Defiant (an Ell Donsaii story #9) (21 page)

Ell examined her handcuffs. They were typical metal cuffs with two curved metal pieces called the “double strands” connected at a hinge to a curved “single strand” that had teeth on it. Those teeth ratcheted in and locked into the double strand, adjusting to a size to fit the person’s wrist. She moved over into the darkest corner of the dimly lit back of the truck. Turning into the corner to shield the view of any cameras with her body she turned on the small one ended port in the end of her right index finger so that it would open about six millimeters from the tip of her finger. She set it to open and close at 200 Hz (times per second). The small sparks of light that resulted when a port opened produced a small blue glowing area about a quarter inch beyond the tip of her finger. Because the port was opening about thirty millimeters from the port itself with most openings plus or minus 5% in distance, it made a glowing spot about three millimeters wide. Ell twisted her wrists around so that the glowing spot immersed itself into the metal of the left cuff’s “single strand.” Moving her finger slowly back and forth at a 45 degree angle to the strand caused the ports that were forming and collapsing to cut hundreds of 3.2 millimeter diameter breaks in the metal. Because they formed and collapsed at slightly different depths, a single pass of her finger didn’t completely cut the strand. But after a few seconds of moving her finger back and forth she could see a lacy slot appear in the metal. She stopped when it looked like just a tiny sliver of metal still held the cuff closed. She didn’t want the cuffs falling off while the guards might notice and she was pretty sure she could break that last little bit with a twist of her wrists.

She rotated her wrists around and, using the port in her left index finger, did the same to the handcuff on the right wrist, then pulled her feet up onto the bench in front of her and cut 99% of the single strands of each of the ankle cuffs as well.

The rocking motion diminished as the ferry docked. A short while later she heard the truck’s engine start and it bumped its way off the ferry and onto the road. Ell said, “Allan, load midazolam for my right finger and Taser darts for my left finger.”

After a brief pause Allan said, “Loaded.”

Ell held onto the grating on the small window at the front of the truck’s prisoner box. She could peer out over the roof of the cab to the engine compartment. The truck rolled through the buildings of the naval base. She recognized various buildings from her study of the satellite maps of the area. Ell set her one ended port at twelve inches. As soon as the truck turned right and started off across the low scrubby hills toward where the detention center was located, she moved back to sit on the bench just over the right rear wheel well. She pointed her index finger at where she estimated the outer sidewall of the tire would be spinning down there below her. She turned the port on at 200 Hz and began slowly waving her finger to move the other end of the port around, hopefully cutting holes into the sidewall of the tire as it spun past. The truck rolled on and on, unaffected as Ell waved the port slowly in and out and then adjusted the distance to eighteen inches.

Eventually, wondering if the port had broken down, Ell had Allan change the port to six millimeters again and looked at the tip of her finger in the shade of her hand. She could still see a fuzzy blue glow. She pointed it back down at the wheel well again and waved it slowly farther in and out.

Suddenly, she realized that the truck likely had dual rear wheels. Even if the outer one had deflated, the inner one might carry the current light load easily. She waved it slowly even farther toward the middle of the truck. Still nothing happened! Just before she was about to try the other finger, she heard a sudden bang. The truck lurched to that side and began to slow.

Even in the back of the truck, Ell could hear the Petty Officer cursing as the truck coasted to a stop. The three men got out of the front. Standing to look out the side window she saw them walking back to look at the tire. “God dammit!” The Petty Officer swore tonelessly. “Jackson, get on the horn back to dispatch. Have them send a cage car and a regular car out here to pick us up. Tell the motor pool their damn truck blew out both back right tires.”

The truck shifted as if someone had climbed onto the back bumper. Ell sat down quickly. As she’d suspected, the Petty Officer peered into the small window at the back and looked at her for a minute. His eyes disappeared from the window and the truck moved again as the large man got down.

Ell stood and peered out at them again. After carefully estimating their distance she pointed her finger through the wall of the truck at the Petty Officer’s thigh and said to Allan, “Midazolam, eight milligrams, seven feet six inches… fire.” The PO broke off from his banter with the other two guards to look down at his thigh with a puzzled look, then reached down to rub it. He went back to his conversation without further evidence of the injection though.

