When The Chips Are Down

by Aiden Vaughan

  So it was agreed that Jason would go in, and Daniel would follow up after school was out. Jason sent Daniel a text message, and he agreed to drive over to DCC as soon as school was out, about 2:30. Captain Garcia took Jason out to lunch, and then brought him back to his house to change clothes, so he would be more dressed up, like he was at the first interview, and to get his notes and recorder. Captain Garcia then drove Jason over to the DCC plant around 2:00 and waited for him in his car. That way he would be there to intervene, should the need arise.

  Chapter 26

  A Tough Interview

  (Monday Afternoon)

  Jason opened the front door of the DCC Chip plant and walked up to the receptionist. “I’m here to see Dr. Ramanathan.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Not exactly. My name is Jason Hunter. I was here last Monday for a plant tour, because I am writing an article for the Merriam High School newspaper. At that time, I interviewed Dr. Ramanathan, and now to complete the article, I have a couple of follow up questions. It will just take me a few minutes.”

  “Oh yes, I remember now.” The receptionist relayed the information to Dr. Ramanathan’s office. After a couple of minutes, she told Jason, “They said it was okay for you to come over. Remember where his office is?” When Jason replied yes, she had him sign in and gave him a visitor’s badge to wear.

  Jason walked down the hallway, and soon was visiting with Dr. Ramanathan. “Hello again, young man. I understand you had a couple more questions for me.”

  “My name is Jason, Dr. Ramanathan, and I do. I recently received a report from a testing firm back east that had just completed a thorough set of tests on your new line of Ultimo chips. The report indicated that there was a major flaw in the chip design. It couldn’t handle floating decimal point calculations correctly and so would skew data on many software applications. Are you aware of this flaw, and if so how long have you known about it?”

  Jason’s question had the same impact as a punch in the gut to Dr. Ramanathan. The color drained out of his face, and he reacted with a nervous tic in his eye. “Where did you get this report, Jason? We haven’t commissioned any outside testing that I am aware of.”

  “I got the report from Paul Schwartz in Boston. I sent him a couple of the chips to test after our interview last week.”

  “You did!” Dr. Ramanathan said in an angry voice. “Where did you get those chips from?”

  “I don’t understand your anger,” Jason replied in an even voice. “Haven’t you been selling these chips for the past year now? Mr. Schwartz said in his report that there was no way that someone at DCC could not have been aware of this.”

  “Yes, I was aware. But I ask you again, where did you get those chips!”

  “At the end of our tour, I asked Mr. Liu if I could have a couple of chips to take home with me,” Jason answered.

  Dr. Ramanathan got out of his chair and began pacing around the room. “That idiot! No one was supposed to know about the problem until after it was fixed!”

  “Mr. Liu is Vice President of Operations and you didn’t tell him about the flaw?” Jason said with some astonishment. “Who did you tell in the company?”

  “That’s not your concern! Who have you told about this?”

  “Why should I tell you who I have told about this, when you won’t tell me who you have told about it? How about some simple horse-trading,” Jason proposed. “You tell me, and I’ll tell you!”

  “Don’t get smart with me!” Dr. Ramanathan snapped back. “We are talking about a multi-million dollar product line here!”

  “Your chips are only worth millions of dollars if they actually work, Doctor. Isn’t that why there were all of these hijackings of the Ultimo chips? It was your way to pretend that they worked properly while you tried to fix the problem!”

  “We almost have the new product ready. In another two months they will be out and nobody will know the difference!”

  “Nobody except those employees and outside people who were attacked and tied up to create this illusion. What about them?” Jason demanded. “What about all of those companies who have been waiting for this new superior chip line that doesn’t actually work? What about them?”

  At this point, two security guards came walking into the room. Ramanathan had pushed an emergency button under his desk. “Take this teenager to Urbano Santos’ office. There has been a major security breach. Be sure to search him and confiscate any communications devices!”

  “Hey, you can’t hold me against my will!” Jason shouted angrily. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “Get him out of here!” Dr. Ramanathan ordered. The two security guards each grabbed one of Jason’s arms and led him out of Research and Development and down the hall to the Security Office. Jason protested on the way, but to no avail. When they arrived inside the Security Office, one of the guards searched Jason’s pockets and removed his cell phone.

  Urbano Santos, Chief of Security, came out of his office. “Thank you,” he said to the guards. “I’ll take over now. Put his cell phone over on the shelf. If any other teenagers come into the plant, I want you to escort them here to our office as well. Now I want you to do a sweep of all the hallways and main offices.”

  When the guards had left, Santos said, “I understand you are making reckless allegations about DCC. Just what do you think you are doing?”

  “They would be reckless if they weren’t true,” Jason said. “The problem for you is that they are true. Your chip scam has been exposed now, and you are going to pay the price for all the people you hurt trying to make the world believe that the Ultimo chips actually worked properly. I’m talking about people like my young friend who you left bound, gagged and blindfolded in that old warehouse, Rubino!”

  Jason’s words had a very stinging effect on Urbano Santos. He took out a revolver from the side holster he was wearing, released the safety, and pointed the gun at Jason. “Come with me, boy,” he said in a mean sounding voice. “We have a lot of talking to do!”

