Chapter 12: The state of Texas
I focused on the Battlenet feeds while my cousins slapped hands and whooped. I threw them the thumbs up, palm down sign and listened to Rafe. "Thanks for the lift, Condor. We’ll call if we run out of money or get too drunk to drive." The pilot’s voice crackled past his cockpit noise filters, "De nada, Tortuga. You watch your brothers and stay out of trouble. Entering racetrack this time." The Lifter would be loitering overhead in an oval pattern.
I switched focus to the Stalker drone feed. It was about two hundred meters above a street in a town. A map check showed this was Clyde, Texas. The propeller had extruded from the front cone of the drone, lowering stall speed and even quieter than the muffled jet engine it used. "Dropping to SLIR run," the Drone Pilot said. He pronounced it "Slur." The ground flew up and then the nose of the drone leveled off about thirty meters over the ground. I could clearly see pedestrians below, but none looked up.
"Shooting," said the Mission Commander. I couldn’t see anything from the drone, but another feed showed a jerky infrared movie of a van at a charger. Three red blobs inside and another outside. The drone swept into a climb and showed only high, thin clouds for a while. "Tally. You are go for run," said the Mission Commander. "Roger, Home," replied the Pilot, "Go for run this time." That would be the strafing run.
The drone wheeled around in the sky. For a second the sliver of moon I could see out of the van window looked like a blazing sun to the drone. Then the earth filled the view. I saw the I-20 highway straight down. The nose started coming up and the buildings of Clyde were visible ahead. "On path, commencing run," said the invisible Pilot. I wondered if he even had a body. Many drone pilots were retasked uploads, waiting for a Medical Writ zombie.
The propeller shrank as dive speed came up. In the nose of the drone’s propeller was the cannon. It was sized small at fifteen millimeters. Larger would have overpowered the airframe. It used compressed propellant, to keep the sound level and weight down. The drone itself was used to accelerate the ordnance. "Puff acquiring," The Pilot was referring to the targeting program. A violet line of laser light suddenly connected the drone with the ground. It would be invisible to human sight. The laser line came up to fix on a van under a charging station rain canopy. The Stalker must be very low. "Locked. Safeties free." If I had waited for his voice to rise, I would have missed the whole thing. The Pilot sounded like he was reading school texts aloud to the blind. "Engaging."
A chain of small vapor puffs appeared at the nose of the drone to be shredded away in the wind. The nose of the drone rose suddenly and I was looking at those thin clouds again. "Shot," said the Pilot. "Tracking," said the Commander. I received a new feed from the Garda net, a widening cone of red specks closing with a stick figure graphic of the station. The cone suddenly enlarged with thousands of little red dots. "Good deploy," said the Commander. The red specks intersected the station graphic.
I switched to the camera feed from the charge station. I could see the nose and passenger side of the gray van. The image got blurry for two jerky frames, like something fast was moving across the view. Then, one of the abductors walked into frame from the charger side of the van, just visible from the knees down. He was putting paper towels into a trash flap. When he stooped to get a squeegee, I saw it was Ogre. Pretty sure, anyway. The station camera was so bad it was almost fraud to call it a security system. Ogre cleaned the windshield, or that was implied by his standing at the van nose with the squeegee. All we could see was his legs moving from side to side. I could imagine the mess. What the Stalker drone had fired were saboted gnats.
They were one of the early delivery systems for Nanotech. When you wanted to send small packages without raising questions, a cloud of insects was explainable. Even after the technique was known, it continued to fool. You would need an entomologist with a microscope to check. This generation was a tiny blob of green glue, protecting an even smaller tracking tag. Short, stiff bristles around the outside came to a point at the nose. In flight, it was unguided but aerodynamic. The impact was barely noticeable. When it struck something, it stuck like paint. Texture and appearance mimicked a mangled bug. The miniature cannon of the drone had packaged hundreds of these little mock gnats with every round.
I switched back to the Stalker feeds. The outline of the front of the van was clearly marked by red tags. I could also see parts of the station sparkling red. As the van started moving, errant red tags on the station began winking out. When they were gone, the Mission Commander said "Thanks Signals, looks good." The focus widened and satellite imagery textured the stick frames. Our target van was labeled "Ford Nexstar." It was getting eastbound on the I-20.
