Now, as she watched the shirtless Sioux cast his line, Yon felt the familiar yearning for a closer relationship with him. But she realized that so long as Ellie shared his bed, there was little hope of that happening. Still, it doesn’t hurt to keep planting seeds, Yon thought. Sooner or later, he’ll move past the loss of his family and realize I have more to offer than Ellie does.
Before Yon finished the thought, the aforementioned Ellie came alongside the Adirondack chair and knelt beside her. In a near whisper, Ellie said, “Dasan has just received a transmission from Hoot. She wishes to speak with you and Takoda as soon as possible. Do you want to tell him, or should I?”
Yon smiled at Ellie. As much as she wanted the android out of the way, it was hard to hate her. Ellie was as kind to Yon as she was to Takoda. “Thanks, El. I’ll go get Tak. You set up the call. Full encryption. We’ll be right in.”
“As you wish.” Ellie gently squeezed Yon’s hand and left.
Takoda didn’t respond when Yon called to him from the streambank, nor did he seem to notice her wading out to him thereafter. Only when she smoothed her hand on his shoulder did he stir.
“Hey there, change your mind?” he said.
With a shake of her head, Yon said, “Hoot’s ready to talk.”
Takoda’s small office felt more cramped than usual to Yon. With the hulking Akecheta sitting next to her on the sofa and Ellie standing by Takoda’s desk, there wasn’t much legroom for anyone. But it was important for the androids to hear the conversation, given they had roles to play in the rescue of Billy Hearns.
Among those in the room, Yon had been a Beacon member the longest, and she had been the one who’d recruited Takoda into the network. Not long after that, Hoot granted them the two androids to assist with rescue missions. As a cover, Hoot suggested they serve as housemates, one for each of them. At the time, Yon felt Takoda would benefit from the companionship of both given how withdrawn he had become after the loss of his family. So, she recommended Hoot provide both to Takoda. Strategic error on my part, Yon thought now as she looked at Ellie.
“I say, are you there, Yon?”
Hoot’s voice shook Yon back into the moment. Deep and full of gravitas, the Beacon leader’s British-accented voice always caused Yon to conjure an image of a uniformed Field Marshal on the other end of the line. In truth, Yon had no idea what Hoot looked like. She had never met her.
“Yes, Hoot, I’m here,” said Yon. “Takoda is here too.”
“Good. Have you briefed him on the situation?”
“Yes, in as much as I know of the situation. We’re both anxious for more information.”
“Understood. Well, what I communicated earlier is true. NASF knows about our mission. They apparently do not have insight into the specifics of our plans, nor do they fully appreciate our goals, but they know enough to present problems. You see, they intend to let our plans unfold and nab us in the act.”
Yon’s heartrate quickened. “Then we’re scrubbing?”
“No. There is too much at stake. But we will have to adapt our plans to account for NASF surveillance. Now, listen carefully—”
Takoda spoke over Hoot. “Hold up. Before you go any further, I’d like to know how NASF found out about the mission.”
When Hoot did not answer immediately, Yon began to feel nauseous. The underground leader’s eventual answer did little to ease the sensation. “Yes, well, as we feared, Mrs. Hearns’ anxieties led her to discuss the rescues with someone outside Beacon. Her parents. Evidently, Mr. Hearns overheard the conversation and contacted NASF.”
Yon’s stomach cramped as she watched Takoda clench his fists and shake his head. During the hasty creation of the rescue plans, he had expressed reservations about Sarah’s reliability.
“Then we have to scrub,” said Takoda. Though his comment was directed at Hoot, Yon noticed his glare was directed at her, as it was her responsibility to manage Sarah.
“Not necessarily,” Hoot said. “Over the past several hours, we have gathered more intelligence that gives me confidence we can still achieve success.”
Yon watched Takoda grip the armrests of his chair as he challenged Hoot. “How? Stealth was crucial to our plans. That’s gone now, no matter what kind of intel you have.”
