Young Again
Copyright© 2018 by Edward Douglass Patterson
Chapter 45: More Assassins
“Jim! Bao noticed a ghost assassin near the far end of the arena. We all agree. Can you check it out from your position?” Jim heard over his earphone radio.
Jim turned his attention to that area. “I agree. Eddie, I’ll get Jimmy to track bogey one from here and coordinate with Bao.”
“OK, I will let everyone know. Out.”
Jim turned to his son and pointed in the direction of the assassin. “Jimmy, Bao noticed someone invisible over there. You and Jenny work with her and Tommy on tracking that person. Everyone else, Lyani’s warning looks to be correct. There are three others possible out there.”
Jim remembered when Lyani had asked what they had to counter the invisible suits that the ancients had taken from the Hisphut and how it had started a flurry of activity. The ability to sense someone without seeing them had led them to come up with the plan to have non-combatants looking for invisible people. The Wongs were in the control room on the other side of the arena across from him and his family. Together they were responsible for detecting and tracking invisible assassins.
The scoreboard came on and then the penalty buzzer sounded. That was the signal that a possible ghost assassin had been detected. It showed a score of one, indicating one sighting. Stan Jamison had wanted to cancel the meetings when he had learned about the invisibility suits. It had finally been agreed that the safest place for the President was out in the open. That way an invisible assassin would be noticed without a lot of people cluttering up the area around him. Protecting the President from such an attack had fallen to those with the ability to detect someone without seeing them, which didn’t include any of the Secret Service agents.
When the scoreboard turned on, Mario DeSantis felt personal fear for the first time since becoming President. He knew he wasn’t at the top of the list of targets from what they had learned but he was the only one out there on the floor that couldn’t detect someone in an invisibility suit. That was why he had had to order the Secret Service not to have any agents out there. The only way that the agents could have protected him was to surround him and interpose their bodies without even knowing where the assassin was.
Stan Jamison’s worst fear as a Secret Service agent became actual, as he looked up at the scoreboard. He turned to the four teams that were with him in the main entrance tunnel to the floor of the arena and repeated what he had told them before. “Remember, the scoreboard is the signal that someone in an invisibility suit has been detected. The unit digit equals the number detected. Our intelligence puts the maximum number of invisibility suits at four, but it is very old information. Those that have joined us from California have the ability to detect a person without seeing them. Not accurate enough to shoot, which is the reason we have the nets. This is why I have assigned a Secret Service agent and a California FBI agent to each net. The FBI agent will direct the use of the net to capture the assassins. We will delay moving in with the nets until we have more information. We don’t want to give away that we were expecting invisible assassins.”
Henry O’Rourke was the first of the FBI agents to glance towards the back when they detected someone moving towards them. “Stan, I think that Mel and I should try out handling the net back further in the tunnel. Let’s call it a live exercise.” His voice was soft so as not to be heard beyond the nine of them, but the slight smile let them know that his emphasis on the word live was important.
It took a second before Stan nodded. “Make sure that it is back far enough in the tunnel.” He turned to the other six men. His voice was normal. What he said was meant to be overheard. “Now this is new for crowd control. With all the world leaders and other important people out there, we don’t want to use anything lethal or that could injure them. Get your equipment ready but let us watch how Henry and Mel deploy theirs.”
Henry led Mel back by the curtain near the end of the tunnel. They stayed to one side as they opened the bag with a net borrowed from the national zoo.
The other agents spread across the arena opening of the tunnel. Stan continued talking to keep the invisible assassin’s attention on them as much as possible. “We need to remember that both Russia and China are still being affected by the loss of their leadership. We don’t really know how they will react to what they learn today. President DeSantis’s orders are to be sensitive to this in dealing with them.” One of his agents didn’t realize that he was spouting a bunch of nonsense that he thought an enemy agent would be interested in conveying back to his superiors. When the agent looked back at Stan, Stan rolled his eyes, which he hoped couldn’t be seen by anyone that was not close to him.
