Or perhaps Boss #24 had tried to neutralize the security transmitter so that they could escape. Boss #1 knew that simply unplugging it would result in death. Nobody else would know that.
Or perhaps Boss #24 had seen their enemies attack their copter last night and had taken off for the ranch in darkness to get reinforcements. He was smart. Perhaps he could navigate by the stars. If this is what he had done, they could expect a rescue party soon. Nobody believed this. They did hope for it though.
# # # # # # # #
When dawn was breaking at 7:30 over the slave island, it was 6:30 and pitch dark at Ranch #24. Marie and Nary's island was in the Eastern Time Zone. Ranch #4 was in the Central Time Zone, which is one hour behind.
However even at this early hour, the ranch was starting to come to life. The cook and assistant cook who took care of the meals for the bosses had been up for an hour and breakfast was five minutes away. The bosses lived in a one storey bunkhouse with room for thirty bosses in a squeeze. Currently Ranch #4 had twenty-four bosses, but eight of them were permanently assigned to the cattle ranch and lived in another bunkhouse further south. Eight bosses were on temporary assignment in Ontario. That left eight bosses who would be coming into the mess hall within the next half hour for their meal. Life on the ranch started earlier for the bosses than it did for the residents of the Big House. That's because the field slaves were expected to be working half an hour after sunrise and the bosses ensured that they met that schedule.
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Chapter 41
As the first light of dawn seeped into the skies over Ranch #4, eight bosses burst through the doors of the huts in the gully, found the twenty slaves that had been declared excess to needs, yanked them off their sleeping pads, and force-marched them to the helipad. They completed the tasks of chaining the women to the floor of the copter and removing their dog collars by 7:45. The crates of food had been loaded the previous day. While they waited for enough light to fly, the bosses took up positions around the copter – whips at the ready and rifles slung over shoulders. One boss stood on the top of the copter with a rifle. Big Momma was being careful – the increase in staff retirements might be a little disconcerting to some. She had even roused herself early and was watching from the balcony of her bedroom on the second floor in case some slave did something incredibly stupid.
The news that twenty women had been taken spread quickly through the field slaves and a crowd formed on the edge of the grass helipad. Anxious friends looked for other anxious friends in the crowd. Soon, plaintive voices were calling out to the copter to ask if their friends were in there. Muffled voices responded.
"They took twenty," Hanna told Pililiani.
"I didn't know she was going to do that."
"Knowing ahead of time wouldn't have helped. Are the house girls OK?"
"I locked them inside the house," Pililiani responded. "They don't need to see this."
"It's a good thing Karita is in the house instead of in the nursery. She'd be here in the crowd otherwise."
"WHAT?! Didn't Karita give you my note asking you to keep her in the nursery all day yesterday and today?"
"She didn't give me a note."
"When was the last time you saw her?"
"Monday night. The night before the first copter left. That afternoon, she told me that she was allowed to stay in the nursery until all the babies were asleep. I gave her something to eat for supper and she put all of them to bed by herself. Afterwards I walked her up to the Big House myself. We went right by the loaded copter. She said that you wanted her to stay in the Big House for the next two days. I thought that was a good idea. I watched her go into the kitchen and left."
"She's run away!"
# # # # # # # #
While Pililiani was desperately searching through the Big House for Karita, the bosses stranded on the slave island were desperately searching for possible weapons. The splintered remains of the huts/stilts, the long blades, and pieces of rope from the bridges gave them all the raw materials they'd need to make spears. Not the kind that could be thrown with any accuracy, but the kind of spear that could be used to defend a small fort. Brigadier-General Jock MacLatchie would have referred to the weapons as pikes.
# # # # # # # #
It was 8:30 a.m. at the ranch. Full light. The second transport was still on the helipad, heavily laden. The field slaves who weren't chained to the copter's floor were sitting in a tight circle far away from the copter and were being watched by two armed bosses. The other bosses were doing an intensive search of the grounds around the Big House in case Karita had hidden there. Bosses from the cattle operation were on horseback and were searching the prairie around the Big House. She had had a head start of at least twenty-four hours, but she was a little kid. She couldn't have wandered very far. On horseback, a boss could see for a long way across the prairie.
