"Talk later," Bubba said.
"Now," Mac insisted. "Franklin has taught me that I must always do what I'm told; otherwise, he becomes upset. I don't like it when Franklin becomes upset with me."
"You and that old coot Franklin are together?"
"Franklin is a very inspiring preacher."
"He has his own congregation now?"
"TaDa," she said.
"What's he want." Bubba stopped strolling. The ground stopped shaking at the same time.
"Franklin wants to have a private meeting with you. He won't tell me where that meeting will be, but I can fly you there provided you give me the directions." Mac was hoping that Bubba would just tell her, not actually try to sit in the copter. Copters weren't designed to fly on their sides. "I'll come back to your camp with you afterwards, of course. Franklin intended his gift to you to be permanent."
"Where's he at?"
"He said that he'd meet you at the place where the two of you first worked together before you were policemen."
"Shoot. I'm not going all that way. Half of these here women would be gone when I got back. Them and all my children too. You tell him to come here."
"FF won't agree. Thinks you'll just kill him."
"I would. You going to fly away on me now?"
"No, of course not. I have nowhere to go to. I'm afraid you're stuck with me."
"Let's go talk about that in the church."
"Not quite yet. You see, I believe that Franklin is hiding something from you. He said that I must be sure not to tell you anything about my past. But if I'm going to be one of your wives, I feel I must tell you."
"Your past? What about it?"
"Well, you see, I like to party. And sometimes, I've had a hankering to leave my husband for a while, especially when he became possessive. The last time I came back, I had a little bundle from heaven with me. He had the nerve to ask me who the father was. It was somewhat unlikely that it was him given the length of holiday I had taken, you understand?"
Bubba nodded.
"I wouldn't tell him of course. What I do with my body is my business. He said that if I ever left him again, he'd find me and make sure that I couldn't leave him again. I was a good wife for a while, but got my hankering again. This time with Franklin. I told Franklin about my soldier husband and he became worried about me being found with him. I was living with Franklin in the big city, although he had me hidden away nice and proper. Or improper, I suppose." Mac added a little giggle, although she was as much a giggler as Bubba was a synchronized swimmer. "Franklin said that you would be better able to protect me from my special ops husband and his two buddies what with your more extensive work experience. You know, being a policeman is good, but Franklin said that you'd be better for me because of all the work you did before he joined up with you."
Bubba nodded. "True, true. Let's talk about that."
Mac ignored the tugging, although it took all of her strength to stay firmly planted in front of the church. "So if I stayed here with you, I'd have to be absolutely sure that you could protect me and my young daughter who's sitting in the copter with a friend." Mac sensed Bubba's body quivering to attention when she mentioned the magic words, young daughter.
"Hard for anyone to find us. I make sure of that."
"Yes, it is. And as strong as you are ... (Mac put a hand on his biceps and started to squeeze, but stopped when she reached bone without any resistance) ... I couldn't be my normal friendly self without knowing that you had the skills to protect me. FF assured me that you had been plenty dangerous in your youth."
Bubba thought.
Mac waited. Winnie, get Patella ready.
"You're trying to find out where FF and me worked, aren't you."
Release the hound!
The earth shook again as a large blob of fat fell unexpectedly to the ground and wobbled and bobbled in harmony with the moon's passage overhead.
"Why, yes Bubba I am. Oh look. Fifi wants to play with you. Would you like to tell me where you worked before joining the RCMP?"
"Zeballos Regional Prison."
"And how would I find this prison? Easy Fifi, let the big man talk."
"Go to Zeballos. Follow the river north until it splits. Easy to see from there. It was an underground mine first before they made it into a prison. Goes way back into the mountain."
"So kind. I'm sure your God will reward you."
"The prison has been shut down for years. Why do you want to go there?"
