Chapter 399: Taking the Surveillers Down

Monday, November 12, 2007

On Monday, it was time to take the surveillers down.

"At last!" Paul exclaimed, when I told him very early in the morning what the angel wanted done, giving him time to get it prepared.

It wasn't going to be anything fancy. There were really only two parts to the takedown, which would occur roughly simultaneously in the mid-morning. I'd wanted to get this over with early enough that I could see that it had worked before I left. If the Government persisted in trying to keep the operation alive, I could give my families a LOT of advice because other dimensions had experienced that problem, or I could even delay my departure. I didn't think either would be necessary as I knew more than enough to ruin the operation in a way that put the Government under so much pressure that it would crumble rather than be foolhardy enough to try to fight back.

I could've done it earlier, but a weekday would make as many as possible of the politicians and CIA assholes in DC fear for their lives again. Doing it as early as last Friday was simply unnecessary, and the subsequent news-crew nosiness would have detracted from my birthday party and the quality time my families were spending with me. Those things made Monday morning the obvious time to do it.

The first part was Paul sending out four small teams of his guys, one team each to the three houses the camera babysitting weenies were in, and a fourth team to where the CIA's helicopter and its two pilots were operating from. The teams got into position, scoped out the job covertly, then waited for the go signal. Scoping out the helicopter operation was particularly easy as it was literally the middle of an unused farmer's field, remote from every air traffic control system and all other signs of civilization because the CIA had been paranoid about creating any computerized records of their activity.

The second part of my plan was a media job. With the minimum of advanced notice, we'd invited four TV news-crews to meet us in a specific OSU parking lot, telling them to arrive at 9am with cameras and vans capable of uploading live to their studios. They liked the sound of that and had arrived early. They were made to wait until Dad and three of our guards told them, "Get back in your vans. One of us will go with you to give you directions to where Mark's waiting. Hurry, or you'll be too late." The vans sped toward the baddies' base.

I'd contemplated inviting only two news-crews and flying the vans from my home to the baddies' base, but it was about 7,000 meters. Using 2 g's of sideways acceleration, it would take us 20 seconds to get halfway there, and another 20 seconds to decelerate to a stop near the house, for a total of 40 seconds. That gave the baddies too long to react. I could shave about 10 seconds off by accelerating a little longer than halfway, so the vans would overshoot the destination. That wouldn't matter because I could hold the baddies immobile while the vans slowed and returned (I had to be accompanying the vans, for an obvious reason). I could fly ahead of the vans by a few hundred feet, to get within range of the baddies faster, and I could also use more acceleration, but I still felt we'd take too long. I wanted the news-crews to film the baddies with their live satellite feeds going, and 20 seconds' warning might ruin that.

Instead, I'd gotten one of our Black guards (so he obviously wasn't me or any of the other principals) to walk out of the Staff Quarters while he was putting on a motorcycle jacket and helmet. He walked into the tunnel room where the bikes are kept, and I rode out seconds later wearing the same gear. That way the satellite surveillance would have no reason to track the bike rider, letting me get close to the baddies' base without their receiving a warning.

I'd arrived at the base about the same time as Dad was telling the news-crews to get in their vans. The Guardian Angel had appeared in the middle of the baddies, and had instantly clamped them to their chairs. Those in bed were flown to the living room and held there, waiting immovably for the news-crews.

I sent the word to Paul for him to give his security teams the word to do their takedowns of the three camera-sitting weenies and the pilots.

The security teams had no trouble entering the houses and disabling the lone weenies. I'd checked they were alone the previous night, and our teams had been large enough to easily handle up to three baddies, especially as our guys weren't going to be gentle. Taking down the two helicopter pilots was even easier, as one of them was sleeping and there'd been no locked doors to get through.

The weenies and pilots were tied up VERY securely, and then our guys photographed everything - especially the weenies, their gear, and what their gear was aimed at. They took fingerprint sources as well as DNA samples from the baddies. What especially worried the baddies was our security calling them by name. The evidence our teams had collected was only in case the cops were forced to drop the ball, which we very much doubted would happen, not with the public outcry that was about to occur.

The weenies were left lying on the floor, tied into position just inside the open front doors of their houses. That was to give the cops an excuse to enter the houses and make it easy for them to grab the weenies. The pilots were tied to their chopper's skids. Our teams pulled back and sat in their cars outside the properties. When the cops arrive, our guys will say, "The angel tied them up and messaged us to guard them until you arrived." It was a lie, the CIA contractors would certainly blame our guys, and no one would care. Paul's guys had worn gloves and left no evidence, and no one would be interested in the baddies' protests. They'd be lucky to escape a public lynching.

