“Rogue, you see any other hostiles sneaking around? Over.”
All was quiet, so I repeated myself.
“Rogue, any sign of the remaining hostiles?”
“Only me,” a man said.
I turned around and saw one of Rex’s men emerging from the direction of the main house, and he had his arm around Jerasian’s throat and a gun to the young man’s head, which unfortunately meant that I had found one of our missing bad guys. Now we had another hostage situation and still didn’t know where in the hell Rex was hiding, so I cued my mic.
“Zeus, do you have a clear shot?” I asked.
“Negative, Santa.”
“Well, take it if you get it.”
“Roger.”
The man continued to use Jerasian as a human shield as he walked closer, but he came to a stop about twenty feet away.
“Well played, Finn. We underestimated you.”
“Yeah, you and my high school guidance counselor.”
He laughed.
“You OK, Rogue?” I asked Jerasian.
“Yeah, but I forgot to lock the door.”
“It happens, so, what now?” I asked the man.
He looked at his phone then back at me.
“Good question,” he said.
“Most of your team are captured, dead, or dying. The best chance you have of saving them is putting down the gun and releasing the kid so that we can call for some medical help.”
“They knew what they were facing when they took this job. Every soldier that steps out onto the field of battle knows that he or she might never come home.”
“They don’t have to die this time.”
“We have a mission to accomplish.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You’re working for a God damn lunatic!”
He looked at his phone again then smiled.
“Mission accomplished,” he said, pushing the kid away and bringing his pistol up to his mouth and firing.
A swath of pink mist shot out the back of his head as he crumpled and dropped to the ground. I raced to his side and saw that he was already well into the afterlife and likely looking at a two bedroom condo in one of the quieter neighborhoods in hell. At least, in his final moments, he did the noble thing and spared Jerasian. I cued my mic and signaled an all clear but suddenly had a bad feeling. Why did the guy keep looking at his phone, and what the hell did he mean by mission accomplished? Nobody called losing most of his team and killing himself an accomplishment unless it somehow achieved something else. I raced over and picked up his phone, and on it was a text from Rex that simply said all clear-everything in place.
“Jesus, why in the hell would that guy sacrifice himself like that?” Beeber asked.
“War changes people, and sometimes they can’t leave it behind. They need a mission and orders, and it doesn’t even matter what they are or who they come from.”
“Tragic.”
“Indeed, but enough lamenting. We need to get into that house and free our women,” I said.
We raced up to the front door, found it open, and entered the house to discover it empty.
“I’m getting a very bad feeling,” I said.
“No shit,” John added.
“Do you think this was all planned?” Corn asked.
“Not sure, but these men wouldn’t have sacrificed themselves for nothing. There is definitely something we’re missing, so we better find the girls and figure out what the hell is actually going on here.”
We moved through the dark house, room by room, and the anticipation and anxiety grew with each empty space we encountered. At last we saw a light at the end of the hall on the third floor and moved forward cautiously in case there were any more of Frank’s security men still entrenched in the house. Only feet from the door, I heard a quiet murmur then silence.
“I think I might have heard one of the girls,” I whispered.
“Just one?” John responded.
“I’m not actually sure, but, so far, this is way too easy, and my scrot-sense is tingling like a motherfucker. I’m thinking everyone better hold up while I check this out.”
Rex and his team were ex Delta Force, and that meant that they, like me, were versed in many skills of combat—two of them being explosives and traps. A dark house with one lit room seemed like a giant trap, and I was feeling like a big fat rat, and the lit room was the cheese. I took out my iPhone and turned on the flashlight app and worked my way very slowly down the rest of the hallway, and there, just above the floor and extending between two ornamental statues, was a laser tripwire. Cross it and something happened—likely something very bad. I stepped over the beam and traced the wires to a small electronic unit wired to some C4 explosives. Lovely, there was enough to take out the immediate area and us with it. Clearly, Frank and Rex weren’t fucking around, and so I disconnected the device from the explosives and switched off the beam.
“Fucking Frank and Rex are bigger assholes than I previously thought. They had a nice big bomb wired up to take us out if we got this far.”
“Remind me to kiss your scrot and give it a big ol’ thank you,” John said.
“I will, but I better check for more shit before we start celebrating.”
As there might still be more traps, I dropped down into a crouch and slipped my head past the doorframe and hazarded a brief glance around the room. Oddly, it was empty, and the only light was coming from a large wall mounted computer monitor. I slithered in until I could see the entire screen, and there before my eyes, in all their digital magnificence, were our women. They were sitting in chairs with their hands and feet zip tied to the arms and legs, and their mouths were covered in tape. They appeared to be in some kind of concrete structure, and Jessica was in the center while the others were on either side of her spread out in a neat line. Rachel and Violet were to her right while Bridgette and Lux were to her left, and all of them looked terrified and vulnerable, but at least Violet and Lux were trained field agents and therefore had the potential to hopefully aid us in some way—though it seemed unlikely given their situation. I continued to stare, unsure if it was picture or video, when I suddenly saw movement.