"There’s your feed Tortuga," the Mission Commander said, addressing our Battlenet handle. "We’re coming up on time for the bird, will you all be needing it some more tonight?" The accent was more noticeable when Texan Garda weren’t using canned commands. None of us had a use for the drone that would justify the expense. "Ah, thanks but no thanks on that bird, Home. We’re happy with the feed. You all have yourselves a nice night now." Right back at you, Tex.
Rafe started the Swat van forward. The lights came on and we accelerated down the onramp to the highway. I backgrounded the feeds and closed old links. My cousins were staring at me like I had two heads. "Man, you were far away there," Lucho said. "Why were you talking like a Texan?" The Cocktail number 7 must have focused me into the Battlenet. I wiped at the corner of my mouth, checking for drool. Dry, thank god.
I went for distraction to get past the awkward questions. "Took care of a little business and made some calls. Look at your lenses." I sent them the tracking feed and threw up the station video. "The van is about forty minutes behind us. Rafe is going to find us a fold in the road and then we’re going to get our girls back."
That seemed to work. Lucho and Lalo looked surprised, as though slapped. Then Lucho’s eyes hardened, "Orale! You guys are good. Hell yes, we want our girls back." Lalo piped in with his own "Hell yes."
I fed them terrain maps and specs on the Swat van. Walked them through a "Dead Stop" ambush plan adapted for circumstance. By the time we had crossed a good hill and Rafe backed us into the trees, they had an idea of what we were going to do. And they forgot about my little slip, hopefully.
Etienne killed time with a story about rescuing some fashionista models from a Dead Stop ambush. This time, he was in Moscow and the girls were Russian. He delved into the technical plan and then gave lurid details about their gratitude. Etienne had a talent for believable storytelling. His wink let me know he was doing his own bit for distracting my cousins.
Rafe also contributed by saying, "Not that story again! You need to do something new so you don’t become a bore." The statement implied the story was genuine, without actually saying so. It also gave him an excuse to withdraw from conversation and watch the Battlenet. He would let us know when the show would start.
"Ten minutes out," he finally said, "Condor has visual." Etienne and I stood up. "Places everyone, the show will start in a moment," I directed Lucho to the driver’s seat and Lalo to a box of flares. Rafe had already exited outside and disappeared. Etienne opened the back door and hopped out. He gave me a nod, shut the door and disappeared.
I crouched behind Lucho in the driver’s seat. "OK compadres, the beam is going to fire automatically. When the van is hit the lights will go off and it will roll to a stop. We are going to move out and shield the van with some traffic controls. Until we get that done, the van is at risk of getting hit, so be quick." I enlarged the tracking feed and added the Lifter visual feed. "I’m going to watch the approach, so don’t interrupt or touch anything until I tell you."
On the roof of our Swat van was a short range Area Suppression Weapon. It was a bolt on package used by riot police and urban zone Garda. The robot arm aimed a microwave emitter at a wide area up to five hundred meters away. The beam could be varied based on need. Want a crowd dispersed? Tune for flesh and give them cooking waves. It was
mostly non-lethal. Want phones and cars to stop? Tune for energy and fry their computer chips. It worked on anything not metal shielded. In this case, we would turn their Ford Nexstar into an unpowered box.
The system powered up, tickling my Skin receptors. The target van was coming to the hill. As it crested, the silhouette gave a great, isolated target. I felt the discharge and the headlights went off as it continued coasting downhill. "OK Lucho, pull forward after he goes by." The Swat van slowly rolled toward the highway with the lights off.
Tibbet made the decision to pull off to the right shoulder. We had hoped he would, but he came to a stop a little further back than projected. The Swat van was closer than Rafe and Etienne. "Lucho, turn in behind him and stop. We aren’t going to need the traffic controls."
He stopped us next to trees about fifty meters back from the Nexstar van when I tapped his shoulder. "Lalo, check your load for rubber slugs and watch my back out here." While he did that, I told Lucho, "If we ask for it, I want you to slap this button here for just a second." I flipped the safety cover off the Red fire button for the ASW microwave. Then I set it for area denial. "Only slap it for a second and only if we ask for it, comprende?" I really hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. I would be in the beam if it all went wrong.
Lalo opened the back doors and we got off. It was very dark on the shoulder and a water retention ditch to the right of that was treacherous footing. Lalo slid in some mud and went to one knee. Thankfully, he didn’t discharge his shotgun. The training was keeping him tactical.
