by Hammond, T.
As for Officer Blair, he was let go from his position at the police department. We never did find out where the files were emailed to. Bas and David both think we will eventually hear from a military or government agency. But first, they have to get through David and Bas’ security system. If they are smart, they will give us a call and ask for a meeting; if they’re not so smart, they may find out how accurate David’s mini-drone prototype is. I hear the little drones flying all around the property, while they are being tested. It sounds like a colony of little demented dragonflies.
Boys and their toys!
Sneak Peek
Color Blind
Team Red – Book 2
ByT. Hammond
Chapter One
“Banzai!” I heard the scratch of dog claws scramble across the deck and straight off the edge.
“What the…?”
Ken’s laughter started indoors and got louder as he rolled the screen door open so he could step outside to stand by me on the back deck. “Teresa, your dog is totally wicked. He must have launched himself eight feet out to catch that.”
“Catch what?” I needed a clue here. Maybe I could ask for a vowel? “All I heard was him yelling ‘Banzai’ as he dashed past me.”
“Damn it! Red!” David’s voice shouted from the kitchen area as he stormed through the house and joined us outside. “Where did he go?”
Oh, oh, someone’s in trouble. In my mind I heard what sounded like “Mwah ha ha.” A very satisfied, doggy version of maniacal laughter.
“I hear evil chuckles emanating from under the deck,” I tattled.
“Red!” David yelled again, stomping down the six steps leading to the back lawn. “You promised you’d leave them alone.”
“What?” I asked. Sometimes being blind is so frustrating. “What did he promise to leave alone? What’s happening?”
“Red just took out one of the mini-drones,” Ken explained. “He leapt right off the deck and caught one in mid-air. It was totally awesome!”
“Not so awesome, Ken,” I replied with the Voice of Reason. “Do you have any idea how much those things cost?”
A voice interrupted from under the deck: “According to the Rules of Engagement, it was flying over the DMZ. Per our contract, I’m allowed to take out anything in the red zone.”
“What contract? You’re a one-year old, you’re too young to contract with anyone.” I sighed, shaking my head, “Geez, what am I saying? You’re a dog, who would be crazy enough to make a contract with you in the first place? And, what are you talking about? Rules of Engagement and Demilitarized Zones?”
Ken figured out the conversation based on my replies to the dog. “David and Bas are testing the mini-drone maneuverability portion of the program they’re developing,” Ken explained. “Red promised to stop snatching them out of the air as long as David kept them away from the deck area, henceforth to be known as the demilitarized zone.”
Henceforth, huh? I think that’s the first time I’ve heard a real person say that word in a conversation. I kept my snide thoughts to myself.
“Geez Red,” I heard David’s muffled grumble from under the deck below my feet. “How many of these do you have down here?” There was a short pause. “Eight? You caught eight drones?”
This time I joined Ken in a peal of laughter. “What do you expect David? He’s a dog, he’s going to chase them,” I reasoned. “Isn’t that why you started having them made of hard rubber, instead of metal?” Personally, I thought he was fortunate Red only collected drones and didn’t feel an urge to bury them too.
“I caught most of them before we set up the Rules of Engagement,” Red rebutted. “The other two were within jumping distance of the deck, so I’m allowed to catch them.”
I repeated Red’s words for David’s benefit.
“We were flying a pattern ten feet away from the deck rail,” David protested.
“Ah, I underestimated his jump by two feet,” Ken confided in me, sounding like a proud parent. In a louder voice, “That was a ten foot leap Red. Most excellent!”
I jabbed a playful elbow in Ken’s side. “Stop encouraging him. What if he accidentally swallows one?”
Secretly, I agreed with Ken. The drones David used to refine his software were vaguely shaped like helicopters for maneuverability. Not much larger than golf balls with two inch tails, they measured three, to three and a half inches, in total length. I could hear them constantly buzzing around our property as the guys ran their simulations. While we had established speed limits around the house, some of the drones were capable of moving very fast, depending on the program being tested. It was impressive that Red, from a running leap, could snatch one out of the air.
David’s booted feet were heavy as he clomped up the steps. He stopped in front of me. “Here, hold on to these,” he requested. I heard a clacking sound as he, presumably, dropped the retrieved hardware in Ken’s hands. Then he speared fingers through my hair tilting my face up for a warm kiss. “Good morning, Beautiful.”
“Hey, Gorgeous,” I replied, melting into the sexiest mouth in the Inland Northwest, sliding my free arm behind his neck to deepen the contact; I mustn’t spill the coffee held in my other hand. David tasted faintly of Columbian roast and… was that a donut? No one offered me a donut this morning.
“Oh, puh-leeze. Get a room for goodness sakes,” Ken complained, sounding mock-disgusted. “Here, let me grab your mug before you spill this last swallow down David’s back. I’m making a new pot so I’ll refresh your coffee when it’s ready. I need to go inside anyway, to check on the chicken I’m marinating for lunch.” The mug was pried from my surprisingly firm grip (I am serious about my java), leaving me free to slide the second arm completely around David’s wide back as Ken wandered back to what he claimed as his kitchen.