"You women hiding in the woods," Mac bellowed in her best parade ground voice. "In about 15 minutes, a large number of B.C. copters are going to land on the lake and take you and your children to safety. You will be cared for and protected from further harm. However the people coming to help you may feel compelled to take Bubba with them. They may not have sufficient copter capacity to lift Bubba out of here, which would mean that some of you might be left behind. That would be a shame because it sure seems to me that Bubba is due for a fatal heart attack very soon. Fifi and I are going to go to my copter and leave. Bubba's not going to feel like moving around much for a while. I'm sure he'd appreciate any tender loving affection you might want to give him when nobody is here to see you being appreciative. Y'all have a very appreciating day, now."
With that, Mac backed off from Bubba's prone body, Fifi was still engaged in taste-testing morsels of neck flesh. Bubba's splayed knees were facing Mac in invitation. She took three big steps backwards, one sideways, and then sprang forward in the classic run up for a football field goal attempt. Her pointy-toed shoes didn't hinder her at all. If anything, they added to the pleasure she felt. Perhaps not so much to the pleasure Bubba felt.
"Three points," she said with great enthusiasm. "Go Riders, Go."
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 36
Saturday morning, March 10, about 9:30.
As instructed, Scout Team #1 (TG and Yollie) was the first to arrive at the prison. Their job was to search the surrounding area for possible interference from local inhabitants. Strike Force #1 (Hank and Yolanda) arrived shortly afterwards and Strike Force #2 (Doc and Granny) were right behind. Scout Team #2 (Wizard, Winnie, and Patella) had further to travel so they were the last sling warriors to reach the battle zone. Wolf and Mac were the Battle Control team at the controls of the Wilizy and they would be the last to arrive. The Wilizy couldn't travel as quickly as the slings, but Mac had already ordered the slings into a holding pattern until Scout Team #1 had completed its sweep.
"Do we go in?" Yolanda asked.
"Negative," Mac said. "Franklin planned this for a long time. He wouldn't leave his hidden treasures out in the open for anyone to come in and rescue. This place is a prison designed to keep prisoners inside. Franklin worked here. He'd know the security; he'd have chosen this site because of it."
"Plans for the prison have to be stored somewhere. Physical lay-out, security, everything," Hank said.
"The B.C. military is searching for that now," Mac replied. "Battle teams, don't get your hopes up. Franklin emptied his brother's files. What are the chances that he didn't think of emptying files about the prison too?"
# # # # # # # #
At Mac's request, TG was briefing them on the possible security systems that might be in place, including sensors that could be outside the prison itself. Motion detectors, for example. Even approaching the prison might be dangerous if they did so visibly. Franklin could have programmed underground explosives to go off after any breach in the prison's security. "We have to be very, very careful now," he said.
It was then that they all heard the system wide warning alerting everyone that a brain plug had been tampered with.
"I'm receiving dual messages," Wolf said. "IDs are Will's and Izzy's."
"Can you determine their precise location?" Mac asked.
"No.... I mean Negative," Wolf stammered. "They're just blowing a huge electronic hole through the rocks below us. All I know is that they're deep un
derground and their brain plugs are together."
"Meaning that Will and Izzy are together and unsupervised." This from Granny.
"But why the signal after we just arrived on site? Do they know that we're here?" Wizard throwing in his two cents.
"Highly unlikely," Mac said after considering it. "They would have no means of detecting us. Coincidence, probably."
"There's a repetitive pattern to that signal," Doc said. "I don't know how long the sequence is, but I'm sure bits and pieces of it are being repeated."
"Tape it, Wolf," Mac instructed.
"I know Morse Code," Doc said. "It's not that."
"Can the sequences be analyzed, TG?"
"Yes. I can do that. It would confirm that Will or Izzy are sending out a coded message. But we already know that. This isn't random interference with the signal, but with no key to the code, it could take days to make sense of it."
"We don't have days." Mac – stating the obvious.
"Why would Will send a message in a code that none of us knows? That wouldn't make sense." The scientific mind of Doc at work. "He knows that one of us can decode it. Everybody listen closely."
