Draft85


 * 1) The acronyms DECON stood for Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation, and Neutralization. The containment part was handled at Yellow Mountain in Nebraska, a thousandfoot tall butte on the great plains near the place where the corner of the state met the Wyoming and South Dakota borders.
 * 2) It had been hollowed out like Cheyenne Mountain for NORAD, but at great expense, without the benefit of the Golden Gift.Hunky's cell was lit with a sickly red light that evoked mental images of blood, part of DECON's standard psychological procedure to break down the prisoner for interrogation.
 * 3) Hunky had been around the block. Such tricks were simple jokes to her.Hunky's dress was of Barbelo make, satiny and white under normal light, but with a hint of metallic reds and greens shifting on its surface, like the colors of an oil stain floating on a puddle.
 * 4) In the light of the cell it looked like a dark rag. Under normal circumstances, Hunky wouldn't touch a dress with a 3.048 meter pole, but it had been required as part of her role as a credentialed White House reporter.
 * 5) She took off her dress and began ripping out the hem to obtain objects she had hidden there before embarking on the operation, small tools made of a polymer whose structure would not be synthesized on Earth for at least another forty years.
 * 6) There was a plastic jeweler's screwdriver almost as hard as steel, but perfectly invisible to the metal detector that had been waved over her body. Also there was a dental pick and a very thin scalpel.Hunky didn't get very far with these, because the guards busted in and took them from her, along with her dress.
 * 7) Hunky didn't care one way or another. That was simply confirmation that she was being watched.After that Vice-President Earl Roland and President-elect Henry Jackson entered the cell and saw Hunky standing there wearing nothing but her bright yellow panties and a matching bra.
 * 8) Roland ordered Hunky to reveal what was hiding underneath her hair. 'What the hell are you talking about, Earl?' came Hunky's reply.Roland was already bored. 'Shall I have the guards come back in here and hold you down, do it anyway?'
 * 9) Hunky sighed, did an about-face, and lifted her ponytail, allowing the Vice-President and the Presidentelect to see a thing there like a little white mushroom.Roland said, 'What you see right there, Henry, is some kind of implant linked to Neutrinonet.
 * 10) Sitting here deep inside a small mountain makes no difference. Hunky is still linked to the Swarm as long as it's plugged in.'Roland removed the plug, revealing a white cup with fifty-five black pins, each one like the lead in a mechanical pencil.
 * 11) 'We have found that pulling the Plug results in a Church of End Dome over-reaction, every single time.'Jackson said, 'So we can expect them to come calling here shortly?''Every single time,' Roland repeated. 'Please tell us a little about yourself, Miss Hunky.'
 * 12) 'I'm cold.We will provide you with nice international orange clothes without any little surprises sewn into them.In that case get me a clean pair of panties.Request denied.Why?''Because you want it.'Hunky, realizing she was getting nowhere, turned to the Presidentelect.
 * 13) 'My name, originally, was Sophie Krause. I was born in the State of Washington in 1925.'The President-elect looked at the mannish woman, who nevertheless looked half her stated age, and said, 'Bullshit!'Hunky continued without a beat.
 * 14) 'My father Karl Krause was a GermanAmerican immigrant who moved to Washington from Pennsylvania before the First World War to work the coal mines around there. My mother was his first cousin Erika Zinter. But let me ask something about you, Scoop.
 * 15) Round Robyn has a theory that says whatever little committee a Senator chairs in Congress, be it the Committee on Military Kickbacks, or the Committee on Porking Little Boys, or what-have-you, the chairman is really doing that thing and just wants a little cover.
 * 16) I'm sure you've seen what DECON can do by now. So reviewing the rise of one Henry Jackson to the presidency, and putting two-and-two together, what's the scoop, Scoop?'We'll see if you mouth off like that after the traditional attention-grab,' Roland said.
 * 17) He called for some DECON guards to come into the cell. One of them had a bucket with white electrolyte paste which he painted on the bare metal bed that was the sole piece of furniture in the cell, and Hunky was secured to the bed at four points with tiewraps at he wrists and ankles.
 * 18) Hunky was rather calm, considering she was about to be brutally tortured with electricity. Turning to the President-elect she said, 'You know what motivated our Vice-President to become such an expert in producing pain? It's a pronounced fear of death.
 * 19) Earl is obsessed with it. Earl is terrified by the inevitability of the end. It's going to happen to all of us, and there absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Most people drown such fears in this or that religion which provide sure answers that remain constant throughout the centuries, or even in my own religion where we have a rather unique solution.
 * 20) But Earl specializes in taking victims to a level of pain that simply overrides their dread of death, to that point where they just beg to die. It sickens me to think about it, but that moment, which is clearly evident in the victim's eyes, is some kind of religious experience for Vice-President Roland.'
 * 21) 'I have to admit you are pretty close to the mark, Miss Hunky. And here at DECON there has always been plenty of work for someone like me to do. Someone who, as you say, finds it to be such a spiritual thing.' The President motioned for a switch to be thrown.
 * 22) There was a hum. Hunky's body convulsed on the metal cot, thrashing wildly within the limits imposed by her physical constraints. Hunky bit through her tongue and urinated, but there were no moans or screams, which was puzzling.
