Code Name: Buffy and Buddy
Chapter Four
Mom was in my room on my computer when I got home. What I forgot was that today was her day off. She works the reception desk at one of the local car dealerships and alternates weekends with one of the other women, so she has weekdays off when she works the weekends.
“Um, Mom, what are you doing?”
“I found Buffy’s profile. Buffy has friends. Angel, Willow, Watcher, and Cordelia have left frantic messages for her to contact them, but she has not responded. How was your day?”
I told her about my visit with the Air Force guys. “What other names were in her timeline that did not contact her since she disappeared?”
“I wrote them down. Here’s the list.”
I was not surprised to see Xander, Spike, Oz, Caleb and Anya as frequent contributors among the more familiar names. I was surprised that there was no Giles.
“So what do you want to do?”
“We’ll discuss the logistics with Dad when he gets home from work, but I think I need to arrange a meeting away from peeping eyes.”
“With all those spy movies Dad watches, I am sure he will have some idea.”
* * * * *
Mom had dinner ready when dad came home. Over dinner I showed him the list of names Mom had written down and told him where she had found the list. He noticed the same names I noticed. “A little obvious don’t you think?”
“A little too obvious if you ask me,” I replied. “But it’s all we have.”
“So what’s the plan?”
The front doorbell rang. I stood. “That would probably be Chief Johnson. He knows that I can fly.”
My parents stared at me. “He never said anything to us,” my mother gasped.
“I wonder how he found out,” my father said.
“Let’s ask him,” I said.
I went to the door and let Chief Johnson in. Beth Anne was with him. Mom offered them soft drinks which they accepted. We sat around the kitchen table.
My dad cut to the meat of the discussion. “How did you know Tommy could fly?”
“Little League tryouts. He hit the ball, and he was so excited he ran to first without his feet touching the ground. He did that three times. I wasn’t sure I saw what I thought I saw, so I put him in the outfield. I watched him pull a ball that should have gone over the fence into his glove. I watched that ball curve in a way it should not have curved. Scared the shit out of me to tell you the truth. I cut him from the team for his own safety.”
“Who else knows?” I asked.
“Some of the patrol officers know. We’ve seen you leave through your window and return in the middle of the night. We don’t talk about it much, but it’s there.”
“Beth Anne, how did you find out?” I asked.
“The first time we kissed you were so excited we floated off the ground. We were a couple of feet in the air, just hanging there. I thought I could deal with it, but I was afraid that one time we’d float too high and you’d forget I can’t fly and drop me.”
“I would never have hurt you on purpose,” I said.
“I know that, but accidents do happen to the best-intentioned people.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I know, and I can’t help but think how lonely you must feel.”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“So,” Chief Johnson said. “We have a young lady to find. Tommy, tell us everything you know about her. We know what she looks like from the photographs, and we have a few details from the missing person report, but we don’t know much else. Does she have an accent? Does she walk with a limp? Did you recognize her perfume?”
“Typical Florida accent, but that’s no help because she told me she flew in from the south.”
“The missing person report is from Ft Lauderdale. That matches.”
“She had the same Case Logic camera backpack I have.”
“That’s a start. We can see how many of those backpacks were shipped to South Florida.”
“Assuming that’s where she bought it. It had a bunch of miles on it. She’s had it a long time. It could have been a gift from someone up north.”
“Still, I’ve seen your backpack, and there aren’t too many like it around.”
“What about the camera gear? Anything special?”
“Same stuff you could find in any good camera shop anywhere or online. That’s not much help.”
“Did you get close enough to smell her perfume?”
“No.”
“Not even at the pit stop?”
“No, but she had these paper wipe things. Hang on.”
I went to my room and dug out the extra packs Buffy had shoved in my hand when I used the restroom.
“She had a whole box of these,” I said when I returned.
“That’s a hospital wipe,” my mother said. “You can’t buy those in a store. They have powerful disinfectants. What would she be doing with those?”
“Her mother is a nurse,” Chief Johnson said. “It’s in the missing person report.”
We stared at the wipe hoping that somehow it would give us a clue.
As I turned the pack over in my hand, I stared at the words on the back. “Mom, do you have any like these?”
“Not exactly. I have others.”
“Could you get them? I don’t think I know how to find her, but I think I know how to call for help without running afoul of the extortionists.”
“Extortionists?” Beth Anne gasped.
“Yeah, that’s what the Air Force guys said.”
“Do you trust them?” Beth Anne asked.
“The only people I trust are sitting in this room, and as far as I know, someone has a listening device focused on that window and can hear everything we say.”
