Defiant

by Laurence Dahners

  Getting out of the truck, Ell checked the PO, rolling him onto his side and worrying about whether being Tasered while tranquilized might do significantly more harm than either one alone. The PO seemed to be unconscious but still breathing well. She studied the other two men who just looked as if they were absolutely blotto drunk. One laid out supine and snored; the other leaned forward, head between his knees. That one swayed unsteadily from side to side.

  “Allan, bring the hoverbike to this location,” Ell said, distractedly, still watching the three men and worrying about whether she might have given them too large a dose of the drug. About a minute later a whirring announced the arrival of the unloaded hoverbike. The fans didn’t have to run very fast to keep it aloft with nothing but the carbon fiber frame to lift. Ell picked up the broken hand and ankle cuffs, saying “Set the bike down on the road just behind the truck.”

  The hoverbike settled to the road about twenty feet away with only a little dusting of blown dirt. Safety protocols kept Allan from landing it closer because he was flying it entirely on GPS and accuracy was plus or minus six feet. In the silence, Ell could faintly hear a car coming. Giving up on watching over the three men, she trotted to the hoverbike and quickly rode it to the top of the rise just east of the road, still looking back to keep a worried eye on the three men. She settled the bike into an open area between the scrubby little trees that populated the ridge and stepped back out to peer at the men through some brushy cover. A car rolled up from the direction of the base, the same direction the truck had come from. A uniformed man got out, obviously curious about what had happened to leave a prison transport truck stopped at the side of the road with the door open and three men lying in the shade behind it. The moment he realized the men were incapacitated became obvious. He crouched, drew a weapon and scanned the area for threats. Then he went to check more carefully on the men.

  As soon as Ell felt confident that the man would look after the three guards she walked back to the hoverbike. She had Allan spool up the fans just enough to lift it eighteen inches off the ground and pushed it through the trees and a little ways down the other side of the ridge. Climbing on, she lifted off and slid down into the little valley on the other side. Staying low, she followed that valley as it meandered northeast. She came to two roads where she stopped, checking both directions, then sliding quickly past the roads when there wasn’t traffic. Eventually she came to an open, relatively flat area. She surveyed it carefully and, seeing no one, raced across it low and quick.

  On the other side of the open area, she lifted up over a fence and Allan spoke, “You have now entered Cuban territory.” Ell flew a ways further. She found a tree that was significantly larger than the rest of the ones dotting the low hills and parked the hovercraft in its shade.

  Opening the large compartment under the saddle of the hoverbike, Ell pulled out her jeans and t-shirt. Pulling off the orange coverall, she put them on, then the socks and shoes. After laying out the coverall next to the bike and hiding the remains of her cuffs deep in under a bush, she got out a granola bar and a cup. She filled the cup with Coke dispensed from her umbilical port and took a deep drink. Ahh, she thought, savoring the drink she’d been denied while in the jail. She sat down to think. She wanted to wait for dark before she left Cuba, so she had quite a while.

  ***

  Lieutenant Milner looked around again, carefully and slowly turning a full 360 degrees so his AI could make a video record of his surroundings. “What the hell is going on here?” he muttered to himself. He’d already called in a situation report to the Camp. He eyed the three drunken sailors again and then made a circuit of the truck. The only apparent damage to the truck was to the rear wheels and the back door for the right side prisoners’ compartment.

  He’d stood on the back bumper to peer into the left prisoner’s compartment through the tiny window. It was empty. Its door was solidly locked and undamaged.

  The tires on the right rear wheels appeared to be completely shredded! He’d seen blowouts before and knew the tires could be ripped up, but the outer tire that he could easily see looked like someone had held a chain saw to it while it was spinning.

  The deadbolt and the locking lever for the back door were both broken in a most bizarre manner. The broken surfaces were very rough, something like a cheese grater or a rasp.

