Chapter 21: Shocking Developments

Mid-June, 1986

I told them about how Sheila, on our second ‘AD’ walk, had impressed me even more than the first time. Her depth of knowledge and level of ‘power’ with her abilities had blown me away.

I explained how it was her idea to ask the portal to jump to Rafael’s future, to get around not being able to go to Viktor’s future. I told them how we’d jumped ahead to Sunday afternoon. There we learned that Viktor told Rafael that if we hadn’t attacked by 10:00 on Sunday night, his guys could ‘stand down’ from full alert. He DID insist that they leave the auto-guns on to guard the complex.

I told them that we also heard Viktor tell Rafael that he and Akbar had gone to Nicaragua to indulge in ‘deflowering some virgins’, since Akbar had been so shaken up about nearly drowning!

I laughed, “When Sheila heard that most of them weren’t even 12 years old, she wanted to have us attack Nicaragua, like RIGHT NOW.”

I told everyone, “While we couldn’t ‘attack’ Nicaragua, since we now knew what Viktor looked like, we could ‘follow’ Viktor and Akbar to Nicaragua, having realized that’s where they’d gone.

“The ‘chaos’ Sheila caused Akbar there was hilarious.

“We arrived on scene just as he was about to rape a poor 12-year-old virgin. Before he could even get his pants all the way off, Sheila flooded his brain with images of an obscenely fat, ugly old crone with rotten teeth, who was begging to get laid! The bastard’s dick went so soft, it nearly disappeared into his scrotum.”

Everyone was now laughing so hard it hurt.

.

“Then”, I continued, “just as he went to slap the poor thing, Sheila, using an annoyingly high, whiney voice mentally yelled, ‘Aaaak-baaar, you leave that poor girl alone!’ The fucker’s eyes liked to shoot out of their sockets as he began looking around wildly, thinking his commandeering mother had somehow found him! Viktor, who hadn’t heard any of Sheila’s ‘mental harassment’ was in shock, wondering if his comrade had gone insane.

“Sheila was nearly begging me to ‘physically’ take her to their location to try and save all the other girls who were there. I explained that we’d be facing not only Viktor and Akbar, but another whole garrison of Rafael’s storm troopers. I assured her that what she’d done HAD probably screwed him up for the rest of the day at least.”

I continued, “Joni, who was just in awe of everything, suggested we ‘zoom out’ to at least try and figure out WHERE they were. We did that and discovered they were on an island about 50 miles east of central Nicaragua. The neat thing about AD travel is you don’t need a helmet or glasses to fly ... you can also fly past Mach 2 and 100,000 feet if you want!”

“So”, I said, “within a few seconds we were high enough to identify our location. Since we were having so much fun, we decided to ‘fly’ back to Rafael’s main compound, north of Haiti. I wished I had a globe with us, since I wasn’t sure what we were seeing, but Joni and Sheila seemed to know the geography incredibly well.

“Joni explained that since you guys, Rex and Jeremy, did so much work in the Caribbean Sea, she and Sheila had taken an avid interest in the entire area. That’s why they had a thorough knowledge of all the islands and where they were in relation to each other. Even though you guys couldn’t tell them where you were at any given time, you did always tell them where you’d been. Sheila was our ‘tour guide’, pointing out what all of the different islands’ names were.”

I also didn’t tell them how I realized just how limited my imagination had been with regards to all of our abilities. This trip had been opening my mind up to much more than just ‘recon’. AD travel had limitless possibilities. I was thinking about taking Mary on a trip to Mars when things calmed down. Or maybe even a different galaxy!?

“Anyway”, I continued, “when we got back to Rafael’s main compound, our purpose was to try and ascertain what the ‘mindset’ of Rafael’s troops might be. Rex, you’d said something before you left for the ship that it could make a big difference in our plan. ‘A “highly motivated” soldier was far more dangerous than a mercenary who might only be there for a paycheck.’ You’d said. ‘Our decision to wait would have some effect on the former, but be incapacitating to the latter.’

“That’s what we were hoping to discover.

“With Sheila having ‘enlightened’ us to her methods of ‘invasive telepathy’, we decided to split up so each of us could take a different barracks. There were 8 of them.

