“Do you trust him?”
Carter looked over at her passenger while considering her question, “No. I don't trust him.” She looked back at the road, “But at the same time, it's not like we have a lot of options. If we don't take him at his word, and follow through, he's just going to keep hunting until he has both of you, and you'll be in DC, or where ever it is that he wants to keep you.”
“But being a prisoner on station is not better.” She scoffed at her, “It does not matter that we will be free to go where ever we want on station, we will never be able to return to Earth. And that makes us prisoners, without the cage.”
“I suppose you're right, but consider this,” She paused for a moment as she took a turn, “When you did what you did, did you really expect that the United States would just say, oh well, no big deal? I mean, just in terms of property damage alone, you committed a felony, to say nothing about the terrorism charges they could have brought.”
She turned away and looked out her window, and said nothing in response. Sam let the silence hang in the car for a couple of minutes before she spoke again, “I take it that your silence means that you weren't entirely on board with this idea.”
“No, I was not.”
“Then why did you take part in it?”
“I only agree to be contact person, I did not want anything to do with, I did not realize until after it was done, what I was getting myself into.”
“You couldn't back out?”
She shook her head.
Sam pulled the car into a parking lot where she told her to go, “You don't have to come with us. You heard what he said, he knew you were just the contact, there's no charges against you.”
“That does not mean that there will not be later.”
“I doubt it. There's nothing for them to gain by doing so.”
She opened her door and began to get out, “I do not share your optimism.”
Sam sighed as she got out of the car herself, she looked around at her surroundings, an apparently abandoned warehouse just outside of the inner loop of Houston. Not anywhere she had planned on looking herself, at least, not until the bottom of the list. She knew that Peter would never have consented to drive her here, at least not unless they were in broad daylight, and even then her hair would probably be standing on end. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a small group of teenagers, maybe the oldest was in his early 20s. They were looking in her direction, possibly sizing her up, possibly just curious as to what she was doing here at 8 in the evening. The sun was setting behind them, and in a few minutes, twenty at most, they would lose the natural light, to be replaced by what was apparently two or three out of sixteen light poles. She glanced around to see what else could be an issue if they had to stay later than she wanted to. Nothing immediately caught her attention, other than the group of boys all turned to face her, rather than each other. She was clearly the focus of the groups entire attention. They had ceased talking directly among themselves and while she could still hear them talking, it was clear by their posture that they were talking about her.
Ms. Phoeng was several meters in front of her, ignoring the boys and instead making her way towards a barricaded door near one of the garage doors. Sam increased her pace, without appearing to be hurrying, to catch up with her. When she had caught up to her, she spared a glance over to the boys. They had almost casually crossed the street, as if they were trying to be intimidating. Sam wasn't intimidated in the least, but certainly did not want to have to shoot any of them. She stopped at the barricaded door, and waited patiently as Ms. Phoeng rapped a sequence on it, she kept herself facing her while still being able to track the boys out of the corner of her eye. Sam subconsciously pulled her right hand closer to her concealed pistol. It seemed to take forever for the door to open as the boys began to get bolder, not even caring if they were noticed any more. She was just about the clear the concealment of her pistol when the door opened. The boys stopped their advance, and the two of them were pulled into the building. The door was slammed shut behind them. Her eyes seemed to take forever to adjust to the darkness inside the building, she couldn't make out anything but the outline of the door.
“Sorry about that, Captain Carter. They aren't harmless, but they are useful. They've kept people away, although I've had to show them on more than one occasion that I am much smarter than them, and more than willing to hurt them if they try to come in here.”
She detected a faint Spanish accent on her voice, but except for that her English was nearly flawless. Sam still couldn't quite make out anything, but felt a gentle tug on her hand leading her into the building. One thing that she did notice, was the smell, it smelled as if something may have been rotting outside, odd that she didn't notice it when they were outside, except that the slight breeze may have been pulling the smell away from them, “I am sorry about the lighting too, but it helps if someone does get through the door, that they can't see anything immediately either. We'll get to a place where you'll be able to see in just a moment.”
