The sergeant in charge of the swat team, Randy Delton, grasped the parameters of the situation swiftly: “Our only chance to do something might be to pick him off as he goes by Fort McHenry,” said Delton. “Let’s head over there. I want the snipers deployed along the river bank as soon as we get there!” With their sirens wailing and strobe lights flashing, the swat team set off down Key highway and Fort Avenue which ran parallel to the shipping channel for the mile and a half journey to Fort McHenry.
The fort had been built in pre-revolutionary times to control access to the Baltimore harbor area by hostile naval forces. It commanded a point where the channel which led out into the Chesapeake Bay narrowed down to a mere 500 yards. Any vessel traveling in the middle was only about 250 yards from the shore of the fort. As the swat team howled down Fort Avenue, they gradually overtook Adolpho in his boat who was proceeding as fast as he could down the shipping channel. His destination was a small submarine lying submerged, waiting for him, about a mile away. The swat team roared into McHenry park and rolled their patrol cars across the grass to take up positions right at the waters edge, no more than 250 yards from any passing vessel.
Meanwhile, up above in Delia, Judy and Terry were watching this whole scene in horror on their video monitor from a height of 50,000 feet.
Judy said: “If we are ever going to be able to make a difference, this is the moment. Let’s start going down there and we can work out what to do once we get there.”
Terry looked askance at her, but knew of Judy’s reputation for predictive statements and made another difficult decision to follow her instructions. He put Delia into a descent at about 100 miles per hour, taxing the regenerative circuits to the limit and blasting energy into the underside lights as the batteries quickly became fully charged. It was now 6.10 p.m., and the sun was just dipping below the horizon.
Down in the boat, John was alert and watching for any opportunity to help himself now that his mother was free.
“Sit next to me!” ordered Adolpho. He understood hostage situations quite well, and he knew that as long as John was close to him that any sharpshooters on the shore would be deterred from trying to gun him down. John reluctantly crawled through the fast moving boat to Adolpho’s end close by the outboard motor. Lying on the floor near Adolpho’s feet, he gazed up at the darkening sky and saw a vision that made his heart leap. There was a cluster of bright lights right overhead, getting closer and brighter as every second passed. It could only be Delia! John wriggled himself up into a sitting position beside Adolpho.
Back on the shore, Randy Delton was with his three swat team snipers watching through his binoculars from the waters edge. “They are too close together!” he said decisively. “We can’t get the suspect without risking the hostage.”
John glanced up again at that cluster of lights in the sky, closer and brighter as every second went by. With a sudden convulsive surge of energy he thrust down with his legs and threw himself over the side of the boat. Adolpho immediately throttled back the engine and wheeled round to go back to John. Standing up in the boat, he pointed his gun down at John in the water. “Take this rope and come back to the boat or I will shoot you! I’ve got nothing to lose!” he said, throwing a rope with a life ring attached out towards John.
Back on the shore of Fort McHenry, Randy Delton was watching all this through his binoculars. “Shoot now!” he commanded. “Get him while he is stopped and they are apart!” The three snipers started firing. Each 50 caliber sniper rifle had a tremendous kick back so they could only regain their aim after about five seconds, but the second shot went right through Adolpho’s chest and he fell lifeless into the water.
Chapter 49
Up above in Delia 1, Terry and Judy were still plummeting down. They were watching the events on the boat in the shipping channel on the huge screen of the surveillance camera. Although they could not hear the rifle shots, they had seen John fling himself with his hands bound into the water. Then they saw Adolpho standing pointing his gun at John, and suddenly he plunged over the side of the boat and the water was full of blood. With a thrill of horror and relief, they guessed what must have happened.
“The police on the shore must have got him!” said Terry. Delia was at about 2000 feet and slowing down. Judy picked up her cell phone and called James again: “John is in the water. The kidnapper has been shot by police on the shore. We are going down to get John. Tell the Baltimore police to close their eyes and see nothing.” She abruptly hung up, and busied herself opening the bottom hatch in Delia to reveal the water underneath, with the empty boat and the floundering John clearly apparent down below.
Back on the shore, Randy Delton received a call from James.
“This is Major General James Harper of the United States Air Force. We know that you have just killed the captor of one of our key defense engineers. You will get an Air Force commendation for your work. This engineer is of extreme value to the United States and we are going to use a top secret silent helicopter to retrieve him from the water in the next few seconds. For reasons of national security I am requesting you not to report what you are about to see. OK?”
“Yes sir, I understand,” replied Randy.
He went across to his snipers: “Hey guys gather round. I have just been notified that we have saved a key US government engineer from a kidnapping. The US Air Force is about to use a top secret silent helicopter to retrieve him, and we are requested not to report anything that we see. Is that clear?” The men nodded and then turned round to watch with heightened interest. Their attention was repaid as they saw Delia come swooping down out of the sky and hover a mere foot over the water where John was floundering around.