“The first one I entered had most of the guys cleaning their weapons and talking about what they were going to have the other guys doing if and when the attack occurred.

“They seemed highly motivated to me! They also appeared to be the leaders of Rafael’s army.

“The next barracks was wildly different. These jamokes were either bitching, playing cards or sleeping. In the corner I saw their weapons laying in a pile. They also looked dirty and unkempt.

“When the four of us reunited, most of their observations seemed to be like my second one. Sheila told us that she’d managed to delve into one guys idle brain and discovered he didn’t even want to be there! He kept wondering why the Territorial Governor kept putting up with Rafael’s thugs always running roughshod through the nearby towns.

“Just as she explained that to us, the light went on in my head.

“Viktor MUST HAVE the Governor under his mind control! That’s the only thing that made sense.”

Both Jeremy and Rex enthusiastically agreed with my assessment.

Greg mused, “It’s too bad we couldn’t ‘cure’ the Governor just before our attack? Maybe HIS troops could help us or at least swoop in to take over after we leave?”

Rex just froze, with a big grin slowly coming over his face. “Charlie, could you really pull something like that off? “Cure’ him? If you could do that, the rest of my plan would be perfect and complete!”

“Yes, the only question is how long it might take me, acting alone. You saw what happened when I tried to cure Bill when we were in his office. He still felt compelled to follow Viktor’s directive. Had Linda been with me, the cure would have been immediate and complete within a matter of seconds.”

Linda giggled, “And he would have creamed his pants in the process! Charlie, if you need me, I’d love to assist you. Please let me help?”

“No, no, no, Tinkerbell, this whole operation is FAR too dangerous.”

She wasn’t happy and in fact was looking at the group, silently pleading her case.

Sheila interjected, “Look guys. I’m not saying you need to let us girls assist in any kind of combat, but what you’re talking about here ISN’T all that dangerous! I could go with Charlie and Linda. Then, after they ‘cure’ him, I think I could push an ‘immunization’ suggestion that would keep him from ever falling back under Viktor’s control. Please, let us help and the second we’re done, both Linda and I will pop back home, I promise ... please?”

Linda was now smiling at Sheila, excited that she had an advocate and partner for her suggestion.

Jeremy was just looking at me, wondering what we were about to get into. I could tell he wasn’t any more enthused about the idea than I was.

A look around the room, however, indicated that ALL of the girls were on Linda and Sheila’s side.

Bob asked, “Rex, what do you think about Linda and Sheila going with us on this operation? Would I be able to go and assist them if they DID get into trouble? I think we need to hear YOUR plan. With and without the girls going. Then, maybe we just put it up for a vote?”

Rex nodded, then delved into his Plan- ‘without’ the girls going. He pointed out the necessity for things like ‘maximum personnel casualties’ to insure that Rafael couldn’t readily go on a counter offensive after we left. It included many other ‘intensely destructive’ items that would leave the entire site totally devastated with a maximum amount of collateral damage.

He then gave us ‘Plan-Charlie and girls’.

I kept wanting to find things to disagree with, but I couldn’t. By the time he finished I could see the wisdom of getting the Governor to be on our side. At the very least, so he wouldn’t be Viktor and Rafael’s puppet any longer. The ONLY downside of his plan, besides the girls going, was that the work they had to do before the ‘Chaos and Mayhem’ started was a bit more intricate.

Rex laid out all of the satellite photos as he meticulously went over each detail. When it was all said and done, I had to capitulate. I also realized that what the girls and I were going to do was located nearly 10 miles away from Rafael’s compound.

The girls wouldn’t be anywhere near where bullets might be flying.

The three of us DID however need to do some ‘recon’ and planning of our own.

Rex had shown us exactly where the governors Palace was, but since none of us had actually been there, we’d have to fly as opposed to teleporting to get there. When I pointed that out, Sheila chuckled, “We know where it is, Charlie! We flew right over it on our Spirit Walk’! I remember seeing it.”

“Yeah”, I told her, “but I don’t know if that counts as ‘being there’?”

She grabbed me by the hand, “Come on, let’s get invisible and I’ll pop us, say 100 feet above it and we’ll find out.”

