The Hidden Society

by R. Chauncey

  ***

  Chapter 19

  January 7, 3:47 p.m.

  Larson took his time walking to Marajo’s room. He kept looking around to made sure no one was watching him and he wondered if he was acting so suspiciously he‘d attract attention anyway. He hoped not. But he did turn around twice as if he was lost and looking for something – the way he imagined one of his fictional tough guys would do, before he walked around to the back of the motel to room 244 and knocked on the door. He couldn’t help but feel he was living a scene out of one of his mystery novels.

  All I need is some high tech weapon that shoots a thousand rounds a minute and a dozen bad guys closing in on me. I’ll kill’em all. He grinned a foolish grin.

  He heard the bolt on the door being moved then the door being unlocked and opened.

  “Come in,” Marajo said, stepping back as soon as she’d opened the door and saw it was him.

  He didn’t have time to say hello after he entered before she closed, locked, and bolted the door shut.

  “Everything okay?” he asked as he looked about the warm, typical looking motel room. He spotted the bathroom door off in the right corner and rushed toward it dropping his bag and taking off his coat as he did so.

  “So far,” she answered, ignoring his move to the bathroom.

  Ten minutes later he opened the bathroom door and walked out drying his hands on a towel and asked, “So what’s the next move.”

  “You made a statement in the cabin I took you to after I untied you and before you left,” Marajo said. She was sitting on the bed.

  “I remember. The cabin you took me to after you tried to cave in my skull,” he corrected her.

  “If I’d tried that you’d be dead. You said you know where the Society keeps their information.”

  “Yes, I do.” He walked back to the washroom and hung the towel back on the rack and came out and sat down in a chair next to the desk.

  Marajo stared at him with an unbelievable expression.

  “What?” he asked, looking at her as if he’d done something wrong.

  “How the hell did you get that?” she asked, sitting across from him on the bed.

  “Julian gave it to me,” he said.

  “Why would he do that?”

  He told her in fifteen minutes about the letter and the trip to the cabin and the laptop and two drives Julian gave him.

  “You have this information in your com-cell?”

  “Yes. The second drive he gave me told me how to remove the chip from that drive that had the information on it and place it in my com-cell. And I did it.”

  “I knew Julian knew a lot about computers, but I didn’t know he knew enough to put an information chip in a flash drive,” she said.

  “Well, I followed the information he put on that second drive and the darn thing worked,” Larson told her.

  “Why the hell would he choose a retired high school history teacher to expose the Society?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. And considering that blow on the head I got from you, I wish the hell he hadn’t. I wish to hell I’d thrown that damn letter in the trash after I read it.”

  “By the way what did you hit me with?” he asked her.

  “A tire iron,” she answered.

  “That is just nasty,” he told her in an angry voice. “You could have killed me.”

  “I didn’t hit you that hard,” Marajo said.

  “Well, it damn sure felt like you hit me as hard as you could,” he told her.

  “Julian wouldn’t have chosen you at random,” she said with a thoughtful expression on her face. “He would have had a specific reason for contacting you and giving you those drives. How did he contact you?”

  “By mail.”

  “E-mail?” she asked.

  “By regular mail delivery.”

  “No e-mails?” she asked, standing up. “We’d better prepare to leave. The Society’s killers are probably on to me by now.”

  “No e-mails.”

  “That makes sense,” she said. “E-mails can be easily traced by the Society.”

  “Just goes to show you our modern computerized e-mail system isn’t as safe as the software companies would like us to believe.”

  “Think,” she said as she walked to the closet and opened it.

  “Think about what?”

  “Something that could have made you his choice to contact me,” she pulled out of the closet a large, worn black leather traveling bag and walked to the bed and sat it on the bed.

  “Look, Marajo. You don’t mind me calling you Marajo, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. I’ve already told you that. Though that’s not my real name,” she replied, opening the bag.

  “I never met, or heard of Julian Franks, before I got that letter from him. I read it and I answered it just out of curiosity. Something I can guarantee you I will never do again. I’m a retired high school history, thirty-six years as a teacher I may add, who writes fiction for a hobby. My success as a writer has made my retirement salary, which I may also add is large enough for me to live comfortably on, into pocket change for me. I can’t imagine any reason Julian Franks would have had for selecting me to destroy the Hidden Society.”

  She stopped as she was reaching into the open the bag and looked at him. “If you and Julian never met, then it was probably something you wrote that attracted his attention and convinced him to use you.”

  “Outside of my work as a teacher I’ve never written anything but fiction,” he said.

  He face took on a serious expression. “Unless?”

  “Unless what?”

  “Well, when I was working on my Master’s Degree I wrote a paper entitled ‘Greed and Power’.”

  “What was it about?” she asked, returning to the leather bag.

