The Pulptress (13 page)

Once inside she surveyed to
lobby. Cookie cutter decoration, she decided. A corporate edict
with little room allowed for any local ideas. She whimsically hoped
this did not turn out to be what she sought.

She paused briefly at the
entrance to the in-house drinking establishment. Again she felt the
hand of some never been out of New York designer showing the locals
what Florida should look like. She'd rather sit down for a drink in
a stable.

A few minutes later she met
the manager. He started in on a standard welcome to a potential
customer. Number of rooms. Amenities. Three sentences in she raised
her hand.

“
Mr. Stanley, I know all of
that from your website. My client has one special need that's a
deal breaker. So let's get that out of the way. Might save us both
a lot of time.

“
At our meeting we will
demonstrate the largest mobile super-computer on the planet. That
means we'll pull three long big rig trailers as close to your
auditorium as possible. Each trailer has well over a thousand blade
servers running Linux all networked together. This sheet details
the power requirements of the system. If you can supply that much
power without any special charges, other than for hookup and the
actual current used, we'll talk further.”

Five minutes later she
drove on to her next possible target. Legwork, necessary, but
boring. Forty-two places within sixty-seven miles of the Kennedy
Space Center eliminated by lack of electric capacity.

And twelve more to
go.

***

“
Janiea Fairfield-Event
Planner” read the business card the Pulptress passed out to so many
people in the general area of Cape Canaveral. She didn't really
enjoy the sales and marketing part of her cover identity. But
Janiea had a very smart and lively personality that could be played
with humor, if the situation allowed. Janiea had spent the last two
evenings at various bars and nightspots taking the temperature of
the region as the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery approached.
She fended off pickup attempts cheerfully. For Janiea's looks were
a bit above average. And her obviously buff body attracted a good
share of attention.

About ten-thirty each night
she drifted back to the nearly hidden Bed & Breakfast where she
stayed. Once there, unaccompanied, she chatted with the owners and
other guests and watched the eleven o'clock news before turning in.
Early the next morning she went looking. Looking for a public place
with electric power to spare. A lot of it.

Word came down the week
before. Of a plot. A plot supposedly instigated by the
ultra-hardline faction of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Of pilfered
technology reworked by Iranian scientists into a semi-portable
weapon. A narrow beam electromagnetic pulse generator. To bring
down the shuttle before it reached orbit. Before it really got a
good start. For the multi-day space flight would pass over the
sacred land of Iran more than once. Bringing Discovery down with
all hands would embarrass America, the Great Satan. And, if the
weapon worked, the next version would silence any foreign object
that dared pass over Iran.

But, the experts agreed,
that would take a huge amount of power. So the Pulptress searched
for places with that capacity. She knew she did not search alone.
Various official agencies received copies of the purported plot.
And someone, or more likely, several unofficial people searched off
the beaten path areas for signs of portable generators.

Around noon that day Janiea
Fairfield, supposedly of one-quarter East Indian heritage, walked
her George Hamilton style tanned body into the lobby of Space
Palms.

***

She did her quick look
around before heading for the front desk. Nobody told the
management of this place what to do about decoration. Anything
connected with space, fact or fiction, seemed to be fair game. Real
life astronauts rubbed shoulders with Tom Corbett - Space Cadet and
some version of the Republic Pictures' rocket-suit characters. Huge
Hubble telescope prints of the planets could be compared with pulp
cover paintings by Emish, St. John, Gladney, and others.

She broke into a genuine
smile at the wacky decor. As she stretched a few driving kinks out
of her legs an almost laughing female voice came from behind
her.

“
Put your eyes back in their
sockets, Dudley Do Right. She may be cute, but you're spoken
for.”

The Pulptress used that as
her cue to head for the desk. She might not have been so hasty, if
she had heard the reply.

“
Seriously, I know that
young woman. From somewhere.”

***

“
Those power requirements
are a cinch for us, Miss Fairfield. At times we've hosted huge
numbers of news teams. And we've put on insanely loud concerts on
the beach and on floating platforms. We'll get you the current you
need. And where you need it.”

“
Excellent, Mr. Lewis,”
replied the Pulptress. “I'll need to see the facilities, of course.
And, let me repeat, this is a fact finding jaunt for now. But, I'll
take pictures to go with your literature. And I have a few more
places to look at.”

“
Of course you do. Your due
diligence. But, if you find any place besides us and the Alhambra
that can cover your power requirement, I'd sure like to know about
it. If you'll follow me, we'll get started. I can show you
everything but the upper observation deck. Right now those rafters
are groaning from three I-Max cameras and gosh knows what else
waiting for Discovery to launch.”

***

She came back to Space
Palms. She couldn't quite say why. The Alhambra was completely
booked. By a single unnamed high tech company for some kind of
experimental symposium. That used huge amounts of power. And
employed a large number of security guards. But she came back to
Space Palms. More than once. And Mr. Lewis was right. Nobody else
had the power capacity.

That's not to say that she
ignored the Alhambra. She went there, late the same night, wearing
a black cat-suit. And face-paint. And night vision gear. She
observed. She probed. Nothing seemed to be beyond normal
precautions against industrial espionage. But then, an
electromagnetic pulse weapon did not really have to be fired in the
open air.

But the Pulptress took no
chances. Four blocks over she slipped into the electrical
sub-station that supplied the Alhambra. And very carefully hid a
few devices. Devices like the one she attached to the power lines
entering the Alhambra. The whole setup waited for a timer to run
down. A timer that could be extended by her cell phone. Or be
activated by it.

