Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11)

by Laurence Dahners

  Crossbow looked up, “Brick,” he said acknowledging him with a nod. After a pause, “What did you learn?”

  Art took a sip of his coffee and frowned down at it, thinking how can they charge so much for this crap? Looking back up at Crossbow he started detailing what he’d learned. He told him about the problems with attacking the White House itself, describing the defenses he could see and the difficulty he foresaw in overcoming them. Then talking about suspected issues, for instance the tunnels he knew were there, despite not knowing much about their nature.

  Crossbow’s eyes remained fixed on Art and Art found he desperately didn’t want to disappoint the man. He rushed his thoughts to continue, “So, while I can imagine that we might be able to take her out at the White House with a well laid-in mortar when she was on her way to her helicopter, even that would be a highly difficult suicide mission. However, I think I’ve found a weak link in her golf trips.”

  “Golf trips?” Crossbow asked, sounding astonished.

  Art nodded. “She loves golf and plays almost once a week. She even goes on golfing vacations. On a golf course she’s out in the open, often surrounded by trees. She’ll have a security team with her, but snipers in the woods could take all of them out. Then we just have to snatch Stockton and get her out of sight.”

  “Golf!” Crossbow said an appalled tone in his voice. “For God’s sake, she’s supposed to be running our country and she’s out playing golf?”

  Art nodded, looking into Crossbow’s eyes and wondering if the man ever did anything for fun himself.

  “OK, we’ll need to scout the courses up there to figure out which one would be best.”

  Art raised an eyebrow, “She’s going to take a golfing vacation in Pinehurst the first week of October.”

  “No shit?”

  Art nodded.

  “That’s perfect, just freaking perfect.” Crossbow leaned back with a smile, thinking, “You play golf?”

  “A little.”

  “So does Redman. Time for you two boys to go play Pinehurst and do a little scouting.”

  ***

  Ell woke up at six in the morning, like she usually did. She padded down the hall to check on Zage. Entering his room, she had a moment of panic. His crib was empty!

  Taking a breath to call out to Shan she scanned the room, then let the breath out in a long sigh. Zage lay on the floor, arms around Tanner, looking as peaceful as he could be.

  Ell glanced back at the crib. Its side was down. Could I have forgotten to put it up when I put Zage to bed last night? She asked Allan to bring up the video from her putting Zage into the crib the evening before. A moment later it scrolled before her eyes and she saw her hands lifting the crib’s side into place. She watched a moment longer to make sure she hadn’t put the crib’s side down before she left, but that wasn’t the case. She went back on the video to the point where she had lifted and latched it, then had Allan zoom in on the latch to be sure it had fully clicked into place.

  Turning, she looked at Zage, musingly. He looked very innocent. She knew kids often started climbing out of their cribs at around age 2, but Zage was only 21 months. On the other hand, despite the way he sat around a lot, when he did do things he seemed very capable. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had climbed out already. However, figuring out how to undo the exterior latch, from the inside seemed pretty difficult.

  She lifted the side of the crib back up until it latched. She tried to reach it from the inside of the crib. The rails were close enough together that she couldn’t really do it, but she could imagine that with Zage’s smaller arm he might be able to.

  She turned to study him some more. I guess I should put him in a regular bed, she thought. Even though it appears that he’s coordinated enough to lower the rail and climb out of the crib, it seems crazy to put him in a situation where he has to do that. It would be safer for him to climb out of a regular bed.

  ***

  Brick and Redman had had to learn each other’s real first names in order to golf together without sounding like a couple of oddballs. This had been their first day of golf in Pinehurst. Art had always played in sloppy clothes at cheap courses and felt oddly overdressed wearing the nice pants and golf shirts they’d bought for this mission. They’d been paired into a foursome with a couple of old duffers who were even worse golfers than Art and Joe were. Art had tried to pump them for information about Pinehurst, but they were there on a vacation and didn’t seem to know much about the area.

