Nightfall

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Okay, then. First of all, ever since we got back from Brazoria two months ago, the NADF has been holding Annabelle and Tyke prisoner down on Edgmont Key, to make sure I behave myself,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, we figured that much. We knew you couldn’t talk about it, but things like that are not hard to guess. That’s why we never asked too many questions,” Joan said.

  “I hoped you’d guess; I hated having to lie about it,” Mike said.

  “It’s okay. We all understand what the circumstances are,” Joan said.

  “Right. Well, anyway, I remembered what Luther Anderson said about how Colonel Burns wanted to terminate the tachometer program at the end of December, so I knew I had to think of some way to escape again before the time was up. For a long time I couldn’t think of what, though. They’ve been keeping such a close eye on me, it seemed like anything I came up with was impossible,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, that’s the problem we’ve had, too. We’ve been trying to think what could be done ever since you got back here. But it wasn’t safe to try anything again too soon, and then we haven’t seen you much lately to talk about it, either,” Joan said.

  “Yeah, I know; I’m sorry about that. But anyway, after a while I got to thinking if I finished the tachometer, then maybe we could use that to escape into the future where they couldn’t touch us. So I worked really hard on it, and I finally got it working the same day as the bombing,” Mike said.

  “So then we just need to find a way to smuggle you out to the island and then everything will be fine,” Philip said, sounding relieved.

  “Well, I wish it could be that easy. But I saw some things in the future that I don’t understand, except to say that we can’t use the tachometer to escape, after all. So now I don’t know what to do. But whatever it is, it’ll have to be soon. Like within the next few days,” Mike said.

  “We’ve still got several weeks before the end of December,” Joan pointed out.

  “Yeah, we do. But that’s what I wanted to tell you about. I went to Lieutenant Bartow’s house this morning and told him the tachometer couldn’t be used to change the future,” Mike said.

  “What possessed you to do such a thing as that?” Philip demanded.

  “Because there’s something really bad on the way, something that will make the university bombing and even the Boer War look like a cakewalk. In fact, I think it’ll kill practically everybody on Earth. I thought maybe the NADF might at least have the power to save a few people, if they knew about it ahead of time,” Mike said, and went on to tell them about the plague he’d seen with the tachometer.

  “It doesn’t surprise me; I’ve been expecting something like that for a long time,” Philip said sadly.

  “You did the right thing, though, Mikey. We don’t blame you for trying,” Joan said, clasping Philip’s hand.

  “No, but it does mean we won’t have near as much time to work with for any kind of escape plan,” Philip said.

  “How much time do you think we have?” Mike asked.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say Lieutenant Bartow probably has in mind to get rid of you sometime this weekend, while you’re all three down there together on the island. That way it’ll be quick and easy, with no witnesses. I don’t think he’ll wait another week,” Philip said.

  “I think he’s probably got it planned for Sunday evening,” Joan said quietly.

  “What makes you think that?” Philip asked.

  “Well, Marie talks about her husband all the time, you know. I feel like I know him better than my own brother sometimes. He’s a slave to protocol and he’s completely ruthless when it comes to serving the greater good as he understands it. But he’s not quite so far fallen that he takes pleasure in cruelty. He still has a faint tinge of conscience. A man like that would give you and Annabelle one last weekend together, as long as it didn’t interfere with his orders or cause him any problems. Then he could kill you on Sunday evening and still feel good about himself,” Joan said.

  “It sounds like you’ve known him all your life,” Mike said, impressed. He was certain she was right in her analysis; that was exactly the way Luke Bartow would think and behave. Mike wasn’t entirely surprised, though; Annabelle had that same piercing insight at times, sharper than a razor’s edge.

  “It’s not hard to read between the lines, if you pay attention,” Joan said.

  “Well, at least that gives us a little breathing space, then,” Philip said.

  “Not much, if there are any arrangements that have to be made,” Joan said.

  “Which is exactly why we’ve got to finish hashing this out tonight. Did they put a chip in you, Mikey? That’s what they usually do when they want to be able to track somebody,” Philip asked.

  “Yeah, me and Annabelle both. Right here on the backs of our necks,” Mike said, turning his head to expose the small scar where the chip had been embedded.

  “All right, then. The first thing we’ll have to do is to cut those out,” Philip said.

  “I know that much. But what then?” Mike asked.

