Chapter 15

Saturday, June 10, 1995

There we were, calmly sitting around the kitchen table. Elieta was flipping blueberry pancakes and I was ferrying them to the table. There were three guys sitting there (Rock, Bear, and David) and two eight-year-olds. We were talking about having an outing to the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, in Glen Rose, TX. It was one of those ‘the animals roam free, and you better keep your window rolled up’ places. It was a couple of hours away to the southwest. I know that the kids were raised up as Indians, but they’d never seen a cheetah or an ostrich. Just a little outing.

Suddenly, Alex put her fork down on the plate, and sent me a message. ’MOM! Bad men are coming.’ I relayed it to the three others of my family. Only David and Elieta were excluded.

’Where are they Alex?’

’She doesn’t know, Mom,’ said Jim. ’I’m trying to track what she’s seeing but it’s at the edge of my range. No landmarks that I can see.’

’Okay,’ said Bear. ’Everybody finish breakfast normally. We’ll go from there.’

’We’ll just go into the kids play room, until we know what we’re gonna do,’ said Rock.

’Got ‘em,’ Jim sent to everybody on our network. ’I can see a sign. “Northwest Regional Airport” That’s the next exit on I-35W ... One of them has a sniper rifle in his lap. I don’t understand that. Is he going to shoot from the car? ... They are in a brown SUV.’

’There’s only two of them,’ said Alex. ’I can put them both to sleep, right now.’

’No, Alex. Don’t create a huge crash on the interstate. Let’s see if they are going to meet up with any others,’ I replied. I could piggyback on Alex’s connection now. How could she find them in the first place? I needed a link to everybody in that car.

The three of us (me, Alex, and Jim) watched through the eyes of the driver as he drove down the highway. He was driving only 55 mph. Didn’t want to attract the attention of a random patrolman, I guess.

I laughed to myself. I’d driven on that stretch of road. The posted limit was 65. This was Texas, after all. We’ve got miles to go, why not drive faster? He’d be more likely to attract attention with a slow moving car, and a passenger holding a sniper rifle in his lap.

They took a turnoff that did NOT lead to our ranch. I was confused. I passed along the news mentally: ’They are stopping at a construction site. There’s nothing but a tall structure, partially complete.’

Bear said, ’I guess a competent sniper could hit something from a mile out.’

I kept updating the family mentally: ’The driver is staying in the car and opening a laptop. The passenger is taking the construction elevator.’

We waited for them to do something. ’Okay the sniper is settled at the top. SHIT! He can see the front of our home. He’s just looking through the scope, but he’s not planning on shooting!? I don’t understand.’

Bear had a reason: ’He wants to see, not shoot.’

’You’re right, Bear. His pal in the SUV just radioed the sniper. “Just keep an eye on the car. Let me know when they’re all in. Get comfy. It could be a while.”’

Rock chipped in with an answer. ’They have a bomb in our SUV. When did they do that?’

’I don’t know, but you’re right. There’s a bomb in the car.’ Bear was angry. It was just a rental.

’You’re right, RockDad. There’s a funny connection in the engine,’ said Jim.

’Jim? How do you have a connection to the car? ... Never mind. We’ll get to that later,’ I exclaimed. I didn’t grok that at all! The car had no mind.

’I got it from S2D2,’ Jim answered.

[Lexi, Jim did that through me. He messaged me directly. How I don’t know. But I thought it best to answer. I queried the computer in the Lincoln SUV. There is an unidentified electrical connection, not in the schematic, in the engine compartment.]

Red, he contacted YOU?

[Yes, in my persona as S2D2. It came through as a normal message from Chas’s computer. That link is never really down. It came through in the last few minutes.]

Un-fricken-believable!

I broke off from Red/S2D2 and got on the family hookup. ’Well, I was going to get them to come to the house, but I’ve contacted them directly, thanks to Alex finding them. They are the two bad guys who are hired by Exxon! Not only did he NOT fire them, but Fortin activated a plan that was in place for planting a bomb in some Mexican cartel. Except it was now aimed at us. There’s a lot of detail, including a mechanic at the local Lincoln dealer.

’Blackman and Browne are two “special consultants,” who are paid from a slush fund controlled by the Chairman and CEO, Abel Fortin.’

Rock said, ’Sorry, kids, but this is an adult part of the conversation.’

’Awww, RockDad! We wanna be part of this, too,’ Alex complained.