  So, broken latches, open prisoners’ compartment, no prisoners, destroyed tire and drunk guards. Milner could imagine the guards getting drunk on duty. Hard to conceive, considering the punishment it would engender, but it had been done before. He could believe that drunk sailors would run their vehicle off the road and destroy the tire in some spectacular manner. But without any other damage to the truck?

  He could imagine how the drinking and the tires had happened, but he couldn’t, absolutely could not, come up with a plausible explanation for what had happened to the latch on the truck!

  Milner’s AI said, “You have a call from Admiral Whitt.”

  Shit! Ice seized Milner’s gut. No lieutenant looked forward to talking to an admiral. “I’ll take it… Admiral Whitt, this is Lieutenant Milner speaking, sir.”

  The Admiral grunted, “Milner, what the hell is going on out there?”

  “Sir, I came up on one of the prison transport trucks stopped on the roadside between the base and the detention camp…” He paused to see of the Admiral would question him. Since the Admiral didn’t prompt him, he continued. “Sir, the guards are intoxicated and the right back tires of the vehicle are blown out. The prisoner’s compartment is open and, if there were prisoners in it, they are not to be seen at present.”

  “God dammit! Does it look like the truck wrecked?”

  “No sir.”

  “Find that prisoner! It’s a woman. This takes absolute priority. She can’t have gone far. Look for tracks. We’ll have tracking dogs out there soon so don’t disturb any scent that might be present in the compartment.”

  “A woman sir?”

  “Yes, even though everyone thinks it isn’t true, we have had a few women in detention here at the camp in the past. This one is…” the Admiral sighed, “I’d just as well tell you, it’s Ell Donsaii. The Commander in Chief herself has an interest in this… prisoner, so you can figure… if we don’t find her, the fecal matter’s gonna be pouring onto the rotary impeller.”

  “Yes sir,” Milner said. The Admiral cut the connection with Milner already scanning his surroundings. He had no idea how to track anyone, but he guessed he’d better try. He squatted down to talk to the one guard that wasn’t completely laid out and snoring. “Seaman!” He lowered his head to look at the man’s nametag, then pushed up on the seaman’s shoulder to bring the nametag into view. “Jackson! Seaman Jackson!” Milner shook Jackson’s arm. “Seaman!” he barked again.

  Jackson looked blearily up at Milner.

  “Jackson, what happened here?”

  Jackson’s head swiveled unsteadily, “Uh… tire blew out.”

  Milner thought about asking how the seaman got so drunk, but decided not to waste a question. “What happened to the prisoner?”

  Jackson’s head tipped back and he stared at the open cell on the back of the truck for a minute. Then his head drooped forward again. He mumbled, “Dunno,” then pitched over on his side and closed his eyes.

  Milner rubbed his chin. Jackson’s breath didn’t smell of alcohol. What kind of booze could get you that drunk without a telltale odor?

  A tow truck and another prisoner transport vehicle arrived. They were staffed by seamen and a Petty Officer 1st class. Milner wondered if he could turn this problem over to them. After a moment he decided the admiral probably wouldn’t like that.

  Taking charge of the situation he said, “Towing this truck will have to take second place to recovering the prisoner. She’s escaped and the Admiral...” Milner had been about to say has a bug up his ass but suddenly realized that people may be examining his AV record later. “Admiral Whitt has designated her recovery as pr
iority one.” Realizing that he had no idea how to go about tracking a prisoner, he turned to the Petty Officer, “PO, you have suggestions for carrying out this mission?”

  “Yes sir. We call for UAVs to give us ‘eyes in the sky’ and dogs to track scent. Meanwhile we spread out looking for tracks.” He eyed the back of the truck, “No one gets in there and disturbs the scent.”

  “The Admiral said he’s sending dogs, you get on the horn for UAVs. The rest of you, spread out, look for tracks.” Milner turned back to the drunken guards. He shook the Petty Officer, “PO! PO!”

  The PO’s eyes opened, “Whaaa’?”

  “What happened to your prisoner?” Milner barked at him.