Nobody spoke up. Then....
"Lucas can," Winnie said. "Theo too. They use this to tease their brothers and me. Makes us all mad, so they don't use it around us much any more."
"Wolf?" Mac asked.
"I'm on it. It's very early in the morning over there."
"Double pulse priority. Wake Lucas up. Try Theo if Lucas doesn't answer."
Lucas did answer and yes, it was a code that he and Theo used. The message was bombs at front.
Mac ordered Wolf to hit the mine with the Wilizy's heaviest gravity pulse possible. Twice, and then twice again. The sling warriors could hear the two double thunks from where they were high in the air. The messages stopped immediately.
"Scout team #1: You're up. Maximum caution."
Hank mind messaged Mac while TG and Yolanda were preparing their equipment. We've never talked about that gravity pulse weapon since you arrived. We haven't talked about the double-double confirmation either. How did you know?
A good battlefield commander never reveals her secrets.
# # # # # # # #
It took TG and Yollie only about ten minutes to set up their equipment. They had practiced with it most of yesterday and were now good at the controls. This was equipment that Mac just happened to see after she just happened to stumble up against Will's workroom door with her hand accidentally falling onto the door handle. She just happened to see the controller joysticks after she accidentally opened a drawer. She just accidentally happened to see a full drawer of spider-like insects in the desk on the other side of the lab. She spent enough time playing around to figure out what they were. Then some time later, she just happened to send TG down to the hold to look through Will's things to see if he could spot anything useful. She left the whole system all connected just to make it easier for him. Lucky the way all of that happened.
"Be sure to keep the drones high in the air," Mac reminded them. "They can't touch anything in case it's a detonator."
"That mine will have a ton of empty space in it," Yollie said. "Plus it will have lots of spiders already inside, so the system will be programmed to ignore them. We're only going to crawl along the walls like a normal spider would. We'll be alright." A polite way of saying, Back off, girl. I've got this. TG winked at her in appreciation.
The wall crawling had taken them past three big iron gates that spanned the entire width and height of what were very wide tunnels. Any human coming in or leaving would have had to stand on a suspicious looking wire grid while entering a key pad code and putting his eyes down onto an iris scanner. That wire grid was positioned in front of a small door in the iron gate. Similar wire grids were on the other side of the big iron gates.
"I think we're past all the security gates," TG reported. "We can follow a wide tunnel to the left or investigate a large wire cage that's hanging in the air. It looks like its some kind of elevator for going deeper into the mine."
"Which way, Boss Sir?" Yollie asked.
"Down," Mac said. "Explore the cage first," she instructed.
The cage – sort of like an adult-sized bird cage – was at the top of a big dome. Below it was a lot of empty space until you reached a rock floor way below. The cage was large enough to accommodate up to six adults. A winch operating a thick cable would drop the cage or raise it. The controls operating the cage were inside it. Access into the cage was protected by a fourth key pad and an iris scanner.
"Permission for the spiders to crawl down a wall, Boss Sir?" Yollie asked.
"Granted."
Once they had descended to the first set of cells, with no security measures in sight, Yollie and TG put the spiders into fly mode and it became easy.
"I can see an open cell door and whoever was there left us a paper trail to follow," TG announced.
"We're following the trail now," Yollie said. She had sensed Mac's mouth starting to open and jumped in before she could speak.
About three minutes later, Yollie announced. "Found them. Izzy is outside Will's cell. They appear to be checking each other's dental hygiene."
"Can these things of yours cough?" Doc asked TG.
"If they can, I don't know how to make them do it. I know how to make them crawl, how to make them fly, and how to record a scene."
"TG. Let's make the spiders kiss."
Scout Team #1 put the spider drones into a hover right in front of the faces of the kissing prisoners and had them bump noses together. Izzy noticed the movement first, and pulled away. "Will, we have some peeping spiders looking at us. They appear to be very friendly."