 * 23) 'Tough broad,' the President-elect said, trying to keep from fainting at the horrifying sight as it went on for about a minute.The President ordered the current cut. 'Not so tough. They have some way of electing to anesthetize themselves.
 * 24) Her consciousness cut out at the first jolt, what you saw was just the involuntary jerk of muscles. But when she wakes up again she will be very sore. She'll feel just like she beat herself up.
 * 25) It's a lot better to use a whip for this sort of thing but I didn't want to get her blood all over you. Cut the dyke loose.'When Hunky woke up later she was alone, and as Roland promised, unbelievably sore. But she knew the drill, it wasn't the first time it had happened to her.
 * 26) She spent some time massaging herself. Then she took off her panties and began picking at the thread stitching of the decorative pattern embroidered on them.
 * 27) Her guards watched all this on their closed-circuit television screen, but assumed she was just idly trying to fill in time with something to do. Hunky accumulated the thread from her panties into a big tangled pile of stuff resembling spider's silk.
 * 28) The stitching Hunky had dug out from the fabric of her panties was a polymer chain from Barbelo finer than a newborn's hair, yet stronger than steel wire. Robyn called the stuff Polywire, and it was just one of the millions of deadly things to be found on Barbelo.
 * 29) Her undies were shredded and Hunky's fingers grew bloody from lacing the stuff through little vent holes around the cell door. A small piece of one thumb, in fact, had been sliced clean off and the floor was slippery with her blood.
 * 30) It hurt like hell, but she knew she had to work fast.Her watchers grew alarmed at the blood, and guessed she had found a way to commit suicide. Roland saw the scene on closed-circuit television and ran down to her cell.
 * 31) The door opened and the Vice-President walked halfway, stopped and stood there looking at her in total disbelief that slowly turned to belief. Roland realized death would follow in mere seconds, with no chance of reprieve, and he wasn't ready.
 * 32) That stark fact was clearly evident in his eyes. Hunky didn't find it to be a spiritual moment, but she smiled, knowing he would get to think about it for the short span of life that remained. And Roland saw her break out into a gloating smile.
 * 33) Immediately after that Roland's legs buckled. The Vice-President jerked and bounced down on Hunky's deadly web, letting gravity finish the grisly job.
 * 34) After his spinal cord was severed many slices of VicePresidential meat plopped down in a wet pile at the door like so many bony ingredients for pork stew.The DECON guards were furious. They tried to cut the web down but only succeeded in slicing their own knives into little razor blades. # Hunky began to laugh hysterically. Finally they used their handguns to blow chunks out of the door frame where the wire was slung. The web drifted down to the floor and the guards stepped through aiming their weapons directly at Hunky.
 * 35) The Secret Service agents guarding the President-elect followed, and when they motioned it was clear the actual President-elect stepped through into the cell after them.'Gun mentality,' she sneered at the DECON guards, lisping the second word with her injured tongue.
 * 36)  She stood there nude except for her bra, but was victorious and unashamed.'You've assassinated the Vice-President of the United States!' said the President-elect.'Self-defense,' Hunky replied. 'The Vice-President of the United States tortured me with electric shock.
 * 37) But right now you've got much, much bigger things on your plate. You might want to take me somewhere where we can at least pretend we aren't being overheard.'The President-elect paused, then agreed with a nod of his head.
 * 38) Hunky's tongue was stitched up by a physician and she was given her promised set of prison clothing, then was left alone in the glassedin alcove overlooking the cell bank with the President-elect but at the insistence of the Secret Service her hands were bound to her chair with tie-wraps.
 * 39) 'Why this place?The Vice-President seemed to think it was sufficiently secure to lay some compromising shit on me,' the President-elect said. 'State your piece.I don't think the late Vice-President gave you a very good understanding of what happens when one of us are captured, especially someone of my rank.
 * 40) You might remember that I said I was the number two gal.'We're supposed to expect your people to come rescue you shortly. I didn't give it much credence. The cell bank down there is full of inmates, after all.'
 * 41) 'Members of the Church of End Dome are not the only domestic enemies of our dear departed Vice-President. But look around. You'll find I'm the only CoED you got here, and that not for very much longer. Seriously. Del is coming, do you know what that means? No?
 * 42) This is, I believe, the first and last time we've allowed any one of our people to be held here for any substantial length of time.Allowed?The thinking was that if we could get to you we could end the war.''What, get to me? Kill me?
 * 43) The country can make more Presidents you know.Not kill you. Talk to you. Like right now. What did the Vice-President have on you?Sex videos. Same sex videos, if you must know.'
 * 44) 'That's the stupidest thing. Not stupid that you let yourself be filmed having sex with someone of the same gender, but stupid that anyone cares. That's all that DECON is really doing you know. Provide both the disease and the cure. Let's have done with all that crap.'
 * 45) 'What do I have to do?End the war. That's all.What, the Barbuda thing?''All of it, the whole stupid war that's been going on between America and my church since 1943, the one that you've been losing badly from the gitgo by the way.
 * 46) If not we'll end it ourselves but if it comes to that there won't be an America anymore, not like the one we grew up in. It might seem strange to you, Scoop, but the folks in the Church of End Dome are actually loyal Americans who loved what this country was and should be again.
