Chapter 17

We were joined shortly after that by the Leader of the Grroz. He appeared much younger and more spry than earlier.

“So much wasted dead meat, though you did leave a couple of them just barely alive. They were very tasty,” the Grroz leader told us. “I have stopped my warriors at the road leading in here. They are all sated for now. Some of them even caught two prey. If you are finished, we are ready to return. Many will be looking for mates and will be anxious to be about that,” he finished in my mind.

Grace and I went outside with the Grroz Leader, and I opened the gate again. The Grroz leaders moved the remainder of the Grroz through the fog and into the gate. I didn’t see any dead Grroz lying on the ground or any that appeared to be wounded. What I did see was the bodies of humans or at least parts of bodies scattered all over the area around the warehouses and a number more leading back to the vehicles. I didn’t see any live humans, other than Grace and myself. After the old leader marched back through the gate, I canceled it and the fog.

“I suggest that we break camp and return to the hotel before I call Mr. Hill,” I told Grace before taking a look at her. She was covered in blood, but most of it was from others, and the few wounds she had received had already healed.

“WE are going to need to clean up before going back to the hotel. You are covered in blood,” I told her.

“I’m sure it isn’t any more than you are. We could go to the house on Camino Bosque and clean up. They should have running water there,” she suggested.

“An excellent idea in more than one way. Since we don’t want the CIA to know what identity we have used or where we have been staying, perhaps we should stay at the house on Camino Bosque and wait for the CIA there. We could bring our camping gear down here and take it there also. That way we could use one of the vehicles here to move it, at least part of the way. The beater is covered by a field that will be good for five or six more days, so they shouldn’t find it. Make them guess where we have been staying and work to find its location,” I told her with a grin.

“Perhaps we should clean up before retrieving our camping gear,” she suggested.

“All right, what vehicle should we use?” I asked.

“That big limo. I’ve always like riding in the best vehicle available,” she told me. After canceling the electrical reduction field, we got in the limo. I started it, and we drove over to the house on Camino Bosque Dr. that the Cartel leaders had been using. The lock on the front door was easy to open, and we entered the house. It was a modern house with all of the usual conveniences one would expect to find in such a house.

Grace started our clothes washing after we had showered, as we had located appropriate clean clothing in the trunk of the limo. However, clothing wasn’t the only thing that we found there. There was also a large briefcase with what turned out to be $300,000 in it. It was obviously drug money, but I had a good use for it, so we wouldn’t mention finding it to the CIA. We had also found an expensive digital camera in the trunk and used it to take pictures of the gruesome scene of the mangled and partially eaten bodies of the Cartel members both inside and outside the warehouses in addition to pictures of the device. This was our insurance that the CIA would keep their word and would agree to our demands for compensation. I still had the documents from their Bangkok office as a backup.

Following dressing in our new clean clothes, we drove the limo back to the warehouses, and set out to retrieve our camping gear and the remaining meat. We had left our weapons in the house and I had created a force field around it to keep visitors or the inquisitive from entering it. It didn’t take long to break camp and move our things down to the warehouses. We used one of the available vehicles there to transfer the camping gear to the beater hidden on Rock Point Rd. I renewed the field around it before returning to the warehouses where we got back in the limo and returned to the house on Camino Bosque. Dusk was approaching by the time I was ready to call Mr. Hill to advise him that we had completed our assignment.

Again I used the tablet to make the call after locating a line in the electronic spectrum. It was a line from the Big Bear City Hall. The phone only rang twice before it was answered.

“Hill,” a voice said.

“Mr. Hill, this is Thorne Saint Cirq. I’m calling to inform you that we have completed our mission, and are ready for you to send a clean up crew and someone able to dismantle and remove the device,” I informed him.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

“We’re located in the vicinity of Big Bear Lake. It’s a short distance north of San Bernardino,” I informed him.

“Just a minute,” he said, and there was silence on the phone for a couple of minutes.

“Saint Cirq, we can be there in three hours. Exactly where are you?” Hill demanded.

“We?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m in Los Angeles. I’ll be there in a short time, but we need to know exactly where you are and where the device is. We can clean all of this up before daylight,” he told me.

“Don’t be in such a hurry, Mr. Hill. You haven’t heard the full story or my demands yet,” I told him.

“Demands? What demands?” he demanded angrily.

“When you come, bring $100,000 with you. Then I’ll tell you where we are and where the device is,” I told him.

“Oh yes,” I added. “You will need to bring a lot of body bags with you. The Grroz left quite a mess,” I finished.

“The Grroz?” he asked in a much quieter voice.

“Yes, there were about a hundred Cartel members here, and they were preparing to move the device to Los Angeles when we stopped them. There were about eighty Grroz that I brought here to attack them, as well as Grace and myself,” I informed him.

“Ar ... are they all dead?” Hill asked in a trembling voice.

