Warrior (Freelancer Book 2) (11 page)

The rest of the tour was a perfunctory "Bedroom. Bedroom. Bedroom, Bathroom, Linen Closet." One of the things Rick had learned about his roommates was that they wasted remarkably little time on anything that didn't interest them.

They trooped back downstairs. Steve was sitting in a wooden rocking chair on the front porch smoking a pipe and reading a book. As they went into the kitchen, Rick noticed him stand as a woman and a young girl came up the walk.

Eps never cooked so his description of the kitchen was only a succinct, "Kitchen," and then he passed them off to Scotty. "And now as promised, the mysteries of the 'bat cave’."

Scotty shut down the terminal, yanked the receiver from the cups, and hung it up on the wall receiver. "OK, down we go."

Next to the back door was a walk-in pantry and, to the left, a slightly battered brown-painted door that Scotty indicated, saying, "Rick, why don't you open the door to the basement."

Knowing it would be impossible, Rick dutifully twisted the knob and tried various combinations of pushing and pulling. The door remained closed.

Stepping back, he said, "Wow, I'm stunned, the door won't open. Who’da thunk?"

Scotty pointed to the molding above the door. "Reach up there. Feel that chain?"

Rick found a small chain like one from an overhead light but with only three of the little metal

balls and gave it a pull. He heard a solid tchunk on

the other side, and the door swung open. He could see that its other side was braced with layers of plywood.

Scotty crouched down to floor level, reached just inside the right side of the door, and flicked a switch. Bright lights blazed in the basement. Still in a crouch, he pointed up. "There is another switch mounted up there where you'd expect to find one."

He waggled a finger at Rick and Eve. "Do not flip that switch."

Eve frowned. "Why not?"

"Take my word for it. Just think of our redheaded friend's penchant for explosives and do not flip that switch."

Scotty stood up and pounded on the plywood that backed the door. "This is cross-grained. It would take someone with an axe a long time to get through it, and that's not counting the chicken wire we laid underneath."

Eve shuddered. "I'm not sure I like the way you guys tend to worry about people with axes."

Scotty started down the steps. "Well, we're actually thinking about the police or your friends in the CIA but, yeah, we do tend to have friends who like to play with axes. All part of the fun of belonging to the Society for Creative Anachronism."

Rick followed Scotty down. "I thought all that hacking and slashing was an outdoor sport."

"Well, for the newbies, sure." Scotty reached the bottom step. "It's another matter when you're playing at the Master level. We've had the Black Knight of Gaithersburg come through here twice during Insurrections."

He pointed back up at the door, which was swinging closed behind Eve. "Well, 'through the house' technically, but never through that door. Broke his axe haft the last time, which made him a prime target for Eps and his over/under crossbow."

Eve just shook her head. The room at the base of the stairs was small or at least seemed so with the computer equipment lining the walls. Lights blinked, enormous reels of tape spun back and forth, and some sort of device chattered and spat punch cards in a corner.

Rick noticed it was perceptibly cooler.

"You put in central air?" he asked hopefully. "Nah, just a couple of wall units out back with a redundant power supply and air ducts to this room," the big man said. "We can all stand a little heat and humidity, but Gidget here is a PDP-6 mainframe, and she needs her environment cool and dry at all times."

Rick whistled. "Extremely cool. Where did you get it and what are you going to do with it?"

"Well, it was over at the Pentagon and they wanted the PDP-8 and so they declared the PDP-6 outdated. You know how they like new toys, so we literally became trash collectors." Scotty rubbed a speck of dust off one of the monitors. "Showed up in a truck wearing overalls, and they handed it to us on the back loading dock. We had to take a wall down to get it in, which was a bit tricky since that particular wall was holding up the rest of the house, but she's all ours now."

"And I repeat, what are you going to do with it?" "Do with it?" Scotty looked genuinely puzzled. "I

don't know that we'll do anything with Gidget. It's enough to have her here and let her teach us new stuff." He waved his hand by his head as if brushing away a bothersome fly. "I'm sure we'll find something useful for her to do at some point."

Scotty led them to another heavily reinforced door. After another lesson on secret latches and booby traps, they entered the garage. "Now, you'll be able to park the van and a bike or two in here but only on the right side."

He walked over to a tarpaulin-covered shape against the left wall. When he hauled on a rope that ran over a complex series of pulleys, the heavy canvas rose to the ceiling.

Underneath was a sleek wooden shape made of black-painted wood that looked like some sort of boat. After a minute or so walking around, Rick looked through a Plexiglas panel in the front and exclaimed, "This is a goddamn airplane!"

Scotty's smile grew to a grin. "A Bowers Fly Baby, homebuilt, open cockpit, single-seat prop plane constructed from the finest aircraft-grade spruce plywood. I bought if off a friend who had spent three years building it and one hour flying. Turned out he was afraid of heights."

Eve stroked the silky-smooth surface of the painted fuselage. "What a shame. It's beautiful."

Scotty's eyes sparkled as he released a lever and pulled a wing out from the side until it locked into place reaching almost all the way across the garage. "Yeah, it was a real downer, but I hear he's gotten into spelunking now. You know, exploring caves."

Eve laughed. "That's much safer, I'm sure." "Probably not but he's having fun," Scotty said. "I learned to fly when I was a kid, so I just renewed my license and put in enough flight hours to solo. I'm going to go out to Warrenton next weekend; they've got a glider port—well, it's just a smooth field—and they only charge five bucks for each takeoff and landing."

He reached under the wing, released a catch, and folded the wing back. "See, under here? I've got a complete custom trailer already hooked up." He turned to Rick. "All I need is someone with a car to pull me out there and then act as ground team."

"Ground team?" asked Rick.