A door opened ahead of them filling the room with a slender beam of light, the sudden change from dark to light blinded Sam again, but her eyes gradually adjusted and she made out a fairly large room ahead of her. When she walked in, she swept her gaze across the room taking in the elaborate setup. Off to one side was an old chalkboard, equations and circuits written on it, erased, written over, erased again and finally left up there. Towards the middle of the room was several computers, one of them was connected by hard line to a cubic device about 3 meters on each side. Her gaze stopped there as she examined the device from afar.
She hadn't even noticed the young Hispanic girl standing in front of her. "It's a broad spectrum electronic countermeasures system, capable of filling as much, or as little, of the radio spectrum with white-noise capable of distorting or even out right blocking many frequencies at once. It can even selectively block one channel while letting the two adjacent channels through without so much as snow."
Sam couldn't take her eyes off of it, "What kind of range does it have?"
"Seventy kilometers was the range in its first test, I'm sure I could have made it area of effect larger if I had more power."
Sam finally blinked and turned to the girl, "Sam Carter." She held out her hand for the girl to take.
"Maria Hernandez." She took Sam's hand and looked behind them, "Not to press, but should we get out of here? Not that I'm doubting you, Captain, but I know they know where you are, so they know where I am now."
"We have to leave, but we have some time." Sam smiled at her, "Micheal is providing us some interference. Let's get some things together before we go."
She regarded Sam with a cold stare, "Like what, exactly?"
Sam stuck her head out towards the other side of the room, "Your personal effects, for example. I doubt we have time to get the device, but we can certainly get your computers." She looked around, "Can I make a phone call?"
Maria nodded, "It's not running right now, although with a flip of a switch I can jam everything in this building. With very little power required."
Sam smiled, "Not a bad idea, I'm going to call someone to help us get out of here. Once we're gone, turn it on and make Robert's life just a bit more difficult."
Maria started walking towards a bedroom setup, it looked like a half bedroom with no expectation of privacy, Sam didn't want to know what she did for personal hygiene, because she didn't spot anything that could even be used as a bathtub or a shower. Suddenly the source of the odor from earlier dawned on her, she probably hasn't had a bath in weeks. She was lost in that thought that she missed Maria's question. "I said, who is Robert?" Maria had stopped walking and was now staring hard at her.
Sam had already opened her mouth to breathe through it, rather than her nose, "Robert is the NSA guy that was here for you."
Ms Phoeng finally spoke up, "He caught me at plant. He said I could go free if you go with Sam."
Maria glared at Sam, "You're lying to me!"
Sam shook her head, "Micheal is not providing physical interference. He's not in orbit causing trouble. He's hacked the NSA real-time satellites, the NSA thinks we're still driving. But he can't keep it up for long, maybe fifteen more minutes. Then it's a race to see who gets here first, James, or Robert. I want to give James a head start. Robert says he just wants the device, as long as you come with me. But I wouldn't put it past him to get you too, if the opportunity arises."
She looked at her, sizing her up, and then turned and ran off to her bedroom, "Call your friend and get those computers shut down, I can be ready to go in five minutes."
"The device has to stay." Sam cautioned as she raised her phone to her head.
Maria shouted back, "That's fine, it's just a prototype. If I had better parts I could make it much better."
Sam put the phone down, "A truck will be here in twenty minutes."
"That's cutting it close. Move the computers next to that door over there." Maria waved in the direction of a garage door. "That door opens, we can load your truck from there."
Sam ran over to the computers and began shutting them down, "What about the boys outside?"
Maria smiled as she closed up her bedroll, "Thugs today don't hold a candle to gangs twenty years ago, I flip a switch and their smart phones get blocked, they leave to find signal for their phones. I've done it a dozen times before, they were the guinea pigs that I tested the ECM device on, making sure it worked before I tried the massive jamming field. Every time I flipped the switch, they left."
Sam started pulling the computers apart, most were laptops, but there were two desktops, including the one tied directly to the ECM device. "Are you going to be able to control it once the computers are disconnected?"
"Yes and no, it can be turned on, but the frequency can't be adjusted. So while it will work, nothing else will either, GPS, wireless networks, radio, anything. The affected radius will only be about 200 yards.". She smiled, "There's one house that keeps calling their Satellite provider every time it turn it on. I think they're about ready to drop the dish."
