Susan reassured the delivery man that the police would be getting to his wife and two children in just a few minutes, that she had already sent them to his address. He seemed quite puzzled that she could know his address and the situation with his family. This was all very disorienting to the poor man. She hadn’t given him an explanation of how she knew all that, but he seemed to take it all quite well. Meanwhile Jace retrieved some cord and translocated back down the driveway and in a flash secured the two would be attackers hands behind their backs as well as their feet. When the other two attackers coming in from the back garden turned the door knob to test it out back, they found it unlocked. They quietly stepped into the patio area, then the mud room. The invader behind collapsed with a sickening thud from a blaster being used as a hammer to his head. The invader in front who was now about to enter the living room stopped in his tracks, turned his head quickly to check on his partner in crime. He got equally entertained with a crack to his forehead. Jessi didn’t think that he’d gotten a good look at Jace. Jessi and her Mom Susan could not find any more approaching Badjans or their paid accomplices. The package o the stoop was benign and not a danger, so it was left there for the police to check out later.
The security officers came lights blazing to their front driveway as well as the street directly behind their house. Neighbors were popping their heads out of windows to look at all the flashing lights in the neighborhood. The two Badjans in the driveway were immediately secured, mouths swept for poisons and properly shackled. The two in the house by the back door entrance area were also secured. Jessi told us later that the whole thing was a total eye opener for her to see her two parents take charge and inflict violence on the intruders. She now has a totally different view of their abilities and competency. She was allowed to follow their thought processes and see how they used their powers to speak to each other as well as manipulate the minds of their attackers to make them less aware and less sharp while ushering them into their traps. Just excellent and elegant the way they showcased their powers as a team. She was herself in the standby mode in case she needed to help but that was never necessary.
Breecher had marshaled lots of local forces to within a quarter of a mile of the homes of Mader, Cherese and Matt, all of whose parents were at home at that time of the afternoon fortunately. All of their parents had various competences and all possessed arms. Those members of Six did not either see, smell nor sense any attackers around them and Breecher did not want Securinet or local forces to actually go to their homes unless definitely needed. That would just mark them as important targets for the Outlaws to get to later should they be monitoring for others associated with Jordan. By now it was clear that Jonah and somehow Jessi were the associated ones and therefore targeted. Suspicion was pointing to Mr. Waple as a central figure in this attempted kidnapping, for that is what it increasingly looked like.
The delivery driver who had sought protection inside the house was so moribund with fear at the dangerous predicament he and his family had been placed in that he seemed incapable of even moving. He had arrived at the terminal depot to drop back his delivery vehicle when two armed men accosted him as he was getting out in the parking lot. They put a blaster to his kidneys and said there was one more delivery to be done. Then his phone rang and his wife said that she had a gun to her head and she and her daughter were safe for now, but that he needed to do as those people said. When one of his co-workers passing by and waved to him, he was instructed to wave back and just go back inside with the box on his passenger side seat and drop it off at the address on it, which was along his normal route. As expected they told him that if he did as told, there’d be no reason to hurt him or his family. His vidcom was disabled and he got back in his delivery truck to do the job.
His two attackers he could see, were right behind him in their own vehicle. When he got there, package in hand, he got up to the front door and it opened after some knocking as instructed but then he was left slightly dazed as he vaguely felt a brushing sensation past his right shoulder. He was disoriented somewhat by his stress and the way the slender middle aged man who had opened the door seemed to be blurred. Then he heard a sickening thump or crunch and he turned around to see his followers were crumpled on the driveway motionless. He still couldn’t fully fathom what really had happened. Some young lady shepherded him inside to sit on a couch. The front door was closed and locked and the father who had neutralized those two men plus a lady who appeared to be his wife and the athletic gorgeous young lady all with blasters tucked into their waistbands, disappeared in the back of the house. There were a few grunting sounds after a loud crash and all three folks came back into the foyer area looking stern but calm. That’s all he could relate to the local police when they interviewed him while sitting on the couch. “No it had been a completely ordinary day prior to all this.” He said in response to their questions. “Is my family safe, I cannot call them, the attackers took my vidcom and disabled it. Can you check on them?”
He was informed that his wife and daughter were already checked on and were ok. It appeared that once he got to the address, the two folks with them left. It is assumed that they knew he was delivering the package. His family was unharmed and he was free to go.
“How did the police know about my family’s situation?” He asked. “The Wentworths here told us to check on them” he was told, “ How did they know that, I don’t recall telling them.” He said.
The officer said smirkingly, “You must have told them, but didn’t remember during the stress of the situation.” He started to say something, but just ended up shrugging his shoulders as if to say, strange! This whole ordeal was strange.