  Like a lot of southern courses, the course they were walking had numerous tight fairways surrounded by trees. There were a couple of holes where it looked like you could hide a small army just off the fairway.

  In the clubhouse they went to the bar and pulled up stools, hoping to learn something by shootin’ the shit with the bartender and patrons as Crossbow had suggested. Art felt a little nervous about it; conversation with strangers had always been difficult for him.

  At first it seemed to Art that they were going to be stymied on this point as Joe just sat there, saying nothing and steadily drinking his Miller High Life. However, most of the way through a second beer, Joe lifted his chin at the bartender and said, “Been workin’ here long?”

  To Art’s amazement Joe had soon extracted the man’s life history. The bartender had been working in Pinehurst in various capacities for fifteen years. Joe got opinions on which courses were the best, who were the best local golfers and whether any other locations could hold a candle to the North Carolina golf courses. Eventually he worked his way around to the questions that mattered, “Hey, I hear that Stockton herself comes down here and plays sometimes.”

  “Yeah, supposed to be a pretty good golfer, but it really screws things up.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Aw, you know, clearin’ the roads for her motorcade, Goddamned Secret Service everywhere, every other cop from miles around blockin’ off roads. It makes everything a nightmare for the rest of us peons who’re just tryin’ to get on with our lives.”

  “Humpf, which course does she play?”

  The bartender shrugged, “Different courses. Number Two of course, just ‘cause everybody says it’s the best, and she plays the Country Club of NC pretty often. They say she really likes this new course named Shalimoore, up north along 15-501. Seems like she plays others kind of at random.”

  As they walked out of the bar and back to their car Art said, “That was freakin’ amazing! You practically milked that guy. I had no idea you could do that kind of thing!”

  Joe shrugged, “I get talkative when I’ve had a few beers, but you need to stay with me so I don’t get stupid drunk.”

  The next day they went out with a Real Estate agent, posing as two guys who’d shared a winning lottery ticket. They were supposedly thinking of buying vacation homes in Pinehurst. They looked at mini mansions on golf course fairways, especially the three courses the bartender had said Stockton liked to play. They professed a special interest in empty lots, several of which were still available at Shalimoore.

  Those lots were heavily wooded.

  ***

  Brick and Redman met Crossbow in the woods the next time. He was carrying one of the venerable AK47s with which the SCDF had outfitted itself. Purchasing the AKs had been a real pain because there were so many restrictions on them nowadays. Nonetheless Crossbow had pushed it hard and eventually every member had been outfitted through purchase or theft, mostly theft. Everyone had a 9mm pistol as well.

  Crossbow had a brand new police issue bulletproof vest in his other hand. Redman took the gun for Crossbow, so Art carried the vest as they went deeper and deeper into the forest. When they came to a meadow Crossbow stopped and had Art carry the vest out and tie it to a lone tree in the clear area. Crossbow asked about likely distances of golfers from the trees since he’d never played golf.

  Then they took turns shooting at the vest from back in the woods deep enough to hide well. The vest was good enough to stop standard round
s but Crossbow had some armor piercing rounds that went right through it. Of course, armor piercing didn’t do as much damage as softer bullets, but, since just about all the President’s men would be wearing vests, they’d either need shooters good enough to make head shots or they’d need to use piercing rounds.

  Crossbow chewed his lip a while, “We’ll need to get the men out for some situational shooting to see how many of them would be able to make head shots from these distances. We also need all the AKs converted to full auto so they can fire a lot of rounds if they aren’t very accurate.” He thought a little longer, “We also need more clips. And the men need to practice a lot.”