Ell pointed at the second man. He wasn’t as big so she said, “Midazolam , five milligrams, six feet, fire.” This time she saw a drop of fluid appear in the air just short of his thigh and fall into the dust at his feet. She said, “Midazolam, same dose, six feet three inches, fire.” The man slapped at his thigh as if he thought a bug had stung him, but didn’t look away from the PO’s story.

Ell dosed the third guard with the short acting tranquilizer, then turned to the latch on the door of the truck. She’d looked at it when they’d put her in the truck and it consisted of a deadbolt thrown by a large lever on the outside. The lever fit into a slot on the outside of the truck and looked as if it were gripped by an electronically controlled servo. First Ell extended her cutting port into the door where she thought the deadbolt was and moved it around a while, occasionally shaking the door.

One of the guards came over and in a slurred manner said, “Hey! Shtop messin’ wit da door!”

Ell ignored him and kept shaking the door and stirring her port about in the area of the deadbolt with her port. After about a minute she was rewarded with a clank and increased travel as she shook the door. Although she could barely see the large lever through the bottom of the grated window, the fact that she could see it at all made the work of cutting it much faster. A little more jiggling and the door swung open.

By then all three guards looked very bleary. Sitting on their buttocks in the shade of the truck, they gazed up at her unsteadily. To her dismay, the Petty Officer leaned back and pulled out his service weapon. He pointed it clumsily in her direction and said, “How’d you ge’ tha’ door op’n?”

Ell shrugged her shoulders and, trying to look harmless, held up her wrists to display her handcuffs.

He said, “Move back from tha’ door. I’ll lock i’ righ’ thish time.”

When he put the hand with the gun down on the ground to help heave himself unsteadily to his feet, Ell shot him with a Taser dart from her left finger. She twisted her wrists to break the remaining bits of metal holding the cuffs closed and then reached down to break the last strands of her ankle cuffs as well. The right one still had too much metal in the gap so she had to run her port through it a little bit more.

Getting out of the truck, Ell checked the PO, rolling him onto his side and worrying about whether being Tasered while tranquilized might do significantly more harm than either one alone. The PO seemed to be unconscious but still breathing well. She studied the other two men who just looked as if they were absolutely blotto drunk. One laid out supine and snored; the other leaned forward, head between his knees. That one swayed unsteadily from side to side.

“Allan, bring the hoverbike to this location,” Ell said, distractedly, still watching the three men and worrying about whether she might have given them too large a dose of the drug. About a minute later a whirring announced the arrival of the unloaded hoverbike. The fans didn’t have to run very fast to keep it aloft with nothing but the carbon fiber frame to lift. Ell picked up the broken hand and ankle cuffs, saying “Set the bike down on the road just behind the truck.”

The hoverbike settled to the road about twenty feet away with only a little dusting of blown dirt. Safety protocols kept Allan from landing it closer because he was flying it entirely on GPS and accuracy was plus or minus six feet. In the silence, Ell could faintly hear a car coming. Giving up on watching over the three men, she trotted to the hoverbike and quickly rode it to the top of the rise just east of the road, still looking back to keep a worried eye on the three men. She settled the bike into an open area between the scrubby little trees that populated the ridge and stepped back out to peer at the men through some brushy cover. A car rolled up from the direction of the base, the same direction the truck had come from. A uniformed man got out, obviously curious about what had happened to leave a prison transport truck stopped at the side of the road with the door open and three men lying in the shade behind it. The moment he realized the men were incapacitated became obvious. He crouched, drew a weapon and scanned the area for threats. Then he went to check more carefully on the men.

As soon as Ell felt confident that the man would look after the three guards she walked back to the hoverbike. She had Allan spool up the fans just enough to lift it eighteen inches off the ground and pushed it through the trees and a little ways down the other side of the ridge. Climbing on, she lifted off and slid down into the little valley on the other side. Staying low, she followed that valley as it meandered northeast. She came to two roads where she stopped, checking both directions, then sliding quickly past the roads when there wasn’t traffic. Eventually she came to an open, relatively flat area. She surveyed it carefully and, seeing no one, raced across it low and quick.