 * 47) So we don't want it to come to an end, and neither would you, if you knew everything.''But I don't know everything. Tell me everything.'President-elect Henry Jackson, Hunky, and six Secret Service agents gathered in the main control bay of DECON, which was surrounded by four levels of prison cells, including the one where the entirely unrecognizable body of the Vice-President still lay.
 * 48) It was the largest cavity inside Yellow Mountain, Nebraska.Two of the Secret Service agents had initially preceded the Vice-President and President-elect by elevator into the DECON complex. Two had accompanied the leaders, and after that two more had come down as reserve.
 * 49) President Gerald Ford had separated from Jackson after the incident at Mt. Rushmore and flew over to Caspar, Wyoming to remotely manage the war in Barbuda.
 * 50) The bulk of Yellow Mountain blocked any direct radio transmissions between the agents and the larger team that waited in the summit parking lot but DECON had promised to arrange for communications and at first the agents had been satisfied with the results.
 * 51) But now the link had been severed and Special Agent Ted Hickey, the leader of the detachment inside the mountain, demanded the DECON leadership explain why.Ed Conley, the man in charge of DECON when the Vice-President was not actually present and handling the reins, said, 'I took DECON to Protocol Yellow when the Vice-President was killed.
 * 52) No messages get in or out after the initial message that we are actually at Protocol Yellow. Only the President can move us back to Protocol White and he is flying over from Casper right now.''I want to get the hell out of here,' Jackson said.
 * 53) 'Unfortunately, sir,' Conley replied, 'the elevators are locked on their tracks as part of Protocol Yellow.''Then we'll take the goddamn stairs!' the President-elect said. 'The reporter goes with.' A nod from Ted Hickey confirmed this plan was a Go.
 * 54) By a quick hand-sign Hickey indicated that two special agents would stay behind and they understood it was to ensure the integrity of the crime scene.Hunky spied her Plug sitting on a console in the main bay. 'I want my Plug back before we go.'
 * 55) The President-elect nodded, and one of Hickey's special agents retrieved it for her.When DECON went to Protocol Yellow guards on every level of the mountain took the safeties off their weapons and began to patrol their assigned routes within the complex, but the doors were not locked.
 * 56) Some of these squads encountered the four Secret Service agents climbing the stair well with their charges, but they did not detain them.'Jerry Ford,' Hunky said with disgust as she climbed the stairs with the President-elect and the agents.
 * 57) It was quite a climb. Yellow spinning lights turned the stairwell into a disco. 'Nobody voted for his ass, and nobody voted for Roland either. Ford's probably coming here because he's got his own sex video hanging over his head.'
 * 58) 'Two days until the Inauguration,' Jackson said, stopping for a rest on a stair landing between floors. 'That'll give him forty-eight hours to comb the DECON records, remove whatever it was Roland had on him. Frankly, I don't blame him at all.'
 * 59) Ted Hickey caught the eye of the President-elect. 'This isn't America. This isn't who we are.I agree one hundred percent. So tell me your mission statement, Special Agent Hickey.The law specifies a list of people that the Secret Service is required to protect,' he said.
 * 60) 'Anyone can opt out of that protection except the President, the Vice-President, the President-elect, and the VicePresident-elect. I'll try to accommodate your wishes, but by law I'm in charge until we get out of here.''Agreed.'
 * 61) Five minutes after they left, Ed Conley asked for a report on the progress of the stair-climbers. 'Last report has them spotted on level 31,' a subordinate replied.'Go to Protocol Red. Use this when you call it away.' And Conley handed the subordinate a sheet of paper from a notebook.
 * 62) 'Yes sir!' He punched the complexwide intercom. 'SECURITY ALERT, PROTOCOL RED. REASON FOR SECURITY ALERT, ESCAPED PRISONER. TARGET IS A WHITE FEMALE NAMED SOPHIE KRAUSE. DETAIN ALL ACCOMPANYING SUSPECTS. DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED IN THE EVENT OF RESISTANCE.'
 * 63) 'What the hell is Protocol Red?' demanded one of the two agents Hickey had posted behind in the command center.'It means DECON slams down tight and no one can move after two minutes.
 * 64) After two minutes everyone should be at their posts but there are always laggards so for the next eight minutes after that only the DECON Internal Police can move, individually and in squads, taking names and questioning tardy personnel.
 * 65) If their excuses are halfway valid they will personally escort them to their units, if their excuses are lameb&' Conley shrugged. 'Vee haff vays.'The other Secret Service agent pointed a 9mm at Conley. 'Rescind the order authorizing deadly force.
 * 66) The President-elect and four agents are with her. In fact, you and everyone involved with that announcement just committed a felony offense, threatening the life of the President-elect'Ed Conley said in a loud voice,
 * 67) 'I don't like the way this Secret Service agent is pointing his gun at me. I can't focus on my job.'From the upper levels of the cell bank all around, DECON guards with semi-automatic rifles poured fire into the two Secret Agents.
 * 68) It was massive overkill, but the tone of Conley's voice seemed to suggest he really didn't like being threatened.'Now that,' Ed Conley said, 'is closer to what I call a felony offense.'In the stairwell the rotating yellow lights ceased and rotating red lights spun up, and Agent Hickey's party heard the alert with the part about deadly force. He and his agents chambered a round.
 * 69) Hickey said, 'They know exactly where we are, and if we keep climbing up these stairs, we're going to run into company. So we need to do make a detour.'Hunky tried a door leading to level 28 but it was locked. Hickey swiped a badge and it clicked open.
