Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (8 page)

Her eyes were tearing up. “We have to save him. Quickly.”

Paul nodded in total agreement, his heart going out to her. “And
we will do just that. Come, we need to get over there using the least amount of
magical energy possible. I propose we find a cab.”

They flew across the airport, avoiding all the air traffic,
and landed near the terminal building. A spell kept the airsoft equipment and
the night vision goggles invisible, though they didn’t try to hide the Motorola
radios or headsets.

Outside the baggage claim area, they hailed a cab and
instructed the driver to take them around to the east side of the River, to
2750 South Capitol Street in Washington D.C. The driver, an elderly Hispanic man,
pointed out that there was virtually nothing at that location, but Paul
responded that they were meeting someone there. With a shrug, the driver drove
out of the airport, taking the GW Parkway north.

The taxi was able to quickly carry them to the I-395 loop
and from there, to the I-695 freeway heading to the southeast of the city and
across the Anacostia River. On the south bank, the interstate became the I-295
which quickly took them to South Capitol Street. Another couple of miles
brought them to a padlocked chain link gate, an entrance to an empty parking
lot in front of a small commercial business.

Across the boulevard, to their west, lay the perimeter of
the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling military complex.

Paying off the perplexed driver, Paul added a substantial
tip.

Even at this hour of the early morning, there were more than
a few cars using the four lane road, and they had to wait for a gap before
crossing to the west side of the pavement. Then they moved across a short strip
of grass and a set of railroad tracks into a narrow line of trees. In front of
them now was a barbed-wire topped chain link fence with signs declaring it to
be US Government property and that trespassers would be prosecuted.

Using the absolute minimum level of energy, they levitated
over the fence and down to the ground on the west side.

“The motor pool is right up against the other side of that
second fence,” Paul said, nodding at another fence line in front of them.
“We’ll find a vehicle there.”

“How thoughtful of the US Government to give us a helping
hand here. My feet certainly thank them,” Capie said with a great deal of
sarcasm.

Another brief levitation spell and they were into the
central area of the motor pool. The area was brightly lit from several street
security lights mounted high up on aluminum light poles. Around them, they
could see a number of M35 2.5 ton trucks in both green and brown camouflage
paint schemes. 

“I see some Humvees over there,” Capie pointed out.

“Let’s hope they left some gas in one of them for us too.”

Choosing the one closest to the motor pool front entrance, Paul
and Capie climbed in, using a spell to start the vehicle and another one to
open the main gate.

Paul spun the steering wheel, piloting the vehicle onto
Mitscher Road and hitting the gas.

“Now, to find the electrical substation,” Paul grumbled as he
glanced around the base.

They found it easily enough, in a small white one-story,
non-descript metal building with no windows.

Leaving the Humvee in the parking lot, they dropped a cloak
of invisibility around themselves and strode briskly up the white sidewalk to
the side door. The lock on the door snicked open at Capie’s command, the
building alarm short-circuiting in a silent puff of smoke.

Inside the dimly lit structure, Paul glanced around at all
the machinery. There were step down transformers and buss bars everywhere.

The two MCCs (Motor Control Centers) were not hard to find
either. There, Paul studied the main breaker panels and switch designators.

“Nice of the engineers here to organize things and keep them
up to date,” Paul wisecracked before pointing to several large breakers. “Those
breakers control the feeds to the DIA building where your father is.” He looked
back at Capie. “Not only am I going to open those feeds, I am going to weld
them open. It will take hours, perhaps days for the Normals to replace them.
Are you ready?”

“Do it!” Capie urged him.

One by one, Paul grasped the handles and forced them
downward. Then with a wave of his hand, the breakers arch-flashed in blindingly
bright white bursts for a couple of seconds.

“Let’s go,” Paul said hurriedly. “We need to get to your
father before they try to move him to another location, such as a building that
still has AC power.”

• • • •

The Humvee carried them over to Boundary Drive and up to the
gate for the parking lot of the huge DIA complex. They noted with grim amusement
the agitation of flashlights in the guard house.

As they hurtled past, Paul muttered quietly in that
direction, “This is not the car and we are not the people you’re looking for.”

Spinning the steering wheel with one hand and leaning hard
on the gas pedal, he raced up the ramp to the top of the parking garage and
straight to the covered walkway at the building’s rear entrance.

As far as the two of them could tell, only a few emergency
exit lights were on. Otherwise, the building was both dark and silent.

Paul snapped on his night vision goggles, patted the pistol
in his shoulder holster, and grasped the airsoft rifle.

“Communications check,” he said softly into his mic.

“Loud and clear,” Capie nervously replied. “Let’s go get
Dad.”

