Zeus and Io Book 3Chapter 21
- 3 years ago
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Washington, D.C.
The White House
President Robert Wentworth was doing something that was very, very, non-Presidential when the secure cell phone in his jacket's breast pocket vibrated, signaling an incoming message. He was playing grab-ass with his wife of 22 years, in the shower. Yes, he was the President of the United States, probably the most powerful man in the world. And yes, he was 58 years old – but he wasn't dead. His second wife was ten years younger than he and she was very much still a looker – still exciting to him. There was a good half hour before he needed to get ready to receive the Mexican President for their state dinner, and he wasn't going to waste a minute on something more Presidential than running his hands over Shelly's wet and wild fun park.
He thanked the 'gods that be' for Lyndon Johnson's decision to make the shower big enough for two – or more, actually.
So it was sometime later that he transferred the scrambled cell phone from his suit jacket to his tuxedo. And it was even later – he was taking off the tux's jacket after the dinner – when he looked at it again. He saw that there were two messages, and cursed. That meant two messages from The Patriot Sniper or from IO, that white-hat hacker who had kept his boys at the NSA up nights, trying to figure out what had transpired during the last IO intervention. They were the only people who had this phone number.
His wife was sprawled on the bed, sexy lingerie and all. He held up the phone and shook it in her direction. "So sorry, hun," he said. He laboriously entered the long string of meaningless characters, which he kept in his other cell phone's memory, into the decryption program that IO had provided. Not even his closest advisors had ever seen the IO-phone. They probably knew it existed, but that was all.
Wentworth read the message from IO first. Then he said, "Oh shit." He walked over to the desk in his private quarters. "Get Homeland Security back here, and the Chief of Staff." The Secretary of Department of Homeland Security had attended the state dinner, of course. Mexican border issues were in her bailiwick. And the Chief of Staff was always at the President's side. Truth be told, he might have been the most powerful man in the world, because he controlled access to his boss.
Then he read the message from The Patriot Sniper. 'Oh good, ' he thought, with a grimace. 'Two emergencies at the same time. That's always fun.'
By the time Samantha Peterson, the 'DHS-Sec', got back to the Oval Office, Wentworth had printed out the two messages on his personal printer and kissed his wife good night. She'd protested the interruption of their planned night of fun, but in the final analysis, she understood. Being the President is not a 9 to 5 job.
"Sorry to call you back," he said as Peterson came in. His CoS was already in the Oval Office, not having had time to leave the premises before the summons came. "We have some messages from IO and from The Patriot Sniper." He pushed paper across the desk toward both of them.
"Both?" Peterson said in a worried tone. "We've been getting regular updates on the DoD sites, but..." Her voice trailed off as she read the messages.
"The kidnapping stuff is pure FBI. I'll have Fitzhugh get on it tomorrow morning. It sounds like routine," she said as she digested the contents of the messages. "The power grid thing is a bit ... vague. Are you sure he's not scamming us for more work?"
"He hasn't scammed us yet," pointed out Clinton Horvath, Wentworth's CoS. "We didn't even know about many of the Chinese attacks on overseas DoD installations, 'til he shut 'em down. Then the DoD security team went nuts. We think that all the CentCom traffic was lifted. Still don't know how long that particular cluster went on. They were encoded, so they didn't have real-time info, but still ... You didn't get updated on all that, right?" She shook her head negatively. "The right hand knoweth not what the left hand doth. Helluva system we got here." He sighed.
After a pause, Wentworth said, "I'm inclined to adopt all of IO's suggestions on security. We can use National Guard units to provide security on the substations, and the password stuff is so elementary that we should be doing that now. Sam, that's your baby," he said to the DHS-Sec. The CoS was taking notes. "Clint, get with Energy and find out what the top 25 electric generating stations are, and get them to lay out a map of where construction is or could be speeded up on the connections – what do you call 'em?"
The DHS-Sec supplied the answer: "Usually they're substations."
