Code Name: Buddy and Buffy
Chapter Three
Like I said, my dad is a great guy, and he loves me with all his heart, so it pains me to say something negative about him, but he is not the brightest person you’ve ever met. Still, he takes the time to think things through, and while other people will get there faster, he does get there eventually. I ate my breakfast while I waited for the questions as he and my mother looked through the folders. The first question was not a question at all. It was a statement.
“They weren’t who they said they were.”
“I agree,” I said.
“How did you know that one was a Marine?”
“The tattoo on her forearm, eagle, ball, the anchor and the corps.”
“There’s something huge going on here. How much danger are you in?” He paused. “And what are we going to do about it?”
I love my dad. Did I tell you that? I love my mom too, but not the way I love my dad. “I think we go about our lives as normal and see what happens.”
“I’ll drive you to school.”
“Thanks, Dad. I’d like that.”
“Tommy, we’ve known about your flying for a long time, but the rest of this stuff, that’s new. I think it’s time you told us the whole story. I’ll cover for you if it makes you late to school.”
I choked on my cereal. They knew? My mind raced with questions.
My mother refilled my orange juice and sat down next to my dad. “We worry about you,” she said. “There’s so much going on we don’t understand, but we were afraid to talk to you about it. I guess now we have to talk about it. Please don’t be angry with us.”
I took one of my mother’s hands with both of mine. “I love you, Mom and I love Dad. I could never be angry with you because I know you love me with all your hearts. It’s one of the few things I know that I can trust.”
My mother’s smile was tentative, but she tenderly put her other hand on top of mine. “Please tell us the whole thing. We need to know how we can help.”
I told them about when I was six I jumped off the swing set like the other kids did at the top of the arc expecting to drop down to the ground like they did, but I didn’t go down, I went up. I told them about stepping off our porch and expecting to break my ankle on the pavement but instead floating gently out to the street. I told them about how it took me years to learn to fly, one small step at a time. I told them how I learned about my skills and how I took the time to develop them. They knew about my trouble sleeping, so they weren’t surprised when I told them that much of that learning had been at night or how much I had learned from spy movies and military specials I streamed on my computer.
When I was done, my mother said, “We knew about some of this, but we were afraid if we talked about it, we’d drive you away, and we would never forgive ourselves.”
“I think it’s better that we didn’t talk about it,” I said. “I was afraid that knowing your only child was so weird might be a problem for you.”
“It was,” my father said. “Until today, we weren’t sure about you. We didn’t know how you would turn out. Would you be a good guy or a bad guy? We didn’t know. Now we know that you will be fine. We need to get you to school.”
“I hope you know how much I love you,” I said.
“We do. When you come home from school, we should talk about what we need to do about this girl. Do you like her?”
“I barely know her.”
“But she flies like you.”
“Yes.”
“We need to find her and help her. Her parents may not be as accepting as yours.”
Did I tell you how much I love my parents?
I missed homeroom, but I got to school in time for the first period. I have math first period. I am in the most advanced math class my school offers and my math teacher is absolutely the coolest teacher I have ever had. Ms. Schwartz knows that I am way more advanced than the rest of the class, so she gives me college level stuff to work on. I love it. It doesn’t hurt that she’s also the best-looking teacher I’ve ever had. She grew up in Cocoa Beach and was a surfing champion until she decided to settle down and get married. They stayed together until they finished grad school when he dumped her for a fancy lawyer in Orlando. She killed him in the divorce settlement and now she only works because she wants to. Whenever she’s not teaching, she’s surfing and still looks every bit as hot as she did when she was a champion. I’m surprised that some gnarly surfer dude hasn’t swept her off her feet and carried her away. I would if I was twenty years older.
You know, I don’t understand why anyone would name a kid Archibald Poindexter, but that was the name of the school’s principal. One of his student couriers was waiting for me when I left math class. “Mr. Poindexter wants to see you in his office.”
“For why?”
“Some college recruiter he said.”
“I’m not going to college. I’m taking a year off to travel.”
“Whatever, please come with me.”
Three enormous men who had once been muscular, but now had mostly gone to flab, and the city’s chief of police waited for me in Mr. Poindexter’s office. As soon as I saw them, I understood why I had known the three women were not who they said they were. These men were wearing Air Force uniforms and had nameplates above the breast pockets of their jackets. The women had not had nameplates. So, in the spirit of the best defense is a good offense I spoke first.
“Good morning, Chief Johnson, gentlemen. I assume you are here to see me. May I see ID please?”
The darkest of the three strangers laughed as he pulled out his wallet. “Excellent.” He handed me his ID. “Hello, Buddy, it is good to meet you. Captain Richard Thomson, at your service. I have been following your photo posts for a year. You’re terrific.”
I gave him back his ID. “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate the compliment.” The lieutenants showed me their ID’s without comment.
“Chief Johnson, for the record, I did not break up with your daughter. She broke up with me, and the idiot she’s going with is not worthy of her.”
The man who I had hoped would one day be my father-in-law laughed. “I know. I’ve told Beth Anne that a dozen times. She is a wild one. She’ll dump him, too.”