"Lalo, since you’re already wet, work your way up this ditch to the van. I’ll be up ahead on your left, so don’t shoot me. If there are guns, get down in that ditch and cover me. Rafe and Etienne will be here soon, so don’t shoot them either." I told him this while adding combat handsign to trigger his training. He nodded understanding and stepped off carefully. Lalo was the most controlled cousin; the number 7 had the strongest hold. He would be steady at my back.
I dropped down into the Gorilla stance. Knuckle guards and toes, suspended by the exoskeleton. It kept my profile low and was a quiet way to move fast. I angled along the ditch line long enough to pass Lalo, then angled up for the back corner of the Ford. Light amplification gave me a good look at the terrain. It also made me remember the first time I fought Deni Lee Ogre. He had noticeably enlarged pupils. Either drugs or body mods were going to be a factor. Their bar bills made me think that it was some kind of drug.
Easing in the last few meters, I gained position behind the passenger cargo door. It helped that there was a blind spot and I stayed lower than the windows. I could hear an argument inside. Male voices only, consisting mostly of expletives. They seemed more concerned about their phones not working than the van. One wanted to walk back to Ranger and call "Castle." The other was paranoid and thought trouble was coming. I heard a metallic click that sounded like a weapon.
I checked the Battlenet. Etienne was crawling in toward the front of the Ford. Lalo was still picking his way down the ditch. Rafe was across the highway in the median. Rafe could see Tibbet, swiveled around in the passenger seat. Correlating his visual with what I could hear let me place Tibbet as the paranoid speaker with the gun. My feed of the conversation let the rest of the team draw independent conclusions. "I can blow out the window," Rafe offered. His shotgun would need that obstacle out of the way to put follow up shots on target.
If Tibbet cooperated, that is. I believed it would be more of a distraction, forcing him to move. Crouching down further, I sub vocalized, "On my mark, Lalo can fire up this side when you hit the other." Rafe clicked compliance. Lalo made a little noise, getting into position, but clicked compliance fairly quickly. "Guerillas in the mist," I told my sergeants. They would understand the reference. "When Ogre exits."
Our problem was the locked doors. I could probably pull a door off regardless, but it would take too much time. Better to wait for the helpful kidnappers to figure out what we already knew. Someone in there had to get help and the other one would have to hold the girls in the van and wait. It was almost physics. That it was taking so long was an indicator of their paranoia. Tibbet was sure they weren’t alone out here. Ogre was impatient to get away. They reached compromise. I heard their agreement and the noise of a large body moving around inside. "Ready," I hissed through clenched teeth. Slipped my left hand onto the door handle and set my crouch. Ogre slid open the side door. I rocked back with the door to stay out of sight until it was fully open. Ogre stuck his head out to see the ground before exiting. I said, "Now."
The blast from the ditch and the passenger window shattering seemed to happen simultaneously. I stood up enough to cup my hand on the back of Ogre's head and yank him out of the van, trying my best to land him on his head. He had good reflexes and landed on a shoulder instead. I couldn’t pay much attention to him, being occupied by a quick entry of the van. Tibbet was down between the front seats with a pistol. He was looking toward the passenger window, but quickly noticed me and reoriented. I wasn’t going to make it, so I dived back out of the van. Tibbet fired a send-off shot that went left. When I hit the ground I said, "Lucho, the red button." Then I lost it for a second, like everybody else in the area.
The Skins reacted to the beam by tightening up and dropping me to the ground. Pain reflexes for Skins were usually lifesavers, but in this case it just left me immobilized for a second. I felt like my skin was on fire. Heartfelt shrieks from multiple throats blanketed the area. I heard the girls, adding strained sopranos. And then it was over. The Skins recovered and helped me into a crouch while my own skin still burned. I looked at the open van door and visualized the front seats. When I could trust my judgment through the pain, I sprang. Left foot on the doorjamb, hands to the frame. Correct for the driver’s side and push off with the left leg. My shoulder struck the back of the seat Tibbet had shifted behind, crouched in the foot well. He had dropped the pistol, a flinch reaction when it burned his hand. The seat bent forward to pin him to the dash and steering wheel. I heard Lalo’s shotgun go off, then Tibbet began struggling.
