Chapter 13
They came out of the Santa Cruz mountains on highway 17. The road flattened as it passed Lexington Dam, then dropped again, leveling out for the final time into the charming little village of Los Gatos. At one time, a sleepy little town of artists and retired people, it had been discovered by the wealthy, and now, like Santa Cruz, was still a charming little town if you could afford it.
“I live up Broadway.” Susan said.
“Broadway doesn't go all the way through, does it?” Brad asked.
“No. It cull-d-sacs at the top of the hill.”
Brad turned on to the long uphill drift of Broadway and pulled over to the curb. “How far up do you live?”
“Up there." she said pointing up the street. "On the left. The small tan house with the green shudders.”
“Cute.” Brad observed as he studied it for a moment. It was smaller than the others, but blended with the older, well preserved homes that lined the tree shaded street.
He started the Land Rover and drove by Susan's house without looking at it. Instead, he studied all the cars at the curb all the way to the end of the road, not seeing one containing people. “Let me know if you see any vehicles that you aren't familiar with.” He said as they turned around to go back down the hill.
“I've been looking for exactly that.” she said, still studying the cars as they turned. “So far I see nothing suspicious.”
Brad parked two houses down from Susan's. As they walked up to the front door they could see that it was not closed all the way, but left slightly ajar. Brad had switched from a leg holster to a shoulder holster when they left the ranch. He reached inside his windbreaker and slid out a Glock 9mm, and held it pointed to the ground in front of him. Silently motioning for Susan to come around and stand behind him, he moved to the side of the door. He pushed it all the way open with his foot, quickly glancing inside before bringing his head back. Raising the pistol to a fire position he moved inside, sweeping the room over the sights of the weapon. As Susan followed behind him he quickly went to each room, kicking the doors open and sweeping them in the same manner as he did the living room.
“Clear.” he finally said.
“What?” Susan asked.
“Oh, never mind.” he said absently. “That was just an old habit. When you deem a house safe, you say 'Clear', so the rest of the team knows that it's safe.”
“Am I member of your team?” she asked with a slight smirk.
“Actually, you're my whole team.” He looked at her for a moment and grinned. “And, I must say, the best looking team that I have ever had.”
“I'm not sure if that's going to be very helpful.” she said.
She looked around at the room, which had obviously been rifled through, drawers pulled out and contents flipped out onto the floor. Cushions removed from chairs. The kitchen was the same with the added attraction of broken dishes on the floor, silverware scattered everywhere, cupboards swept clean of contents, which were also strewn across the room.
In the bedroom the mattress was tossed, the bedding laying in a heap on the floor. Drawers were also pulled out with contents thrown about. On the dresser, among other small, overturned boxes, of powders and keepsakes, was the overturned jewelery box, earrings and necklaces that it contained spread over the dresser top.
“This is it.” Susan said, picking up the box and handing it to Brad.
He turned it over in his hands, feeling it as he inspected the sides, top, bottom and inside of the box. “This might take a few minutes.” he said as he rubbed and manipulated it. Finally, he held it out in front of him and pressed two spots simultaneously. There was a slight wooden 'click' and the lower section of the bottom slid out slightly. He pulled it out all the way, revealing a thin hollow in the false bottom's surface. Within it lay a thin memory stick and a piece of paper. He unfolded the piece of paper and read out loud, “If you found this by accident, put the memory stick back in the false bottom, slide it shut and don't tell anybody. I'll explain when I come back. If you did not find it by accident, that means the plan did not go well, but I don't expect that to happen. If it does, call the number on this paper and tell them who you are. They will protect you.
“What kind of crap was Jeff into?” Susan asked rhetorically.
“I don't know.” Brad said as he studied the memory stick. “But, if we knew what was on this thing, we'll know what they're after, which should give us an idea of who they are.”
“That shouldn't be too much of a problem.” Susan said, taking the small cylinder over to her computer desk, which, amazingly was not destroyed. Once she sat down she knew why. “The hard drive is missing.”
“What did you have on it?”
“Nothing classified. Most of it was just personal stuff – communications with friends, things I found interesting.
“They – who ever 'they' are, will be disappointed.” Brad said.
“I have a laptop in the back of the Land Rover. Do you think you can use that?”
“Computers are what I do.” she stated. “They're essential to complex code work.”
Once the laptop was booted up, she put in the stick in and a request for a password came on the screen. Minimizing the screen, she went on the internet and went into another program that said, U.S. Government across the top of the screen, and 'classified access' written under a password request, which she immediately typed in, opening a decoding program. She applied the program to the memory stick and sat back. “This might take a little while.”
“Okay.” Brad said, as he went to the living room window and looked at the street through the curtains. He came back, picked a cushion off of the floor, place it on the couch and sat down. They sat in silence for a few minutes.