“Sir, can you vouch for these gentlemen?”
“Yes, I can. They are all personally known to me.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Chief Johnson stood. “This matter is not in my jurisdiction, and the only reason I am here is to tell you that you should trust these men. When your father gets off work, I would like to come over and chat with you. I know you have special skills and don’t trust people easily, but you should trust them. I am leaving so you can discuss what you need to discuss in private. I would offer to put in a good word with Beth Anne, but I think your special skills scare her.”
“Thank you, sir.” I was beginning to wonder how many people knew I could fly and what else they might know about me. I had thought I was so careful.
Chief Johnson saw the look in my eyes. “Tommy, it’s a small town. Hiding in a small town is hard. I’ll see you tonight. I know you will need my help and I am here for you.”
After Chief Johnson had left, Mr. Poindexter excused himself leaving me alone with the three burly guys in Air Force uniforms.
The captain spoke after he heard the door latch. “For the purposes of this endeavor and all written correspondence, we will refer to you as Buddy and not your real name. We do not wish to compromise your identity any more than it already is. What do you know about this lady?”
He produced the same picture of Buffy the ladies had shown me this morning on my porch. “Not much. I only met her the other evening. We haven’t seen her since.”
I handed him back the picture. “And my real identity has already been compromised. I had a most interesting visit to my house this morning.”
These guys were simply not poker players. The men turned a whiter shade of pale.
“Who visited you?”
“A woman in an Air Force uniform, a woman in a NASA jacket and a former Marine sharpshooter. There was also surveillance of some kind going on.”
The captain pulled up a picture on his smartphone. “Was this one of them?”
“She wore the Air Force uniform.”
“Did this one wear the NASA jacket?”
“Yes.”
“And this one was the Marine?”
“No. Someone else.”
The captain scowled and thumbed up another picture. “How about her?”
“That’s her.”
“I assure you this other woman was there. You only saw one sharpshooter, but the other must just have been better hidden. They never travel alone.”
“Who are they?”
“Extortionists.”
“As in pay me, so your barn doesn’t burn down. That kind of extortionists?”
“Exactly.”
“Linked to organized crime perhaps?”
“We believe so.”
“And I stumbled into something they did not want me to see?”
“Yes.”
“And this has something to do with an upcoming launch?”
“Yes.”
“Who is the target, the people who own the rocket or the people who own the payload?”
“Both. The payload has a nuclear electric generator. If it were to have an ‘accident’ at precisely the right time on launch, it could disable the entire space center.”
“And take out the port?”
“Yes, and the city of Titusville.”
“Do you really think they are capable of shooting down a rocket being launched from the space center?” I started to work the math in my head.
“We don’t know. We have to assume that they can. We can’t afford to think otherwise.”
“That’s pretty accurate shooting” I said, but I already realized that it might not be all that tough. “They would have to hit the rocket a few thousand feet over the pad, and it’s not moving that quickly at that point. Actually, now that I think about it, the math isn’t that bad. The flight path is predictable. Control of the projectile is the issue at that speed. Still a good surface to air heat-seeker could do it if you were close enough. If you mount it correctly, you don’t even have to aim, you merely have to launch at the right time.”
“Our thinking exactly.”
“Given the available worldwide inventory of such missiles and their known flight characteristics, it should not be too difficult to calculate the potential launch points and guard them.”
“We did all that.”
“So, what do you need me for?”
“You and Buffy got through our security.”
“So?”
“We didn’t know you were there until after the launch. Where you were standing is one of the best launch points for such a missile. If you had wanted to, you could have shot down the rocket with a shoulder-mounted missile, and we could not have stopped you.”
“That would make a guy nervous.”
“Yes, exactly. Buffy has friends. One who posts frequently goes by the name of ‘Willow’ and one by ‘Angel.’”
“Is there a friend called ‘Watcher’ by chance?”
“I think so.”
“They watch way too much television.”
“We don’t know who her other friends are and we don’t know the real identity of either Willow or Angel. They would see us coming a mile away, but you should be able to contact them and enlist them to help find Buffy before the extortionists use her to take down the rocket.”
“When is the next launch?”
“A week from Saturday at 4:00 AM.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“That’s all I can ask. I have taken the liberty of sending you a text with my sat phone number. Call me if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
I left the office deep in thought. Other than the dirty looks I always got every time I was called to the principal’s office, which happened more often than I liked to admit, the rest of the day was uneventful, kind of hazy actually.
Ms. Schwartz was waiting for me after school.
“Tommy?”
“Oh, hi Ms. Schwartz, sorry I wasn’t really attentive in class today.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Those men coming out of the principal’s office didn’t look like it’s a little trouble. They look like it’s a lot of trouble. What have you done? Tommy, you are a great guy, but even great guys get in trouble and sometimes they can’t get themselves out. Call me if I can help.”
“Ms. Schwartz, I don’t know the half of it yet. It’s a big puzzle, and there are lots of pieces.”
“Tommy, you’re shaking. Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Use your fear. It will make you strong if you take control of it and not let it take control of you.”
“Thank you.”