* * * *
Maggie critically surveyed her appearance in the mirror behind the bathroom door. She was now just minutes away from making her appearance on the ballroom floor of Scone. "How about that?" she smiled in the mirror to her partner, who was straightening his bow-tie and cummerbund behind her.
"You look marvelous, my dear girl," he exclaimed, grabbing her by the arm and leading her to the drink table. He poured champaign into two glasses. "Here's to making the impossible possible!" As he lifted his glass, a voice spoke in his earpiece - 'Cheers!' "I got you, Harry?"
"All the way in. You hear me, Maggie?"
"Unfortunately it seems that I have to with this thing in my ear. Where are you anyway?"
"Not telling. My secret for now."
"By the way, Harry, let's keep things silent unless it's an emergency. I don't want all the ladies I'm dancing with to be drawn away by your alluring voice," he laughed. "Everything in position? Will we have a clear path through to the target hallway?"
"As clear as a summer day in Bermuda - which, I may add, is where I'm headed once this Scottish fun is done. How were the recordings? I didn't get to hear any of them."
"Perfect, if I do say so myself. You agree, Maggie?" She had walked into the bathroom to put an additional dab of blusher on her nose.
"Magnifique! You are the next Olivier."
"Come on, let's get out of here before our fine Lady Jennifer comes after us herself."
"She's going to be there?! Oh, spare me!"
"She's not that bad, Maggie. Give me a break," he smiled as he led his 'graduate assistant' out the door while she mimicked their hostess's bows and smiles and laughs.
They followed the sound of voices chatting and glasses tinkling toward the reception room at the far end of Scone. A butler announced them and they entered, soon finding Lady Jennifer, who proceeded to introduce them to this and that neighbor and local politician. 'At Yale? In the States?' ; 'You are studying the paper mache vases? Wonderful.' ; 'You heard of the robbery attempt? How dreadful!'
Dean Westerfield and Lynn Peterson made their way around the floor, waiting for the crucial moment when they would make their unexcused exit. Out stepped the Minister of Defense and the Duke, ready to lead the evening's festivities. They approached the podium.
"Welcome, friends and family, to Scone!" Everyone clapped for formality's sake. "I have the honor to introduce our esteemed colleague and friend, who drove all the way up from London to see us," laughter, "Minister Simpson." Everyone clapped as the Minister of Defense climbed the steps and walked past the band.
"Thank you, Richard. The honor is all mine. I couldn't think of a more healthy respite from the daily business of the government than a visit to Scone and our Scottish friends. For now, however, I hate to bore you with more verbiage so I will allow the band to take over." He smiled and waved.
The music began to play and the dance floor was cleared. This was the cue for Dean and Lynn to step aside. She raised her arm for him to smell her perfume, and his lips moved to her bracelet. "Harry, all set?"
"Yup. Got ya. I just need about two minutes to check all the detonator settings on the outside area up front. Hold tight and keep clear to make the break." Maggie grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him further down the wall after seeing Lady Jennifer nearby. This was no time for chit chat.
Their hostess pursued. "Damn, what's she up to? She's following."
"Don't make eye contact but keep an eye on her. Also, try to move toward the door instead of away from it." He smiled at her, pretending to laugh at something she said. "Watch the clock. Two minutes."
Maggie's back rubbed up against a table of hors d’ouevres. No place to move but onto the dance floor. As she turned to look behind, Lady Jennifer came up quickly.
"My American friends! How do you enjoy the party?!"
"Splendid indeed, my lady," he turned to her. "Astounding, the job they've done here. Quite magnificent."
"I've heard the Duke really likes to entertain."
"He seems to be in his medium in a large crowd of politicians."
She laughed. "Would you like to dance? I can't help it when they're playing American oldies."
He quickly glanced at Maggie, whose wide smile cloaked her concern. "Oh, I don't think my bad knee would appreciate it, my lady. I'm. . ."
She took him by the arm. "Please, we'll take it slowly."
"Harry, Harry," Maggie began panting into her bracelet, frantically scanning the eyes of the security men around the room. "Hold up, we've got problems. Hold until my signal." No response. "Harry, do you hear me?" No answer. She grasped her right earring and began to hear a faint static. Either Harry's connection had malfunctioned or he had been found inside the air duct and captured. Maggie began to dance with the music, spinning in the direction of her partner. She looked Lady Jennifer in the eye, smiling and nodding. Dean Westerfield saw her out of the corner of his eye coming toward them and knew instantly that something was wrong. Maggie began to wave at him, but allowed her fingers to fling upwards toward the ceiling - she meant that Harry had flown away, and it was time for them either to follow along on their own or be captured.
