Chapter 45: Crime and Punishment

The call Tamara and Peter were waiting for came about 2:30 p.m.; the little two-way radio Ron had given them beeped and she answered.

“Bogey at ten o’clock,” came Ron’s tinny voice, then he laughed. “A guest heard the drone’s buzz coming from the west-northwest. Around campsites 15 to 20.”

“On it,” Tamara replied and she hopped into the golf cart Ron had lent them.

Peter got behind the wheel.

“Let’s set up on The Meadow to the east of number 20,” she told him. “That’s far enough away from any campers. I didn’t see anybody around there earlier, though; that’s kinda strange.”

She pulled the device out of her backpack and got the umbrella ready.

“When I get out, pull back about 50 feet,” she told Peter. “No point in damaging the golf cart, Ron’s radio, or your phone. But stay close enough to video the thing; keeping back 50 feet should be safe.”

She hopped out and popped open the umbrella as the drone’s sound got louder; then it appeared flying low over the trees to the west. As it flew past the tree line and headed over The Meadow, it turned and lined up for flying over the pool. As it turned, Tamara pointed her device at it and triggered it. She increased the power a bit and the drone wobbled and stopped its forward movement and turned slightly to the north. She gave the drone another EMP jolt and with that, it lost a bit of altitude and turned back the other way. Then it recovered and resumed its travel toward the pool. She hit it with another burst of pulses and the drone staggered in the air, dropped a few feet and turned about 90 degrees to the south, but then it recovered again and turned back toward the pool area. Each time the drone seemed to recover, she shot another burst of pulses at it. She kept it flying over The Meadow, wandering around in circles as it wobbled and rocked in the air.

Now it began trying to stay pointed almost due west, seemingly in an attempt to head back to where it had come from, as if the operator knew it was in trouble and was trying to recall it. But Tamara, operating from her cover under the umbrella, kept giving the drone bursts of pulses every time it leveled out, but each time it lost altitude as she allowed it to get closer to the line of trees to the west. Now it was clearly flying below treetop level. Each time the drone began to increase its altitude, Tamara fired more bursts, repeatedly making the device stagger and turn off course. Like a drunken sailor, the drone rocked, twisted, jerked, and pitched, all the while trying to travel west while its altitude relentlessly kept dropping. Tamara followed behind it, hitting it with pulses whenever it seemed to recover.

This thing has some pretty damned good electronics, she mused. Well, time for the coup de grace.

She increased the power output of her EMP device to 30 percent and triggered it as the drone, now only about 20 feet off the ground, approached the trees and she heard its blades shriek as the drone made a valiant attempt to gain altitude. Another EMP shot and the drone pitched forward, increasing its forward speed instead of increasing its altitude, and it struck the lowest branches on a nearby tree. The drone dropped twelve feet to the ground.

Peter raced in with the cart as Tamara ran up to where the drone lay.

“Fantastic job, sweetie! I’m gonna look for an SD card or whatever the photos are stored on; hang on,” Peter told her as he pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves.

Tamara looked at the device. Its only apparent damage appeared to be the two forward rotors and the rotors looked like they could be easily replaced.

“The thing’s turned itself off. Must be a safety when it hit the tree,” Peter said. “Ah, it’s got a micro-SD card. Let me call Ron ... oh, here he comes.”

Ron pulled up in a UTV utility vehicle.

“Great job, Tamara,” he called as he and Vicki got out of it.

“Ron, let’s see what the memory card’s got recorded,” Peter said. “It’s on a micro-SD.”

“Sure, let’s get back to the office; I can copy the card to the computer there. Vicki, can you stay and watch? Make sure no one disturbs the thing. I assume you want to see what’s on there too, Tamara?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Climb in and let’s go. I’ll also call Gary and tell him ‘the Eagle has landed,’” Ron smirked.

“Funny guy,” Tamara said.

“Not,” Peter said.

Back in the office, when they examined the contents of the memory card, Ron almost went ballistic.

“Shit,” he exclaimed. “He still has stuff on here from last week, looks like, and shots from over the pool, look, he got a number of kids in there. On The Meadow, kids playing, in the playground too. Damn. I’m gonna nail his ass...”

“We gotta make sure that the card is tied to the drone,” Peter mused. “Oh, I know. Let’s see if there’s any metadata stored with the images ... okay, it is, good. See, this ‘EXIF’ tag? It shows the drone camera model was used to take the shots and the dates. GPS data too. So this card is tied to the drone and the resort’s location. Let’s copy this onto a memory stick and give it to Sarge Gary and I’ll put the card back. I have the video I took of the drone crashing and I kept Tamara out of view.”

“Good,” Ron said. “You want to go through with the plan of sticking it up in a nearby tree?”