“Really?” Beth Anne exclaimed.
“I would if it were me. Mom, please get the wipes. Chief Johnson, I know you eat barbecue when you’re on the job. I’ll bet you have a bunch of wipes in your car from the barbecue place. Could you get them and perhaps a bunch from your evidence kit? Take a look around while you’re out there.”
We sat in silence until Chief Johnson returned. He stood with his back to the window. “Parabolic dish pointed at the window from a telescoping tower two blocks over.”
“Nobody says a word,” I whispered. “Game on.”
I wrote a message on a napkin. “Mom, log into my Buddy account from my computer.”
She gave me the evil eye.
“I know you can,” I wrote. “You did it this afternoon.”
She nodded.
“Wait two hours and post this on Buffy’s timeline. ‘Buddy wants to meet the Slayers and Friends at moonrise where Buffy and I crapped. Treasure hunt.’”
“That’s crude,” my mother wrote back.
“I know, but I seriously need to take a crap, and I have a long night,” I said aloud.
“Where are you going?” My mother asked aloud.
“To take a crap,” I shouted.
I shoved the several different brands of wipes into my pockets as I stood from the table. I snatched the GPS out of the drawer and some pens off the table as I walked to the bathroom. I did what I said I would do and opened the bathroom window. I pushed out the screen. I leaned out to look around. Within a minute I had collected two pairs of binoculars, two pistols, and an assault rifle. I placed these gently on the floor. I was beginning to have serious trust issues. Before I jumped through the window, I tied the laces on two massive pairs of combat boots together so that the occupants of those boots could not run without falling.
I jumped through the window and flew just over the hedgerow as fast as I could. I smacked my feet into the parabolic dish as I passed and snapped the mast in half. I turned and headed north. I needed a set of coordinates.
* * * * *
I stood at the southern base of the Dames Point Bridge and wrote down the coordinates. I flew to Castillo San Marcos in St. Augustine and wrote down the coordinates. I flew to Disappearing Island in Ponce Inlet and wrote down the coordinates. I had hit two dozen parks and wildlife refuges by the time I needed to be at Parking Lot Thirteen on Playlinda Beach. I approached from Mosquito Lagoon coming in low over the water. I touched down lightly behind the tracking station so that the tracking station was between me and the restroom building. I had an hour to moonrise. Mom had posted the message an hour ago. It showed up on my cell phone when it was posted. Unless they were flying, it would take at least an hour for anyone to get here from my house and they would have to negotiate some closed gates along the way.
I scattered two dozen wipes on the ground between the entrance to the male restroom and the female restroom. I had written the coordinates of the places I had stopped on the wrappers. The hospital brand Buffy had used had the correct coordinates for where I would actually be. The rest were diversions. The right coordinates pointed to an observation platform, North Platform Four, in the northern part of the park seventeen miles away with no roads in between. Driving time from Parking Lot Thirteen to North Platform Four around the lagoon would be over an hour. Flying time would be much less than that.
One unfortunate characteristic of the Parking Lot Thirteen was that it had no cover. I guess I should not have been surprised when I heard the helicopter approach. Of course, the Air Force would have helicopters. But if the Air Force had the helicopter, who had the drone? I had noticed the drone earlier. A drone with infra-red cameras, which I had to assume it had, could make my life difficult. I quickly slid under the northernmost boardwalk that crossed the dunes to the beach. It was further from the bathroom building than I would have liked, but it gave me a better view than from the closer one which was more behind the building.
Given that I had at least one helicopter and one drone to deal with, part of my plan was in jeopardy. I had assumed that the only people who could fly were the people I needed to meet. The rest would drive. The advent of the helicopter meant that the people I needed to meet could be walking into a trap. Serious trust issues here.
The fact was that I did not know who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. I could not distinguish between the two by the direction in which each was shooting. It would not be that clearly defined. In spite of Chief Johnson’s assurances, the Air Force guys were just a little too smooth. They were too quick to call the people who had visited with me that morning extortionists.
The helicopter made a slow run over the site. I could see rifles in the hands of the occupants through the open side doors. They were searching the ground. I assumed they were looking for me. The wood of the boardwalk would offer little protection if they started shooting. The drone sped through right behind the helicopter. The drone had Air Force markings, but I was not sure that meant much. The helicopter had markings of a private security service. It was not Air Force. The helicopter’s occupants pointed their weapons at the drone but did not fire. The helicopter touched down on the road in front of me, and two people in combat fatigues jumped out. The helicopter throttled up and flew away. The two people ran up the hill to the tracking station and took positions on either side of the station on the ground where they could see the entrance to the restroom building. I recognized one as the woman whose rifle I had taken this morning, and the other could be the friend I saw in the picture the Captain had shown me. I stayed quiet until I was sure their attention was fixed on the restroom building in front of them and not on me well off to their right.
