Wings of Steele- The Series, page 123
part #1 of Wings of Steele Series
With the upper cowling standing open on Karen's machine he was taping both the outside and inside of the holes he could reach, the foil tape adhering to itself in the center of the holes. The engine and transmission looked like it had been hit several times and although the block and casing had deformities there were no punctures. He wasn't sure if they were a result of low velocity ammunition for the silencers reducing their power, or if the rounds had dumped some of their inertia by hitting the water first. It truly didn't matter, except it busied his mind.
“How does it look?”
Chase straightened up suddenly, whacking his head on the underside of the open hull with an audible thwunk. “Son of a...” he groaned grabbing his skull, rolling on his side. He rubbed his head vigorously, looking up at Karen, “Hiya.”
“Sorry,” she sighed with sorrowful eyes.
“S'OK, I'll live,” he winced, sitting up. “Man, that smarts.”
Karen dropped limply on her knees to the sand next to the Jet Ski, “What do we do now?”
“We survive.” he replied, reaching up and pulling the cowl down and latching it to the bottom half of the hull. “We'll need to find a place to hole-up.”
“I can't believe she's gone,” muttered Karen, her bottom lip quivering, her eyes full of tears.
Her mind had jumped the tracks and Chase needed her focused. He shuffled on his knees to her, taking her by the shoulders at arm's length. “Hey, look at me. I'm sad too, I loved Pam, but I need you here and now, I need your mind in the game, I need you thinking...”
“I don't know if I can, I don't know if I want to live...”
Chase fought back the burning in his eyes and the clutch in his throat. “I've lost Penny, I've lost Pam, and now you just want me to give up the person closest to my heart? Does that sound fair to you?”
Her eyes were wandering loosely but they locked with his, “You mean me?”
“I mean you. I loved you both, I always have. But I didn't love Pam like I loved you. Like I love you...” he corrected himself.
“Me? You love me?”
“Yes, you. I need you with me. I need you...” Chase felt as surprised at the epiphany as she looked at this emerging revelation. She threw her arms around his neck, kissing him hard, the two of them toppling over in the sand. They lay on their sides in that embrace for a while.
Chase's ears recognized the thump, thump, thump, of helicopter rotor blades. He lifted his head, “Uh oh, chopper.” He raised himself up on one arm, searching in the direction of the sound, spotting the orange and white Coast Guard helicopter passing out over the water from the mainland.
“What do we do?”
“Hide.” Chase jumped to his feet and began gathering their gear, stuffing it into the Jet Ski's storage compartments and slinging their backpacks onto the handle bars. He was praying the chopper would swing north and go up the coast, away from them. When it banked and swung south, his heart jumped as he wrestled the Jet Skis one at a time, into the water. “C'mon, c'mon...”
“Where are we going?” asked Karen, swinging her leg over the seat and thumbing the starter button, her PWC puttering to life.
“We're out in the middle here, we don't have time to make it anywhere else. We're just going around to the other side of the shoal where the mangroves are denser. Hopefully the overhang can hide us...”
■ ■ ■
Clinging onto branches of the overhanging mangroves, Karen, Chase and Allie had waited and watched through the leaves as the Coast Guard helicopter passed directly overhead, tensely waiting until it was well on its way toward Punta Rassa Point before venturing out from their concealment.
Around the southern tip of Pine Island, turning north, heading to North Captiva Island was a good thirty miles. Pine Island Sound, the bay between the islands could get choppy at times, like today. Traveling without life jackets, Chase had hoped out loud that they wouldn't run into any Coastguard, Police or Game Warden boats which would give them cause to be confronted. Being a relative novice on a Jet Ski, Karen was not encouraged by the lack of a life jacket, the choppy conditions of the bay, or the sketchy condition of her PWC. Twenty-five to thirty miles an hour, if her gauges could be trusted, was all she could manage under present conditions. She watched how Chase handled his machine and wished she had that much confidence in her abilities. Under different circumstances, very different, she'd probably be enjoying herself.
