Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story) (15 page)

Jamal swallowed and looked around. The other men’s eyes were fervent and if any of them were dismayed he didn’t see it on their faces. Jamal’s eyes shifted to the floor and he hoped they didn’t hear his heart pounding in his chest. Distantly he wondered when he had become afraid to die. For years he’d told himself that he stood ready to die for his vengeance. Surprise washed over him to realize how little vengeance still pumped in his veins now. He had been seduced by the Great Satan.

With time and a great deal of argument a plan slowly gelled. They would wear athletic suits in the American Olympic team colors and would then wait along the route to the arenas. When they saw a bus full of Americans they would stop that bus and board it pretending to be American athletes who had mistaken the boarding location. Then they would hijack the bus to a location where they could broadcast the killing of the athletes, preferably one by one, to the world.

A visit to a Wal-Mart equipped them each with athletic garments resembling the sweat suits of the American Olympic team. They then began examining possible routes that busses might take between the dormitories and the stadiums. Jamal and Hamid, with one or two others at a time, drove the possible routes and up and down side streets, looking for a site where they could hold the athletes after they captured them. They had no idea what might work and had argued constantly over various possibilities.  A large parking garage stood just off the main street to the arenas and Jamal turned into it. Hamid said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“This parking deck would be easy to drive a bus into. I thought we should check it out.” Jamal drove up a wide ramp that circled, taking the Suburban higher and higher in the deck.

“But it is open to the outside! We’d have no protection from snipers!”

“At least let’s drive to the top and look out at the city from up there. Who knows what we’ll see.”

Hamid crossed his arms and sat back into his seat, obviously unhappy. When they got to the top they got out and the four of them wandered around looking off the top deck to see the city. Jamal had to admit he didn’t see anything useful and Hamid soon said, “This was a complete waste of time.”

As they drove back down Jamal said, “Maybe one of these lower levels, we could park the bus near the perimeter of the deck…”

Hamid interrupted, “No! That’s stupid. We need a completely enclosed space.”

Jamal, distracted by Hamid’s contempt, missed the street level exit and suddenly realized that the parking spiraled down below street level as well. “What about down here?”

The area below street level was closed off from the outside world and poorly lit but still, attackers would be able to approach from many angles. Hamid merely grunted in doubt, but then they came to the bottom level where they found that a quarter of the total area of the lowest deck was walled off in concrete The main entrance to that section  was an enormous rolling steel door that would be large enough to drive an entire bus through! They got out and examined it, it wasn’t even locked! With all four of them heaving on it they were able to raise the door enough for Jamal and Hamid to slip under with flashlights. They found an enormous room which was empty but for a few ladders, some cleaning supplies and an old pickup with a flat tire. Hamid asked, “What is this room for?”

Jamal, who had been wondering exactly the same thing, shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to be a waste of an enormous amount of valuable parking space. There was one human sized door, also sturdy steel and no other openings. They wandered around examining the entire room. It didn’t even have ventilation ducts or openings other than the doors, suggesting it must have been designed only for storage. There was a large grate in the floor near the back corner and the floor sloped toward it. At first Jamal wondered if they had intended to use it for washing vehicles but there was no water spigot near it. There was one across the room by the cleaning supplies. Then Jamal realized that water must leak into the deck and run down here during storms. That corner was the lowest point in the entire deck and so the grate probably served as a storm drain which explained why it was so large.

The concrete walls of the underground room were sixteen inches thick and the steel doors would be very difficult to break through. Hamid proclaimed the room to be perfect and sent Jamal to get the other team members while he began planning.

When Jamal returned, Hamid told him to find plans on the web for the deck so that they could determine where the storm drain went. To his surprise Jamal found that he couldn’t connect to the net down in the bottom of the deck and had to drive back up, almost to street level in order to do so. His AI then downloaded plans for the deck but to his astonishment the available plans didn’t show the storm drain at all! Instead, a sump pumping system was shown from that back corner of the deck, to pump back up about four feet to access the storm drain system. Jamal surmised that they hadn’t been able to excavate quite as deeply as they had planned and so the floor level was above the storm system rather than below it as anticipated by the architect. At the slightly higher level it could drain directly into the storm system rather than requiring the pump. This he confirmed by looking at the plan for the entrance. The plan showed a level drive into the deck whereas they actually had had to drive about 4 feet up a ramp to enter. The plans, at least the ones available on the net, apparently didn’t show these changes that they had made during construction. Those plans labeled the big room on the lowest level, “valuable car storage.” Perhaps that part of the business plan had never borne fruit? With the entire team there, they were able to lift the large grate and one by one they climbed down into the storm system. At present it had only a small trickle of water. They walked along until they found an access pipe with rungs in its side that led up to a manhole cover.

They left Yousef at that manhole cover and Hamid and Jamal went back up to street level. They walked along where they thought the storm sewer ran, looking for manhole covers. When they found one, Hamid used the net to order Yousef to stick a wire up through the finger hole in the manhole cover. Nothing happened so they searched for another manhole cover closer to the deck. This time, when Yousef stuck the wire up they saw it. They had him go to the next access point and do it again, the third cover they came to exited into an alley. Hamid was delighted and began to talk of possible escape. “They’ll think we have no way out! We’ll get a welder, and weld those damn steel doors shut so it takes them forever to get in. Then we’ll kill all the Americans, leave through the drain that they won’t know about because it isn’t on the damned ‘net’ they rely on for everything. We’ll pop out here in this alley and disappear into the city!”

Jamal, heartened by the possibility that he might not die, became a little more enthusiastic himself.

