The Agent's Daughter Read online

  “Quite the imagination you have there,” Shirley said. “Where were they?”

  Evan now had a sheepish look on his face. “I ran the wrong way. They were in the store next door the whole time.”

  Shirley held her clipboard in front of her face so he could not see her giggle.

  “The point is, that day I realized what it felt like to lose one of my kids. To experience the sense that one of them was gone. Having Melina learn to drive has brought those feelings back again.”

  Shirley placed her hand on Evan’s shoulder. “Evan. There is nothing that I can say that will make you feel better about letting your daughter drive. But I will say that from what I have heard about her, she is a mature, young woman. I am sure she has her mother’s accident fresh on her mind. She is going to be a more careful driver than you are.”

  Evan thought for a moment and then grabbed Shirley’s arm. “You’re right. Thank you, Shirley.”

  “Now, let me finish up my mission checklist,” Shirley said as she smacked Evan’s helmet.

  “The GPS unit has the exact coordinates of the reactor building. Once the GPS has determined that you are the close enough to the reactor building for the scintillation detector to work, this timer will start. As long as you are still within the correct distance, the timer counts. If you stray outside the range, the timer will stop. You must fly over the building until the timer reaches one minute to be assured that the equipment has had enough samples to give an accurate reading.”

  “Five minutes to drop,” the voice from the cockpit said.

  “Once the minute is up,” Shirley continued. “Follow the arrow on the screen and the GPS unit will direct you to our recovery position just across the border. It's twenty miles straight south. Any questions?”

  “None,” Evan said. “Let’s do it.”

  Shirley began checking the clips and straps that held Evan in the SSC. After checking and counting each one aloud, she closed the last panel of the SSC, sealing him inside. Then she called to the cockpit to tell them that he was ready.

  ………………………….

  Melina was in her bedroom reading when she heard a knock on her closed door. She had been in her room since she returned home from school, having gone straight up without acknowledging the existence of Angela the nanny.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The door swung open, and Angela stood in the frame of the doorway.

  “I figured that I would start fixing something for you and Travis for dinner,” Angela said. “Do you have a preference?”

  “Anything is fine,” Melina said, without looking up.

  “Your brother said that he would like chicken tenders and apple sauce,” Angela said. “Would you like that too?”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Melina said, still not looking up but now with a bit of a miffed tone in her voice.

  “Are you okay?” Angela asked. “Is something wrong?”

  Melina finally looked up from her book. She could not keep it in anymore.

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. My dad has gone on a trip, and he has left me with a woman that he seems to be a little too comfortable with. An old friend. Hah! I know how things work. Old friends connect on the internet, and then the next thing you know, they are laughing in each other’s kitchens. Well, my mom is not dead you know.”

  Angela was stunned. She had never been on the receiving end of a stream-of-consciousness rant of an upset high school girl before. After a moment of silence that allowed her to take in what Melina had said, she started to laugh.

  “What is so funny?” Melina said with even more indignation than before.

  “My dear,” Angela said. “Your father is a sweet man, but I actually do perform short-term home care as my job. And I do work for the same company that your father does. They provide my services to employees of a certain importance whenever they travel. Besides, I could never get together with your father. I am a close friend of your mother.”

  Then it hit her. Melina remembered where she had seen Angela before. “You have been to the hospital to visit Mom, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have,” Angela said. “I go see her once a month.”

  More silence. Now Melina had to take it all in. Angela was a close friend of her mom, yet Melina had never even heard her mom mention her before.

  “How do you know my mom?” she asked.

  “I used to work with your mother,” Angela said. “At the same company that your father and I work for.”

  Melina already had known that her mom used to work at the same place that her dad worked. In fact, that is where they met. But she hadn’t worked there for years. She had stopped working to stay home when Travis was born.

  “Your mother was my best friend at work,” Angela continued. “It’s funny how that works with adults. We have dear friends at work that we do not see otherwise. Nonetheless, your mother and I would try to have lunch together at least once per week, even when she stopped working at the office. I do miss those lunches.”

  “Did you work with Mom before she met Dad?” Melina asked.

  Angela smiled. “Your mother and I started work on the same day. We met at the new worker orientation. Did you know that was the exact day when your mother met your father?”

  This was gold. Melina’s mom and dad always put her off whenever she asked about their work. Other than knowing that they met there, she had never heard the story of the event itself.

  “Oh, please,” Melina said, sitting up on the bed. “Could you tell me about the day they met.”

  Angela looked up in thought. “It was lunchtime and your mother and I had gone down to the company cafeteria to get something to eat. Once we sat down, I looked over and saw that your father was sitting at a table near ours. I waved to him and some of the other men from my new department. Your mother pointed to your father and asked me who that handsome guy was.”

  Melina noticed that Angela was still standing in the doorway. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “Thank you,” she said as she came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “Your father thought that we were checking him out, so he got up and came over to our table. He was fresh out of college. We all were, but he had a cockiness to him. He knew me because we had met earlier that morning, but he did not know your mother. After saying hello, he asked your mother if she were the new girl in the secretarial pool that he had heard about.”