Reflecting back on events of the last ten days, Karen reminded herself she still needed to press Chase for answers. There had been no real opportunity for discussion or explanation. She was lost as to a reason why any of this could really be happening. It seemed like something out of an action movie and she was an unwilling participant. She just wanted to go home, she wanted her life back. She wanted Pam back. Pam. Her heart ached, her throat caught and she had to blink away the wetness around her eyes. Chase was not a criminal... at least she didn't get a sense of that. There had to be a reasonably sensible answer to all of this...
Karen suddenly realized Chase's PWC was gradually pulling away and she was having to add throttle to keep up. Except she couldn't. Her engine seemed to be working harder than it should, the hull wallowing. She was sinking.
“CHAAAAASE!!”
Allie woofed and strained to look back around Chase. He caught her cue and after failing to locate Karen in his mirrors, whipped his head around to see her waving wildly, her Jet Ski sitting low in the water, still under power, but just barely. “Hold on dog.” He turned into the waves and waited until he was over the crest before goosing the throttle, hard. The PWC leapt out of the water, the German Shepherd clutching the seat with her nails as they pounded across the top of the chop like riding a horse at full gallop.
Chase cut the throttle early, his momentum sliding him past her, using the throttle to slingshot up next to her on the opposite side. “Pass me the bag!”
“What about me?” she asked, pulling the backpack off her handlebars.
“You can swim, the bag can't. Give it to me!” He reached out, trying to maintain control of his machine.
“Oh, nice,” she snipped, reaching out to hand him the backpack with both hands. “Good to know where your priorities lie.” Her engine puttered to a stop with a cough and Chase, still under power, idled away. “Hey, wait!”
Chase recognized the stress and fear in her voice, “Relax, I'm not going to leave you.” He throttled the Jet Ski around in a circle, slowly passing her head-on, the machines bobbing opposite each other in the water. “Careful, don't tip us...” His small laptop backpack slung across his shoulders, he directed her to grab onto the straps as soon as she slid onto the seat. As Chase applied throttle to steady the PWC, Karen had to hold on tight to keep from sliding off the back, her face pressed against the heavy fabric of the flat backpack. They circled once around Karen's sinking machine, the nose barely protruding from the water's surface, bobbing in the waves. “Somehow, I don't think my insurance is going to cover that...”
■ ■ ■
North Captiva Island has no connection to the mainland. You can get there by boat, water taxi or the small airstrip on the island. Vehicles on the island are limited to scooters, dirt bikes and electric carts. With a small residential population, most people on Captiva are vacation visitors, attracted to the chilled, unconcerned, disconnected and laid back island life. If Chase and Karen could avoid more than passing contact, they should be able to stay long enough to make adequate plans. An unoccupied rental or an empty residence would be a perfect recipe for being anonymous, away from prying eyes and nosy people. But they had to get there first and Chase was losing confidence in his Jet Ski's ability to get them to the populated end of the island, obviously laboring, over capacity and somehow damaged. He angled toward Foster Bay and the narrowest part of the island, nursing the machine along, the engine sputtering and belching.
■ ■ ■
When Chase nosed the Jet Ski up on the sand and turned the key off, the engine sighed as it puttered down. “I think this one's done too...” he grumbled. Allie jumped down, happy to be off the machine on solid ground to stretch her legs.
“How far to food, water and...” Karen looked down at herself, “a shower?”
“Are you up for a walk?”
“I suppose, she groaned, “if that's what it takes.”
“Then it's about a mile,” said Chase, setting their backpacks on the sand.
“How far would it be if I didn't feel like walking?”
“Swimming would be about two miles... “ He pulled Allie's tennis ball from a pouch on her harness and gave it a toss, “Did I mention the sharks...?”
■ ■ ■
After scuttling their crippled watercraft in the mangroves, Chase covered it with cut branches to camouflage it from the air and the water. Hopefully they'd be long gone from the island before anyone discovered it.