“All of the Cartel members are. A few of the Grroz were injured, but all of them were fine when they finished the job. I’ve created a force field around the location where the device and the remains of the Cartel members are. You won’t be able to get in there until we get our money, so don’t even consider arriving here without it,” I told him.

“I’ll call you again in the morning,” I finished and disconnected.

“Why did you demand money from them?” Grace asked after I had finished the call.

“The $300,000 that we found here will go to Paul to help him with his work to create the tools that are necessary to create the drive for the ship to leave here in. The CIA money is for us to retire for a time and enjoy life for a while,” I told her.

“Where have you considered retiring this time?” she asked with a smile.

“Perhaps in Thailand, Cambodia, or Laos. There are Wats in all of them, and some are not averse to admitting women. Perhaps we could rent a house near one, and attend their devotions each day,” I suggested. Grace was smiling broadly at this.

There was plenty of food here in the house, and we also had the venison. Grace made us a good meal before we retired for the night. While she cooked, I had returned to the warehouse to create the force field surrounding the area that I had told Mr. Hill was already there. It wouldn’t do to have them arrive and find it missing. They were too good at covering things up for that to be considered. We also had the pictures, and I would threaten to go to the media with the pictures if we weren’t paid.

While Thorne and Grace enjoyed a pleasant supper, a bit of sex, and a good night’s sleep, Mr. Hill and those at the Los Angeles offices of the CIA and elsewhere did not. They were even too busy to get something to eat and subsisted on coffee.

“Where the hell did that call originate from?” Hill demanded as soon as the connection was cut.

“It was coming from a line at the Big Bear City Hall,” an assistant informed him.

“He did say that he was in the vicinity of Big Bear Lake, but he also fooled us into thinking that he was in the Director’s office when he called about the briefing,” Hill reminded them.

“So we can’t put a lot of trust in that statement. Anyway, tell me about this Big Bear Lake area in case he was telling us the truth,” he demanded.

“It’s in the mountains north of San Bernardino. The elevation around the lake is about 6700 feet above sea level, but the surrounding mountains go up to about 7300 feet. The area is heavily forested away from the lake. The city has an airfield of its own,” an aide told him.

“All right, see about getting maps of the general area and more specific information about it, just in case he is actually up there,” he told his people. Hill himself retired to the chief agent’s office and called his boss at home where it was a lot later than in Los Angeles.

The Director of Operations (DO) was not happy to have his sleep interrupted. He was even less happy when he heard what Hill had to say.

“A hundred Cartel members and eighty Grroz! You’ll need a lot of body bags and a good bit of help to clean that up, especially in the daylight. Is there any possibility of getting the money back if you can eliminate Saint Cirq?” the DO asked.

“You remember what happened at the briefing, don’t you?” Hill asked. “He can probably still do the same thing again. If we piss him off, he is just mean enough to turn a couple of hundred of those Grroz loose there at Langley; like he threatened to do,” Hill reminded him.

“All right, I’ll see about getting permission for the money, but I’m going to have to call the Director for that and to get you some more help. We can probably get some military assistance for you from units out there. The Director will have to take care of that. I’ll also get a team headed that way to disassemble the damn bomb. We can probably get them from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I’ll call their Chairman and get them to head your way. When is Saint Cirq going to call you again?” the DO finished.

“He said in the morning, probably after the banks open,” Hill told him.

“Get some police and body bags up to that lake by early in the morning, also some trucks to move the bodies,” the DO finished and the line went dead.

The Director of Operations (DO) called the Director of the CIA (DCIA) as soon as he got off the phone with Hill. Needless to say, the Director was even less happy than he had been to be disturbed, as he was presently sleeping with his current mistress in her Washington apartment.

“What the hell is so important that you have to call me here?” he growled into the phone when the DO finally reached him, after trying several other places. The DO told him everything that Hill had relayed to him before explaining the problem about the money and military assistance plus about contacting the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Director (DCIA) cursed up a storm on learning all of this, as he knew he wouldn’t get any more sex or sleep that night. He would need to see the President and update him on what had happened and what was needed.

“Hold up on calling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They may not be the right people to handle this. I’ll bring the problem up to the President and see what he or his staff recommends. I’ll let you know what I learn,” he assured the DO. It was a very pissed Director of the CIA who dressed before leaving his mistress’s apartment and drove to the White House to awaken the President.

The President was even less happy than the Director had been, as he had just gotten to bed after a long evening planning session with his staff. He and part of his staff heard out the Director and had a number of questions before he called the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon to order them to send a couple of platoons of military people from the nearest available facility to the Big Bear Lake area and to have them there by 0800 in the morning. He also called the Secretary of the Department of Energy and told her to cooperate with the CIA in the matter of disposing of the atomic device, as he put it. She in turn suggested that the National Nuclear Security Administration could handle the problem, and she would contact their Emergency Operations Office. The DCIA got the contact number for them.