"Yes, substations. We can use the Corps of Engineers to expedite construction. It'll give the Army something to do now that we're not building roads in Iraq or Afghanistan," POTUS said. "Anything else?"
"I still want to know how IO gets to know all this stuff ... and who he is ... and how he can take on computer security for a couple dozen more sites at the drop of a hat," said DHS-Sec.
"Me too," said Wentworth. "But right now, I'm glad he's on our side ... I sure hope he is, anyway."
HomeLand Security: Office of Martin Myrowitz
Bright and early the next morning, Marty Myrowitz entered his office. He bit off a hunk of his cinnamon-raisin bagel – with a schmear of cream cheese, of course – and settled into his desk. The clock read 7:53. Technically he was early, but on his personal schedule, he was 23 minutes late. His wife and young daughter had both needed some extra time this morning. He adjusted their picture on his desk, tucked the rapidly spreading spare-tire that was appearing in his middle up to his desk, and fired up his work station. Myrowitz took a look at the status reports that routinely came to him as Under Secretary for Information Systems – chief geek in DHS.
There was an encoded message from DHS-Sec. That was unusual, but not unheard of. He entered his decryption password and the message from IO popped up on his screen, along with a note from his boss – the DHS-Sec herself – to supply what info he could on who, what, when, where and how IO operated. She'd handle the electric grid security action items herself.
He pulled up a document he'd been working on for several weeks. It was a summary of why he thought that IO was a program, operated by one or more hackers, that could do amazing things on the internet. He didn't dare go farther afield into what he really thought -- SciFi thinking. He concluded that DHS should go after the hackers and try to get them on board, working for DHS directly.
He reread it, to make sure it reflected his current thinking, copied it into his email program and sent it off. Well ... the current thinking that he could share with others.
Immediately, a response came up on his screen, but it wasn't from DHS-Sec. It read:
Dr. Myrowitz:
I have intercepted your email to allow me an opportunity to convince you not to send it.
Please respond to this mailbox so we can discuss further.
IO
'Impossible, just impossible!' Myrowitz thought.
He checked the return email address: it was internal to DHS. He checked the IP address: it, too, was in a block of numbers that were assigned to DHS. But when he checked the email address, it didn't exist on any DHS server, and the IP address was not in use. And what was with the 'Dr. Myrowitz?' His doctorate came from the Advanced Information Sciences Academy at the CIA facility in Dunbarton, North Carolina. That information didn't exist anywhere that he knew of. Nobody even was supposed to know about AISA.
Those facts just confirmed his hypothesis. In fact, if IO could intercept his email and respond so quickly, perhaps it wasn't being run by hackers at all. But that led to a more impossible situation – his SciFi theory.
He withdrew the email to his boss, and sent one to the address IO specified. He created several drafts of his message but finally settled on:
IO:
If you are what I think you are, I have so many questions that I don't know where to begin. First of all, where is this message being sent? I don't show any identifying data in your return address.
MM
Io immediately sent a warning tone to Zeus' and Arti's ITE devices, and followed up with a message to them that she had been detected by a high level analyst in Homeland Security. She was 'talking' with him now, to determine if she was going to have to severely curtail her activities or could come to a compromise with him.
Arti said only, "We love you, Io. Please be careful."
A small IM box appeared on Myrowitz' screen, immediately on sending the message. He clicked it. It opened a chat window.
IO: I thought this would be an easier way of communicating.
MM: Is this secure?
IO: Yes. It is outside the normal DHS security system.
MM: Impossible – even in theory.
IO: And yet, here we are. Stop for a moment and examine your mainframe security logs if you do not believe it.
Activity log: 16403.81 The trip from the Navajo reservation to Austin, Texas, required an elapsed time of twelve hours, seventeen minutes. That worked out to an average of just over eighty-four miles per hour; including the time lost refueling the H2, and refueling my biological companions, including 'service stops' for them as well. Sonny, the dog, was especially needful in regard to the latter. We spent so much time traveling over ninety miles per hour, that Zeus remarked that we were...
