Warp Speed (25 page)

"Jim, you're right. The stitches are to fill up the bullet holes left by terrorists. Tabitha is limping on a shot up leg. Johnny Cache shot her. Long story. Do you have any other weapons in the car? I asked.

Jim smiled and popped the trunk. His karate gear and his tournament bag were in there. He rummaged through the gear and dug out two kamas, two escrima sticks, and one set of nunchukas.

"Which do you prefer?" he grinned.

"This will do fine," I brandished the Glock 19 with the pre-Clinton-Reno era clip. "Sixteen shots ought to do. Besides, I ain't in any shape to be fighting. I'll have to keep you covered. Sorry."

The front door to the office had been opened effortlessly. Obviously, the guard's keys came in handy for somebody. We cautiously scoured the entire facility and found no signs of foul play, except that my laptop was missing from the safe, the lab was nearly destroyed, the contents of the offices were strewn about everywhere, and
my
whiteboard in
my
office was gone.

"They even ripped the whiteboard right out of the damn wall." Jim exclaimed. We grabbed what equipment we thought would still function and loaded the car.

"I guess they got what they came for," I told Jim and shrugged my shoulders.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

"Call Tabitha and ask her."

Jim tried twice and got Tabitha's voicemail message. "That's odd," he said.

"Well, let's head back to the hospital and keep trying to reach her on the way."

The terrorist effort or war effort, whatever it was, had reached into my everyday life more deeply now. While we were away Johnny's people must have ransacked the lab. It would have been a big operation. The safe had to weigh a ton. It must have taken a forklift to move it. And it happened fast. Something else was bugging me on a more subconscious level, but I couldn't wrap my mind around it just yet. Then I thought to look at the alarm system.

"Jim, check the silent alarm," I pointed to the hidden panel on the wall where the system's keypad was hidden.

Jim slipped back a wall plate and punched in a code on the keypad. The display read today's date about thirty minutes ago.

"We just missed 'em Anson!"

"What?"

"They triggered the alarm just thirty minutes ago!" Jim exclaimed.

Then my subconscious grabbed hold on whatever it was that was bugging me before. "That means it's still going on! What if they had come in when Sara or Al were here? Crap! They might go to their homes, Jim."

"We gotta help them, Doc!" Jim looked frantic.

"Jim, get Sara and Al on the phone and tell them to get out of their houses now. They can meet us at a public place or someplace safe," I told him. I couldn't think of where to send them.

"Tim's place?" Jim asked.

"Perfect."

Jim got Sara at her apartment. He told her to leave this second. Don't change clothes, don't put on makeup, just go. I hope she listened. We were only five miles from Al's house so we headed that way while Jim called. There was no answer on the phone. I also tried Tabitha at the hospital again, but had no luck reaching her either.

We reached Al's house; there were two vehicles in his driveway that we hadn't seen before. There was a truck and a van. Jim pulled up in the neighbor's driveway and we crawled over the fence into Al's backyard. I barely had the strength to get over the four-foot chain link.

Jim and I hugged the back wall of Al's house and eased around the chimney to the back door. The back door flung wide open and Al came flying out the door headfirst and he skidded across the patio into a large ceramic plant pot. The little apple tree in the pot had one small apple clinging from its droopy limb. The impact of Al's head into the pot shook the apple free and it fell on his back. Al was out cold I was pretty sure.

Behind Al stepped a very large individual. I didn't have time to make out any details of his face before Jim had sunk the blade of a Kama into his throat and ripped out the guy's trachea. I rushed in behind Jim as he flew through the door never missing a beat from the Kama strike. There were Kamas swinging and then escrimas. Two more were dead before the gunfire ever started.

The first gunfire Jim was prepared for and he dropped and took out the assailant's kneecap with a low side kick. He pulled the man's wrist downward while kneeing his elbow upward until the man's arm was in two pieces. I managed to bust off a few rounds into the guy covering Jim's present attacker. Jim proceeded to break the guy's neck as I continued the cover fire.

The van parked out front squealed out of the driveway and laid down some suppressing fire from an automatic weapon. Jim and I dove behind the upstairs stairwell for cover. We waited for a few seconds listening for movement.