It was hard for Yon to disagree with Takoda’s assessment. Beacon’s plans had presumed NASF would never learn of Billy’s rescue — before, during or after the mission. On the other hand, Hoot was the antithesis of recklessness. She had to have compelling reasons for believing the mission could still succeed.
“If you would allow me to explain, I think—”
Takoda cut off Hoot again. “What’s to explain? NASF knows about Billy, right?”
“Yes, quite right. They know he is our primary target. They know he is special.”
“Then it’s game over.” Takoda pounded a fist on his thigh.
Yon tried to make eye contact with Takoda but he looked away. As she contemplated ways to break the tension, Hoot intervened. “You surprise me, Takoda. I did not expect you to give up so easily.”
In a calm and measured voice, Takoda said, “What you call giving up, I call facing facts.”
That was too much for Yon. “Oh, come on, Tak. Ease up. You don’t know all the facts. Give Hoot a chance to tell us why she thinks we can still pull it off.”
“Why? Hoot said it herself. NASF knows Billy is special. That means they’ve examined his DNA…which means they know why we want him.”
“Actually, that is incorrect,” said Hoot. “From what I’ve been told by our informants, NASF hasn’t a clue about the GODD chip. Their ignorance of our objective is the primary reason they intend to let our plan unfold, albeit under intense surveillance. Only, that will be quite difficult for them given they are not privy to the details of our plan, nor do they know we have been apprised about their plan. With some modest revisions, I believe we can confuse them long enough to accomplish both rescues.”
“What kind of revisions are we talking about?” asked Takoda.
“We? Should I take that to mean you have reconsidered giving up?” Hoot replied.
“If the revisions include Sarah, no. She’s too big of a liability.”
“She’s been a liability from the get-go, Tak,” said Yon. “But she’s also an important asset. Too important to exclude from our plans. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, but what if she makes another mistake and the rescue fails? If NASF interrogates her, she’ll roll over on us in a heartbeat.”
“Then we’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Hoot said. “Now, are you in or out, Takoda? If you’re out, step away now.”
Yon gripped his hand and looked him in the eye. “We’re so close, Tak. Don’t back out now. We need you. I need you.”
From the sour expression on his face, Yon thought he might pull from her grip and storm out of the room, but instead, his shoulders slumped and he nodded. “All right, I’m still worried about Sarah, but I can’t let you down. I’m still in.”
“Good show,” said Hoot. “Now, let us discuss the alterations for your part of the mission. Every minute counts if we are to succeed.”
CHAPTER 5: ZERO HOUR
Command Center – NASF Province Headquarters
Minneapolis, Lakelands Province, New Atlantia
The video feeds from the glider drones were split into three screens. Damon leaned over the holotable and studied each one. The center screen showed Rodrick Hearns’ RiverForge speeding along the interstate toward Minneapolis. The one on the left provided an overhead view of the Minneapolis Gene Center building. And the screen on the right was zoomed in on the front door of the Hearns’ home in Chicago.
“Show me the church,” Damon said.
On the opposite side of the ping pong-sized table, Cassidy tapped her fingers on the holoimage of a keyboard floating above the table. Seconds later, the zoomed-in image of the front entrance of St. Matthew’s replaced the video feed outside the Hearns’
home.
“Switching to the back entrance view now,” Cassidy said.
The screen toggled to show the rear of the church. Damon pressed his earbud radio. “Schwartz, everyone in position?”
“Roger that,” Schwartz said. “Two plainclothes and a nano inside. Glider overhead. I’m with the rest of the squad in the command truck. We’re ready to close in on your order.”
“Good. We’ll let you know when the Hearns women are on the way.” Damon turned to Cassidy. “Show me the house again.”
Despite the myriad of surveillance resources and officers at Damon’s disposal for the dual operations, he felt exposed. While he knew Beacon’s general aims, he had no idea when they would act nor the tactics they would use. He suspected they would synchronize the timing of the separate smuggling operations, but he had no intel to confirm it. He also thought it likely Beacon would wait to snatch Billy until he reached Minneapolis, where the border with Carapach was a mere twenty miles away, but there was no guarantee of that either.