Renfrew was conducting a second search for Karita inside the Big House. Big Momma didn't trust the house slaves to report her if they found her. She had put an inactive dog collar around Renfrew's neck to motivate her.
Right now, Big Momma was meeting with Big Daddy and Boss #2 on the grass below her balcony. Safe Haven would come down hard on Ranch #4 if their asset had escaped. All the trio knew for sure was what Pililiani had discovered in her initial search. Karita had left with all of her clothes and two blankets. This suggested that she was dressed for warmth and had planned the escape. Getting her dog collar removed was obviously part of that plan. She had also emptied a large orange sack of onions and had taken that sack with her. She may have used that sack to carry her clothes or she may have just worn all of them. The blankets would have fit into the sack easily leaving some room for food and water. The head cook reported that she might have taken some dried fruit. Perhaps some crackers. Perhaps some empty glass bottles that Karita could have filled with water. None of these items were inventoried so the cook couldn't be sure.
"We won't find her hiding in the house," Big Momma had concluded on this evidence.
Boss #2 agreed. "She's gone. We could put your copter in the air. That would increase the search area. She was prepared for cold nights."
"Do it. Give the job to Jenkins. He'll want to find her. Boss #24 left the ranch suddenly yesterday morning. Could he have taken her with him?"
"As far as I know, he had had no dealings with the girl in any way. He found those replacement saw blades in the grass. He had a reason to leave quickly."
"What if he had taken the blades out of the copter himself? What if he had hid Karita in Big Daddy's copter and came to me with the blades. She left with him." Big Momma had a devious mind. One of the reasons she had survived so long.
"She wasn't hiding in Big Daddy's copter. I would have seen her when I put in the bomb."
"Bomb? What bomb?"
"Be quiet, Big Daddy. She could have snuck into the copter after you finished."
"There wasn't enough time to do that and I stayed in the area anyway. I'd have seen her."
"Bomb, what bomb?" Big Daddy persisted.
"The bomb that would kill the carpenter if he didn't come back quickly enough." Big Momma turned to Boss #2 again. "Could he have picked her up outside of the ranch?"
"Unlikely. Again – he has no reason to help her. He's had no contact with her. She doesn't know him; he doesn't know her. How could they have set up the plan? When did they meet to plan this? She has no idea what the ranch looks like outside the Big House. How would he tell her where to go in words she would understand? There are no significant landmarks in this part of the ranch. But the possibility is easily checked. Big Daddy's copter has a tracker that records how long the copter is in the air and what compass heading it had flown on. That data record would show if he set down to pick her up. The data would also show if he made any unusual changes in his flight path to the island. All we have to do is get Big Daddy's copter back."
"You put a tracker inside my copter?" Big Daddy was
speaking in a normal voice but was struggling to hide his concern about this violation of his basic masculine rights to be able to have sex with wild women without his wife finding out where and when he was doing that.
"Be quiet, you old fool."
"What if she couldn't escape yesterday like she wanted to, but is leaving today?" Boss #2 was trying to earn points with Big Momma now that Boss #1 was away. An opportunity like this couldn't be ignored. "We are led to believe that she left yesterday when actually the plan is for her to leave today when our guard is down."
"She's only five years old. She's not going to think of that."
"But Pililiani would. And Pililiani liked her."
"True. Do you believe that Karita is hiding in the transport copter right now?"
"She's not hiding in the front of the storage area – that's for sure. The bosses would have seen her when they chained the women to the floor. All we have to do is open the back hatch and look inside."
"Do it."
Boss #2 reported back two minutes later. "The crates in the copter are all squares or rectangles. The crates are tight against the sidewalls, but they're not tight against the curved walls at the back of the copter. A little girl might be able to squeeze into that space. She wasn't hiding in this copter. She could have been hiding in yesterday's copter."