 * 70) He ordered one of his agents to join him on point, and the other two on rearguard, with the President-elect and Hunky between them, and they all left the stairwell.'So where do we go?' Jackson asked.'My girl is coming,' Hunky said, 'and she's homing on my Plug.
 * 71) I'm talking to her right now.Your girl?Del. Ever heard of her?There's been whispers.Well she says she's coming, so we just need to find another stairwell and go down as far as we can go, then straight out. My people are squirting a layout of this place to me now.
 * 72) I can see it in my head.How can they have a layout?' Jackson asked.'We know every corner of this mountain,' she said, 'the number of times our people have been taken here for a short spell.I accept your plan, Hunky,' Agent Hickey said. 'Just tell us where to go. And boys, girls, no one stops us no matter what, got that?'
 * 73) As Ed Conley indicated, for two minutes after Protocol Red was called away the Big Board was lit up with a flurry of activity as the DECON personnel moved to their assigned stations.
 * 74) The activity dropped abruptly at the two minute mark and for the next eight minutes the Big Board showed a reduced set of activity as the internal security forces squared everything away.The movement of Hickey's team was masked by this.
 * 75) But at the eight minute mark they descended one level down a partially painted stairwell that was empty of personnel and looked to be little used. Still, the swipe of the badge to open the door at the bottom of the stairs registered on the Big Board.'What's that movement?' Conley wanted to know.
 * 76) The duty officer quickly put up a visual of the space that Hickey's team and his guests were entering from the stairwell. And as they passed under the security camera and out of view Conley got one good look at Hickey, who held up the Vice-President's badge and stuck his tongue out.
 * 77) He was incensed. 'Go to Protocol Blue! Now! Shut it all up tight!'The red lighting shifted over to all blue, everywhere.
 * 78) Now even the VicePresident's badge was no good. None of the doors in the entire complex would work at all unless Ed Conley personally authorized it from where he was, on a case by case basis. He pointed at a section of the Big Board where a force of seven security men were now trapped in a section of corridor.
 * 79) He said, 'Get ahold of these fellows and tell them to drop two levels and work their way east. Release the doors in front of them in such a way that they run smack into where the Secret Service team is trapped. No one else moves.'Conley was good as his word.
 * 80) When Hickey tried to get out of the office space they had crossed, the door wouldn't respond. He tossed Roland's now useless badge away. 'Any ideas?'A hissing black shaft about a foot long penetrated a nearby wall and carved out something in the rough shape of a door, which then fell forward flat to the deck.
 * 81) The hissing stopped and the black shaft retracted into what the Presidentelect knew must be the Golden Gift, so familiar from the Scroll of Lael but now physically present, held in the hand of an attractive red-haired young woman wearing a gray and red tunic, textured black tights, and black boots.'Del!' said Hunky with a big grin.
 * 82) 'Just in the nick of time, as usual. Gentlemen, meet Del. She's a twolegged Tough Women Attack Team, all by her lonesome.'110 DEL'Have a macro,' the newly-arrived young woman said. She passed to Hunky a silver copy of the weapon she held in her hand, probably snagged from a Navy of Mastema armory somewhere.
 * 83) 'Kill that camera, please, Hunky.'Hunky used her Silver Gift to make the slowly rotating video camera covering the space they were standing in to entirely go away.Soon after that a squad of eight DECON troops dispatched by Conley entered the office space though the door, which seemed to work for them just fine.
 * 84) 'Everyone lay down your weapons and freeze!' one of the newcomers shouted, and Hunky marveled that he even got the two commands in the correct logical order.Then Hunky stepped in front of Del and blossomed her phantomizer blade to full umbrella mode, something the original Golden Gift couldn't even do, causing a great wind to start.
 * 85) She used this as a shield to absorb the initial bullets of the guards, which came immediately after her movement.In a perfect dance, as though they rehearsed it, which in fact they often did, Hunky collapsed her blade and stepped beside Del.And Del, stepping a bit forward, fired exactly two rounds, center of mass, killing two guards.
 * 86) Lather, rinse, repeat. Two more guards down and then Hunky and Del were close enough to just hack the rest to pieces.'How'd you get in?' Hunky asked Del.'Well there's this network of tunnels inside the mountain made by DECON,' Del explained, 'and there's the network of tunnels we made under the mountain as insurance.
 * 87) It was just a simple matter of making one well-placed connection.' She held up her Golden Gift and wondered if she she needed to explain to Hunky the actual mechanics of the entry.'Ladies and gentlemen,' Hunky said, 'allow me to introduce the B'nei Elohim named Del, the daughter of the late Talishi. who was the incarnation of El Shaddai.
 * 88) Which, I suppose, makes her a half-sister of Jesus. Or something.What did she give you just now?' President-elect Henry Jackson asked. 'Is there more than one Golden Gift?Naw, we call this a macro,' Hunky said, holding up hers.
 * 89) 'Del's mother God gave the Golden Gift to some very clever monkeys, and we very clever monkeys copied it and made it better.''What's next?' asked Ted Hickey, choosing not to dwell on the God thing.
 * 90) 'Our plan was to move down and out.We will stay with your plan,' Del said, 'except that we will backtrack along the path I carved on my way up here. I took the liberty of killing the cameras in every space I entered.That's just great,' Hickey said.