“Mmm, what were you two doing down in the man cave? Working out? Burning off donut calories perhaps?” I asked, swiping my tongue across his lips to catch any residual sugar.
By man cave, I was referring to the twelve-hundred square foot, windowless basement that David commandeered when he accepted my invitation to cohabitate. In the five weeks since he moved in, he and Bas have transformed it into a computer room, slash, fitness room, slash, security room, slash, weapons stash, and “I don’t want to know what else is down there” room. He and Sebastian Declan have been using the Cave to design and test uber-hush-hush surveillance software; security prototypes and programs that David developed for his clients (yeah, the kind that wear uniforms and salute each other). It was all very top secret, which is why the room, with its own hidden entrance (in the pantry of all places), was perfect for their clandestine projects. We kept a smaller, fully equipped computer room upstairs to act as a decoy in case anyone made it through the security system and into the house, but there was nothing of importance in there.
There are no windows in the basement, making the room a firetrap, so the guys decided to tunnel an escape route that opens up inside a tool shed about ten feet from the back door. Personally? I think it was just secret, boyhood wish fulfillment. I mean, secret tunnel? Really? I’m sure there should have been permits for most, if not all, of the property renovations, but what harm is there in a few circumvented laws? I enjoyed the irony of having six detectives, and officers we worked with regularly at the police department, digging the tunnel on their days off. It says a lot about the trust built up between us all, that Bas and David could ask for their help. As for the permits? I’m blind, how am I supposed to know what’s really going on down there? Snicker.
“We were lifting weights when the program went crazy. One of the drones suddenly dropped off the grid.” David bent forward and caressed his mouth over my throat. “Damn woman, you smell good. Lavender and…” he sniffed lightly, “vanilla?”
“Yep. I smell even better laid out on those crisp cotton sheets in our bedroom,” I burrowed my face against the dampness of his neck, “they smell like your cologne. I think our scents smell better when t
hey are blended together, don’t you?”
The approaching heavy tread of hiking boots preceded Bas, who called out, “Did you find it? It looks like we have a drone missing from the house security program too. The readout shows we lost it last night in almost the same place as the second drone.” He joined us outside.
I released David to give Bas a one-armed, good morning hug. “Hey, Handsome. I’m betting you’re working off a donut too. I’m feeling left out.”
“Don’t worry,” Red called out from his hiding spot, “we saved a chocolate one for you.”
“Are you guys giving donuts to the dog?” I’m pretty sure I sounded suspicious as well as grumpy. Amazingly, no one spoke up to deny my accusation; I took that as guilty silence. I made a mental note to bring up the subject of the dog’s diet again later, when donuts weren’t at stake. “I can’t believe the dog got a donut before anyone offered one to me,” I pouted. Yeah, I know, really mature. But they all knew I loved donuts.
Ken followed Bas out from the house and rattled his handful of hijacked hardware. “Super Dog took out the drone, plus most of the metal ones you were missing from last week.” I heard a clatter that sounded like Ken spilling the drones on the picnic table beside us.
“Don’t you guys use GPS or something? Can’t you just find them when they go missing?” I asked.
“Whatever is disabling them seems to turn the drones off, so there’s no signal. Kinda like when you turn off your cell phone,” Bas answered. “These are the cheaper, lightweight versions we use for speed and maneuverability tests; they are pretty low tech compared to the military-grade stuff we haven’t unpacked from the egg crates yet.”
David chuckled. “Is it too late to trade him in for a Chihuahua? At least they can’t jump higher than a few inches off the ground.”
Red’s voice piped up from somewhere under the deck, “I caught them fair and square.” There was a thoughtful pause. “I think I should get a finder’s fee.”
When I repeated Red’s suggestion, David retorted, “Finder’s fee? They wouldn’t be ‘lost’ in the first place if you left them alone.”
Call it a moment of weakness, I took this opportunity to defend my faithful canine companion. “You have to concede that when the darned things are flying around the property, they look like small balls. You know his favorite game is ‘fetch’; talk about waving a cape in front of a bull. Red may be able to talk to me like a person, but he is still a dog—of course, he’s going to chase them.”
“I’ve been tempted to come out here a couple of times with a tennis racket,” Ken admitted.
“Coffee?” I asked hopefully.
“Brewing,” Ken reassured.
“I suppose I should confess, the cat next door caught one of the metal ones last week when it flew close to the fence line. When I chased her, she dropped it so I added it to the pile I had already caught.”
“Red tells me the cat next door caught one of them.” I grinned, “Obviously you forgot to review The Rules with all the surrounding animal life.”
Bas started laughing. “David, you have to admit that ten feet away from the deck is a great catch. Not to mention it was going almost fifteen miles an hour. We’ll have to review the cameras and watch.”
“Red,” I called. “Come on out. You’re not in trouble.”
