Dialene Read online

  "Sounds complicated," Chuck sighed.

  "Sounds devious," Cam grinned. "I like it."

  I shrugged, "Yes it's going to be complicated. But I think there are going to be a lot more attacks, and until we figure out who's behind it, I can't think of anything else to do."

  "So we play the shell game," Chuck nodded.

  "And Samantha's the pea." Cam agreed.

  "Who's a pea?" Samantha asked coming into the room, looking very tired.

  "You are," I smiled, then turned to the other two, "You know we're going to have to double Sabre as well. Though I think that won't be hard considering the number of tigers around here." I chuckled.

  "I don't want you risking anyone in my place," Samantha said walking over to the table.

  "Samantha?"

  "Yes Chuck?"

  "You're outvoted."

  "I'll get Sabre to tell you then." She pretty much growled that at him.

  "He's been outvoted too." Chuck growled back. "We handle security, and until we catch whoever is behind this, we're running the show."

  "Who do you think is in charge here?" She said frostily, I could see she was getting mad.

  Chuck stood up and glared down at her. "I am. And I have no problem at all with locking you in the basement if I think it will keep you safe. And don't even think to complain to Sabre about it, because there are sixty one other people around here who feel exactly like I do and are just as bound and determined to keep you from doing anything stupid when it comes to protecting you. You may own us, we may love you, but we all promised your dad we'd do whatever it took." His voice continued to get lower and more commanding as he talked.

  "And we will all honor that promise even if it costs each and everyone of us our life. So don't make this any harder then it has to be!"

  She had been looking angrier and angrier until he mentioned dying for her, then she suddenly wilted and turning on her heel she stormed out of the room.

  Chuck collapsed back into the chair with a huge sigh. "Gods that woman is worse then Sabre sometimes."

  "This happen often?" I asked.

  "When Sabre isn't around, about once every few weeks or so. How he makes her toe the line I'll never know."

  "I think she just doesn't like feeling helpless."

  "Samantha's anything but helpless. Trust me, I've caved into her more times then I like to mention and she's not afraid to try and kick your butt either."

  "Yeah, you'd think she'd been raised by a bunch of thick skulled, stubborn, ass-kicking tigers," Cam said grinning.

  "Well there is that ..." Chuck grinned back.

  "Let's reminisce later," I said, "We have a long night ahead of us if we're going to get these plans worked out."

  They agreed and we got to work.

  We decided to knock off about 4AM. We had pretty much all of huey and duey worked out. Luey was only partially done. We figured another day and then we could start training everybody on the procedures. Chuck would handle finding the doubles, Cam would handle some of the new hardware. We spent the last half hour working out changes for tomorrow, we still had probably two more days to deal with before we could switch to the new system.

  I headed down to check on Sabre, and wasn't at all surprised to find Samantha down there with him.

  "The Doctor says he's out of danger of slipping into a Coma," she told me. "He should wake up in the morning, they have him on a mild sedative now."

  I nodded and reached over to ruffle his ears a bit remembering when we had met.

  "You know, the first time I saw him, I thought to myself that he was a crazed monster?"

  Samantha looked up at me from her seat by the bed. "Why's that?"

  "Well look at him, he's huge. And he was drunk, and he was making it clear he wanted to spend the night with me and didn't want to discuss alternatives."

  "So what changed your mind?"

  "Who said my mind's been changed?" I grinned at her. "But he was gentle, considerate, and pretty damn good, so I decided that maybe he was safe after all."

  She smiled and nodded at me. "I've known him since we were kids. I was about twelve when my Dad brought them all here. It was nice, I went from being lonely half the time to suddenly having a bunch of new friends. There was a group of us who became really close though. Chuck, Sabre, Justine and me. They were about the same age as me, well mentally at least, I guess they were only about six physically. Anyway, we used to get in a lot of trouble ...

  "Justine? I haven't met her."

  "She died several years ago."