Paul gave her a quick smiling nod and got out of the Humvee.
From there, the two of them jogged over to the rear door of the building. With
a flick of a wrist, the lock snapped open and they dashed inside.

“Okay, we need to go down two floors,” Paul announced as he
fast scanned the hallways around them. “And I want to use the 4-D Man spell.
Ready?”

“Yes, I think so. Let’s go.”

Paul stepped close to her and cast the spell. The two of
them dropped through the floor, down past ground level and then into basement
level B-1.

It was one of the weirdest experiences of Capie’s life,
passing through solid matter as if it was no more than smoke.

Floating to a stop, they found themselves in a pitch black
corridor, lit only with the IR of their night vision goggles. Everything around
them was only visible in ghostly green images through the goggles.

But they could hear someone talking.

“…the whole building,” squawked one male voice. “Thankfully
some of the exit emergency signs are lit up and the radios still work. Alan
should be back with the flashlights soon.”

Paul waved to his wife and advanced around a corner,
silently stealing toward the source of the voice.

There were two men there, dressed in security guard uniforms,
restlessly shuffling around in the blackness of the corridor. Pointing his
finger at both of them, Paul cast another spell and the two guards silently
folded up on the floor, fast asleep.

“I want to try the avatar spell,” Capie quietly volunteered.

“While you are doing that, I will check for more security guards,”
murmured Paul as he walked a few feet further up the corridor.

Capie got busy, thinking of the spell she had seen Paul use
on John back at Yerkes Observatory.

“In the name of Gandolph, Queen Elsa, and Tim the Enchanter
from Monty Python, may there be an avatar of this man to answer some
questions,” she pronounced firmly with a wave of one hand.

In her goggles, she saw a ball of green smoke spring into
existence a few feet away. It swiftly grew into an exact image of one of the
two guards.

And then she blinked.

Well no, not quite a duplicate. This one was subtly
different.

Even in the green lighting of the goggles, the face appeared
distorted, almost radiating evil. And the eyes were slanted and cruel.

“Ugh!” Capie hissed. “Like a zombie! Not cool!”

Waving both hands frantically back and forth, the figure
faded from sight.

“Wow,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief and looking
again at the man she had cast the avatar from. “You, sir, are one total sicko. Talk
about ‘monsters from the ID!’” she said, quoting from
Forbidden Planet
.
“I guess I’d better try the other guard.”

This time the spell worked as intended and a ‘normal-looking’
duplicate of the second guard appeared in the corridor.

“Now,” Capie demanded sternly. “Where is my father?”

• • • •

“Paul!
Paul
!” clamored Capie as she dashed down the
corridor.

As he stepped into her way, he hissed at her. “Not so
loud
!
What’s wrong?”

“He’s not here! Dad is not
here
!” she shouted. “The
guard told me!”

“Calm down! Where is he?”

“The Bolling Clinic, he said! Paul, they brought him in
several hours ago! Two special agent types, the guard said. And then, an hour
after that, they had to take him to the Bolling Clinic. The guard I was talking
to didn’t know why, just that his condition was serious!”

Paul nodded then realized that the gesture was pretty
pointless in the dark. “Those special agents were Oni, no doubt. Okay, let’s
get out of here and find the Bolling Clinic.”

“I asked the guard already,” snapped Capie as she yanked frantically
on his arm. “It’s just north of the motor pool! Let’s go!
Hurry
!”

579
^th
Medical Group (Bolling Clinic)

238 Brookley Ave SW

Washington, DC

June

Tuesday 4:01 a.m. EDT

T
he
Humvee raced up Mitscher Road, the tires squealing as it tore into the clinic’s
rear parking lot. Paul drove like a mad man, the vehicle screaming around the
building and up to the north end, where the emergency entrance was located.
Standing on the brakes, all four wheels locking, the tires squalling as they
burned rubber on the asphalt, Paul brought the Humvee to a jarring halt.

Leaving the engine still running and its doors wide open, Paul
and Capie bolted across a narrow strip of pavement and through the double-wide metal
doors of the clinic, using a sleep spell on the four Normals (nurses and
orderlies) that got in their way. At the nurse’s station, they put two more
nurses to sleep and then used a spell to create an avatar of one of them.

“Where is my father?!” demanded Capie hotly of the holographic
image.

“Christopher Kingsley, the fifty three year old man they
brought in a few hours ago,” Paul added breathlessly.

“Room 108, down that hall,” was the emotionless response.

Capie didn’t hesitate but tore off in that direction. Paul
took a couple of seconds to dismiss the avatar spell.

And then he too took off at a sprint down the hallway.

He was just entering the doorway of Room 108 when Capie started
screaming at the top of her lungs.

