Chapter 355: Assassination Attempt

Monday, June 4, 2007

We all had breakfast together, in front of the TV to catch up with the latest breaking news. "Breaking" being the operative word, because things were being broken all around the world: store windows, marchers' heads, church attendance records, and every hope I had for people being sensible.

The parents had already informed their workplaces that their going to work was going to be problematic for a while. Vanessa and Mom could do MAF's work from home. Vanessa had employed very good staff for MAF who were easily capable of taking up the slack, especially with Vanessa being available on the phone and by email. OSU's lectures had finished, so Prof's work would've mainly involved students panicking over something or other. He got a secretary to put a note on his office door telling people to email him.

Dad was the only 'real' worker, and such was the chaos that it wouldn't have been a good idea for the father of the resurrected boy to go out in public. He called his work to talk to his boss about it, but that guy transferred the call upstairs because he knew the owner would enjoy talking to Dad. After Dad explained why he'd called, the big boss said, "We have bereavement leave, but I'm not sure what the company policy is on resurrections. You'd better stay at home with your son until I work it out. Is he REALLY your son?"

"He sure is. There's no one like Mark, and no way anyone could pretend to be him. It's an amazing situation."

Mom had been on the phone to the Department of Education people even before breakfast, pestering them on my behalf. They'd made the mistake of giving her their cellphone numbers after one of my school's earlier contretemps with us, making it easy for Mom to get on their case first thing. They quickly already agreed that the rest of us who went to school could have "dead week" at home rather than at school. Kids are still meant to go to classes for the last week before exams so the teachers can review the year's work with everyone, but the Board didn't want 100,000 people frantically pursuing the relatives of the resurrected boy onto school grounds, so that was an easy decision for them. They weren't so sure what to do about me though, and would be having an emergency meeting later this morning to discuss that problem.

Ava and I did the breakfast dishes. Apparently it's good for all us kids' characters, despite the fact that our characters are all very different - how unlucky is that! Everyone else got on with their activities. Julia was especially under pressure because it was her final year of school and her parents wanted her to do well in her exams. She would of course, but her parents' idea of "do well" was a high standard. All of the parents were probably thinking that of all the weeks that we could've been locked up inside our home, the study week before the end-of-year exams had to be the best possible time.

Ava and I were walking hand in hand back to the Kids' House, chatting about nothing in particular, when my proximity sense showed the bone in Ava's left upper-arm suddenly burst apart.

I'd just started thinking <WHAT THE... > when I heard a loud {CRACK} from the direction of Dimple Hill, to my right.

#3: <GUNSHOT! GET DOWN!>

Having multiple minds can be FANTASTICALLY useful in emergencies:

• I let go of Ava's left hand, grabbed her body with both my arms while several NP-points lifted us both and accelerated us rapidly behind the nearest bushes.

• Another mind created the Guardian Angel to justify the use of NP because the damned UAV was watching.

• Another mind had the idea of creating ten max-sized, max-brightness, overlapping Guardian Angels, up and down the path from us, obscuring the sniper's sight.

• Another mind created a couple of dark blue human-shaped light blob dummy targets over us and had them 'run' down the path away from us to draw any more fire.

• Another mind pulled my cellphone off my clip, hit speed-dial 9 (that calls Paul's number; speed-dial 9 being our local version of 9-1-1). That mind held the phone to the side of my head as we flew.

• Another mind thought, #14: <We don't need to get behind bushes now. Head over the back of the ridge but angle uphill so we'll be away from the same line he fired on last time.>

• Another mind thought, #1: <Ava's upper-arm is shattered. The bullet passed right through. I doubt it's life threatening, but it made a fucking mess of the bone.>

• Another mind thought, #15: <As soon as we're behind the ridge, fly down the gully then into the Staff Quarters under cover of multiple light blobs. They've got a damned good first-aid kit in there and half the guards have medical training. They'll certainly know what to do about a gunshot wound.>

• Another mind created a sight blob to search for the shooter, but couldn't see him. He was probably at least a mile away given the topography of the land and there being a cordon a half-mile from the west wall of the property.