He walked back to his delivery truck and grabbed up his vidcom, then reached back under the back seat where the attacker had thrown the battery pack, snapped it back together just as it rang. His wife was online and as he tearfully asked about them, he got a second call from his boss at the depot asking if he was ok. They’d called him frantically when they saw him with the strange men then saw him going back out with the truck at the end of his shift. They had called the police when they couldn’t raise him but they could track the vehicle as it travelled. One of his work friends who had his wife’s contact tried her and couldn’t raise her on the line either. Was he ok they wanted to know, to which he replied, “I’m ok now yes, but I was held at gunpoint to go make a delivery which turned out to be a cover for a home invasion at the Wentworths. However the Wentworth family took care of the bastards. It seems that they were Outlaw Badjans trying to make a kidnapping. The Wentworth family live in a nice house on a beautiful street, but I wouldn’t have thought them to be prime candidates for kidnapping. They look like college professor types. Anyway yes I’m ok and my wife and kid are ok too.”
His boss said, “Don’t come in tomorrow, you need to spend time with them and recover. When you come back we will have a therapist here to talk to you ok.”
When he got back to the depot, he saw over twenty of his colleagues plus his boss waving. He pulled into his numbered parking spot and they were all there opening his door and standing in two rows. He slipped on the safety brake as per regulation then opened his driver side door. His boss Jarnel gave him a big hug as his foot touched the tarmac stepping out of his truck and as he walked away from his door, the men and women patted him on the back in greeting and solidarity. He couldn’t help himself. He was boohooing by the time he got to the end of the line. One of his closer buddies took his keys from his hand for his personal ride and next he knew he was in the passenger seat of his own vehicle being whisked down the broad avenues of Pommerose out the ten miles toward suburbia with a trail of vehicles in front and behind driven by his co-workers. In his driveway there were remnants of yellow crime scene tape with blue lights flashing and his wife ran into his arms as he stepped out.
He cried more that late evening than he could ever remember doing all his life, almost as much as when his Dad had taken a switch to his backside for t
elling a lie around age 7. Somehow he pulled himself together at that thought just before his daughter could see him in such a state. He was so relieved that it had ended well for him, his family and the Wentworth folks as well. He was many orders of gratitude appreciative of his thoughtful and caring work-family too. He thanked them each and ran inside where he was told by the police that they were leaving and did not need to question him. Their Department Chief had already informed them that he’d been already debriefed. They’d get back to him if they had any other questions. He would have a couple of police vehicles around his home for the night but they wouldn’t expect the crooks would have any more interest in him, they’d said.
16. Counterattack
Meanwhile the hunt was on as night was falling for the two Outlaw kidnappers who had held his wife and daughter hostage briefly. The police in their monitoring bunkers downtown were tracking them on their traffic cameras and other assets. Multiple swat teams were already mobilized and heading to specific choke points ready to spring into action. The whole provincial area was a hotbed of activity and Breecher and his team were coordinating it all.
There was an area forty five miles outside of pommerose and within ten miles of Bahoe where AI predicted based on all the pattern analysis of the escapees that they would head to. It was felt that there were some safe houses in that area, so lots of assets were directed there. Team Six was told to stand down and protect their own families and home turf. Team Five were marshaled to help, just in case.
It was now felt that the targets for kidnap were Jordan and Jessi. Two more incidents seemed to confirm this. A small four man air transport was found crashed still smoking on the edge of the Jordan’s farm with two dead bodies inside burnt to a crisp. There were remnants of combat arms in the wreckage. Breecher speculated that the two Outlaws who were seen by Jonah were there to work with those deceased to kidnap him but likely they must have been warned to abort by news of the accident somehow.
So now there were at least six live Outlaws being tracked by Securinet with four other live injured captives and two dead ones already in the bag. The four were already getting first aid and being evaluated to go into the decriptors where they would have their brain information harvested if they did not voluntarily cough up all! The Securinet and it’s local forces finally had finally gotten a good look at the vehicle that had driven away from the underpass with a new disc stuck on its topside and as suspected, it was being driven by AI. It finally pulled up into a farm road and stopped with full engine shut down. The forces approached it carefully with two Mauser transports bracketing it totally by the first one slipping in front of it and a second behind it after a quick robot scan to detect any danger signals such as explosives proved negative. Then the already unlocked doors were opened and one officer checked it out carefully making sure that the engine and electronics were disabled. A tow truck already staged got it on its bed and it was taken for full processing.
The driver had obviously hopped off and as night had now fallen, all the infra red and other sensors were used but it was one of the strong Team Five members who was good at sensing other human energy signatures who picked up on him. He was but only a few hundred yards away from the underpass, settled in under an overhang all wrapped up in steel and aluminum foil layers so as not to leak heat signatures and breathing with a carbon dioxide metabolizer to avoid detection by carbon dioxide emission. Fully surrounded now, with no where to go the hapless driver Outlaw emerged hands up. Breecher said that he sang all that he knew and was begging not to be put into the brain machine! So that was one more down. He claimed that he was simply a bit of a drifter noncom who had been offered some money by this pilot to go with him and ferry a vehicle to this underpass where he would then transition it to full auto drive that was already fully installed, but it needed the rooftop disc for more accurate guidance. Then he was to lay low and would be picked up in the morning at the creek. He was paid a full week’s salary for the practice sessions and the act. He could help to identify the pilot, that’s all. Five more outlaws to find.