Meanwhile, the news-crews were en route to the baddies' Corvallis base. Our guards and Dad had prevented the newsies from broadcasting anything yet, and had told them that when they arrived they were not to transmit anything or their network would never be invited to another Anderson event. They could record, but not go live yet. Being inside the vans, Dad and the guards could ensure those orders were obeyed.

When the news-crews braked to a halt outside the baddies' base, Dad and the guards stayed in the vans to prevent any transmissions.

I greeted the news-crews, insisting they waited outside until they'd all arrived, a delay of less than a minute. Then I led them into the baddies' living room, where I explained, "They are all being held immobile by God's Guardian Angel, so you have nothing to fear, even though some of them are armed.

^-- "What you're looking at is a CIA operation using independent international mercenaries hired to spy on and carry out other more intrusive operations against me. For example, they slipped drugs into my food in a restaurant to give me diarrhea and make me vomit so they could obtain samples to use for medical analysis of me. In the hall closet you'll find an umbrella with a hypodermic syringe in its point which they were intending to 'accidentally' bump into me in the street, to get a blood sample from me. I'll give you more examples later." The bosses had sent the hypodermic umbrella recently, presumably in frustration at not getting a blood sample from me. The local baddies had refused to use it because it was both too dangerous and a stupid idea for how to get blood from me, but that didn't matter.

^-- "You'll notice that all their screens are focused on my home. They're using sixteen near-Earth orbit spy satellites launched by the US Air Force at the CIA's request, primarily to provide 24-hour coverage of our home although they perform other missions when over suitable parts of the world. Make sure you get some shots of those screens because they'll lose their feed in a few minutes."

I paused to let the media record the scene for several seconds.

After they'd had long enough I resumed, "You'll want to make sure you get audio of what happens next. It'll be quiet so make sure your tape recorders are set to be as sensitive as they can be, if that's how they work."

I pulled out the cellphone of the senior guy here, the angel pulled his arm up and pressed his thumb to the panel on the phone. I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and typed in the pin number. The angel split off a little mini-angel, which flew into my voice box and hovered there, where half of it was clearly visible sticking out of my throat. Allowing the cameras to film what I was doing, I found the person called "One" in the phone's list and I placed the call, moving closer to the reporters and holding the phone so its speaker was facing the reporters' eager microphones, and so their cameras could see the number it was calling. When One answered I put on the phone owner's voice - we had HOURS of tape of his talking and I'd practiced copying it in front of my families - to say, "The team's worried about the orders getting too dangerous. They want me to tell you they aren't happy."

"What do they want?"

"To be made happy and to be reassured. You'd better have some convincing reasons because they think you're going to set them up, and some of them could get killed by that."

Mr. One spent about thirty seconds telling me what to tell the team, that he'd look into upping the pay rate, and gave some reassurances that they were safe.

I said, "I'll pass it on and get back to you." I hung up.

The angel left my neck, merging with the main one in the middle of the room.

In my normal voice I told the baddies, "One wants you to know that you're safe from the angel and that it'll never find you. I hope you feel reassured."

^-- To the cameras I said, "What you just heard was the software-distorted voice of Robert Briggs. He's an Operations Controller for the CIA working out of Langley. You'll have his voice recorded well enough for evidence later. It's heavily distorted but the CIA will be forced to release the software that did the distortion so you'll be able to reverse it to get his natural voice. The phone company's records - the angel's notes say they're using AT&T - will confirm that the cellphone he just used and the second phone that Robert Briggs habitually carries were both in the Langley area.

^-- "With that established, what we'll do is go outside, I'll stand by the front door with the Guardian Angel. You'll contact your producers to get them ready to break into your current programming in two minutes, at exactly 10:45 local time and not before. Then you'll approach me from your vans, this time transmitting live, and we'll reenact your arrivals and my explanation."

^

[I knew Robert Briggs used AT&T because one of the Risk Takers' strategies that'd worked was to wait until the local boss was asleep, float his phone to his thumb, press lightly then float it away to enter the pin number. Those Marks (I'll call them "I" for this description; that being reasonably accurate) had scrolled through the list of phone numbers memorizing them all.

