Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (24 page)

He noticed that Daneel was no longer playing video games but
surfing the internet. The A.I.—no, the young man was simply amazing.

Paul waved a hand, bringing forth an internet display,
pulling up the Reuters News Agency. Two dignified talking heads were making
assertive hand gestures with great emphasis and excitedly debating something.

“…fast, even for the Israeli Defense Forces!” said one of
them adamantly. “They plowed right through the border defenses—”

The other individual, a middle-aged woman that Paul didn’t
recognize, was shaking her head. “Political risk, I say, for the Prime Minister
to take that action. The international community—“

It was the man’s turn to shake his head. “The children! Two
of them dead! He took a risk if he didn’t invade—”

With a growing sense of alarm, Paul switched feeds to a BBC
website. There a reporter stood in front of the camera, microphone in hand,
while in the background the occasional firing of mortars could be heard.

“…earlier this morning,” he was saying. “Again, the latest
word we have is that they are twenty kilometers over the border, closing in on
a small Syrian town, the alleged location of the kidnappers of the Israeli bus children.
Reports of more deaths of the kidnapped children are unsubstantiated at this
time! But sources—”

Paul shut off the display. Something was terribly wrong!

“Merlin!” he growled, standing and putting hands to hips in
frustration.

Merlin materialized in midair, dressed in thick pants, a
white long-sleeved shirt, hiking boots and an Alpen Schatz hat. Draped around
his neck and one shoulder was a thick yellow coil of heavy climbing rope,
ending in a three pronged grabbling hook, which he held in one hand. Strapped
to his waist was a belt carrying a Petzl bongo hammer, a string of rocklock carabineers
and a bag each of anchors and pitons.

“What’s up now?” the sorcerer asked with a hint of
impatience. “I’m a little busy.”

“There’s a problem,” Paul told him in a shaky voice, ignoring
the mountain climbing gear. ”Capie left for the Middle East hours ago. She
should have arrived there already.”

Merlin floated down to the ground. “And?”

“So, there’s fighting there now! The Israeli Army has
invaded Syria! Some of the Israeli children that Capie went to save have
reportedly been killed! Merlin, if she were there, doing what she went to do,
then none of that would have happened! Unless…” And Paul found that he suddenly
couldn’t complete the sentence, his throat constricted, his mouth dry.

“Steady there, young man,” the wizard from the Middle Ages
said, with a nod of his head. “To be sure, there is cause for concern but you
know not what has happened.”

Paul frowned, looking down at the ground. “Capie’s in
trouble. I just know it.”

With a sudden lunge, he grabbed the satellite phone and
madly punched in the buttons, fumbling when he made a mistake but finally
getting it right on the third try.

“Dad?” Daneel asked, a look of growing concern on his young
face. “Is there something wrong with Mom?”

Paul tried to smile reassuringly but failed. “I don’t think
so,” he responded, unconvincingly, holding the satellite phone up to one ear.

There was no answer.

“You’re going after her, I hope,” mumbled Merlin.

“Dad, are we going to find Mom?” Daneel asked, frowning with
worry.

“Yes, Daneel, that’s exactly what we are going to do. Come
on, Merlin. Get rid of the climbing gear. I’m not even going to stop to pack. We’ve
got to get there just as fast as we can!”

Israeli Northern Command Headquarters

Safed, Israel

September

Friday 1:14 p.m. IDT

H
urling
himself rapidly, portal by portal, across the Indian Ocean and then across
Saudi Arabia and then Jordan with both Merlin and Daneel in tow the whole way,
Paul arrived in Safed, Israel shortly after one p.m. local time. Along the way,
he had tried calling Capie several times on the satellite phone. There had been
no answer.

Immediately upon his arrival in Safed, he first tried a scan
of the local area, searching for the embedded gram of platinum 190 that had been
implanted underneath Capie’s skin between her shoulder blades. He ran the scan
out to a radius of 100 miles in all directions.

Nothing.

Disconcerted, he ran it again, out to 500 miles.

Still nothing.

According to their tests, he should have been able to detect
the platinum 190 anywhere within a maximum radius of 800 miles. So he ran the
scan again, to the maximum range he could reach.

But nothing turned up on his scan. She wasn’t anywhere in the
range that he could reach.

For a full minute, he stood there in shock and incredulity.
She wasn’t within 800 miles of Safed?! That meant that she not only wasn’t in
Israel or Syria but she was also not in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Cyprus, Lebanon,
Egypt, Georgia, or the northern half of Saudi Arabia!