He was a strong cabrón, bending the seat back toward me and getting some wiggle room. He was so intent, he missed Etienne leaning in the driver’s window and unlocking the door. I relaxed my grip and watched him scramble onto the seat. His Skins had burst out of his shirt at the biceps. "Skins," I alerted. It didn’t matter to Etienne. He opened the driver’s door and yanked Tibbet out onto the road by his right arm. Tibbet rolled up to a crouch, but I could see Rafe trotting across the road behind him. "Is that you Mister Tibbet? We have been looking for you all day," Etienne lilted. He slapped the van door closed. Mister Tibbet was well in hand.
That left Ogre to attend to. I disarmed the pistol and kept the slide. It was a handy weight of metal. The girls were chained to the child seat hooks, but I didn’t have time for them yet. A flash and a boom showed Lalo crouched at the ditch and firing his shotgun. Less visible was Ogre. His favored colors blended well, except the face. I saw that ghostly face for a moment and then he turned toward the trees and sprinted. "In pursuit," I said, moving into my own sprint. As I passed Lalo, I said "Get the girls." Light amplification wasn’t working so well, among the trees, so I switched to thermal. A red blob to my left resolved into a terrified rabbit, frozen by gunfire. I slid up the Battlenet overview on one lens to orient myself with my team. I heard Rafe say, "Lucho, pull up and get the girls."
There was a glimpse of a running man between trees up ahead. I reoriented and gave chase.
"Condor, I could use some eyes over here." I pleaded.
"Roger, Tortuga. Where am I looking?" The pilot sounded bored, I hoped it wasn’t a sugar low.
"Up ahead of me about a hundred meters." Battlenet gave me a view from the air using the Lifter avionics. I saw myself flash by, moving south through a line of trees between a field of grass on the right and a field of rocks left. Up ahead, the trees stopped at an old dirt road.
Ogre ran out of the trees and into the r
oad, earning a red box around his image on the Lifter feed. "Movement, Contrary" and "Human" said the labels. Then "Red 2" replaced the other labels.
"Tally, Tortuga. Moving south on road. Clocking him at thirty kph," the pilot said, "He’s heading toward a flooded quarry." I picked up my own speed, using the overhead view to steer a path. "Keep him in sight Condor. I’ll intercept."
Easier said, in this case. He was moving pretty fast for conditions. I believed now he was using some sort of drug and a pretty good Skin. No wonder he had slapped me on the pavement like a wet diaper. I was lucky he didn’t kill me. Top line Skins and a common van looked like professional tools for muscle. These guys were acquiring the stink of bad money.
I cleared the trees onto a dirt road. Now I could really stretch out. Checking my feeds, Ogre was discovering the quarry in his path. I began to catch up. He was slowing and veering west to avoid the pond. The Lifter feed showed a rock field in his path followed by another line of trees. I was rapidly closing. "Condor if you would, give him a few seconds of candlepower." Intense light circled a figure out on a rocky flat. I kept my eyes down and ran on until the light shut off.
Now Ogre was barely walking straight. His organic mods could not adjust to the overload of light. He was blinded. It would only last a moment. I turned my speed into an elevation change atop a large rock. That led to a long leap close to Ogre. He heard my close movement and turned around. I flipped the pistol slide at his face and charged.
He was still fast, but batting the slide away put him off balance for my running arm bar. He was flipped to his back as I continued past, building up charge on the Skins and wheeling for another go. He turned that ghostly face to me from a crouch. One eye was closed, trying to recover vision while its mate gave him a blurry sense of my movement. His block was slow and my backfist got through, sending charge to the side of his neck. Then I got a surprise. If my Skins took that kind of voltage, they would have tightened up and twitched away from contact. I was already sending a hammer fist where his head should be when that happened. Instead I was swinging at air. He had broad jumped away like a galvanized frog.
The unusual Skin response had obvious problems for Ogre. He landed eight meters away, failed to get his feet under him and bounced from the impact. A puff of dust hid where he lay. I slid close enough to see his crouch in that screen of dust and then he snapped his arm in a pitcher’s toss. A large stone struck my visor, hard enough to transfer energy to the bones of my face. One eye flashed white and scrambled my night vision. Without the thermal images on the visor, I would have been blind. For a moment, pain stole my attention. When my blood’s Nano compiled a response, I felt the pain fade. Ogre was readying another rock.
