happened in the past seven months, and I can’t imagine what’s ahead now with folks out to kill us. But whatever happens, however long we have here,” he took her hands in his and dropped to one knee. He continued looking into her deep, moist eyes; “I want to spend all of it…the rest of my life…with you. Will you marry me?”

  + + +

  Friday, 2200 EST:

  “I’ll call you back.”

  Within thirty seconds, Senator Matthews had Skylar on his DARPA prototype.

  “Mission accomplished?” he asked.

  After a brief pause, “Not yet, Sir. Some level of anti-spyware in his car I’ve never seen before, and they abandoned it just moments before I could break through. I got a team together and went to his apartment, but I guess they’re into obstacle courses or something. They climbed down the back from six flights up before we could get through the front door…”

  Skylar was sweating. He paced around his SUV, leaning hard on his cane. This was tech stuff, right down the middle of his lane. It’s what he had extensively studied and worked with when his bad knee took him out of the more physically demanding side of working for Jason. And he’d blown it.

&nb
sp; Jason let the silence linger.

  “Uh, they got away on his motorcycle. One of those electric hybrid types; couldn’t even hear them leave. Bought some gas and stuff from a convenience store and took out as much cash as they could from an ATM. They were heading south, but we’re monitoring the turnpike and interstates. I’ve got my police contacts alerted. We’ll find them, sir.”

  “See that you do.” And with that, Jason hung up. Nothing more to say. He knows he screwed up. And he knows I won’t tolerate screw-ups. Not again.

  Skylar stopped his pacing. With a string of profanity, he leaned over and rubbed his bum knee. Good as the replacement was, it hadn’t been designed for quickly climbing up and down six flights of stairs or running around Justin’s apartment complex.

  He had no intention of letting Matthews down. He’d worked with the man for decades, long before Jason became a public figure. He was even an understudy of Jason’s previous “fix-it” man, Louis “Bull” Thatcher, before the older man took that FSAT stuff and went crazy.

  Skylar knew that one of the main reasons Jason kept him around was that he was as tenacious as Matthews about recapturing Karen Lane even after all these years. Matthews wanted to continue his experiments. Skylar just wanted to inflict enough suffering to avenge his shattered knee from the morning she escaped back in 2020. Then he could retire, or more likely continue as a security consultant for Jason. Skylar speculated that staying involved would be the safer position, as he questioned whether any of Jason’s private “security” team ever actually retired. Especially ones like himself who knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak.

  His team had positively identified her in Asheville, North Carolina weeks ago, and in Charleston, South Carolina a few months before that. He had well-paid people going over surveillance videos 24-7. He would find her.

  Right now, his main focus was on quickly finding and eliminating a young Black couple who had the audacity to escape him. Twice. That made it personal.

  55. REVELATIONS