{CRACK}.

Only a second had passed since the first shot, but Ava and I were already more than ten yards away from where she'd been hit. I had no idea where the second bullet went, which was VERY fine with me.

#12: <Probably a single sniper. I wish the fucking UAV wasn't above us or we could fly ourself up that hill. We could zip through the forest so quickly it'd only take us a few seconds to get close enough to the likely area for us to find him with a infrared sight blob. I'd VERY much like to very slowly tear that fucker's limbs off.>

#All: <Agreed.>

Ava was just starting to draw a breath, her mouth opening ready to scream. I said, "You're safe, darling. You were..."

Ava started screaming.

{CRACK}.

Another miss, but Ava screamed even louder.

Our alarm siren went off, adding even more noise. My families were ordered and trained to run to the panic rooms the instant this particular siren sound occurred (and most other siren sounds too). Paul had made a BIG deal about it, even telling Mom, "If Carol gets shot and she's lying on the ground at your feet, you leave her and RUN for the panic room. There's nothing you can do for Carol in the few seconds it'll take one of my guys to get to her. Not only that, but my guy could run up to Carol, scoop her up, and run her into cover. He could do that in a second. But if you're fucking around with Carol, you and my guys are all going to be sitting ducks stuck in the open, and you'll have stupidly gotten yourself and several of us killed. You'll turn a mess into fucking disaster. If you EVER don't run for the panic room when that siren goes off, I'll rip you a new one." We'd all been given instructions that forceful. The siren was sounding, but I was too busy to head for a panic room now.

Ava and I sunk below the back of the ridge, so we were totally safe from the sniper now. I reduced our sideways (relative to the ridgeline) velocity, turning us right to accelerate down the gully toward the Staff Quarters.

Paul answered his phone, "Yes?"

Hoping he could hear me over Ava's screams and the siren, I yelled, "Sniper on Dimple Hill. Ava's hit once in her upper-arm. The angel's flying us down the gully. I'm guessing to the Staff Quarters for medical help. Ignore the lights on the path; they're an angel special effect. Everyone else is inside either house, I think." They'd better all be inside, or Paul would rip them a new one.

"I see you." We were coming to the end of gully. Paul hung up.

I created dozens of max-sized, max-brightness, overlapping light blobs, obscuring the entire exposed distance to the Staff Quarters. I also created several human-shaped dark blue blob stacks and had them run or fly across the gap. We zipped across the gap with them at an altitude of ten feet. If the sniper fired blind into the area, he'd hopefully aim below us at one of the running pairs of targets.

Maybe thirty seconds had passed since the first shot, but the staff were already boiling out of their Quarters, and those on the grounds were running flat out.

The procedure for a shooter on the hill has the first reaction of securing the principals, which is the first reaction to almost everything. The next phase, depending on the situation, is nearly always for our guards to go into full-on guarding mode, i.e., they hunker down and surround us with a highly armed and alert defensive shield. There's an optional - meaning unlikely - possibility in the procedures manual which has some of our guards sally forth to go after the shooter. This time Paul sent six guards out to do that, as they were near our dirt bikes and we were already in a security alert so all our guys were wearing bulletproof vests and were armed. It took almost no time for the six guys to run to the bikes, mount up and roar out of our gate, which was re-locked behind them. With the obvious threat of a sniper on Dimple Hill posed, our staff had already practiced responding to it several times, including practicing riding dirt bikes all over the hill. They knew their way around it, and the security center staff will already be directing each of the riders to different locations on the hill to block the main routes off it, and then to start searching inward. Most of the hill, especially the side nearest us, is used as the McDonald Forest. It's research forest for OSU, so is more like an open wood and a normal forest.

