Chapter 299

Nichols raised his hands above his head as he walked slowly toward the gate. No more than fifteen feet away, the nearest guard swung his rifle to the ready position. Still, Nichols walked on. As he neared the gate, the guard mentally keyed one of his helmet's functions and Alerted while raising the rifle to his shoulder. As his finger slipped inside the trigger guard, the odd looking weapon centered on Nichols' chest even as the guard's amplified voice boomed out, "Halt!"

When the guard initiated the Alert status, all hell broke loose at Security Headquarters. The big monitors in every room came on in split-screen mode. The larger part of the screen showed what the Alerting guard/trooper saw through his visor, and several other scenes that the head tech thought pertinent took up the rest of the view. In addition, status reports from all sections scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

In seconds, the Ready helicopter roared into the air, its crew alert and its guns coming online. Heavily armed troops poured out of headquarters, boarded Ready SUV's and sped toward the Retreat. Barriers on the mountain road a quarter mile below the Retreat entrance sprang up. (Since Jeff now owned all the land on both sides of the road down to the Spermans' property, and with a generous donation to the county's coffers to grease the gears of government, he had talked the county commissioners into designating the road as private property from the Spermans' to its end at the ski lodge. With the agreement, the road, basically, became an extension of his driveway. County commissioners were pleased since they no longer had to spend county money to plow out and maintain over a mile of mountain road for only one house/building at the end of it.) The gate arm was up at the bottom of the steep driveway and the underground popup barrier was deactivated for the moment. The gate guard waved the SUV's loaded with troopers through. There was no snow on the driveway since Security routinely kept it plowed out and chemically treated for just such an emergency. Seconds later, a hummer with a top mounted pulse cannon charged up the road behind the SUV's.

Mayfield hadn't been sitting on his ass. The General had said he could have anything he wanted to protect the only person on Earth that Ship would allow to be her commander, so Mayfield asked for what he needed, and so far, the General had not rejected a single request.

Sirens inside the Retreat blared, and the women and Alphas who happened to be there at the time ran to retrieve their pulse rifles from the gun lockers, also grabbing handguns hidden all over the Retreat, everyone hastening to their assigned defensive/safe positions. The AI announced, "THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

Kayla, frustrated out of her mind that she was not with her Prime, nevertheless, took up her secondary orders, making sure everyone at the Retreat was armed, in their positions, the children were safe and guarded, and the building was secure. The Retreat's AI was allowed to tap into the feed from Security, so everyone knew what was going on, but Jeff's repeated drills helped to keep everyone calm, even as Kayla cautioned them that what they saw on the monitors could be just a distraction for the real attack from another quarter.

The Alert helicopter began an ever-widening search pattern, and the second gunship rose high above the Retreat, its adapted alien electronics reaching out in search of anything out of the ordinary. Another helicopter, stealthed, crept invisibly over the area well behind the Ready helicopter, its sensors looking for anything the first helicopter might have missed.

The Ship had not received any of the radio transmissions through her shields, but she had gone to her own Alert Status when she saw the helicopters begin their searches. Still invisible, she rose above the mountain, her sensors far more sophisticated than those of the humans, but she, like they, detected nothing unusual.

Mayfield had bolted from his office as soon as the Alert sirens came on. The General began to say something on his radio, but Jeff reached to touch his arm. "Mayfield has this place running like a well-oiled machine. The helicopters will warn us if this is a diversion for another type of attack. The monitors show the road is clear coming up the mountain. Nothing is moving in the rugged areas to the north, and none of our sensors are picking up anything that might indicate an attack. You trusted Mayfield enough to give him this command, why not let him and his people do what they have trained so hard to do?"

Even as he was talking, Jeff's radio came on with a message from Kayla telling him everyone was armed and in their assigned positions. He acknowledged her, suspecting she was pissed that she was not with him to be his last line of defense, but, in truth, he preferred her to be with the rest of his family. Between Diana and Kayla, everything would get done that needed to be done.

The Ship knew where her Prime was, but with the distance involved, she was unable to contact him with her first mental attempt. She increased the power of her mind touch and tried again, almost blasting Jeff out of his seat. He tried to respond, but was at first unable to make the contact. Grabbing hold of the arms of the chair he was sitting in, his head bent forward, worried that she would up her power more if he didn't contact her soon, he conjured up all the mental energy he could and finally succeeded in establishing the connection, giving her all the information he had in far less time than it could have been done verbally.

Even in the few seconds the mental contact took, sweat was beginning to drip from his forehead.

"Ship?" the General asked.

"Yes, Sir. She knows," the Prime responded. "She confirms what our people are reporting. There are no aircraft or missiles coming our way and no movement on the ground for miles. Apparently all that is going on is what we see on the screen. Shall we go talk to this guy?"

The General started to object, wanting to keep Jeff absolutely safe, but rank or no rank, Whitworth knew how useless an objection would be. He might be polite about it, but the Prime would do whatever the hell he wanted to do.

As they jogged out the front door of Security Headquarters, an SUV was waiting for them with its doors open and its motor running. As soon as they were seated, the trooper accelerated them away. After a screaming trip up the driveway, they came to an abrupt halt a hundred feet or so from the scene at the gate of the construction compound.