 * 91) 'Now Conley's got a trail of dead cameras leading directly to the last position he knew we were. So now he knows we have help.''There's such a thing as the fog of war,' Del countered with a bit of annoyance. 'Let's see how bright this Conley fellow really is.
 * 92) Let's see how far we can get before he puts it all together.''The President has arrived, sir,' the duty officer told Ed Conley.
 * 93) 'He's making his way to the summit now.''Good, when he gets here and authenticates, unlock the elevators. Meanwhile I want the bodies of these two agents put in the path of somewhere we know Jackson went. It's called shaping the evidence trail.'
 * 94) Ed Conley stepped back from the Big Board to allow his personnel to remove the bodies, and stepping back, he was able to take in the whole picture. There were hundreds of small screens showing mostly stationary views, some empty, some with idle DECON personnel, but about twenty random screens were blank static with no signal, and he wondered about that.
 * 95)  He knew there was no particular relationship between the dead screens and the position of the corresponding camera within the mountain, but he thought if such a relationship could be made, it might speak volumes. When the bodies were dragged away, Conley approached the duty officer again. # 'Plot the position of this dead camera,' he ordered.'Yes sir,' the duty officer replied, and presently a floor map of that level of the mountain was displayed, with the dead camera indicated by a flashing red dot.'Can you plot all the dead cameras?
 * 96) Is there a PolyCode script ready to do that?''No sir, but I can whip one out for you. Just one moment.' Presently the duty officer hand completed his script and ran it. Twenty maps flashed on the screen, one after the other.'Okay, now here's the real test.
 * 97) I want you stack those maps in order, and then I want you to rotate the whole shooting match to an oblique view so I can see them from the side and up. Can you do that?'
 * 98) The duty officer had to think for a bit before he could answer in the affirmative, and the script for this took somewhat longer than the first one. But in about ten minutes Conley was looking at a kind of x-ray view of Yellow Mountain, with a trail of red dots meandering through the center of the hill to the bottom.
 * 99) The top dot was the most interesting one of all, that was the camera covering the space where he had sent that squad of seven DECON personnel before losing contact with them.'Do you see that?' Ed Conley said, tracing the line of red dots from the bottom to the top.
 * 100) 'They've gotten help from outside.I don't see how that's possible, sir. How would they get in?Who's to say the whole mountain isn't sitting on a network of tunnels they made, waiting for the right time, and they just punched through?
 * 101) Send everything we have to that bottom dot.'In the space one level up from that bottom dot Del stuck her head through the hole she made in the floor just long enough to see it was filled with more DECON personnel than she could possibly deal with, even with her, Hunky, and the four Secret Service personnel in full berserk mode.
 * 102) She sat back up and said, 'Well, we have our answer. This Conley dude put all the pieces together. We'll have to get out another way.Any ideas?Actually, I've just had a brilliant one,' Del said. 'I've called in our air assets. DECON will want to scramble to deal with them, so all we need to do is be in one of the helicopter hangers when they do.
 * 103) Then we just walk right out of the mountain.''Show me the body of the Vice-President,' said Gerald Ford after he had seen the cell-camera footage of the demise, not fully aware exactly what it was he was asking for, but Ed Conley dutifully took him up to the cell and showed him the pile of hamburger that used to be Earl Roland and it was everything Ford could do not to puke up his lunch right there.
 * 104) He wheeled away out of the cell and up against the rail looking down on the control bay to steady himself. 'Where is the so-called President-elect?' the President asked when he was able to speak again.'Mr. President, the President-elect together with the assassin are being taken out of the complex by six Secret Service agents, against my better wishes.
 * 105) Apparently there was a disagreement among those six agents as well, we've found the bodies of two of them they shot up and left behind.'The President looked to his own Secret Service agents. 'See to it.' And it occured to Ed Conley just then, much too late, that the dead agents were fill of DECON lead, and he hadn't thought about that. So he started thinking about making his own way out of the mountain.
 * 106) The duty officer said, 'We count twelve incoming bogeys, possibly Church of End Dome air assets come to pull the assassin out.'The President said to Ed Conley, 'You handle it. All I want right now is a private office with a computer terminal and total access to the files.
 * 107) And by that I do mean all of them.'TFTR_1989'Have a macro,' the newly-arrived young woman said, and she passed to Hunky a silver copy of the golden weapon she held in her own hand. It was probably snagged from a Navy of Mastema armory somewhere. 'Kill that camera, please, Hunky.'
 * 108) Hunky used her Silver Gift to make the slowly rotating video camera covering the space they occupied to entirely go away.At that point the squad of eight DECON troops dispatched by Conley entered the office space though the door, which seemed to work for them just fine. 'Everyone lay down your weapons and freeze!' one of the newcomers shouted, and Hunky marveled that he even got the two commands in the correct logical order.
 * 109) Then Hunky stepped in front of Del and blossomed her phantomizer blade to full umbrella mode, something the original Golden Gift couldn't even do. This caused a great wind to start. She used this black shield to absorb the initial bullets of the guards, which came immediately after her movement.
 * 110) In a perfect dance, as though they had rehearsed it, which in fact they often did, Hunky collapsed her blade and stepped beside Del. And Del, stepping a bit forward, fired exactly two rounds, center of mass, killing two guards. Lather, rinse, repeat.
