Wanted Page 17

  This time he found a commercial tripod set up with a laser on top of it pointing at a slant down into a large hole in the wall of the basement. He walked down into the tunnel and found Ell standing there about six feet into it. Hands on her hips she was looking unhappily up at the roof of the tunnel.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Dirt.” She waved a hand at the roof. “I hoped that I’d be in some kind of rock by now.”

  Shan frowned, “So?”

  “So, it could collapse. Not a good thing if we were down here inside the tunnel.”

  “Oh. Couldn’t we reinforce it like the tunnels under the farm?”

  “Yeah, but then we’d have to hire a shotcrete guy. Hard to keep that a secret.”

  “Well… how about some graphene bracing?”

  “Ooh, great idea! Gary can make us some arch shaped graphene balloons and some long tubes. With enough pressure in them, they’d support the tunnels alright. I’ll go work out some dimensions.”

  ***

  Steve, Randy, Barrett and Dan, the members of Ell’s security team being held at the US Penitentiary in Jonesville Virginia were ushered in to a meeting with their attorney Victoria Nis. “What can you tell us Ma’am? Will you be able to get us out of here anytime soon?”

  Looking frustrated, she shook her head, “It should be simple and straightforward. They don’t have evidence of your aiding and abetting. It’s hard to argue that you pose a danger so you should at least be out on bail. Honestly, I thought you’d be out weeks ago. I’ve had several judges order your release, but they just ignore them, citing ‘executive orders.’ I’m going to keep going up the ladder to higher and higher courts, but it looks like they’re just going to keep dragging their feet and running various delaying tactics. I’m sorry.”

  “Damn! Can they really do this?”

  “They aren’t supposed to be able to. But, what can I say. Possession is nine tenths of the law, and they have you in their possession.” She wrinkled her nose, “Actually that’s a poor analogy referring to possession of real property, it just seems as if it’s applying to your persons in this situation as well.”

  “So are you suggesting that we should remove ourselves from their possession?”

  “Hah! Wouldn’t it be sweet if you could? It would definitely throw a wrench in their engine, and later it would be pretty easy to argue against prosecution for your escape on the grounds that you were being held illegally in the first place. Unfortunately, attempting to escape is a dangerous proposition and you could easily get seriously hurt or killed just trying to get out of here. Sorry, you just need to try to be patient while the law grinds its interminable way to justice.”

  ***

  Viveka walked out to the parking lot, simply amazed to be going to her own car. Well, her leased car but still. Though it was tiny compared to most American cars, it still was bigger than almost all the cars back in India. More amazing to her than the fact that she had her own car, was the fact that she’d ridden a bus here in America for weeks and never been crowded. No one had rubbed up against her or made any remarks. She would have been perfectly happy riding the bus forever if it weren’t for the fact that everyone warned her not to walk the roads alone at night. Instead of crowds being the problem, it was being alone that was dangerous here.

  She got in the car and told its AI to take her to her apartment. She hoped to call her mother tonight because the UPS tracking service said it had delivered the phone she had sent her. Viveka had paid extra to have the phone set up and to have written instructions for her mother included so that her mother would turn it on and be able to receive Viveka’s call. Viveka had considered sending her mother a HUD but no one in their small town had experience with them and so no one would be able to help her figure it out if she couldn’t work it herself. Also, it would make her mother a target.

  As Viveka walked in to her apartment, she asked her AI to connect her to her mother’s phone. After one chirp the screen on Viveka’s wall that had come with the apartment flickered to life with her mother’s face, scrunched in concentration as she studied the screen of the phone in front of her. “Mama!” Viveka said with great joy.

  ***

  Ell said, “OK” when Allan told her she had a call from Steve. “Hey Steve, what’s the word from you and the guys?”

  “Sorry about calling so late, but I remembered that you didn’t used to go to sleep until really late. Still true I hope?”

  “Still true. Call anytime you need to but I do usually sleep between three and six AM.”

  “Man, I wish I could get by on three hours a night.”

  “Sometimes I wish I could sleep a little longer. Anyway, what’s going on up there?”

  “Well our lawyer, Ms. Nis says she isn’t going to be able to get us out of here for a looong time. I’ve talked to the other guys, and to the ladies up at Alderson. All of us are agreed now that we’d like to get out of here ASAP. Do you still feel up to trying to break us out, or should we wait until after you’ve had the baby?”

  “Hah! After I’ve had the baby, I’ll need help taking care of him. Be good if at least Amy were out of there and back on my payroll ‘cause I feel woefully inadequate for that task.”

  Steve snorted, “So you think breaking us out of prison will be easier than taking care of a baby?”

  “Um hmm,” Ell said distractedly. “Which floor are you guys on?”

  “Bottom floor.”

  “Where? GPS isn’t locating you inside the building.”

  “South wall, second room from the west corner. We’re in the high security part of the prison now. I should have had you try to get us out when they first brought us in, we were in the minimum security camp then.”

  Ell didn’t comment on the level of security. “Are all four of you guys in the same room now?”