Where in the name of all that was holy could she be?!

“Dad?” Daneel asked plaintively. “Where’s Mom?”

That was a really great question. Even if she were
unconscious or even…dead…he should still have been able to find the platinum
190. So, where was she?

For a moment, he considered the idea of starting a standard
search pattern, spiraling outward in 800 mile increments from his current
location. He could theoretically search the entire surface of the planet in,
oh, say, a month or so.

Bad idea, that. No telling what wizards of
Errabêlu
he might run into that way.

“I don’t know, son,” he replied. “Let’s go ask if anyone has
seen her here.”

Lacking any good alternatives, Paul went to the command
headquarters for the Israeli Defense Force, Northern Command, which, according
to the internet was responsible for defending the entire northern end of Israel
from attacks from either Lebanon or Syria. His intent was to find the
commanding officer and interview an avatar of the man.

But Major General Moshe Peretz was not there. According to
the avatar of one of the soldiers, the general had personally gone with
elements of the 91st Division into Syria to rescue the kidnapped children and
was, at that particular moment in time, in the city of Nawa, a dozen miles
across the Syrian border.

Another try on the cell phone was not answered.

“Dad, where is Mom?” Daneel asked, tears forming down his
face.

“We’ll find her, son. But we need to hurry,” Paul muttered.

“She’s fine,” Merlin said, attempting to comfort the
youngster.

“Come on,” Paul muttered, opening a new portal.

Racing into Syria, they arrived at Nawa to find that combat
operations had already ceased and that the IDF Sword Battalion was withdrawing and
already halfway back up the 119 highway toward the Golan Heights.

Going back down the road himself, Paul had no difficulty in
finding the general. He stood beside a mobile command post in the small town of
Keshet. While the man was busy coordinating the withdrawal with his staff, Paul
found a nearby empty house that afforded a modicum of privacy and created an
avatar of the general in the small living room.

“General Peretz, did you rescue the children?”

“Most of them, yes,” the avatar answered in Hebrew. “Four
were killed by terrorists and two during the rescue. The rest are alive and are
being evac’d to the Rivka Ziv Medical Center in Safed.”

Some of the children killed? Surely, if Capie had been
there, that wouldn’t have happened. So where was she?

“And was there any sign of a red-headed American woman?”

“Such a person talked to me, before the battle, in the same
fashion as you are now,” the image told Paul. “I have not seen her since nor
has anyone reported seeing her.”

“Daddy?” wailed Daneel.

“Hush, little one,” Merlin appealed to the young man. “It
will work out. Daddy will find her.”

Paul paced back and forth, uncertain of what to do next. The
one thing that he was sure of was that the Israeli general couldn’t be of any
further help to him.

“Let’s go talk to the bad guys next,” he said, wringing his
hands.

• • • •

The avatar of a Syrian soldier in Nawa directed Paul to the
area headquarters of the Syrian army in Jasim. There Paul found that the local
commanding officer was a certain Colonel Sayid Mussan directing his forces from
a Senezh-M1E HLCP (High Level Command Post) parked near a small school.

On the roof of a nearby second story apartment building,
Paul created an avatar of the Syrian Colonel.

“Whose idea was it to kidnap a bus load of Israeli
children?” he snapped at the image.

“Orders from Damascus,” the figure responded. “I don’t know
who, but from fairly high up in the government.”

“Did you see or talk to a red-headed American woman?”

“Yes,” it said and Paul leaned forward, his eyes blazing.

“When? Where?” he demanded to know.

“In Nawa. We were told that she would come, to try to rescue
our hostages. When she was seen, the Regional Head of Military Intelligence,
Major General Yousef Anawi, was to be told, personally. The Mukhbarat, the
secret police, moved in. There was much confusion then. I was there. I saw things
I did not understand. I was ordered not to talk about it.”

Paul stood there, speechless, mouth open, stunned into
disbelief. The Syrians had taken those kids as hostages in order to take Capie?
How was that possible?

It made no sense to him. How could they know anything about
her? All of the terrorists involved in the Olympic Games terrorist attack were
dead. So how would they know that she would come, that she had red hair? How
did they know that?

This man wouldn’t know the answers to any of those questions.
Only the members of
Errabêlu
in Syria would know that.