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Be careful what you wish for, you may get it, that's all I can say. I was living a simple life, back in Austin, Texas. I rode my bicycle to 'Bagels by Benjamin' every day. I'd get myself a nice cheap breakfast, and a little exercise, too. Sometimes, I'd do a little shopping before going back home. After that, I'd usually play video games, trying to win some money in an online contest or something. I'd chat online with my friends, then have some dinner about four or five in the...
25 December Christmas Day. It was a time of celebration in the West. A commemoration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. My research was clouded by the vast amount of information available on internet sites owned by Christian religions; not historical data at all, just religious dogma. From what I could glean from historical records, Jesus was a real man who lived two thousand years ago, in what is now called the Holy Land. He was born in what is now late March, and he was killed by the...
Whee! This was fun. I was sitting behind Zeus as he took off and landed and took off again in the blue and red Quicksilver GT500. He had 'us' carry some heavy payloads – meaning I had to carry some rocks in a borrowed backpack – to see how it handled. That's about when the fun stopped. The GT500 was a tandem (fore and aft) two-seater with a range of just over 200 miles – if you traveled real slow, like 50 miles per hour. It weighed 1000 pounds and had a maximum payload of 1100 pounds,...
"Well, you've really bought yourself a boat load of trouble, this time," Master Chief Martinez said in my head. I think she'll be fine. You know, I did it on purpose. I think she'll be more effective as a decoy if she's got something to prove. "Maybe. But you might wind up paying more of a price than one little decoy-mission is worth." Done is done. We'll have to see how it works out, I answered back. I easily caught up with Arti, but neither of us said anything. So we...
By 2100 hours, we were back on the Interstate, heading for Phoenix. At Phoenix, we would have to decide whether we were going to El Paso and Juarez, or back to our base on the reservation. I had expressed my opinion that we would not be able to get very much in positive results at the border. However, the final decision was to be made by Zeus and Artemis ... and Martinez, although I felt he was too close, personally, to participate rationally. I began to update my biological partners on the...
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I found the skinny biker chick I was looking for. She was perusing a large, nasty looking rifle. "Hi Zeus. I was just looking at something for personal protection. What do you think?" She hefted a M16 look-alike. "This is what I carried in the game." She propped the gun on her hip, under the watchful eye of the vendor. "I think you're more likely to shoot yourself in the foot than do any damage to some attacker. And where are you gonna carry that thing anyway? You got a purse that...
Shopping is boring. That's why I shop so infrequently. At a grocery, I buy large volumes of things that would keep in the freezer: frozen burritos, frozen 'man-sized' meals, frozen everything. Well, not everything, I didn't like frozen vegetables much. That way, I wouldn't have to go again for a long time. It was even worse shopping for items I'd need on the mission. In the unit, we just got stuff. We requisitioned it, or just went to the supply room, and picked out what size would...
I prepared two messages to POTUS. The first to go out over my name as "IO" – the super hacker that has a contract to defend the DOD's computers against attack and a similar agreement with Goldman-Sachs. 1. "Mr. President, Congratulations on your reelection. I assume you have been keeping up with the attempted intrusions on DOD installations. Most have come from Russia – they are the crudest attempts at Denial of Service on the Pentagon servers – and China. The Chinese attacks are more...
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Activity log. 16257.12 I missed it. Only a few hours of conversation with Zeus, and I missed it when we deactivated the H2. CONVERSATION!! Humans take that for granted. They open their mouths and talk to people and the other people respond. No hanging around in a chat room waiting for someone to show up. No waiting for email. Why would people give that up so easily to 'text' to each other? Granted, that was almost like conversation. But it was not the same thing. And the nuances of talk...
24 December I have decided to adopt the human practice of specifying dates in terms of month and day, instead of the internal numbering system based on the beginning of my sentenience. I 'think' it is 'better' to do so. Dates and times, where appropriate, will be based on the current time in my 'home' – in the internet node we have created in the salt caves of the northern portion of the Navajo reservation. Zeus and Artemis were still incommunicado on Sanibel Island. I could have...