“Wait a minute! I didn’t think you had enough different powers to be able to fly, let alone become invisible, have Mind Control, Mind Reading and Teleportation. Where did all that come from?”

Sheila blushed, then coyly looked at Mary for a quick second before looking me in the eye. “If I told you ... I’d have to kill you! Come on, quit pussy footing around and let’s DO this.”

“So, you don’t need me to like hold your hand, to get us there or stay in the air?”

She giggled while shaking her head, “No, but you need to hold my hand, or YOU won’t get there. I’m the one who knows where it is, remember?”

With that, she snatched my hand and the next thing I knew, we were looking down on the Governor’s Palace.

I was flabbergasted!

Sheila whispered, “Let’s do a little recon. It’ll save us some time when we come back.”

We then flew down, waited until someone opened the huge front doors, then spent a few minutes getting the layout of the interior of the Palace.

We had to dodge a few people who moved unexpectedly, but otherwise, we figured out everything I felt we needed to know. Now, when we went back, one of us just had to hold Linda’s hand so she’d teleport with us. By doing this now, we saved a good 10 to 20 minutes not having to bumble around in crunch time. We were also able to get a good look at the Governor, so we could now ‘pop’ directly into his proximity.

We popped back home, where everyone grinned at us, as we stood in the foyer.

Mary smirked, “That didn’t take long! Were you successful?”

I walked over and gave her a kiss, “You KNOW we were! You ALWAYS know.”

She shrieked when I spanked her cute little ass, then she playfully smacked me on the arm.

I looked at everybody holding back chuckles, “Well, we found out that anything we see while ‘Spirit Walking’ must count as physically knowing where something is! Sheila took us right there. I’m still curious, Sheila, did you know how to get there, just by seeing the palace as we flew over it? Or, because we flew so high your sense of exactly where it was on the map came into play?”

She fell silent, deep in thought, “Well, Hell Fire! That’s a good damn question. Yeah, I was confident I knew where the palace was from seeing it. BUT, having flown there so high up, I was also sure EXACTLY where it was in relation to the rest of the world. Sooo, it might be both!?”

Jeremy was now laughing, “I’ve never seen somebody stump her like that before. She always has an answer for everything! Good job, my man.”

Now Jeremy got a slap on HIS ass, “I never said I knew everything. I haven’t figured out how to gargle peanut butter, yet!” Sheila giggled and stuck her tongue out at him.

Greg asked, “Sooo ... when are we going to do this?”

Rex chuckled, “Well, are going with ‘Plan-Charlie and girls’?”

I glanced at Linda and Sheila, who were grinning hopefully, “Hell yeah! And I don’t feel Bob will be needed to go with us. I’m pretty sure you’ll need him more.”

Rex nodded, “Yes, if you think you can do your part in under 20 minutes, that’s how long it’ll take us to plant all the charges and re-aim one of the automated machine guns to shoot anyone coming out of the ‘head honcho’s’ barracks. I’m thinking Sunday night/Monday morning at 0200 Hours local time. That’s 0100 hours here, since they’re on Eastern time. We’ll each have our assigned areas and chores to perform. When that’s done we’ll all reconnoiter at the dock to set the charges to incapacitate the boats. Since we don’t want to sink them now, we’re going to use much smaller charges that’ll just knock out the controls. The Governor and his guys can then repair that and commandeer the boats for their government. The ‘eco-damage’ will be hardly worth mentioning, since the boats won’t sink. The same for the planes. Instead of blowing them to smithereens, we’re only going to take out one landing gear strut. The smaller charges shouldn’t make the planes explode ... hopefully. All explosives will be detonated by me, remotely, just before we get the hell out of there. I’ll wait until Charlie flashes that the girls are gone, then, hopefully ... BOOM!”

Sheila was glaring at us with her hands on her hips, “And why do Linda and I have to miss the fireworks? Hmmm?”

Rex walked right up to her, grabbing the back of her head so he could look into her eyes, “‘Because that was the deal, remember? There’s still all kinds of shit that could go haywire and we may have to use our powers to fix things that don’t happen according to plan. If bullets start flying, I don’t want to have to worry about where you ladies are. Besides, we don’t know what Viktor and Akbar might do.”

I could tell Sheila wanted to interject something, but demurred, out of respect to Rex.