“Holy shit! Get in here!” I said, which brought all the guys rushing in to join me.
The girls all suddenly looked directly towards the camera, which meant that it was a live feed, and they could hear me.
“Violet! It’s Finn.”
Violet tried to speak, frantically moving her head, but the duct tape kept her from making any sense.
“Where are you? In the house?”
She moved her head left and right, signifying the answer was no.
“Then where?” I asked, knowing full well it was a stupid question, as she obviously couldn’t answer.
Meanwhile, Beeber pulled out his iPhone.
“I better record all this in case there is some kind of clue we’re not seeing,” he said.
“Good idea. Violet, can you give me any kind of signal or clue? Anything?”
Suddenly, Frank walked in from the left and stood in the center and looked like a smug asshole.
“Hello, everyone. I assume that if you’re alive then the remainder of my security team are dead or captured, and we have officially moved on to the contingency plan.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Frank?” John asked.
“Come now, John. Do you think a man gets to my position in life without having a contingency plan? Speaking of which, I must offer my congratulations on getting past the tripwire. Rex and I both figured that one would do the trick.”
“Do you mind getting to the point, Frank?” John asked.
“No problem. So, I assume you’ve realized the idea was to kill all of you, but, if by some off chance that didn’t happen, we put in place some counter measures, the first being the bomb, the second being that we relocated all the women to a more secure location.”
“To what end?” I asked.
“To John’s end, or a
t least the end of his political career.”
“Not going to happen, Frankie. We have proof that Jessica is innocent.”
“Perhaps, but you don’t have Jessica, nor any of the other ladies for that matter.”
“So, what are you going to do? Hold them indefinitely?” John asked.
“No, just until tomorrow when you announce that you’re not running for president.”
“After that, I’ll give you their location.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Frank. Why would you do that when you know that you’re going to prison?”
“Prison? Hardly. I’ll be long gone, enjoying my retirement and living like a king in a country without extradition.”
“You’ve been in the game too long to give it up so easily.”
“I’ve had a good run, and I’m ready for retirement, but it doesn’t really matter what you believe, because I hold all the cards. So, I expect you to do exactly as I wish, then we’ll come to some kind of arrangement for your precious loved ones.”
Some movement caught my attention, and I glanced over and saw that Violet looked particularly uncomfortable, though I couldn’t tell if she was crying or perhaps had something in her eye. God only knew what horrible shit Frank had already subjected them to in the pursuit of his evil agenda. My attention was abruptly drawn back to Frank when he cleared his throat and continued speaking.
“Just so you know. The girls are all wired up to about four pounds of C4 explosive, which I can remotely detonate with my phone here,” Frank said, holding up his hand.
On his phone’s screen we could clearly see a digital display which had two large buttons, one red and one green. Above it was a digital timer, so the fucker had some kind of app on his fucking phone that could remotely detonate a bomb. What the hell was the world coming to when some asshole actually created an app for such a twisted purpose?
“I hit button number one and a thirty second countdown sequence begins. If I don’t hit the second button before it reaches zero, boom! All of these lovely ladies will be very dead, and the best part of it is that I can activate it from pretty much anywhere in the world. As I said, I hold all the cards, so don’t be getting any more ridiculous ideas about attempting another rescue.”
Frank walked over and stood closer to the camera so that his face was now huge and looming over us.
“Well, I can’t say it hasn’t been a little fun, but I look forward to seeing you on television tomorrow morning, John, as you wrap this all up to a nice, tidy end. Oh, and make sure you get plenty of sleep. I wouldn’t want you looking bad during your last official day in office.”
“Fuck you very much, Frank,” John said.
“Until tomorrow, ta-ta,” Frank responded.
The video window suddenly went black as the connection was terminated, and all of us stood in utter silence unsure what to say or do.
“Now what?” John asked.
“Nothing’s changed. We get our fucking women back.”
“Yeah, but how do we accomplish that? We don’t even know where they are.”
“I’m still working on that part of the plan.”
Shit, I seemed to have a real gift for believing I was at the glorious conclusion of a difficult affair, only to be thwarted by some unforeseen element. If I had a dollar for every time it happened in recent memory, I’d have enough money to buy Dave a whole drawer full of Han Job T-shirts. Oh well, it was time to put our thinking caps back on and get our shit together, as lives were literally in the balance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Arousal Release Resolution
JOHN CALLED SANDRA and reported his location, and, after about five solid minutes of profanity, she calmed down enough to hear the rest of the story. It didn’t absolve our sins of smuggling the vice president out from under her watchful gaze, but she seemed to at least be a little more understanding. Within minutes, the Secret Service as well as the local police, emergency medical workers, and, last but not least, Special Agent Dave Moore descended upon the estate. Frank’s security men were ushered into custody or ambulances, and I was hoping that at least one of them could tell us where they took the women. As fate would have it, most were in critical condition, and those able to speak were remaining quiet.