Therefore, Damon and his task force of humans, androids and drones had to remain alert and ready to react to whatever devilry Beacon had planned. Damon shifted his gaze to Rodrick’s car. “What’s Mr. Hearns’ ETA?”
Cassidy replied, “Given the current traffic flow, he should arrive at twelve-fifteen, a little more than three hours from now.”
“Is the boy still asleep?”
“Yes, sir. Biometric data from the tracking implant shows slowed respiration, low heart rate and minimal brain activity.”
Damon’s mind drifted to the memory of driving his son, Dylan, to the same gene center for his euthanization two years beforehand. He recalled how angelic Dylan had looked as he carried the sedated child into the clinic. He didn’t remember much about the inside of the facility, just the small room where he and his wife said goodbye to their sleeping child. It tore Damon apart then, and thinking about it now did so again.
As his emotions began to swell, Damon gritted his teeth and looked away from Rodrick’s car. Focusing his attention on the video feed of the Minneapolis clinic, he tapped his earbud again. “Fenner, report. All in position?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any sign of Beacon operatives?”
“No, sir. Facial recognition feed from nanos stationed at entrances confirms no unknown persons entering or exiting the clinic.”
“What about the two doctors from Carapach? Have they arrived yet?”
“No, sir. They are still inbound from the border checkpoint. According to glider data, Dr. Fujita will arrive at 9:18 a.m. The other doc, Wells, is about fifteen minutes behind.”
“Copy that. Make sure your people stay out of sight. If either of those doctors is with Beacon, I don’t want them tipped off to our presence.”
Earlier in the week, Damon had ordered a thorough background reevaluation of all the people employed by the Gene Center as well as those who worked at St. Matthew’s. Convinced that Beacon had people on the inside in both places, he tasked his team to identify the most likely conspirators and they pegged Wells and Fujita as the leading candidates from the clinic.
While their NASF records were clean, neither Takoda nor Yon were New Atlantian citizens and both were didgee caste, which made them stand out to Damon’s task force as possible suspects. The conscription of didgee females to serve as surrogates for evvie embryos was a practice decried among the didgee-dominant society of Carapach. Yet, beyond their caste affiliation and current country of residence, nothing in the doctors’ backgrounds leaped out as inherently suspicious to Damon.
Now thirty-eight, Wells was Carapach by birth. Like Damon, Wells was widowed. And also like Damon, the doctor had lost a child to Jakali Syndrome, though the records showed Wells’ daughter had not been euthanized like Dylan. She had instead been placed in a gutant internment colony two years ago, a legal practice permitted in Carapach.
In another similarity with Damon, Jakali Syndrome had factored into the death of Wells’ spouse. The records indicated she had been killed by a jakali who had snuck onto Wells’ property a year before the daughter’s internment.
Turning to Wells’ professional background, Damon had learned the didgee had received his medical training in New Atlantia and then returned to live in Carapach. There, he opened a small clinic in his home territory of East Dakota where he assessed gutation risks for couples considering marriage and those eager to start families. Then, four years ago, he closed his clinic and went to work at the Minneapolis Gene Center. He still lived in East Dakota, but that was not unusual. Good paying jobs lured many Carapach citizens to commute across the New Atlantian border to work in Minneapolis.
From a legal perspective, Wells appeared to be a law-abiding citizen of both Carapach and New Atlantia — no arrests, no reports of subversive activities, no controversial papers as a student and no black marks as an employee of MGC. Fujita’s citizenry background was similarly clean.
She was born in Osaka, Japan. In her teen years, Fujita and her didgee family emigrated to Pacifica and settled in Los Angeles, where she lived until graduating medical school.
Fujita was thirty-six now and, as far as Damon’s team could determine, she was single and childless. Like Wells, she chose to live in East Dakota and commute between Carapach and New Atlantia for work. Interestingly, discreet nano surveillance at the clinic suggested the two doctors were close friends.