The Lifter pilot saved me a painful experience by lighting the area up again. Ogre’s rock flew over my left shoulder. My visor darkened like a welders mask, but thermals still showed the scene. Ogre was night-blind again. He turned and ran, using the bright light to pick his footing.
"Condor, that’s enough light, thanks." The pilot replied, "He is heading toward a riacho in the trees." A flowing stream makes a good obstacle. The lights went off. I looked up and saw the Lifter as a collection of heat sources riding on blowing columns. It spun around and gained altitude.
Ogre was picking himself up and weaving away, having tripped when the lights went off. He was making poor time, stumbling through tall grass concealing rocks. His body language was tired. Looked to me that maybe the bull had been run enough to take down. My feet picked a sure path through the rocks. I was quieter this time, closing from behind. By the time he turned, it just served to better expose his jaw. He still had some quick left but not much wind. I gave him Russian Systema, lots of fast delivery at close ranges, until he fell while backing up. Once down, I put the boots in to empty those lungs. He became passive enough to slip a bear hug over him and build charge. I had a moment with my mouth next to his left ear, "Deni Lee, you should get over to the gym first thing when you get to prison." After I put him to sleep, I had to shock the Skins again to get them off. They did that kicking frog response the whole time. Put up quite a fight by themselves.
Of course, Etienne runs up out of the dark after all the sweaty parts are over. "How long did you have to wait out there for me to finish?" I asked.
"I only just arrived," he claimed, "Monsieur Tibbet was showing us his collection of pocket knives. He seemed to have dozens." I looked Etienne over closely. He had an oozing patch on the neck of his Skins. His right hand dripped red blood slowly, "Everybody still breathing back there?" Etienne sketched a salute and said, "Premier ordre, I would have mentioned if it was worth mentioning."
I called Condor for a lift. We were the better part of a kilometer away from the vans and Deni Lee was plasticuffed, hands to feet, as carry-on luggage. Etienne heaved him aboard like an oversized purse and I grabbed his Skins. The Lifter was up and away before we found seats. I focused on the Battlenet feeds, picking a landing. "Rafe, lets load the Ford and everybody in the Lifter. You and Etienne can drive our Tortuga back to Abilene. We’ll be at Dyess base."
Etienne quipped from beside me, "That is a lot of Navarro’s in an enclosed space, someone could end up pregnant." Rafe heard the feed and agreed, "You have reason, they must be chaperoned. You should keep Etienne. I would rather listen to the radio than his stories." They were worried about sending the abductors off with their former victims. I hadn’t really considered it. Having a little number 7 blind spot moment. Civil lawyers would have made us regret that.
It wasn’t an issue at the Dyess Garda base. Military Police impounded the van and jailed our abductors. No charges were read or required for forty eight hours. The rest of us were whisked off to medical. To Father Cervantes, we reported the seizures and arranged transport. To Saint Peter, we committed the uploads of Tibbet and Sanborn. The girls were uploaded as witnesses. I pondered the therapeutic value of letting the girls watch some interrogations while the surgeons rebuilt my occipital bones. I knew I was looking forward to seeing a few.
Chelo and Sweetie were in puzzling shape. Both had been drugged with a veterinary grade tranquilizer. Chelo had slept unmolested on a bubble wrap bed in the back. Sweetie had been beaten and raped. Trauma counselors kept us away, but their witnesses were available for our questions. I reviewed the first draft.
Chelo had had a little fit in the van, scratching and screaming in Ogre’s face. Sweetie had a probable concussion from the fight and Chelo would not be calmed. Ogre did not hit her, only grappled. Tibbet pulled over to get the truck Sangrons and they swarmed her under. All the Sangrons from the truck, except Aroz, later got off at a Chihuahua street corner. Some were bleeding and one was unconscious. I think most of that was me, but nobody marked her. She was valuable to them undamaged.
Not so Sweetie. Ogre made a point of hurting Sweetie while Chelo was tied down. "Your girlfriend is a bonus. From now on, when you get under my skin, I’ll get into hers." Ogre and Aroz assaulted Sweetie during the drive to Delgado’s. They only stopped when Chelo pleaded for her whipping girl’s life. The technique was literally medieval, but it worked all the same. I wondered which of them thought of it.