  “It was about how the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few greedy people was the greatest threat to democracy and freedom in the world. I pointed out, from my research, that some people, mostly men, were willing to deal with terrorists and criminals to acquire more wealth and power. I pointed out that wealth and power with some of these men had replaced their families and God as the most important things in their lives.”

  Marajo stopped unpacking the bag and looked at him. She was holding a brown cardboard box in her left hand as she said, “My God!”

  “What?”

  “Julian was desperate when he mailed that letter to you asking you to come and see him. He had been searching for years for someone to help me expose the Hidden Society, and he hadn’t found anyone till he came across your Master’s Degree paper. You were the last person he had to turn to. That’s why he didn’t keep you long. He knew the Society was on to him, or soon would be, and he had run out of time.”

  “He was at one time one of the three leaders of the Society according to the first flash drive. Why couldn’t he have exposed the Society?”

  “He may have been a leader, but his power was limited by the Council of Twenty and two other leaders and the other members and soldiers. If they had detected any action on his part as a threat to the Society, they would have killed him immediately,” she said as she placed the box on the bed next to the bag. “What have you got in that bag of yours?” She nodded toward his traveling bag on the floor next to the chair in which he was sitting.

  “Change of clothes, extra pair of boots, six pairs of sock and underwear, and a medical kit. Plus the standard personal gear. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving equipment.

  And I brought a pair of binoculars and a flashlight ju
st in case we need them.”

  “Long underwear I hope. We’re going to be outdoors until we succeed. And it’ll be cold even though we’re heading southwest.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got two sets of long underwear,” he answered, looking at the box in her right hand. “Let me guess what’s in that box. A couple of pistols with ammunition “

  “Two semi-automatics that can hold fourteen round magazines with three extra loaded magazines for each of us. Pistols, six shooters, have too many moving parts. They tend to jam. Grab the towels out of the bathroom. And pack them in your bag. You should have a backpack. The sun will be setting in a few hours and we’ll leave then. Get some rest if you need it.”

  “Why did Julian pick you?” he asked.

  “Long story. Tell you on the way. And no we weren’t lovers. By the way when did you write this paper Greed and Power?”

  “May of 2038. I was attending Chicago State University. I got my bachelor’s degree there, too.”

  “The University published the paper?”

  “No it wasn’t a Master’s thesis. They just put it in the history department computer files.”

  She didn’t say anything because she was thinking.

  “Anything odd about that?” Larson asked.

  “Julian had apparently become so desperate to find someone to help me expose the Society he started reading information from colleges. He came across your paper and did some checking on you and decided you were the person I needed. You were probably his last hope.”

  “You know my professor said it was an unusual and original subject for a paper. He wanted me to develop it into a thesis for my Master’s. But I didn’t need a thesis to get a

  Master’s. I wasn’t interested in trying for a Doctor’s Degree.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t need a Doctorate’s Degree to teach in high school. Even a Master’s isn’t necessary for that,” he said.

  “Then why did you get a Master’s Degree?” she asked as she put the box on the bed and removed a faded blue heavy cotton backpack from her leather bag.

  “To get into another lane for an increase in salary,” he answered.

  “Do you have a backpack?”

  “No. Don’t need one, do I?”

  “I’ve another one in the Highlander outside. Easier to carry our things in than a regular bag,” she told him, setting the bag on the floor. “Let get some sleep after I’ve put my things in this backpack. You can repack your things in the backpack in the Highlander once we’re on our way.”

  ***

  Chapter 20

  January 7, 5 p.m. Hidden Society’s Armory

  Lawrence had angrily disapproved of letting Karl and Willow into the Society’s Armory when Karl walked into his office followed by Willow and demanded access to the armory. He hadn’t been told by a leader or a member of the Council of Twenty to open the armory for anyone. Let alone a common soldier. If the government should find out what kind of weapons were in the armory, the FBI would descend upon the Ames Ranch and search it from top to bottom. All the guests would leave the Ames Ranch and Hotel and the Hotel would be in the news with a bad reputation that would take years to live down. And, most terrible, the leaders and Council of Twenty would hold him responsible.

  But he hadn’t been able to stop Karl from getting the information necessary to get into the armory. In spite of his loud, angry protests the brutal animal of a human had thrown him out of his chair onto the floor of his office and gone through his computer files till he found the computer code that told him where the armory was located and how to get into it. Using that code Karl had unlocked the armory, and then stepped on his left leg right on the pants leg of his ten thousand dollar hand weaved and hand stitched woolen and cotton suit on his way out of his office to the armory with that mindless flunky soldier Willow following blindly in his footsteps like some goose stepping Nazi SS goon. Except Willow didn’t goose step.

