Lieutenant

by Laurence Dahners

  Amy put down her purse and walked across the room to her children. “I… I’m so sorry kids.” Their faces blurred behind her tears. “We’re in trouble. Pretty bad trouble.”

  Mikey put his arms around her, “Mom?” he asked anxiously, “what happened?”

  Amy had her right arm around Mikey and Janey crept under her left, “Your dad hasn’t been able to make his child support payments for you guys for a long time now. And when Janey was sick, it cost so much money and I missed so much work we really got behind on our bills.”

  Mikey swallowed, not quite sure what the talk about money meant but sure that it must mean something bad from the trembling in his mother’s voice. “You can have my money Mom.”

  Amy sobbed and sank to the couch, pulling her children to her. “Thank you honey, but we need a lot more money than you have. I really do appreciate your offer though.”

  Janey said, “I’m sorry I got sick… Do we have to move in with a relative?” Janey had a classmate who had moved in with her grandmother when her mother got sick and so that possibility was one she could comprehend.

  “Oh, Janey. Being sick wasn’t your fault, don’t blame yourself. I wish we could move in with a relative. But with Gramma and Grampa passed on, and me an only child, we don’t really have a relative that would take us in.” Amy did have a cousin on her mother’s side but she was pretty sure he was a drug dealer. She would rather live on the street than move her children in with him.

  “What are we going to have to do?” Mikey asked.

  “I’m not sure yet honey, but we’re going to have to move and we might have to live in our car for a little while. Wherever we go we’ll have to get rid of a lot of stuff. We can sell some of it, like the big screen you guys were fighting about. Selling it will give us some money. We won’t have anyplace to keep those things anyway.”

  Ice poured into Mikey’s veins. There was a rumor that one of the kids in his class was “homeless.” The other kids whispered and pointed and sometimes laughed. That kid had been popular the year before, but now he hardly ever said anything.

  “In our car?” Janey whispered, trying to imagine it.

  ***

  Steve looked at Jamieson with some concern. The rest of the team had been filled out with six guys that Steve already knew. He’d hired two women, like Ms. Donsaii had requested and even they’d been women Steve had already known and respected. Ms. Donsaii wanted to have ten total on the team with three members of the team dressed for action and immediately ready, though it was ok to be napping. Three more were to be nearby but available on call at all times. The idea was to have three members immediately ready to come to her aid and three more available with thirty minutes. The other four could be completely off duty or on vacation. She seemed confident that she would only be subject to kidnapping, not to assassination so didn’t want anyone actually bodyguarding her, only available for rescue.

  So far Ms. Donsaii had met each of the members as Steve brought them in and she’d approved all of them. But they needed a tenth member and Steve had run out of people he knew well. Jamieson had also been a Navy Seal and had been recommended to Steve by another ex military friend. However, Jamieson seemed awfully cocky and… abrasive.

  Maybe that would be OK if it meant the team would have another highly capable member?

  The entire team had gathered in a back room at Steve’s gym and had been doing some hand to hand combat exercises while Donsaii interviewed Jamieson. She’d been talking to him a lot longer than she did when she’d interviewed other team members.

  Jamieson knew his looks melted most women. Dirty blond hair, handsome face, long ropy muscles, six foot one. His looks in combination with his Seal credentials meant that he’d expected the interview to be a mere formality. Instead this child of a client had been busting his chops for thirty minutes now. Asking questions about how he’d handle various situations, then asking him to come up with less violent responses than he’d initially proposed. She had a pretty face though he liked his women with more meat on their bones. He sighed, “Ma’am, you obviously don’t know much about security teams. It isn’t all sweetness and light. Sometimes you’ve got to break a few eggs.”

  She stood, “OK, well, thank you for coming in Mr. Jamieson. We’ll just have to keep looking.” She turned and walked out to the rest of her team.

  “What! You’re turning me down?” he followed her out onto the mat and sneered around at her existing team. “I could take any three of these ‘so called’ security people you’ve hired so far without breaking a sweat.”