“
NNOOOO
!”

The shriek was so loud that it pierced Paul’s brain like ice
picks. He turned away, clapping his hands over his ears.

Snapping back around, he saw that Capie was standing over a
gurney, her mouth wide open, her eyes filled with terror, both her hands
gripping the body there tightly.

Her father’s body.

One corner of Paul’s mind noted that the medical staff must
have tried to treat him. Chris was shirtless and there were red marks on his
chest. Also, there were several items of hospital equipment nearby including a
heart monitor and a defibrillator.

As Capie continued screaming, she pulled her father up to
her bosom, her arms wrapped like a vise around him.

A stab of pain hit Paul squarely in the chest and he found
it difficult to breath. Tears welled up in his eyes and he choked and then coughed.
For several more seconds, he froze in unbelief, hoping against all hope that he
was misinterpreting what he was seeing. It just couldn’t be true, not after all
that they had been through to pull off a daring rescue, and not when they had
the man safely in their grasp.

Paul dashed over to the two of them, reaching out to clasp
his hand on the professor’s arm, instantly noting how cold the arm was. A quick
spell confirmed his worst fears.

Chris Kingsley, his wife’s father, was dead.

Capie screamed and bawled for what seemed like a lifetime,
but it was actually only several minutes, gently rocking her father’s body back
and forth with her own. Bewildered by the unexpected calamity, Paul’s mind
refused to think logically. All he could feel and think about was Capie and the
pain that she was suffering.

Merlin snapped into existence in the doorway and steadily
moved toward them. Paul looked up at the older wizard’s saddened face. Paul
guessed that his own expression must have told Merlin exactly how he felt.

“I’m so sorry, young man,” Merlin said, his calm voice
reaching Paul’s ears even over the din of Capie’s wailing lament. “He’s been
gone for hours, much too long for any magic to help.”

Paul nodded, still stunned by the loss.

Merlin turned and stared at Capie and Chris intently. “The
cause of death isn’t obvious,” he announced sadly. “No signs of trauma. You
would need a doctor, of course, to tell you more than that.”

With a troubled nod, Paul agreed. “Let’s have Dr. Beverly
Crusher here with a tricorder, please.”

Merlin morphed into the image of the red-headed physician in
the blue and black StarFleet uniform, carrying a standard medical tricorder.

Without a word, she brushed past Paul, sweeping the tricorder
over the body, the trilling of the instrument barely heard over the sound of
Capie’s crying. Capie seemed not to notice the hologram.

The tricorder warbled for a few seconds and then chirped.

“Acute myocardial infarction,” Dr. Crusher announced sadly.
“Moderate state of atherosclerosis. Apparent rupture of atherosclerotic plaque and
blockage of the distal right coronary artery.” She leaned back from the body
and gave Paul a sad frown. “In other words, a heart attack.”

Looking down at the floor, Paul wiped away a tear. “So they
didn’t kill him.”

Dr. Crusher shook her head. “Not directly, no. But his case
is not that advanced. I would say that acute physiological stress was a major
contributing factor. So yes, they are at least partly to blame.”

“Thanks, Doctor. Can I have Merlin back?”

The image of the doctor blurred, to be replaced by Merlin.
He nodded at Paul. “Yes, the shock is great right now but you cannot stay here.
Apparently, when Chris Kingsley died, the Oni left, since there was no special
reason for them to stay after that. That seems to be why there are no Oni here
at the moment. But when they realize that you avoided the trap in Chicago, there
will be wizards and Oni coming here. You must take Capie and be gone by that
time.”

Merlin was right. Their time here was limited. There would
be time later to mourn Chris’s loss but only after they left this place.

Looking at Capie, Paul instinctively knew she would not go
anywhere without her father’s body. And that was just as well. The man deserved
a decent burial and Paul pledged in that moment to see that he got it.

Moving to his wife’s side, he put his arm around her
shoulder.

“We’ll take him home, dear, just as soon as you are ready,”
he told her gently.

• • • •

It was a hot and muggy day in southern Wisconsin, the air
uncommonly still. Capie watched as Pastor Abrahams mumbled the words of the
graveside service, speaking of the resurrection of the dead in the life to come.

In front of her lay the casket, the one with the remains of
Professor Christopher Edgar Kingsley. In a few minutes, it would be lowered
into the ground and covered over with dirt and sod, with a dual headstone
already in place to mark the gravesite. The grave of Chris’s wife, Myra, lay
next to his.

Paul stood beside Capie, glancing anxiously at her every so
often. Her face was bleak and vacant as she stared at the casket.