She made her way through the crowd toward the large window overlooking the now dark lawn. She came up against a tall security man and smiled a friendly good evening to him just before he was thrown forward on top of her by the panes of glass shattering inward at the blast of a detonation just outside.
Screams rose through the ballroom and a masked soldier appeared on the ledge. He fired his gun into the air and cried out over the din first in Gaelic and then in English with a strong Irish accent. As he pointed his rifle at the crowd, the sound of machine gun fire sputtered down from the speakers Harry had planted in the light fixtures above them and small pellets exploded from beneath the plaster on the opposite wall. The team of MI5 counterterrorism agents stationed throughout the castle began running in their direction. They arrived just in time to witness a compact paramilitary IRA unit enter through the window as explosions continued both inside and outside.
Lady Jennifer hung tightly to Dean Westerfield and there would be no getting away without her - until a large man, charging unusually fast with Maggie's aid, collided with the two dancers, flinging the young lady to the ground and then falling on top of her. Maggie grabbed him and began heading through the panicked crowd toward the door.
Both threw guests violently aside as they reached into their pockets for their night vision-enabling goggles, just in time for Harry to cut all power to the castle, except for his battery powered hologram generators, speakers, and exploding pellets. The guards rushed into the crowd as the lights gave out. Vases smashed, statues fell, the chandeliers rained crystal down upon the panicked party, and the two bandits made their way quickly up the steps. Before the security men could grab their night vision goggles out of the ammunition chest placed near the door, Maggie fired tranquilizer darts into their sides.
They ducked into a small side hallway as a team of soldiers rushed down the main corridor. They could see ahead that their way would be blocked shortly by a reserve force of MI5 security officers and instead headed to the left toward the opposite side of the castle. Maggie yelled into her bracelet, hoping that her partner in the ducts would hear her.
"We're in the fourth hallway, moving left. Do you hear me, Harry?"
"Got ya there, baby. Somebody's been messing with my wires but I don't think I've been found yet."
"The path is blocked! I thought you said. . ."
"There's a vent on your right near the floor about seven feet from the end of the hallway. Get in it," she was now using her laser to cut open the grating while the man covered her from behind, "then go straight for fourteen yards, make a right - NO, a left! - an
d then another right just five yards further on, and you will bypass everyone I think."
"What do you mean 'I think'? Find out now!"
"They're moving left and right. I can't tell where they're going to be but I don't think they'll be there. I know that there are three guys in the target hallway, heavily armed. Be careful."
"Why don't you take them out, Harry?" the man shouted behind her and Maggie repeated into her bracelet as they crawled hurriedly though the ducts.
"They're bigger than me and I don't have a dart gun."
"Damn. What are we going to do with that guy?"
"Hug him when he gets us out of here." They could hear the ongoing explosions from the other side of the castle.
Maggie inserted a thin mirror through the grating of the air duct, allowing her to look first left and then right along the corridor which she recognized to be perpendicular to their target. "All's clear after these two guys pass." The sound of boots could be heard approaching and then quickly vanishing off toward the ballroom chamber. "Let's move now!" she wasted no time with the laser cutter but instead kicked through the metal cover, sliding out into the hallway and immediately taking account of their location. "Target two meters to the left," she grunted.
"Hold tight there and check for the three fellows waiting for us."
"Correction: four now. I'll play princess and you follow." Maggie stood up, straightened her long evening dress, and rushed, screaming, into the hallway. The soldiers all lifted their rifles at her but then stopped at her appearance, lowering the muzzles and replacing aggressive concern with sympathetic eyes. She rushed headlong into one of them and he grabbed her by the arms. "My husband, I can't find. . ." she shoved a dart hidden in her hand directly into his neck and before the others had time to realize what was happening they each received the same as the man emerged behind her with his gun ready.
"Magnificent display, my dear!" he exclaimed as the men's faces crashed into the marble floor.
"Sweetheart, I'm dazzled!" Harry's voice could be heard from within the air vent near the floor as he cut through the metal with his cutting laser. "Only a few more minutes and we can vacation in a tropical paradise together."