  “My Mom has a Master’s degree in Applied Physics,” Melina said.

  “Yes,” Angela said as she smiled at the memory. “And your father turned the brightest shade of red when I told him that she was one of the new scientists at the company. Your mother gave him a smug smile, and he was about to walk away in defeat when another man from the department your father and I worked in walked up. The man made a disparaging remark about me to your father having to do with my being a woman and that I would not cut it in our department.”

  “You mean he did not think you could write good software code?” Melina asked.

  Angela looked puzzled. Then she remembered the cover story Evan had made up for the family. “Umm…yes,” she said, “I was the first woman ever to be hired into your father’s department. That man not only did not think that I could write decent code, he did not think that there should be any women writing code.”

  “Wow,” Melina said. “What a Neanderthal.”

  “That’s true,” Angela said. “And that is essentially what your father said to that man. He stood up for me that day and continued to stand up for me against all the men in the department. That’s what your mother took away from that first meeting. That’s what won your mother over.”

  Melina looked at Angela with a look of wonder. “I never knew any of this, thank you for sharing it with me.”

  “Any time,” Angela said as she got up off the bed. “How about we go downstairs and get you and your brother something for dinner.”

  As she headed for the door, Angela paused and looked around the r
oom and then looked at Melina. “What’s with the purple walls?”

  “Periwinkle, actually,” Melina said. “Don’t ask.”

  ………………………….

  Evan could not see anything from inside the SSC but the glow of the video monitor. The B2 pilot had already given him a warning that they were one minute from drop.

  “Ten seconds,” the voice in his earpiece said. “On my count, five, four, three, two, one, drop!”

  With a loud thump, Evan could feel that the SSC was away and falling. It tumbled a bit at first, but the fins attached to the sides aligned it so that it assumed a straight path downward.

  “How are you doing, Evan?” the voice in his earpiece said. This time it was Shirley.

  “I’m doing okay, but I have this weird sensation that I am falling,” Evan said.

  Shirley smiled, “You are about three minutes to parachute deployment. Is there anything else to report?”

  “Well, yeah,” Evan said. “You know that high pitched whistling sound they use in cartoons when something is falling. This thing makes that noise.”

  “I will make a note of that for the tools group,” Shirley said as she pretended to write it down, “Get… rid… of… cartoon… whistling… noise.”

  Two more minutes passed. David called out the altitude every five thousand feet.

  “Okay Evan, you are at ten thousand feet,” David said. “One minute until parachute deployment.”

  “Okay. Standing by,” Evan said. He was focused now.

  One more minute passed. “Ten seconds to deployment … Five. Four. Three. Two. One… Pull!”

  Evan could hear the parachute blast through the cone at the top of the SSC. There were a few seconds of silence as the chute unfurled. Then there was a loud thump as it popped open. The falling sensation stopped, and Evan was under a full canopy.

  “The canopy is open,” Evan said. “Fall rate has declined.”

  “Copy that,” David said. “I have the rate of descent steady at seventeen feet per second. Prepare for SSC ejection. Ten seconds. Good luck, Evan. On my mark. Five, four, three, two, one. Release!”

  Suddenly, the bolts that held the eight pieces of the SSC together all disengaged at once. At the same time, a small charge attached to the middle of each of the eight panels exploded, so the panels were blown free of Evan and the glider. He was outside now. It was cold, and the only sound was the wind hitting the unassembled glider above him. After a quick check of the parachute to verify that it did not sustain any damage, he leaned forward and the glider snapped into a horizontal position with him dangling below.

  He had another minute or so before the glider began the automatic assembly process, so he spent some time adjusting the focus of the camera. It was a clear, moonless night. Evan could see the reactor base below and in front of him. It was the only thing illuminated for miles in any direction. He zoomed the camera in on the reactor building. It was lit up from all sides with floodlights attached to the ground. Even at his altitude, he could make out the details of the roof of the building.

  The silence was soon pierced by the sound of gears turning. It was the glider assembling itself. Slowly the long, straight structure above him sprouted into a V-shape. The fabric of the wings fluttered in the wind as the wings were unfurled, but fluttered less as the wings grew wider. When the wings got to their full extension and the glider was assembled, there was a loud clank as a locking mechanism at the apex of the glider fell into place. The assembly was complete, and he was ready to pull the release for the parachute and begin his flight.

  Evan reached for the release above him, but then he paused. Since the glider had finished assembling, there should be only the sound of the wind, but there was still a faint grinding noise. He looked around for the source of the noise and then he saw it. It was coming from the gears that had turned while the glider was being unfurled. They had not shut off when the glider assembly was complete. Evan had no way of stopping them. He watched helpless as the gears continued to try to unfurl the wings even further past their final position.

  And then there was a loud snap.