After overnighting at Delgado’s, they had left Aroz and taken the girls to a darkened charge station out on Avenida Hidalgo. Just pulled into the mechanics bay and shut the door. They had a bathroom and vending machines running, but no lights. The place was closed during a "Capacitor upgrade." It appeared they had planned this bolt hole well. Tibbet spent all morning on his phone. In the afternoon, they just drifted north with traffic. Both girls were mostly unconscious before that, from a powdered drink Tibbet prepared. They gave Sweetie a little less over worry about a concussion. No one wanted a long road trip with a corpse in the van. She rode strapped to a seat, but was in and out of consciousness. Sweetie remembered going through Juarez but couldn’t name any of the other towns or where they stopped. She sounded so lost and hurt, my eyes welled. I became angry.
Buzzers went off i
n the recovery room and I lost the net feed. A medico was looking down at me, "Whoa there, Marshal. You’re just coming off the number 7." He pressed a button and the buzzing stopped, "You need to stay calm for me or your immune system is going to undo a lot of healing." He looked off to the side and his lips moved, then refocused at me. "I can’t give you number 7 until morning. I’ve been provided a link for your Happy Place. Go there and try to stay relaxed." He wouldn’t let me back in the team net.
I appeared in my chaise lounge on the seaside patio, like slow teleportation. Dorothea pushed my arm and said, "You haven’t heard anything I’ve said. No more Sangria for you." It was dusk and the sea was reflecting a burnt orange sunset. A mostly empty glass of sangria was in my cup holder. I felt strangely bodiless, an anesthetized version of myself. "Let’s go inside and watch a show." Dorothea tugged my arm and I felt more solid. We went inside.
My hina went to make wedges of Torta media ahogada, sort of a spicy French Dip from Jalisco. She never needed much urging to cook for me and I wanted fewer distractions for a minute. The media wall configured for playback, protesting loss of signal from several subscription feeds. The Doctor had cut my bandwidth to basic services. I was only getting about a hundred channels, but one of the basic feeds had a webmail function.
My recall of the girl’s witness was already fuzzy. I tried to find and examine that anger. It kept slipping away. I brought up the webmail and composed a letter to Tio and Memo. As I wrote to them of the girl’s ordeal, my anger crept back. I was using a backchannel to hack my own feelings, writing a letter to find new paths to lost memory. Between the Doctor and Happy Place protocols, I was having a hard time holding on to negative emotions. When I finally sent the message, an unrealized weight lifted. I fell asleep on the couch with Dorothea five minutes into her show.
I woke in my bed to sounds of the sea. Dorothea was still asleep, one hip exposed from the sheets. It took a moment, with her unwitting distraction, to piece together how I got here. When I remembered, I got out of bed and went to the living room. Before I could sit on the couch, the doorbell rang. Father Cervantes was there, wearing a black cassock with the collar and silver cross. "Buenos dias, Marshal. How are you feeling?"
"Hoy me siento mejor." I did feel better. Dorothea came out of the bedroom dressed for visitors. "Would you like some café, Father?" He looked a long moment at Dorothea and then at me. My Happy Place was my own selection and so gave insights to my mind. Whatever conclusions the Father reached, he kept to himself. "That would be welcome, gracias."
We settled in to cups of café at the breakfast nook. Dorothea took hers in the living room, "You two have business to discuss. I will go watch my telenovelas. So nice to meet you Father." Cervantes smiled and said, "You are a gracious hostess. I, too, am pleased we met." He addressed her but ended up looking at me. That appraising look from before. When she had gone he said, "This place is not what I expected. Is Dorothea modeled from someone you know?"
I had purchased the specs at a Build-A-Mate site. Thinking back, it occurred to me that she was an amalgamation of women I had known. "She is modeled after several gracious women I have met." It was a better answer than "She is an idealized companion I bought." Some subjects you discuss with a priest require careful wording.
"Jesuits do not typically build Happy Places. We use workspaces, but they are re-creations of actual locations," Cervantes told me. "I now see an appeal for this bubble of calm. Most Happy Places are filled with puerile fantasies. Yours though, has a more mature appreciation of God’s works." I told the Father, "There is a French proverb my Sergeants like to say. Wine will not keep in a foul vessel. I find that to be true." He smiled in consideration, "An appropriate proverb, I shall have to remember it."
