Puppeteer

by Schultz, Tamsen

  “It looks like something from the evil empire,” Spanky commented as they all returned to the table. The Abram machine was smaller, shaped like a basketball. Black in color, it had an ominous look to it.

  “It not only looks like something from the evil empire, it acts like it, too,” Jay said.

  “Meaning?” Dani prompted.

  “This is one unforgiving bitch of a system,” Jay shook his head, and stared at the machine, as if trying to puzzle out its motives. “We've got people working on it, working on finding its weaknesses. We haven't found much but we do have two. And they're two substantial weaknesses.

  “So, here is how it works,” Jay started, moving in front of the machine and pointing to a small black window. “This machine is custom-programmed for use in a specific area. In other words, if you want to use it in Florida, it would be programmed to recognize sharks because they've got them there and you wouldn't want the system going off every time a shark swam by. And, knowing what we know about the area, we can give an educated guess as to what Getz's systems is programmed to recognize. So here's what we think,” he moved back toward the marine map with the Xs as he spoke. “Given where we are, where Getz's house is, we're going to recommend that you assume anything over three feet long or two feet wide will be recognized.”

  “That's not very big and counts all of us out,” Dani pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Jay agreed, “That's the bitch of the system,” he moved back to the machine. “As I said, it has two big flaws, and we're going to need to count on those. See these?” he asked, pointing to a series of little black windows. “These are like infrared beams, like the kind you'd see in museum. And, like in a museum, unless you break the beam, the monitor isn't going to pick you up.”

  “How many are there on each machine?” Drew asked.

  “On a standard machine there are eighteen. We didn't install them, but the guy who did installed the standard version. Which brings up a good point, we're working on the assumption he hasn't altered either machine. Given that Getz used two different companies to install the systems, it's possible he used a third to customize them. I don't think it's likely, there aren't many of us who can do this kind of work, but it bears mentioning. But, back to the Abram, the beams can pick up movement up to fifteen feet away.”

  “Okay, so we have some leeway in how we approach the monitors and I'm assuming we're going to run those trials today as well, so what's the second weakness?” Dani inquired.

  Jay smiled. “The machines are completely unreliable.” He paused for dramatic effect. Next to her, Ty sighed.

  “How unreliable?” he asked.

  “If they bump into anything they'll shut off. If a big storm comes and shakes them around, they'll shut off. If it gets too warm or too cold, they'll shut off. And when they shut off they don't raise an alarm. Don't get me wrong, if they shut off, whoever is monitoring the system at the house will know the machine is off, but it won't raise an alarm.”

  “And how often does this happen?” Dani asked.

  “In the three hours we tested four machines, all of them shut off at least once for a time period of at least ten minutes.”

  “Hell of a system,” Dani said. “Do they come back on automatically or do you have to reset them?”

  “They come back on automatically in most cases, once the system readjusts or recalibrates, but we did have to manually reset one of the machines,” Jay answered, pacing in the front of the room.

  “So, if we can get a couple of the machines to shut off at strategic times, given the number of times something similar has, presumably, happened in the past, it's unlikely the guards are going to come running,” Ty commented.

  “One can hope,” Jay gave them all a satisfied, if somewhat feral smile. “The machines have created their own ‘cry wolf’ situation that we can take advantage of. And,” Jay added, moving back to the map, “looking at the placement of each system, I don't think it will be difficult to arrange for a machine or two to accidentally need to recalibrate.”

  * * *

  “Christ, I'm cold,” Dani swore to herself as she peeled the wetsuit off her body. Or at least she thought she was speaking to herself.

  “It's because you have no body fat.” Ty stood next to her, already sans suit. Reaching out a hand, he helped her step out of her own.

  “Funny, I thought it was because the water is about sixty degrees,” she shot back. She hated being cold. She'd soldier through, but she'd never like it.

  Ty laughed at her disgruntlement. “We'll get dry suits next time. We should have had them this time.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Dani grumbled.

  “Dani, are you grumbling about the cold again?” Spanky came up behind her and collected her suit. Unlike her, Spanky was a polar bear, the colder the better.

  “Not me,” she gave him a toothy smile. “I'm being sweet as a peach.”

  Her colleague snorted in response. “Remember that time in—”

  Dani cut him a look and he stopped mid-sentence.

  “Right, I'll go wash these up and get you a dry suit for tomorrow.” Spanky turned and walked away.

  “That time when, what?” Ty asked with an amused look. He handed her a towel and a sweatshirt.

  “It wasn't one of my better moments, I don't feel like reliving it right now,” she answered, drying her hair. She pulled the sweatshirt over her shoulders and then stripped the top of her bathing suit down underneath it. The air outside was warm but she was still chilled from the water where they'd been training for the past two hours and needed the extra warmth of the sweatshirt. When it fell to mid-thigh, she glanced down and realized it was Ty's. She looked up at him. He shrugged.

  “You looked like you needed it more than I did,” he answered. “So, what does Dani Williamson look like when she's not having one of her better moments?”

