Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 04 - Jupiter Returns (15 page)

Jupiter still didn’t seem to notice what we were doing and several people did what I did.

It wasn’t until Tracy stirred her coffee with a fork and the fake Tracy followed suit that Jupiter screamed, “You fools. Can’t you idiots see what’s going on here? They’re making fools out of you.

“
I have been watching and I can’t believe you’d blindly follow the prisoners. As for the rest of you, you try to pull something else like this again and your time will be shorter than I had planned.

“Dinner is now officially over. Everyone had better get a good night’s sleep because tomorrow is a long day
, beginning early.”

When Julia and I got to our room, I put my finger to my lip and started moving around the room.
I had taken a crash course at the FBI about spotting bugs and hidden cameras.

Julia saw what I was doing and joined me.
We didn’t find anything but that didn’t mean they hadn’t planted anything.

We talked while we got ready for bed, about ways to sabotage Jupiter’s plans.
We had watched Burt Jameson walking around like he owned the house all during dinner.

Jupiter had made him the head of the guards and I thought it was her idea of a joke.
I mean, come on. He looked ridiculous strutting around in his pink uniform.

The next morning they got u
s up at six thirty a.m. and fed us a big breakfast. Then they led us into a large room that must have been a ballroom. Tables and chairs had been set up with various activities going on.

There was a TV in the corner and that’s when I realized that these people must be from some third world country and had never seen a
TV before. A large sectional sofa had been put in front of the TV along with several other chairs and loveseats.

A group of people were sitting there arguing about something in
a foreign language and I realized what they were arguing about when I saw one of them jerk the remote control out of another one’s hands.

All of a sudden a full-fledged fight broke out and Jupiter motioned for Burt to break it up.
He had been right when he had bragged to me about his skills. He moved with lightning speed and did some fast kicking and punching and grabbed the control.

He handed the remote control to Jupiter and she put the TV on the old show, Three’s Company.

“This will teach you about relationships in this country,” she said, “and you can learn to speak without an accent. Besides, it’s funny.”

She motioned to Julia and me, “Julia, you will sit here and watch TV with them and explain what’s going on.
They can speak a little English but I expect you to teach them more.

“Judith, you will sit here with Tracy and Tracy,” she
paused to laugh. “You will help her learn to fit in with your home life and with the FBI. You will not use this time to plot an escape.

“If I see any hint of this I will separate you and you will have no contact from here on out.
You will be searched from time to time so don’t try to pass any notes either.”

I noticed Tracy was chewing gum and I had never seen her chew gum before.
In the limited training I had gotten from the FBI, I knew it meant something.

She handed me and fake Tracy a stick of gum and Tracy and I sat there and popped it and the fake Tracy followed suit.

I heard Julia laugh and saw the others laugh after looking at her.
I had seen that episode before. It was one of the episodes that had a sad part.

In this episode, Janet had just auditioned for a dancing part in a play and the producer had told her she didn’t have what it took to be a dancer.

I remembered having tears in my eyes in that part, but Julia and the group were laughing.

“Good job, Julia,” I thought.

On the other side of the room the guards were playing cards. They had drinks in front of them and were smoking cigarettes.

I watched Jupiter
, noticing that her appearance was different today. The night before I had thought her shaved head was tattooed but today I realized it was painted. It was painted with swirls of metallic blue and silver. She was dressed in a metallic silver robe and lots of silver jewelry.

I noticed her feet for the first time and she was barefoot with toe rings and anklets in silver.
Her earrings were long, wide, and silver. They reached her shoulders.

She evidently hadn’t planned on doing any fighting
and was depending on her guards to protect her. I began to wonder if they could be bought or bribed in some way.

“You will
be expected to wear fatigues at all times in the office,” I heard Tracy say and I turned around and noticed the fake Tracy taking notes. “You’re allowed to hit anyone who works for you who displeases you in any way. That’s the beauty of being in charge,” she continued.

I looked down trying not to laugh and all the while the fake Tracy was taking notes.

“Vot elze,” The fake asked and looked at me.

I looked at Tracy, “Did you tell her about Mark?”

“Oh Yeah,” she said, “You have to bow down at his feet when you’re near him.”

“Ah, jest like e
n my country.”

I didn’t try to correct her speech in any way.

There was a loud bell and Jupiter announced that it was lunch time. Everyone stood and bowed until Jupiter left the room.

Tracy took out her gum and stuck it under the table and walked out without looking at me.
On the way past her side of the table I quickly reached under and retrieved the gum. It was holding a piece of paper, just the corner.

I stuck the not
e in my jean pocket and added my gum to Tracy’s and handed the wad to the fake letting her see what I had done with mine and Tracy’s. She added hers to ours and walked off with the wad.

After lunch we were given another hour to rest before the afternoon session began but we were restricted to our quarters.

Julia and I stretched out on the bed and I unfolded the paper Tracy had given me. We read it together and it read:

Don’t give up, not hopeless as it seems.
There is a plan. Stay dressed tonight and don’t go to sleep. Mimi and Brad will not be taken.

When we went down for the afternoon lessons, Jupiter told me to sit with the president of the United States.
Of course he wasn’t really the real one and his accent was so thick I could have cut it with a knife.

