April 2: Down to Earth (49 page)

There was a faint whine as Harold used his power winch to climb the line quickly.

He left the winch hanging clamped on the line and did not offer to take the watch back. The sound of  a zip seal popping and water flowing, indicated he was examining his bounty.

"It's strictly against doctrine to accept supply from local population you know."

"Um-huh," Harold said around a mouth full of something. "We have two egg salad and two tuna salad sandwiches for each of us and carrot sticks and olives. It's all in a metalized Mylar bag with a  cool pack, so no rush to eat it."

"Good, I'll wait at least an hour and if you suddenly go into convulsions and plummet to your death I'll probably skip the egg salad."

"Oh my God, the jug is almost full of ice and it's not just water with it – it's lemonade. We can add water as we drink it down and it will get weaker but still be pretty good. There's a note with it."

BO kept his watch, refusing to split the screen, or take his attention away to see what Harold was doing. "Would you at least read the thing before the poison hits?"

"OK, Here's a little snack, as I imagine you have the usual yucky military food. Just put the freezer puck inside the cooler jug when you are done and sit it on the fence. Please don't come in the yard to set it closer to the house. My dog would very much object. Will drop something off tomorrow if I see another team. – Diana Hunt."

"You think that's really her name or is she pulling our leg?"

"What? Why would that be false? It's a common name."

"Diana – goddess of the hunt?" BO suggested. Finally he figured out Harold had no idea what he was talking about, so he dropped it.

"All it shows on our data sheet is she's a divorced woman, fifty-two, damn she looks real good for fifty-two," he commented. "She has met Ms. Lewis the owner of our stake-out target and visited the house. She doesn't work, drives into town every third day on the average. Never leaves the dog out when she goes into town. Has no registered firearms and has never placed an assistance request to the local police. Had the fire department out once several years ago for a fire beyond her fence."

"Chinese or Korean long term intelligence asset - with skills in counter operations – neurotoxins a specialty,"  BO added.

"Damn, you can sure rain on a parade," Harold said.

"I had extra training," BO admitted.
About eighteen years of it,
he thought to himself, suddenly realizing he sounded like his mother. Next he would be telling Harold not to fall off and break his neck. Got to lose that, he decided privately.

"At least that about the dog explains it," he observed out loud.

"Explains, what?" Harold asked around sandwich.

"Why her ugly pony is never saddled up."

"Yeah, he is a big sucker, isn't he? And I've never heard him bark."

* * *

The safe house wasn't a house. Indeed, it appeared to be a commercial grocery. Three overhead doors provided easy entry and the middle one rose on their approach. The bays on either side had semis parked, but the center had plenty of room for two big trucky vehicles. They went in to a bare bones freight elevator big enough to lift a car and rode down instead of up. It was several degrees cooler when they stepped off in a wide corridor, with a number of doors visible. They went to the closest and Papa-san gave a single sharp rap. The Oriental fellow who answered was dressed western, but bowed with grace to Papa-san and if anything deeper to his wife.

"Jung, we shall be here until late, but leave before sunrise. Likely before the tide changes. This is Miss Lewis and Mr. Tindal her body guard. We shall require a late meal and I need secure communications. They are not prisoners, they are under my personal protection."

The man gave a sharp little nod, that seemed more absolute than making a great fuss and Papa-san went back out in the hall, presumably to find the secure communications.

Jung walked them across the hall and opened a suite for them. "Why don't you make yourselves comfortable in the common room?" he invited. "These are four identical bedrooms with baths. I will have your things set outside them and you can shift which you use if it suites you. There are refreshments in the cooler there."

"If we're going to be busy tonight I'm taking a nap," Gunny declared. "I'll be in this first room here with the door cracked open," he told April. "If we are attacked and you can't hold back the advancing horde feel free to awaken me, since your weapon makes so little noise."

Jung glanced at April's weapon without humor, holding back a question from anything but his eyes. "It is always wisdom to rest when you can," he agreed with Gunny. He bowed to Mama-san and left.

