The Agent's Daughter (24 page)

“
They were talking about
Mom’s accident!” Melina said.

“
That’s what I was
thinking, so I continued to listen closely. The technician said
that William had sent him over to the police station with paperwork
that documented a phony story about an accident that involved a
foreign agent in order to get the police to release a copy of the
picture. My guess it that he wanted to see what was captured on
film. The police gave the man a disk with the photo on it, and then
he gave the disk to William. But not until he made a copy of the
photo. He thought the expression on Laura’s face was funny, and he
wanted to show his coworker. Kinda weird.”

“
It’s more than weird,
it’s sick,” Evan said.

“
I got the impression that
William did not know that the technician had a copy of the photo,
so he had to show his coworker the photo in private. That is why
they were in the security room. Nobody ever goes into that
room.”

“
Except tools group
personnel,” Evan said.

“
It’s our own private
lounge,” David said, smiling. “So they walked over to the security
room computer and loaded the disk with the picture into the
computer’s disk drive. Then they used a photo editor program to
open the picture. I could see the computer screen from where I was
hiding, and my eyes almost popped out of their sockets when I saw
the image. It was Laura. You could see into her car and see that
she was not awake and slumped over. After a few chuckles about the
goofy expression on Laura’s face, they closed the photo editor,
took the disk, and left.

“
If they took the disk,
then how did you get the picture?” Melina asked.

“
I waited a few minutes,
and after I was sure that they were not coming back, I ran over to
the computer and searched through the temporary cache until I found
a copy of the photo. I knew that you should see it, so I emailed it
to you right from the security room computer. I was so flustered at
that point that I forgot about the glider and just went to my
office to try to calm down so I could drive home.”

“
So, were you able to calm
down and go home?” Evan asked.

“
Not exactly,” David said.
“I was in my office for a few hours when William knocked on the
door and came in. He said that I was seen leaving the security room
earlier in the day, and he wondered what I was doing in there. Now,
I know I was not seen by anyone when I was going in or coming out
of that room. I am sure of that. The only way that I could have
been seen leaving that room was if they had reviewed the security
disks for that hallway. My guess is that the email sent from that
computer triggered some security firewall. They were trying to find
out who sent it.”

“
What did you tell him?”
Evan asked.

“
I made up some story that
I saw the door open, and that I went in to investigate. He seemed
to accept that explanation, and then he left. At that point, I
wanted out of there, so I headed straight for the elevator. I was
riding down in the elevator, texting Alex that I was coming home
when I heard this thump and then a hissing sound coming from the
floor of the elevator. It took a second to realize that it was an
FCAN. It must have come from the ceiling because it was not in
there when I got on.”

“
This sounds kinda
familiar,” Melina said.

“
I already had my phone
out and was texting so I quickly added the words
help fcan elevator
and
then hit send. I think it went out. That is the last thing that I
remember before I woke up here.”

There was quiet as everyone took in all that
had been said.

After a few moments, Evan spoke. “The photo
tells me, without a doubt that there are some questions about
Laura’s accident. The biggest question that I have is why.
William’s interest in the photo would tell me that he is involved
somehow. But why would he want her to get into an accident?”

“
I don’t have an answer to
that, Evan,” David said, “but my guess is that he had some reason
to want Laura out of the way. And now he wants us out of the way
too.”

“
Agreed,” Evan replied. “I
now question whether what William told us about the Malaz wanting
us is true. He may or may not be planning to send us to Malazistan,
but I don’t think he plans on us coming back. We know too much
about Laura’s accident. Either way we’ve got to get out of here
now.”

“
You’re the expert,” David
said. “What would you suggest?”

“
The windows are barred,
and there is just the one door. It is solid metal, and there is
nothing in this room strong enough to break it down. The door is
the way out though. We are going to have to go to war with the
people that show up here to get us. We’ve got to make some weapons
from whatever we can find in this room.”

David scanned the room from where he was
standing. “This is not going to be easy. This room is empty. And
how many people do you figure that we are up against?”

“
We’ve been visited twice.
The first time, William came with two men. All three were armed.
The second time, when they brought you, there was no William, and
there were two men. And they were different men.”

“
That might be because you
broke that guy’s arm,” Melina offered.

“
That’s right, I forgot
about that. And that second guy also took some damage. If William
shows up too, I would plan on anywhere from two to four people.
With guns.”

“
And you can hear people
coming through that ceiling vent,” Melina said, pointing to the
vent in the ceiling. “It’s so loud, last time we could tell how
many people were coming by counting how many sets of footsteps we
could hear.”

“
That’s right,” Evan said.
“We should be able to know their exact strength before they open
the door. Okay, start looking through the room for anything that
can help us.”

Evan walked over to check around the shelves
along the wall again. David headed toward the sink so he could look
in the small cabinet below it. Melina followed him and began
looking in the tall cabinet next to the sink.

“
I shouldn’t tell you
this,” David said, looking up at Melina. “But it’s safe to say that
my son is crazy about you.”

Melina stopped searching the cabinet and
looked over at David. Alex is crazy all right, she thought.

“
Alex was so nervous about
you guys going out tonight that he wasn’t able to eat breakfast,”
David continued. “I didn’t think that was possible. His mother
finally sent him out to get a sandwich at his favorite sandwich
shop.”

“
I know the shop,” Melina
scowled.

“
Apparently, it’s a
popular hangout,” David said. “I got a text from Alex while he was
still in the shop. He said that some annoying girl from his class
had just came over and sat right down at his table. What was her
name …?”