  * * * * *

  Outside in the parking lot Daniel and Eric had arrived and Daniel parked his car. They were supposed to get together after school and work on music, but Daniel had to go meet Jason to finish their interviews and hopefully get to the bottom of the chip mystery. “Jason told me that this should only take a few minutes. If you want, look around the parking lot. I think Captain Garcia is supposed to be out here monitoring things.” Daniel got out the case containing his digital camera, then went into the DCC building.

  When he got to the front desk, Daniel told the receptionist that he was here to meet with Jason Hunter, so they could finish their follow up questions for the article they were putting together. “Yes, I am aware of that. Our security guards just contacted me about that. They know where you are supposed to go.” The guards were contacted, and within a couple of minutes they were there to escort Daniel to the Security Office. Once inside the Security Office, they paged Urbano Santos on his cell phone. In couple of minutes, he came out of his office door.

  “Thank you, again. I’ll take Daniel here to our meeting.” After the guards left, Santos said, “Come this way,” and directed Daniel into his office. He then opened another door toward the back of the office which led to a large storeroom filled with miscellaneous cleaning supplies, tools and hardware items, large coils of wires and rope, and some old desks and chairs. Daniel spotted Jason seated in a chair in the middle of the room, but his hands had been tied behind him and he was bound to the chair. Daniel tried to snap a picture with his digital camera, but Santos took it away from him. Also in the room was the company CEO, Chang Chao Ling.

  “What is going on?” Daniel asked. “I have heard of tough interviews but this is ridiculous!”

  “Very funny, my young friend,” Santos replied, “but when we are finished with you I don’t think that you will be laughing.”

  “Why are you holding Jason prisoner? All we came here to do was finish our inter
view.”

  “You boys are not journalists!” Chang Chao Ling said in an angry, almost hissing voice. “You are those teenaged detectives who have been on the news lately. You didn’t come here to write a newspaper article. You came here to spy on us! Tie him up also!” Ling ordered Santos.

  “Why do you think you can get away with holding us here as prisoners? Don’t you know that the police are outside? Once we learned about the flawed chips, it was pretty obvious that this was an inside job. The only question left was who, and now it is quite obvious that you were the ones responsible for the hijackings and deceiving the public!” As Daniel was saying this, Santos had grabbed his arms and was tying his hands behind him with a piece of rope.

  “Before the public finds out, we will be long gone. Thanks for letting us know about the police. If they try to stop us, we have you as hostages. That will keep the police off of our backs for now!” Santos said. He finished binding Daniel’s wrists, and then forced him to walk over to a chair in one of the corners. “Sit down!” he ordered, and pushed Daniel into the chair. He then proceeded to tie Daniel to the chair.

  “Urbano, we need to be ready to go within the hour,” Mr. Ling said. “Go get the suitcases of cash and anything else we will need. We’ll take the van next door. We can pack everything in the back including the hostages, and ease out during the rush hour when everyone is starting to leave. I will call the airport and have them service my aircraft.”

  “Are you sure you want to take these boys along? Do you want to risk a kidnapping charge?”

  “I think that is the least of our worries right now. We need to get out of here before the public finds out, and since these two boys are among the few who know about the report, it is a good idea to keep them out of circulation for a while. If the police try to stop us, we have the boys as hostages. Before you leave here, I want you to gag them. Just use some of those rags on the shelf in the corner. I don’t want them to be able to talk and plot against us any more. They already have done us enough harm! This way they are packaged and all ready to go as our hostages when we need to leave.”

  Ling then walked out of the storeroom. Santos checked that the ropes binding Jason and Daniel were secure, and he tied gags in their mouths with the rags. Soon he left the storeroom, but not before turning out the lights, locking the room, and leaving the boys in total darkness.

  Chapter 27

  Not Just Another Pretty Face

  (Monday Afternoon)

  Outside in the parking lot of the DCC Chip Company, Captain Antonio Garcia was becoming impatient and worried about Jason. After Daniel had gone inside to meet up with Jason, he had visited with Eric for twenty minutes, but then Eric went off to check on Daniel. It had been over an hour since Jason went inside, and he had not telephoned out to Antonio yet. Antonio placed a call to Jason’s cell phone, but there was no answer, just his voice mail.

  Antonio was now regretting that he hadn’t put a wire on Jason, but Jason refused, insisting that the wire would backfire. If he was forcibly searched before he had confirmed who the conspirators were, most likely the top people would immediately clam up and not reveal themselves if a wire was found. But if they thought they were just dealing with a teenager, they would be less likely to hide themselves so that they could find out what Jason actually knew. It was a daring approach; Jason was going to directly confront the people he suspected with the report. Their guard would naturally be down, as they wouldn’t initially suspect that their secret had been discovered.

  But now it appeared that they had Jason under wraps somewhere. It was time to go in and get him out of there. Garcia had several patrol cars in the immediately vicinity, just patrolling or observing traffic. He got on the radio and called them all in. If the company was uncooperative at all, he would call in additional officers to completely seal off the building until he recovered the boys. He was hoping that he wouldn’t have to play hard ball with the company, but he had no qualms about doing so if he felt that Jason was in danger or being held against his will.

