A deserted Bay Bridge ca.hotels.com
I woke up in my bed, disoriented. It was morning. I could tell by the texture of the light. I saw, standing around my bed in a circle, not only Claire, Naomi and Scout but also Jane, Mary and Samantha.
“I must be hallucinating” I thought to myself. “What is this, some crazy dream. How could this be?”
Mary spoke first, in her sweet southern drawl: “We’ve returned to your house Roland, all of us, thanks to Samantha.”
‘What day is it, what happened?’ I stammered.
“You fainted yesterday afternoon” Naomi began. “We think it was food poisoning because Mrs. Abbott and Lucille fell ill also but nowhere near as severely as you. They’re both better now, better than ever before and Mr. Abbott, he’s doing great also, full of talk. His mind is all there. From what we can guess, your brain took such an aggressive response to the poison in your system that it shut you down. You had a high fever for several hours last evening, then it diminished, and you fell into a deep sleep. We knew you were out of danger, but we all wanted to be around when you woke up, to greet you, so ‘good morning’.
“But Jane, Mary, how did you get here? I thought you were taken away, or dead.”
“It’s a long story” Claire said lovingly, stroking my forehead, “and now that you’re awake and back with us, we’ll fill you in at the breakfast table. Come, take hold of my arm. I’ll take you to the shower next door. Naomi, could you please gather up some clean clothes for him and follow us out back. We’ll have him presentable in no time. And Scout, see Lucille next door and tell her we’ll soon be ready for breakfast and then go to the boys downstairs and tell them the good news.”
Scout ran off like a bolt.
One thing about our enhanced, multitasking minds: They were sure good at issuing commands and delegating authority.
As Jane and Claire slowly lifted me from my bed, I half feigned weakness and slunk back in their arms, comforted to no end to be in such caring hands and to see all their faces again.
At the backyard pump, as I washed and Claire worked the handle, she began to fill me in on the news.
“They arrived last night about seven just as we were cleaning up the dinner table. We heard someone yelling at the front. Scout was the first out the door. She recognized Jane’s voice. Jaime and Charlie followed to let them in. You wouldn’t believe how happy that little girl was, screaming for joy. I had to hold her back from climbing over the gate before they could get it open. But when they did, it was all hugs and kisses and tears.”
“They have a crazy tale. But I’ll let Samantha tell that. She was the one that saved the day. They spent the entire time yesterday walking from a hotel near the San Francisco airport all the way across the Bay Bridge back here. It took them ten hours. They still don’t know exactly who I am. Jaime just said I was part of the project on the hill. Roland, how are we going to explain the part I played. They might look upon me as the enemy, not only in their midst but in your bed.”
“Don’t worry Claire; I’ll stand up for you and so will all the others. There are no keeping secrets here so the whole truth will have to come out.”
“It’s Samantha I fear. She’s been looking strangely at me since we met and I can tell she knows something about me. She wouldn’t take my hand when she heard my name when we were first greeting each other.”
“Well, that’s because she doesn’t know the whole story. Look, we’re one big family here and must stick together and work together. Let’s head back to the house right now and iron everything out.”
I kissed Claire, and I made sure when we walked into our kitchen we were hand in hand. Then the boys came up from the basement. We all moved to the dining room. I greeted Jason and we all sat down, except Naomi and Lucille, who were busy serving us food, along with Scout, so happy her mother and Jane were back that she wanted to do everything for them. I settled for a coffee while the others ate.
“So tell us your story” I said after giving them a while to eat.
Samantha began: “It all started for Mary and me as we were at my house packing up clothes. A man with a gun bursts in the front door takes our phones and orders us into the front seat of his car. He tells me to drive to the airport while he sat in the back with his gun inches away from Mary’s head the whole time, saying nothing, except that we’re going to meet all our friends there and board a plane. When we get near the airport, he directs us to the back of a Marriott hotel. He has a key to the back door and takes us up to the fourth floor to a large suite where we find Jason and Jane sitting on a couch and another man with a gun in front of them. They seat us down together and lock the door. They’re both Russian and start talking in their language.”
“The first man there was nice to us, asking if we’d like some water or anything else, while the other one who brought Mary and me was a brute, often yelling at him and telling him to shut up in Russian along with other curses. I didn’t let out that my minor at the university was Russian Lit. I understood every word they said.”
“The mean man was pacing the floor and not happy about something. Then he got a call on his cell and grew even more angry, calling the person on the other end an idiot and incompetent. From the conversation, I could tell the caller was supposed to bring Jaime here but that he’d gotten away. Our man then instructed him to go back to the house on Channing Way and make sure the radios were bundled up correctly and safe.”