“Sure. Make him work for it. And have Gary here when he finds it and have him confirm ownership. How about Gary hauling him away sans clothes too?”

“I love it,” Ron smiled.

“Hey Ron, how come there wasn’t anyone around the area when we did our thing?” Tamara asked. “I would have thought we’d have a crowd watching.”

Ron laughed. “Think you’re the only bright one around? I didn’t want any witnesses, so I had spread the word that we’d have free food at the lunch stand and free video games for the kids all afternoon, with prizes for the highest scores. You saw the big crowd when we got back to the office?”

“Sure. I was wondering what was up,” she said. “Very clever.”

Ron made his call to Lynch and then told the couple, “Take the UTV. I’ll get the truck with the ladder. We’ll head back and stage the drone crash into a tree.”

Once they put the memory card back into the drone and got the drone about twenty feet up in the tree, they scattered the pieces of the broken rotors on the ground below it together with a couple of broken-off small branches and a bunch of leaves. Then they all returned to the office.

They were surprised when instead of a visit from the drone’s owner, the office received a phone call. Vicki answered the phone when the call came in, forty minutes after they had stuck the captured drone in the tree.

“Arundel Nature Society, how can I help you?”

“...”

“A guest heard it buzzing around and told us about it. Listen, sir, this is private property and it’s posted with ‘no drone’ signs. We want you to stop overflying us.”

“...”

“I see. No, the guest heard it flying over the trees somewhere near the river.”

“...”

“If it came down, none of our guests have reported seeing it.”

“...”

“The only legal entrance to our property is through our gate. If you come onto our property any other way, it’s criminal trespass and we prosecute offenders, sir. If you want access to the grounds to search, you’ll need to come in the legal way, on our entrance road, and check in at the office.”

“...”

“No, it’s not our responsibility to hunt for your device. You flew it to our property and if it didn’t come back to you, then finding it is your problem, not ours.”

“...”

“Oh, you will? Be my guest. I doubt that they will help you.”

She hung up.

“Now that was interesting,” Vicki said. “He told me that it flew off course and he tried following it but lost radio contact. He wanted to come in through the woods to look for it; you heard what I told him then. Next, he claimed we had to look for it and return it; if we didn’t, it was theft, and he’d go to the police and they’d make us search for it.”

“Yeah, right,” Ron said. “Well, change of plan. If he doesn’t call the police, we still have a phone number they can trace.”

“Was there any damage that your ray gun did that can be found when he gets it?” Vicki asked Tamara.

“I strongly doubt it,” Tamara answered. “The memory card, that’s where the photos were stored, is semiconductor memory and that’s pretty sensitive to EMP damage. We could read the card with no problems.”

Just then a few guests came into the office to check their account balances. Vicki looked up their accounts and printed statements for them. They thanked her and left.

“I guess I’ll call Gary and give him the latest news,” Ron said. “I wonder...”

The phone rang again and Vicki looked at the caller ID.

“Same number,” she said, and this time she put the speaker on.

“Arundel Nature Society, how can I help you?”

“This is the drone’s owner. Listen, if you don’t find it and return it, I’ll take you to court.”

Vicki grinned. “Go right ahead. Is it weatherproof? You might get a court date in three to six months. What happens to it if it gets wet? Also, can you prove to a judge that we are preventing you from searching for it? You said you were calling the police. Why don’t you do that?”

“I called. They said that finding lost property is not their job,” he replied.

“I see. Well, neither is it ours,” Vicki retorted. “You have two choices then. Search for it yourself or do nothing and take the loss. Your choice.”

“Are you kidding?” the guy screamed. “That drone cost 2500 bucks!”

“And how much do you think a lawyer will cost if you try to sue us? You’re looking at 300 to 400 bucks an hour, buddy, plus court costs and filing fees. I wouldn’t waste the money if it were me. Do you have anything more or are you done?”

“Um, well, can I come in to search for it?” he asked.

“Absolutely. If you plan to come yet today, you’ll have to leave at sunset, though, unless you want to camp overnight. But we have a rule about single men here. For singles who are unknown to us, like yourself, you can only enter as a couple—if you’re married, that needs to be your wife.”

“You can’t do that!” he screamed.

“This is a private resort and we certainly can make the rules about who is entitled to come onto our grounds. Again, your choice. Will you be coming today?” she asked sweetly.

“Um, no, I gotta ... Listen, I’ll call tomorrow.”

He hung up.

“Okay, let’s move this along,” Ron said. “We stopped the drone; many thanks, Tamara.”

She nodded.

“I’ll call Gary and give him the guy’s phone number and the drone registration number. That number was barely legible, but at least he had it registered.”

Meanwhile Peter and Tamara were talking.