  "Oh! I didn't know. How'd it happen?"

  "My Dad had just passed away, he was pretty old when he had me to start with, part of the reason he gave me the tigers as a gift I think. Anyway, someone tried to kidnap me basically. It went bad and Justine stood up and got in the way when they tried to kill me."

  "Sounds pretty bad."

  "She was Sabre's mate."

  I looked down at her, "So is that why?"

  She nodded, "Partially. I was torn up, and he was devastated. I went to comfort him, and well, one thing led to another. I guess we both needed a lot of comforting. After a while, well," she shrugged, "once we got over Justine's death we just discovered each other."

  I nodded, "He is sweet, isn't he?"

  She smiled, "Yes he is."

  "So when are you going to marry him?"

  She sighed, "I wish I could."

  "Samantha, you've got more money then I can imagine. And a lot of power as well, plus brains. Figure something out. You can't keep doing this to him or yourself forever. Hell, I'm not much on mixed species matings myself, but I'd sure as hell give it a shot for him."

  "Yeah I know, 'Crap or get off the pot'." She yawned.

  "Come on, it's late, lets get to bed. We've all got a busy day tomorrow." I grabbed her hand and dragged her off to sleep.

  The ride in the next day wasn't bad. We used the APC again and took a different route than the day before, with Cam flying cover once more. We went in late, Samantha needed the sleep, and I didn't want to leave before Sabre had opened his eyes and she and him had talked a little. Plus it threw off the schedule, which helps when you're worried about attacks.

  By that evening Sabre was up and walking around, though you could see he had one mother of a headache. Chuck, Cam and I filled him in on what we were doing and how far along we were.

  He nodded. "Sounds good over all, though I don't know if you can talk Sam in to using a double, you know she hates that kind of thing."

  We all grinned.

  "Don't worry about it," Chuck said, "We already took care of it."

  He looked at us and smiled, "Well I think getting knocked silly might have been worth it if I missed that argument. Keep working the procedures, I'm going back to bed before Sam or Doc Kisha finds out I'm not still in it."

  "Later Sabre," he waved.

  We worked on our plans for another six hours until we finally felt we had things covered. The hardest part was making the two plans look like the one fake plan. It meant we'd have to swap our real people for their doubles and back again, without people noticing. We also didn't want the hidden originals being mistaken for the security backup teams.

  "Tomorrow we'll pass out the operational plans to the people who need to know." Chuck said. "But I guess that's it."

  "Now that we're done I have something I want you two to see." Cam said getting up from the table.

  "What?" We both asked.

  "Come on and I'll show ya'."

  So yawning we both got up and followed him downstairs to one of the back storage rooms in the basement.

  "I had Nikki working on this all day. Other then her and us, no one knows its here, and the combo is 631." He opened the door. "Come on in and take a look."

  Chuck and I looked at each other and shrugged and followed him in.

  It was a small room, about 10 feet on a side. There was a small table in the center with a small computer and 4 chairs. One wall was covered with a la
rge map showing where each of the attacks had taken place. There was a calendar on another wall, and a third had charts showing where the hardware they had used had come from. A fourth tracked the species of the attackers.

  "Nice job Cam," Chuck said.

  "Yeah, it is." I added.

  "Nikki did it, I just told her what we wanted. The computer has all the intell we have on each of the attacks, and you can graph it there anyway you want. The wall charts are up to date as well, and if you can think of anything else you want up there just tell Nikki or leave her a note here."

  I nodded again, "Tomorrow I'll look at it. For tonight I'm off to bed. I need to sleep."

  "Good idea. See you in the morning," Chuck said following it with a great big yawn. "Night."

  We used the APC again the next day, and got a lot of complaints from the police department. The Mayor's office lodged a compliant as well. After all it was Wednesday now, a full 48 hours had gone by! Jerks. I'd heard that in New York and Los Angeles as well as Chicago they let all the major companies' execs fly in however they wanted too. I don't know why Dallas was so opposed to it, strange.