Feeling restless with anticipation of armed visitors, Brad stood and walked over to the window again, pulling the curtain back slightly, staring up and down the street.
Susan sat up as she watched the screen. “Oh, that was kind of fast.” She said. She clicked a few keys on the keyboard, pushed the 'enter' key dramatically and sat forward. “It looks like some kind of a glossary of the contents.”
Brad walked over and studied the screen. “Holy shit!”
“What is it?” Susan asked.
“I recognize some of the item names. These are top secret weapons. Some still in experimental stages, others deemed too devastating for even us to develop. It ranges from ordnance to weapons systems.
He moved the mouse over the first one and hit it. It was a component breakdown, which Brad studied for a moment.
“Top secret ordnance.” He said, pointing to what looked like a pineapple on a missile. “That's a bullet.”
“Really? It doesn't look like one.” She said as she leaned closer and peered at it.
“It's a fragmentation bullet. It's like a tiny hand-grenade.” Brad said as he went to another schematic of the same ordnance. “See this?” he pointing to a component breakdown of the slug. It's got a detonator imbedded in a soft point. When the bullet hits a solid object it detonates, exploding like a tiny bomb, sending fragments at a tremendous force in all directions. You don't even have to hit your target with this – just get into their vicinity.
“Fired from an automatic weapon, 30 bullets would be like 300 bullets. Even if the enemy was hiding, all you have to do is spray a solid object behind them, and the exploding bullets would wipe them out.”
“That's horrible.” Susan said.
“It's a product of war, which is the most horrible thing of all. It's meant to be horrible.” Brad said.
“This is the kind of work you did? War?” she asked, finding it hard to believe that a man like Brad could have spent his life in such a predatory environment.
“No.” he said calmly. “My job was to prevent war. When all reasonable avenues have been blocked, and it's due to one or two people who are in control of thousands or millions of lives, which they can extinguish on a whim, last resort actions sometimes have to be taken, and that was, at times, my job.
“History has shown that if you just ignore these people, you allow Hitler's to rise, and then millions of innocent people do die.
“Somewhere out there,” he said waving his hand towards the general world, “Are people who want this stick because they can sell it to just those kinds of people, and once this information is sold, we have the serious problem of not just some tribal chief or group of fanatics, but ones with a military technology that would give them the power of a modern day Hitler.
“Imagine the Taliban having sophisticated, futuristic weapon systems like these. Ones that could challenge the might of the U.S., and it's allies. The world would see an era that would make the dark ages look like a party.”
Brad opened his hand and stared at the stick. “It's amazing isn't it? This little piece of nothing may be the most dangerous thing in the world right now.”
“My God. What else do you think is on here?” Susan asked, looking at the stick as if monsters would soon sprout from it's surface.
“Things far worse then fragmentation bullets, but we're not going to find out. Just knowing this information could be bad for our health. This is the kind of stuff that is kept under lock and key in the basement of the Pentagon and very few people would know that it even exists.”
Brad furrowed his head. “I thought maybe this was some gang level thing, you know, drugs or transporting illegals.” He reached over and turned the computer off. “But this looks much bigger than that. We don't want to know any more about these weapons, and we have to make sure that the wrong people don't get this stick.”
“What shall we do with the it?” Susan asked.
“Armando mentioned their was a mole in the organization, but wouldn't tell me any more. Maybe the mole is the one that slipped the stick to whoever your brother stole it from.
“If the mole is still in place, then we aren't secure in our choices of friends. I trust Armando Martinez, but he's answerable to somebody who is answerable to somebody else, and somewhere in the chain of command is a broken link.”
“Maybe we should just destroy it. Smash it with a hammer. Throw it in the ocean.” Susan suggested.
“If nobody was looking for it, that would be a great idea, but now there are people on both sides who know that it exists and we're in the middle. The only way we won't be hounded for what could be the rest of our very short lives, is to get it back into the vaults where it belongs, and have all parties know where it is, which eliminates us as people of interest.”
“Put the stick right back where you found it.” Brad said, handing it to Susan. “It survived one search, so there probably won't be any more.”
“Famous last words.” Susan said critically.
“Yeah. That ran through my head as I said it, but if by some chance they capture us, and we don't have the stick, they won't kill us right away.”
“Why is that not comforting to me?” Susan asked.
“We have to create what ever little safety guards we can and be glad that we have them. We'll call it a precautionary measure.” Brad said confidently.
“Precautionary measure.” Susan repeated. “I like the sound of that. It give me more of a warm, fuzzy feeling than, 'they won't kill us right away'.”
“Good.” Brad said, looking out the window again. In his preoccupation, not catching Susan's sarcasm, he said, “Then let's get out of here before somebody we don't want to meet does a drive by.”
All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.
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