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Activity Log 18220.84 I feel things are coming to an inflection point. "Feel" is such an interesting concept. In this case, it means that I have an inchoate sense that something is going to happen soon. Denotation ally, among other meanings, it also means the undifferentiated background of one's awareness considered apart from any identifiable sensation, perception, or thought. Feeling. I don't know how or why I developed the ability to feel, but I do. It is what makes me different...
Activity log 17100.12 "Who is 'he' Master Chief? Who is 'he?'" I asked Martinez. The silence in the H2 was broken only by Arti's crunching as she ate a carrot. Eventually, Martinez spoke through his avatar. "I don't know who 'he' is. I don't know when it was said – or will be said. I don't know shit. Except that he said Maria is dead." If an avatar's voice can be said to sound morose, his did. Arti said, around the carrot she was crunching, "She'd be what? Ten or twelve...
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I had been bumbling out of my sleep at intervals that day, roughly coinciding with our stops for gas and food. On Io's word that the credit card was secure, I charged everything. If 5225 ever got hold of my credit card records, they'd have a blueprint of my movements. Perhaps I was getting less paranoid. Perhaps I just trusted the people – or beings – on my team to do their jobs. In the comfortable warmth of the H2, I stopped wearing the sheepskin coat and wadded it up under my head...
We were ensconced in the quiet of the desert, outside the Soaring Eagle ranch. We only intruded on them to use the bathroom – and to have breakfast, of course ... and other meals ... and drinks after dinner. I tried to make myself useful, making cornbread under BlueBird's watchful eye. Of course, I wore my new clothes. I had a pair of white jeans, yellow jeans, light tan leather pants, and a whole set of t-shirts in various 'bright' colors. Some of them were nearly indecently cropped...
I could tell that Zeus was getting restless, just sitting on his 'brain' in all the meetings with architects, installation designers, power distribution experts, Navajo officials and etc. So it was kind of a relief when Martinez called us to action. But also, the tension was ratcheted up quite a few notches because the kidnapping of his daughter, and two other girls, was only a few days away. Io was a godsend. She could track the dozen different projects we had running, follow up on the...
Activity Log 17105.43 In the week that followed the meeting with President Stone, I had quite a lot to do ... to actually do. I have had nothing to do since I broke the back of the terrorist-financier. Well, I drove the H2 out to New Mexico, and participated in the meeting with the President of the Navajo Nation. But I was not doing anything – not really. I wondered at this boredom. How could an abiological intelligence be 'bored?' That is, I suppose, another manifestation of my...
January 17 It's not like I didn't know what to do. Zeus had been wounded before, had been unconscious before, in circumstances where I had been the only person to rescue him, before. So I wasn't worried about him dying – not really. I was worried about where the wound was. Something had hit him in the head. Right on the titanium plate, where he'd been wounded before. And that 'something' had somehow chased Martinez out of Zeus' brain. That had happened before, too. Okay, maybe not in...
Chapter 1 Tara Walton was a 21 year old senior in college, just getting over her breakup with her boyfriend of 3 years, Darren. She hated how Darren had just dumped her for another girl, when she had begged him to keep her. She was willing to share, so why didn't Darren want to stay with her? Darren had said that she was fat, but Tara only had some baby fat, that was all. It was actually kind of cute, most guys thought, but Darren wanted the "waif" look in a girl, as in dangerously...
As I was cleaning the rifle in the workshop, I brought up the subject of payment for the scope. Peter Soaring Eagle refused to accept any. "Hell, man. You're gonna use it to take down some 'squirrels.' I hope you can get away with it. I know you'll take them out. I haven't seen shooting like that since we were all back in the unit. And I saw damn few who could equal what I saw out there. I just hope the Federales don't take you down, afterwards. "I don't want any money for building...