Inside Delia, Judy was kneeling beside the open hatch and calling out detailed directions to Terry at the controls: “Forward two feet. Left one foot. Down a foot. OK, put her in park and come help me.” Through the hatch John’s head was momentarily visible. He knew that help was coming and as best he could he was doing survival bobbing. He was no expert swimmer and with his hands tied in front of him and all his clothes on, it was difficult and he was only having limited success. The result was that he was swallowing an awful lot of water. Just as Judy got Delia positioned over him, he disappeared under the water for a few moments. Then he bobbed back up again and lifted his bound hands towards Judy. She grabbed his wrists by the tie and Terry leaned over and seized John’s arm at the same time. They hauled the half drowned John between them in through the hatch and onto Delia’s floor. “OK, I’ve got it- you get us out of here,” commanded Judy to Terry. Terry leaped back to the controls and set Delia to her maximum rate of rise. Judy pushed John to one side and slid the hatch door into its position as part of the floor.
Out on the shores of Fort McHenry, the swat team sniper squad looked at each other in disbelief as they thought they saw this saucer shaped thing drop out of nowhere, descend onto the figure struggling in the water, and then rapidly ascend into the dark evening sky having apparently retrieved the figure that was in the water. The abandoned boat and the bloody patch of water remained. Randy commanded his squad: “OK guys, we saw nothing, OK?” The three swat team snipers variously shook their heads and wiped their eyes in a gesture of disbelief.
Meanwhile, inside Delia, John was on the floor, spluttering and coughing and trying to get his breathing back together again. He was cold, drenched and miserable, except that he was happy to be inside Delia and free from Adolpho. Judy had grabbed the emergency tool kit from a storage locker, and dexterously used a pair of pliers with a cutting edge to remove the nylon ties around John’s wrists. As he lay on the floor and opened his eyes, he perceived Judy in her wet tight brown sweater kneeling over him. Her nipples were clearly visible through the wet tight sweater. “John Sykes – I love you!” said Judy. “Don’t ever do this to me again. I lost one man to foreign agents already in this life and I don’t want to lose another one!”
“Thank you – I love you too and I’ll try,” said John with
a faint smile, as a warm thrill went through him to hear Judy’s protestation of love, despite his drenched clothes. Judy bent over him as she knelt and engaged him in a long, passionate kiss. John’s arms came up and hugged her gently; clearly he was enjoying the moment. Just then Terry glanced back: “Hey Judy, I did a first aid course a while back and that is not how you do mouth to mouth resuscitation!”
Judy sat up and grinned at him. “Well, it sure worked!” she exclaimed.
“Thank you Terry – you saved my life back there!” commented John as he sat up dripping.
“You are welcome,” came the reply. “We’re at 50,000 feet now, and I’m setting the GPS to lock onto Huntsville.”
Judy dragged out some blankets from the storage locker and John took off his wet outer clothes and wrapped himself in blankets for warmth.
Judy sat herself down in the flight engineer’s seat next to Terry, and John wrapped in his blankets sat in one of the second row seats behind them.
“John, I hope that you realize we have broken every rule in the book to come and extricate you like this,” remarked Terry.
“I know, I am so grateful to you guys,” replied John. “It was a terrible situation. Imagine if it was your mother that had been dragged off like that.”
“It would be nice if nobody knew we did this, but I had to talk to James to coordinate with the police,” said Judy. “This is going to be awfully embarrassing. I am scared that they will never trust us again. I am supposed to be a second lieutenant in the US Air force and I could be court-martialled for breaking all the rules like this.”
“Let’s just hope that we can sneak Delia back in without anybody noticing,” said John wistfully.
During the 45 minute flight they chatted about the things they had learned on this first real life saving mission using Delia.
Terry said: “I realize now how by making Delia both capable of flying into near space and operating in the atmosphere, we have made her not too great at doing either. When we were retrieving John back there, it was obvious that what we really needed was to open up the whole side of the vehicle and to have an overhead winch like they do on air sea rescue helicopters. Then we could have just winched him in and pulled him in sideways onto the deck – it would have been a heck of a lot easier.”
“But of course that enormous hatch would be a problem when there is no air pressure outside,” responded Judy. “I guess it is fairly obvious that the world needs an air sea rescue LeviStar that makes no pretensions of going into space. In the same way we ought to have a space going LeviStar that does not even try to do air sea rescue. Without all the pressurization systems, air cleaning and recirculation systems etc. the air sea rescue vehicle could be a heck of a lot cheaper and simpler.”
John commented: “For surveillance purposes we really don’t even need a crew. We could design a LeviStar that was optimized just for surveillance as a remotely controlled vehicle. It could stay over a country, hovering at 100,000 feet for weeks at a time, and then be called down to lower altitudes to do surveillance on a specific place as needed. The one thing we don’t have in Electrolev at the moment is a marketing person. Maybe we should hire one, and his first job ought to be to plan out all these products and get government contracts to develop them.”
“You’re right! Let’s talk to Steve about hiring a product planning and marketing person,” replied Judy.
Delia hummed smoothly back to Huntsville.