Then I'd gone snooping at phone carriers until I'd determined the current location of One's phone. I'd flown to Washington, obtained an AT&T phone of my own, placed a call to a phone-sex number - I've always been slightly curious about those - and had driven along the roads near CIA's head office in Langley keeping precise notes of my location and times. Using AT&T's computers later had told me when my call had been transferred to different cellphone towers, which gave the locations that happened. I'd acquired a movie camera with a very high-powered zoom lens and timestamp function, and had filmed cars leaving Langley for all of an afternoon and evening. Then I'd gone to the DC AT&T building again and found what time One's phone had changed cellphone towers and in which direction. Reviewing the tape gave me a list of several dozen possible people; so many because he hadn't been talking on his phone at the time, so I got its new location only from its periodic check in. I'd used this approach because I'd deemed it too dangerous and difficult to do a sight blob search of the CIA's huge head office.

Doing checks on their cars' plates at a police station had narrowed that further and had given me many of their addresses and occupations. It'd been easy to check their homes to see who was carrying around a fingerprint-secured phone. Unfortunately no one was.

Further database searches, using a CIA database and facial recognition software this time, had given me much better information, narrowing the list down to three guys. Two of them had been carrying two cellphones, so I'd picked the most likely guy and called One's number using his own home's landline phone. I'd seen one of his cellphones respond so the angel had appeared and grabbed him.

The Guardian Angel spent an enjoyable - for me - several minutes convincing him that he should verbally and completely answer the questions typed on his phone. Once he'd become cooperative, I'd turned on a video camera I'd brought then the Guardian Angel started asking every question it could think of. After several hours and tapes, I'd cut off his head while the camera was still rolling.

Then I'd tracked down his boss, interrogated then decapitated him.

Then I'd duplicated the tapes and given them to several media studios, busting the operation wide open. Paul's men and the cops had, just as the news was about to break, captured the local baddies to make sure they didn't escape. The audiotapes from my bugs and other evidence we'd collected at home supported everything. That had ended the Surveillance Problem for that Risk-Taking Mark.]

^

The arrival reenactment went without a hitch. I even had the baddies' TV muted and tuned to CNN so I could see them cut over live to my breaking story, confirming that the broadcast was getting out. Dad and the security guys came in to watch the circus.

I repeated to the cameras, "What you're looking at is a CIA operation using independent international mercenaries hired by the CIA to spy on and carry out other more intrusive operations against my family and me. For example, they drugged my food in a restaurant to give me diarrhea and make me vomit uncontrollably so they could get samples to use to medically analyze me. Apparently the CIA didn't get enough samples the last time they had me as their illegal prisoner, so they have been continuing their illegal operation on the sly.

^-- "In the hall closet there's an umbrella with a hypodermic syringe in its point which they're planning to 'accidentally' bump into me with, to get a blood sample. We've got many weeks of all their plans on tape so there's a wealth of other examples. We've already placed copies of the audio tapes in the news teams' vans, with typed notes of the locations of the best segments to save you time searching through weeks of material." The baddies were looking decidedly worried. They were well and truly blown, all on live TV. It wouldn't do their highly secretive careers any good at all.

^-- "You'll notice that their screens are focused on my home. They're using sixteen spy satellites launched by the US Air Force at the CIA's request. They provide 24-hour coverage of my home."

^-- I pulled many pages of notes from my pocket, explaining, "The angel typed up the information I needed. It wants me to do the introductions first." I turned to the second page, asking the angel, "Which one is Sergeyev Kozak?"

The angel moved to hover over the Ukrainian, whereupon I said, "Thanks." Then I read out a good summary of his life history, with emphasis on the types of illegal missions he was typically involved in. It was possible that his history might be different in this dimension, but so unlikely I didn't worry about it. I'd contemplated having the Guardian Angel enter each baddies' head for a few seconds, then enter mine, whereupon I'd describe the guy's life, but I'd decided that might frighten the paranoid Government too much. Just reading from typed notes was safer.

I went on to give the name and capsule life history of every guy here. Soon into the second guy all the satellite feeds were cut. I pointed that out, saying, "Someone in Langley - probably a guy called Samuel Sutton according the angel's notes - just ordered the plug pulled on the satellite feeds. No doubt the Government will claim the satellites weren't actually looking at my house, but were doing valuable research on the gopher problem and just happened to be looking at my land when we arrived." I got a few polite chuckles from the news-crews, but not from the gagged baddies.

I carried on with the introductions, impressing the news-crews considerably and scaring the hell out of the baddies. They'd TOTALLY underestimated the angel. It was clear by the expressions on their faces - that the cameras were catching - that the angel was on the money. Even better for me than just being accurate was that several of these guys were REALLY BAD baddies. They shouldn't have been allowed to draw breath let alone be paid by the Government to operate against its own citizens. One of the Eastern Bloc guys had blown up a school bus full of young kids in a failed extortion attempt, for example - admittedly the worst example. Our Government's knowingly employing such a monster would cause them a great deal of embarrassment, as it had in many other dimensions.