  She turned back to look at him, a bemused expression on her face, “Nonetheless, I prefer the team I have. I don’t want someone with a ‘cowboy’ attitude.”

  Jamieson leaned into her personal space, “That’s so much bullshit! You’re just a spoiled little rich kid who doesn’t know what’s good for her!”

  Steve stepped over and reached tentatively out, a little concerned because Jamieson was younger than he and more recently in the service, taking him could be difficult. However, eyes flashing, Ms. Donsaii put out a hand to wave him back. She said, “Spoiled huh? You’re wanting to demonstrate your astonishing fighting skills?”

  “Sure!”

  “Pugil sticks?”

  “No problem.”

  A stack of pugil sticks with 2” diameter shafts stood in the corner. They were 50 inches long with heavily padded ends. Ell had trained on them briefly when she’d been at the Air Force Academy so she was familiar with their use. She went over, picked up a pair of them and threw one to Jamieson.

  He said, “OK, who am I taking on?”

  “Me.”

  “What!? I could break you in half with one of these!”

  She smiled grimly, “I don’t break all that easy.” She said giving hers a little twirl. The ring on the mat is our boundary, three solid strikes or push me out of the ring three times and you’re the winner.” She waved the rest of her team off the mat.

  Steve stepped closer to Ell and in a low voice said, “Ms. Donsaii? I don’t think this is a good idea. Jamieson may not pull punches like he should.”

  She looked at him a moment, then said, “You may be right, but probably not for the reasons you think. However, I think the team needs to be aware of my particular skills–that knowledge may be important someday. She seemed to relax, “On the other hand demonstrating them on Jamieson here is probably dumb.” She tossed the stick to Mary and turned to Jamieson, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have let you irritate me.”

  Jamieson muttered, but loud enough for everyone to hear, “Yeah, sure. I’d back off too, if I were you.”

  Ell’s eyes flashed, “Mary? Toss me that stick back.” She held out her hand.

  Mary looked at Steve, her eyes questioning. He shrugged, “She’s the boss.”

  Ell said, “Steve, get us some headgear and gloves also, please?”

  In a few minutes Ell was back in the ring with Jamieson. “You understand the rules? They aren’t standard military. Push me out of the ring three times or three solid strikes, OK?”

  Jamieson rolled his eyes, “No problem.”

  Ell took a deep breath and let herself slip slightly into the zone. “Steve? One 2-minute bout. Blow the whistle?”

  With a shrug Steve blew the whistle. Jamieson immediately charged Ell, stick held low and horizontal, obviously intending to just shove her quickly out of the ring. Moving so fast the group hardly understood what had happened, Ell dropped under the right end of Jamieson’s pugil stick, shoving her stick between his feet to trip him, then bouncing up behind him and delivering a firm strike to his butt that sent him the rest of the way down onto his face and helped him slide on out of the ring.

  Steve blinked as he blew the whistle again, “One out, one strike,” he looked at his stopwatch, “eight seconds off the clock.” The new members of Ell’s team looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Even Steve, who’d had personal experience with Ell’s quickness felt surprised all over again.
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  Jamieson leapt back to his feet, face red and looking like he wanted to kill someone.

  Steve stepped over next to Ell, “Are you sure you want to continue? He’s ready to rip your head off.”

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on her opponent, “You OK Jamieson?”

  “Of course! I just tripped.”

  Ell realized that she might be too far into the zone if she’d moved so fast that Jamieson didn’t even realize that she’d purposefully tripped him. She took a deep breath and turned to Steve. “Whistle please.”

  Steve shrugged and blew the whistle. Jamieson stalked toward Ell then lunged out, thrusting the pugil stick like a lance. Ell moved like a bullfighter, arching her body to let the thrust pass by on her left, then she struck Jamieson lightly on the back of the head with the pad on her stick. Steve blew the whistle again, “Second strike, eighteen seconds off the clock.”