  It was the locking mechanism. It no longer could handle the stress of the gears trying to hyper-extend the wings. With no support at the apex of the glider, the sides drooped down and enveloped Evan in fabric. He struggled with the wings and supports until he untangled himself. Once freed, he could see the broken pieces of the glider. It was clear that the glider was not going to be able to fly. It was also clear that he needed to come up with a new plan. Fast. He was still under parachute, but he was only about two minutes from landing on the ground.

  Evan looked up at the parachute canopy. He needed to get to the parachute cords. If he could pull on the cords on one side, it would create an air imbalance in the parachute that would cause it to move in that direction. He pulled a knife from a pocket in the leg of his jumpsuit and cut the straps that supported the glider. He watched as it fell off into the night sky. This allowed Evan to pull himself up to where the cords for the parachute were located. He grabbed two of the cords on one side. Immediately, the parachute changed direction. Satisfied that he could control the direction, he spotted where he wanted to go, pulled on the cords and headed down.

  ………………………….

  "What do you mean the glider did not deploy?" Shirley said anxiously.

  David focused at a blip on the monitor. “I can see that he is still falling at the same constant rate that he was falling when the parachute first opened. Seventeen feet per second. If the glider had deployed, the rate of descent would be slower and erratic.”

  “Do you think that something happened during the SSC ejection that made him lose consciousness?” Shirley asked.

  “Oh, he’s not unconscious,” David said. “He’s moving in a straight line. Evan appears to be steering the parachute.”

  “Great,” said Shirley. “Hopefully he can get much closer to the border, so we can send someone in to pick him up.”

  “Umm… he’s not headed for the border,” David said. “He appears to be steering the parachute right at the reactor building.”

  ………………………….

  Evan could see the base getting larger as he descended. He had disconnected the video camera from its swivel housing, and he held it in his hand as he shot video of the entire base. Then he focused the camera on the reactor building. He wanted to take a closer look at it because he was going to try to land on the roof. The building was two stories tall and had a roof area about the size of a couple of city blocks. There appeared to be half dozen guards patrolling the grounds, but nobody on the roof.

  His plan was straightforward. He would land on the roof where there were no guards and where he could hide the parachute. There, he would wait while the radiation detector did its job. Then, at the right moment, he would climb down from the roof and find a break in the guard patrol, so he could run to the edge of the base. After climbing the base’s perimeter fence, he would hike the twenty miles to the border.

  At five hundred feet, Evan could see the lights from the base begin to be reflected off him. In a few moments, he would be easily visible to anyone on the ground. For the last two hundred feet, he would be illuminated by the lights on the ground. That would be when he needed some luck that no one saw him. Evan continued to drift in silence toward the top of the reactor building. He was fifty feet from the top of the building when he saw a guard that was patrolling the grounds coming around the far corner of the building. The guard pointed at him and began to run toward the front of the building. So much for luck. He had been spotted.

  Evan landed on the top of the building as he heard the first wails of a blaring siren that echoed throughout the base. Below, on the ground, he could hear the sounds of footsteps running around the building. They must not have known that he was on the roof because they were searching for him in the bushes at the base of the reactor building. Evan quickly unstrapped himself from the parachute and looked around
. He had landed near the corner of the building between two massive air conditioning units. Evan searched through the parachute until he found the radiation detector. He cut it loose and placed it at his feet. He was going to have company in a few moments, so he put the camera in his pocket and reached for his sidearm. The sidearm was a standard military issue fifteen-shot semi-automatic revolver that was supposed to be located in a holster near his waistband. It had apparently shifted during the landing and was now probably the thing in his pants that was trying to give him a wedgie. As he was fishing through his jumpsuit trying to find it, Evan heard a noise behind him.

  “Do not move,” the voice behind Evan said in Russian.

  It was the guard that had first seen him, though he appeared to be alone. He walked around Evan until he was in front of him. The guard kept his rifle pointed at Evan the whole time, and then he motioned for him to stand up. The guard was now five feet in front of Evan, the barrel of his gun a few feet from his chest. Slowly, Evan moved his hands to an interlocking position behind his neck. He thought about lunging at the guard when a thought occurred to him. With one of his fingers, he pressed a button on his watch. The guard, lacking a radio to alert the other guards, was unsure of what to do next, so he just stood there waiting for others to show up. Evan stood there, smiling at the guard but not moving. Finally, after about thirty seconds the silence was broken by another voice, loud and behind Evan.

  “Hey software doofus, did you finally fix the dictation feature?”

  The guard instinctively turned around, unaware that the voice was coming from Evan’s watch. As he looked away, Evan executed a palm heel strike to the guard’s face that sent him flying into one of the air conditioning units and knocking him out cold.

  Evan laughed to himself. He was going to have to tell that software doofus to leave his watch just as it is. Kneeling down, he removed the jacket and helmet from the guard and put them on, and then he grabbed the guard’s rifle and slung it and the radiation detector over his shoulder.