  ***

  Research Triangle Park, North Carolina—ET Resources will be attempting to land a subterrene tunnel boring machine on Mars today. Although they, NASA, and a number of other private enterprises have already landed multiple small exploration type rockets, this will be the largest thing landed on Mars so far. Working by melting its way through the Martian underground, the machine will leave behind a passage eighteen feet wide and eighteen feet high. People will be able to live and farm hydroponically in the spaces created. Needless to say, landing such a large, heavy object on a relatively narrow shelf of the Valles Marineres rift valley will be more challenging than previous landings. I wish them luck, because I for one, would like to go to Mars…

  As if AJ and Carter didn’t feel nervous enough, with their tunneler hurtling down out of space and possibly about to destroy millions of dollars’ worth of work and equipment, Rob Braun, and Ben Stavos walked into the room and sat down. There’s nothing like having the big bosses breathing down your neck to really bring out the sweat on your brow! Trying to smile, AJ said, “You think we’ve got a chance of landing this thing without ripping a huge hole in the Martian landscape?”

  Braun, the rocket scientist, shook his head glumly. “No, I just went over your numbers. I think you slipped a decimal point ‘cause you’re under powered by nearly a factor of 10. If you really like that shelf you’re shooting for, you’re about to destroy it.”

  AJ’s sphincters spasmed before he saw the little grin on Braun’s face. He grinned back, “Now that was just plain mean.”

  Braun laughed, “I just thought it would be a good idea for you to change your underwear before the landing,” he turned to watch the room’s big wall screen where a small fiery dot had just become apparent in the infra-red supplemented image.

  They’d flown one of the little waldoes from their small test tunnel up to the upper rim of the Valles, above the shelf where they were going to land the big tunneler. Its AI had turned its lenses to the correct direction to pick up the descent of the tunneler. Since the tunneler essentially had a built in heat shield in the form of its tungsten nose, they had had it scrub off a lot of its velocity in the Martian atmosphere rather than burning rocket fuel to slow it down. It had just finished a nearly complete circumnavigation of Mars and the tungsten was really hot.

  For a minute or so, the hot spot on their screen disappeared, as the jets on the tunneler spun it end for end in order to bring the big rocket nozzles on the other end into play. Then the hot spot reappeared as the rockets began firing.

  From there it was somewhat anti-climactic, as they simply watched the big rocket descend and land on the flat spot beneath the waldo. Still, when it was finally down, they all let out a big breath of relief. In theory, even if one or two of the rocket motors had failed, the AI could have compensated by increasing the thrust of the others. However, AJ had figured that, surely if two motors had failed, Murphy’s law would have resulted in both failing at the same location, resulting in an imbalance that couldn’t be corrected.

  Looking at the position of the tunneler, Carter had it lift and turn a little bit so its flat side was toward the wall. The position looked good, so he fired a rocket on the other side, tipping the tunneler over to fall on its flat side. The flat side would form the flat floor of the tunnel so he now had it right side up, with its nose pointed into the wall.

  The nose was already hot from its trip through the atmosphere, but not quite hot enough to tunnel into basalt. They opened up the port to the big solar parabolic, feeding heat into the tunneler. Inside the tunneler their specially-cut sapphire lens spread the heat evenly around the tunneler’s asymmetrical nose.

  While they waited for it to heat, Ben Stavos pulled a cooler out from under the table and popped open a couple of bottles of champagne to a big cheer. Once everyone’s flutes had been filled, he lifted his, swung his eyes around the room at the group that had gathered. He finished his perusal on AJ and Carter. Arching an eyebrow he said, “A toast, to a job well done!”

  AJ took a sip and mimed wiping sweat from his brow, then said, “It hasn’t cut a tunnel on Mars yet.”

  Braun pointed, “It looks like the temperature is up. Time to find out if it will?”

  Carter checked the numbers. The nose of the tunneler was up to about 1500°C, far below tungsten’s 3,000°C melting point, but well above the 650°C it took to liquefy most basalts. He gave some instructions to his AI. They all watched through the eyes of the waldo as the big rockets at the back of the tunneler opened up and began pushing its nose into the wall of the ledge. The nose cone slowly melted its way in and disappeared, leaving only the rocket exhaust blowing back out of the tunnel.