At 8:45, the second transport copter with twenty slaves lifted off the helipad. Boss #2 was in the pilot's chair and the heavily-armed, burly Boss #10 was sitting next to him. As Big Momma had instructed, Boss #2 took the copter up to maximum speed and kept it there.
# # # # # # # #
At the same time as that second transport copter was lifting off Ranch #4's helipad, Boss #24 was landing Big Daddy's copter in the clearing of the slave island where he had landed it the previous day. This morning, he had approached the island from the water side and had kept the copter below tree top level. If he couldn't see the slave camp, bosses in the slave camp couldn't see him. Solar powered copters are quiet; there was no chance that he would have been heard.
Meanwhile, with his small force of bosses now armed with pikes, Boss #1 was preparing to make the transport copter into a fort. He had instructed the bosses to bring all the long pieces of wood with a sharp end that they could find to the damaged copter. If they could bury the non-pointy end of these large splinters of wood underneath the copter, the pointy ends sticking outwards might slow down attackers trying to get in the fort through the rear hatch or the side doors. They had no shovels for digging, but they did have cooking pots and the ground under the copter was somewhat spongy. With a barricade of sharp splinters protecting the copter, the bosses could stay inside the copter with their pikes to battle anybody who got through.
While the eight bosses were busy creating a wall of splintered wood around their transport copter, Boss #24 was busy putting Big Daddy's copter back to the way it was before he had borrowed it.
# # # # # # # #
Boss #24 had finished tying down Big Daddy's copter when he heard the sound of a woman's voice shouting. He moved in a direct line from the little clearing towards the village of huts. He paused when he saw the charred transport copter surrounded by a wall of splintered wood, sharp points facing outwards. He also saw that every hut in the clearing had been blown to the ground. There was a certain tone in the woman's shouts that caused the hairs on Boss #24's neck to stand up. He felt danger and decided to make himself into a small target. As he crawled through the underbrush towards the water, he could hear the woman's voice more clearly. She was cursing. Not cursing in terms of swear words. These were curses like, "I curse your black heart for murdering...."
The carpenter crawled closer. An old woman was standing on the water of the bay right in front of the ruins of the hut settlement. He looked again. She was definitely standing ON water that came to her ankles. He could see nothing holding her up.
The bosses were in a loose semi-circle on the shore facing her. All carried blades in one hand and spears in the other. The woman's skin was white and wrinkled. Her hair? Gray with streaks of white. She wore a shapeless discoloured shift of some kind over some leggings. As she cursed, she called each of the bosses by name and pointed her right hand's index finger directly at him. Boss #24 was surprised to see dog collars around the necks of the other bosses. The old woman herself wore no such jewelry.
For reasons that he couldn't explain, Boss #24 activated his pinky ring computer and began recording the scene. The old woman continued to curse each boss standing in front of her. When she was finished, she swept her hands together and clapped three times. A fog enclosed her body. "You will die today for your crimes. You will pay for your crimes in your afterlife. Big Momma and Big Daddy will join you there soon enough." Through the fog bank, the carpenter saw the outlines of her body diving into the water. Then, nothing.
On shore, the bosses huddled around Boss #1. He dropped to the ground and used his blade to sketch something in the ground. Ambush positions perhaps for killing the old woman when she came ashore. Focused as they were on the ground, the bosses never saw what had materialized inside the fog bank. Boss #24 saw. Two creatures were swimming through the mist towards shore. One was a massive alligator. An equally large black panther was sitting upright on the alligator's back.
Boss #24 didn't remember calling out a warning, but his pinky-ring computer recorded it clearly. "The water! Look at the water!"
The bosses turned as one, and as one, they turned back towards the camp and fled in the direction of the destroyed copter. That's when alligators streamed out of the underbrush and blocked their way. The black panther rose into a crouching position on the back of her alligator transport, her red eyes flashed, and a horrific panther scream raged through the clearing as it leapt ashore.