“Then he received another call which made him even more livid. He was pacing the floor the whole time and waving his gun in the air as he talked. I thought he might turn on us any moment and blow our brains out just to let off some steam. From what I could tell, the two men sent out to bring Mr. Tanaki and his daughter here had also failed. There was some sort of altercation at the Hayward airport, right on the tarmac, and one man was taken down while the driver of the car sped off and was now calling our captor. He was directed back to the safe house in Berkeley, to await instructions.”
“All the while I was trying to decipher their plans for us and things weren’t adding up. How could they possibly take us through the airport with guns in their hands, to board some international flight, and us without passports? They wanted to collect the whole group of us here after we dispersed in every direction from your house. I figure we were too many for them to assail in this mansion and we might have guns. So they waited until we each went our different ways, divide and conquer, tailing us in their cars to regroup us here at gunpoint. But for what purpose? The only thing I could think of was to kill us. I expected any moment that you and Scout would be pushed into this room the same way we were.”
“So I decided that I had to do something fast. I asked our kind captor if I could go to the bathroom and he waved me to a door down the hallway towards the bedroom, while our surly fellow was cursing louder than ever on his cell. Once inside I immediately squeezed through the window and was able to swing myself from a ledge to a balcony on the back of the building some six feet away. From there I quickly rappelled down the remaining two balconies and was in the lobby talking to security before they even thought I was done taking a pee.”
“Security called the police and in minutes two officers were there with me in the lobby, appraised of a hostage situation. They told me a swat team could be here in twenty minutes but I told them that time was more critical than that, we had to go up to the floor right now. If they noticed my escape someone would be shot. As we were racing up the stairs I told one officer that there was only one gunman to be worried about, the other would immediately give up without a fight. When we reached the hallway they crouched down a few doors from ours, two guns drawn and pointed at our door, the hotel manager holding me by the wrist behind this protective wall, all of us hushed.”
“But I knew they had no plan, so once again I jumped into action. I pulled away from the manager, leapt over the crouching officers and ran and banged on the door, yelling: “It’s me, Samantha, let me back in.”
“I knew it would be ‘hothead’ who answered the door. He opened it a crack and saw me standing outside, wondering what the hell was up. Then he opened it more to pull me in, not seeing the officers down the hall. That’s when I pretended to fall to the ground, at the same time pushing the door wide open with my foot. As he bent down with his gun in hand to grab me, I heard three shots ring out. He fell right on top of me, dead. From inside, just as expected, I could hear the other Russian screaming out, “don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I give up.”
“The two police officers were full of praises for me and each other as we went downstairs, all of us, everyone’s adrenaline pumping, the Russian with his hands cuffed. They were probably thinking of all the awards they were going to get for diffusing the situation so smoothly, even before the swat team arrived. But as we reached the lobby, the lights blinked and the emergency generator kicked in, and one of the officer’s cell phone failed in the middle of his call.’
“The landline at the front desk was still working and he called his precinct headquarters. Then he turned to the manager and said: ‘Something serious is happening. We have to report back right now. We’ll take this man with us but keep these four in their suite. We have to question them.’ Then they left, but they didn’t say when they’d come back.”
“We were led back to our room and one of the staff stayed with us, while others dragged the body off down the hallway. The police hadn’t returned and so they had us eat dinner that night, still escorted, in the hotel restaurant. Later on back in our room, we tried to call you, but even the landlines were dead. About ten p.m., still waiting, we felt it, all of us, in the same instance, a flicker in our heads, a kind of flash before a blackout. Now we knew something serious was happening. But we had no idea what it was.”
“So we slept there the night. Sunday morning we milled around the lobby and restaurant, but no one had a clue as to what was going on, and now none of the cars were working, so we were told to stay put. We could see from our balcony that no planes were taking off. There was hardly a person in the street. There were rumors of some kind of attack on America, but no one had any sure information.’
“Sunday evening the lights went out and the restaurant closed. We figured the generator must have run out of gas. So we made the plan to stay one more night there and rest up and make the long trek back here the next day, which is exactly what we did.”
“What did you see out there, on your walk back?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“A lot of nothing” Jane broke in. “There were cars broken down everywhere. The freeway, where we walked was dead. As we made our way through San Fran, we could see people peeking out the windows at us. The Bay Bridge was creepy, just stalled cars and trucks, not a person to be seen. We thought it was Armageddon. When we finally made it to this side and started walking up Ashby Avenue, we did meet people, all of them asking us what was going on. All’s we could tell them was that the airport was dead and San Fran. in the same plight they were. We made it here by dusk and found you a sleeping beauty, Roland. After telling our story to your housemates and a bite to eat, we were soon like you, out like a light.”
