Chapter 362: We Get Out of Harm's Way

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 (Continued)

It was time for me to get to our panic room. I was reasonably high over the midpoint between the Main and Kids' Houses, so it only took a few seconds for me to drop down to where the emergency tunnel's exit was (where the Tunnel Boring Machine entered the hill to make that tunnel). The entrance had been secured by two vault doors, the opening itself disguised, and just outside the entrance the ground had been excavated down several yards so the door was now high up a vertical cliff face. None of which posed any problem for me. The cliff wasn't illuminated by any lights, making it shaded and black, so it was easy for me to drop down into its shadow, open the netting that disguised the hole, open the nearest vault door from the inside, and slip in. The doors have sensors on them that report to the security center when they're opened, but I had long since learned how to temporarily disable those. Being able to create a sight blob and NP-fingertips inside an airspace means I can unplug a cable, open and close the door, then plug the cable back in again. That's SOP("Standard Operating Procedure") for me moving sneakily around our property wherever there are inconvenient sensors. I shut the door behind me as I opened the next one, then I flew myself rapidly down the tunnel, joining my girls just after they entered our panic room.

The procedure is that as soon as we're inside and the door locked, we call security to let them know who's inside (both panic rooms have very good telecommunications). I made the call, just to make it explicit that I was here. Julia would have made the call otherwise, and lied that I was with them.

I asked, "Is it a drill? What's happening?"

"It's not a drill, but I don't have any information yet."

He certainly did have information. The houses were fully illuminated and at least half the current security shift would've seen that my parents' bedroom no longer existed. They all had radios, so if one of them knew, they all knew. He just didn't want the kids to know yet.

The kids are faster at getting into our panic room than the parents. Dad's quick, but the other three aren't so good, especially Old Hopalong. Tonight the plan was for Dad to go down the chute first, sprint to the adults' panic room, and place the call to report that everyone was with him. That would partially recover the time they'd lost hiding in the spare bedroom until after the crash, so make the event's timing seem more plausible. Some delay was okay - it could be blamed on Prof stumbling in the tunnel, for example - but it'd be best to make the timing seem as kosher as possible. Donna could've placed the call from the adults' panic room even earlier than Dad, but the guard would have asked to speak to one of the adults, so that call had to wait on Dad's arrival.

About thirty seconds later, Dad called our room. It was on the direct line laid in a hole bored between the two rooms before their steel walls were erected. It was inaccessibly deep into the hill, and had its own telephones at either end which were unconnected to anything else, so we could certainly talk freely on it (which was the idea, in case the emergency tunnel was overrun by baddies).

Dad checked, "Who's in your room, for real?"

"Carol, Julia and me. What about at your end?"

"Just Donna so far. I can hear the others coming. How did it go?"

"Wonderfully well. I don't think it could've gone any better. Remember that you need to look horrified when you see the damage and say you heard some terrible crashes behind you as you went down the chute. There wasn't any fire, so don't mention anything about that. Pass that onto the others please. I don't think the closet was damaged, so you won't have to suffer through Mom's shopping, oww, oww."

While I was fending off my attackers - attacking me out of principle, to defend womanhood's propensity to shop - Dad said, "That's one problem that doesn't affect me as badly as it affects you. Fely does her own shopping and I usually don't even know."

"Lucky you..."

Dad interrupted to say, "The others are here now. Fely wants to talk with you."

I had to repeat the same information to Mom, modified by my saying, "I'm sorry to say that I don't think you'll have an excuse to buy new dresses. I think the closet survived pretty well."

"What about the bedroom itself?"

"It'd probably be best if I don't describe it to you. That way your reaction will be more honest when they finally let us out of these rooms. There wasn't any fire - at least not for the first few seconds that I saw - so don't mention anything about hearing a whoosh behind you. Just lots of crashing sounds."

"We could hear them from where we were. It sounded like a train going through our room."

"A train might've been tidier."

Donna came on the line, and she was telling me how noisy it'd been when one of the other phones in the Kids' Panic Room rang (there are landline and cellphones, as well as the direct point-to-point phone I was using).

Julia answered it. I heard her say, "We know, thanks. Mark's on the direct line to them now. What happened?"

From Julia's convincingly horrified comments, the person at the other end was describing the attack.

We sat on our butts while our security guys reacted. They knew the UAV was owned by the Air Force and had probably been used by the FBI, and the radar operator would've tracked its deliberate-seeming zigzag descent and straight-line attack on Mom and Dad's room, so our security would believe the Government had just carried out a deadly force attack on my parents. No doubt our guys were FRANTIC! If the attack was going to be followed up with anything, then it sure-as-fuck wouldn't be a small "anything". Last time we'd been attacked by the Government, it'd been two helicopter gunships, two Delta Force teams, and most of a 75th Rangers company. What was it going to be this time? Our guys would be RUNNING!