  “Yeah, they put us in the same room two days ago. It’s a six person room so there’re a couple of guys in here that are probably snitches. We think the room’s bugged too so we only talk in whispers using our implants and keeping our heads under our pillows. Sure hope they haven’t bugged the mattresses.”

  “Hmm, talk about stuff they’ll find interesting but not useful, or at least not currently useful. Do that where they can hear you so they won’t have reason to suspect they need to bug the mattresses.”

  “We’re doing that,” Steve said with a “teach your grandma to suck eggs,” tone.

  “OK, I’ve got video of the prison from hoverbike overflights and I think I see which room is yours. In a while try to stick your head into the window and see if you can get your AI to send mine a GPS location to be sure.”

  “OK.”

  “Before I try to pick you up, I’ll shine a laser into your room’s window to be sure I’ve got the right one.”

  “How? I mean how are you going to try to get us out.”

  “What you don’t know…”

  “Yeah, yeah, but at some point you should talk to us so we can help. For instance, these windows are too small to climb out of, even if you’ve got a way to cut the bars.”

  “Good thing we’ve got these implants to talk with then, huh? I’ve got to talk to Amy, Mary and Lisa and figure out how we might be able to get them out too. We want everyone out the same night so they don’t find some of you gone and then put the rest in a tougher location.”

  “A penitentiary with reinforced concrete walls isn’t tough?”

  “Maybe it could be worse? For instance if you got tossed into solitary?”

  ***

  “Amy?” Ell asked, “can you talk?”

  Ell heard some rustling, then Amy said, “Yeah, my head’s under my pillow now.”

  “Steve says you guys have decided you’d like to escape and live on the lam?”

  “Yeah. It doesn’t seem right that we’re stuck in here when we haven’t even committed a crime. Victoria tells us that she’d have had us out of here a couple of weeks ago if it weren’t for the executive order from Stock
ton.”

  “OK, according to the data I’ve got, FPC Alderson, where you’re being held, is a low security facility for white collar female prisoners. Is that the impression you’ve got?”

  “Well, I don’t know what a high security prison would be like, but there are fences and guards, the food’s terrible, the inmates are crazy and…” her voice broke, “I hate this place.”

  Feeling terrible, Ell said nothing for a moment. Then her own voice cracking, “I’m sorry Amy. So sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that… it was easy or something. I was just trying to figure out what, what the obstacles might be to taking you out of there.”

  “Sorry Ell,” Amy sniffed, “I know. I guess the other inmates aren’t the only ones that are kinda crazy in here. You’re right, they don’t have high walls and the fences don’t have barbed wire. We’re on the third floor of the northeast dorm. I don’t see how you could get us out of here. During the day there’s too many people around. At night we’re locked into just the third floor of the dorm. We really can’t even get near the fence for you to get us over or under it.” After a pause she said, “I’ve heard that there are a lot more guards around, especially at night, than there were before we got here. It’s hard to believe that’s just because of us, but they might be trying to catch you if you come after us.”

  “OK, we’ll figure something out. You’re not afraid of heights are you?”

  “Uh. No. What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, I’ve still got to work it out. But you’ll probably be leaving out the window in the middle of the night.”

  “It’s three floors up! I can’t climb a wall!”

  “We might lift you out the window on a cable.”

  “You mean like from a helicopter?”

  “Something like that. I’m not sure exactly. Would you be afraid?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But they’d hear the helicopter coming over and swarm the place with guards.”

  “No, they wouldn’t be able to hear this one. But we may do something different. I’ve got to check a lot of things before I can come up with a final plan.”

  ***

  Stockton stared at Phillips while drumming her fingers on her desk. She hadn’t invited him to sit down. “So, you’re telling me that all this time Donsaii was living in a house in a neighborhood bordering her little farm?”

  Almost at attention Phillips ground out, “Yes Ma’am.”

  “And the FBI took months to figure this out… just why was that?”

  “She had a good disguise and an alias. And this world is a big place. We were looking elsewhere.”

  “And then you finally figured it out, with the help of a snitch who turned her in for money?”

  Phillips nodded.

  “And your team, having confirmed that she was home by watching her arrive, showed up in force, surrounded the house and still let her slip away?”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “And you didn’t think this was important enough for your personal supervision?”

  “No, Ma’am,” Phillips paused, took a breath, then firmed his jaw. He knew what was about to happen and decided he’d just as well show some spine on the way out, “The Agency has many other missions, most of them much more important than the apprehension of one of our nation’s heroes.”

  The corner of Stockton’s lip rose, “So that’s how you ‘roll’ down at your agency. Ignore the president’s priorities. Assign bunglers to the case. A citizen has to toss you an answer you couldn’t find even though it’s practically stuck to your own ass. With that gift, you then throw hundreds of agents at the capture of a mere girl and still manage to let her get away, embarrassing your country at your sheer incompetence in the process?”