***

She spent the following
evening at Space Palms' Launch Pad Bar & Grill. Every now and
then she felt eyes on her. Not the eyes of horny men, though there
were any number of them. And not the eyes of an enemy. Her
instincts were good enough to be sure of that.

Later she walked the beach
in both directions. She even climbed one of the tall palm trees
trying to get a look at Space Palms' upper deck. Her small
night-vision and infrared devices only showed a large number of
packing cases under tarps. And at least one man keeping watch.
Something I'd do, she mused. If I had maybe a quarter million
dollars worth of gear sitting out.

***

At the B&B's breakfast
table the following morning Janiea Fairfield declared, “My work's
done. Finally and thank goodness. But I'm sticking around. At least
until Discovery launches. I am now a tourist.”

And act like a tourist she
did. She toured the Kennedy Center. She snapped pictures of exotic
birds. And she took a helicopter ride. As the sole passenger she
made sure that the whirligig passed by both the Alhambra &
Space Palms coming and going. Plus any number of strictly touristy
spots. All the while she was snapping pictures with her fifteen
mega pixel camera.

Just past mid-afternoon she
returned to the B&B with two things, Chinese take-out and
several gigabytes of images. As usual there wasn't enough ginger in
the Moo-Goo-Guy-Pan. But it was tolerable.

She munched as she
separated out the pictures of Space Palms and the Alhambra from the
fun stuff. Her single-lens-reflex camera and especially the lens
did not match the model numbers on them. The camera itself boasted
rock solid image stabilization and extremely fast shutter speed.
The zoom lens zoomed more than twice as far as it said it
could.

Now she examined the
Alhambra's roof closely enough to see any cracks in the
faux-Spanish roofing tiles. And to read the title on a lurid
paperback cover lying next to an ashtray on the upper deck of Space
Palms. What type of a person, she wondered, reads things like
Biker Sluts at Oxford
?

Then she backed up the zoom
on her laptop's display program. Just one notch. Something
looked... Well... Different. Then her mind pounced. That alarm
clock on the small improvised table was not battery powered. The
darn thing was spring driven. And there was an identical one next
to the folding cot by the back railing. Somebody needed to know the
time come Hell, high water, or electro-pulse.

***

15 March 2009

The lithe young woman
didn't look like Janiea Fairfield, except for her general body
type. Her jet black hair was up in a French braid. Her skin seemed
a bit lighter than the event planner. She wore black stockings
under a pleated deep purple skirt and a black men's dress shirt.
Her small spaghetti strap purse held the tools of the Pulptress'
trade. Not to mention a rolled up fedora and domino
mask.

Under the name Carla
Richardson, of the Cape Cod Richardson's, she had spent an
outrageous sum for a tiny table at the back of the large lower
observation deck at Space Palms. She slipped a twenty to the
hostess who seated her for a root-beer and lack of attention from
the wait staff.

In the fading light as she
arrived she saw the silhouettes of men setting up gear on the upper
deck. The one major piece visible from below actually looked a lot
like an I-Max camera. But it wasn't. Just a mockup. I-Max films had
played a part in her training. She knew every piece of equipment
used in productions.

From the moment she stepped
onto the observation deck she felt eyes on her. Not constantly, but
regularly. But not threatening eyes. Dunklin always told her she
had good instincts. To trust them.

She usually did. So she
went about her business without serious worries. For tonight's
launch the deck was set up like a movie theater with tables. Lit
like one, too. So was what she could see of the rooftop “balcony.”
Small lights imbedded in the floor defined the aisles and pathways.
Even dimmer lights hugged the tabletop rims to barely allow guests
to find their drinks. On each table rested a barely illuminated six
inch LCD TV carrying the NASA feed of Discovery's
countdown.

With just a few minutes
before the scheduled launch of Discovery she headed for the ladies'
room. Alone there, as she expected, her movements sped up. Her
skirt went in the trash. She pulled black gloves over her hands and
shirt cuffs. Now her hands released the soles and heals from her
shoes leaving only a Kevlar backed non-skid sandal. She affixed the
domino mask to her face before slipping into a spandex hood that
strapped under her arms. Velcro locked her purse to the small of
her back. Finally she perched a black fedora on her
head.

The bathroom's pebbled
glass window faced away from the Cape. She slithered out on to a
three inch ledge that circled the building. She climbed slowly to
the upper frame of the window. It held… barely. Now she could
carefully reach the inset of the safety wall around the top
deck.

Once there she reached into
her purse for a folded packet. With the special cloth inside she
wiped the dirt and grime from one of the upper deck's framing
members. Done, she pressed a pliable square of material against the
freshly cleaned area. A chemical reaction began. In less than five
seconds all paint over the wood dissolved to begin a chemical
bonding far stronger than Super-Glue. Now a patch of “hooks” Velcro
attached a swivel carrying a thin line to the “loops” on the
clinging square.

Finally she could raise an
eye above the railing. And see exactly what she was afraid
of.

Two men pretended to work
on the phony I-Max camera while actually keeping an eye on the
crowd below. Three more kept attaching new pieces to an electronic
nightmare worthy of Rube Goldberg. A sixth man stood aloof from the
others. She could just make out a satisfied look on his face. She
lowered her head as she pulled out her cell phone.

The phone did not glow when
she activated it. The buttons carried markings in Braille. She
punched one combination and hit send. That turned off the explosive
charges at the Alhambra and the power station. Now she set off a
macro that would call 911 and play a recorded message about Space
Palms. As she hit send she felt tiny vibrations through every cord
in her hand. She looked up just in time to see the snout of a large
silencer appear over the top of the railing.