On the other side of the open area, she lifted up over a fence and Allan spoke, “You have now entered Cuban territory.” Ell flew a ways further. She found a tree that was significantly larger than the rest of the ones dotting the low hills and parked the hovercraft in its shade.

Opening the large compartment under the saddle of the hoverbike, Ell pulled out her jeans and t-shirt. Pulling off the orange coverall, she put them on, then the socks and shoes. After laying out the coverall next to the bike and hiding the remains of her cuffs deep in under a bush, she got out a granola bar and a cup. She filled the cup with Coke dispensed from her umbilical port and took a deep drink.
Ahh,
she thought, savoring the drink she’d been denied while in the jail. She sat down to think. She wanted to wait for dark before she left Cuba, so she had quite a while.

***

Lieutenant Milner looked around again, carefully and slowly turning a full 360 degrees so his AI could make a video record of his surroundings. “What the hell is going on here?” he muttered to himself. He’d already called in a situation report to the Camp. He eyed the three drunken sailors again and then made a circuit of the truck. The only apparent damage to the truck was to the rear wheels and the back door for the right side prisoners’ compartment.

He’d stood on the back bumper to peer into the left prisoner’s compartment through the tiny window. It was empty. Its door was solidly locked and undamaged.

The tires on the right rear wheels appeared to be completely shredded! He’d seen blowouts before and knew the tires could be ripped up, but the outer tire that he could easily see looked like someone had held a chain saw to it while it was spinning.

The deadbolt and the locking lever for the back door were both broken in a most bizarre manner. The broken surfaces were very rough, something like a cheese grater or a rasp.

So, broken latches, open prisoners’ compartment, no prisoners, destroyed tire and drunk guards. Milner could imagine the guards getting drunk on duty. Hard to conceive, considering the punishment it would engender, but it had been done before. He could believe that drunk sailors would run their vehicle off the road and destroy the tire in some spectacular manner. But without any other damage to the truck?

He could imagine how the drinking and the tires had happened, but he couldn’t, absolutely could not, come up with a plausible explanation for what had happened to the latch on the truck!

Milner’s AI said, “You have a call from Admiral Whitt.”

Shit!
Ice seized Milner’s gut. No lieutenant looked forward to talking to an admiral. “I’ll take it… Admiral Whitt, this is Lieutenant Milner speaking, sir.”

The Admiral grunted, “Milner, what the hell is going on out there?”

“Sir, I came up on one of the prison transport trucks stopped on the roadside between the base and the detention camp…” He paused to see of the Admiral would question him. Since the Admiral didn’t prompt him, he continued. “Sir, the guards are intoxicated and the right back tires of the vehicle are blown out. The prisoner’s compartment is open and, if there were prisoners in it, they are not to be seen at present.”

“God dammit! Does it look like the truck wrecked?”

“No sir.”

“Find that prisoner! It’s a woman. This takes
absolute
priority. She can’t have gone far. Look for tracks. We’ll have tracking dogs out there soon so don’t disturb any scent that might be present in the compartment.”

“A woman sir?”

“Yes, even though everyone thinks it isn’t true, we
have
had a few women in detention here at the camp in the past. This one is…” the Admiral sighed, “I’d just as well tell you, it’s Ell Donsaii. The Commander in Chief herself has an interest in this… prisoner, so you can figure… if we don’t find her, the fecal matter’s gonna be
pouring
onto the rotary impeller.”

“Yes sir,” Milner said. The Admiral cut the connection with Milner already scanning his surroundings. He had no idea how to track anyone, but he guessed he’d better try. He squatted down to talk to the one guard that wasn’t completely laid out and snoring. “Seaman!” He lowered his head to look at the man’s nametag, then pushed up on the seaman’s shoulder to bring the nametag into view. “Jackson! Seaman Jackson!” Milner shook Jackson’s arm. “Seaman!” he barked again.