Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3) (11 page)

Ell picked up a sheet of paper and sat down to look under the table. Locating the circle she’d marked the night before with the pencil she wrapped the paper around the other side of it to block light and leaned in close.
No sparks!
She sighed as her shoulders sagged. Moments later she had the cover off the power supply,
Yes it’s burned out again!
She ordered a large, stand alone power supply that could provide voltages and currents far higher than what she’d been using and went back out to eat dinner. She raised an eyebrow at the exasperated Amy, “You’re turning into a nagging wife!”

Amy snickered, “You’re making me
into
one!”

Chapter Five

The car had been parked across from the Nellis entrance for two days, a small but powerful video camera mounted next to the visor and focused on the exit. In a van across the parking lot a man watched a screen displaying the take from that camera. He said into his mike, “There she is! In a Blue Ford Focus, turning right, pulling into traffic… now.” One of the chase cars, a nondescript small Chevrolet, pulled out into traffic a block back behind Ell. As she drove down the road, the other chase car, parked down the road the other direction in case she turned left, pulled out and fell in three blocks behind her.

***

Ell knocked on the door of the classroom and a few moments later it opened to reveal a short, plump, red headed young woman. She grinned up at Ell with a sparkle in her eye. “Oh, thank you so much for coming in Ms. Donsaii, oops, I mean Lieutenant. The kids will love meeting you. I’m Diane Smithers.” As Ell stepped into the room Ms. Smithers turned to the kids in her class who were all staring at the newcomer. “Kids, I know it’s not time for ‘Show and Tell’ right now and it normally isn’t allowed to bring anything ‘living’ to Show and Tell either, but today we’re making an exception. Janey, would you like to come up to the front?”

Janey got out of her seat and shyly walked up to stand beside Ell. Like she often did when she was nervous, she had the tip of a finger in the corner of her mouth.

Ms. Smithers said, “OK, Janey has brought a very special person in for her sharing and, as always with Show and Tell, you can ask questions and try to guess what is special about this person.

Hands shot up around the room and Ms. Smithers pointed to a boy near the front, “Jimmy?”

“She’s a lieutenant!” Jimmy volunteered excitedly.

Ms. Smithers raised a questioning eyebrow at Ell. Ell leaned forward and said, “Yes, I am. These bars on my shoulders,” she leaned forward so they could see the embroidered bars on the shoulders of her BDUs, “mean that I’m a lieutenant, a rank in the military. I’m in the Air Force.”

Hands continued to wave excitedly and “Sally” was called on. “I’ll bet she’s a pilot.” the girl said excitedly.

Ell looked down at Janey who said, “Yes, she flies planes, but she does it by remote control rather than riding around in them. That’s not what’s so cool about her though.”

A number of excited questions followed, many showing that child’s particular interests such as, “Does she ride horses?” and “Does she shoot rockets from her plane?” But eventually a little girl in the front row who’d studied Ell’s face since she entered shot her hand up. Without waiting to be called on the girl burst out, “She’s Ell Donsaii!”

Janey said, “Yes!” Some of the kids were excited though many, who hadn’t heard of Ell in the Olympics nearly two years ago—a lifetime for kids at the age of seven—were puzzled.

Janey excitedly explained who Ell was to the kids who never heard of her and then Ms. Smithers showed a couple of video clips of Ell in the Olympics for the kids.

Ell did a couple of aerial cartwheels for the kids. Ms. Smithers let the kids ask a few more questions and finally Ell leapt up into the air, did a back flip, saluted the class and left out the door.

She didn’t pay attention to the Asian man who was walking in to the school as she walked out.

The man walked in, made a circuit of the hall and walked out, whispering through his AI, “Yes, it
is
definitely her. Track that car!”

***

Ell heard a knock on the door between her apartment and Steve’s. “Yes?”

Steve’s voice said, “It’s me, may I come in?”

“Sure.” Ell had Allan release the lock and saw the door open.

Steve said, “Bad news. The parking lot team found a tracker on your Ford.”

Ell sighed, she’d
so
hoped that the Chinese had given up on her. “Not on the truck though?”