To my two warriors, I said, “What we have here, is a failure to communicate. You guys renegotiate the rules. I don’t want the dog hurt by leaping off the deck. A no-fly zone should apply to the dog as well as the drones. Add power words and phrases to your discussion like: no treats, no steak, and kennel. Those seem to work for me.”
“We don’t want him hurt either, this was why we explained Rules of Engagement to him in the first place,” Bas told me. “We even set up a no-fly zone over the deck to reduce temptation.”
“Maybe you guys should include me in on the human-canine negotiations from now on? He may understand your words, but you can’t hear Red’s replies to make sure he understands the finer details of your instructions. You know that nuances sometimes escape him, resulting in a loose, and often advantageous, interpretation of the rules.” I grinned, “Such as him thinking, if he can catch it from a leap off the deck, then he can go for it. He’s very smart, but he’s a dog. If he wants something he takes it and begs forgiveness afterwards.” I frowned in thought. Actually, when I think about it, I can recall the “it’s better to ask forgiveness, than seek permission” strategy has been in Bastian’s repertoire for years. My smile widened; it seems like Sebastian Declan is getting a little of his own back.
“I thought we made it clear to him,” David complained.
“Yeah, we even used small words and visual aids,” Bas added, with a laugh.
“Bas-turd,” Red contributed as I heard his nails clicking up the stairs.
I smirked, and kept the dog’s last remark to myself. “You neglected to clarify that if he has to fly to reach it, it’s out of bounds. It’s pretty obvious to me that your idea of a red zone and his idea of a Red Zone are at polar opposites.”
“We need to do something,” David grumbled. “These are the basic prototypes, but they are still pretty pricy. Even more importantly, we can’t afford to have the testing halted every time Red wants to play fetch. We need to run the full program, uninterrupted.”
“Actually, they don’t look too bad,” Bas said. “The propellers are bent on all of them, but no broken tails. They should be easy to fix. Depending on whether Red damaged the bodies, we may be able to salvage most of these, or use them for parts. If I can put them back into working order, we can add them to the current twelve drone security pattern. We have five metal ones here that we had written off as lost, carted off by wildlife, or broken.”
“Do you mean ‘broken’ like the one that smashed into the tree last week?” Ken asked, in all innocence. “It must have been going ninety miles an hour when it hit that elm at the fence line.”
My voice was low and threatening when I asked, “The golden elm near the pond? I love that tree.”
“The top half is smashed to smithereens,” Ken said, with all the glee of a destructive five-year-old.
David’s warm arms wrapped around me pinning my arms against my body, I was not unaware of the comparison to a strait jacket. Oh Man! I really, really like that tree. “Does it make a difference if I say that it was an accident?” he asked. “The tree guy we called seems to think he can save seventy percent of it.” He placed a string of tiny kisses over the bridge of my nose, ending with a warmer one on my lips. My head dropped forward on David’s very wide, rock hard chest. Mmm, he smelled nice with the hint of sandalwood cologne mixed with clean sweat.
Tree? What tree? “Very almost effective distraction technique, Mr. Preston,” I said with a sigh. “Try and save it if you can. I knew there might be accidents with the testing.” Pause. “It was an accident, right? You’re not targeting trees are you?”
“No, of course not,” he assured me. “I zigged when I should have zagged. Operator error. Totally an accident.”
“I’m happy you don’t fly them that fast towards the house. Be safe, okay?”
A tight hug was all the affirmation I needed. Although that chocolate donut wouldn’t hurt right about now.
We had set up the twenty mile per hour maximum speed limit over any area with a manicured lawn or structure; the average was closer to ten miles per hour. In other parts of our acreage the drones were allowed higher speeds as long as it was directed away from the house, and the homes of the few neighbors around us. David and Bas were currently buying up a total of twenty-two additional acres to the west for range expansion—that was his story anyway. I suspected their main motivation was to build an extra layer of privacy.
Our property abutted forestry lands and a wildlife conservation area on the south and east, so we didn’t worry about people wandering into the area from those directions (the incline off the Little Spokane River was too steep and marshy). There were quite a few u
ndeveloped lots on the third side that, theoretically, could be developed, bringing neighbors closer to where we were nestled in the terrain. Those vacant properties ran along the sanctuary boundary also; the guys were looking at securing a strip of land almost a quarter-mile long.
I grinned, not only did David lay siege to win my heart, he was now building a fortress to protect his prize… well, okay, his prize and maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of military-grade equipment. I was still amazed at the amount of money the government threw his way to keep him supplied for all his projects. He may have been Navy for twenty plus years, raking in a respectable military salary, but he was making some serious money now, and his budget seemed unlimited.
David was a combination computer programmer and electronics wiz, with some seriously advanced hacking skills added to the mix. With Bastian’s help, the two of them built and modified drones to work with David’s programs. Many aspects of this work were top secret, but he shared enough that I knew he and Bas were concurrently working on two programs, one offensive and the other defensive, which involved the use of mini-drones.