  Jamieson shook his head like a bull in the arena, snorted once and hissed, “This is bullshit!” He stared fiercely at Ell.

  With a concerned look on her face she asked, “You still OK?” Jamieson nodded vehemently. Ell turned to Steve “Whistle please?”

  This time when the whistle sounded Jamieson stood in place, evidently having decided to take a defensive posture. He held his stick horizontally across his lower chest. Ell walked to him and stopped near the edge of his reach, watching his eyes. Suddenly, he swung the right end of his stick out at her.

  This time instead of dodging she blocked the padded end of his stick with the central bar of her own. He swapped ends and punched out with the left which she blocked as well. A flurry of blows shot out with Ell blocking each of them precisely in the center of her stick as she began backing away. Feeling he had the upper hand, he pursued her but she led him around the ring so that he couldn’t propel her out of it. Even in the superb condition Jamieson was in, the pace of his strikes slowed after a circuit of the ring —then there was a sudden thump. His headgear was on sideways so that the earpiece covered his eyes.

  Steve blew the whistle, “Three strikes, game over. 43 seconds off the clock.”

  Jamieson ripped the crooked head gear off and threw it to the mat, “This is bullshit!” he practically screamed it this time, stalking toward Steve, rage on his face. “I hit her a million times and you didn’t blow the whistle. She grazes my headgear and you do?”

  Ell stepped between Jamieson and Steve. Her face glacially still, she said, “You never hit me, Mr. Jamieson, only my pugil stick.” She didn’t mention how careful she’d been to “only” hit his headgear after what she’d done to one of her trainers at the Academy. “Review the video record from your AI if you’d like.”

  Jamieson glared at Ell, “I could have blown you off the mat any time if I hadn’t been afraid I’d break you in two! And if your boyfriend hadn’t been blowing the whistle every time I got near you.”

  Ell put her hands up, “OK, Mr. Jamieson. I’ll accept your word for it. Now, if you’d leave us?” She raised her eyebrows politely.

  “Not until I kick your boyfriend’s ass,” he roared, lunging around Ell, toward Steve.

  There was a loud “crack” as Ell slapped him in the mid-face. Jamieson dropped to the mat, then rolled over and sat up holding his nose and blinking rapidly. Blood seeped from beneath his hand and began dripping off his fingers.

  Ell dropped to her knees in front of Jamieson. “I’m so sorry, I should never have let you goad me into this.” She looked up, “Randy, please get the first aid kit.” She turned back to Jamieson, “Do you know where you are?

  Jamieson nodded blearily. “Da gym.”

  She held up three fingers, “How many?”

  “Ffree,” he said, a stunned look in his eyes.

  Ell nodded, “Again, I apologize.” May we look beneath your hand?” He lifted it for a moment. Ell said, “All the bleeding seems to be coming from your nose, there aren’t any lacerations on the outside.” She turned back to her team, “Barrett, can you take him to the ED to get patched up and checked over on my account?” Barrett nodded, eyes wide. “Thanks.”

  After Jamieson had been taken away and Ell had left for her apartment, the rest of the team sat and watched what had happened from all the different viewpoints of each of their AI’s video records. Even in slow motion it was hard to catch all the events. Randy turned to Steve, “Holy cripes Steve, what the Hell does she need us for? The girl’s a one woman demolition derby!”

  Steve shrugged. “The Chinese have successfully kidnapped her twice in the past year. Once they drugged her, once they Tasered her. She escaped both times, the first time without any help. Presumably they’ll up their game next time. Their objective seems to be to get her out of the country. It’s our job to be sure that they don’t succeed.

  “Why?! Surely they don’t think she’ll do gymnastics for them?”

  “She’s some kind of genius at physics too. All the money she’s using to hire us comes from an invention she made in November; she was dirt poor before that. The Chinese apparently want her to do physics research for them.”

  Mary said, “But Steve, she’s spending money like it was water. Are you sure she’s not going to run out and leave us in the lurch? What if this ‘invention’ of hers doesn’t pan out?”