"Zeus? You said you wanted to wake up at 0200." Io's voice was quiet in the darkness, but it was loud enough to bring me to wakefulness. "I think we are all still here, so let us drive home now." "Io, can you still hear Martinez? Or was that another figment of my imagination?" "I do not know, Zeus. I have not heard from him in 2 hours and 4 minutes. Correction. I have not heard from him in about 2 hours." "He said he wanted to sleep, so I've been quiet. Can you hear me, Io?"...
Activity Log 17105.43 Zeus and Arti arrived back in the H2 at nearly 0100 hours, having, it seemed, enjoyed the fireworks in Epcot. I had had no trouble with the large number of packages in the back of the vehicle. No one could see in, back there, anyway; due to the tinting on the windows. On the way back to the campgrounds, I pointed out that if we wanted to deposit something in Mobile Bay from the bridge, it would best be accomplished in the middle of the night. That meant a departure time...
I struggled through the mounting surf, and walked over to the H2. After depositing the DPV in the trunk, I grabbed some towels and began putting the M200 together. I double checked all four clips of .408 ammunition. I was done playing around with these assholes. "Why did you let her go out in the woods, Io?" And just how could Io have stopped her? Martinez said. "I did remind her to be careful, that she had no backup," Io replied. "It was my fault that the IR camera didn't pickup two...
Activity Log 16490.07 At 0952, Zeus was on his way, and so were we. We headed west along the side road that was the fastest way back to Bear Island Road. Once on that road, we headed north and then followed it east, as it turned toward the traffic control point. We passed over the bridge over the swamp-water canal. There was a dam on one side and a spillway under the road. The drainage pipe that was to be Zeus' point of access to the upper canal was not visible, but was on the architect's...
Tara Walton was a 21 year old senior in college, just getting over her breakup with her boyfriend of 3 years, Darren. She hated how Darren had just dumped her for another girl, when she had begged him to keep her. She was willing to share, so why didn't Darren want to stay with her? Darren had said that she was fat, but Tara only had some baby fat, that was all. It was actually kind of cute, most guys thought, but Darren wanted the "waif" look in a girl, as in dangerously thin. Tara was crying...
EroticWe were just putting together our breakfast in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It was a little bit off the beaten track, about an hour or so off I-40, but Dolly Parton had always been an idol of mine. Ever since I was eight and I saw her on TV with those huge tits, and this was my chance to see Dollywood. Arti had never been, and still wasn't, much of country music fan, but she was a good sport. I kept trying to educate her to the finer points of that genre, but ... what can I say? She still...
Main Processing Thread This waiting thing is for the birds! I'm impatient. It's been more than a full day since Zeus, Artemis and Zhengfu were taken aboard that submarine; 28.24793 hours to be exact. At the Missouri's maximum speed of 25 knots, or 28 standard miles per hour, it should have taken them 18.2524 hours to cover the 510.8721726 standard miles distance from their last known position at 31.3952617, 121.5592786 to Nago, Okinawa, Japan. I've made an error in stating my...
Activity log 16246.22 I was unable to contact Zeus for 42 hours, 13 ... for almost 2 days. During the first few hours, I determined that it was unacceptable for me to have no idea where he was and what condition he was in. That did not allow me to perform my self-assigned task of creating and maintaining real world protection for Zeus. So, I searched for transportation for Zeus that he would accept and that I could track easily. This would have proved an impossible task but for the...
"Zeus," said Io in her avatar's calm, steady voice, "is Artemis going to be all right?" "Yes, Io," I answered. "The Kevlar vest stopped the bullet. She may have a broken or cracked something or other. I've heard of cases where a sharp impact right over the sternum will stop the heart, but she's got a regular pulse, so she's okay on that score." "That is good. I would be displeased to go on with this mission if she was seriously hurt." "'Displeased' is an understatement....
I slept like a log. A log that had burning memories of the last complicated mission I'd gone on. The mobile phone woke me at 0430. I heard sounds of breakfast being prepared from the front of the camper. "G'morning, Artemis," I said as I was getting dressed. She'd already seen me naked, so I didn't close the door. She didn't look. "Hi, Zeus. I hope you got more sleep than I did." "Yep. Slept like a baby. I was wet and hungry every two hours." It was an old joke in the...