Daneel was crying louder now, Merlin doing his best to
comfort the boy.

“Where did they take her?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know,” the avatar admitted. “I saw a circle of
light appear. She was unconscious, I think. Two Mukhbarat carried her through
the circle and disappeared. That’s all I saw. I was told several times not to
talk about it.”

There were mysteries here that puzzled Paul deeply. However,
now was not the time to reflect on such abstract thoughts. His missing wife was
the primary concern.

His engineer training kicked in. What options did he have? The
scan for the platinum 190 had not worked.

The satellite phone, of course.

Swiftly creating an internet display, he started sifting
through the websites. Yes, it could be done. Satellite phones could be tracked,
similar in fashion to tracking cell phones. As long as they were turned on.

Activating the appropriate website, he typed in the number,
initiating a search…

But the result came back negative. The phone was obviously
turned off.

El Kheir Restaurant

Hannan Street

Haifa, Israel

September

Friday 6:07 p.m. AWST

F
or
hours he struggled with some solution to the problem. He consulted with both
Merlin and Uncle Sam without figuring out a way to track Capie’s whereabouts.

A part of him wanted to charge straight into Damascus and
corner the wizard there, demanding answers. And he wouldn’t hesitate to use any
amount of force that it took to get those answers too.

Daneel was the reason he couldn’t do it. Confronting an
Errabêlu
wizard was very high risk. If it had only been himself to think about, he would
have done it. But he couldn’t expose Daneel to that too. Moreover, there was
still the matter of all the Normals of Earth. They were in jeopardy too, in the
long run, if he failed to stop
Errabêlu
eventually. Several times he
tried the internet again. And always the same result. The phone was not on and could
not be tracked.

For lack of anything better to do and because he was getting
hungry, he went by portal to the El Kheir Restaurant in Haifa and sat in a
corner booth. Part of him noticed how delicious the food was, but mostly he ate
in a mechanical fashion. Afterward, he couldn’t even remember what he had eaten.

He sat there, staring at the wall, feeling numb. In the automaton’s
monitor, Daneel watched his father somberly without saying a word.

And then the satellite phone rang.

It rang twice while Paul sat there blinking in stunned
amazement, not daring to believe that it really was ringing. There was only one
other person who knew that number.

Slowly, he picked it up and answered it.

“PAUL!” screamed Capie’s voice. “Paul, can you hear me? PAUL?!
Oh, God, please help me! PAUL! They are almost
HERE
!”

“Capie!” Paul yelled at the top of his lungs, alarming every
other person in the restaurant. “I can hear you! Where are you? What’s wrong?”

There was another agonizing scream, this time of pure pain.

Without warning, the phone hung up.

“
CAPIE
!” Paul shrieked at the top of his lungs, an
utter sense of panic threatening to rip him apart. He hurriedly paid his bill
and left the establishment, Daneel and Merlin in tow.

Outside, Paul skittered back and forth along the street,
glancing this way and that.

“Calm thyself,” Merlin implored him in a loud voice. “You do
Capie no good in this state.”

“Dad! What happened, Dad? Was that Mom on the phone?” Daneel
begged to know.

Paul came to a sudden halt, closed his eyes and took a deep
breath. “Yes, Merlin, you are right. I must not panic. I must think instead.”

He turned to face Daneel, steeling himself for what he had
to say. “Son, something is bad wrong with Mom. She said ‘they’re almost here.’”

“Then they might have killed her,” Daneel despondently
muttered. “Like her father.”

With a lump in Paul’s throat and his eyes on the verge of
tears, he nodded. “Yes, it is possible,” he barely managed to say. “But this is
not making sense. According to the Syrian Colonel, she had
already
been kidnapped.
Maybe she briefly escaped. Or she was able to get to a phone for a minute.”

“Or this is a trap,” Merlin added, realistically.

Paul nodded. “Yes, there is that possibility too. But I think
they will want to keep her alive for a while. She will be a complete mystery to
them. They will want to know who she is, where she came from and how she got
her powers.”

“They will want to know where you are too,” Daneel logically
pointed out.

“Yes, well, it’s possible that she may already have told
them that. But even if she tells them I am in Australia, they may not believe
her. They will want to confirm it.”

“Then they likely will torture her,” Daneel concluded, as he
began to softly cry.

“Where was she calling from?” Merlin prodded him.