As it turned out, they just got some needless exercise, which I'm sure they were VERY happy about. Time passed and no more violence happened.

As soon as he thought the current moment's lack of violence might continue, Paul called the Chief of Police to quickly report that the UAV the Chief had seen through the telescope had just been deliberately rammed into the bedroom of Steven and Felicity Anderson and would certainly have killed them but for the radar operator's last second warning. The remnants of the UAV had passed through the house and over the northern wall and they needed to be secured by the police. Paul couldn't spare the guys to do it because they were still on high alert in case the Government followed-up with another attack. Paul finished with, "Treat it as a crime scene. This was a deliberate attempt to murder Steven and Felicity." [The radar operator's back got VERY well patted and his hand well shaken by his workmates over the next several hours. He got a BIG bonus in his next paycheck - we reward people who do their job well enough to save our lives.]

No fire had started, so there was no need for that emergency service. There had been very little fuel and it'd been sprayed out widely by the spinning wreckage. Any sparks hadn't caught.

Everybody on the surface did their running around while we sat on our asses chatting about how well the war was going so far. The Government had just badly lost a very important action, and it had no idea.

We didn't want to waste much time sitting in our panic rooms. I had more battles to be getting on with, and I needed to get moving. I talked about it with the parents, and we agreed on what to do.

After twenty minutes, I created the Guardian Angel in my panic room as a visibly yellow radio blob, then I sent it straight up. It rose up through the ground to a height of about fifty feet AGL, where it paused for a few seconds. There were no alarming radio or radar transmissions. The Guardian Angel moved toward the crash site. It was too far away for me to send the blob into the room, so it paused at the edge of my range, pretending to look from the distance, then it moved directly back to me, angling down through the ground.

A few seconds later, Dad called Paul, telling him, "The Guardian Angel has opened the door and is nudging us out. Is there any reason why not?"

"I'd like you to stay there until we're sure nothing else is going to happen."

"The Guardian Angel wants us out. I don't think we have a choice. It's pushing me quite hard. Bye." The parents exited their panic room and walked down toward ours. Prof had fitted his spare leg.

At our end, I'd left our security uniform on a shelf, had put my ski mask in my pocket and had put on a casual shirt I'd flown into this room before the Government's evil attack started, putting it over my black shirt to make myself look less cat-burglar-like. I also powered down the secret study computer. I'd prefer the Government not know about it, and leaving it running might make it easier for them to find it if they were looking for things connected to the internet or drawing power. I'd thought about disassembling it and piling the components on the main room's shelves (the panic room had shelves of tinned food, water, blankets, unfashionable clothes, weapons, etc.), but decided it wasn't worth it. If the Government went to all the effort of drilling through the panic room's vault door, and through the far easier door into my secret study, then they would've also gone through the house with a fine-toothed comb. I had done just one thing to leave them with some doubt: I turned all but eight of the screens off. The DHS had seized my 8-screen system eighteen months ago, and that had been widely publicized as their returning only five screens had inspired much ridicule, so my having only eight screens turned on now might confuse any Government searchers. I memorized exactly where I'd left the mouse and the locations of the CPU and other boxes on the floor, to help me know later whether anyone had used the computer.

We exited our room, waiting for the parents and Donna to arrive. The rooms are about 350 feet apart, so it took them a while; not Donna though. She ran down to us, calling ahead how eager she was to see the damage.

"Remember you have to look shocked, Donna. Your mother and father were nearly killed."

"Oh yeah. I'm not very good at acting things like that. Maybe I shouldn't look?"

"That's easy. After we've packed in my room, the Guardian Angel will herd the parents up the tunnel to the Adults' House to pack and Mom can pack for you too. It'll herd the kids down the elevator and along the main tunnel to where the SUVs are."

We told the parents of the small change when they arrived, then we walked to the chute that led to my bedroom. I used a sight blob to make sure no guards were in the room, then I lifted myself up the chute, quickly followed by everyone else.

I used NP to float three small suitcases onto our bed, and my wives and I started packing.

Dad called Paul on my cellphone, putting it on speakerphone and saying, "Steven here Paul. We're all in the kids' bedroom. The Guardian Angel is getting them to pack small suitcases."

Paul said, "Stay there. I'm on the way."

"We'll stay here if the angel lets us. I'll call you back if we're pushed to move."

Paul and three other guards arrived about the time the girls finished packing, smashing their previous fastest trip-packing record by at least a factor of two hundred.

Paul half-addressed the Guardian Angel, half-talked to us, "I don't think you should go anywhere until we've found out what's going on."

He would've said more, except that the angel picked everyone and the suitcases up with NP, and floated us out of the room. The angel was holding the guards' arms to their sides, so they had no way of slowing our progress. At the Kids' elevator, I used NP to press the button, and the kids were diverted out of the group to be parked in front of the elevator doors. Everyone else floated toward the tunnel to the Adults' House.

