"You always go to Anaheim to change? What would you do if it's blocked somehow?"
I tell her about my former use of Ralph's, and my adventure with the Santa Monica police department. She spends the entire story almost literally rolling on the floor laughing. Three times she tries to say something, and three times she's cut off because she starts laughing again and can't catch her breath.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I use my medium sarcastic voice.
"They should have strip searched you. That's the only thing that would have made that story better, but we need to find you an alternative, and you should probably have spare clothes stashed somewhere. You go do your job tonight, and let's meet Saturday and go exploring and shopping, then go through the army stuff. And don't end up standing in some parking lot with your pants around your ankles." She at least smiles while she says that.
We had agreed that Perez would pay for dinner and I would leave the tip, so I put $10 on the table as we stand up to leave. Perez kisses the woman at the cash register and walks out the door.
"Alright, I've been had," I complain as I catch up to her.
"Yes, you have Air Force, she's my
tia
, she'd never make her favorite
sobrina
pay for dinner. Let me know how it goes." And she is gone.
It goes easy. I go home, get my camera, backpack, and change of clothes, then drive to Anaheim. I pop some molecules toward downtown, feeling the eyes of the tiger, or drone, on me. I remove the envelope, still safely hidden, walk into the building though the unlocked stairwell, and make a thorough search for cameras. When both my eyes and fog senses think it's clear, I sit down in the dust on the landing and photograph each page, including the business card. I memorize the phone number and the handwritten address on the back, just in case something goes wrong, and I glance over the pages to see what they want me to do. Bastards.
Then I put my camera back into my backpack, but leave the envelope and its contents out. Once I'm back on the roof, I make sure that the drone acquires me, then do the same trick as last night, rocketing vertically (not fast enough to burn anything) until I know I've lost it, then hurtling back to earth about 10 miles from downtown.
I follow the 91 out to Colton, where Perez says there is an apartment complex we can use. Sure enough, it's exactly as she described it, sitting up on the top of a significant hill, more or less alone, one side of it a small forest of sorts, lots of trees going down a ravine. I hide the envelope in the vent of the maintenance building, where no one is likely to look for it. Then I jet up a thousand feet and a mile out, watching and waiting.
About 90 minutes later the same drone from downtown, or one that looks the same, comes flying over the complex, and makes circles for, well I don't know how long, because it was still circling when I got bored and left. Straight up again, just in case, a little misdirection maneuver or three, then off to Anaheim.
The trip back to my apartment is smooth, my simulator day is smooth, and my drive back home after work is smooth. On the way, I stop at the pharmacy and print the pictures from my camera. I read everything carefully three times. They not only are trying to bluff me, they think I'm stupid, but I might play along anyway just to see where this all goes.
Perez is knocking at my door at six, unable to wait until tomorrow to see what's in the pictures. She reads the documents at least four times, before she leans back in one of my wooden kitchen chairs.
"They think you're stupid," are the first words out of her mouth. "This is, to paraphrase one of my favorite books, a plan within a plan."
I finish her thought for her. "They know which one of these I'd do, and they must be set up at the other end somehow, yes?"
"Yes. Maybe you did earn that 100. It's a test or a trap. Three requests to assassinate someone, one trip to the Ukraine to check out a heavily secured Russian naval base, one trip to an even more heavily secured Chinese Air Force base, and a trip to Pakistan to photograph a possible nuclear facility. You'd be stupid to go anywhere except Pakistan."
"Probably six tests and one trap," I say it, trying to sound as professional as she does, but failing.
"Let's get your laptop, Air Force, Google this and find out what it is."
I grab her hand with my hand, stopping her from rising, the cherry Jell-o thing I use for a brain having a flash of insight. "That's the trap." Perez is many things, but her technology background is weak. "How many people in the world do you think are going to search for those coordinates today or tomorrow?"
Her eyes get wide, and a mad look sweeps across her face, then is gone. She knows. "Bastards."
"The general gave it away when he reminded me that they control the Internet. We enter any of the search information on these targets, and especially if we entered most or all of the targets, and the NSA would have our IP number and names within the hour."
"So what do we do, person who actually knows something for once?" she says in a mildly sarcastic voice.
"I have an idea, but it's got to be just me, or him actually."
"Air Force," she is annoyed about something, "there is no him and you, there is you."
I give her my stupid look, and she just laughs at me.
"I'm going to the library, but maybe one in a galaxy far, far away, like San Diego, but as him, so there's no witness who can tie me to the search, just him."
She thinks about it for a few minutes, then stands up and heads for the door. She tells me to be careful, and that she'll be back at nine tomorrow to pick me up. I tell her I'll be ready, and I thank her for helping me. She gives me a smile and is gone.
I grab my backpack, drive to Anaheim, then fly to UC San Diego, landing on the roof of the library. I put regular clothes on, remaining him, put a couple $20 bills into my pocket, and walk down the stairs into the building. There are sections set aside for Internet research, and I find the most secluded one, while appraising the customers.
One young lady with about 10 piercings in her face attracts my attention. I walk over to her, feign ignorance of these computer things, tell her I know there's some app that let's you see pictures of anywhere, and would she take $20 to help me check out some coordinates?
She takes my $20, compliments me on my cool black contacts, not knowing that his eyes are always black, and finds me satellite images of the place. It costs another $5 to print them, so I give her my second $20, thank her, and wander back into the stairwell. Twenty minutes til I'm mostly naked over Anaheim, another 30 minutes and I am home. Basically, two hours and $40 bucks later, I have the pictures that the Army allegedly wanted me to obtain for them. Trap.
