“Are you sure your grampa Al won’t order deadly force?” Penny asked. “It’s not like we can send him a letter telling him who’s coming to dinner.”
Kris leaned back from the table. That was the heart of her problem. The only way she had a chance to see Grampa Al was to come in under false colors. And there was no familial protection under that false flag.
“If things get too bad, we’ll just have to let him know who his intruder is,” Jack said. “If we’re deep inside his security zone, we might still be able to advance even after we let him know it’s Kris just trying to get a word in edgewise with him.”
“What do you think, Grampa?” Kris asked. “You’ve known Al all his life. He won’t really kill me, will he?”
Grampa Trouble did not answer that question nearly as fast as Kris wanted.
“I would hope not,” he finally said slowly as he rubbed his chin in thought. “You have to understand, that kid just about raised himself, with Ray and Rita being off in the war and all. He’s got issues with his old man enough to fill a lifetime. I like to think that blood is thicker than water, but between those two, I’m none too sure there is any blood in their veins. And now you say he’s gone rogue, ignoring both his father and his son’s efforts to handle the alien threat, charging off in his own direction entirely. It doesn’t sound good.”
“So,” Kris summed up her thoughts, “if he hasn’t gone rogue, he’ll likely meet me with hugs and kisses, and this effort is a waste of time. If he has gone rogue, then we really do have to get in to him. But we may have to do it through live fire.”
“I think that pretty much the operation,” General Trouble concluded.
Kris pursed her lips, making a face at her now-well-defined problem. “There is sneaky gear for just the three of us?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as I see it, the two of you”—Kris marked Grampa Trouble and Colonel Hancock with her eyes—“need to get back to your regularly scheduled life. The sooner the better.”
“I can call Harvey to give us a ride down the mountain,” Grampa Trouble said.
“No you won’t,” Kris and Jack said at the same time, with Nelly a nanosecond ahead of them both.
“No net activity from here,” Kris said. “Let’s take a look at this car we have and see what we can do about Penny’s driving you two down the mountain.”
“I’m staying at Nuu House,” Grampa Trouble said. “Penny can drop us off ten blocks from the place, and we can hike in. Maybe we’ll get a bite to eat before we do that. Give Penny a bit of time to exit the threat zone.”
“We can play that as we see it,” Penny said. “Let’s see how this car works.”
The car was plugged in to the solar panels on the roof, so despite the cold, it was ready to go. The problem was the very small size of the backseat.
“I think I can squeeze in there,” Penny said. “You big men take the front seat.”
“I’ll drive,” the colonel offered. In a few minutes they were backing out and heading slowly down the road, with Jack and Kris waving good-bye to them.
“I think the fire has warmed up the place,” Jack said.
“It will be good to get out of all this heavy disguise,” Kris said.
Jack had always been good at getting Kris out of trouble. Now he showed his skill at getting her out of other things. He was even good at slipping her out of her spider-silk armor.
But then, Kris was very good at getting him out of his, too.
27
Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile slammed down the phone. “General Tordon and Colonel Hancock just walked in the front gate at Nuu House.”
Heads popped up as his team came out of their computers. Eyes were bleary and exhaustion thick. “Have they been interrogated?” Rick asked.
“Not yet,” Foile answered. “And I doubt we’ll get two words out of them. Still, that they’ve come in out of the cold tells us something. Two are in. Three are still out there. How did the two get in, and can we trace them back to the three? Drop your old data tracks. Get the feed from Nuu House.”
“I’ve got it,” Mahomet said. “They walked in from Fifty-fourth Avenue.”
“Backtrack them. I don’t care what you have to use. Bank or traffic video, gas stations. Any video we can get, look for them.”
“Doing it,” came from all three.
“Rick, I want you to get yourself over to Nuu House. Talk to those guys.”
“I thought you said they wouldn’t talk, sir.”
“But they need to know we’re onto them. Maybe you can rattle one.”
“Rattle General Trouble?” Leslie said, her eyes still on the feed running fast across her computer screen.
“I don’t have high hopes,” Foile admitted, “but there is always a chance. Even the best make a mistake. Maybe just one, but if we don’t force it, these folks aren’t going to give it up for free. Rick, do your best. Lives may depend on it.”
“Understood, sir. I’m on my way.”
Foile went to stand behind his other two agents. Security film flashed by almost too fast for the human eye to process. The computer checked each figure, applying its own search parameters. The two men were very distinctive. Between the computer and the human eye, they would catch them.
“Got them,” Leslie said. “Two men, ramrod backs, coming out of that restaurant.” There they were. No disguise. No effort to hide. The general even spotted the traffic camera and looked right into it.
“How long were they in there?”
“I don’t know.” Leslie sped up the take from a traffic camera, covering the stoplight . . . and just incidentally covering the street in front of the restaurant. An hour of film went by before a car stopped in front of the place and two tall, straight-backed men got out of it. A shorter woman unfolded herself from the backseat of the small two-door, gave the general a quick peck on the cheek, and settled into the driver’s seat. The two men waved as she drove off.
“Can you make that license plate?”
“No, sir. It’s screened.”
“Track her. Track that make of car and the screened plates.”
For the next hour, they tracked the small coupe as it wound its way through side streets. Whoever was driving that car knew how to evade surveillance. They’d find her, then lose her, then find her again only to lose her as she turned down a street lined with middle-to-low-income housing with no cameras.
A thirty-minute drive took them over an hour to reconstruct.
“Damn, that woman is good,” Foile mumbled under his breath, and hated himself for the admiration he was feeling for the ones he was hunting.
“Is that your princess?” he asked Leslie.
“I should hope not,” the young woman agent said, grinning. “If Kris has any sense about her, she’s back at their lair, enjoying a whole lot of Jack.”
Foile pinned her with a frown. The agent didn’t even look back at him.
“Well, wouldn’t you hope that, sir? You haven’t become a completely old married man, have you?”
Foile allowed a “harrumph,” to that.
“No, that’s Kris’s best friend, Penny. She’s shorter than Kris, and she was trained in intelligence and security. Her dad was a cop, too. We’re trying to track one of our own. You ought to be glad we’re doing as well as we’re doing. Think of what you’d be doing if that was you out there.”
“I am, and I would,” Foile admitted. “However, we have an arrest warrant for the leader of this gang. A warrant I intend to serve. Find me your princess, Leslie.”
“We’ve got her going on the freeway. She’s headed west,” Mahomet crowed.
“Toward the mountains?” Foile shot back.
“Toward the mountains or some place short of there,” Leslie pointed out
“Get me a list of all the motels with multiday rentals using cash,” Foile quickly said to his boss. She got on her comm-link.