 * 111) Two more guards down and then Hunky and Del were close enough to just hack the rest to pieces.'How'd you get in?' Hunky asked.'Well there is this network of tunnels inside the mountain,' Del explained, 'and there is a network of tunnels we made under the mountain as insurance.
 * 112) It was a simple matter of making one well-placed connection.' She held up her Golden Gift, as though she needed to explain to Hunky the actual mechanics of the entry.'Ladies and gentlemen,' Hunky said, 'allow me to introduce Del, daughter of Talishi, which, I suppose, makes her the sister of Jesus.'
 * 113) 'What did she give you just now?' President-elect Henry Jackson asked. 'Is there more than one Golden Gift?''Naw, we call this a macro,' Hunky said, holding up hers. 'Del's mother God gave the first one to some very clever monkeys, and we very clever monkeys copied it and made it better.'
 * 114) 'What's next?' asked Ted Hickey, choosing not to dwell on the God thing. 'Our plan was to move down and out.''We will stay with your plan,' Del said, 'except that we will backtrack precisely along the path I carved on my way up here. I took the liberty of killing the cameras in every space I entered.'
 * 115) 'That's just great,' Hickey said. 'Now Conley's got a trail of dead cameras leading directly to the last position he knew we were. So now he knows we have help and he knows where we are going.''There is such a thing as the fog of war,' Del countered. 'Let's see how bright this Conley fellow really is.
 * 116) Let's see how far we get before he puts it all together.The President has arrived, sir,' the duty officer told Ed Conley. 'He's making his way to the summit now.Good, when he gets here and authenticates, unlock the elevators.
 * 117) Meanwhile I want the bodies of these two agents put in the path of somewhere we know Jackson went. It's called shaping the evidence trail.'Ed Conley stepped back from the Big Board to allow his personnel to remove the bodies. Stepping back, he was able to take in the whole picture.
 * 118) There were hundreds of small screens showing mostly stationary views, some empty, some with idle DECON personnel, but about twenty random screens were blank blue with no signal, and he wondered about that.
 * 119) He knew there was no particular relationship between the dead screens and the position of the corresponding camera within the mountain, but he thought if such a relationship could be made, it might speak volumes. When the bodies were dragged away, Conley approached the duty officer again.
 * 120) 'Plot the position of this dead camera,' he ordered.'Yes sir,' the duty officer replied, and presently a floor map of that level of the mountain was displayed, with the dead camera indicated by a flashing red dot.'Can you plot all the dead cameras? Is there a PolyCode script ready to do that?'
 * 121) 'No sir, but I can whip one out for you. Just one moment.' Presently the duty officer hand completed his script and ran it. Twenty maps flashed on the screen, one after the other.'Okay, now here's the real test.
 * 122) I want you stack those maps in order, and then I want you to rotate the whole shooting match to an oblique view so I can see them from the side and up. Can you do that?'The duty officer had to think for a bit before he could answer in the affirmative, and the script for this took somewhat longer than the first one.
 * 123) But in about ten minutes Conley was looking at a kind of x-ray view of Yellow Mountain, with a trail of red dots meandering through the center of the hill to the bottom.
 * 124) The top dot was the most interesting one of all, that was the camera covering the space where he had sent that squad of seven DECON personnel before losing contact with them.'Do you see that?' Ed Conley said, tracing the line of red dots from the bottom to the top. 'They've gotten help from outside.'
 * 125) 'I don't see how that's possible, sir. How would they get in?''Who's to say the whole thing isn't sitting on a network of tunnels they made, waiting for the right time, and they just punched through? Send everything we have to that bottom dot.
 * 126) 'In the space one level up from that bottom dot Del stuck her head through the hole she made in the floor just long enough to see it was filled with more DECON personnel than she could possibly deal with, even with her, Hunky, and the four Secret Service personnel in full berserk mode.
 * 127) She sat back up, looked at Agent Hickey sheepishly, and said, 'You were right. This Conley fellow you mentioned put all the pieces together. We shall have to get out another way.Any ideas?Actually, I've just had a brilliant one,' Del said. 'I've called in our air assets via Neutroninet.
 * 128) DECON will want to scramble to deal with them, so all we need to do is be in one of the helicopter hangers when they do. Then we just walk right out of the mountain.'
 * 129) 'Show me the body of the Vice-President,' said Gerald Ford after he had seen the cell-camera footage of the demise, not fully aware exactly what it was he was asking for, but Ed Conley dutifully took him up to the cell and showed him the pile of hamburger that used to be Earl Roland and it was everything Ford could do not to puke up his lunch right there.
 * 130) He wheeled away out of the cell and up against the rail looking down on the control bay to steady himself. 'Where is the so-called President-elect?' the President asked when he was able to speak again.'Mr. President, the President-elect together with the assassin are being taken out of the complex by six Secret Service agents, against my better wishes.
 * 131) Apparently there was a disagreement among those six agents as well, we've found the bodies of two of them they shot up and left behind.'The President looked to his own Secret Service agents. 'See to it.'
 * 132) And it occured to Ed Conley just then, much too late, that the dead agents were full of DECON lead, and he hadn't thought about that. So he started thinking about making his own way out of the mountain.