  That evening was busy. We had our doubles, we had our procedures. Everyone was briefed, and re-briefed. We did a number of dry runs on all of them, talking our way through radio calls, attacks, responses. We had the whole crew working it till midnight, then we called it a night.

  The next morning, we all did a quick review, then Chuck introduced us to Samantha's double. We all already knew Sabre's double. We all mounted up then and ran our route to work. I was driving 'duey' as I had to be seen with the doubles. We had a plan to deal with that too, I'd only be seen some of the time, we had installed one way glass on all the vehicles. So you couldn't tell who was driving. I usually didn't get out or in with the doubles anyway, so I'd just do an occasional trip in 'duey' to convince anyone watching that I was indeed there.

  We got hit two blocks out of the gate.

  It was a pretty bobbled job, I guess they thought we hadn't changed our system from last time yet. It was over pretty quickly, we had changed all of the cars so that they could quickly be made to look alike by flipping a switch. Once that was done, the other three chase cars that were laying 'dormant' in the traffic, shuffled with us and the doubles laid down on the floor. Suddenly they couldn't tell which car it was, and being this close to the estate our air cover was there immediately.

  Also our 'chase' car, the one that was supposed to be carrying our muscle was actually empty and being driven by remote. So they could attack it all they wanted. The rest of the drive in was without incident. So we decided to just continue on with our plans.

  For the next several months we got hit about once every twenty days or so. Once we did get hit two days in a row, but otherwise the attacks were at least a week apart. Our own people were getting hurt, but we kept making all sorts of strange changes to the duey plan that they just couldn't seem to keep up with. One week we didn't even put the doubles in the cars, just drove them all there apparently empty with a clever switch at the destination to make them think that Samantha and Sabre had been laying down in separate cars.

  Cam had the idea of putting Samantha's and Sabre's doubles in different cars to see which one they'd go after. They went after both. Something to think about.

  So after losing six hit teams and about forty people they stopped trying to hit Samantha on the road to work. They tried her office, but company security was way too tough for that, the only thing that came close was a missile launched at her office, it actually got within a hundred feet before it was destroyed. Didn't scratch the windows though, those were well armored. They gave up on the office after only three tries. They didn't lose as many men though.

  But our Intell people were starting to get some information on the attacks. We learned that the supplies and people were coming out of Brazil, even though the people weren't always Brazilian nationals. Mostly they were various people from the criminal classes there, but it was suspected some were being recruited from Europe.

  After giving up on the office attacks, they tried hitting the estate a few times. That was pure folly, as the estate was armed to the teeth and the tigers enjoyed it more than the video games in the arcade room.

  It was about four months since the war room being set up that Chuck called me and Cam down there to a meeting.

  "What's up?" I asked Chuck, looking at the charts on the walls. There had been quite a bit of information added to it.

  "Well, I think I've found a pattern, and I want the two of you to look at it, and see what you think."

  "Sure," Cam nodded, tail tip twitching excitedly, "What have you got?"

  "Not that quick!" He smiled, "First I want to see if you come to the conclusions I did on some other issues. Now first, remember those few amateur attacks after Sabre got back? I added them back in under the assumption that they were actually part of the whole."

  "A probe of our defenses?" I asked.

  "But that would be stupid," Cam said, "They had a fairly good idea of things when Sabre left. Why start over just cause you had a one year cease fire?"

  "Bear with me Cam, and yes, exactly that Dialene.

  "Now look at this next point, all the attacks have been small, the biggest had fifteen operatives, but for the most part it’s been eight to ten man teams. And almost all humans as well. What does that tell you?"

  "Well definitely not a corp, they'd never risk human lives like that, they get animorphs a lot cheaper."

  "Correct Dialene. Anything else?"