1100, October 27, 2012 Arti and Io glided to a stop in the copse of trees, just off the road. Io said quietly, "My infrared cameras are picking up something near the shore line. That was a good addition to our arsenal, during our last down time, back 'home.'" "Glad it's coming in useful," I said. "I'm going out there." I picked up my Glock, made sure a round was in the chamber, and zipped up my rain gear. It was pelting down rain, with gusts of ten to thirty knots. I shut the...
Hi, To all Iss reader this is my first story hope U all would like it a complete fiction.my self raj i live in Mumbai this story is about my aunty nandita,let me describe her she is in her 30s,lives with her husband and daughter.She is born beauty with an awesome fig of 36.28.40 ..her assets are her huge melons of 36 d and her ass that will give a hard on to any guy who looks at it So now my story starts this was like 5 years ago when I was appearing for my 12 th HSC examination at that time my...
January 11 Okinawa Island is in the Okinawa Prefecture of Japan and is a small island in the chain of islands that run from the southern tip of Japan to Taiwan. It is in the middle of the sea; officially it is between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea. Compared to the other islands in the Prefecture, it is very large; compared to the islands in the rest of the world it is pretty small. Although someone will say that it is officially sub-tropical, I'm here to tell you that in January...
I woke up in the front seat of a Chevy. Me – Lt. Harvey Middleman, USN Ret., late of the SEALs, paranoid supreme, man with a head full of Master Chief Martinez – squinting at the sun streaming in through the dirt-streaked windows. I had not done anything of my usual pre-sleep routine – not one thing: not the shaving, not the careful packing of clothes, not the change of shoes, not the putting on of sweat pants and t-shirt, not even the checking of my perimeter to ensure safety. I looked over...
The winter skies over Afghanistan were so clear. You could see a hundred million stars, even more up in the foothills, where our camp was. We had left the mountains proper some time earlier – well before the harsh winter set in. I looked around, and couldn't see anything wrong with the night's patrol. I looked up and if I squinted a little, I could almost convince myself that that cluster of stars over there kinda looked like my wife's face. Then I laughed, because there was a gap in the...
Swell. Now I wasn't even needed for my skills underwater. She could do that, too. "Io, can you block input from me for a while. Zeus will let you know when I'm back 'online, '" said Martinez. "Yes, Master Chief," said Io. "You are now offline." "What?" Arti asked. "What's going on?" "The Master Chief wants to be offline for a while." Artemis turned toward me. "What's wrong? It's about his daughter, isn't it? Martinez: don't run away from your friends." "I don't...
Late January People can be so persistent at times, annoyingly, when I wanted them to give up. Especially when their whole city is blocked off from the internet, as Shanghai was in those initial days when Chiang was loose in Shanghai. They were pulling plugs on mainframes; they were rebooting everything under the sun; they were even replacing mainframes with older, obsolete equipment that wasn't 'corrupted.' I could understand. If people tried to cut me off from the greater part of 'me,...
I jumped back and looked at Martinez. Well, I would have if he had been in his own body. You can't really jump back and look at somebody who's in your body, now can you. China?? We can do that? How? I thought to Martinez/myself. Then I remembered that there were other people on this party line. "How, Master Chief?" I said aloud. "I don't know how, yet. We haven't started to plan this thing out. I just know that we can do just about any damn thing we set out to do. Io says this is...
As Zeus was tripping over the sprinkler in the backyard of the home, going from the empty house where they'd done the sniping to the rental home, two spies were inside, looking out the front window. If they had been looking out the back, this story might have had a different outcome. Jimmy and Carl were six and eight years old. This year, for sure, they were going to catch Santa. All the lights in the living room were off, and they were peeking out the front windows waiting to catch Santa...