  “Wha’ pris’ner?” His head drooped back.

  Milner shook his head disgustedly and looked up as the van with the canine unit arrived.

  Admiral Whitt arrived at the scene of the escape and the Commander who’d assumed command of the site from Milner trotted over to his vehicle.

  “Any luck?” Whitt asked.

  The Commander shook his head disgustedly, “No sir. Sorry. The dogs can’t track her any farther than twenty feet down the road,” he pointed back toward the base. “The UAVs,” he pointed up into the air where three small UAVs could be seen circling, “don’t see anyone for as far as we’ve calculated even Ell Donsaii could have run in the time elapsed. We’ll have the UAVs keep watch after dark when infrared will let them look for someone hiding and not moving, but I’m afraid she got a ride with someone.”

  Whitt frowned, “Got a ride? Who would pick someone up in a prison coverall, with wrist and ankle cuffs on?”

  “Sir, I surely don’t know, but how else could the scent trail end right there?” he said, pointing at the spot on the road, twenty feet behind the truck, where the dogs had repeatedly circled, noses to the ground but with no trail to follow any further. “Either a car picked her up, or she grew wings and flew. I’ve checked with the Naval Air Station and they assure me a helicopter didn’t come in and get her. Radar would have gone crazy the way they watch for Cuban overflights.”

  “Have they taken the dogs on a bigger circle around the area, to see if somehow she broke the scent trail somehow but they could pick her up farther away?”

  “Yes sir. There are a couple of dogs out there now, making a circle at about a half mile.”

  “OK, put out a general alert through the AIs of all Base personnel so they’ll be on the lookout. Tell them it’s Donsaii so she doesn’t fool anyone with some kind of ‘good girl’ act. All boats and aircraft leaving Gitmo are to be searched by the canines that have her scent. Close down the Cuba border. I want swimming to be her only possible means of egress.” He grimaced, “And bring me those drunken sailors that let her get away.”

  “Uh, sir, the three guards have had their alcohol levels taken. They weren’t drunk. In fact, their alcohol levels were zero. And they already appear to be completely sober. The medics tell me they must have been drugged with a short acting tranquilizer. Blood levels for those will take longer to come back. None of them even remember driving off the ferry, but the medics say it’s fairly common for there to be recent memory loss with those types of drugs.”

  “Drugged! How in all the holy hells could that even happen? How do you get short acting drugs into sailors while they’re driving a truck?” He developed a thoughtful look, “Unless they were partying?”

  The Commander shook his head. “I don’t know sir. We’ve checked the cab of the truck for needles and the men for needle tracks. No joy.” He held up a hand, “Just a sec’ sir, call from the medics.” He wandered a few steps away, then returned. “The tox screen shows benzos in the blood of all three sailors.” He shrugged, “Relatives of Valium, some are very short acting and could explain what we’ve seen. Hard to know how all three sailors would have gotten dosed with those drugs, either self-administered or how someone could have drugged them. The doc has rechecked for evidence they might have been shot with trank darts and found no puncture marks. There weren’t any drink or food containers in the truck that might have been drugged.”

  Whitt pinched the bridge of his nose, “OK, let’s say she had accomplices here at Guantanamo and they somehow blew out the tires of the truck, then drugged our men when they got out to assess the damage.” The Admiral shrugged to indicate he didn’t think either of those things were plausible, “Even granting those two items, how did they get her out of the transport truck?”

  The Commander held out the broken pieces of the latches for Whitt to examine, “Cut them somehow Admiral. How,” he shrugged, “we have no idea.”

  Whitt stared at the rough surfaces. What could cut metal and leave a jagged surface like that?