  Dani glanced around for her sweatpants before finding them under a pile of towels. They were a little damp, but better than nothing. She slipped out of her bathing suit altogether, safe in the coverage provided by Ty's sweatshirt, and pulled on her pants. It was a delay technique. She'd cut Spanky off not because he was about to reveal something about her, but because he was about to talk about a nasty operation they'd been on together in the Arctic Circle. Not a place your average DEA agent went. And Dani had no doubt Ty would pick up on that fact.

  “Let's just say I get mean and could out-swear even the nastiest sailor.” Dani remembered the operation. They had sat in sub-zero temperatures for ten days before the men they'd been waiting for decided to show up. She had been frozen for every minute of every one of those long days. It'd made her cranky and tired, and being tired had made her even crankier. She'd lost a lot of weight, which had made her body feel fatigued, which, shockingly, had made her even more cranky. But when the time had come, she'd single-handedly taken out nine of the ten heavily-armed men. “Of course, I also shoot really well when I'm cranky, so maybe being cold has its perks.”

  * * *

  Ty walked into the big house and, for once, it was quiet. Marmie was at her computer, but she was reading. A book. Not a report or a computer printout. He didn't know where everyone else was, but it was almost disquieting.

  “Hi Marmie,” Ty spoke as he approached her. “It's quiet here this afternoon. Where is everyone?”

  Marmie smiled and put her book down. Ty glanced at the title but couldn't make it out since it looked to be written in some sort of script.

  “Cotter is out with his men and Jay, doing some more training. Adam's in Miami, the rest of my team is downstairs. Dani is up in her room reviewing some files and Drew is in the library,” she recited with her usual friendly but perfunctory manner.

  “And Spanky?”

  Marmie shrugged but didn't answer. There was no way Marmie didn't know where he was, she just wasn't going to say.

  “Dani might be in a good mood by now if you want to go check on what she's up to,” Marmie suggested with surprising casualness
.

  “Any reason she was in a bad mood?” he asked, mulling over Marmie's curious change of approach toward him. He liked the older woman, but he'd always sensed a sort of protectiveness in her when it came to Dani. She sort of circled him like a mother lion trying to figure out if he was a threat to her cub.

  “The cold. She hates it. She took a two-hour hot shower when they all got back. She claimed she was feeling human again a little bit ago when she came down for some coffee.”

  The information dump on Dani in those few sentences was more than he'd ever gotten from Marmie in all their previous interactions. Maybe she'd decided he wasn't a threat—at least not the kind she was looking out for. Dani, on the other hand, well, there was no doubt that she still saw him as a threat. But he'd wear her down.

  But not right this minute. Right now he had something to discuss with Drew.

  He excused himself from Marmie and made his way through the cavernous house toward the library, smiling all the way. He couldn't help it, something about the house always amused him. It was such a lavish place, filled with beautiful expensive things. But not filled the way a designer would fill a house. It was chock-full of stuff that looked like it was purchased merely because the purchaser liked it. There was no rhyme or reason, no matching pieces, no theme rooms, no continuous style. It was stuff that, though mismatched, seemed to go together. Probably because the person buying it, and Ty assumed it was Dani's sister Sam, had a strong personality and it came through in the things she surrounded herself with. Dani might think she and her sister weren't alike, but he suspected they were more alike than Dani would ever imagine.

  “Come in,” Drew called from behind the closed library door after Ty knocked. He walked in and closed the door behind him. If Drew was surprised to see him, he didn't show it. He gestured to a leather wingback chair and Ty took a seat—debating how to bring up the subject he wanted to address.

  “It didn't go well this morning,” Ty spoke, deciding on the abrupt, straightforward approach. Drew raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything, so Ty continued. “You know what I'm talking about. Your team is good and they dive better than ninety-five percent of the divers I know. I bet most have even trained underwater. But even so, they succeeded in getting past both machines only nine out of ten times.” And the thought of Dani being in the water that one time it didn't work was the single thought driving this conversation.

  “It was their first time out. They're still out there,” Drew pointed out. Based on what Marmie had said, Ty figured Cotter and some of his team were still in the water, trying to rectify the numbers.

  “And how are they doing?” Ty asked, knowing Drew would be receiving dive-by-dive reports—that he wouldn't wait for an end of the day recap. And, judging by the look on Drew's face, Ty guessed they weren't doing much better than this morning.

  “Shit, Drew,” Ty shook his head, forgetting for a minute he was talking to the team director. “It's not good enough and you know it,” he looked the other man in the eye and held his gaze.

  Drew's blue eyes studied him, unwavering for a long moment. His mind was sharp and intense, in stark contrast to his calm demeanor. Drew was taking his measure. Ty wasn't sure what Drew was looking for or if, when he looked away, he did so because he'd found it. But whatever was going on in Drew's mind didn't matter a bit to Ty—all he cared about was making sure the team director had the best people to do the job. He could never eliminate the risk to Dani, but he sure as hell would do whatever it took to reduce it.

  Drew sighed and swung his eyes back to Ty. “What do you suggest?”

  Ty looked at Drew, “I have a couple of friends from my SEAL days, bring them in. They can shut the machines down long enough to get the rest of the team through and they'll do it every time.”