“There’s something else” Samantha began with a concerned look. Claire’s name was mentioned by the Russians several times, not as a target but a partner in some kind of malware attack that took out the phones. So what is it, Claire, who are you working for them or us?”
“To begin with” Claire answered, in a clear and confident tone, “let me apologize to the four of you for my part in what’s happening. The others know my long and complicated story and can fill you in. But I will say right now that I was never for the Russians. I was out for myself, myself alone and I used them just like I used everything and everybody else. My sin was selfishness, and for that I apologize to all of you. But since I met Roland and Scout, I’ve found a better way to be.”
“It’s lucky for everyone sitting here now” she continued, “that I did pretend to join league with them and contribute to their planned malware and nuclear attack. You see they had this plotted out months if not years ago. They already had backdoor access to ninety percent of our systems. With our joke of a new president they helped put in office and the North Korean crisis, they had everything in place. They would take us out making it look like North Korea, embroil the far east in war and with everybody’s systems and pants down except theirs, retake their old empire and probably the rest of Europe too.”
“I hit the dark web a few weeks ago and gave them access to the last little ten percent of our security systems and they took me into their fold, the fools. Within hours I’d hacked their communications and found out about the imminent EMP strike. Then they were so stupid as to meet me in person and set me up in a motel room near campus, driving me in the backseat of a car while one of them used his laptop. I had all their passcodes within seconds. Just as you had telepathy with each other when standing close, I had it with computers. With my eyes closed pretending to take a nap I swam through their nets and infiltrated every top secret mainframe they owned. It took about fifteen minutes and it gave me all I needed to alter some of my scripts and infect all their systems too, with a little time delay, so they wouldn’t know it until after the first missiles launched and their fate was sealed.”
“From the moment they met me I was in the same boat as you were, a captive. They wouldn’t let me out of sight, but they were nice to me, as if we were partners, always politely trying to get information as to my sources and the extent of my talents. They kept me in the motel room for two days living on takeout food. But when I asked to be taken to a mall to buy some fresh clothes, they agreed. In the crowds I managed to snatch a cell phone from a purse and told them I needed to use the head. I got through to someone at central intelligence. Of course they wouldn’t believe me about the EMP strike until I started rattling off the names of their top secret projects and some of the highest level security codes. This got their attention. I told them of the North Korea ploy and that the missiles would be launched the next Saturday from the Russian side of the border after a massive malware strike on all our computer systems. I was going to tell them much more, but the conversation was cut short by my associates bursting into the bathroom. I managed to flush the phone so they had no idea I made the call. I wasn’t going to let these creeps or any one country dominate the globe. If I hadn’t done this we’d all be speaking Russian pretty soon, like you Samantha. So you see, I’m the saviour of this country, not the destroyer.”
‘I’m sorry Claire. I’m beginning to see your side now” Samantha replied. “But what about all this business with us and the guns and the airport?”
“That all came about at the last minute, unexpectedly. I did want revenge against the lab for all the pain it put me through and I saw that I could easily use these Russians to do it for me. I knew next to nothing, not even its location. But I did have Frank’s address. Soon we had his phone tapped and within a few days Eileen’s and Jaime’s. Our plan was simply to blow the place up, right when all the chaos started. But then, when they realized what a valuable asset the research might be, orders were given from high up and far away to abduct Eileen and Jaime and Frank and whisk them off to the motherland on a private jet, along with me.”
“Then, the day before all this was set to take place, we intercepted the phone call from Roland, and that changed everything, in my mind and theirs. We listened in, riveted to your Friday and Saturday morning conversations. Now they told me they were going to scoop up the whole lot of us and fly us away. They said they had private planes at the airport and a way around security. They called in the operatives at hand at the last minute, most of them the young men who were sleepers here and instructed to send back intelligence with shortwave radios on the state of things after the bomb attack. That’s why they botched the roundup of so many of us. They were never trained in kidnapping.”
“But here’s where they double-crossed me also. They told me they were going to fly us off and save us. I’d developed a real liking for all of you from the eavesdropping, and that’s why I insisted on coming here to meet Roland in person. I was intrigued by the idea of other people like myself. That’s why I secretly told him what side I was on when I came here. If I’d known they were planning on killing you, and me, as if we were a threat, I don’t know what I could have done to save anyone. Lucky for us their plans backfired. I was totally on board your side the moment we drove up the hill to rescue the wafers and I’ve been here ever since. I’ve even taken one.”
“You have more wafers?” Samantha broke in.
“Yes, several dozen and you’re each welcome to one if you want. We’ve all taken one.” I replied.
“I sure wish we had one of them Ruskie radios.” Charlie mused.