Then Hamid realized angrily that they couldn’t connect wirelessly to the net from down in their “retreat” as he was calling the concrete room at the bottom of the deck. That would make it very difficult to publicize their capture of the Olympians, their demands and their eventual killing of the athletes. Hamid was delighted when Jamal told him that he could hardwire a signal repeater up to the street level. A visit to Radio Shack provided the materials and then they back drove to the parking deck at two in the morning. Hamid barked orders as they strung the wire from the basement room up to the ground level.

It became apparent to Jamal that Hamid planned to place the antenna on the roof of the parking deck. He said, “But they will be able to triangulate and find us almost immediately.”

“What?”

“First they will find the antenna where our signal enters the net. Then they will come down to this area of town and search for the source with direction finders. If all our signals come directly from the top of the parking deck, they will immediately look in its bottom levels for us.”

“So?”

“So when they find us they may do something we do not expect that will stop us from completing our mission. We may want some time to pass before they have that opportunity.”

“OK then, where should the wire go?”

Jamal proposed that they string it across the street, piggybacked on one of the wires crossing to the next building, then to the top of that building and across to the other side of it. He had a few bad moments when it appeared that Hamid intended Jamal to string the wire but then the small man, Abdul, volunteered to do it. It seemed he had no fear of heights and he simply hung from the existing wires and crawled across like a monkey, then scaled the next building dragging the wire as if it were a completely ordinary task. On the way back he used cable ties to fasten the antenna wire into place every few feet.

Once they had their plan mostly in place they settled down to a few daily excursions to increase familiarity with the city. They bought a welder and practiced with it. They bought caulk to seal around the doors against tear gas and they carefully caulked every crack they found in the concrete. Two large spotlights were purchased and tested to be sure that they could get good video and audio from the “execution site” out onto the net. Hamid’s plan involved making outrageous demands, then killing an Olympian every hour until he thought the Americans were about to blow their way into the “retreat.” Then they would kill the remainder of the athletes and make their escape while a long prerecorded diatribe was being broadcast on the net to distract the police. “Yousef will remain on the outside to watch what the police are doing and keep us informed so that we will know what to do.”

Jamal said angrily, “Why Yousef? I know the city better.”

Hamid looked at Jamal with suspicion, “Because Yousef looks like the Mexicans that are so plentiful here. Why do you want to remain outside? Is Jamal, jabaan (coward)?”

Jamal said nothing for a moment, then, “No, I just think I can do a better job.”

Yousef smirked, “Jabaan.”

Yousef bought binoculars and rented an office in the building across the street from the parking deck with a window looking over the entrance to the deck. On another late night they strung another hardwire down to the retreat from Yousef’s new office, this time for a simple two way intercom that Yousef would use to communicate with Hamid even if their net access was cut off.

They had a couple of celebratory feasts, congratulating each other on deeds to be done and praying over their last days here on earth in case they did not succeed with their escape. All of them were required to watch as many news feeds as possible about the American Olympic athletes so that they would recognize them. Jamal found himself intrigued by a particularly striking woman gymnast named Donsaii…

Chapter Six

Ell walked into the glaring lights of Olympic Stadium in Dallas like a spectator. Performing at a higher level, she’d been accepted onto the official seven person team without having to use any of her “secret moves.” She felt ecstatic to be there at the Olympics. Her head swiveled every which way as she strode along in the middle of the group of American athletes. Intermittently she bounded up and down with enthusiasm. The other female gymnasts were also energetically bouncing around like pinballs.

When the team got to their place on the center field Ell wandered through the Americans looking for Phil. To her surprise she was stopped by a couple of the swimmers who wanted her autograph! Though she’d seen a videography team at the gymnastics training camp and her mother had told her about a news “Special” on the net concerning the gymnastics team, she had no idea that she’d been singled out as a “dark horse,” and had featured large in the news reports. The general public found her fascinating, partly because of her beauty, but also in large part because video of her astonishingly perfect routines were run in comparison to some bad landings and routines that were interesting only in that Ell hadn’t been hurt! The story of her late entry to gymnastics, her young age to be in college and her military cadet status interested Olympic fans too. As usual, women’s gymnastics was one of the most popular attractions of the Olympics. This combined with Ell’s looks brought such attention that she had gradually become one of the best known athletes of this Olympics. She had both passionate supporters who rooted for her and vehement detractors who were sure she’d flop in “real competition.”

“Sure, I’m honored.” Ell said to the autograph seeking swimmers. She noticed that one of the swimmers had a large stack of autograph cards. “Can I bum some of your cards to get some autographs of my own?” They were happy to share and she started with the two swimmers’ autographs and moved on, looking for Phil. She ran into Michael Fentis, the sprinter, who appeared bored with the entire event. He’d been winning gold medals on the world stage for quite a while so she realized this probably wasn’t a big deal to him, but strode up to him and said, “Mr. Fentis, might I obtain your autograph?”

Fentis didn’t even glance at her, “No.”

Ell was startled by his rudeness but shrugged and went on. She asked every other athlete she recognized for autographs and they all graciously signed her cards, many asking her to return the favor. Then she saw a familiar broad back and blond head, “Phil!”

He turned, “Hey Ell!”

“Go 22nd Raptors!”

“Yeah! Raptors!” Phil found himself genuinely glad to see her and was bemused at the joy he felt when she threw her arms around him and gave him a tight hug. He realized that any resentment he felt towards her was finally gone. He’d been actively following news about her gymnastics on the net and taking a lot of pride in her exploits. He’d become very proud to know her and called her a “friend” when speaking of her to others.

Ell let go of Phil and bounced up and down exuberantly. “Isn’t this great!”

Phil grinned back at her happy enthusiasm. “Yeah. Your first event is tomorrow?” He knew it was, he probably knew her schedule better than his own.

“Yup. But in the morning, so I’ll be over to root you on in the afternoon. You kick some ass and make me proud, hear me?”