With the start of the new year, I made a few changes to my schedule. First, I cut down on my Kung Fu training to two nights a week and one Saturday afternoon class. Uncle Paul wasn’t happy about it, but I explained that I needed a short break for a few months. While that was certainly true, the main reason was that I needed more time so that I could get my helicopter pilot license.
I’d made arrangements with a local helicopter training school for private lessons every morning comprising of two hours of ground school classroom lessons and one hour of flying time every day. Before my first lesson, I had already scan-read all their training books and trained for hundreds of hours on the computer flight simulator that Howie had found for me. I’d even snuck aboard many training and non-training flights and scanned the trainers as they flew for enjoyment or taught their students.
My typical day started at seven o’clock, where I’d meet my first of two cancer patients in the meditation room at Hannah’s home. Shauna and Sister Clara had managed to find over one hundred willing candidates for my cancer treatments. Given that the only risk to the patients was the cost of their flight, they had more candidates than I could handle.
After working with the two patients, I’d head out to the helicopter training school for the rest of the morning. I was home in time to have lunch with mom and Ben and then I was off to the hospital. I’d leave the hospital at five and head back to Hannah’s Home to work with the programmers at VR Health Services for a few hours before heading home to eat. Dinner was followed by either Kung Fu or scan-reading. If I were scan-reading a new language, I’d also watch videos or movies in that language to work on my pronunciation.
Throughout the day, I’d also practice with my field. I was pulse-searching in a one block area around me every five minutes while maintaining my shields all day. I practiced holding and controlling multiple fields and I was constantly scanning people to see if I could find a way to perfect my ‘lie detector’ ability.
Knowing that this schedule was only temporary helped me get through it. Mark’s visits on the weekend didn’t hurt either. Our long-distance relationship was working out very well for both of us because we were both always on the run. Mark was constantly traveling and learning about each of the McKenzie holdings, getting personally acquainted with the capabilities of each of the key people running their mines. Even if Mark had lived next door, we couldn’t have seen each other much more than we were now. Because those moments were so few, we appreciated them more and tried our best to do fun things. Honestly though, sometimes we’d set out to watch a movie only for both of us to fall asleep a few minutes into it.
The routine lasted throughout January, varying only slightly as my instructor decreased my ground school drastically and increased my flight time. Apparently, he was impressed with my level of proficiency with the course material. My skill at controlling the helicopter, really a copy of his skill, also allowed him to teach more advanced piloting than was normal for my notice level. He proclaimed me to be a natural pilot and started training me in how to fly different helicopters as well. They had four different models at the school and I got a chance to learn on each of them.
February seemed determined to throw me off my game. The first major interruption came in the form of Kevin. Back in December, I’d given him all the proof he needed to show that someone was threatening the lives of the families of the seven politicians and he and his superiors were finally getting back to me with plan to put a stop to it.
“I know it’s taken a long time, Abby, but we had to go slow in choosing which politicians to approach and how to approach them without tipping our hands. We ended up choosing your senator, Sean Daniels, and a senator from New York, Rhonda Evers. We chose Daniels because he was from North Carolina and we think that Roger is based out of here so it should be easier for him to help us. Daniels is also family to the Governor and his ability to have his ear gives him an outsized political impact compared to the other politicians on our list. Finally, Daniel’s security chief is related to one of our agents. That meant we had a very reliable conduit to set up some secret discussion with Mr. Daniels. Likewise, we chose Mrs. Evers because her niece is an agent and calls from her wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.”
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“Were you able to convince them to work with you?”
“Oh yes. Both were shocked to learn that we knew about the threats and they really want us to put a end to it. They’ve agreed to cooperate, but they’re really scared for their kids. They have no idea how the envelopes with the threats are even getting to them. Whoever left them is able to bypass all their security measures. Someone with Roger level skills is working for the bad guys.”
That comment brought me up cold. My recent worries about Ben made me think of someone else like me, someone with a field. However, Kevin meant regular James Bond type skills and as he talked about their plans, I relaxed and put that thought from my head and concentrated on what he was saying.
The plan was straightforward. Next time the senators received instructions from the blackmailers, they would inform the FBI immediately using a pre-set coded email. If the instruction ran counter to what the senators wanted to do, they would ignore them and the FBI would put round the clock, hidden surveillance on the children. If anyone came after the kids, the FBI would swoop in a catch them.
Kevin’s main worry was that the blackmailers would take too long to go after the kids and the FBI would decide to remove some of the round the clock security. He wanted Abby to see if there was any way that Roger could help, if that were to happen. I assured him that Roger would help as much as he could. However, if both senators refused their orders, then there would be three potential attack sites. Roger could only be in one place at a time. Kevin understood and simply asked for any help that he could get.
The meeting with Kevin wasn’t the source of the interruption to my schedule, but it was the cause. The only way that I could think of that Roger could be of use would be in tracking the children, if they were taken. I’d have preferred a more pro-active option where I would stop the kidnapping from happening in the first place, but given the multiple locations and targets, that wasn’t an option. I couldn’t be everywhere at once. Instead, I took two days off and went to Raleigh and New York. In each of those cities, I waited until the kids were asleep and inserted a small daimuby into their femur bone. It wasn’t a very complicated process. Creating a field of equivalent size to the gemstone, I removed a section from the inside of the bone and sent it to L2. I then placed the diamuby inside the hollowed out cavity using filter forceps. The forceps, glorified tweezers really, passed through the leg and bone in R1 and when the gem was positioned perfectly within the hole I’d made, I shifted it to reality. The whole process took under two minutes per child, but having to get to the children at night meant that I still had to wait for hours until a flight was heading back to Charlotte.
In all, I placed trackers in two kids in New York and three in Raleigh. As an afterthought, I also placed a few internet-connected cameras in R1, recording to a cloud server, in each of the children’s rooms. If any of them were taken, I’d be able to see who took them and I’d have to return to those cities and start tracking them. However, that in itself presented a problem. By the time Kevin was able to inform me about the kidnapping and I was able to get out there, hours would have passed and the range for finding the children would have grown to almost unmanageable levels. There was no way that I’d be able to find them, if I was using a car. Also, I’d lose time waiting for a flight and getting to and from the airport.
The solution was obvious once I finally thought of it on my flight back from New York. I was going to need access to a helicopter. When the time came, I would either have to ‘borrow’ one, already have my own, or ask Kevin to have one on standby for me. Each option had it’s good and bad points and I would need to consider each very carefully. Regardless of which option I chose, refueling was also going to be a difficult issue to resolve.