  Lawrence had followed them in his own special made electric cart. Instead of returning to the hotel to romance one of the rich beautiful older women, a job he considered most important, who came to the hotel for the purpose of being romanced by him. Or one of the hotel’s handsome employee. Women he knew would be ever so grateful for the pleasure of his attention, in their overpriced deluxe suites of the hotel ranch.

  The expression of outage on Lawrence’s face as he stood watching Karl and Willow enter the armory said he didn’t approve of letting Karl and his three thugs have the electric guns.

  They were the most sophisticated weapons in the world. They looked like regular semi-automatic hand guns, but instead of firing metal projectiles they fired electric volts half the size of a twenty-two caliber bullet with ten times the killing power of a .44 caliber slug and five times the speed. The volts fired by an electric handgun could travel half a mile, and instead of hitting the ground like regular bullets the volts simply broke into harmless electrons because they had a greater resistance to gravity and broke up before gravity claimed them. But if one hit a person they’d penetrate an inch into the body then break into electrons that electrocuted a person with the equivalent of 6000 volts. Depending upon what part of the body was hit, the chest or head were the best places to hit, death would be instantaneous or long and painful.

  Where the average semi-automatic had a magazine of 12 to fourteen rounds of ammo an electric gun had a battery that carried a hundred volts of electric bullets. The battery took an hour to recharge itself, and could be used four times before it had to be replaced. And the battery could be recycled. Electric guns also weighed less than a third of weight of a regular semi-automatic and were not affected by water or any weather conditions. They could even work in space. The electric bullets would travel a million miles in space before they dissipated. They could even be fired underwater and were deadly at thirty feet. The electric handguns didn’t produce a noticeable flash, just a bright spark and only a soft cracking sound, and were made out of fiber optics and plastic. They looked like regular handguns. They were illegal everywhere in the world, because no government wanted them falling into the hands of criminals. And only the Hidden Society had them. One hundred hand guns, and one hundred rifles each of which had a range of over two miles and the power to penetrate a six inch brick wall.

  “I suppose Derrick and the other leaders know about this,” Lawrence said in a disapproving voice as he stood next to the door of the armory. “As well as the Council.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what they know,” Karl answered, checking one of the automatics to make sure its battery was fully charged. But Karl had assumed Derrick would make the assumption he would help himself to electric weapons if he needed them.

  “Then why are you taking these?” he demanded. “Only the leaders with the approval of the Council of Twenty can authorize the use of these weapons. These are top secret weapons!”

  “Yeah, I know,” Karl replied.

  “I am responsible for these weapons, you know,” Lawrence yelled at him.

  “I’ve got an important job to do. And I need these.”

  “I don’t care what sort of job you have to do, Karl! You have no right in here.

  You’re just a damn soldier!”

  “Do you have someone to run this ranch hotel for you if you suddenly leave?” Karl asked Lawrence as he turned toward him concealing his strong dislike of him behind a blank face.

  “Of course, I do. If it is any of your concern,” Lawrence answered.

  “Good,” Karl said. He pointed the semi-automatic in his right hand at Lawrence’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  The electric volt hit Lawrence in the chest and he was killed so quickly he didn’t have time to a
dopt a shocked expression or cry out in pain. He dropped to the floor like a sack of sand.

  Willow calmly watched the killing and said, “You didn’t like him, did you?”

  “Piece of shit,” Karl replied, putting the gun in the holster he’d taken for it and putting both in the red canvas bag on the table. “Get one for yourself. And take two for Dodge and Betty, too. And an extra magazine for each of us though I doubt we’ll need them. I’ll leave the ones for Dodge and Betty in their rooms when they return from Westport.” He grabbed two red bags from a metal shelf and handed them to Willow. “We’ll need medical kits, night goggles, sleeping bags, and a heat detecting unit, too.”

  Karl moved to the metal shelves in the large armory that had the equipment they needed and began filling the red bag he carried with the equipment.

  “Never fired one of these,” Willow said, liking the weight of the weapon he’d taken from the gun rack.

  “Just like a regular automatic,” Karl said, closing his bag and turning toward the door. “Get what I said you’d need.”

  Willow immediately began loading the red bags he had with the equipment Karl told him to take. As soon as the bags were filled he took them out to the cart Lawrence had come to the armory in and put the bags in the back. Then he went back inside the armory for sleeping bags. He took the solar electrically heated sleeping bags. He picked up one of the three portable heat detecting units from the floor next to a gun rack and carried it to the back of the cart Lawrence had used.

  “That everything we need?” Karl asked him.

  “Yeah, except for food and drink,” Willow said.

  “Okay, we stop by the supply room for food and a good field coffeemaker and a fresh water filtering can, but no alcohol. This ain’t going to be no pleasure trip if what I suspect about this Marlene Done woman is true,” he said. He looked at the cart Willow had put their equipment in. “Why’d you use his cart?”