Eventually, he got around to business. "That proverb should be inscribed at the entrance to Gneflheim. It is the most foul of vessels I have ever encountered." His lip curled in distaste. "We have established a collection of puppet strings attached to the criminals in our custody. They dance to the tune of whoever controls the game world." He looked upward and said, "Grant that God will illuminate our search for this evil." I said, "Lord, hear our prayer." It seemed the correct response for what was essentially a prayer. Father Cervantes smiled at me, "You appreciate the spiritual position quite well. I am sure we will prevail with men such as you at our side." He rose from the table and said, "Collect yourself, Marshal and meet me in the Real. The Doctor has given you the number 7 and is even now releasing you for work." He walked to the door, but faded away before reaching it. I considered his visit. He didn’t convey any important information. It was more of an ontological check, accessing a patient’s lucidity. After a last look around, I faded back to the hospital bed.
The Doctor was leaning over me. "Back in your head, I see. Don’t try to move yet, I want to tell you about your face." He touched something on the side of my head, "Very important. This cold patch needs to stay on for another six hours. Nano makes a lot of heat, so this will keep it from damaging tissue." He raised his hand up and formed a "C" around the orbit of his eye, "You broke the bone about where my thumb is. It is re-pinned and grafted but not fully healed." He dropped his hand back to the bed. It drew my eye to his name patch; Larson, C. "Just take it easy on your face for the next month or so and you will avoid needing cosmetic reconstruction." He crossed his arms and glared down at me, "I trust that won’t be a problem for you?"
I gave him a cocky grin, "Chill the face for six and stop using it to knock on doors, check." He had a disbelieving look but nodded his head. I was discharged.
My Skins were gone, probably to a transfuser station. I discovered a set of Garda BDU’s and boots to put on. It appeared they were left for me and fit as well as they ever did. An orderly came in and stripped off the bedding while I dressed, "Your men are asking about you out front." He pushed my pillow into a burn bag. I went out front.
Etienne and Rafe were chatting with the nurses. Rafe was less serious, breaking off to walk toward me. "So there you are!" He stepped close and examined my face, letting me see a flesh patch over his left earlobe. "That blue mask is not your color. How long must you live with it?"
"Six hours," I said. "Bon," offered Rafe, "I will keep you away from pretty girls that long." He led me to the outside, pausing only to slap Etienne on the rear in passing, "Come along, Lover. These ladies have people to save."
We went to a hanger off the airstrip. Inside was the Forensics moving truck, the Swat van and a Ford Nextar. Two Skins hung from hangers and a table was strewn with trash. Father Cervantes and Nacio were picking through the trash with plastic gloves. They stopped when we entered and came around the table, "Come see what we found." They led us to the Skins.
"This is a custom variant of an Indian Tiger Skin. Fast twitch but lower stamina. Good foot speed as I’m sure you noticed. They are thin enough to pass beneath clothing. Microtags show they are prizes from Gneflheim. Tibbet’s new body was also a prize." Father Cervantes moved to the flat table.
"Powder residue in some packaging contained the tranquilizer. It appears homebrewed, a street drug." He poked his pen among the trash to reveal a blister pack. "This is Cocktail number 10A5v12, a fairly potent children’s enhancement drug you may have seen before. I am running the batch numbers for records." He continued flipping packages to show a prescription bottle with no lid. "This held a powder residue we are still breaking down. Another street drug with a variety of effects, most of them recreational." He pointed his pen at the Forensic truck. "Their cell phones are being dissected in the truck. High end commercial types with some privacy software. We are back tracing phone records and pulling encryption keys." The Father led us up to the back of the Forensic truck. I could see an array of weapons and two wallets on the right bench seat.
"We didn’t retrieve the pistol slide, but all serial tags have been destroyed on the frame. I did get a donated slide from the Range Master, so ballistics are available." I had seen the pistol when I disarmed it, th
e proverbial black gun. That it was a throw down was no surprise.
"These edged weapons were produced from slit pouches in Alex Tibbet’s Skins." They were a nasty collection of push daggers, shuriken and skinners. Four were stained purple on their edges with positive blood reaction. I looked at Rafe and Etienne more closely. Rafe was having none of it, "Where did that slide get off to, Marshal? I believe you were the last to see it." Pendejo.
"I was entertaining Mr. Sanborn with it out in a rock field. He threw it somewhere." Father Cervantes looked between the two of us, trying to read context. He hadn’t gotten much of a report on last night’s Dead Stop ambush. Saint Peter had not yet compiled it. "I expect we have everything of value from the gun already," the Father told us, "Let’s get through this last little bit and then we’ll conference." He turned to a flatscreen.