  “We’ll have to find somewhere for y’all to go. You really should’ve stayed with Damon for a while when you got to Brazoria, Mike; Luther said the only way they ever found you last time was because you went to a place they knew you had connections to. You’ve been too loose with your tongue these past few years; you’ve told too many people where you’re from and how you grew up and all kinds of things like that. All the NADF had to do was go snooping around asking questions. You can’t be that careless next time or you’ll end up dead,” Philip said sternly.

  “I know,” Mike said, chastened.

  “Brazoria is out; Luther says they’ve already been alerted to keep an eye out for you, that you’re a known terrorist with links to the University bombing. You’re liable to be shot on sight if they find you in their territory. Same thing with Cuba and most of the Mexican city-states,” Joan said.

  “I was afraid of something like that,” Mike said.

  “There’s always Campeche, I suppose. They wouldn’t care two cents how big of a criminal or a terrorist you might be. I know it’s an awful place to live, but it’s better than nothing,” Philip said.

  Mike privately had his doubts about that. Campeche was usually lumped in as one of the Mexican city-states, but in reality it was an artificial country, a city built on steel pilings driven into the shallow seabed of the Campeche Bank, out in international waters nearly a hundred miles north of the Yucatan Peninsula. It was barely more than an overcrowded slum in the middle of the Gulf, a refuge for outlaws and criminals of every stripe and kind. There were quite a few such artificial city-states here and there in the world, built atop seamounts or underwater ridges or wherever the ocean was shallow enough. Campeche was the only one in the Gulf; the Union and even Brazoria had never allowed any such places to gain a foothold near their own shores. But Mexico had been too weak and divided to do likewise, and now Campeche was too large and strong to be gotten rid of.

  Nevertheless, it was a horrible place in every sense of the word, and only a fool would ever set foot there.

  Unless, of course, you were rich. The upper crust in Campeche had all the luxuries that people anywhere else were accustomed to. Mike had no shortage of money, but still, it was just the thought of it.

  “I wish there was somewhere else than that,” he finally said reluctantly.

  “So do I. But it’s the only place I can think of where you might not get caught, unless you decided to go hide out in the Everglades and turn into a swampbilly,” Philip said.

  “No, I think even Campeche is better than that,” Mike said quickly.

  “Then we’ll see what we can do about getting you there. The first problem will be getting y’all off that island without getting caught,” Philip said.

  “How can we do that?” Mike asked.

  “It won’t be easy. I’m certain they s
can the sea all around the island and they’d notice any kind of boat with a motor; the heat signature alone would give it away even if the radar didn’t,” Philip said.

  “Damon said it breaks up radar signals if the water is rough,” Mike said.

  “It does. But that won’t help the heat problem; not unless we used a little row-boat and had everybody wear thermal suits to hold in your body heat,” Philip said.

  “I think we’d roast, trying to row a boat two miles across the Bay in choppy water with a thermal suit on. Even at night,” Mike said.

  “I don’t doubt it’d be uncomfortable, Mike. You might sweat off ten pounds by the time you made it to shore. But I don’t think you’d die,” Joan said.

  “But how would we get a boat in the first place, though?” Mike asked.

  “We’ll get to that part in a minute. First of all, how well do they search you when you go over there?” Philip asked.

  “It depends. They always go through my bags pretty thoroughly, if that’s what you mean,” Mike said.

  “What about body searches?” Philip asked.

  “Well. . . they usually just pat me down and let it go at that. But they’ve also strip-searched me now and then, just to make sure I know it could happen, I guess. You never really know,” Mike said.

  “Are you willing to risk a strip search tomorrow evening?” Philip asked.

  “To smuggle what? An inflatable boat?” Mike asked wryly.

  “No, just a pack of razor blades. So you can cut out your tracking chips,”

  “Yeah, I’ll stick them in my underwear. Even when they do a strip search they don’t usually look in there,” Mike said.

  “All right, then. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll slip over there Saturday night in a rowboat and pick you up on the eastern shore of the island. I’ll be waiting in the first mangrove thicket as you head southward. Have your chips out already by then, and I’ll bring the thermal suits with me. We’re supposed to be getting some blustery weather that night, so that’ll help. Be there at ten o’clock,” Philip said.

  “Why couldn’t you just bring the razor blades then, too?” Mike asked.