“I’m going back to bed. Handle this thing and make sure that the media doesn’t get wind of it. Those fools would blow it all out of proportion,”the President warned the Director (DCIA), who in turn called the DO and informed him of what had been set in motion. The Director went home then, as his mistress was upset with him for paying more attention to business than to her.

“I might need to silence her if she wants out of the relationship,” he thought to himself on the way home.

There were quite a number of other people inconvenienced that night because of what Thorne had started with his call to Mr. Hill.

Grace and I awoke early on Friday, the 26th of May, in the house on Camino Bosque. We chanted for a time before exercising and then sparring. This was followed by a shower and then breakfast. It was 7:15 by the time we were ready to see what was going on in the world. There had been a radio in the kitchen, and we had listened to a news station on it during breakfast, but it hadn’t been very informative.

“We should check the airwaves,” I told Grace as we finished. “Do you want the cellphone frequencies, or the police and aviation frequencies?”

“I’ll take the cellphone frequencies. They shouldn’t be too crowded or busy out here,” she told me, as we began cleaning our weapons again. We had worked on them some last night getting the blood and other things off of them and oiling them. However, ‘Dragon of the Morning’ would require some sharpening to return it to its original condition, but that could be taken care of later by a professional. For now, I used powder to clean it thoroughly and re-oiled it before returning it to its scabbard. Grace’s weapons had also needed a bit more care.

I started on the aviation frequencies but found those in this vicinity to be rather uninformative, as there appeared to be little local traffic this early in the morning. Switching to the police frequencies was much more rewarding. There was a lot of traffic from both the Big Bear police and from the California Highway Patrol (CHIPS). From the number of those on the net, it appeared that a significant number of the Highway Patrol’s finest had descended on the Big Bear area. After a time, I turned to look at Grace, but she appeared to be busy also. Shortly she looked up at me with a smile.

“It appears that there is a significant gathering of law enforcement people here, and it has upset those in charge of the city and the surrounding area,” she told me with a grin.

“Yes, I picked up a number of conversations from the Highway Patrol, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department, and the Big Bear police. There were also mentions of the FBI and the CIA arriving shortly in addition to Homeland Security,” I told her.

“Are they flying in or driving?” she asked.

“Mr. Hill assured me last night that he could be here in three hours from LA. That could be by vehicle or aircraft, but knowing the CIA, I suspect they will arrive in an aircraft as will the FBI, if they are included in this. I’ll continue to monitor the aviation frequencies,” I told her before we both returned to listening.

Just before 8:00, I picked up a transmission from a Marine helicopter asking for landing instructions at Big Bear’s airfield. Twenty minutes later, there was a transmission from a Department of Energy aircraft asking for landing instructions also.

“It would appear that the participants in this little exercise are gathering,” I told Grace as 9:00 o’clock approached. “It’s time to call Mr. Hill and see what he is up to,” I added before using my tablet to go to the electronic spectrum and dialed Hill’s number. The phone only rang twice before it was answered.

“Hill,” I heard a rather tired voice say.

“Good morning, Mr. Hill.”

“Saint Cirq,” he answered but went no further.

“From monitoring the various electronic frequencies, I see that your various assisting units are assembling here in the Big Bear area. When do you propose to arrive, so we can bring this operation to a close, Mr. Hill?” I asked.

“The Federal Reserve Bank here in Los Angeles received the order for the money early this morning. My assistants and I are on our way to collect the money now. We should be arriving in Big Bear City around 10:00. Where should we meet you?” Hill asked.

“After you arrive, come to Camino Bosque Drive which is off of Baldwin Lake Road. You’ll see a large black limo parked outside of the house where we are. Bring the Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s people with you to block off Camino Bosque and the roads on either side of it. The Marines can land their helicopter at the site once I remove the force field. You’ll also need to bring the trucks to remove the bodies and the body bags. I have no idea what transportation or equipment the Department of Energy people brought with them, but they will require something to move the device in. They could probably use the truck that the Cartels had here to do that,” I told him.

“You seem to be aware of all of my assets,” Hill said in a surprised voice.

“It’s my job to be aware of what is going on. I’ll know when you arrive and will contact you again then,” I told him before disconnecting.

“How are we going to escape with all of those people in the area?” Grace asked.

“That is the question, isn’t it?” I answered with a grin.

“And the answer?”

“I propose that we wait until Hill and his people follow those sent to remove the device into the building, and then I’ll create a field around us to hide our movements while we return to our old campsite. From there we can move on the Lone Valley side of the ridge toward Squirrel Spur and move down to the beater from there before heading out to evade any pursuit. It’s a good thing that we extended our stay at the hotel to this weekend. Hill and the CIA are going to be really upset when they learn that the device wouldn’t have worked,” I said with a smile.