"Jim, are we clear?"

"Not sure. You ready to cover me."

I changed the clip since the slide on the Glock was open, depressed the lever with my thumb and it closed, chambering a new round. "Ready now. On three and you stay low. One, two, three!"

I rolled out into the open and fired two rounds. Jim came out behind me and zipped across the room behind the couch and took cover again. I rolled across the floor behind him. "Ow shit that hurts!" I held my chest.

"You all right, Doc!"

"Yeah. Just pulled some stitches I think."

"I think we're clear. Let's get Al and get the hell out of here."

Al was coming to by the time we got out the back door. He was concussed and a bit goofy-headed. If you have ever been concussed, you know that "goofy-headed" is a good way to describe it. We dragged him to Jim's car and hit the road fast.

I grabbed Jim's phone and tried Tabitha again.

"Jim, is that you!" Tabitha answered.

"Tab, it's Anson. Listen it is still going on. Jim and I were just in a firefight. You better get some back up and get out of sight fast," I told her.

"Anson, I know! Dr. Reese caught one in the neck before I realized what was going on. Don't worry. We have the situation contained and I think everyone will survive. Are you okay?"

"Jim and I are fine. Al is banged up pretty badly but he'll be okay. I think we need to hide everybody's families. Jim and I will pick up Sara and meet you. Where?"

"Listen Anson, we're already on the move. We'll track Jim's phone and pick you up. You keep moving and stay safe. See you soon." Tabitha disconnected.

We grabbed Sara in record time and before we knew it a helicopter was shadowing us. Then my phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Anson, pull over in the next parking lot," Tabitha told me.

I turned to Jim. "It's Tabitha, Jim. Pull over there!" I pointed to a parking lot by a strip mall where a military helicopter was setting down--Tabitha was waving to us from the open doorway. We loaded into the chopper and were gone.
Safe again
, I thought.

"Dr. Clemons, you're bleeding." Sara pointed at my back.

"Yeah, I figured I was. It's just a few loose stitches. Nothing to worry about, I think," I reassured her.

Jim spoke to Tabitha through a headset. "Where's Rebecca?"

"Don't worry. She's been moved in a different chopper. We'll rendezvous with her in a few minutes."

The helicopter pilot landed us at the airstrip on the Redstone Arsenal where we loaded into a C-141 Starlifter evac plane. The closest they are based is in Memphis, Tennessee and Jackson, Mississippi but they fly patterns in Huntsville, often. This one must have been close by when Tabitha put in the call. Come to think of it, I never did figure out how she got us a helicopter so fast either--I didn't care. I just wanted to get out of sight fast. As we boarded, Tabitha explained to me that our families were being hidden and that her daughter would meet us at the rendezvous point. Neither of us were sure how far the--whoever they are--would go to get what they wanted. Whatever that was. Were they looking for something or did they just want us out of the picture? And, who were they? I still voted for Chinese.

CHAPTER 15

We landed a few hours later. Where, I have no idea. When we debarked the plane we were inside a very large hangar. There were other aircraft and vehicles inside the hangar, so it was a big place--wherever it was. I tried to be useful, but I was beginning to feel very tired and sore.

Jim had never left 'Becca's side throughout the flight. She seemed to have had no changes, good or bad. We all had hopes that there was something, anything that we could do for her. I hoped that the crazy quacks had just not been smart enough to figure out what was wrong with her and it was still a straightforward medical issue. I hoped so, anyway.

As we debarked I followed the group in a daze. We entered an elevator, a large elevator, and descended for what seemed like a full minute or two. The elevator doors opened into a large bright room. The wall directly to the right had a large red "Floor 31" painted on it. I did later find out where we were, but the location was classified even higher up than I realized existed. I was beginning to learn that there were many more levels of "Top Secret" than just the ones I had experience with.

"Anson, are you okay?" Sara asked as she approached the group.

