“I see,” said the Captain, “and what would you need to pull off this jailbreak, in terms of personnel and equipment?”
“One of the large shuttles, a pinnace would be too small to hold the entire squad plus the rescue team. And I was thinking that this is just the sort of thing our new SEAL contingent would be good at.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Jack concurred.
Now we will see if the SEALs are worth their up keep.
“Have you talked with Chief Morgan about this?”
“Not yet, Captain,” replied Billy Ray. “We didn’t want to get them boys excited prematurely.” This brought a few chuckles from the others, easing the tension in the room.
“Very good, gentlemen,” Jack said, then addressed the others present, “Does anyone have any suggestions or comments?”
“Are you sure that a large shuttle won’t be spotted flying over the base?” asked Lcdr. Curtis.
“Affirmative, Commander,” Billy Ray responded, piloting the shuttle would presumably fall to him. “The detention site is not far inland and the area is not inhabited. There are a number of forest openings in the vicinity where a shuttle could set down without being spotted.”
“Yes,” added JT, “we were thinking that we would come in overnight and the SEALs and myself would scout the area around the prison camp. We would set a place for the ambush and then lay low until the target appears. Once the bus is halted and the prisoners released, the shuttle will land on the trail and pick everyone up.”
“Once they are on board,” Billy Ray finished, “we’d head straight out to sea and climb for orbit—there’s nothing on Earth that can catch us at that point.”
“Seems like you two have thought this through,” remarked Gretchen. “How soon do you want to go?”
“Tomorrow,” JT and Billy Ray replied in unison.
“You don’t want to wait a few more days and make sure the pattern holds?” asked Nigel Lewis.
“No, tomorrow is Friday. We don’t know if the pattern will stay the same over the weekend.”
“Alright then,” the Captain said, bringing the discussion to an end. “Lay on your operation for tomorrow, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Vincent, I suppose you volunteer for the piloting duties?”
“If that’d be alright with you, Sir.”
“It’s settled then. Go brief the SEALs when this is over, Mr. Taylor.”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
Jack sat back for a moment and then shifted topics. “Commander Curtis, have you any word regarding Dr. Saito?”
“Aye, Captain. I received a call back from Mizuki Ogawa, Yuki’s assistant, saying that there was a guard standing in front of Dr. Saito’s apartment door. Also, there were lights in the apartment this evening.”
“But no eyes on Dr. Saito himself?”
“No, Sir. But Dr. Ogawa was going to keep the apartment under surveillance.”
“I hope she doesn’t get noticed by whoever is guarding the place.”
“I told her to be careful, Captain. What is really needed is for us to get some boots on the ground in Tokyo.”
“What would you suggest?”
“I would like to take Mr. Danner and one of the pinnaces and scout the situation, Sir.”
“I see, why Mr. Danner?”
“Because Bobby’s physical build and general coloration can probably pass for Japanese at night. The apartment building has no place to land on top, which means we will have to park the shuttle nearby and travel to the target by surface transport. I’m still working out the details.”
“Alright, Commander. Do it.” The Captain looked around the room with a grim face. “As you have probably heard, the UN and various national governments have rejected our warning of possible alien invasion and offer of cooperation out of hand. In fact, the last report I received before this meeting from Lt. McKennitt said that there were problems at the UN office in Vienna. Evidently the Chief has been wounded and armed crew members have been sent into the building to extract our people.”
“What!” someone exclaimed. The strain of the situation was obvious in the Captain’s face. Even the newest crew members knew that there was an emotional bond between the Captain and Dr. Tropsha. What most of them did not realize was that the Captain and the Chief had served together for more than a decade in the Navy, a symbiotic relationship between officer and enlisted man that continued on board the Peggy Sue. The Captain’s concern was as much for the Chief as for Ludmilla.
“As we try to prepare Earth for war with unknown adversaries, we find opponents aplenty hear at home. I will continue to monitor the situation from the bridge. Commander Curtis, Mr. Taylor, put your rescue missions in motion. Everyone else, man your stations. I’m not calling General Quarters, but I want to be ready if the need arises. Questions?”
There were none.
“Very well, you all know what to do. Let’s go get our people back.”