She spent the early years of her career in Alaskon, working as a researcher for a therapeutics company that developed medications for a range of gutation symptoms. Then, five years ago, she made the leap to New Atlantia and the Minneapolis Gene Center. According to her MGC employment file, Fujita had made the career shift to get out of the laboratory and into a clinical setting.
Storybook stuff. Except Damon didn’t buy the backstory, not about Fujita nor her friend Wells. Call it caste-bias or distrust of foreigners, but Damon had a bad feeling about both of them, particularly given they had been the primary doctors at the clinic who interacted with Billy and Sarah Hearns.
Ten and eleven o’clock passed without any sign of suspicious activity. With only an hour left until Rodrick reached the outskirts of Minneapolis, Damon pressed his team in the field to remain on alert. Beacon would make their move soon, he was certain of it.
“What’s your logic module tell you, Cass? Once Rodrick enters the city, where’s the best spot for an ambush?”
The android turned to study a holomap that hovered a few feet away. Damon stepped around the holotable and joined her. The map displayed downtown Minneapolis with a red line that highlighted the route Rodrick had been directed to follow.
“Skyway gives Beacon many options.” Cassidy touched the map, illuminating two yellow dots. “But so long as Mr. Hearns stays on course, the two best chokepoints are here and here.”
Damon nodded. The complexity of the Skyway transport network presented Beacon with multiple possible ambush spots and escape routes and, at the time Rodrick would be driving through the city, Skyway would be bustling with lunchtime activity.
The Skyway system was a grid network of tunnels and enclosed bridges that linked together most of downtown Minneapolis. It had originally been built to allow people to move about the city during the bitter cold winters without going outside but now, one hundred seventy-plus years since the first section opened, Skyway was the primary mode of transportation for those who lived and worked in the city.
Thanks to a series of modernizations and expansions over time, Skyway was now capable of accommodating foot traffic, personal magboards and android taxicarts. The system also included a high-speed, maglev trolley that facilitated transportation to and from the farthest reaches of the downtown area.
Damon imagined Beacon operatives scrambling out of a Skyway access point and swarming Rodrick’s RiverForge at a hololight. One of the operatives would disable the vehicle with an EMP nodule while another stunned Rodrick with a laser blast. Then, under cover of a smoke grenade, one or two others would s
pirit Billy away.
A faux food cart made the most sense to Damon. They would slide the sedated boy into a waiting cart and hustle into Skyway. Once inside, they would blend in with the many other service carts and pedestrian traffic. If Beacon acted true to form, they would employ diversions. Damon imagined other food carts with identical markings nearby. Operated by identical-looking androids, the carts would jumble up together to confuse the extensive NASF surveillance system monitoring Skyway. Most likely, they would have other operatives who would attempt to jam the surveillance feeds at the critical moment when the cart carrying Billy reached their intended escape point. Out they would leap from the cart and hop in a waiting vehicle outside and speed away.
Such a plan would have sounded far-fetched to those unfamiliar with Beacon, but not to Damon. He had seen the surveillance feed of just such a Skyway smuggling operation less than a year ago. Only, then, it had been a didgee conscript Beacon had kidnapped. They got away with it because NASF had been unaware of the intended “rescue” until it was nearly over. By the time officers responded, Beacon had escaped with the didgee. But this time, NASF was ready and waiting for them.
Damon studied the two chokepoints highlighted by Cassidy. “I agree. Both are close to intersections and there are multiple exits within a short distance of each.”
“Correct, plus the exits empty onto streets with straight shots out of the city,” said Cassidy.
“Okay. Let’s concentrate our plainclothes near those two chokepoints. Cover the rest of the Skyway access points along Rodrick’s route with nanos just in case we’re wrong.”
“Yes, sir.”
While Cassidy transmitted those instructions to the contingent of officers mingling with pedestrians in Skyway, Damon returned to the holotable to ponder alternative Beacon strategies. As he focused his attention on the video feed of the gene center, Cassidy came up beside him.
The GODD Chip (The Unity of Four Book 1) Page 6