“No, the truck was clean and, believe me, we went over it with a fine toothed comb. But we can’t use that parking lot anymore and we’ve got to assume they might track your Focus to another lot and follow you home. You’ll have to try to be even more vigilant watching for tails.”

***

The younger man said, “After she left the school, we tracked her vehicle back to the Air Force Base. Later, her car left the base and parked in a parking lot. That tracking device on her car was destroyed shortly after stopping in the parking lot and the car was moved elsewhere. At a distance we followed the adhesive trackers that we placed into her car’s seat so they must have successfully attached to her clothing. We followed them to an apartment complex. We can’t pick up a signal at present, presumably because they are inside the building somewhere. They are very small and their signal is weak.

“We’ve checked and none of the apartments are rented in her name. We don’t know what part of her clothing the trackers attached to and so we have no idea when she might wear that item again, nor the likelihood of the tracker being destroyed in the wash. However, we are ready to follow her if and when she does leave with a clothing tracker. We will also try to track her car coming and going from the base again but I don’t think we should attach another tracker to her car because the first one was detected and destroyed so quickly. She must be very suspicious due to the previous attempts we have made to gain her cooperation.”

“OK,” Zhou said, “have men standing by this ‘apartment complex’ at all times. They should check
each
person leaving with telescopic imaging, not just wait to detect the tracker leaving.”

***

Inside the van the smaller man said, “Someone leaving the building.” He manipulated a joystick, centering the woman in the field of the camera in the small car parked in the apartment complex parking lot. He zoomed in, “Right height but she’s brunette.” He started to zoom back out and center the complex in the lens again.

Suddenly, the heavy set man sat up and said, “One of the adhesive tracking beads has just responded to query!” He glanced up and spoke to his AI, “Get Mr. Zhou!” To the smaller man he said, “It’s the bead that was on the headrest. It would presumably be attached to a hat because she would have washed it out of her hair by now.” He fiddled with the controls of the panel in front of him, “A moment to triangulate, yes, the tracker bead is on this side of the building, has anyone else left the building?”

“No, just that brunette. She’s on the sidewalk heading away from us. No hat.”

“Maybe she’s wearing a wig! The tracker could be in the hair. Have Dog team follow her! Yes the bead is moving away too! Tell Dragon team to stand by.”

Zhou joined the conversation then, ordering the surveillance van to stay where it was but confirming that Dog and Dragon should follow the brunette and waking up the other two ready teams as well.

Shortly they had followed the brunette to a small shopping center and into a martial arts dojo. The two members of Dog team went around to the back of the dojo to cover the rear exit. Dragon team parked in the lot out front, two members staying in the car and Xu walking into the dojo on the pretext of asking about lessons. Twenty minutes later Zhou arrived with Snake and Tiger teams, three per vehicle and parked farther away. Xu came back out of the dojo and walked to the car where Zhou sat, getting in the back with him. “Well?”

Xu shrugged. “There are many brunette women in there. I think one is thin enough to be Donsaii, but it’s hard to tell how skinny they are in their gis.”

Zhou called for the surveillance van to bring its sensors over and had it park directly in front of the dojo but it still couldn’t pick up the tracking bead while—or if—it was inside the building. Zhou’s eye began to twitch irregularly as anxiety and frustration made his tick resurface. He decided they must wait for her to leave and tried to settle back to wait but it was hard to be patient. It had taken forever just to find out that she’d been assigned to Nellis AFB. His supervisors had been calling frequently asking for updates and riding him for more progress. Yesterday he’d noticed a small patch of hair was missing on the side of his head. He told himself that he had a much bigger team than the two previous teams that had failed to capture this girl.
But, fail they had and my team has had so much trouble even finding her…

Gary unobtrusively made his way to stand near “Raquel” at the beginning of the class and stayed near her as they made “strikes” on some stationary targets. When Millie called for them to pair up, he turned to her and raised an eyebrow, gratified when she nodded. The longer the class went on, the more attraction he felt for the pretty young woman. Going out dancing with her had certainly whetted his appetite for more. He trotted over to pick up a pair of the padded hand targets. 

