NaNoWriMo, Day Sixteen

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

After yet another day of IRL activities (housework, dog things, a flick with The Long Suffering Wife, etc) it’s again almost 21:00 and here’s that blank screen. Gonna need some help.

I call on the power of Diet Coke! I call on the power of Extra Strength Excedrin!! But most of all, since it’s Saturday, I call on the power of Sirius XM’s “SATURDAY NIGHT SAFETY DANCE“!!! Starting with The Smiths’ “What Difference Does It Make?” Yeah, that’s a good start.

Let the word herding begin! Wait, why won’t half of these windows open at the same time? And the ones that do open are like molasses in January? Ah, yes, streaming audio & hot tunes will eat ALL of the CPU cycles. Kill “SNSD” on the primary system, restart “SNSD” on the alternate system, open writing windows… Success! (“Welcome To Paradise” by Front 242 — still going strong!) I WILL NOT BE DENIED! (Maybe the Diet Coke & Extra Strength Excedrin combo was too much.)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (continued)

She had dispassionately told Tom that he should go home because he was way out of his league. That logical calculation was even truer for her, since she didn’t know what Tom already knew and she didn’t have his friend for high tech backup. But there was no doubt that Tom had been asking for her help with his last comments to her.

She was being handed an emergency situation with limited resources and limited knowledge of the nature of the emergency. She hadn’t decided if she wanted to help Tom, even though she had decided that she had to help him. She had to start taking some action, but her head was spinning trying to think what action to take. Meanwhile the clock was ticking.

It was an emergency. That was the trigger needed to get her pilot training to kick in. Fly the plane. That was always the first thing to do in an emergency, no matter what else was going on. It was a matter of priorities and managing your focus and work flow. Don’t create new Problems B, C, D, & E by obsessing over Problem A. Solving a non-fatal Problem A didn’t help if your loss of focus caused a very fatal Problem B.

Be quick, but don’t hurry. That was something she had learned on her high school basketball team. Her coach had been a devout disciple of John Wooden and his philosophy of the game and life. That particular lesson had also proven invaluable at times while flying.

Now she was on the ground, not in a plane. There were undoubtedly unknown and unseen dangers all around. Something bad was happening and she believed that something worse was coming. She could try to take action to intervene. She would have to figure out what to do. Some luck would help, but the only person she could count on was herself. No time to panic. Be quick, but don’t hurry. Fly the plane.

First priority, she had to make sure that Neil was out of harm’s way as best she could. He should be at school now, but she didn’t want him going home or to the hanger. She picked up her phone and dialed.

“Sarah, it’s Margaret. Can I ask you for a favor? A work thing came up at the last minute. I may have to be gone for a couple of days. Can Neil come and stay with Bobby?” She listened to the answer, not expecting any problem. “Great, I owe you one. I’ll let Neil know. Thanks.”

She sent a text message to Neil. “Got a new work thing, may have to be gone a day or two. Talked to Sarah, please go stay at Bobby’s again until I get back. I’ll lock up the hanger before I go, shouldn’t be any need for you to go over until I get back.”

That done, what did she need to do next? If Tom showed up back here in the afternoon then she could stand down and talk with him. As great as it would be if that happened, she didn’t expect it. If he didn’t come back, she had to do something to find him, help him, and release him.

She couldn’t go charging out to that place in the desert by herself. If Tom was actually in danger and didn’t come back, she wasn’t going to rescue him without help. While she was waiting to see if Tom reappeared later, she should spend her time getting her ducks in a row to move if he didn’t. Easier said than done since she didn’t yet know how much help or what kind of help she would need.

She couldn’t go to the police or FBI. First of all, since Tom had gone “voluntarily” with Ellen, Margaret wasn’t 100% sure there was an actual crime committed yet. Secondly, Tom had been very reluctant to involve the police and not just because he might have been acting in some gray legal areas. He had talked about “bizarre” discoveries and people with tremendous resources and influence, making it sound like there was some sort of conspiracy theorist’s paradise behind all of this. She hadn’t ever given any credence at all to any of those theories, but then again, she hadn’t ever had shadowy lawyers threatening her just before a client got kidnapped in front of her.

Who were those guys? There was a key question.

In the military Margaret had occasionally come in contact with “operatives”, men and women from alphabet soup agencies that she had never heard. Her orders had always been simple and direct. Fly the mission as ordered, don’t ask questions, and forget that the mission existed. There was always an air about these spooks that the regular military quietly despised, an attitude that they didn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else, or even by any rules at all if they didn’t wish to.

Ellen and the two gorillas with her had reeked of that attitude. Margaret had never seen any badges or identification. She had assumed that the grunts were armed, but had never seen any guns. The SUV had regular New Mexico license plates, not the special plates issued to government vehicles. Despite all of that, every move they made had oozed that sanctimonious, better-than-thou, above-the-rules attitude. If they weren’t officially in some covert organization now, they had been trained by one.

If she was going to help Tom, she needed to know as much as possible of what he had known. That was the start of a plan. Get information, get help, be ready to take action if Tom wasn’t returned safely. It occurred to her that as spooky, paranoid, and arrogant as the kidnappers had acted, it wouldn’t hurt for her to be very, very cautious.