Chapter 6
Roof of the VIC, UNOOSA Headquarters, Vienna
“All right, men,” called Sandy over the radio link. “The Chief’s been shot and the Doc is in trouble. Please, go and fetch them from the building.”
“Aye aye, Lieutenant,” Replied Hitch, nudging Jacobs toward the rear boarding ramp, then on suit-to-suit “Crap, if the Chief dies it will be almost as bad as if the Doc got hurt.”
“Hell, Stevie,” Jacobs replied. “The Captain’s apt to level this whole complex as it is.” The pair hustled down the airstair and headed toward the door leading inside the building. There had been two UN guards, armed with submachine guns, standing watch there, but with the appearance of a duo of two meter tall, 250 kilo gray-black space monsters, the UN beat a hasty retreat back inside the building.
“Do you think they locked the door?” Jacobs asked.
“Who gives a shit?” Hitch replied. “Cover me!” With that Hitch sped up to a full run and simply slammed head-on into the glass and aluminum door.
Kinetic energy won out over aesthetic design. The door shattered, scattering pellets of safety glass and pieces of aluminum in all directions. The guards were just disappearing at the bottom of the stairwell. “Come on, Matt!” Hitch called to his partner, “we got ‘em on the run!”
* * * * *
Two floors down, Ludmilla and the wounded Chief were retracing the steps they had taken entering the building. The Chief was leaning heavily on Ludmilla’s left side as she brandished the stunner in her right hand. The Chief, jaw clenched in pain looked at the blond doctor and said, “Leave me! Go on, get yer self out.”
“Nonsense, we came in together and we are going out together,” Ludmilla replied. “Besides, how would I explain to the Captain that I abandoned his oldest friend? I am a big girl and you do not weigh all that much; we will make it.”
Rounding the corner before the stairs to the next floor they came upon two guards. “Auchtung! Halt!” one shouted, raising his machine pistol. Ludmilla sprayed them both with debilitating blue light. Their weapons clattered to the floor and both guards collapsed, shaking as if jolted by a stun gun—which is essentially what had happened. The only difference was that this stun gun didn’t need to shoot wires into its targets.
Past the still twitching guards, Ludmilla and the Chief ascended the marble stairs one careful step at a time. Reaching the top of the wide stairway, they were now in the hall that led to the flight of stairs to the roof. Unfortunately, between them and the exit was Jean-Jacques de Belcour, leading a squad of four armed men in vests and helmets.
“Dr. Tropsha, you are under arrest!” called de Belcour. “I would suggest you drop your weapon and raise your hands.”
The hell I will,
thought the furious Ludmilla. Behind the squad confronting her, two more guards bolted out of the heliport stairwell. They ran full out toward their compatriots yelling something unintelligible about “monster robots” in German.
As the party confronting them was distracted by the commotion from the other end of the hallway, Ludmilla and the Chief squatted down to present a smaller target and the Doctor prepared to fire on the guards. Before she could get off a shot, a gigantic black figure flew out of the heliport stairwell and smashed into the wall opposite the opening. As the first figure was extracting itself from the demolished drywall and framing, a second black monster ran into the first.
“We are directly behind the squad of men in helmets,” Ludmilla quickly transmitted over her shoulder pip. As Jacobs and Hitch finished untangling themselves from each other and the wall, Hitch replied, “Got it, Doc. Lay prone on the floor so’s we don’t hit ya.”
The two fugitives moved to comply, laying belly down on the floor, with Ludmilla holding the stunner out in front of her. The UN official, bravely leading from behind, ordered his men to advance.
“Open fire on those things!” M. de Belcour yelled as he backed slowly away from the armed squad. When he was about five meters from his former quarry, Ludmilla shot him in the back with the stunner. As the Frenchman fell to the floor, the UN guards opened up on the two advancing crewmen.
A hail of bullets peppered the two armored spacemen. Unfortunately for the UN troops, the heaviest rounds they were firing were 7.62mm NATO, which bounced off the armored suits without leaving a mark. The 9mm pistol rounds from the submachine guns might as well been a gentle spring rain. Then the crewmen returned fire.
Both Jacobs and Hitch sprayed their antagonists with waist high bursts from their rail guns. At 600 rounds per minute, and with a muzzle velocity of 2000 fps, more than 100 5mm flechettes shredded the UN squad. “I think they’re all down, Stevie,” said Jacobs.