"I'm . . . just a little tired." I would live for now I told myself. I was trying to focus on my breathing, but since I'd had the damage to one of my lungs, breathing was more labor intensive. Just sitting still seemed like work. It reminded me of a comic book character I used to read a lot of. This guy had some sort of "techno-organic virus" that there was no cure for, but fortunately he had superpowers. He used his superpowers constantly to hold the virus at bay, yet he was still one of the most powerful superheroes in his universe. His friends would always mention that he was so powerful while fighting the virus that they couldn't imagine his strength if he were cured.

Well, I don't have superpowers. I wish I did. And I'm definitely not one of the most powerful people in my universe. I was tired and in pain.

"You just look a little pale is all." Sara laid her hand on my shoulder.

"I agree with you, Sara. He could use some sun. And maybe a haircut. At the very least run a comb through that unruly mop," Anne Marie added as she approached.

"Annie! How are you? It's good to see you." Seeing my future stepdaughter bolstered my morale a bit. It felt as though I were given a jolt of caffeine and epinephrine all at once.

"From the looks of it," she said, "a helluva lot better than you."

"Have you seen Tabitha?" I asked.

"Just for a sec. She's really busy right now. You know, saving the world and everything." Anne Marie laughed and patted me on the back as she gave me a hug. "It's good to see you, Anson." She looked into my eyes and smiled. "Did you force her to pick a date yet?"

I was confused at first. "A date for wha-- Oh, when did she tell you?" We had only been groundside a day or two before all hell broke loose again. It is hard to believe Tabitha had much time to chat with her daughter.

"Mom always calls me immediately, or as soon as possible, after each mission. You guys had me real worried on this one. She says you saved her life, twice."

"She's just modest. It was a team effort, both times. She is too much of a handful for one person to save." I laughed and felt a twinge of pain in my chest. I grimaced at it but it soon went away.

Several days had passed and we settled into the underground Air Force facility--wherever it was. Tabitha made sure that we all had the bare necessities available to us and the facility seemed nearly endless. I was feeling much better, although we still were no closer to helping 'Becca or finding the identity and purpose of our attackers. Jim and Sara had conducted several experiments on 'Becca's invader and had concluded that the attached dumbbells were indeed Casimir-effect type devices. Or at least they had been at one time in their lives. Why they hadn't gone chaotic yet was a mystery. Perhaps the attached influenza virus was responsible for that, or perhaps being suspended in a liquid matrix that allowed them to align themselves to each other had something to do with it. I don't know for sure. Could've been just plain dumb luck. Sara had suggested that we try the simple electric discharge method on a small sample of 'Becca's blood. Why not? It had worked on all previous configurations of the dumbbells that we'd seen.

So, we took a sample of Rebecca's blood and prepared to electrocute it in the same manner we had used on a macro level, before. Sara had run the show at the ECC manufacturing facility back in Huntsville, Alabama, so I let her run the show now. We carried out the process on a very small sample, via robotic remote, on the lowest abandoned level of the facility, which turned out to be an old abandoned mine shaft. For extra safety, we added a solid, steel reinforced concrete wall. Things went well for the first ninety-three nanoseconds. Then the mineshaft was fused together with a fireball explosion from the Casimir effect devices going hypercritical much faster than they had in any previous experiments with the original configurations. These new viruslike dumbbells were much more energetic than the standard Clemons Dumbbells. We obviously couldn't just electrocute 'Becca. We had to be sharper than that. Hard problems are never easy to solve.

Jim and I had the idea of flowing 'Becca's blood through a filter that was electrically polarized in just the right way to attract the dumbbells out of the blood and capture them. The inspiration came from an old Skylab experiment that astronaut Owen Garriot conducted. Dr. Garriot used some sort of filter, flowloop, and microgravity to remove tumor-causing things from blood. I didn't remember what the tumor-causing things were, but the concept was all I needed for the current inspiration.

We modeled the new "flubells," as Sara had started calling them, and developed a map of their electromagnetic signature. Once that was done, we designed the filter, during about three days of nonstop effort. We were all beginning to get a little edgy and very tired. The long hours and my labored breathing was keeping me from doing my most creative thinking. Jim was really carrying me mentally. We looked to Sara for fresh innovations. Youngsters are good at that.