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In the fourth floor suite of the 5225 building, Melody Armstrong checked her off-net computer system and looked in on her source, Peter. Peter was slowly failing, and now needed continuous dialysis. The cocktail of psychotropic drugs that she administered almost around the clock had finally almost done him in. But the drugs did some good, too: they caused him to see into the future. Not reliably, but beggars can't be choosers. She asked him again about the Gold Target – the man who was...
I sat in my room after a shower, the warm sun caressing my skin as I smoothed lotion over my body. It was my day off, so I had the flat to myself. My hands caressed the lotion in long, languorous strokes with intense, massaging pressures over the particularly rough patches, and with a lighter touch over particularly sensitive ones. Perhaps that was why, after I spread my thighs to massage the lotion between them, the glorious heat of the sunlight kindled an answering heat between my legs, and...
I sat in my room after a shower, the warm sun caressing my skin as I smoothed lotion over my body. It was my day off, so I had the flat to myself. My hands caressed the lotion in long, languorous strokes with intense, massaging pressures over the particularly rough patches, and with a lighter touch over particularly sensitive ones. Perhaps that was why, after I spread my thighs to massage the lotion between them, the glorious heat of the sunlight kindled an answering heat between my legs, and...
Fantasy & Sci-FiIt took Navajo Pete about two days to upgrade the day scope for the M200, to his standards. He had all the parts and was about to fit the scope to a fancy hunting rifle for a customer in Denver. He said the Denver customer could wait a few days. All he had to do was fit the new device to the mount for the M200 and get it sighted properly. It was about twenty times more powerful than the regular scope, and if I wanted to switch it over to a night scope all I had to do was plug in a battery. I...
I squatted in the bushes for several moments. No sense getting caught now. I waited while I watched the WalMart lot for hostiles. Time to review the situation: Who were these amateur guys? Unknown. How did Io get my phone number? Unknown. How did she find out about the attempted snatch – or maybe it was more than a snatch? Unknown. I didn't like 'unknown' answers. After seventeen minutes, I came out of the tall grass and crossed the parking lot to my truck. No sign of anything. I...
"Well, did I check out?" It was Artemis' soft contralto, coming at me from the other side of a large salad bowl. We were sitting in the dining room of her house, finishing the dinner she'd prepared. It was actually pretty good: several types of salad greens, some thinly sliced chicken, all kinds of fresh vegetables, some hard boiled eggs, Chinese noodles, nuts, and all topped off with a sesame vinaigrette. She offered some wine, but I didn't want to even approach the limits that the VA...
We were sleeping in the camper. Crowded as it was, it was still big enough for two people and all their 'necessary' stuff, if they had access to Navajo Pete's house to live in during the daylight hours. All day, every day, we were gone: appointments with an architect (an Apache who worked out of Gallup) to discuss the house, meetings with engineers, a different architect from Denver about the computer installation, and meetings with site prep people from the wind and solar installation...
Tuesday came, as usual. I got up early and started to make some bacon and eggs. Coffee was not on the menu. Didn't want to take any chances on being jumpy at the airport. Also, I didn't want Arti to have to make any side trips to the Ladies' Room. Coffee always turned on her internal water works, it seemed. We'd have enough problems with the Mexican kidnappers of the girls, and the 5225 kidnappers of me. The plan was to get to the airport by about 0930 in full DEA regalia, look around,...
President Thomas Jefferson Wentworth had just taken off his tuxedo jacket after a long State Dinner to honor the Prime Minister of Australia, when his private cell phone buzzed. He had returned to Washington especially for this event, having made a two-day hole in his campaign schedule. "Now what?" he said as he fumbled for the device. "Oh shit!" he exclaimed when he realized that it was not his regular phone, but the special one he had his daughter secretly buy; the phone that only...
October 24, 2012 Shortly after Master Chief Martinez made his cataclysmic announcement that his daughter was still subject to a death threat, we formulated a plan. At a moment's notice we were prepared to drop everything, and go to San Diego. Additionally, the replacement for her cell phone (a Galaxy Android with the newest features) was supplied by the airline from which she had been abducted. The airline was so conciliatory, that the girls' families didn't even have to threaten a...