  “They're military,” Drew pointed out. Technically, US military wasn't supposed to use armed force on the US civilian population. Ty almost laughed—technically the CIA wasn't supposed to be operating against US citizens either. That Drew brought this up was amusing.

  “They won't fire any weapons,” Ty offered, knowing no SEAL would willing go into an operation without weapons. They wouldn't be obvious, they might not even fire them, but they'd carry them. “But, if you're worried about protocol, one of our other teammates, Rani Khalid, formed a small securities company, Bright Line Security, when he retired. They could take a leave of absence and sign on with Rani. They'd be civilian.” The setup wasn't quite that clean, but it would be clean enough to get away with.

  “Bright Line Security,” Drew cocked a brow. “Sounds like a day care center,” he added.

  “It does, but it's not. Rani picked the name as a joke since bright lines were hard to come by in our line of work.”

  “I know a little something about that myself,” Drew replied. Ty studied the man and, for the first time, noticed that Drew looked his age. He wasn't old at thirty-eight, but if he'd entered the CIA right out of college, he'd been doing it for over fifteen years, and Ty knew how much gray a person could see in fifteen years.

  “I suspect you do,” Ty answered.

  “And why would these friends want to do this?” Drew asked, bringing the conversation back on track.

  “Because I'll ask them to,” Ty responded. Drew's eyes never wavered from his and so Ty opted to continue. “And because they took a liking to Dani when they met her in San Diego. They'd be upset if anything happened to her.”

  “And you? Would you be upset?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes? That's all you're going to say?” Drew looked at him with something akin to amusement.

  “What is it you want to know, Drew? That I care about Dani?” Ty countered and then continued when Drew remained silent. “You already know I care about her. And since you keep sending me to her room and turning a blind eye, along with the rest of the team, to what is obviously not a by-the-book working relationship, I'd wager you approve. Even if you can't outwardly support it.” Ty studied Drew's expression. The director's jaw ticked and his eyes were carefully blank. He sensed that Drew had a lot to say on the matter, but the time and place wouldn't allow him to either confirm or deny Ty's assertion. So Ty took the opportunity to say what he wanted.

  “So, yes, I do care about her. Very much. But the rest is between me and Dani. And if you're worried about me going off the deep end if something happens to her, don't be. I'm not going to lose it if something happens to her, but I sure as hell am not going to sit around and do nothing when I know how to reduce some of the risk both she, and the rest of your team, face.” Ty wasn't convinced he was telling the truth about not going off the deep end, but he was saying what needed to be said.

  “You've changed her,” Drew said.

  Ty shook his head. “Whatever she's doing differently is her choice. Maybe it's because of me, I'd like to think I might be affecting her in a good way, or maybe it's this case.”

  “Or maybe it's both. And as for being in a good way, well, we'll see. As her friend, I'd say yes, no doubt. As her boss, the jury is still out.”

  Ty was surprised that Drew allowed himself to comment on the matter, and he knew he should leave it at that. But he couldn't. He couldn't let Drew think Dani might let him down. “You should have more faith in her, Carmichael. Even if she's changing, or probably more to the point, letting herself change, she's not going to screw up her job. It's too much a part of who she is.”

  Drew raised an eyebrow in a ‘we'll see’ gesture and turned away, ending any more talk of Dani.

  “We don't know when this thing with Getz is going to go down, or even if it is going to happen here. It could be a big waste of your friends' time,” Drew said, returning to the earlier topic.

  “Fawkes hasn't taken leave in a couple of years, believe me, he won't mind coming to the house to hang around for a few weeks. If you don't want him here, he can stay at my place. As for Roddy, he and his wife just had a baby and her family is from a few miles south of here. He also has a lot of leave
and his wife is already excited about spending some time with her parents.”

  “You've already talked to them.” It wasn't a question. And Drew wasn't happy about it.

  “They know enough about what's going on from when Dani was in town—when you authorized their assistance,” Ty pointed out. Drew had approved using Fawkes and Roddy as backup, so to speak, for Dani. “They know I'd like them to come and work on the team but not what we'd need them to do. I've run the logistics by them. If you agree and bring them on, it's your show, it's your job to tell them what you want them to know.”

  Drew was silent again for a long while. He rose, ending the conversation. “I'll think about it,” he said.

  It wasn't what Ty wanted to hear but it was better than a flat ‘no’ so he nodded in acknowledgement and left without another word.

  * * *

  Ty closed the door behind him and Drew wondered if he was heading to Dani's room. For the first time in possibly forever, he liked one of the guys Dani was seeing.

  Except protocol dictated that they not technically ‘see’ one another.

  Ty was a good man, and strong enough to handle Dani, which was saying a lot. But Drew also saw the little things Ty did for Dani, like giving her his sweatshirt earlier in the day and sending her restaurant recommendations when she was in San Diego. Things that made Drew understand that, while Ty recognized how strong and capable Dani was, she was still someone he wanted to take care of, still someone who could use a little TLC every now and then. And he did it without making a big deal out of it. Maybe that was why she seemed to accept his attentions—the most surprising development to Drew's way of thinking. It was good for Dani, but it meant additional stress for Drew as he tried to separate what he wanted for her as a friend and what he needed from her as an agent.