  "Well," Cam said looking up and his ears perked up and swiveled forward. I could tell he had something. "They've burned through what, eighty or so people by now. If they had just gotten say thirty up front, they could have overrun us easily on any of the street hits, and saved a fortune. Hell they'd give the company or the estate a run for its money if they'd thrown eighty at once!"

  "And that means?" Chuck smiled.

  "It's not only not a company or corp, whoever is behind it has no military experience or advisors!" Cam grinned.

  "Or refuses to listen to them if he does." I added. "And here I thought they were just suffering from hiring bad help and using cut outs. But Cam has a point, after the first failures, why not just a big push? We know now that whoever is doing this has deep pockets."

  "Exactly," smiled Chuck. "Now, look at this next piece." He pointed to the calendar, we both turned to look. "This is when all the attacks took place, what do you notice?"

  "None on Saturday's!" Cam and I both said and then looked at each other.

  "That's right, and the only one on a Sunday came when a certain person was out of town."

  I looked at Chuck, then back at Cam, then back at Chuck again. "That would explain why things stopped when Sabre was away. But why isn't he trying to hit just Sabre?"

  Chuck shrugged, "I'm not a psychologist."

  "We had damn well better run this by one before we tell Sabre," Cam growled. "Cause the high and mighty Mathew Morrisey isn't going to live very long once he sees this."

  "Do the other facts fit in Chuck?" I asked.

  He nodded, "Mathew has no military experience or advisors. He doesn't care very much for the military, truth be told. Further he has no animorphs on staff, and no strong big company ties. All of his money he inherited, and he's got a rather large trust fund."

  "So what do we do?" I asked, "Suspecting is one thing, but we need proof. We need a trap."

  "I know. You two are the sneaky ones. What do you think?"

  Cam and I pondered that one a while.

  "I have it!" Cam finally said grinning.

  "What?"

  "You know that small beach house Samantha used to go to before she became VP?"

  Chuck nodded, "Yes, that would be perfect."

  "Care to fill me in?" I asked.

  "It's a place out off the coast of South Carolina. Samantha loves the place, but it's a security nightmare. If we slipped that she was going there to him, well it w
ould be the perfect place."

  I nodded, "Sounds like a plan."

  "I'll geta discrete surveillance set up immediately." Chuck said. "Now how to we tell him, without telling him?"

  I smiled, "Why not tell Samantha that you want to do some work on the house defenses the Saturday after this, so why doesn't she take her friend and make a holiday of it out at the coast?"

  He nodded, "Not bad, she'll have to call him and invite him, or ask him this Saturday."

  "Tell her to ask in person, less chance of eavesdropping."

  "Good point. But she knows the security is bad there, so what do I say if she asks about that?"

  "Tell her we'll have the double highly visible around the house or some such." Cam put in.

  "Okay, sounds like a plan. And Cam, I'm putting you in charge of getting some kind of psych eval of him done by a profiler."

  We left then in much better spirits then we'd been in since Tigg had died.

  9

  Sabre came and asked me what was going on when Samantha mentioned the trip to the coast to him. He said he was about to ask Chuck what was he thinking when suddenly someone painfully stepped on his tail.

  I laughed, "Trust us. You don't want to know, yet."

  He growled, "Maybe I do."

  "Oh no, not yet. Remember how Chuck told you we threatened to lock Sam in the basement if she didn't behave?"

  He nodded.

  "Well that same threat applies to you this week. So you just wait."

  "Well I don't like it!" he growled again.

  "Well, maybe you'll like this?" I snickered and applied my skills to diverting his attention.

  "A-hem, I have work to do you know."

  I grinned, "Then get back to it and don't ask questions we can't answer."

  "Can't or won't?"

  "Can't."

  He sighed and walked off grumbling.

  "Okay," Chuck told us Tuesday, "Mathew just called to tell Samantha that he's going to be showing up a few hours later then her. Seems he has a family function to attend that morning, but he promises her he'll be there by one at the latest."