  Eyes fixed over Stockton’s head, Phillips said, “She’s not a ‘mere’ girl.” A muscle twitching by his right eye gave evidence of just how pissed off Mason Phillips actually felt.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot, a really fast girl,” she said derisively. She stared at him for a moment, “Mr. Phillips, you serve ‘at the pleasure of the President,’ and this president is not pleased. Tell Deputy Director Rhodes that she’s now the Acting Director and have her to set up an appointment to talk to me.” She waved dismissing fingers at him, “Go find a job somewhere else… if you can.”

  ***

  Los Angeles—Professor Ari Dunzberg today announced that an analysis of galactic rotation in the Magellanic Cloud carried out by his research team also supports the so-called K-D paper published by Kinrais and Donsaii four years ago. This is the fourth “experimental” paper to support the theoretical work put forth in the K-D paper…

  Ell looked up as Shan came in. “Hey man o’ mine, you headin’ out for a run?”

  “Yeah, got to do something to burn off energy now that I don’t have anyone to play b-ball with.” He tilted his head, “In a way it’s better. I can think about stuff while I’m running, which I couldn’t do while I was playing.” He winked, “Today, I’m going to ponder the effects of the 5th dimension on the universe as a whole, rather than on a single galaxy at a time.”

  “I can’t run in my current state, but I need some exercise. Can I walk a ways with you, then you can run the rest of your route on your own?”

  “Sure, that’d be nice.”

  Ell got up and they headed out the door for a walk around the farm. “Hey, some of those inflatable graphene braces came in for the tunnel. Good thinkin’ on your part, they work great.”

  Shan frowned, “How’d you have them delivered?”

  “Gary’s got a port that goes to one of my hideaways. A waldo picks them up and sends them back out to me. Same way we ordered our temp-control suits from your dad’s company except your dad sent them to us through a UPS port.”

  Shan shook his head and gave a little laugh, “I feel like an idiot. I’ll bet they’re small until they’re inflated right? I was thinking they’d have to be delivered in a truck or something stupid like that.”

  Ell grinned, “Yeah, they’re about a cubic inch each.”

  They walked a little ways in silence, then Shan said, “Did I tell you the FBI stopped by to ‘interview’ my parents and sisters?”

  “No! I’m so sorry. Are they upset?”

  “They don’t seem to be. They said they just answered honestly like you had me tell them to. They told the men in the suits that they had seen you in Asheville but otherwise hadn’t had contact. They could honestly say they hadn’t provided you any help.” He shrugged, “I guess the fact that they haven’t harbored or aided or otherwise committed a crime is no guarantee against being arrested, especially if those guys decide they want to use them as bait.”

  “Yeah,” Ell said wistfully. “I haven’t seen my mom since Stockton first put me away. Well, I’ve seen her on video, but you know.” Her lip twisted, “It just isn’t the same.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think I should even try to visit her because I suspect they haven’t picked her up or interviewed her because they are using her as bait. I’ll bet they have her under observation thinking that surely I’ll go by for a visit sometime. I’m thinking I need to work out a place where we can both meet after dodging any tails.”

  “It’s sad to think that our friends and families are being used as lures.”

  “Yeah. Speaking of that. I’m planning to go up north tonight and scope out the locations where they’re holding Amy and my security team.”

  “Are you sure you should be doing that as pregnant as you are?”

  “Well, no, but even if it’ll be kind of unpleasant for me going up there, I’ve got to remember that just being in those places is no walk in the park for my friends.”

  Shan frowned, “Don’t you need to leave this afternoon if you’re going to get there in time?”

  “The hoverbike can make it in an hour and a half, no problem.”

  “I thought you flew pretty high on that thing?”

  “Only eight to ten thousand feet, can’t go
higher than that without oxygen.”

  Shan shook his head, “You should check. I don’t think you want to go even that high when you’re pregnant. Less oxygen at altitude.”

  “Ohhh,” Ell glanced up at her HUD, then looked embarrassed. “You’re right. And I already flew pretty high when I was up in Virginia to meet with Hoyt. What am I going to do? I don’t want to leave them in those places for another couple of months until I’ve recovered from the birth. Amy sounds like she’s having a pretty tough time dealing with prison.”

  Shan stopped and put his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace. Lips close to her ear he said, “First, stop saying, ‘what am I going to do?’ Say, ‘what are we going to do?’ We’re a team.”

  “Oh, Shan,” Ell snuffled a little into his neck, “you shouldn’t get involved in this.”

  “We’re a team,” he said firmly. “I’m already involved in it, because my wife’s involved.” He held her out at arm’s length and leaned down to look into her downcast eyes. “I think we should get in our old truck and head that way as soon as I finish my run. It’ll be an adventure.”

  “OK,” Ell said, leaning in for another hug. “You go finish your run. I’ll pack up some stuff to take along.”

  It was late afternoon when they drove past USP Lee. The penitentiary’s forbidding concrete walls and towers were visible from Highway 58 but they couldn’t see very well because of trees and the fact that the prison was on a little plateau higher than the road. They drove past the prison and into Jonesville, then turned and drove back to Kingsport just across the border into Tennessee. They got a motel room and went out to dinner.