Mary hugged her, “Don’t worry, we’ll see everything they see! I agree with Rex, and they don’t need to be thinking about us when they’ve got other far more serious things to contend with.”

Rex smiled, winking at Mary, “Okay, I think we’ve covered almost everything. Let’s get things ready for that party!”

About that time, Mike rapped on the patio door waving at me anxiously.

I opened the door, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Well, um”, Mike stammered breathlessly, “the concrete company just called me and they have a problem ... A huge job they had fell through just this morning! They want to know if I would mind substituting regular, high-grade concrete in place of the soil cement?”

“Wow, how much extra would that be?”

Mike grinned, “Nothing! But, what I wanted to ask, Bob said that you guys were thinking about adding-on to your driveway. Would you want to do that today? The concrete company is desperate. They have 20 trucks fully loaded with no place to go! They only want ten cents on the dollar if they can dump it SOME WHERE by this afternoon!”

I thought for a second, then looked at Rex, “Hey Bud, how would you like a 15-foot section added on to your driveway?”

Rex shrugged, “I hadn’t thought about it, but, why not? If nothing else, Bob could park his Step Van on it to get it off the street?”

Mike was smiling, “Do you think any of your other neighbors might want an addition to their driveways? Oh yeah, and we’d like to pour your patio addition this morning, too. We’ll make it an additional 2” thick so it won’t crack even if we do have to drive the Bobcat over it, heck, you could park a damn semi on it!?”

I nodded, while mentally summoning Ed and Bill. I told Mike, “Now this is the kind of problem I like to solve! Go ahead and plan on doing at least Rex and our driveways and I’ll let you know in a few minutes about our neighbors.” He scampered away with his cell phone, smiling and talking excitedly.

Both Ed and Bill were excited and said to have Mike add, ‘as much as the city would allow’ as far as an addition to their driveways. It’s not like we couldn’t afford it. After last year’s massive influx of cash from ‘El Muerte’, we were all millionaires. And with Bills investment ideas, my Family’s net worth was well over $350 Million, not counting some 4200 Lbs of gold that’s buried in my basement! We also still had over 8M in cash in the massive gun safe in the garage.

I planned on covering the cost of the concrete just because I could. I was SURE Mike and the concrete company wouldn’t complain about me paying with $100 dollar bills.

Mike told us that the concrete company was sending three crews of concrete workers to help him get it all done today. Apparently, they were ALL very happy.

It wasn’t really any surprise when Ed, Gracie, Sally and Emmy all came over, with their little ones in tow. What with all the last minute construction going on, they felt that ‘misery loved company’. Suddenly we had 9 kids and 15 adults in the kitchen and living room. The only one not here was Bill, who was at work.

Rex and Jeremy were looking at me, half chuckling, wondering if there wasn’t something we could all do to escape the chaos. I saw Rex suddenly get an ‘Ahh hah’ look in his eye.

He flashed, “Jeremy and I should probably ‘pop’ into the office for a bit. Even though we have the day off, something about our Boss just isn’t sitting right with me. Maybe we can catch him unawares and see if he really is a turncoat.”

I gave him the ‘suspicious stink eye’, wondering if that wasn’t just an excuse to flee this scene, but, his confirming frown told me otherwise.

“Do you want me to go with you?” I asked.

He nodded at the girls, “If it wouldn’t upset them, sure, you can tag along. I just want to nose around the office for a bit, using the excuse that I just happened to be downtown and dropped in. Jerry was going to stay invisible and see what he could sense without anyone knowing he was even with me. I’m afraid if we show up ‘en masse’ he’ll get suspicious and not be as open as he might be if he thinks I’m there alone.”

His logic made sense and he agreed to summon me or the rest of us if he felt he needed our help. Shortly after they left, Bob, Greg, Ed and I decided that we needed to check on the construction going on, to make sure they were laying out our driveway additions the way we wanted.

The girls were all giggling about how it looked like we were making a jail break.

It was a good thing we checked, because I’d forgotten to tell Mike that I wanted the addition to go all the way toward the house along the side of the garage. I was thinking that when we had the garage extended, we could build a carport alongside so Greg’s truck could be shaded from the sun and rain.