“
Ellen?” Melina blurted
out.

“
That’s the one,” David
said, pointing to Melina. “Alex was not too happy with
her.”

“
David, could you come
over here and help me with this shelf?” Evan yelled from across the
room.

“
Excuse me,” David
said.

Melina stood there thinking. It had never
dawned on her that Ellen had forced herself on Alex. Now she felt
terrible about doubting him. And she felt even worse about not
being able to talk to him and tell him that it was okay. For the
first time since she found herself in that room, she ached to get
out. She had to speak with Alex. To tell him that it was all right.
To tell him that she understood that it was Ellen's fault. For now,
the best she could do was help her dad and David get them out of
there.

Melina went back to the cabinet and
continued her search. She found nothing on the lower shelves, but
she could not see the top shelf, so she climbed up the cabinet
using the lower shelves as a ladder. As she reached the top shelf,
she could see something all the way in the back. She stretched her
arm as far as it could reach, and she pulled it out.

It was a long extension cord.

She jumped down to the floor and looked at
it. An extension cord not being much of a weapon, she was about to
put it back the cabinet when she paused and looked at it again.

“
That’s it,” she said as
she grabbed it and carried it over to where her dad and David
were.

They were in the process of moving a tall
metal shelf unit from the wall to over by the door. As she walked
up, Melina could hear the two of them discussing their plan.

“
If we move the shelf
right here,” Evan said, “Then when they come in, we can push it
over on them.”

“
Make sure that it’s not
too close to the door,” David said. “We don’t want it to hit the
wall before it hits anyone.”

Evan looked up and saw Melina standing in
front of him holding the extension cord. “I see you found
something,” he said. “I’m sure we can find a use for that
somehow.”

“
I already know how we can
use it,” she said.

Evan was intrigued by this, and now David
stopped what he was doing to listen.

Melina continued. “First, we need to slice
off the tip of one end of the cord. The opposite end of the one
that has the plug. We then attach the bare wires to the doorknob.
When someone goes to unlock the door, once we see that the deadbolt
has been opened, we plug in the other end of the cord into the
outlet while the person turns the doorknob. The person turning the
knob would receive a massive shock and would be stunned before they
even got into the room.”

Evan and David looked at each other, mouths
open. Then they looked back at Melina.

“
That’s a fantastic idea!”
David said.

Evan walked over and put his hand on her
shoulder. “Melina, that is really smart. It’s something that your
mom would have thought of. I sometimes forget how much of her is in
you.”

“
Your father is right,”
David said. “I’ve never worked directly with your mother, but tools
groups around the world use her inventions. Your idea is classic
Laura. Way outside the box. Your mother is crazy smart. How she
comes up with these ideas for gadgets for the agents, I honestly
don’t know.”

“
My dad was just telling
me about some of them before you got here,” Melina said.

“
Let me tell you, my
favorite of hers is the LRED,” David said as he looked toward Evan.
“I know you’ve used that one a few times.”

“
What’s an LRED?” Melina
asked.

“
The government is big on
acronyms,” Evan said. “It stands for long range electrostatic
disabler. It is a gun that looks like a shotgun, but it shoots a
projectile the size of a shotgun shell that acts like a
self-contained electroshock weapon.”

“
The principle is the same
as the electroshock weapons that the police use to disable crooks,”
David said. “You know the ones that shoot sharp pins connected to
wires at a perpetrator. In the police version, the wires are
connected to a battery in the gun that provides the high voltage to
stun and disable the person. An LRED still has sharp pins that are
connected by wires to a high voltage source, but the difference is
that the wires are connected to a power source contained in the
projectile.”

“
Mom’s energy technology
allowed the projectile to be self-contained and not connected to
the gun. This allowed the projectile to be fired at a great
distance. The range is about a hundred yards.”

“
The best part is the
parachute,” David said. “The projectile has to travel at a high
velocity in order to reach the target. However, it must be at near
zero velocity when the pins come out, so it doesn’t kill the
target. There is a sensor in the projectile, and when it detects
that it is near the target, a tiny parachute pops out the back that
slows it down. At that point, wires pop out the front, and it
functions just like a regular electroshock weapon.”

“
That sounds pretty cool,”
Melina said. “We could sure use one of those right now.”

“
You know what one of your
mom’s gadgets we could use right now?” Evan asked. “The magnetic
bullet deflector.”

“
Magnetic bullet
deflector?” Melina said. “What, no fancy acronym for that
one?”

“
Your mother was still
working on it,” David said. “She had only built one prototype, so
they hadn’t had gotten around to giving it a formal
acronym.”

“
You see, kiddo,” Evan
said. “It was the last thing that your mother worked on before her
accident.”

“
So what did it do? Other
than what is apparent from the name.”

“
That’s pretty much what
it does. Mom took one of her miniature nuclear power sources, the
smallest one she had ever made, and merged it with a small
donut-shaped electromagnet.”

“
Wait a minute,” Melina
said. “We are studying this in school. You can create a magnetic
field with an electromagnet. It turns electricity into
magnetism.”

“
That’s right,” Evan said.
“Mom took a wire and wound it thousands of times around a solid
iron ring. As the current is passed in a certain direction in the
wire, a strong repulsive magnetic field is induced. If the ring is
pointed in the direction of a bullet, the magnetic field is strong
enough to deflect it. Up to five feet of deflection, when the
shooter is as close as fifteen feet. It won’t stop the bullet, but
it will stop it from hitting you.”