Suddenly, Henry and Mel ran forward with their net. They continued forward even after hitting the invisible assassin with the net. Henry called out. “Now!” Both of them pulled hard on the net. The impression of the assassin in the net showed him falling.
“Brian and Bill, take your batons and subdue him. The rest of us will face the arena. Move and talk enough to keep anyone looking this way to look at us and not what is going on behind us.”
As Henry and Mel held the net flat, Brian and Bill stood on either side of the human figure size bump in the net. They were trying to decide where to hit. Suddenly, a knife blade was seen starting to cut the net. Brian swung at where the hilt of the knife would be, while Bill swung where he thought the head would be now that the motion of the knife gave more information about the form seen in the net. Brian’s swing caused the knife to stop moving as the sound of breaking hand bones was heard. Bill gave a number of quick taps to where he thought the head was. After getting an idea of where the face was, he delivered a series of medium strikes more to distract than to cause damage. At first, the figure struggled, then it tried to protect its face.
Brian held his baton ready to strike. With his other hand, he grabbed at where he thought the wrist was of the hand holding the knife. He must have hit the injured hand, since the form jerked, but still didn’t emit any sound. He felt the hand until he found the wrist. He grabbed the wrist, then lightly placed his baton on the hand. “I have hold of the wrist of his knife hand. Bill, see if you can grab the other arm.”
When they had him in handcuffs with the net wrapped around his legs, Stan came back to inspect their catch. “Bill, go and find a tarp and two uniformed officers to guard him. Take the net off and wrap him in the tarp. They can guard him here. We might need all four nets. Also, see if there are any small carts to take refreshments out to the President. If we can have two of you take the cart out with a net hidden underneath, we can have a team with a net positioned when it is needed.”
Sarah was helping Lyani answer a question about her injuries that the surgery corrected when the scoreboard turned on. When they had finished answering that question, she held up her hand.
“We will move on to more new information that we would like to present. After Jinghua helped bring Lyani to California, they came to the bunker where they had lost their mother. With their help, we learned that the entrance to the bunker was offset from the bridge such that only one large rock blocked the entrance. When we were able to enter the bunker, the first thing that was done was turn off the EMP weapon. Signs of someone recently checking and turning on the EMP weapon caused speculation about who could have found a way into the bunker. That was the wrong question. The most likely suspects were with us. Lyani and Jinghua were as surprised as the rest of us.” She dramatically raised her hand, which pointed out into the sports area.
Everyone that knew the planned script for revealing information at the meeting knew that Sarah had abandoned it. Ashley stepped close to Jian but continued to look around at the crowd. “Sarah pointed towards the invisible assassin. I think he is heading here for Jinghua.”
“I agree.”
“I think that she is planning to present Jaia just before he gets here. If Omara has named her as the primary target, then he will turn towards her. That will give us the opportunity to attack him from behind.”
A small smile was just visible on Jian’s face.
“My sister, what you say makes sense.” The last of Jinghua’s whispered comment was drowned out by the penalty buzzer. Glancing up, they saw the home team score was twelve. Jinghua smiled. “One down.”
Those tracking the invisible assassin noticed that he stopped when the buzzer sounded for the second time. Norm Stillman saw that the second sounding of the penalty buzzer brought a smile to all the guests in his sky suite. He leaned over to ask Jim what was going on. “What does the buzzer signify?”
“There was a possibility of invisible assassins. When the score was one, it meant that one was detected. The new score of twelve means another was detected and nullified.” Jim stopped as Kelly leaned forward.
“I think that it happened over in the tunnel. Something happened in there beyond where we can see.”
Jim took a second before he spoke. “That makes sense. Thanks, Kelly. The Secret Service and FBI are there with nets. Our primary job is to sense the people here and check that everyone that we can sense is visible.”
“That is a little more than enhanced abilities.” Norm turned to look at the others.
“We had a lively discussion about that. Chief Alverez, one of the SEALs, says that he has known people that have reacted to people without seeing them. Not invisible, just in another room or something like that. Ernie finally admitted that he was one of them and that it had saved his life. He has come up with some very interesting training plans to teach using it.”
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