“Excellent question and the first one I should have thought
of. Thanks, Merlin.” Without regard to the strange looks of the pedestrians
walking by, Paul created an internet display on the side of a block building
and initiated the satellite phone search yet again. This time, he got a
positive response, including the latitude and longitude.

“All right!” he shouted, pumping a fist in the air with
hysterical relief. “Now, where is that?” Google maps quickly told him that it
was in Eastern Europe, in Romania.

“Europe?” echoed a very surprised Paul. “What is she doing
in Europe?”

“We don’t know how long she will be there,” Merlin prompted.

“Right,” Paul nodded, with another deep breath. “We must act
fast, yes. But in case it is some sort of trap, we must act smart too.” He
glanced around again. “We need a workbench and a few tools.”

• • • •

From an Ace Hardware store on the east side of the city,
Paul purchased a soldering iron, solder, wire cutters, and all the USB adapter
cables they had in stock.

In an open pasture at the nearby Carmel Mountain National
Park, he set up a virtual reality work bench and, like a house a-fire, began
cutting and stripping wires. He also took one of the Oni talisman armbands off
and laid it on the bench as well.

“Dad! What are you doing?” Daneel pleaded to know, angst in
every word.

“Yes,” Merlin echoed, as he floated closer in the late
afternoon sunlight to get a better look at what Paul was working on. “I hope
you don’t mind. But I would like to know too! What are you up to?”

“They have her,” Paul explained in a rush. “It’s going to be
hard for me to just bust in and rescue her. Even eight Oni talismans probably
aren’t enough to let me get away with that. It’s quite likely, maybe even
probable, that they know about me. But the good news is that they don’t know
about you, son.”

“Me! What can I do?” Daneel exclaimed hopefully.

“Why do you need Daneel?” Merlin asked.

Paul waited a moment before answering. “I may need the help
of another wizard. It would more than double our chances of pulling off a
rescue. I can create a distraction while a Scottie does an end run.”

“You want to give me magical powers? Now?” Daneel squeaked.

“Yes. I won’t kid you, Daneel. It will be dangerous. What do
you say?” Paul asked, torn by the necessity to ask the youth to risk himself to
save Capie.

“And if a Scottie doesn’t work? Or if you can’t give him
magical powers?” Merlin asked.

Paul gulped. “Then I will have to try a more desperate
plan.”

Merlin’s gave him a lopsided smile. “It’s hard to imagine a
more desperate plan.”

“I’m ready. I’ll do it,” Daneel announced without fear.

Paul finished wiring a USB cable to the Oni talisman. “I
wish I had McDougall’s talisman. It is so much more powerful. Instead, I’m
going to wire up seven of these Oni talismans and plug them into your USB
ports. That will have to be enough.”

“That only leaves you one talisman,” Merlin pointed out,
with a dubious tone of voice.

“Yeah. This is all guess work. I’m making it up as I go
along.”

“Obviously.”

It didn’t take long. The solder had barely cooled as Paul
took an Oni talisman for himself and plugged the other seven newly cabled
talismans to the remaining open USB ports on Daneel’s motherboard. Then, using
the duct tape, he secured the seven talismans physically to Daneel’s frame. The
end result was crude but serviceable.

“MacGyver would be proud. Okay, I’m ready,” he announced.
“Let’s go.”

“A suggestion, if you please. Let us not go directly there,”
Merlin recommended. “We can use portals to get reasonably close and then we can
fly the remainder of the way. Less chance of being seen that way.”

“Agreed,” snapped Paul, laying his fingertips on as many of
Daneel’s talismans as possible and opening a portal. “First stop, eastern tip
of the island of Cyprus, then Afsin, Turkey, then the Turkish north coast.
Final destination is somewhere in eastern Romania. Here we come!”

• • • •

On the eastern tip of the island of Cyprus, Paul emerged
from a portal in front of the Apostolos Andreas Monastery, a long low
rectangular building of grey stone blocks. It was early evening here, the sun
practically sitting on the horizon. Maybe it was for the best, Paul mused as he
created his next portal, to arrive at his destination sometime after dark. A
rescue after sunset might be easier to pull off. Right. And what sort of odds
would Vegas quote on that possibility?

Even though he was in the eastern Mediterranean, where
Errabêlu
was far more likely to have a presence in this part of the world than others,
he was careful to keep his portals well away from the capital cities along his
path, like Beirut, Nicosia, and Ankara. Moreover, his portal jumps were of
necessity short, and he used every trick to disguise the energy involved as
much as possible.