According to our manual, other guards were to scan the hill with binoculars looking for movement. There wasn't much hope of that, but it was deemed worth a try. It had a good chance of spotting movement if there was a large number of attackers. In this case, there was a half-mile radius cordon around our property, so there'd be two or three dozen (I guessed) National Guard soldiers in the woods around that side of Dimple Hill's base that was near us. That was probably partly why Paul had let our guys go, because the cordon of soldiers kept our house safe from a massed assault, and our guys roaring up the hill would have a lot of support. Presumably that support was already running toward the sound of gunfire. If so, they'll be creating plenty of movement, and hopefully some gunfire too, if they find the fucker.

I worried that the National Guardsmen might mistake our guards on their bikes as the baddie escaping, but there was nothing I could do about that. I was busy decelerating Ava while trying to cushion her injured arm from my maneuver.

The guards coming out of the Quarters had seen Ava and me coming, and Paul had probably warned them we were on the way too. All the light blob effects I had going confused them, but they understood me yelling, "Ava's been shot." Her cries conveyed that same message very effectively. Getting the principals to cover was top priority, so the guards that saw us quickly blocked others from running out the door, leaving it free for the angel to drop me and Ava into it, where we were grabbed and pulled inside.

"She took one shot in her arm. The bone's shattered and the bullet passed through." I couldn't think of anything else useful to say, and there wasn't much else that I should legitimately know, so I stopped talking.

Our guards knew exactly what to do. Ava was laid on the kitchen table and three of them moved into medical action so smoothly that I immediately felt a lot better. Two more guards adopted defensive positions to cover any baddies coming in the doorway, which would've been hard because there were still guards coming up from their bedrooms, seeing the situation and looking VERY unhappy as they were running through the room and out the door.

The guards were so unhappy in part because Ava is well liked by them. She spends a fair bit of time with them, is officially single, and enjoys flirting with them a little, although it didn't take them long to learn that light flirting was all they were ever going to get. In some respects that made it even more fun for them because it was safe fun; although that's not as much fun as unsafe fun would've been.

Paul didn't come in, but there was no need for him to. His guys could look after Ava and me, while Paul had the whole operation to coordinate.

I canceled the light blobs outside, and supervised the medical treatment by keeping an eye on Ava's vitals - as my proximity sense showed them to me - holding her other hand and distracting her with sweet words and kisses on her cheek.

She'd recovered from the initial shock, and was able to get some words out now, asking, "I've been shot?"

"I'm afraid so, darling. One shot in your upper-arm. You'll recover easily, but I bet it hurts like a bitch now."

"God yeah! Was he ... ARGH!" one of the guards working on her had moved her arm while doctoring it. When she'd caught her breath, Ava completed, "Was he aiming for you?"

"No one could have a reason to aim at someone as lovely as you. I should've taken the tunnel..."

"Too pretty."

I knew she meant the springtime garden, but I said, "Yes you are, but you're still pretty in the tunnel too."

One of the guards had radioed to tell Paul what Ava's condition was, making it sound non-serious, and suggested that they use one of the SUVs to take Ava to the hospital. Paul apparently agreed.

The guard then picked up a wall phone, looked up the hospital's number on a list attached to the wall, called them, made VERY sure they knew this was "THE Ava West, who lives with the Andersons and Williams. She was shot in an assassination attempt and she needs immediate orthopedic surgery." After he was put through to the right person, he effectively dictated the first couple of pages of the medical chart for them, finishing with, "We don't need an ambulance; we're bringing her in ourselves now."

An SUV pulled up outside as close as possible to the front door. A couple of tables and sofas were carried out and placed to obscure the SUV and the gap between it and the doorway. Three of the guards carried Ava out gently, with other guards standing between her and the obscuring furniture as an additional shield. I tried to join them but was blocked by one of the guards who'd been guarding the doorway. He said, "Paul's orders are that once Ava's on her way, we take you downstairs and protect you there. There's at least one shooter still at large and you're probably his target. You're not going outside until the all-clear has been sounded."