"Think of what an unscrupulous cable company could do if they had this ability." Sam packed up the third laptop. "Although it would disrupt wireless networks too, most cable companies love to provide that service too."
"It blocks everything, no one would be able to call even 911, unless they had a land-line. And anyone with a cell phone that used the tower right behind me wouldn't get signal either, even if they were out side the 200 yard range."
Sam zipped up the fourth laptop, "How long does the effect last?"
Maria moved her packed up stuff over to the garage wall, "It's over the instant I turn it off. But it uses more power than I can pull from the grid, so I have to run it off of a capacitor. The capacitor has enough power to last for twenty five minutes at that power level. If it was fully charged, it could run for 90 minutes."
"So we flip the switch as we're leaving and we get a 20 minute head start."
She stopped at the door, "Are you expecting them to chase us?"
Sam shrugged, "I don't trust them, even though he says he's done with me, and you, I don't believe it."
"Can I leave now?"
Maria looked at her contact person with an expression of guilt, "If you want to, I thank you for your help, and you'll find the money we agreed to in your bank account. I can't ask you to follow me any further. I'll still be looking out for you, when I can."
Ms. Phoeng bowed her head and ran out the way they came in. Sam moved to follow but Maria had already walked over to her to start packing up the last two computers and stopped her, "She lives a block from here, she'll be fine."
"I'm curious as to where you got the money for this stuff?"
"Call it drug money." Maria shook her head, "My father was a cartel assassin, he was given a lot of money to make sure that the drug smuggling ring in the Houston area ran without too much interference. Most of the time it was just a bribe, but occasionally he had to off someone who threatened it. Most of them were either pushers who strayed away, or a rival cartel member. But he had to off a couple HPD officers that got too close, the last one cost him his life as well. But his money was well concealed, my parents were never married, although he constantly provided money for her and me. She died a year ago, a revenge hit I'm told, and I had already had a knack for electrical engineering, so I took the money and began working."
Sam said nothing, mindful that her reaction to anything she might say could be trouble.
"I don't care to be involved in the drug war, but because of my father I am. Even though he did what he could to hide us from it, they still found her. I don't think they'd think twice if they found me. This ECM device was my ticket out of their way, I thought at first I could sell it, and go anywhere I wanted to. But then I realized that there was only one place I could be out of their reach, and that was L1."
"Why would you even have thought to build this thing?"
"A not yet publicly known scandal, two of the larger cartels got their hands on drones they shot down over the border. They've repaired them and are using them to hunt down border patrol agents, and their rivals. You probably haven't noticed from where you are, but there has been a 40% jump in violence on the border. Agents in their trucks are being ambushed in well coordinated attacks, when the neighboring agents and the national guard move in to assist, its already over, but 100 km of border opens up every time, and hundreds of people are pushed through, carrying tens of thousands of pounds of crack, cocaine, heroin, amongst others."
Sam blinked, "The drug war is going real bad then."
"I don't know which ones has them, I don't even know which one killed my mother, but if they come looking for me, and they have a drone, now they'll never find me, and they'll lose the drone."
They pulled the last computer over to the garage door, and sat down to wait for the truck. Sam pulled out a piece of paper from one of the boxes, "If you'll get me a list of what you would need, I'll get the list sent on to the right people."
Maria regarded her with a cold stare, "Not quite. I want to be sure that I'm going to be safe up there. Once I get up there, I'm kinda stuck there aren't I?"
"No, but there's few places that would take you on Earth, maybe Russia, you could join Snowden."
"No thanks, I've seen the way they treat him there."
"Then I'm not sure what you're looking for. Captain Atkinson can't offer you asylum, it's not another country up there. It's a neutral international space station. Technically under international law, but he doesn't recognize the UN as an international government for a host of different reasons."
"I just want a re-assurance that he's not going to discard me when he's got what he wants."
"He's kept the Persian refugee, and all she's done is wander the station learning English."
She stopped and stared at the floor for a moment before looking back at Sam, "Alright."
Topic: Fortune Favors... (Read 11804 times)