"Well, you never really know where a plane like this will end up," Scotty admitted sheepishly. "It's not as bad as a glider, but it's still a good idea to have someone following you on the ground in case the engine quits or something."

"I'm in."

Scotty walked over to what looked like a pile of aluminum rods and nylon sheets along the far wall. "And, in return, I'll teach you how to fly one of these. A hang glider."

Eve put her hands on her hips. "Are you trying to give me ulcers or just kill my boyfriend? Because I'm telling you right now, I love you a lot, but if he dies, I'll remove your skin with a potato peeler and dump you in salt water."

Scotty looked worried for a second and then laughed, hoping it was a joke. "These are relatively safe. It's a Rogallo wing, and it's held in shape by the air itself. Of course, they're still in development, so I guess they're a little dangerous."

Eve stared at him silently.

"OK, they're quite dangerous," said Scotty. "But only if you don't follow the safety rules."

Eve headed for the door back to the stairs. "I think the only reasonable safety rule would be to never get in one, but I know I can't convince the trooper of that. You boys keep playing with your dangerous toys. I'm getting some tea."

Scotty looked at Rick. "So?"

Rick scoffed. "Of course I want to fly it. It's the coolest thing I've seen in months."

Scotty smiled. "There's only one thing more to show you."

"Let me guess. A back way out."

Scotty stopped and stared at Rick. "How did you know that?"

Rick laughed, "After you blew up that Vietnamese hitter and took off through the sewers? Give me credit for learning a few things about the guys I live with."

"Well, to my surprise, you are correct." Scotty turned and walked through the computer room to a door in the opposite wall. The door opened to reveal a small closet with shelves on three sides filled with spare computer parts, old cans of paint, metal springs, and other things that someone clearly felt might be useful for some project someday. Bending down, he tugged a small bolt fitted into the concrete floor and pulled on a handle concealed underneath a shelf.

The entire wall pivoted in the middle and revealed another basement.

"Welcome to our next door neighbors, the Nordheimers. Nice people, and they sleep soundly," Scotty said in a low voice.

Pointing to a workbench on the back wall of their neighbors’ basement, he said, "That workbench is another door leading to a short tunnel and then to the Porters over on Hamilton Street. Their basement window looks the same as the day it was first installed, but the entire frame now swings out into a window well. That puts you a block away, probably outside any cordon, and we figure it should give us enough of a head start to be useful."

He pointed to the neighbor's side of the door. "See, we cemented the cinder blocks onto the doors and mounted this section of the wall on heavy-duty bearings."

Rick whistled softly. "You're pretty proud of this aren't you?"

"Well, the original idea came from the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. They held off the German SS for three months by connecting every building underground, so they could move without being seen." He closed the door and snicked the bolt back in place. "No one is shooting at us—but it never hurts to be prepared. Speaking of which…”

Scotty carefully closed the wall and reset the bolt that kept it from accidentally swinging open. Then he bent and, pushing aside a box marked "Pyrotronics, Inc. Anaheim California," pulled out a paper bag. The bag held what looked like a regular sleeveless undershirt but seemed to Rick to be strangely stiff. Scotty looked at the tag and handed it to Rick.

"It's an extra-large so it should fit."

Rick held it up. He could see heavy, stiff fabric patches in front and back. "What the hell is this?" he asked. "I don't usually wear undershirts, anyway."

"Well, you might want to wear this one from time to time." Scotty pointed at the patch in the front. "That's a new material DuPont has just invented called Kevlar. It's not on the market yet—still being tested—but it's supposed to stop bullets."

Rick swung the shirt and examined it more closely. "This stuff stops bullets? Hell, the 'chicken suits' in Nam were a hell of a lot bigger, and they wouldn't stop shit. Everyone just threw them away." "Yeah, well, that's because they were just metal plates—essentially the same thing knights wore in the Middle Ages. This is completely different. You can thank Dr. George Emory Goodfellow for that."

"Who?"

"The doctor who treated the wounded after the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He was one of the foremost experts in bullet wounds at the time."

"Probably had a lot of practice,” interrupted Rick.

"Undoubtedly," Scotty agreed. "The point is, in several cases, he saw that multiple layers of silk were quite effective in stopping bullets. Eventually, all the leading mobsters of the 30’s wore the silk vests he invented."

The big engineer turned and began searching on a higher shelf. "That worked until law enforcement developed the .357 Magnum cartridge. A classic case of the seesaw between offensive and defensive technology. Really, it's a lot like the English longbow at Agincourt—"

Rick could tell they were heading for a lengthy tangent. "Whoa. Back to this super t-shirt or whatever it is."

Scotty gave up on whatever he was looking for and motioned Rick back into the larger room. "It's not a t-shirt. It's a ballistic vest. Like Goodfellow's vests, it's made of dozens of crisscrossed layers of Kevlar, which is similar to silk but far stronger strand for strand. A single layer won't stop a bullet, but when they're combined—"

He suddenly brightened as a thought struck him, and he reached over the top of the computer cabinet. "Here it is."

He turned with a small revolver in his hand and said, "Put it on, we'll give it a test."

Rick thrust the shirt behind his back. "The hell we will."

"Really? OK." Scotty looked disappointed but put the revolver back where he had found it. "None of us are willing to be the test subject, but I thought that your physical strength would make you better able to absorb the shock."

"Forget it," said Rick firmly. He held out the shirt and examined it again. "What's the deal? It only covers my chest. What if I get shot somewhere else?" "It's all about probabilities," said Scotty. "That's the area where it's the most likely to save your life. If a bullet hits you in the head, you're dead; if you are struck in the arms or legs, you'll probably survive the trauma. Protecting the chest area is calculated to give you a survival rate approximately 60 to 75 percent greater than without it."