Once across Turkey, their path turned west-northwest across
the Black Sea and in the general direction of Constanta, Romania.

“Romania. That seems like a strange place to take her,”
Merlin announced with a measured frown, glancing over at Paul.

Paul nodded, the darkening night making it difficult to
study the shore of the Romanian coast line to the west of them. “In eastern
Romania, huh.” Then, at that moment, Paul realized with a groan, just where
they were headed. “Transylvania! We’re headed for Transylvania! I can’t believe
it! Transylvania!”

Not understanding what Paul was grumbling about, Merlin
merely shrugged.

With an impatient frown, Paul performed another scan for the
platinum 190 and was gratified to find it on his heads-up display, at a range
of just over 300 miles, in a northwesterly direction. Thank God, she was there!

Paul studied the terrain ahead of them. “Can we portal in
closer?”

“That we can,” Merlin admitted. “Shorter jumps though.”

In fifty mile increments at first, followed by thirty and
then twenty, they portaled into the Romanian countryside to a small town known
as Toplita, high up in the Kelemen Alps, where the last portal dropped them off
just outside the town’s outer limits, in the center of a darkened road. As soon
as he had stepped clear of the portal, Paul shivered in the chilly night air.
It wasn’t far above freezing. With a snap of his fingers, he created a bubble
of warm air around himself.

“You’ve done this before. From here we should fly the last
twenty miles,” Merlin recommended, “flying the distance at low altitude and at
a low speed, lest the energy of a portal give us away.”

Paul studied the skyline around him. There was a moon, yes,
but less than quarter phase and it would be setting pretty soon. It was of very
little help.

“When are you going to give me magical powers, Dad?” Daneel anxiously
asked.

“Let’s wait until we get closer, son,” Paul answered. “I
would rather rescue Mom without risking you, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Oh, okay.”

• • • •

They had been flying in the nippy night air for what seemed
like hours but was probably a much shorter period of time.

“I sense a mountain range over there, to the northwest,”
Merlin pointed out. “We need to find a nice deserted spot to land in when we
get closer, perhaps in a forest clearing some place. Something a mile or so
from the target area would be nice.”

“There should be a ridgeline we can follow,” suggested Paul.
“It should go up higher into the mountains. Then we can look for a suitable
clearing, like you suggested. Let’s go.”

He waved a hand, altering course, now flying a northwesterly
course.

“Transylvania,” Paul muttered beneath his breath. “Of all
the places she could be, why does it have to be Transylvania?”

Despite the moonless night, Paul’s spell for enhanced night
vision allowed him to see a mountain valley, a small stream running off to the
north. Turning to the right, they followed the stream bed higher into the
mountains.

The stream took them up the gentle slope of a mountain,
curving gradually to the northwest again. Eventually, Paul pointed into the
tree line and they left the stream behind, maneuvering carefully at treetop
level above a thick forest.

“Ah,” murmured Merlin. “According to those coordinates I
saw, we should be very close now. Yes, I should have known. She’s in that
castle yonder, isn’t she?”

Merlin was right. Quite suddenly, there were some lights up
ahead and Paul could see a very large castle through a break in the trees. He
blinked in surprise. Just a few moments ago, he would have sworn that there
were no lights and no man-made structures in view but now, there the castle
was, big as life and impossible to miss.

He grimaced in distaste. Yes, of course she had to be in a
castle! Where else would the damsel-in-distress be kept? He sighed heavily and
shook his head grimly, not the least bit amused. No one would dare to put this
in a Hollywood film, not even in B-movies as bad as
Brain Robbers from Outer
Space
or
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
! Geez, the castle even
had a moat, for crying out loud!

Paul pointed down at a dirt road on the west side of the
castle property. “Let’s try landing over there.”

It may have been a dirt road but it was otherwise well
maintained. Paul studied the castle through the break in the trees, noting that
the drawbridges were on the north and east sides of the castle. The west side
had no such access.

Occasional snowflakes drifted through the air now.

“In there, huh?” Paul asked, with a stony expression.

“Those are the coordinates, yes,” Merlin confirmed.

Paul’s shoulders slumped. “Okay, I see no choice. Daneel, we
will have to give you magical powers.”

Merlin appeared surprised by that. “We’re going to do it
here? But that took you and Capie a day to recover from.”