Jeff, suspecting something was awry, had called Mayfield on the radio and advised him to wait to search the prisoner until he got there. As Jeff and the General walked up, Mayfield tried to discourage Jeff from getting too close to the handcuffed prisoner who was still lying face down on the ground just inside the now-open gate.

Jeff stopped about ten feet from Nichols/Ferguson. "Who are you and what are you up to?"

"Don't come too close," Nichols responded, trying to hold his face up out of the snow enough to see who he was talking to. "I have a necklace locked around my throat that has a remote controlled charge in it. My belt has a very strong fiber garrote in it that won't show up on any type of detection gear. My belt buckle is composed of a new type of high explosive that is plated over with brass. The explosive is controlled by a transmitter that is part of my right shoe heel. It, like the other, is undetectable by any but the most sophisticated gear, and even that must be at close range to be successful. I have been sent here to kill Art Hanes and if I am unable to do so in a reasonable length of time, my employer will activate the explosive in my necklace. If I try to remove it, it will automatically activate."

He took a shuddering breath and quickly continued, "I don't even know the man I've been sent to kill, although I've seen videos and pictures of him, and I was ordered to send assassins to try and kill him in Georgia and also here. I'm damned if I try to kill him, and dammed if I don't, so I just decided to tell you what was going on. Do with me as you will. I'm tired of wondering when Moreau is going to blow my head off with the necklace, or send an assassin to kill me some other way."

"Get him on his feet," Jeff ordered.

"Don't come any closer," Nichols loudly said, his voice shaky. "I don't know how much Moreau knows about what is going on, but he has the ability to use several satellites to observe more than you would ever expect him to be able to see, although for some reason the view of this mountain is very blurry. But as soon as he realizes something is happening, he'll send the impulse to activate the explosive in my necklace. It will certainly kill me, but I'm not sure about its blast radius."

"Ship?" Jeff mentally inquired.

The Ship, having heard through Jeff's mind link now that he was closer, responded, "I have increased my defense of incoming signals. None of your planet's primitive impulses will penetrate my screens. The mountain no longer appears blurry to satellites, but now doesn't show up at all. If you will bring the prisoner to me, I will remove the explosive and weapons from his person."

The troopers had hesitated and looked back at their commander for further instructions when the prisoner had warned them of the explosive around his neck.

"Get him on his feet and to the Ship," Jeff ordered. "She just assured me that no outside impulse will get through now."

None of the borer crew was in sight; all were hunkered down behind the big borer or the crane.

Behind the crane, the site boss, the foreman and the crane operator tentatively peeked over the right track to see what was going on. "I knew there was something squirrely about that guy," the foreman said.

"Yeah, surrre you did," the boss responded, sarcastically. "But I did tell you that I thought this place was military. I guess they proved it," he said, nodding to the two gunships, one still obviously searching, the other high up, then indicated the hummer with the weapon on top. I'll just be glad when we get this job completed and get back to regular work. It's going to be bitch enough carving out all those rooms and connecting hallways without this shit going on."

"You can bet you won't catch my ass anywhere near that fence," the crane operator said, a little of his awe slipping through. "These guys are fucking serious about it."

"No shit," the foreman responded, then rose up a little for another look. "Seems like they're taking Ferguson to that building over there. What the fuck is with that guy? I made it plain as day to everybody that this outfit was probably military and stressed that I had been told they would shoot anyone who tried the fence. They even have fucking signs on it."

The crane operator eased over a little to look past his machine. "Yeah, they for damn sure are serious about the fence, but what bothers me the most is that fucking helicopter over there. Every time it turns toward us my bowels start to get loose."

"They're not gonna mess with us," the foreman said.

"Maybe. But if that's so, how come you're still hunkered down here with us?" the boss asked.

"Because I'm scared shitless," the foreman responded.

"I'm not. I have the opposite problem," the crane operator griped, his teeth locked together. "I need to use the bathroom bad – real bad."

"Well, go use the bathroom," the foreman snarled, exasperated.

The crane operator turned to look at him. "When I stand up, those guys in that helicopter hovering over there are going to notice me and turn all those guns toward me. After they do that, I won't have to go to the bathroom any more. It'll be sliding down my leg."

One of the helmeted guards locked the gate back, then turning toward the workers, his amplified voice booming out again, said, "We apologize for the show. You may go back to your duties."

The three, along with all the other workers, tentatively stood. The crane operator, taking mincing steps, headed toward the office trailer as fast as he could waddle.

"What do you suppose is in that building they're all headed toward?" the boss asked.

The foreman stood looking at the still hovering helicopter, then glanced at the guards who were again in their original positions. "I guess I can go along with Joe. I don't want to even look like I'm interested. I hope whoever is controlling those guns in that thing," he said, nodding his head, afraid to point, "doesn't get excited too easily. Come to think of it, I think I'll take a piss break before we get back to work."

The boss turned to the foreman. "Might as well tell everybody to take a break. None of them are going to get much work done until they talk this out. We'll let everybody get settled down a bit so they can concentrate on what they were doing before this shit went down. A break now might save someone from having an accident."