Margaret got out of the car and went around to the back where Tom and Ellen had been standing. She picked up the crushed electronic fob there and recognized it as being identical to the one they had found on the undercarriage of her jeep. This one wouldn’t be working again, but she took the debris with her. If nothing else it would be one less piece of evidence for the next person on the trail to follow.

Next Margaret rifled through the backpack that Tom had left behind, itemizing the contents. Binoculars, water, snacks, sunscreen, gloves, ski hat, sunglasses, and rain poncho. He had apparently done this before and knew how to take care of himself out in the field for the day. It was too bad that none of that stuff helped her.

There was also another of the GPS tracking fobs in there. She kept it, thinking it could be useful later. The final thing in the side pocket was a folded up sheet of paper which showed a police booking picture of an older woman. The board the woman was holding said “Dahlia”, a date about two years ago, and “Manitou Springs, CO”. There was a phone number and an email address written on the back of the paper. She didn’t recognize the woman, but she had heard Ellen refer to a Dahlia, so Margaret had a pretty good idea who this was. She kept the paper as well.

Looking into the backpack’s side pockets she found a hotel key and a set of car keys. That confused her since she was sure that Tom had had a set of keys with him. She had seen him pull the GPS fob off of them. But these were apparently the keys to the rental car she was parked next to. The hotel key was for the hotel whose parking lot they were in. But what room was he in? Like all of the new credit card style hotel keys, for security purposes it didn’t have a room number on it.

Taking the car keys, she confirmed that they were for Tom’s rental car by simply unlocking the car. There wasn’t anything particularly useful in the car itself, although she did find the rental agreement showing that he had picked it up in Pueblo and a set of receipts for gas purchases from there to Farmington via Santa Fe.

Checking the car’s trunk, she found the telescope and tripod where she had seen Tom stashing it earlier. She was no expert on telescopes so she just left it alone after confirming that there wasn’t anything in the telescope carrying case other than the telescope and various tools and accessories. She locked the car back up and pocketed the keys. She also kept the hotel key.

Picking up Tom’s backpack, Margaret walked around to the hotel’s lobby. She went in and approached the front desk.

“Hi, I’m Margaret Locke, I run the balloon company out at the airport. You’ve probably seen me leaving my flyers here over in that rack. I think you have a guest staying here named Tom Tearman, Tallackson, Thompson, something like that. I picked him up yesterday and we went flying, but I found his backpack in my jeep this morning. I’d like to get it back to him. Can you help me?”

The woman at the front desk looked at her and appeared to recognize her, at least vaguely. “Sure, what was the guest’s name again?”

“His first name is Tom, I think the last name was like ‘Tearman’. He’s a tall guy, about six foot three, skinny, balding.”

The front desk clerk typed on her computer monitor, finding the information that she needed. “We’ve got a Tom Tiernan, that sounds like him.”

“Great, can you tell me what room he’s in?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that for security reasons. But I can connect you to his room to see if he’s there or leave a message for him if he’s not.” She pointed toward the house telephones across the lobby.

Reaching across the counter, Margaret picked up the receiver on the clerk’s phone. “Can’t I just use this one? Why walk over there to call you back right here?” Margaret smiled.

The clerk rolled her eyes a bit, but reached out to the phone and punched in the room number. Margaret watched her dial, then listened to the phone ring the obligatory three times before it went to voice mail.

“Hello, Tom? This is Margaret from the balloon place. You left your backpack in my jeep yesterday. Give me a call at the hanger and we can get arrange for me to give it back to you. Bye.” She handed the phone back to the desk clerk. “Thanks, much appreciated.”

“Can’t you just leave the backpack here?” the desk clerk asked. “I’ll make sure he gets it when he gets back in, saves you the trouble of messing with it anymore.”

Margaret shook her head and smiled, shouldering the backpack. “Sorry, it’s got a lot of very expensive camera gear in it. I’m responsible for it right now, so I’ll have to give it back to him personally. But thanks for the offer. Bye.”

Margaret walked back around the hotel until she got to a side entrance. It was marked “Guests Only – Use Key For Entry”, but Tom’s key worked just fine for her. She took the stairs up to the third floor and then went looking for room 313. Tom’s key worked fine there as well.

Tom’s room yielded nothing extraordinary to help her search. Room service had not yet cleaned it for the day. Margaret quickly went through the drawers and Tom’s suitcases, but found nothing other than clothing and the usual toiletries one would have on a trip.

There were many flyers arranged on the table, including hers. Tom had been researching the area, but there wasn’t anything there that Margaret wasn’t familiar with. She checked all of the flyers to see if any of them had any notes written on them but found nothing.

In the trash can next to the desk she found some crumpled up pages from the note pad next to the phone. Whatever he had been working on last night after their flight, he had a lot of questions.

“How many at compound? Cult? Commune? Ownership? Funding? Construction? Train tracks? Why not on photos? Security? Cats?” There were also doodles and one comment, “Jason will check,” with arrows pointing to several of the questions.

Jason. That’s who Tom had told her to talk to about something to do with a motorcycle. It must be the name of Tom’s tech guy who had been running data searches for him. Margaret realized that she really badly needed to get in touch with Jason, whoever and wherever he was.

But how?