  “Because it’ll be dark and we can’t risk a flashlight to let us see anything, that’s why. We don’t need any last minute delays,” Philip said.

  “Okay, so what then?” Mike asked.

  “We’ll cross over to old Fort Desoto and meet up with Joan. She’ll drive us to the marina in Treasure Island. I’ll have Damon buy you a boat with a strong motor and park it there. Then head out for Campeche as fast as you can go. You won’t have long before the guards figure out something’s up and start looking for you,” Philip said.

  “No, not long at all, after our tracking chips don’t show any movement and don’t register any body heat,” Mike pointed out.

  “I think I’ve got a solution for that, anyway. It won’t last forever, but it’ll buy us a little time,” Philip said.

  “I’d love to hear it,” Mike said.

  “You said Annabelle had a dog, didn’t you? So have him swallow the chips after you cut them out. He’ll move around and show movement, and it’ll be close enough to body temperature inside his guts that it won’t set off the alarm,” Philip said.

  “Well. . . I guess that might work,” Mike admitted.

  “I still wouldn’t dally, if I were you. There are a thousand things that could happen which might make them suspicious enough to come check on you, and once they do then the game is up,” Joan said, and Mike nodded.

  “All right, then. That’s what we’ll do. Saturday night at ten o’clock, right?” Mike asked.

  “Right,” Philip agreed.

  “I don’t know how to thank you both,” Mike said.

  “Thank us by getting away and living happily ever after,” Joan said, and Mike laughed and hugged her for that.

  “Okay, but I need to tell you something else while I still can, now that you mention all that stuff about living happily ever after. When the plague comes, I saw a few people escaping on a space plane, including you and the kids and several others. Don’t know where you were going, though,” Mike said.

  “That’s good to know, but you probably shouldn’t tell us much more than that; not even exactly when it happens. Twelve years from now is close enough. It feels too much like wearing a straitjacket, when you know too much and can’t change anything,” Joan said.

  “I do wonder where we managed to come up with a space plane, though. As far as I know, nobody’s had one of those since the Union War. One of the many technical skills lost and then never recovered, I’m afraid,” Philip said.

  “Yeah, I did wonder about that myself. The space program has been allowed to decay to such an extent that we can barely maintain the satellites and the stations anymore. It’s really shameful from a scientific standpoint,” Mike said.

  “Well, be that as it may, I don’t foresee the government making any big push to get back into space within the next few years. But nevertheless, somebody must end up developing a workable space plane before the plague strikes, if you’re sure that’s what you saw,” Philip said.

  “I’m absolutely certain that’s what I saw,” Mike said.

  “Any idea who might be working on something like that?” Joan asked.

  “How would I know?” Mike asked.

  “Well, you’re an astronomer. I assume you’d keep up with whatever’s going on in space science,” Joan pointed out. That was true to some extent, and Mike thought carefully.

  “There are always people interested in reviving the space program, especially in Florida. I know there’s one lady right here in Tampa who keeps pestering everybody she can think of to fund her project to develop a new long-distance space vehicle. She’s kind of an idealistic flake, but she’s the only one I can think of offhand,” he said.

  “What’s her name?” Philip asked, grabbing a pen and a piece of paper.

  “Um. . . Weiss. Peggy Weiss. She’s an astrophysical engineering professor at the University of Tampa. Why do you ask?” Mike asked.

  “We might have to see about funding her work, if you think twelve years is enough time for her to accomplish anything worthwhile,” Joan explained.

  “Yeah, she ought to have enough time to get something done, if she had the money. But how would you manage that?” Mike asked. He knew full well that Philip and Joan didn’t have the kind of cash to fund research programs; even he didn’t. Talking about it was laughable.

  “Damon inherited a pretty large fortune, actually. He’s got the money to fund something like that, if I asked him to,” Philip said.

  “He’d do that, just because you asked? Wouldn’t he want to leave it to Katrina?” Mike asked.

  “He’d do it if he understood the reason why. If he knows this modern world is coming to an end in only a few more years, then he’ll also know money won’t be worth anything after that, anyway. Why keep it if it’s no good?” Philip said.

  “That’s true,” Mike admitted.