The two kidnappers who had held the delivery driver’s wife hostage briefly, were being tracked outward from the city. They had driven in circles and stopped at several different businesses including restaurant parking lots, seemingly scoping out whether they were being followed. Then on their last stop, they switched to an old beaten up truck leaving the smaller car type vehicle neatly parked nearby. The drones clearly showed the switch but with two drones following and clear skies, they showed up like amateurs. They merged onto a busy highway joining the already waning after work traffic doubling back once to pass by the area where they’d left their first vehicle. They saw no one around it in an already empty parking lot. Actually the local officers had already gone to the site but were shooed away once the team realized that that the Outlaws were doubling back. These Outlaws were the definition of cagey.
Now that they felt certain that they were undetected, their driving behavior suddenly changed. They whipped back onto the highway for ten miles, came off the exit for the highway 403 thence onto farm Route 63 headed north for four miles thence through a barely passable mud track across a creek. They could not have gotten across that without a four wheel drive tall vehicle. Where they went was not accidental! They seemed to stop on a ridge with lights off for ten minutes no doubt looking for vehicle or airborne threats or followers. Infra red imaging showed them driving between trees on a large farm up to a small farmhouse approaching from its rear. This was another ruse to detect followers obviously since directly in front of the farmhouse ran farm Route 54. It would have been so much easier to get there on that wide open road, but they chose the back country off-road route for a reason. Their heat signatures exited their vehicle and entered the house. Two disguised Securinet vehicles drove casually past the house but did not enter. However those would be used to cut them off later should they bolt. There was a good possibility that they were going to settle in for the night.
Finally, the transport with pilot and the original two Outlaws seen by Jordan on his farm had been under observation in the field where it was parked. Intense multi band scrutiny of the area revealed that the three individuals each got on dirt bike type vehicles and they went in two different directions riding in the fields between trees to neighboring farm houses. Two of them, presumably the couple from my farm, after an approximate five mile ride in the darkness seemed to have made it to a nice looking home on the edge of a large farm in the Bahoe area. The other individual, who may be the pilot of the transport seemed to have ridden in the field then crossed a road and then gotten into a pickup truck conveniently parked on the side of a second road. He secured his bike in the bed of the truck then drove off. Surprise, surprise, he ended up on farm route 54 and turned into the same house as the other two from the Pommerose delivery man’s wife event. Birds of a feather often flock together yeah!
So now there were two venues to observe, swoop and possibly pluck from. Breecher and his team now stopped the live feeds and constant up-dates and told us to get some rest. They may simply observe those fellows for a few days to see which other associates might join them or talk to them. They were closely monitoring all communication channels and had their ears also tuned to my Mr. Waple. He was likely to not be an innocent. His boss too, Mr. Morgan and all their associates were going to be watched in case they too were involved while ‘keeping distance’ for plausible deniability.
Securinet wanted the big cheeses, not just the small fry. Bahoe has long had a significant Badjan presence and it looked like Securinet was onto some of the organization and their supporters here. So there were three Outlaws in one home and two in another. All the communication going in and out of the area was being monitored closely. Every stone was being turned over. Could there be a direct landline type communication set up between some of these farmhouses so that there was nothing out there to intercept? Satellites with LIDAR were called in to look for subsurface disturbances like tunnels. All possibi
lities were being considered. The unique sensing skills of team Five were being put to good use. They were driven past those homes to see what they may pick up on. They could confirm the presence of people but frustratingly could not get any useful intel. Drones were mostly kept distant so as not to arouse suspicion.
17. Harvesting under pressure
We needed to go to Moog’s farm in the morning and the night was getting on. It was time to get some much needed sleep. So as my final deed I informed Breecher of our early morning plans to travel. He advised caution and weapons to defend ourselves on that farm. Moog and I would fly our dashers around the perimeter and throughout the farm to ensure no one snuck up on us. I would be able to keep up some additional surveillance using my special newly developed attributes.
Next morning, having ensured that we had enough cameras installed around our farmhouse and farm buildings to allow us to monitor any strange events from afar, we all piled into two vehicles and headed out. Once at Moog’s farm in Minorcaville, we opened up the gates to allow the harvesters in, while we kept up with the electronic surveillance set up on our home farm in Dudemar. Moog and I sent out two dashers to survey the farm before bunches of people arrived to do their work which could lead to confusion as to friend versus foe. I sent out my instinctive feelers to probe the area, looking for other hidden minds around. All was quiet though, I got no hits on any disguised minds in the area. The sun was coming up full strength and the weather was dry. This was ideal harvesting weather but Moog and I were not going to be heavily involved this time except doing the security job while based at Moog’s farmhouse. Mum and Dad would be more involved with overseeing the work. Mum had brought lots of food and drink for us all and even snacks for the workers. Mobile potties and cleaning stations had been set up by the cooperative to service the teams doing the work.
Outlaw Badjans (Six of Toigan) Page 12