 * 133) The duty officer said, 'We count twelve incoming bogeys, possibly Church of End Dome air assets come to pull the assassin out.'The President said to Ed Conley, 'You handle it. All I want right now is a private office with a computer and total access to the files. I mean all of them.
 * 134) 'The cliff on the east side of the base of Yellow Mountain was pierced with eight large four-story high helicopter hangers opening on a large landing area. Here was where DECON's dreaded black Sikorsky H-5 helicopters were maintained and stowed.
 * 135) Hunky noticed that close up they weren't really black at all, but dark green.A small company was guarding the hanger where Del's party happened to emerge, with about fifty alert troops. Del squeezed Hunky's hands to assure her, then stepped out to try a supreme bluff.'Report!'
 * 136) Del snapped to the company commander.'Lieutenant Ross, Ma'am. Hangar Six all secure. All personnel present and accounted for.' He did not question her bizarre uniform or her strange, unknown accent. After all, it was Protocol Red.
 * 137) If she was still moving around, then she obviously had the authority to do so no matter who she was. But Hunky's orange prison uniform raised eyebrows.'Do you recognize this civilian?' she barked, pointing at Hunky.'Yes Ma'am, it's the reporter we took into custody at Mount Rushmore.'
 * 138) 'The alert was called away because the Vice-President of the United States is dead and his killer has escaped,' Del told him. 'The enemy is already here and they want this woman. Do you understand?Yes Ma'am!They will try to get this woman come hell or high water.'
 * 139) 'I understand the danger, Ma'am.Then I turn her over to you, lieutenant.What?' Hunky wailed as Del turned away, thinking that this was some kind of double cross, like when Edgar the Younger went over to Mastema's camp. 'But Del looked back again, her attention caught by the appearance of the company commander's rifle. She came strolling right back and ordered the man to present arms.
 * 140) Then Del did a thorough inspection of the exterior, with sarcastic military flair. Then all kidding aside, with practiced motions she broke the weapon down to it's component parts while muttering 'Mmhmmb&mm-hmmb&' Finally she turned back to the officer.
 * 141) 'Lieutenant, tell me why is there light machine oil all over everything in your rifle except where it belongs?Ma'am, I have no explanation.How about your men? Round them up. Let's have a quick personnel inspection.'
 * 142) They left their posts in the nooks and crannies of the hangar and formed up on Del's makeshift parade grounds right in the middle of the hangar. Del, Hunky, the Presidentelect, the four Secret Service agents and the company commander got halfway down the first rank before Del stopped and shook her head sadly.
 * 143) 'Lieutenant this is a major safety hit. I won't have any of your soldier's half-assed work, inspired by you, causing a hang fire.'
 * 144) 'My apologies, Ma'am. I can offer no excuse.If this was a drill I'd let it go. But this is Protocol Red! It's the real thing! Instruct your men to disassemble and quickly clean their weapons. Handguns too! Everything!Yes Ma'am!''It's a disgrace. And in front of civilians too!
 * 145) I'll tell you what, Lieutenant Ross. I'll make you a deal. I won't report this.Thank you, Ma'am.But I am going to take the prisoner to Hangar Seven.'
 * 146) 'I understand, Ma'am.'Del's team were nearly all the way across the hangar floor when a hundred security men finally caught up and entered, anxiously looking for them. Some of these men were pilots who piled into the helicopter.
 * 147) But what they all saw defied belief: the DECON duty officer had started rolling up the large hangar door leading outside to the landing pad in preparation for the launch of the helicopter.
 * 148) And fifty soldiers had let Del's people slip past them because they were all sitting flat on the floor, legs spread out, with their weapons disassembled in tiny pieces all around them.Ed Conley was watching it now on the monitor in the control bay. He screamed for an override on the door, and got it.
 * 149) The door began to shut again after opening only three feet.The bursts from the DECON security men's rifles began to hit around them, some very closely. Under fire, partially protected by Hunky's macro in full mushroom bloom, Del, the President-elect, the four Secret Service agents and finally Hunky dropped and rolled under the closing hangar door just before it slammed shut.
 * 150) They were safe for perhaps one minute.Three flying saucers arrived on the landing pad, piloted, respectively, by Dory, Jill, and Mike Morrich. Mike had miraculously survived the nuclear annihilation of Washington DC on Timeline Zeta and became a member of the B'nei Elohim, but he had never accepted the Name Ritual.
 * 151) 'I was about to give up on your ass,' Mike said as Del and one of the Secret Service agents sat in the webbing slung across the central core. In Dory's second saucer the President-elect and two more agents piled in. Jill got Hunky and the last agent.
 * 152) Then everyone's stomachs clenched as the saucers accelerated sharply upward, and the ground dropped quickly away.'Seriously?' the President-elect said, 'am really I seeing this? Flying saucers?''And why not?' Dory said. 'It's the same trick as the macros.
 * 153) Make the air go away over the roof and you get a bubble of low pressure, hence lift. And a macro makes its own power the more it eats. Basically we're just like a helicopter but with unlimited fuel.'DECON already had three birds of their own in the air, and they had five more getting prepped to fly.
 * 154) But Del's wing had twelve units already in the air. Del told everyone flying them, via Neutrinonet, to play a little Three Card Monte, and the twelve flying saucers mixed it up like gnats for a while, until nobody watching could be sure which one held who.