Chapter 50
When they arrived back at Huntsville, the door to the Electrolev hangar was already open and all the lights were on. Terry dropped Delia 1 down to about 2 feet off the ground and scooted her smoothly into the hangar, where he lowered the undercarriage and gently set her down on the concrete floor. They opened the hatch and lowered the ladder, and started descending into the hangar. Right opposite Delia 1 Major General James Harper was standing, arms folded across his chest and with his normally smooth pink complexion looking red and even blotchy in places. As usual, his Air Force general’s uniform was impeccable and gleaming. “I want to talk to you people,” he yelled. “Stand right here,” he said, pointing to the ground right in front of him and using a voice more like you would expect from a sergeant major than a major general. He lined the three up in front of him like recruits at boot camp, with John huddled in his blankets trying to look a little dignified. “You have just appropriated a piece of public property for which the American taxpayer has shelled out $200 million dollars. You did not tell anybody until it was too late to do anything about it. You have jetted across the United States without declaring any flight plan, and subjected a piece of top secret military equipment to the risk of being observed by the general public. John Sykes – you had better realize that the United States government has counter intelligence forces who could have dealt with this situation a thousand times more skillfully than you did, even if your motives were well meaning. In future if any of you receive any threats you are to tell me immediately. We can easily arrange for James Bond types who are trained for this kind of thing to solve the whole situation with much less risk to the United States than you caused. Do you understand?” John nodded ashamedly. “As for you Terry Mettle, you piloted this vehicle without any of the necessary clearances or flight plans, and caused chaos in the military air traffic control system. I had to personally intervene and explain that you were on a classified mission of national security importance to stop the national guard from intercepting you and shooting you down! Second Lieutenant Judy Chen!” He emphasized the words Second Lieutenant, “I suspect that you were the instigator of this whole episode, and you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. If this was not a matter of national urgency then all three of you would have your security clearances downgraded for an extended period. You all have pilot licenses of one kind or another and by normal standards you deserve to be grounded!
“I have had to personally intervene at the highest levels to prevent all these things from happening and used up a lot of my personal political and credibility capital in the Air Force to do this. THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN! Do you understand?” The three stood there and nodded, muttering: “Yes sir”.
Harper walked over to John and hugged him. “Welcome back son, I am glad you are here!” he said quietly. Then he turned to Terry and Judy, and without saying a word he shook hands with each of them and looked them steadily in the eye. He then turned and walked briskly out of the building.
When John got back to his apartment, he toweled himself down and changed into fresh dry clothes. Then he called his mother’s cell phone. Amazingly she responded at once. “Hello John?”
“I’m so glad to hear you Mom. Are you alright? Where are you and what is happening?” asked John.
“The Baltimore police have been questioning me over and over again almost like I was a criminal!” replied John’s mother. “I think that they have almost finished now. They told me that you had been rescued.”
“Are you free to go?” asked John
“They just want me to sign some statement saying what happened to me, so then as soon as I’ve read it I’m free to go.” said his mother.
John was clicking away at his computer while they were talking. “There is a US Airways flight that leaves Baltimore at 8.30 a.m. in the morning. It can get you here to Huntsville just after midday Sunday. Let me book you on that and then you can come and see how I live here. Can Dad come?”
“I would love to come and see you,” said his mother, “but even I must not be away for very long because this is peak harvest season on the farm. It’s out of the question for your father to come.”
“OK, let me fix up the flight,” said John. “You get a taxi to the nearest hotel that has a room and then in the morning just get yourself to the airport. Do you still have your pocket book with all your credit cards and ID stuff?”
“Yes, I have everything because I originally thought that I was going to the police station.” responded his mother.
“OK, well stand
by for another call in a few minutes after I have fixed up your flights.” instructed John.
“OK, I’ll watch out for your call and look forward to being with you,” replied his Mother.
Chapter 51
At midday on Sunday John was there at the airport security barrier to meet his mother. She was a wiry sixty year old with graying hair and wearing blue jeans with plaid fleece toggle jacket. Coming through the airport corridors she was impressed by all the prestige adverts for aerospace companies. Then in the main hallway was a beautiful model of the international space station. John was waiting for her behind security and greeted her with a relieved hug.
As they walked out to the parking lot, John updated her on what had happened to him since those few fleeting seconds when they had seen each other in the parking lot beside the inner harbor at Baltimore. “That guy Adolpho had a little power boat parked at the Marina, and he took me off in it down the harbor channel towards the Chesapeake. As we were going along, I looked up in the sky and I saw one of our prototype flying machines high up above in the sky. So I knew that my friends were coming to rescue me. Then I managed to jump over the side of the boat into the river. Once I was in the water Adolpho stood up and was pointing his gun at me, and luckily the police on the shore were able to get a bead on him and shot him dead. Moments later my friends who you will meet today came down out of the sky and pulled me out of the water, to bring me back here.”
His mother said: “What on earth are you working on here John?”
“It’s a new kind of secret flying vehicle for the Air Force,” replied John. “I can’t show it to you even though I would love to, but the general idea is that it’s a new kind of helicopter. In fact my friends used one of them to pluck me out of the water after Adolpho was shot. They work a lot like a helicopter.”
A Disruptive Invention Page 23