* * *

When twilight and the brief tropical dusk were definitely done and it was full night, Bill clipped on his drop line which doubled as his safety line and plugged his spex into the sight of his rifle. In the full dark that stayed across his knees.  Harold hadn't said anything in a long time and he looked at the red square in the upper right of his spex and cranked the gain up until Harold's silhouette started filling in with some of his features. When the moon came out later he'd have to turn it down. He had his mics cranked up but the night was so quiet it was eerie. At one point he heard the faucet running in the Hunter woman's house which was slightly closer than the Lewis home they were watching. He'd eaten one of the sandwiches after Harold played the taster and it was time to take a watch. First he checked the relief schedule by satellite. The board still showed them being relieved before moonrise by Ed Anderson and  Big Jim Zapinski. Rather than move or make a sound, he just told Harold by text in his spex to hand the watch off to him.

There were just a few low lights around the pool, barely illuminating the walkway through the lower yard at the Lewis home. The caretaker cottage on the uphill side hadn't had a light on yet, although they'd seen him clean the pool and sweep the air car platform during the day. They hadn't seen him leave, but they didn't have any sensors on the property itself. The young woman, Adzusa Satos, who was on their known list, came in the afternoon with another man and supplies.

They hadn't seen them leave either, but there were no lights on in the house. They both felt not bugging the property itself was too restrictive, but that wasn't their call. They would have put something in the landscaping island, in the dead end  turnaround on the far side of the house, but the older gentleman to the west took it upon himself to maintain the teardrop shaped mound and he checked it to weed or rake almost daily. There was nowhere to put a cam or sensor he wouldn't see it.

The first indication they had something was wrong, was when their relief didn't tell them they were coming in. It took about an hour to walk in from the parking lot of the nature preserve downhill from them. So when five and then ten minutes went by with no call that their relief was on the way, they called themselves. It wasn't that there was any jamming. They simply got no answer. Their communications disappeared into a virtual void. They tried public access and conventional cell phone circuits. They couldn't  access wireless or private satellite, any more than military communications. The wireless in the near house was secure, but it didn't show at all now. They were cut off by some means with which they were not familiar at all.

Bill sent out a message to the sensors under his control and put them in sleep mode. He slid over as close to Harold as possible. "Shut down all emissions," he ordered him, speaking softly into his ear. "Anybody who can cut us off like this may be able to turn our own local net against us. If you see anything in close switch to touch and sign language."

"Do you think  Ed and Jim are in trouble?" Harold worried.

"They have a lot more resources than we do, right up until they step off of the parking lot into the woods. I'm a whole lot more worried about us. If anything they are the ones that should show up with a force to relieve us."

"You want to take up a new position? Maybe get down out of the tree?"

"No, every reason this was a great location still applies. We've no indication anybody knows we decided to operate in the canopy. If we drop now our view will be very limited. But stay clipped on and ready to drop if we take any fire. I'd like you to break out the reflective sheet and drape it in a cylinder inside the camo net. We can stand to glass the area and then we duck back down. You'd have to be almost directly under us to pick us up on infrared, once you rig that."

"Yes Sir," Harold replied with unusual formality. He rigged the delicate cloth with almost no sound and tapered the top edge in a bit as they had been taught. The bottom edge he canted below the camo toward the slight breeze so that when he was done they actually had a better air flow than before. The  remote sensors were gone with the net, but they had a tremendous location for using their handheld gear. They scanned as far as they could see in every direction.

"What the devil is she doing?" Harold asked

Diana came out  with her arms full. Still in her sarong and abbreviated T. The huge Newfoundland dog at heel. She laid some items on the patio Bill could not quite make out and carrying a bag she came all the way down to the wall where she had left them lunch. Her proximity made them both nervous and they watched her neglecting to keep watching in the distance. Whatever she did behind the wall there was a momentary flicker of orange light that could only be an open flame.

A quick tap on his arm made Bill look at Harold.

"Fuse?" Harold signed, since she was so close, looking concerned.

Bill thought about it quickly and just shook his head no. Whatever she needed a flame for she was taking entirely too long for it to be an explosive device. If it was she'd be leaving the area quickly. Besides hardly anybody used a simple match fuse anymore. They were obsolete.