 * 155) They even made a point of mixing up any attempt to track them on radar by briefly pointing the top of the saucers back toward the transmitter at DECON now and again. If air molecules disappeared, it went without saying that radar pulses did too.
 * 156) Then in one coordinated move the twelve saucers split up to every point of the compass.In a thirty mile circle centered on the point where Wyoming, South Dakato, and Nebraska all came together a dozen dilapidated trucks had been prepared, waiting on the side of various dirt farm roads.
 * 157) Most of these were decoys. Hunky and one of the Secret Service agents named Gwen Scott was set down by Jill on the Wyoming side, and Hunky jumped out to get in the truck, but Special Agent Scott said, 'Whoa, whoa, we got a problem now.
 * 158) We've fulfilled our mandate to protect the President-elect but now our mandate is to investigate the death of the VicePresident. You're a material witness, Hunky, perhaps even the perp, I can't let you out of my sight. You must know how it is.
 * 159) 'Hunky said, 'You were right there, you came into my cell before you let the President-elect come in, it was a polywire web. Yeah I set it up but what is there for you to investigate? I didn't want to get any more electric shock torture from Roland. How about you investigate that? Shit.
 * Me, I'm for out of here.'Gwen pointed her gun at Hunky. And Hunky, with intense sadness, pointed her macro right back at her. Hunky said to her, 'This entire operation was put together to get me out of that Yellow Mountain shithole, I'm not going to let you follow your stupid rules and put me back in there, which is exactly what would happen.
 * 1) So we part ways right here, Special Agent Scott, like it or not. Jill, take her to meet the rest of her team.'Already five of the decoy saucers had stopped for a few minutes by five decoy trucks, then the saucers and the trucks went their merry way.
 * 2) Del had been dumped off on the Nebraska side and started heading for Crawford. She saw two black helicopters crossing the sky as she drove across the Ogala National Grassland, green from recent rains, but the choppers were looking for flying saucers, which, of course, was the whole point of the B'nei Elohim using the trucks.
 * 3) On the South Dakota side, Dory was speaking to Ted Hickey and the President-elect when Jill and Mike came in, bringing their one agent apiece. Dory said to the Presidentelect, 'He got to you, didn't he? The Vice-President? Pulled out all the DECON stops?'
 * 4) Jill arrived just in time to hear the President-elect admit that it was true. 'Sex videos. Stuff that would have killed my campaign.'Dory said, 'You see, that's how America rolls these days, and we don't like it. We never did. They call us the enemy within, Domestic Enemies, right?
 * 5) But that crap you saw up there in the mountain? Torture? Extortion? That's what we've been fighting since 43. And I'm telling you to stand by for heavy weather, Mr. Jackson, because we saw the President go in to DECON just as you were coming out.
 * 6) 'Mike came up, caught the jist of what Dory was saying, and threw in his two cents. 'Best case scenario, Ford deletes whatever crap the VicePresident had on him, goes home, and in two days you and Jeane Kirkpatrick are sworn in.
 * 7) I presume you are going to dismantle DECON if that's the case.'The President-elect said to Mike, 'You are absolutely right. I'm going to tear DECON down to molecules and hold everyone who put it together responsible. If that was the object of this entire exercise, folks, then consider it a resounding success.'
 * 8) 'Well, let's not celebrate just yet,' Mike cautioned. 'Worst case scenario, Ford calls off the inauguration and uses DECON to squash any impeachment flack he might get from Congress. At that point all you will have is a sort of government in exile. You'll be like the Dalai Lama.
 * 9) We consider ourselves real American patriots, so we will offer what help we can, which is considerable, but it is pathetic that the United States has come to this. And historic, any way you look at it. How does the ancient Chinese curse go? May you live in interesting times?
 * 10) We might be looking at a second American civil war.'Jill added, 'Between the best and worst cases are scenarios that are a mix of the two. We've gamed all this stuff out. In most of our scenarios, President Ford releases whatever crap DECON had on you to the media.
 * 11) You will have to be prepared for that to happen.''Hunky suggested to me that whatever it was that I thought was crap wasn't really crap,' the Presidentelect said, 'and I've started to think she might be right. The stuff I saw in Yellow Mountain, now, that really was crap.
 * 12) But you, Special Agent Hickey, where do you come down on all this?'Hickey said, 'I am carrying out my oath to protect the President-elect of the United States. Until such time as you are sworn in as Commander-in-Chief, I will continue to carry out that oath, and I will expect the agents under me to carry out theirs.'
 * 13) Special Agent Gwen Scott said, 'Yes sir, but I think I just made an enemy out of Hunky. I tried to keep her from leaving my sight because I knew she was mixed up with the assassination of the Vice-President but it quickly came to an armed standoff and she left.
 * 14) Threatening a federal officer is another offense, by the way.'Henry 'Scoop' Jackson crawled into one of the waiting farm trucks, one driven by a third Secret Service agent, rolled down the passengerside window, and said, 'I was in that God-forsaken mountain.
 * 15) I watched Earl Roland torture Hunky and she was simply doing what she could to keep it from happening again. If it comes down to it, when I'm President I will pardon Hunky myself, and also any of you for helping me if the Secret Service tries to retaliate for you going rogue. Now lets get the hell out of Dodge.'