“Damn straight, Matt,” replied Hitch. Then remembering the party they were supposed to be rescuing called, “Doc, Chief? Are you OK?”
“Come on yous deck apes,” the Chief’s unmistakable raspy voice replied. “Stop playing with the locals, an’ get us the hell outta here.”
The two armored men picked their way through the bodies of the downed UN troops, meeting the Doctor and Chief at the supine body of M. de Belcour. Thanks to being stunned by Ludmilla, the UN official was the only member of the opposition to survive the brief but deadly encounter with Peggy Sue’s crew.
“What should we do with this one?” Hitch asked, “He’s still twitchin’.”
Suddenly, Ludmilla had a wicked thought.
This officious UN buffoon was going to hand me over to be carried off like an animal? Let us see how he likes it with the positions reversed!
“Bring him, I think the Captain will have some interesting questions for our UN friend.”
“But Doc, he ordered those men to fire on us!” replied Jacobs.
“Yes he did,” Ludmilla smiled. “Have you never heard the old saying ”keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”?”
Yuki’s Apartment, Tokyo, Japan
In Yuki’s apartment things had gone from bad to worse. Inspector Takashi had shown up around midnight with three men, all bearing the tell-tale tattoos of yakuza, Japanese mafia. They could also be identified as yakuza by their speech patterns, an almost unintelligible dialect only heard by normal Japanese in gangster movies. Outcasts from larger Japanese society, the gangsters have their own language with a unique and specialized vocabulary suited to their disreputable occupation.
“I am sorry to inform you, Dr. Saito, that the government has decided that your sudden reappearance would be an embarrassment,” Takashi said to the grim faced Saito. “Given poor economic conditions and recent tensions with the Chinese, harboring one of the renegades from the mystery spaceship would cause unnecessary disruption.”
“I remind you, Inspector Takashi, that I am a Japanese citizen and a scientist with an international reputation. You cannot simply make me vanish.”
“Sadly, that is not true, Doctor. You have already vanished, on board the International Space Station. Since you are already dead, the government has decided that it is best you stay dead.”
“So, are these gangsters here to kill me then?” Yuki asked, eying the three yakuza nervously. This caused one of them to laugh and make a mumbled remark to his companions. Then all three laughed.
“No doctor. These men are going to watch over you, until a deal can be struck with the Chinese. You will be traded to them for the return of several of our people and other considerations. I’m sure they will take good care of you, as long as you are productive.”
“Doing what? I am an astrophysicist!”
“Come, Doctor. You know at least some of the secrets of that spacecraft you traveled in. Every major power on Earth wants to know those secrets.”
“So why am I not being kept in Japan?”
“Again, sadly, things have not gone well for our nation these last several decades. It was decided that this course of action is best.”
“Dishonor rots the soul, Inspector.”
“I am truly sorry Dr. Saito.” With that he bowed and left the apartment. The three thugs stood smiling at Yuki, much like a pack of hyenas smile at a wounded gazelle.
* * * * *
The small shuttle carrying Lcdr. Curtis and Bobby descend into Tokyo after midnight. They landed on top of a parking garage a few blocks from Yuki’s apartment building, the closest suitable site they could find. After securing the pinnace, nearly unnoticeable among the antennas and other equipment on the garage roof, the pair made their way down to street level. Both were dressed in unadorned black jumpsuits, appropriate attire for a bit of clandestine skulking about. Both were also carrying concealed stunners.
On the ground floor, Gretchen walked up to a parked car and took what looked like a charge card from her pocket. She waved the card over a strange icon on the driver’s side window and the doors unlocked with an audible click. “How did you do that, Commander?” Bobby asked, suitably impressed.
“It’s Yuki’s shared car pass. He left it behind on the ship,” Gretchen answered, as though that explained everything. What Bobby did not know is that Tokyo, and other large cities in Japan, have a number of shared car companies. Millions of commuters who use trains, subways and buses in Tokyo and the surrounding districts sign up for cards that let them rent cars from parking garages downtown. The cars are checked out with the swipe of a card and charges are billed automatically in 15 minute time blocks. The system lets people travel by trains for long distances and then use shared cars at their destination.