  Once it was in about ten meters, he shut off the rockets. In their earphones they all heard Ell’s voice, “Congratulations! I assume you are going to let the walls cool before you extrude the base plate?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Carter said, unsurprised that she had been listening in. “Once it’s cooled we’ll extend the graphene pushers until the base plate is outside the tunnel and drop the plate off. Then we’ll shorten the pushers, blow up the big graphene balloon that wedges it into the tunnel and start pushing the tungsten penetrator again. We’re keeping the penetrator pretty hot in the meantime.”

  “How long till you start farming?”

  “Well, that’ll be at least a few weeks…”

  Chapter Seven

  Art and Redman were tasked with bringing in the SCDF in small groups so Crossbow could watch them do some shooting to evaluate their current skill levels. Crossbow would shake his head then sermonize them about target practice. The cells were encouraged to target practice together using ropes to move the targets around in order to simulate moving targets. Then they were scheduled to come back later for reevaluation. Cells were kept separate as much as possible and Crossbow preached to all of the members about the importance of avoiding any knowledge of anyone else.

  Crossbow also talked extensively about how to remove any evidence of the SCDF from their lives. No paper records. Few electronic records and any of those set to auto delete after the attack. Especially records of where they’d gone to meet or any AV records of SCDF people or meetings. SCDF member Buckboard, an IT expert helped each of the other members install software and set it up to ensure this would happen.

  All the AKs were converted to full auto.

  Redman disabled the AI on his truck and the men were taught how to drive on manual, off road and through woods.

  Redman taught selected, mechanically apt, members how to break into a vehicle, disable its AI and take it over.

  One of the SCDF members, a guy codenamed Peanut, showed up with a stack of ghillie suits, trimmed out to fairly closely match the vegetation around the Shalimoore course. The suits had been modified with ports to blow cool air into the outer layers making them hard to see with infrared as well as more comfortable on a hot day. The men practiced wearing them, advancing slowly in them, and doing their target shoots in them.

  Art had the feeling that half the reason Crossbow wanted to bring the men in was so that he could talk to them. Art didn’t know how he did it, but even if they came in with serious doubts about the mission, after talking to Crossbow they left full of fire and brimstone. Art had had the same experience after all. Somehow when you talked to Crossbow all your doubts
fell away. Art’s niggling concerns that as a patriot he shouldn’t be plotting against his own president had been replaced by a grim certainty that Stockton should never have been elected and was destroying the land he loved. Like Nathan Hale, Art concluded it was a pity he had but one life to give for his country.

  They brought the men in on weekends so as not to interfere with their jobs. Brick, Crossbow and Redman went up to Pinehurst during the middle of two separate weeks to look over the area, especially around the Shalimoore course.

  Everyone in the SCDF scheduled themselves to be on vacation the first week of October.

  ***

  Gary leaned back and rubbed his eyes. Viveka’s latest iteration of the VLGC had just formed a large and very complex graphend object. The testing numbers on the prototype were nothing short of amazing.

  The in situ allotrope coating system she had come up with also worked astonishingly well. Viveka had taken advantage of the fact that most of the allotrope formation peaks on the graphic projection that Kinrais had produced were at sub-atmospheric pressure. This meant that soft rubber seals around the in situ system were sucked down against the object being coated as soon as they started pumping the pressure down. It made achieving a seal relatively easy. This let them control the pressure in the chamber formed by the in situ allotrope coating system. Once they had correctly adjusted the temperature and the mix of gases inside the chamber, they could form either diamond or graphene on the surface of the object they were coating.

  Allosci would soon be making large profits coating the underside of aging bridges with graphene. With a relatively thin layer of graphene absorbing the tensile stress in a bridge fatigued by age, it could be counted on to hold up for many more years.

  There was even some talk about diamond coating old monuments to stop their deterioration.