"If you're going to the tropics, I'm headed for Siberia!" Maggie hissed back at the vent as she began unhinging the corners of the case of vases. She inserted mirrors one by one to deactivate the laser beams crisscrossing the case and within just over twenty seconds they were removing vases carefully one by one. Maggie entered the vent and jumped down through the hole that Harry had cut at the base of the duct to a basement room below. A basket with pulley was quickly put in place and Harry lowered the vases down to her. In 124 seconds, slightly above their estimate of the day before, the vases were safely in a padded box which Harry had put together the night before in an electricity duct below the castle.
Maggie turned from the box after she had closed it and looked up at the duct above her. "Done, right?"
"Yup. Just a second here while I close up this vent and we're gone." He replaced the metal grating with a new one he had found in the basement. "Got it. We're on our way." He jumped down and the two began wheeling the box along the basement tunnels toward a distant vertical shaft that would let them climb out as far away from the castle as was feasible considering the short amount of time they had to work with.
"Dean Westerfield" - or so they called him on this mission - turned from the display case and grabbed one of the prostrate soldiers by the collar, pulling him out of the hallway and into a nearby closet. He soon emerged not as the suave, tuxedo-clad guest of the Duke, but as a corporal in Her Majesty's Army. He ran out along another hallway toward a side exit of the castle, stopping to salute an incoming captain.
"Where are you headed, soldier? Our main line of entry is not in this direction."
"That is correct, sir. I was instructed not to impede the attacking units by going the other way, sir. I'm bring reinforcement munitions for the fourth company."
"What? The fourth company is in York, you. . ."
The captain received a stern fist in the nose and a swift tranquilizer dart in the neck. "Bloody Brits don't know when to step aside," he muttered as he turned toward the driveway. Four Marines stood near a humvee jeep parked along a side wall of the castle. He ducked behind a bush and crept along over the flower bed to come out near them at an angle facing their backs. He leapt out with his gun ready. "Men," he imitated the captain's Cornish dialect "this way on the double!" The four guards turned and were shocked to find tranquilizer darts planted in their chests. "Nothing personal, fellas. Just business." He climbed into the jeep and immediately headed off the road and up toward the hill upon which the ancient crowning stone of the Scottish kings stood. Maggie and Harry emerged from a utility access, tugging the box of vases behind them on ropes.
As loaded the rear cargo hold of the humvee, bullets screamed just above their heads. "Halt there!" a voice came from far behind them. Maggie and Harry ducked into the jeep and the wheels skidded down the grass as they drove toward the road and smashed through the parking lot gate with two army jeeps now in pursuit.
"Get your measures ready, Harry! I want to lose them by the turnoff to the main road up ahead. Where did you repair people leave the van from London?"
"'You repair people'? Well, we repair people left it on the main street in the village two miles to the right on the highway." Harry removed two weapons, a smoke screen generator and a gun from his bag, handing one to Maggie, and turned to look out the rearview mirror. "What the hey?. . .What's that thing doing?!"
Maggie screamed and the jeep swerved. "What's going on back there? Just take them out."
"There's a helicopter - some sort of black military thing - behind us as well. Did you see this thing on the roof before? I could have sworn. . ."
"They must have brought it in at the emergency call. Does it look armed or is it just a transport?"
"You bet it's armed. This thing looks like an air force in itself."
"Great. Just perfect."
The swift chopping of the rotors deafened out their voices and a spot light crossed back and forth around them. "We're done."
"Never." They turned sharply to the right, out onto the rolling grass hills. As he began to make his way out over the tumultuous terrain with Harry and Maggie's head slamming into the roof, the helicopter hovered and swerved around to face the chasing humvees. Machine gun fire reigned down and the army tires were shredded while the bullets ricocheted off the armor plating. "What's it doing back there? What's happening Maggie?!"
"Oh my lord! The chopper just disabled them. I don't. . . Ahh!" she screamed and plunged her head into Harry's chest as the helicopter accelerated, descended, and hovered just feet behind the racing jeep. A distorted, high pitched voice was emitted from the helicopter's speakers."
"Look at your marvelous vases, my dear curator!!!"
Harry climbed back and pried open his padded case. There was nothing but a piece of paper inside:
My Dear Mr. Westerfield and Ms. Peterson,
Nice working with you.
Best wishes always,
"Lady Jennifer"
A Light in the Dark Wood