Boss #24's pinky ring video revealed the fate of the first boss that the panther encountered. Afterwards, there were sounds of retching and the tape ended.
# # # # # # # #
Lucas and Theo awoke the morning of December 26, 2085 to find Marie and Nary in front of them. "It is finished," Marie said. She was sitting on the ground, dressed as always in her grey leggings and shapeless gray dress. At her feet were four stuffed backpacks. The boys didn't know it yet, but those packs had been formerly owned by four Safe Haven bosses who wouldn't be needing them any longer. Inside the packs were more blades, blankets, and spare clothing. "We should leave now," Marie said. "Another copter will arrive soon."
"What do you mean, It is finished!" Theo said this with some indignation as it dawned on him that he hadn't been sleepy when his eyelids had slammed shut last night. He glanced at the sky – it had to be noon already! Lucas had a court appearance scheduled for early afternoon, so he muttered a good luck wish to his brother and disappeared.
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Chapter 42
The pre-trial meeting with the judge took place in Toronto's South Court building which 200 years ago had served as Toronto's third city hall. Situated at the corner of Bay Street and Queen Street West, at one time it was the largest municipal building in North America. The entryway alone was two stories high. The front door was locked, but as Lucas tried it at 12:55 on December 26, a man in a blue uniform approached it from inside, unlocked it, opened it wide enough to stick his head out, and asked, "What's your name?"
"Lucas."
The man held the door open wide enough for Lucas to get in and then locked it. "The building is closed for Boxing Day and I'm not supposed to let anybody in but you. The judge arranged for it to be open for this one case. I'll take you down to the courtroom. Everybody else is there."
Lucas stared for a minute at the stained glass window, the grand staircase, the mosaic floor, the murals on the wall, and even the doorknobs that had some fancy crest on them. Then he followed the man along a lot of hallways and down some stairs.
"I'm the bailiff," the man said. "Impressive building, right?"
"Yah. I'll need help finding my way out again." r />
"Not to worry. I'll show you the short cut."
# # # # # # # #
The courtroom they were meeting in wasn't actually a courtroom. It was just a meeting room. "I'm treating this as a mostly informal meeting," the judge explained as he met Lucas at the door. "Prosecutor Lee explained to you that we want to be sure that the case against Dr. Sandman is solid before arresting him. I'm wearing my robes because I am still operating in a formal capacity. By law, we have to have a court secretary and a bailiff present, but otherwise, think of this as a business meeting in an old meeting room. Quite the building, isn't it?"
Lucas nodded. The room was empty except for two big tables, a small table where a lady was sitting with a machine under her hands, and a bunch of chairs. The bailiff sat down at one of the chairs near the back of the room, pulled his cap over his eyes, and tilted the chair backwards until it was leaning against a wall, the two front legs in the air.
Prosecutor Lee came out from behind one of the tables where he had been sitting, greeted Lucas warmly, and shook his hand. He was wearing a blue suit again and had a pair of round glasses pushed up onto his forehead where they sat firmly over the comb-over he was using to mask his hair loss.
"So glad that you're here, Lucas" he said. "You're going to help us put one of our biggest problems behind bars. Slider is in a nearby room and ready to testify. I was worried that he wouldn't show up. You can sit here."
Lucas sat at the indicated chair that was right next to Prosecutor Lee's chair. The judge sat at the table facing them. He had black hair along with a thin moustache and a tidy goatee, but the rest of his face was clean-shaven. The goatee and his thin cheeks made his face look unduly long. Underneath the black robe, Lucas could see a white shirt and a bright red tie. A sparkle of red took his eyes to judge's left hand. He had a ring with a red stone in it.
"Judges always sit by themselves away from other people," the judge explained. "A long time ago, they sat closer to the audience but that meant that they were more likely to be assaulted by people who didn't like their rulings. Now we have our own table. You're not planning to assault me, I assume?" and he laughed.