Saturday morning is way more exciting. The
Times
runs a story on my shopping. They identify my underwear by brand, and interview the clerk who sold it to me in Santa Ana, along with the clerks who sold me my map, GPS, phone, and police scanner. Primarily, it's confirmation of Celeste's tale of my sexy black eyes, but also partial confirmation of my lie that I figured out what was going on by listening to the police scanner.
Perez comes by right on schedule, and I tell her about my overnight adventure. She has read the
Times
piece as well, so we have something new to discuss. She searches my closet while we talk, grabs an old hard sided piece of luggage I inherited from my grandfather and lays it open on my bed. By the time she closes it back up, it's holding a set of my flying underwear, and regular clothes for both him and me. Then we're in her Mustang, off looking for places a superhero can get naked without being spotted.
It takes about three hours of unsuccessful driving, but we finally find a motel out near Colton, about six miles west of the apartments we used the other night, which has no cameras in its parking lot, and just like my Disneyland choice, has a restaurant next to it with a good hiding place behind. I think it's a new model for the superhero business, motels with nearby restaurants, but there's no one to share my discovery with.
After we're done with the detailed inspections, she takes me to the mall in Santa Ana, just out of curiosity, she says. We walk into the department store where I buy my stretchy underwear things and Perez asks the clerk straight out if they have any available. He starts complaining that wives and girlfriends have been bringing their men in all day to buy those exact black undies, and all he has left is XXL's. Kiana tells him she'll take a couple sets. He looks me over, shakes his head a couple times in disgust, and fills the order.
"A birthday present for next year," she says, laughing. "We can buy these now, and no one will ever think twice about it." Always thinking that Perez. We pop upstairs to Radio Shack and buy two untraceable phones, one for the suitcase, she says, then into the food court for fast food Mediterranean lunch, and a discussion of where I should look for a place to hide the emergency kit, aka gramp's old school plastic suitcase.
On the way out to the car, she has a thought I wish she hadn't had, or hadn't shared. "Air Force, how many couples across America will be having sex tonight with the man pretending to be you?"
I roll my eyes at her. She hits my arm. I grab the packages with the underwear in them and head for her Mustang. She drops me off at home, tells me not to get into any trouble, and that she'll see me tomorrow at my mom's.
Then I decide to try out our new changing spot which is a 40 minute drive across Orange County, but I'm in such a good mood I enjoy the trip and actually spend most of it singing along with some new music I downloaded. I get to the motel, parking lot actually fairly full, jog behind the restaurant, and set sail in my underwear.
It's climb up a thousand feet, then head over to the decoy apartment building. There's a cute little baby drone circling, possibly six feet long, looking not quite fully grown. I make a face at it and set sail for downtown to see if its daddy is around.
What greets me is worse than my worse nightmares. Every building has at least one woman standing on it's roof. There are maybe six at the Marquis, and 20 at Bank of America. Fortunately, I came in unusually high, and I don't think any of them spot me. All told, there are at least 100 women all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors, looking to ride the salami. I have never been so depressed in my life. If I had let Jen know, been honest with her, given her the salami test run, I would be home right now with that amazing woman. Instead, seeing this bizarre bazaar is my punishment.
Chapter 4
Sunday dinner at my parent's with Perez, but without Jen, is uncomfortable to say the least. Mom and dad spend the day trying to figure out how I fraked it up so bad. Perez spends the day trying not to say anything. We get out of there in our separate vehicles as early as we can. And the worst part is, the main bathroom is being remodeled, so we used the bathroom in my parent's room, where a set of black stretchy underwear was sitting on the bed, still in its store plastic, a heart drawn on it in marking pen.
Head to my Anaheim hiding place, which is only a few miles from my parent's house, park, change, grab gramp's suitcase, and go for a cruise. I stay to the south, in Orange County, purposefully avoiding downtown, until it's possible to turn north out of drone range. The freeways guide me out of the LA basin and up into the mountains. The problem is: where can I hide my stuff where no one else will find it, but I will be able to remember where I put it?
FreshBurger is the answer. Out in Hesperia, nothing but desert for miles behind the store, a fence separating nothing from nothing, probably some building code requirement. Concrete poles holding it up, I fly to the far side of the third pole from the end of the store, pretend to be a dog, dig a hole four feet deep, bury my bone (Ok, suitcase, but bone sounds better), cover it up, spread dust around, and head back into town.
I discretely visit the baby drone out in Colton, then do my best to find a bad person doing a bad thing that I can do something about. Turns out not to be that easy. I try flying over residential neighborhoods, but even in the bad ones there's nothing going on that I can prove is illegal. Take a brief tour of Disneyland, giving cheap thrills to a few kids by standing on air outside one of the exposed areas on the Matterhorn, and saying hello as they pop out and pop back in.
Finally, I amble through the air out to John Wayne Airport, and hit the ground beside a 737 about to start its takeoff roll. I use the runway for running, rocking beside the aircraft as it rolls, tilt my nose skyward as it does, and float off into the sky with it. It banks left, and I do the same, we climb together up to cruise. Takes me 15 minutes to decide it's only going to Vegas, and I turn around and head for Starbuck and then home.
I stop by the LAPD Monday on my way to the gate before my flight, hoping that Perez missed the underwear at my mom's, but no such luck. She asks me if I saw it. My dad, pretending to be the Mysterious Flying Man, and having my mom ride his salami. Frak me.
A copy of the
National Exposer
is sitting on the counter at the gate while the chief flight attendant and I talk to one of the gate crew about a passenger they had problems with. Before we go, I pick it up. The headline: "Celeste Nortin Pregnant With MFM Love Child." Second reason in one day to be sick.