“One sec,” Peter said. “Before you call, Tamara and I had a thought. He had photos of kids and there’s no knowing yet if he did anything with them. So the kids here are his victims, even though we can’t identify any of them; the drone was too far for that. We have a strong feeling that he’s married and his wife doesn’t know about his voyeurism hobby. What about doing this? Make these conditions the requirements for his searching. First: He’s required to be present on the grounds during the hunt. Second: He has to have the kids here do the searching and it will cost him 20 bucks for each kid who joins in, per day. The one who finds it gets 40 bucks reward. Third: He cannot interact with the kids at all; his wife must be the intermediary. He can’t be allowed to get close to them, either, Make him sit on a chair on The Meadow and have the kids stay away. Fourth: If he doesn’t agree to this, then we tell him that we’ll report him to the FAA and show him that he’s risking incurring their civil penalties—that’s as much as $27,500. And their criminal penalties come with fines up to $250,000 and jail time. And fifth: The resort dress code applies to both of them.”

“Wow, that’s nasty,” Ron grinned. “I like that idea, especially letting the kids get some money from their hunting.”

“There’s more,” Peter said, grinning. “About your criminal complaint. Tell him that you’ll drop it if he does two things. Gets the photos removed from that website and if he sent the kids’ pictures anywhere, get them removed. The second is to compensate you for lost business. You can claim that your season’s unrented cabins and sites were a result of potential guests not coming because of the voyeuristic photos. Come up with a reasonable loss amount. If he balks, then tell him that if he’s found guilty of the charges in your complaint, he could be found guilty of a crime which could label him as a sex offender.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. Let me check this out with Gary and see if he thinks it’ll work from the police angle. It might look pretty close to something bad, like extortion.”

“Good point,” Peter said.

“Now I also got to get things ready for the Polynesian evening and the bands coming in later.” Ron sighed. “Really didn’t need this sideshow.”

“And there’s the 5-k race tomorrow too,” Peter said.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Ron sighed, shaking his head.

That evening, the resort put on a luau, complete with a roasted pig—except it was roasted in a big barbeque trailer, not in a pit in the ground—and there were two bands present, with two separate dance floors, giving plenty of dancing space. Tamara discovered that nudists like to dress up in costumes, but lots of them seemed to believe that the costumes should be as revealing as possible. There were two body-painting artists present who decorated the kids before dinner, and after dinner, used glow paint to decorate the adults. Later, after dark, the UV lights over the dance areas made the scene and the dancers look surreal.

The nude 5-k run was scheduled for Sunday morning and the resort had arranged for a race timing company to do much of the organization. An existing and well marked race route had been used for this race in previous years. Resort personnel took care of the participants’ registrations and fees and the timing company people did the rest. The race would be timed using special disposable RFID chips which were affixed to the runners’ number bibs, while established runners could get their personal race chips registered in the timing system.

While the race entrants were going through the registration tables and Ron was overseeing the operation, a call from the drone operator came in and Ron took the call, which had been transferred to his cell phone.

After he answered, the guy said that he’d be arriving there at 10:30.

“I’m sorry, but this morning isn’t possible. We’re hosting a 5-k race this morning and everyone at the resort is tied up with that. There will be runners on the grounds, roads, and trails, so I’m afraid that we can’t have non-race personnel anywhere on the race course. We can let you come in at 1:00 p.m.”

The guy started to make a fuss about that, so Ron told him, “Listen, buddy. We’re trying to work with you but you’re not making it easy, okay? You can go a long way getting things done by following the rules. You haven’t done such a good job about that, have you? I’ll see you about 1 o’clock.”

He hung up without waiting for a response.

Peter and Tamara had come to the registration table while Ron was talking.

“The drone guy is still being a jerk?” Tamara asked.

Ron nodded, “Yeah. I’m gonna put him through the wringer on this.”

“Talk to Gary about him?” Peter asked.

“Yep. He said not to do anything that looks like we’re suggesting an agreement or compromise. He told me that if we’re considering that, we should get a lawyer’s opinion.”

“Oh well, thought it was a good idea,” Peter replied.

“It still could be; we’ll see. He also suggested just letting the guy come in to search today—not involving the kids at first. Let him search where he thinks it crashed for today. After today, maybe use your idea. Anyway, you guys signing up to run?” Ron asked.

“Sure. Some of my cousins are running too. They should be along anytime now.”

Tamara and Peter got registered for the run and got their number bibs. Peter told her about the race bib.

“Usually you pin them to your shirt, but we don’t have shirts,” Peter remarked. “Some runners tie a cord to the top corners and loop it behind the neck and loop another cord around their back, attached to the bottom corners. But when I tried that once, it was really uncomfortable. And there’s always a joker around who complains that being naked, there’s nowhere to pin the bib,” Peter chuckled. “But a couple years ago, one dude clipped the bib to his nipple rings.”