~~~
One evening, as I was sprawled across my bed and studying geometry, a knock sounded at my bedroom's door.
"Belle, may I come in?" the Colonel said.
"Door's open." I sat up as he took a seat at my computer desk. "What can I do for you, Colonel?"
"Have you been going out at night, Belle?"
I showed him no change of expression at the start of a long-anticipated talk. "Why do you ask, sir?"
His eyes flicked the briefest of instants towards my bedroom window. Likely, none but a trained Tan could've caught his gesture.
"Don't insult my intelligence, Belle. Also, while I'm asking questions, why have you stopped telling me news of the weird?"
For years, I'd been scanning the Internet for stories of unusual events in hope that one of them would lead me to one of you. Sadly, the earth is so full of unusual events that they buried any of yours. I'd told the Colonel of them in hope that he might, against all reasonable expectation, give something away; but he truthfully, I suspect, denied knowing anything behind the events.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas wrote. "I've been telling you news of the weird, sir."
"You've been omitting key stories. For instance, the story of a woman in Louisville rescued from attempted rape by a masked girl who leaped from a three-story building and flung the woman's assailant against a wall."
"That story sounds like something from a superhero comic book, sir."
The Colonel gave me the faintest of smiles. "The story of rival street gangs in East St. Louis. They were disarmed and flung about a basketball court by a masked figure who moved faster than humanly possible."
"Didn't I see that scene in a Jackie Chan movie, sir?"
The Colonel chuckled dryly. "By the way, the only wisdom that the masked figure showed in both cases was wearing a mask to preserve her secrecy."
I guessed, then, that the Colonel wouldn't like the real reason for my mask: to keep from getting windburn at three hundred miles an hour. Vanity, thy name was Belle!
The Colonel went on. "The story of a drug dealer in Topeka, Kansas. He was flung, hogtied with his own sports jacket, through a police station's front door, along with a suitcase full of Oxycontin, his list of contacts, and a murder weapon."
My eyes got big. "I had nothing to do with that incident, sir." Whoever had done it had style. One of yours, Un-Thor? I thought so.
The Colonel laughed his deep, rich laugh. "Some would say that your denial of complicity in the last incident implies your admission of complicity in the former incidents. Why don't you and I stop playing games? As I mention more incidents, answer to them either 'guilty' or 'not guilty.'"
When I nodded, the Colonel said, "The appearance of a suitcase full of cash on the doorstep of a homeless shelter in Louisville."
"Guilty, sir. May I ask, though, why you link that incident to me?"
"Because, the same night when the suitcase appeared in Louisville, a suitcase full of cash had vanished from the scene of a busted drug deal near Elizabethtown, just a short hop down I-65 from the home of the Cardinals. At the drug deal, a masked figure streaked across an open field, slapped the buyer and the seller senseless, tied them up with Bungee cords, pushed their cars over a hill into a culvert, dialed 9-1-1 on the seller's cell phone, and, without speaking to the dispatcher, left the phone open at the crime scene while she ran off north."
"Guilty, sir."
The Colonel stared at me. "You don't carry Bungee cords on the off-chance that you'll need them to tie up perpetrators, do you, Belle?"
I shook my head. "I got the Bungee cords out of the trunk of one of the cars."
"Improvisation, then. Another small point in your favor. The modus operandi of slapping persons and pushing cars over a hill recurs in the story of drunken teenagers who, about to drive under the influence, were suddenly assaulted by what they called a Tasmanian devil."
"Guilty, sir, but I don't like the name."
"Why did you attack drunken teenagers?"
"I feared that they might kill someone if they drove." From this vantage, my words bear bitter irony.
The Colonel asked me of twelve more incidents. I pled guilty to ten, not guilty to two. As these occurred around Kansas City and bear the hallmarks of your flamboyant style, Un, I'll judge you guilty unless proven innocent. The Colonel had missed just three incidents that he could've pinned onto me.
I awaited the Colonel's judgment. Grounding for life? Shipping me off to Area 51 to be vivisected? I wished that I hadn't watched so much TV.
"You have ability and training, Belle, and, now, you're showing initiative. Granted that you're making amateur mistakes, you show promise. Still, I doubt that your current escapades are what Sor-On had in mind when he told you, 'Save the earth.' Would you like to do work more in line with his command?"
My heart leapt. "Are you sending me on missions, sir?"
The Colonel gave me his thinnest smile. "Here's your first."
Huntsville, Alabama, was farther along the Tennessee River than I'd gone, but, given that I was leaving home with the Colonel's knowledge and blessing, the city was an easy two-hour run. Huntsville is home to many high-tech, high-security sites, such as Cummings Research Park, Marshall Space Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, Thornton Research Park, the U. S. Army Missile Command, and the U. S. Space and Rocket Center.
The Colonel sent me to none of these, but to a small factory south of town near Byrd Spring Lake. The factory might've made anything -- vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, dog toys. What it did make, I didn't know when I went there. The Colonel had said that I had no need to know. When I got home, I did look up on line what the factory makes. I'll say only that it must be a cover for the factory's real products, none of which show up on Wal-Mart's shelves.
My target wasn't the factory itself, but one of its offices, which held computers. My mission was to wipe their hard-drives.
Let me correct an erroneous statement that Lona made. I did tell the Colonel of my crystal-shaping gift as soon as it awoke. Telling him was the same as telling Dr. Ventnor. Why the good doctor didn't tell Dala and Lona of my crystal-shaping gift, but did tell Sil-Tan later on, is one life's mysteries. The Colonel and Dr. Ventnor told me much in their last days, but not all. What they took with them into eternity, none of us will ever know.
But to our tale. I approached the factory from the south, from the river. The factory was surrounded by barbed wire, but, without breaking stride, I leapt over this. The entrance to the factory's office wing required a key card for entry, but, under the Colonel's supervision, I'd learned to mimic key cards with the crystal-shaping gift.
A security camera was trained on me when I entered the office wing. I made a mental note to scramble the camera's records as I left. The office holding the computers also required a key card for entry, but you know the drill.
Frying hard-drives when one actually means to fry them is quick work for a developed Tan. As I fried them, I wondered how the factory had backed up the hard-drives. Off-site, on a server or magnetic tape, I guessed. Would my next mission be to fry back-up media?
After I'd left the office, I'd begun to search for the security cam's feed when I heard cars screech to a halt outside. Heading for the office wing's outer door, I saw red and blue lights flashing. The police, though, hadn't yet made it through the locked gate in the barbed-wire fence. Hidden by my Ninja black, I sprinted across a parking lot, leapt over the fence, and headed for the Tennessee River. Catch me if you can! I thought.
Trembling with excitement, I had to stop for rest at Muscle Shoals. As I huddled in a riverbank's shelter and looked up at stars amid racing clouds, I wondered whom I was serving. The CIA? The NSA? Whoever it was, why was it attacking a site inside the United States?
The Colonel had given me just a thin smile when I'd asked him those questions. "You don't need to know now, Belle. I promise, though, that I'll tell you when the time comes."
He would tell me at his l
ife's end in a way that only a Tan could understand. Just then, he had something else to tell me. My Catch me if you can was premature, as I caught an earful from the Colonel when I got home. A squad of raw recruits would've melted like butter at the dressing down that I got for not thinking that the security cam might've had a live feed and that police cars answering a silent alarm would run silently.
I doubt that anyone got all A's when the Colonel was the teacher. Still, no one connected daring industrial sabotage in Huntsville, Alabama, with an eighth-grade Girl Scout in Paducah, Kentucky. After refresher courses, I was ready for more missions.