  Steve smiled, then lifted his shirt and turned around, saying, “Look Ma, no backpack for my AI.” They all looked at him blankly. He tilted his head with a wry grin, “So, she’s invented a chip, she calls it a PGR chip, that communicates wirelessly, without radio, over unlimited distances. The CPU of my AI is sitting at home on my desk and she’s upgraded it to ‘near supercomputer’ status. So I have tremendous processing capability but I’m not carrying anything but my headband with a chip that ties me to this high powered computer back in my house!”

  “But what if someone blocks the signal?”

  “Can’t be blocked, intercepted, read or detected.” Eyebrows rose. “That’s why she has so much money. She mentioned that she donated a hundred and five million dollars to North Carolina State University and she never even went to school there! If she can donate that kind of money, I think she can probably afford our services for the foreseeable future.”

  He looked around at the group. “Next on our agenda, she’s been assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. We’ll be moving to Las Vegas, so I hope none of you have gambling problems. First though, at least some of us will need to follow her temporarily to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio where she’s going to have an abbreviated officer training course.”

  Chapter Two

  Ell pulled off her brunette wig and fluffed her reddish blond hair as she drove up to the gate at Nellis. She was looking forward to this assignment with some anticipation, wondering what the Air Force had in store for her. She assumed that they wanted to take advantage of their special access to her and upgrade their communications systems to PGR, especially their UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) fleet, much of which was based here at Nellis. Communicating with UAVs on the other side of the world through satellite radio transmissions would be crazy now that PGR was available. Even before she’d had the idea for PGRs, Ell had often worried about the possibility that opposing forces might find a way to interfere with, or worse, suborn communication with American UAVs. It only made sense that the Air Force would want to take advantage of its royalty free right to use her PGR technology, something that enemies couldn’t interfere with.

  The Nellis gate AI queried hers and captured an image of her face, then lighted green. The guard waved her through and the AI in her Ford Focus drove her to a “Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems” office. In a few minutes she began cooling her heels outside the exec’s office.

  With nothing else to do she looked up at her HUD (Heads Up Display) and began re-examining some of her quantum dimensional equations, searching for her holy grail, a method to achieve interstellar communications. Ell had become convinced that the fact that no radio signals had been detected from other stars did not mean that there were
n’t any advanced civilizations on the worlds surrounding them. Instead she believed that it meant that they didn’t use radio for communication. They simply used PGR or something like it and therefore didn’t radiate in the radio band. She hoped that she would be able to find a method to communicate with such civilizations across interstellar distances. According to her theory, it would be possible if entities at the two stars both had one member of a pair of “entangled” molecules in which Photon-Gluon Resonance could be elicited. Ell’s equations did not predict any limit to the distance over which PGR could communicate instantly. There was however, the minor problem of delivering one member of such a pair of entangled molecules across the light years to the other star! Ell had a gut feeling that such a molecule could be delivered somehow through the same tiny 5th dimension that the entangled molecules in her PGR devices used to communicate with one another instantly. But for the life of her, she couldn’t see how that might actually be accomplished.

  Deep in thought, her eyes had lost focus on her HUD when she heard her name.

  “Lieutenant Donsaii?” said A1C Jobst, marveling at how pretty the new “El Tee” was. “Colonel Ennis is ready to see you now.” When she stood, Jobst was surprised to see that she was as tall as he was. “Right this way Ma’am.” He motioned down the hall. As he walked beside her he kept glancing over at her. She walked confidently and her uniform seemed to fit unusually well. He shrugged, her slender shape no doubt made her an easy fit.

  Jobst stopped at a door labeled, “Lt. Colonel Ennis, Executive Officer.” Jobst knocked on the frame of the open door and said, “Colonel Ennis, I have Lieutenant Donsaii here.”

  “Send her in.”

  Ell stepped into the office and came to attention. “Lieutenant Donsaii, reporting as ordered sir.” She said, staring at the wall over the Colonel’s head, expecting him to call her to “at ease.”