’A., remember what we did when I didn’t tell mom until after I zapped the guys in the truck?’ Jim said quietly.

’Yeah, so?’

’It’s like that. Mom and the Dads are going to fix the bad guys, and they don’t want us to know about it, ‘til it’s all done. It’s a grown-up thing. They’re protecting us,’ Jim said. ’So even though we know that they are going to do something, we should let ‘em do it in secret – even though it’s not a secret.’

I blocked off Jim and Alex, and sent only to the Dads. ’Why do we even bother? He’s eight, going on thirty-eight.’

Bear said, ’It’s possible that Jim will come up with an approach that might be better than something WE come up with.’

’We’re making a mistake if we exclude Jim, but we have to include both of them, I think,’ said Rock.

I widened the connection to include Alex and Jim. ’Okay, kids. We’re not going to exclude you from most of our calls. But remember what we agreed on? No peeking on anybody without special situations. And that includes when Mom and the Dads are getting romantic, right?’

’Sure’ and ’We remember’ were the replies.

Bear said, ’Why not put them to sleep and we just go out and kill ‘em?’

’But we can’t just kill them. They’re our KIDS.’ He waited until there were a couple of napkins flying toward him. ’Okay, okay ... Seems like a simple plan to me. Kill the bad guys,’ Rock agreed.

“Sorry, David, I had a compulsion to throw a napkin at my husband,” I laughed.

“Feel free,” said David. “I’ve wanted to throw things all the time.” He picked up a napkin and threw it at Elieta. Then he grabbed her around the middle and carried her off to their room.

’Can I make a suggestion?’ Jim asked.

’Go ahead, Jim,’ I encouraged.

’If we just kill them, you’ll have the problem of the bodies,’ Jim explained. ’But suppose we put them to sleep, take the bomb out of our car, and then put it in THEIR car. I’ll bet that S2D2 can tell us how to hook it up. Then we just leave ‘em there and let the police sort it out. If we’re careful we won’t even leave fingerprints on the bomb.’

’Do you think you can get a hook-up to S2D2 from our computer? That seems to be a crucial part,’ I said.

Jim considered the computer connection. ’I don’t know. Isn’t there something special about S2D2’s connection with Chas’s computer?’

’Try it. There’s no rush. They’re not going to shoot us or anything, and if we don’t touch the SUV, there’s no risk from the bomb,’ said Bear.

’Good suggestion, Jim. We won’t activate it until we’re sure of a connection to S2D2.’

[Lexi, it will work as Jim suggested. No problems with the connection.]

Red, I’m concerned with giving them access to you.

[I can control that.]

...

David came out of his ‘private time’ with Eli after a while, and started to go out the front door.

I stopped him. “Uh ... where are you going, David?”

“I was just going to move the car to the garage. If you’re not planning on using it, I mean.”

“Well, we were. Rock and Bear were, uh, going out to do some shopping. Kind of a late birthday present for the kids.”

’Guys? I think we need to do this bomb removal thing. I just saved David from being blown into smithereens.’

’Mom, I think we should enlist David for our endeavor ... How was that? Did I sound all grown up and stuff?’

’Yes, Jim. All grown up. Now why do you think we should tell him?’

’One, I think we can trust him. And two, and most importantly, he was a SEAL. He knows about bombs and stuff,’ said our tiny adult.

’Oh! Good idea ... What do you think, guys?’

’It would be a shame to waste all that knowledge,” Bear said.

’It would be a bigger shame if we blew ourselves up, if it could be prevented,’ Rock threw in.

’Yeah. A shame. Another good reason for including him. Let’s meet in the living room,’ I said.

I called David and he came out with Eli. I looked at the Dads and they both nodded.

“Listen, you know I get feelings and visions from the Spirits, sometimes, right?” I got a nod from Eli and just silence from David. “Earlier this morning I felt that there was a bomb in the engine of the SUV. That’s why I stopped you from going out to move it, earlier.”

David went into one of those silences, as I peeked he got a ‘Holy Shit!’ vibe.

He said, “There is exactly one bunch of people who know we’re here. Exxon. We’ve barely been here a week. They moved fast.” A quick study of available facts, is our David. He got up from the couch and closed the drapes. “They can’t be sure you’d be in that car when it went boom, so I assume they’ve got people watching it. And if they’ve gone this far, there’s probably someone out there with a sniper rifle. So, let’s not take a chance.”