Karen had been thirsty for hours, It might have been nice if Chase had mentioned earlier that the backpacks had two-liter hydration systems in them. Even Allie's harness had a hydration bladder and a collapsible fabric bowl kept in one of her pouches to drink from. Ingenious. Karen suspected Chase didn't mention it to preserve their supplies as long as possible. The hike to relative civilization, such as it was, wasn't as bad as Karen had expected, following well-trodden paths through the mangroves. Chase hiked like he knew exactly where he was going – at least he made it seem like that. She was however, not too fond of the revelation that there were snakes to watch out for... poisonous no less. That lived in trees. Yeah, great. Wonderful.
At one point Chase broke from the path, using a hand-held GPS to find a small, green, Tupperware-like container tucked into the crotch of two palm trees that had grown together. He removed a key and jotted notes in a small log book, leaving a hundred dollar bill inside it and resealing the container. Geocache, was all he had said. He was a man in his element, he had a plan and he was executing it. Karen wondered if it should bother her that the whole survival, secret cloak-and-dagger thing seemed to be part of his comfort zone. Or that Allie seemed to suddenly be a different animal, almost instantly morphing into a work dog, all play aside. Karen supposed the thing that frightened her most was when she realized the key he retrieved from the Geocache belonged to a multimillion-dollar, Key West style stilt-house on the water, just beyond the mangroves... and that before he entered, he fitted a silencer to his pistol. He called it a suppressor but all she knew, was that it was the same thing the guys in black used on their guns during the raid.
■ ■ ■
“It has come to my attention,” said Karen carefully, “whether by design or my naiveté, that I don't know you as well as I thought I did...” They sat across the table from each other in the kitchen, half naked, wrapped in bath towels, their clothes in the washing machine, churning away in the adjacent laundry room.
Chase fed a piece of cooked Spam to Allie off his fork, his plate nearly empty. She took it gingerly without even touching the tines. “Well,” he sighed, “part of it is, that I'm not so sure how to tell you in a way where you don't think I'm totally batshit crazy...”
Her elbows on the table, Karen set her chin in her hands, supporting her head, “Try me. Truthfully, I can't see any scenario I wouldn't believe at this point.”
“Ok, I'll start from here and work my way backwards... hopefully it'll be easier for you to follow that way...”
“One question first... what's with the silencer? You're not one of them are you?”
“No. I'm a security specialist, you know that. I've done some bodyguard work, it's just a tool of the trade. There's another one with the pistol in your backpack. They're totally legal...”
“My backpack?” her eyes widened. “I'm glad I didn't go digging around in there for anything!”
“No, no,” he shook his head. “It's in a separate compartment. They're bugout bags, they have necessities in them. Food, water, clothes, a gun, ammunition, knife, a couple unused pre-paid cell phones, walkie-talkies, money... So you can be self sufficient for a while if you need to be. In addition, mine has a small collapsible shovel, yours has a collapsible tree saw, Allie's has her water, four days of food, her collapsible bowl and her tennis ball.”
“That's why you were worried about losing the bag...”
“Yeah, and each backpack has ten grand in it...”
Karen sat up, “Dollars? In cash?”
Chase shrugged, If something bad happens, cash is your best friend, especially if you need to be invisible. Credit cards can be tracked, most cell phones can be tracked via their GPS whether you have it on or not... that's why we have the disposables.”
Karen stared at the table, “My dad once told me people who expect conspiracies always seem to have a way of finding them. Or make them up... like a self-fulfilling thing.”
“Just because you're paranoid,” began Chase, “doesn't mean you're not being followed. Case in point, look at us.”
“I guess. So what's with the secret key thing? How many people know about them?”
Chase sipped his coffee, “ It's a private Geocache, only four of us. Me, the Realtor and two people who are not likely to be found. I've done some very delicate security work for the Realtor, she owes me. So there's almost always a key to a house out here for emergencies.”
“In case you're being followed...”
Chase raised an eyebrow at her.