At Millie’s direction Gary held up one of the padded targets for Raquel to strike. Graceful as always, she launched a blow,
wow she’s quick!
She struck the target with a loud “thwap!” Gary’s hand stung like it had been spanked with a ruler! Astonished, he pulled his hand out of the strap on the target and shook out his fingers. He looked the padded target over.
There’s two inches of padding on this damned thing! I didn’t think it could hurt through all that!
He saw Raquel grimace; it must have hurt her hand too.

Millie’s head had tracked around at the loud sound, thinking something bad had happened. She saw Gary and Raquel rubbing their hands but neither really looked hurt. She wondered momentarily what those two had done now, but then was distracted back to the students in front of her, big men trying to hit things hard and
without finesse
!

The rest of the practice passed without incident, Gary, surprised that none of Raquel’s other strikes had hurt, wondered just what had gone wrong on the first one? When the class finished, he said, “How ‘bout another pizza?”

Raquel grinned back at him, “How ‘bout? Sounds good to me. Let me change.”

Zhou’s eye tic got worse as students started leaving the dojo in fits and starts. “Which one? Which one?!”

Xu said, “I don’t think she’s come out yet…”

“Are you sure?” Xu shrugged. Some of the students wore their gis, some had changed, some walked out to cars, several small groups went into the pizza place next door, some walked away on the sidewalk but they didn’t look the right height, nor thin.

Xu sat up sharply, “I think that’s her. With the redheaded man, see how thin she is? Maybe he’s her brother?”

Zhou exploded, striking Xu on the shoulder “She
doesn’t
have a brother! Did you even look at the briefing materials?!”

Xu ducked his head, “Sorry, sorry, yes, you’re right, no brother, she’s an only child, I’m sorry.”

After a bit a message came from the surveillance van, “She left the dojo and went into the pizza place.” There was a long pause in which no one said anything, Zhou crossed his arms and settled down to wait.

Gary followed Ell to the same table against the wall that they’d sat at before and they ordered a Coke and Diet Mountain Dew from the waitress. Ell grinned at him, “Wanna live on the wild side and try a sausage and artichoke pizza this time?”

“Hmmm, that’s kinda out there for me,” he grinned, “but you only live once. Let’s go for it.”

Gary had intended to learn more about Raquel but she immediately steered the conversation back to him. She learned that he’d grown up in Reno; that his Dad was a mechanical engineer and his Mom a software programmer. Then she pumped him for information about the nanotubes he and his professor were creating, wanting to know how long the longest nanotubes were, what conformation, how pure and on and on. Her fascination in him and his research kept him talking, only occasionally thinking of how little he was learning about her. 

Suddenly Zhou couldn’t take it any longer. He undid his seatbelt, “We will go have pizza too!”

Steve sat at the counter watching the outside and making his coffee and slice of ham pizza last. His eyes narrowed. The four men that’d been sitting in a car out in the parking lot had suddenly stirred. All the doors opened and four Asian appearing men got out and started walking toward Fast Eddie’s Pizza. Steve looked over at Mary and Randy, sitting at a table for two near Ell, intending to draw their attention to the Asians but they were already glancing that way. Ell and her young man were sitting at another table for two, Ell with her back to the wall as Steve had taught her. Steve saw her eyes flick to the window taking in the men walking toward the parlor. A grimace flashed across her face.

Steve looked carefully at the Asians as they entered. They were a badly mismatched group. Two in Levis, one in a coverall and an older man wearing a sports coat. They didn’t look like they belonged together, they didn’t look like the kind of people who would be going out to dinner at a pizza place, and they all glanced over towards Ell’s end of the room when they came in. Not very good “craft” if they were who he thought they were. He whispered to his AI to contact the rest of Ell’s security detail and get them on their way over to the little shopping center, including those that were “off duty” and asleep. They would only have nine of their ten team members because Barrett was on vacation. Steve’s mind raced. The safest thing would be to go over, get Ell and leave, but he wasn’t sure Ell would like that. He’d come to know her pretty well and she
wasn’t
timid. He thought she’d rather deal with these guys now than worry about them popping up later.