Inside, Capie felt hollow with a terrible emptiness, along
with the loneliness, the grief of never again seeing her father, of sharing the
things of her life with him, of talking to him and listening to his voice.

On the one hand, she knew her father was dead. After all,
she had held his body in her arms, had felt the cold clammy skin, had stared at
his lifeless eyes and sensed the absence of life therein. Intellectually, the
fact of his death had been driven into her soul like a long sharp dagger. There
was no denial possible.

But her heart spoke a different story. Every fiber thereof
denied that such an event could have taken place at all, let alone so quickly.
He just couldn’t be dead. It just wasn’t possible. Her memories of his life
were just too strong. Her heart insisted that at any moment she would hear his
strong confident voice again, feel the touch of his hand and see his smiling
face staring down at her. The sight of the closed casket in front of her was an
impossible nightmare, from which she would wake up any minute now. It wasn’t
real. None of this could possibly be real.

And yet it was.

The pain was so intense. She just didn’t know how she could
carry on. The emptiness in her soul could never be filled again; the wound to
her psyche could never be healed.

Paul knew of his wife’s pain. And he also knew that in time,
all those feelings would diminish. No, they would never entirely go away. There
would always be a hurt deep inside her soul, just as there still was in his for
his mother and yes, even for his father too. And just when Capie would think
she had learned to deal with it, something significant would happen in her life
and she would have a sudden urge to call her father, to share that event with
him. But then the memory of his death would all come crashing back down on her
again and she would mourn his loss once more.

All of this Paul knew. And much more. He would help his wife
through it, as well as any spouse could help someone who had just lost a
parent. He would be there for her when she needed him. After all, he owed it to
her, for not finding a way to stop Chris’s death in the first place. He had
known it was likely to happen. Yes, intellectually he understood that it wasn’t
his fault. That he had been left with few options. But that was what his logical
engineering mind told him, not his heart. If he had just been smarter, perhaps
a bit more forceful, perhaps he could have done something—anything—to have
prevented this tragedy and to have saved his wife from the awful pain she was
going through now.

And he hadn’t. So yes, he was feeling more than just a little
bit guilty. And the only way to make up for his ‘mistakes’ was to make sure
Capie recovered as quickly as possible from this catastrophe.

Paul glanced around at the people present. There weren’t
many. Two of Capie’s aunts, an uncle and a handful of her cousins. Also a
couple of Chris’s co-workers and one of his long time neighbors. It was a thin
crowd.

Part of that was Paul’s fault. He was worried that
Errabêlu
might use the opportunity of the professor’s funeral as a trap to snare
both Capie and himself. Therefore, Paul had made a few arrangements to throw
them off the scent. First, he had secretly arranged to ship another corpse to a
different funeral home in Illinois. Right now, there was a sealed casket in a
funeral home in Chicago with Chris’s name on it. The obituary published in the
newspapers named that same Chicago funeral home and stated that the funeral
service and burial would be held tomorrow, in a cemetery in that state, not
Wisconsin. Paul was sure that
Errabêlu
would be quite upset when they
discovered the switch and learned that Paul and Capie had indeed been present
for the actual funeral and burial.

In addition to all of the preparations for the funeral over
the last two days, Paul had also been busy with a few other tasks. Using McDougall’s
talisman, he had ‘rescued’ all of Capie’s personal belongs from Fermi Labs,
storing them and his tantalum block in a PODS container and paying to have the
container shipped to Park City, just north of Wichita, Kansas. Then he had
retrieved the computer and the emerald from the small cave under Bauer Road in
Naperville. Unfortunately, the computer had been thoroughly soaked with water and
was probably useless to him now.

Furthermore, he had transported the
Errabêlu
prisoners,
dropping the eight Oni onto Cannibal Island and McDougall on Little Sandy
Island in the middle of Lake Winnipeg in Canada and leaving them with several
cases of Spam, PBJ sandwiches, and Vienna sausages. There was very little human
presence on the lake and therefore much less of a chance that the Oni or McDougall
would be rescued accidently. Oh, sure, an even more permanent solution was
needed, but now he had weeks, maybe months to work it all out.

For the hundredth time, Paul glanced around the cemetery. He
was still nervous about how exposed they were right now and had several sentry
spells out, to warn him of any use of magic in the extended area.

The pastor closed his bible and nodded at the undertaker.
With a snap of a switch and the quiet whine of an electric motor, the casket
slowly began its one-way journey downward, six feet into the hard ground.

It was incredibly difficult to say goodbye for the very last
time.

“His death will have meaning,” Paul muttered softly to Capie
as she cried bitter tears into a handkerchief. “This I swear to you. He didn’t
die for nothing.”

Capie nodded absently, the only clue that Paul had that she
had heard him at all.