Will turned too. "My drones!"
"Yollie, is that you?" Izzy asked and one of the drones jumped up and down.
# # # # # # # #
The meeting didn't take long. Will's spiders were built with snooping in mind so they had ample ability to watch and listen but no capability to send any signals. At least not to the people they were spying on. Will told TG what to do to transfer the drones' video signal into the Wilizy command center post, and from that point on, everybody could see Will and Izzy; the same was not true in the other direction.
Both Will and Izzy told the drones everything that they knew about the prison and about FF. Izzy spoke the longest, leaving out only the part about FF's groping. She'd tell Will about that privately and that would be the end of it. Unless she met FF alone in a dark prison, that is. Will asked about getting his sling and braided ring back. Izzy gave as much detail as she could about the security system – especially the iris checks and the key pads that needed different codes.
The spiders did a little dance before leaving, and Will and Izzy waved. They didn't need to be told that the Wilizy would be overhead. They would have liked to be told when the spiders would be back. Izzy wondered if perhaps she should go back to her cell in case FF came back, but Will said the Wilizy would warn them somehow, so she just sat on her pad, her back to the cell, and Will did the same, his back touching Izzy's back. They had no idea what time it was or even what day it was.
Before the drones left, Mac had Yollie and TG explore the other tunnel into the mountain that they had passed. The encountered no security stations on their way. Their first stop was at very large cave with a few scattered food bars and water bottles on the floor. "Food storage area for the inmates," TG concluded.
"Nice diet," Yollie observed. "Food bars and water for the rest of your life."
Further down the hallway was another cave that appeared to serve as a staff room with old food machines and picnic tables scattered around. One side of the room had been a small canteen, providing coffee perhaps. There were empty spaces for microwaves to warm up food, but no provisions for cooking food.
Behind the staff cafeteria was a small suite of offices. The big one at the very end was obviously for the prison warden. The two adjacent to that were probably fo
r officers lower in rank. A computer room had stations for three. The computers were still hooked up, as was an iris scanner that was connected to all three. Next was a small service room with a large bank of electrical switches, some of them labeled as Section 1 lighting, Section 2 lighting, etc. The switches for Section 1 lighting were on; everything else was off. Another entire bank of switches was on a board titled Security and none of the switches was labeled.
Back on the Wilizy, Mac asked the group to describe any detail that they had seen or heard on the video that would help in the actual rescue. Just knowing where Will and Izzy were wasn't actually the end of the battle. Getting them out safely, and in a way that could have been done without special powers, would be their biggest challenge so far.
Lots was said and suggested. Below are the things that Mac wrote down.
• We can't let FF and the winning bidder walk into the mine without following them in. But even if we were invisible, all incoming and outgoing traffic is funneled through a small iron gate. We'd never be able to follow them though that funnel.
• Could we break into the prison ahead of time? We'd have to be able to enter FF's eyes into the iris scanner, and we'd need to know the key pad codes ahead of time. How?
• We can't kill FF or the bidders ahead of time because we can't get W&I out without blasting through those big iron gates. What if they were connected to explosive devices?
• We can't give W&I anything that will allow them to escape on their own because the drones do not have the power to carry anything to them. Izzy escaped from her cell somehow, but Will is still locked up. If there were an easy way to get him out, he'd be out by now. At least they didn't still have their brain-bands on.
• We can't coerce FF into letting us in; he might decide to enter the wrong code. The grid is almost certainly electrified, and again, intruders could set off a large explosion with one mistake.
• Will's cell appears to be at the far end of what's habitable. The lighted portion of the prison ends, but the tunnel appeared to continue. It was too dangerous to push the spiders into that area. They had no capacity to operate in the dark.
• Both W&I appeared to be in good spirits, if somewhat cold; they kept sharing a blanket. They should be able to participate in their own rescue if we can send them their weapons.