Paul told the Guardian Angel, "Half the guards should go with the kids." The Guardian Angel ignored him because Paul's suggestion would've been VERY inconvenient.

I said, "I'll have the Guardian Angel with me Paul, and we'll be underground, so I think we'll be safe."

He had no choice. His shoes were only a couple of inches above the floor, but that two inches totally removed all of his control over his movement.

The Guardian Angel did a clever trick: it split in two, both the same size as the original, one staying with the kids, the other moving to join the adults. Paul and the other guards didn't say anything but they were visibly impressed, in a worried way. Sometimes I wish I could read minds, because it'd be very interesting to know what Paul thought of that development.

Just inside the tunnel up to the Adults' House, there's a security door that'd shut because of the alarm. The adults remained hovering in front of it until the parents convinced Paul to radio to get it opened. The alternative was for them to get taken to the Adults' House by the above-ground route, which seemed unacceptably dangerous.

Paul radioed the Security Center to open the doors, and all the adults floated up the tunnel. I kept Guardian Angel B following the adults while the kids descended in the elevator with Guardian Angel A. Or maybe A and B were the other way around; it was hard to tell.

The Kids' Elevator descends 110 feet. By the time we got to the bottom, the adults were a fair way up the tunnel, and in risk of getting outside my 500-foot range, so I raised the kids with NP and zipped us down the tunnel to catch up with the adults ("catch under with the adults", in this case). The Adults' elevator is 150 feet tall, so that geometry should tell you that we didn't have to move far along the tunnel to get within range of the adults. I flew us quickly all the way to the SUV as there was no reason why not. I put the suitcases in the back, and we climbed in, all in backseats. I very definitely didn't get into the driver's seat because I didn't want to give the impression that I was in charge of this in any way.

We chatted while I did the necessary things up top. The parents were flown to the hallway outside Vanessa and Prof's bedroom. The Williams adults were moved into their room with two of the guards, and I put two of their suitcases onto their bed and opened them. The Guardian Angel, Mom, Dad, Paul and the other guard floated into what was left of Mom and Dad's room.

I don't know what Mom said, but the destruction turned her face white. The carpet was gouged up; the windows were all gone, apart from dangerous looking shards; there were pieces of plane and small remnants of furniture scattered randomly around the room. One shredded pillow was lying on the floor about where the bed had been, creating a forlorn, scary symbol.

Mom's and Dad's feet were bare and the floor was covered in glass, so I floated some strong looking shoes out of their closets. I moved my parents and their shoes back down the hallway, lowered Mom and Dad to the floor, and put the shoes down in front of them.

Dad bent down immediately, but Mom was slow to react so one of her shoes kicked her. That broke the spell and got her moving.

When they were shod, I picked everyone up and floated them to the closet, lowering the guards outside the doorway, while Mom and Dad got placed inside. I pulled two suitcases down, opened them, and watched Mom and Dad start to pack (part of our preparation had been to make sure every room had the suitcases we'd use in it, to make things flow better).

Paul was talking earnestly to Mom and Dad while they were packing, but it didn't matter that I couldn't hear him as he'd never be able to talk them out of leaving.

I thought to fly Dad's toothbrush and toothpaste from the bathroom to save him the trip, but God knows what Mom would need. Actually, God didn't know, so it'd be best to let her get it herself, which meant it'd look best if Dad did so too.

When Mom shut the closet door so she and Dad could get dressed, the Guardian Angel moved through the wall back into the bedroom itself, that ability impressing the guards again.

I canceled the angel with the kids and created another sight blob in the kitchen, bagging up several days' worth of food for us, even some fresh veggies. No doubt the mothers would've made different choices, but they'll manage for a few days with what I'd selected. I carried the bags to the elevator and down to the SUV.

When they emerged from the closet, I saw Dad look at where the bed used to be and pat his pants pocket unconsciously. Dad had made the mistake of habitually leaving his wallet on his bedside table. It was probably still somewhere in the vicinity of his bedside, but that was scattered over the hillside. Next time a plane is scheduled to fly through his bedroom he'll know not to leave his wallet in its flight path.

Prof and Vanessa came into the room and inspected the devastation, with suitably shocked expressions on their faces, talking to Paul while Mom and Dad packed their toiletries away.

I picked everybody up and moved them down the hallway, then Mom and Vanessa into Donna's room. I'd already laid a case on her bed and Mom got busy filling it. You can tell when a girl gets to a certain age because the contents of a pharmacy moves into her bathroom. Vanessa gathered the essential half a dozen items, passing them to Mom. We'd originally planned for Donna to do her own packing, so I hope she wasn't going to be too upset about Mom's and Vanessa's choices.