The sand dunes are infested with fire ants. Finding a fire ant colony only took a minute. I scooped the colony up and dumped it on the closer of the two sharpshooters. I have to give her credit for the length of time she withstood the onslaught before running screaming for the water shucking her clothes as she ran. The second ant hill took a little longer to find, but the result was the same. After the second sharpshooter ran screaming for the water, I picked up the dropped weapons and unloaded them. I tossed the ammo over the fence protecting the tracking station. I knew the drone could see me, but that was the least of my concerns. I still had to disable the two sharpshooters and deal with the helicopter. I took their clothes to the beach where the sharpshooters were trying to drown the ants in the salt water. That water must have stung on those bites. What I had done to them was seriously nasty. I felt terrible about it, but they had guns, and I did not.
I can’t claim credit for what happened next, but I saw it coming, and I was ready for it. A giant wave rolled in and knocked them off their feet. While they were struggling against the undertow, I lifted them out of the water one at a time as quickly as I had stolen the rifle this morning and deposited them gasping and wheezing on the beach next to the boardwalk. I used their pants to tie their arms to the boardwalk’s handrail and their shirts to bind their feet. I placed their weapons just out of reach. The ranger would find them in the morning. This was a nude beach so their lack of clothing would not be a problem, but the weapons would be.
I could not hear the helicopter as I walked back to my hiding place, but it had to be close by. The drone whizzed by close overhead, and I grabbed it. I didn’t actually catch it. Well, I sort of did. I threw a large stick into the propeller. When the engine failed, I guided it to a safe landing down the road.
It was not hard to imagine the chaos that must have ensued in the control suite for that drone. I tried not to laugh, but it was hard. Even so, I felt sorry for the pilot whose drone I had abducted.
I found a hiding place on the rise inside the fence around the tracking station. The overhang blocked me from view overhead, and the building blocked me from view in three directions. The fence offered some protection, but not much.
The moon peeked over the horizon, and in my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined what happened next. A military armored personnel carrier raced down the only access road and flattened the drone where I had so neatly parked it off the road in the parking area designated for people who on a beautiful day would be using the beach. Four heavily armed men jumped out. An unmarked helicopter flew in from the north, and four men rappelled down to the ground to face the four already on the ground. An amphibious landing craft hit the beach, and four more men raced up the beach and over the boardwalk. They chased by the two women trussed to the boardwalk they ran along. The helicopter I had seen earlier landed and the two women I had seen on my porch jumped out. They immediately began shouting orders which the men ignored.
A shouting match ensued which turned into a shoving match with lots of shouting and cursing. Fists flew and soon the entire thing devolved into a scene from a bad martial arts movie. I couldn’t tell who was beating up on whom and I lost track of even who had arrived with whom. It was a mess. In the fight, none of them got close enough to the restroom building to see the wipes on the ground.
I had noticed two shadows circling at around a thousand feet. I could not see much, but they were people flying unassisted by machines. This was who I needed to be talking to. Suddenly one of the shapes broke formation and plummeted to the ground feet first. A person wearing a gray jumpsuit, work boots, and a motorcycle helmet landed in front of the restrooms behind the lines of the combatants on the ground. They made a quick survey of the packets of wipes on the ground and confidently snatched the right one. Without even a look around, they jumped into the air and were gone. The melee stopped. There was a frantic scramble for the wipes I had left with the bogus coordinates. The only one with the right coordinates was already gone. When I headed out, the melee had become a battle for the wipes and continued unabated.
The person in the gray jumpsuit had picked up the next clue at the correct location and was leaving when I arrived. The helicopter had followed them to the platform, but apparently had lost them and now searched the surrounding area for them. The person flying high cover was still there. There were two more clues at two distant locations, so I went to the final site, a rain shelter at Smyrna Dunes Park and waited.
Dawn was a sliver on the horizon when a person wearing a gray jumpsuit, work boots and carrying a motorcycle helmet under his arm walked up the boardwalk to me. He smiled broadly and held out his hand. “You must be Buddy.”
“And I guess you’re Xander.” I shook his hand. His grip was firm and confident.
“I am.”
“Is Willow flying high cover?”
“She is.”
“It’s all good.”