"Both men had the usual wallet contents with a few anomalies," The Father pivoted the screen toward us. It loaded a scan of a key, rotating on two axes. "Cee type electronic key. Used for a variety of security boxes. Two key operation. Our feeling is a mailbox or delivery bin." The next scan was a front and back document capture. "VIP passes to a club in Dallas. They both had these. We’re running that down with Dallas Garda." Father paused a moment, then continued, "I warned Dallas away from any known addresses. We’ll know more after we get the interrogations. Why don’t we conference in your Swat van?"
We exited the lab in a box and sealed ourselves in the larger Swat van. "Where are my deputies?" I asked no one in particular. "They are at the PX getting some civilian clothing" said Rafe, "After that I told them to bring our Skins back. We have a little while." Father turned to his Scholastic brother, "Ignacio, keep an eye out if you would." Nacio slipped outside as overwatch. We immersed in the network. I had a little deficit of study time to make up, so I skimmed the summaries quickly.
The abductors were going to Dallas to hole up at a truck stop Microtel. From there they would have been heading east to Shreveport, Louisiana. Tomorrow night they were supposed to be delivering the girls to a club owner there. All particulars were available. Motivations were murkier. Tibbet had a rat as a familiar in the Gneflheim game world. The rat, who he called Mickey, had provided details for the abduction. Chelo was the target, but Sweetie was a secondary. The rat had suggested the whipping girl ploy for control. The connection to Delgado was as a sort of subcontractor, providing muscle and bandwidth locally. Ogre had already worked with him arranging accidents for journalists. Pay off for all involved would be cash drops and gaming points. It reminded me of net swarms. Mobs of bored youths would sign up for deployment by unseen pranksters. They would converge at GPS locations on short notice and pursue frivolous goals before dispersing. These were harmless, mostly, but several prosecutions for economic disruption had created forensic tools for tracing the command chains. This criminal net swarm used a more obscure communications net. It was frustrating to back chain. The van and pistol had been parked in a supermarket for pickup. Just GPS coordinates and a hacked key remote taped to the fender well. The van GPS contained way points for Delgado’s, Saint Francis Academy and the Tacos Borracho parking lot. No idea who provided it, only that it was stolen from long term parking at a Suborbital port. The owners were spending a week in New Zealand.
The drugs showed up in Tibbet’s apartment delivery bin. Not a recorded delivery, just dropped off. They probably had used the key we held to gain access. Another dead end.
We were seeing a rank hierarchy from the game world carried over to the real. Tibbet was a Seventh Circle Dedicant who had won prizes from Gneflheim at several online festivals. He seemed to be the Leader so far. Sanborn was also in the Seventh Circle, but not quite as prized as Tibbet. He had his original body and no game familiar. I thought he was the Assistant. Delgado had a familiar but no major prize awards. He was still working toward the Seventh Circle. He was the Facilitator. The Sangrons were pure muscle without any major prizes. All were fairly high level Gneflheim players. The game world was the only common organizing thread.
Saint Peter suggested we run the transfer at the club. He could provide details from the interrogations to get us dopplegangered as Tibbet and Sanborn. We go in and grab the next link in the chain as soon as possible. Shreveport was six hours away. If Saint Peter gamed that it wouldn’t work out, we could be in Dallas in three and look for leads there. Either way, a road trip.
I called Tio about Memo. He would have to let Memo out of the simulator and send him north for me. Saint Peter had already arranged a Travelers Rest suite in Dallas for him. "Sobrino, que paso?" he asked. "Tio, I can’t come back yet and it's time for Memo to get out of the simulator. Can you get a pen and paper and I’ll give you the details?" He put the phone down and I heard Esmeralda in the background, then the phone clattered as he picked it up again. "OK, go ahead."
I gave him the shut down procedure and suggested lots of coffee. "He will seem a little drunk when he comes out. He will probably be very hungry too. Just get him showered, fill him with coffee and give him the stack of gear next to the simulator." I gave Tio the Travelers Rest details and told him about Lucho’s Mastretta, still parked at the Policia station. "The keys are on the hook in Lucho’s room."
"I will send him to Dallas as you say," Tio told me, "But I would like to speak with you when you get back. Vaya con dios." The call ended. I wondered what more he had to say.
****