Right away he started flirting with me and it made me mad, but I pretended to enjoy it and flirted back.
I didn’t understand what I supposed to be accomplishing with the jerk but then Jupiter came by and smiled at us, “You two seem to be getting along very well together,” she said.

He winked at me and I didn’t like where my thoughts were going.
I was still grieving Ben for one thing and there were thousands of reasons I could never be interested in him.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” I said under my breath, “President Obama would never wink at some female who’s not his wife.”
Then I started thinking, “We don’t need to try and sabotage this operation. There’s no way in hell this plan could work.”

He sat looking at me and waiting with expectation in his eyes and I wanted so badly to tell him that he would never fool someone as intelligent as Michelle Obama.

Jupiter walked up again and asked what we were talking about. “We’re not talking about anything,” I said, “Your friend here would rather flirt with me than learn anything I have to teach him.” I said.

She called for everyone’s attention and screamed at everyone, like she felt totally out of control.
She paced and ranted and raved while everyone looked on. I looked around and wondered how anyone working for her could think they could trust her.

She had turned on everyone who had ever worked for her and she would use up human life
, and throw it away, like it was a paper towel.

CHAPTER 32

Jupiter kept us working until after seven and then gave us supper.
By the time we got back to our room it was after nine.

We followed Tracy’s directions and stayed dressed.
We propped up against the headboard and read until after midnight and we were getting very sleepy.

We must have dozed off because the next thing I heard was a scrapping sound.
It sounded like it was coming from the closet on Julia’s side.

We jumped up to inspect, moving clothes aside to see what was happening in the back of the closet.

I turned on the light inside the closet and closed the door. It was a huge walk-in and we had plenty of room. We sat down on the floor in the back of the closet and I noticed a seam along the baseboard about the width of a human hair.

I reached over Julia and, with my fingernails, pulled at the baseboard.
It swung down and there was a latch up under the hole created by the loss of the baseboard.

When I pressed on the latch a big part of the wall opened like the trunk of a car.
Burt Jamison was in there but was no longer wearing his pink uniform.

He put his finger to his lips and motioned us inside.
He handed each of us a small gun and whispered in our ears, “If you have to shoot, aim for the middle. Don’t try for a head shot.”

It looked like a cave inside the wall, with passages going off in all directions.
We crawled a ways farther and a wall opened off to the right and Tracy joined us. The passageway sloped down at a sharp angle and I realized we were moving toward the first floor. Another guard joined us, no longer in uniform. I recognized him as the guards who had told us not to talk the night before at supper.

It was hard to see in the tunnels with only the light of the small flashlights Tracy and the two agents had
flashlights, but I would have followed them in the dark.

We continued to move in a downward direction and then we leveled off.
Before the passageways had been like part of the house, with side made of wood and wooden floors, but now we were in dirt, like a real cave.

We finally came to a dead end which turned out to be what looked like a well
and there was a ladder going up. I could see the sky above and realized we were in a dry well.

W
e climbed up the ladder and out. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust and then I could make out what looked like dozens of men and women in the bushes dressed in black with their faces painted black.

Tracy told Julia and me to stay put as she motioned for the others to move forward.
They crawled on their bellies toward the house while Julia and I tried to get comfortable sitting on the ground and leaning against the tree.

I sat looking down at the gun in my hand and didn’t like the unhealthy direction my mind was going in.
Right now I didn’t care how healthy it was. If they brought Jupiter out alive, I was going to kill her.

They brought out each
one separately surrounded by at least four agents and walked them to the black sedans parked a ways down the road.

I saw them bring out the fake general, the fake president and the fake Tracy and I kept waiting for Jupiter.
When I saw her I gasped.

She was walking with Tracy in front of her and she was holding a large gun to Tracy’s head.
The agents who weren’t already in the cars with the other prisoners were walking backward.

Jupiter was screaming for them to drop their weapons but Tracy was ordering them to keep the weapons.

What I did next wasn’t because I was trying to be a hero and my nerves were steady as a rock. I crawled on my belly all the way around the house until I ended up behind Jupiter.

I had done this so fast that I don’t think Julia was aware I had left.
I laid there with my left elbow on the ground and left hand holding my right wrist.

“Hey, Jupiter,” I yelled and she spun around just as I fired.
I aimed for her middle and she went down. Tracy kicked the gun out of her hand but she wasn’t moving.

I stood and walked toward Jupiter and when I got above her Tracy was feeling her neck for a pulse.

She told the men to call for an ambulance but they had apparently already done that. We heard the sirens before she finished her request.

The bullet had gone under her right rib and exited through her back.
Tracy was trying to stop the bleeding and I pointed to gun at Jupiter’s heart.

“JUdith
, no!” She said but I kept aiming the gun at Jupiter’s heart. As I thought about all the horrible things Jupiter had done I knew she didn’t deserve to live.

Tracy kept her eye on me while holding her finger over the bullet wound, “You can’t kill her,
Julia. She will be prosecuted and she will be put to death.”

I snorted, “Yeah, like she was the last time?
If she had been killed the last time, Ben would still be alive.”