He was right and there was no way I was going to win that argument, so I gave in gracefully. I'd not had a chance to say "Goodbye" to Ava, so I'd do it with NP. I created a sight blob outside to find her. She was lying on her side in the back of the SUV covered by several bulletproof vests, with heavily armed security guards all around her. Another reason I couldn't have gone with her was there being no empty seat. One of our female guards was beside Ava, with the rest of the SUV packed with male guards, most with a weapon in their hands. It was an intimidating sight. They would have to get through the cordon to get to the hospital. As stupid as the people waiting outside the cordon were, I couldn't see any of them being stupid enough to get in the way of this team.

I gave Ava several light strokes on her cheek. She smiled at my touch.

Two more guys with drawn pistols climbed onto either the side of the SUV, hanging off it drove out the gate, guns pointing forward ready for any more trouble. That was probably against several traffic regulations, although I had no memory of any reference to it in the Oregon Driver Manual. I had a feeling any cops they passed wouldn't remember any regulations our guys could be breaking either.

I was locked inside the bedroom of one of the guards I was with. Two inside with me, two more in the hallway outside.

I asked one of my babysitters, "Has there been any other trouble?"

"No, just what happened to you and Ava."

"Are the rest of my families in their panic rooms?"

"Yeah. It's just a matter of clearing the area now. We've called for a police helicopter with FLIR - that's a Forward Looking Infrared vision system." I knew what it was, but I didn't want to reveal any military knowledge so I kept quiet. "They'll search the woods and have a good chance of locating the shooter. The roads are being blocked so he won't get away that way. There haven't been any reports of engine sounds, so he probably doesn't have a motorbike. There are a large number of mountain bike trails so he could have one of those, but if he goes downhill from his spot he'll encounter the National Guard. If he heads for the top so he can take the trails down the other side, then there's a good chance our guys will intercept him. The odds are against him unless he's very good. We've run this scenario several times ourselves, and a shooter is normally caught."

#5: <If they bring him within 500 feet of us he's going to be a great deal more than "caught". "Fucked" would be a better description.>

#10: <I was thinking of "Torn from limb from limb, and then fucked.">

#29: <I hate to say this, but if they arrest someone in the forest and bring him out, we won't be certain he was the shooter. He might've been someone innocent who got caught up in the net. If we rip someone's limbs off and then it comes out later that it was the wrong person, we'll have messed up big time.>

#1: <Damn! You're right, but damn.>

My guards asked me details about what had happened to me and Ava, what the angel had done, what the HUGE lights had been, where the angel was now, and whatever else occurred to them.

A few minutes into that conversation, very muffled by our being underground, we heard a faint burst of gunfire, one shot of which sounded noticeably sharper.

I looked inquiringly at my guards, hoping they'd gotten word through their earpieces.

The chatty one said, "That sounded good."

"No word from your earpieces yet?"

"Those weren't our guns so it might take a while to find out."

A minute later my guards' body postures changed as they listened to their earpieces, then one of them told me, "The shooter's dead. National Guardsmen got him; no friendlies hurt. The police are heading to the location."

"GREAT! Serve the fucker right! Can I go to the hospital to be with Ava now?"

I started walking toward the door, assuming that I could leave. It turned out that I couldn't, because, "There might be more of them." I'd read the Security Procedures Manual so I knew that, I just hadn't thought of it in my eagerness to be with Ava.

It took another three hours before the hill was searched thoroughly enough for the principals to be let out. By which time we'd learned:

• The shooter hadn't tried to make an escape after his first shots. He'd been wearing a ghillie suit and had apparently thought he'd be able to hide through any search of the area. A National Guardsman had spotted and challenged him. The fuckwit had tried to bring his long rifle to bear on the Guardsman, who had a different idea and an automatic rifle that was already pointing at its target.

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