  “All right, we’ll see about getting that arranged, and doing whatever else we can do to be ready when the time comes. It’ll take some thought and some deliberate choices about a lot of different things between now and then. But in the meantime, I think we’ll keep all this on a strictly need-to-know basis. We’ll have to tell Damon, of course, but aside from him it’ll be top-secret information. Don’t you think, babe?” Philip asked, turning to Joan.

  “I definitely agree. The fewer people who know, the better. Besides Damon, not even the other Avengers need to know,” she said firmly, nodding her head.

  “Okay, one last thing. Do you know anybody who’s good with computers?” Mike asked.

  “Like what do you mean?” Joan asked.

  “I mean a good hacker,” Mike said, and neither of them even blinked.

  “I believe we could get hold of one,” Joan said easily.

  “Good. I need somebody to hack into the Defense F
orces computer downtown and erase all my research notes since I started working at the University,” Mike said.

  “That might be a dangerous assignment, Mike. What’s the purpose behind it?” Philip asked.

  That was a hard question, since Mike had trouble explaining it even to himself. But he knew he didn’t want the NADF getting their hands on a tachometer of their own. True, it might not suit their purposes of manipulating the future, but it still might turn out to be an excellent escape hatch for some of the leaders of the administration and the Defense Forces when the plague arrived. That was the very thing Mike did not want. If the plague had to happen at all, then it was far better that mankind should start off with a clean slate, free of the mistakes and the heavy hand of the past. It was best that the current crop of leaders be completely wiped out, since it was their policies in large part which had led to the current sorry state of affairs in the first place.

  “I don’t want them to know how to build a tachometer. They always made me enter everything I worked on into the database, so it wouldn’t take much for them to reconstruct what I did,” Mike said, and then went on to explain his reasoning.

  “I think you’re right, Mike,” Philip said, and then turned to his wife.

  “Let’s go ahead and get Jennifer over here tonight so she can get started on that project immediately. Once Mike disappears they’re liable to increase the security level on those files even higher than it already is,” Philip said. Joan nodded, pulling out her phone to text someone.

  “Can she come over tonight?” Philip asked after a while.

  “Yeah, she’ll be here in just a little bit,” Joan said.

  Jennifer Rayburn arrived in about thirty minutes, and immediately set up her computer on the coffee table. Mike noticed that she also wore an Avenger’s ring, unsurprisingly.

  “So what are we doing tonight?” she asked after a few minutes. Joan hadn’t discussed anything like that by text, naturally.

  “We’re erasing some files from the NADF mainframe,” Philip said, and Jennifer smiled slightly.

  “Well, hey, we all love a good challenge, don’t we?” she murmured, cracking her knuckles. Then she got started. She must have been a computer genius, because her hands flew across the keypad faster than Mike’s eyes could keep up with them, while she kept her gaze focused intently on the holographic screen.

  “All right, we’ve got fourteen minutes before they realize we’re not supposed to be in here. What needs to be erased?” Jennifer finally said.

  “Anything having to do with Micah McGrath, or tachometers, or time travel, or Arkadelphia, or the Clark Containment Zone,” Mike said, and Jennifer immediately got back to work, typing feverishly.

  “All right, it’s done,” Jennifer said, shutting off the computer. There were still almost two minutes to spare.

  “Thanks, Jen; you’re a lifesaver,” Joan said, giving her a hug.

  “No problem. I better go ditch this hot little notebook before they track it down, though. I’ll see y’all in a few days,” Jennifer said, and then hurriedly left; presumably to get rid of the computer she’d used.

  “She was an Avenger, too?” Mike asked after she left.

  “Yeah, we wouldn’t trust that kind of job to anybody who wasn’t. Jen’s our technology expert; I bet she could make a computer dance ballet and sing the blues if you asked her to,” Philip said proudly.

  Mike reflected that he’d now met five of the six Avengers in this time. Philip and Joan, Damon (well, Katrina now), Luther, and Jennifer. He wondered who the last one might be, but it didn’t seem the time to indulge his idle curiosity.

  He left the Carpenters’ house soon afterward, going home to pack up what few things he cared to take with him. He doubted they’d have time to stop by the house on the way to the marina Saturday night.

  He didn’t have much, actually. Pictures, money, his mother’s letter from Goliad, his father’s ring, a few other odds and ends. The plan seemed like a good one, even though he knew of a thousand things that could go wrong.

  He could only hope that nothing did.