The next stop she made they could see what she did. There was a plant in a pot and she dumped the plant and dirt out - set a small candle of some sort on the bottom saucer and after lighting it placed the pot back over it up-side-down. The combination she thrust deep between some statuary and a dense clump of bamboo. She spotted other candles hidden around the yard, hurrying.

"Infrared decoys," Bill suddenly declared, "For sure she is expecting some company. I wonder if her wireless and security systems went down like our net did and she is assuming somebody will try to come in, or if she was tipped off from outside?"

"I don't know, but she isn't acting like any normal fifty-two year old divorcee I've ever know. For sure she doesn't look like she's getting ready to put a jug and sandwiches out for any new visitors."

"Shit!" Harold added. Bill had to actually hold his hand out palm down, to correct his too loud exclamation.

The woman visiting at the Lewis house, Adzusa Satos, came out the door by the pool next door. The caretaker spoke with her briefly and then ducked back in and they could see him through the glass locking the door inside. He had a ugly short shotgun, with a powered magazine hung underneath.

"That tells us something about the glass doors and pool enclosure," Bill whispered. "If  he thought they would shatter halfway easy, he wouldn't have bothered to lock them.

Adzusa was dressed in a dark green body suit and carrying a weapon, much less bulky than the caretakers. Slim but short enough to describe as a carbine rather than a rifle. When she vaulted the low fence between the houses there was something thin strapped across her back and then it was hidden again.

"What the heck is that thing? I've never seen one," Harold admitted.

"That's a Home weapon," Bill informed him. "A laser. I saw pictures once of one. Their security sometimes has them at dock when a shuttle comes in."

Diana came back out on the patio wearing spex and had changed to loose dark pants and was carrying two flat disks like Frisbees. However when she tossed them in the air they didn't settle but climbed away into the dark.

"Drones," Harold mouthed at him, finally quieting down.

"I know," Bill signed back at him, glad to encourage him to be silent.

"We must be on the same side?" Harold asked switching to sign language too.

"Assume nothing," Bill ordered him.

Diana came down to the wall where she had left their meal and climbed over to their side, surprisingly agile for someone her age. The dog floated after her like a shadow. There was a brief scrabbling sound as its nails caught on the stone and she pointed at the ground and the dog immediately sat.

Adzusa made a circuit of the yard as Diana was positioning herself and ended up in an Oriental garden that filled the upper yard next to the house, between the patio and lanai. As Bill watched she positioned herself on the east of a pile of boulders that were a dramatic part of the landscaping, tugged something up like she was pulling up a hood and then disappeared. Not ducked out of sight or slid behind something. She just disappeared.

Bill found himself holding his breath staring at the spot she had vanished and had to make himself suck air in again. He didn't want to blink because he was sure she was still there and he didn't want to miss the slightest clue if she moved. He had heard of optical cloaking devices on drone bellies and on stratospheric blimps, but they had a simple geometry. To see it done on the complex shape of a human body was startling. He boggled at the thought of how much computing power that must take.

"Look," Harold signed and pointed down. Diana had her case open and was dabbing camo paint on her face in stripes. Bill lifted his spex to see if he could see her without night vision and she was a barely visible blob in the dark. As he watched the light blob disappeared and he lowered his spex and watched her do a quick and much less fussy job of darkening her arms.

"Where other?" Harold asked in short form with three quick signs.

"Cloaking device," Bill had to spell out, having no easy signs for that. Harold looked as surprised as he had been. "By boulders in garden - last." he added.

There was some sort of machine laid out in the open case. Even when he turned his gain up all the way, he couldn't resolve the details of it in the deep shadow of the wall. The high gain image got too grainy. It was dark and mottled colors too, but he could see the shape of a wheel and some fine lines that didn't add up to anything his brain could recognize. He turned the amplification back down and looked around again. He'd been snatching glances all around, between watching the two women, but now he took his glasses and looked to the west in detail. As far as he could detect, nothing moved and everything was unchanged.