We thanked Johnny and his friends then left Robin’s Nest and headed back to the resort to convene in my room to discuss our options. The mood was somber, but Beeber, Doug, and Jerasian were adamant that they might be able to decipher something from the video or perhaps even trace Frank’s conference call. All three nerds set to work and continued on for a good fifteen straight minutes before Jerasian suddenly spoke up.
“Hey, do you remember what Frank said?” he asked.
“Yeah, what about it?” I responded.
“He said he could detonate the explosive device from anywhere in the world.”
“So?”
“So, how would he achieve that?”
“Good question. I imagine he could use a long range radio signal or perhaps a cell phone.”
“Perhaps, but what entity unites the entire world at the moment?”
“According to Doug, it’s Porn.”
“Very funny,” Doug said.
“Yeah, but where do we get our porn?” Jerasian asked.
“The internet—the source of Doug’s porn,” I said, starting to understand where Jerasian was going with his reasoning.
“Exactly, and I’m guessing he’s accessing the bomb via an internet connection, which means we might be able to find the bomb’s IP address, and, if so, we could override his access and possibly deactivate it remotely.”
“You are officially my new CIO when we get you back to San Francisco,” Beeber said.
I was suddenly feeling optimistic, as we were starting to climb out of the depressing helplessness of ignorance.
“Wait a minute! Beeber, can you play that footage from your phone for me?”
“Yeah, I’ve already downloaded it to my laptop.”
I walked around and looked over his shoulder, and, this time, I focused on Violet. Earlier, I had stupidly thought Violet had something in her eye, but now as I watched more closely, I realized that her eye movements were deliberate.
“Can you rewind it and play it again?”
Beeber dragged the progress bar back and hit play, and it suddenly made sense.
“How could I be so stupid?” I blurted out.
“Right now or in general?” John asked.
“Right now, asshole, because I just realized Violet is fucking doing Morse Code with her eyes!”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, its something her dad taught her as a kid, so that they could use it to secretly communicate at boring social events.”
“Wait, you know about the whole Morse Code thing?” Dave asked, sounding irritated.
“Yeah, Violet and her dad told me about it at dinner.”
Dave groaned.
“So, when are you heading back to the mainland?” he asked.
“Violet didn’t tell you I put in an offer on a place in Hawaii Kai?”
“No, did she tell you that’s within rifle range of my place?”
“I hate to interrupt your lovefest, but are you serious about this Morse Code thing?” John asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well then let’s figure out what the fuck she’s trying to tell us.”
Everyone suddenly jumped up and moved over to the computer to look at Violet. I had learned Morse Code in the military but hadn’t done it in years and could only make out a few letters. The first was dash-dot-dot, which stood for D. The next letter was dot dot, which I remembered was either S or I, but, luckily for us, Doug still remembered his Morse.
“We have D and I,” Doug said.
Next was dot-dash then dash-dash.
“And A and M,” Doug added.
We had D, I, A, and M. Holy shit! I knew where they had the girls.
“Diamond Head!” I said, excitedly.
&n
bsp; “How can you be sure?”
“Keep watching.”
When she was finished, Doug looked over at me and smiled.
“You should have been on Wheel of Fortune,” he said.
“Beebs, bring up everything you can on Diamond Head, namely what it’s used for at the moment.”
He tapped a few keys then looked up.
“It’s mostly a tourist attraction, but it also has a National Guard base.”
“Holy shit! It all makes perfect fucking sense now.”
“What does?” John asked.
“Everything—and especially the location. When Violet and I were in trouble up on that farm, an Air National Guard helicopter arrived on scene but was gone by the time we rendezvoused with the FBI. I bet they exfiltrated the hit team. It’s the only way they could have disappeared so quickly, and you of course know who has authority over the national guard?”
“Frank’s good friend—the fucking Governor,” John said.
“Exactly!”
“Well, it makes sense that they’re not out in the middle of nowhere, as they have reasonably fast internet based on that Skype call,” Beeber said.
“Does having the location hasten your ability to hack into the explosive device?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Good, now, you guys work on the bomb, and I’ll work out the details on finding out their specific location within Diamond Head.”
I took out my laptop and opened Google Earth and zoomed in to the famous crater to get a feeling for its basic layout.
“Doug, do you still have access to that Satellite?”
The Poi Predicament Page 39