“Case in point, us,” she nodded, “I get it.” She stared at the table, wondering what happened to her comfortable little world. “So what happened... what's going on? My entire life has changed to something I barely recognize in twenty-four hours...” She looked up at him, her eyes welling with tears.
Chase took a deep breath, “Here goes... Did you ever meet my friend, Dan Murphy, the Sheriff''s Deputy?”
“Yes I think so.”
“His wife was Caroline Murphy, the reporter that was killed right after that UFO news special aired on TV. Remember her?”
“Yes. That was so sad. I didn't know that was his wife, I never put the names together.”
Chase fed another piece of Spam to Allie. “The crash that killed her wasn't an accident. It was intentional. OK, remember my friend Jack Steele?”
Karen chewed on her lower lip, “Didn't I meet him at your bar-b-que right after you got back from Afghanistan? Tall, mustache, had a German Shepherd too? He's a pilot or something, right?”
“That's the one,” he nodded. “OK, remember on the UFO special, there was footage of two girls and a group of people running from a house across the beach and getting on the UFO?”
“I remember something like that... but didn't the government debunk that all as fake?”
Chase steepled his hands, “Stay with me here...”
“OK...” she leaned forward, listening intently.
“The two girls were Jack Steele's sister and her friend.”
“Whaat?”
“And that was Jack's house.”
Karen leaned back in her chair, “You're joking...”
“No joke. Jack has been missing for two years... but he wasn't lost... he just wasn't here,” he tapped on the table. “That video footage is as real as it gets. The ship was real, the people were real and they were sent by Jack to pick her up.”
Karen's mind reeled, staring blankly at Chase, blinking. “Are you saying he's an alien?”
“No,” he chuckled, “His plane disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle a couple of years ago, he's been off-planet ever since. Along with two Navy F-18 pilots. The FBI, CIA, NSA, CSS, have all been searching for him ever since.”
Staring at the patterns of color on the marble tabletop until they began to move, Karen blinked again doing her best to digest it all. “So he was abducted then... by aliens...”
“By an alien ship,” confirmed Chase. “Jack's parents were telling me that the incident wasn't intentional on the part of the aliens, some type of circumstantial oops.”
“Circumstantial...” her voice trailed off as she rubbed her face with the palms of her hands. “When I said there wasn't anything I wouldn't believe at this point... I wasn't expecting that.” She frowned momentarily, “Wait, you said his parents told you... how did they know what happened?”
“Jack came back a little over a year later to visit them and let them know he was alright. He had his own ship by then and he took them up to see it. Evidently he's married now and has a son...”
Karen waved her hand to cut him off, “This is getting deep, I need my wading boots...”
“Jack's mom said she's absolutely gorgeous and has purple eyes...”
“Oh, come on...!” she snapped.
“Hey I can't make this stuff up,” laughed Chase, “my imagination's not that good. Anyway, Jack left something behind, some technology. Lisa, his sister, had it. It was some kind of a communication unit Jack's dad said was no bigger than a laptop. That's what all the alphabet agencies are wanting.”
“I don't get it,” said Karen, fluffing her damp hair. “All this fuss for what, a radio?”
Chase leaned forward his elbows on the table, his voice low like he was revealing state secrets. “A piece of alien communication hardware so advanced, a unit the size of a common laptop can transmit and receive real time audio and video signals from deep space. SETI's radio dishes are about one-hundred-fifty feet across, with literally tons of electronics running them and they can't even come close to doing what this little laptop does.”
“So they want the laptop...”
“And anything else they think they can get their hands on...” Chase stared into his coffee for a moment before sipping. “The NSA is systematically and aggressively pursuing anyone and everyone who had any connection or contact with Steele. His family, his friends, I don't think anyone is safe. I haven't been able to reach Jack's parents in a while and that worries me. It's pretty obvious his sister was in danger... Dan's wife paid with her life for making it public, Dan has had to go into hiding, Penny and Pam are gone because they got in the way... It looks like they're willing to do whatever it takes to get the technology. I think they let me go so they could track me to other people. I'm guessing they're regretting that now.”