  Back inside the storeroom, Daniel struggled to loosen the ropes binding his hands and feet, but so far they were holding quite nicely. He mmphed into his gag, voicing his displeasure at the way the day had turned out. After all of the incredible adventures of last week, and dealing with the uproar and media acclaim over what had happened to Cody and Tim, he was looking forward to just working on his music today. That’s what Eric and he had planned for after school. Instead he was about to be involved in some hostage situation and he wasn’t happy at all about the thought of that, especially since he was going to be one of the hostages. He thought about what Jason had impulsively done. Damn it, Jason, this time your bravado act has really gotten us into trouble! I sure hope Captain Garcia is ready with the police. Otherwise I don’t know how we are going to get out this mess.

  Daniel’s thoughts continued along this line until he was distracted by a small white light that suddenly appeared in the darkness. A familiar voice whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry, Daniel. I’m so sorry that you got caught up in this. I didn’t think that these people would be so desperate that they would resort to kidnapping and hold us as hostages!”

  Daniel looked up from his reverie, “Jason?” he tried to say through his gag. He could barely see the outline of someone beside him.

  “Here, Daniel,” the voice continued softly, “let me get that gag out of your mouth and untie you. Hang on, my friend!”

  It was Jason, and quickly he pulled the rags out of Daniel’s mouth and began to cut the ropes binding Daniel to the chair. “Keep your voice down, Daniel, in case they have a listening device in here!”

  “Jason!” Daniel said in an excited whisper. “Did I tell you how awesome you are lately? How on earth were you able to get free so fast?”

  “Daniel, I want you to know that your best friend isn’t just another pretty face! I had a contingency plan for something just like what happened to us. Luckily the plan worked like a charm!”

  “Jason, right now your face is the best thing I could want to see, if only I could actually see it! Now tell me how you got out of those ropes!”

  “I should actually thank Joe Connor for this escape,” Jason explained. “When we were first talking about the Camp Chinquapin operation, I asked Joe if he had any ideas about how we could escape in case we were caught by camp authorities and restrained somehow. He suggested this!” Jason held up the little flashlight he was holding off of his key ring, and showed Daniel a small metal disk.

  “This disk is super sharp and can even cut through some metal, like the chain on a pair of handcuffs. It is a little smaller than the patch on the back of my jeans. I just cut the top stitching on the patch and inserted the disk. It wouldn’t be discovered in a normal search because you are expecting the jeans patch to be firm like the disk. Even though my hands were tied behind my back it was a simple thing to edge the disk up and then start sawing at the ropes. Once my hands were free, the rest was a piece of cake!”

  “Jason, you never cease to amaze me. That’s why even though I know we are going to get into trouble from time to time, I am always willing to help you with these cases.” Daniel then repeated in a more comic voice. “Did I tell you how awesome you are lately?”

  “All right, Daniel. I owe you one,” Jason said in an apologetic voice. “I’m really sorry I got you into this mess. Now let’s get out of here! Do you still have your cell phone by any chance?”

  “No, Santos took it away from me after he tied my hands behind my back.”

  “We need to find an exit then, and fast before Santos or Ling gets back here. Follow me!” Jason shined the flashlight in front and began leading Daniel toward the back of the storage room. “I remember them saying that there was a garage next door. Maybe we can get out from there.”

  “Why is that little flashlight so bright?” Daniel asked.

  “This is another cool thing I found,” Jason replied. “Instead of a little bulb it has eight or so LED lig
hts. They are much brighter and more energy efficient, so eight of them can run off a single small battery!”

  The two boys found the exit door to the garage. It was locked, but they were on the inside, so all they had to do was release the dead bolt and turn the knob. The door led to a garage that had several vans in it. Jason found a light switch and turned it on. Looking around the garage, Jason said, “We are in luck! There are garage doors and also an entry door. Hopefully it won’t trigger an alarm. Even it does, let’s get out of here and run for it. Captain Garcia is supposed to be out in the main lot waiting for us.”

  Again the boys had the advantage of being on the inside of the door lock. Just as they did before, they unlocked the bolt, turned the knob and were out of the building. They found themselves in a driveway on the side of the building. “Run for it!” Daniel shouted. “The front parking lot is to our left, I think!”

  Jason and Daniel took off and ran as fast as they could to the front parking lot. Jason pointed to where Captain Garcia had parked and they got there in another minute, breathless from their run.

  “I was getting very worried about you, Jason,” Captain Garcia said. “Why didn’t you call me on your cell phone like we had agreed?”

  Jason then told Antonio what had happened while he was inside, and how Dr. Ramanathan and the other two main conspirators revealed themselves, and then held he and Daniel prisoner until they were able to escape.

  “I’m glad you were able to escape. I was just about to order a team into the building so that we could search for you!”

  “Can’t you still go in and arrest them for kidnapping us?” Jason asked.

  “The only problem is that you are here on the outside with me! I would have to get a search warrant first since you are not in imminent danger any more. It wouldn’t be kidnapping anymore, but rather something like false imprisonment.”