  ***

  Washington D.C.—The crowds of protestors around the building that allegedly housed Ell Donsaii’s holding cell now say she’s been moved to another location. With no announcement from the government regarding her location it is not clear how the protestors became aware of the move. The protestors say she has been relocated to the notorious Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba, long a site where terrorists and a few other extraordinarily dangerous prisoners have been held without trial. The relocation, if true, may be a sign that President Stockton wishes to hold Donsaii using her Executive powers, not trusting that the courts will find Donsaii’s imprisonment to be legal…

  Unaware of the consternation back at her escape site and in her homeland, Ell was kneeling to check over the hoverbike. If she was going to fly it over the Caribbean that night, she wanted to make sure it was in good shape. She looked for damage to any of the fans and gently spun them to make sure they didn’t wobble at all. After pondering a moment, she said, “Allan, have Amy hang a six foot rope with a couple handholds off the other hoverbike. Then, you fly it down to Jamaica. Land it somewhere isolated. If this hoverbike craps out and drops me in the drink, I’ll want a spare one nearby to pick me up.”

  Ell very carefully turned the bike up on its side, using her prison coverall as padding to protect the sharp edges at its periphery and the radar absorption coating. Those two features resulted in the hoverbike’s extremely low radar profile and it wouldn’t take much damage to them to raise the radar cross section a lot.

  With the bike on its side, she pulled on the lifting harness that was tucked up under the back end frame of the bike. A command to Allan paid out the carbon fiber line from the winch to the harness. She pulled out fifty feet, then she had Allan reel it back in, pulling against it to be sure it would still work against resistance.

  While she had the bike up on its side she had Allan issue her four more of the little videoports through her umbilical port. They were the ones she’d had made up in anticipation of the loss of her AI headband and had been using under the blankets while she was in jail. Allan sent her a tube of quick epoxy and she stuck the tiny ports to the hoverbike, front and back, top and bottom, to give Allan “eyes” with which to better fly the hoverbike. Allan’s having to land the bike on GPS alone when it came for her a little while ago had been an obvious drawback.

  Next she had Allan send her a tube of skin bronzer and she set about turning herself a different color. Doing her back she realized she had a problem. She wanted to be fully covered but, without a mirror, couldn’t see her back to make sure she’d covered every spot. She considered the problem then had Allan send her a three centimeter port, rolled up to fit through her fifteen millimeter umbilical port. It still wasn’t large enough so she had him send her a 7.5 centimeter (three inch) port through that one. Allan had the waldo that was hidden in the tunnel in West Virginia deliver her a folded AI head band. It came through the big port and she put it on. Standing in front of the hoverbike so that the videoport she’d stuck to the bike could see her back, she looked at the image in the headband and finished applying the bronzer. Then she used the same method to make sure her face was evenly brown. Rubbing the bronzer through her hair to darken her scalp darkened her hair some, but then she had Allan send her
a black mousse to fully darken her hair. She studied her image. She looked like a darker version of Ell. But, she still looked like Ell.

  She didn’t want to put a prosthesis on the bridge of her nose like she’d done in the past because they required makeup so she had Allan send her a couple of stents to put inside her nostrils to widen them. They made her look moderately different; she hoped it would be enough. She sent herself some cheek fillers to put in between her gums and cheek when she was about to encounter other people, but there was no need to wear them right now.

  Next she put in a couple of cheap looking earrings whose front and back glass beads were actually videoports. They enabled Allan to see what she saw, as well as what was behind her. Then a cheap looking silver necklace that actually had a tiny retinal projector port in its glass pendant. Even though she couldn’t just glance up and get images immediately like she could with a HUD, in a pinch she’d be able to hold it up and see video or stills that Allan had sent her.

  For now though, it was good to have a headband with a HUD. She settled down to catch up with what had been happening in the world while she’d been in jail with limited access. She reviewed the vid of the last D5R meeting Roger had recorded for her and felt gratified to see that most of their projects, unencumbered by her absence, were proceeding well.

  ***

  Stockton looked up as her Attorney General stepped into her office. Her Secret Service agent Will Argant was surprised to see her smile because her normal expression was so dour. She pasted on a pleasant look for the public or she’d probably never have been elected, but when doing business out of the public eye, stern and harsh expressions dominated.