The Agent's Daughter (30 page)

“
Travis, honey,” Angela
said. “They are empty because-”

“
Okay,” Alex said,
interrupting. “We are coming up on 100 meters ... now. The ring on
the screen indicates that the watch is ahead and to the
right.”

Angela pulled the car over to the left side
of the street and parked along the curb. Just ahead of the car, and
across the street, was a small broken down old office building.
Only a hundred feet wide, it was sandwiched between two massive
manufacturing buildings. There were lights on in several of the
rooms. Unlike any of the other buildings on the street.

“
I think we’ve found
them,” Angela said, pointing to the building.

“
Hey! I see some people on
the roof,” Travis said, his face still plastered to the window of
the car.

Angela squinted her eyes as she looked
toward the roof of the building.

“
You have better eyes than
I do,” she said, still straining to look through the windshield. “I
don’t see a thing.”

Angela took a compact spotting scope out of
her pocket, put it up to her eye, and scanned the roof of the
building until she came to the dark outline of a person. She
continued scanning until she spotted several others. She could not
identify who they were or what they were doing up there.

“
You were right, Travis,”
Angela said. “I see people up on the roof. The receiver said the
watch was at an altitude of 18 meters. That must be
them.”

Angela pulled the car ahead a few feet and
made a left turn into an alley between two more large manufacturing
buildings. She drove to the back of the buildings and parked the
car behind one of them.

“
What are we doing here?”
Alex said. “They are in the building right across the street. Let’s
go and get them.”

“
We don’t know the
situation, yet,” Angela said. “We can’t just walk in the front door
and ask for the three of them. Chances are the people that have
them have guns. I’m not putting you two in harm’s way.”

Alex looked at her with a scowl.

“
Why don’t we just call
the police?” Travis suggested.

“
All we can tell them
right now is that some people are missing, and we believe that they
are in that building. That does not give the police enough of a
reason to enter the building and search it. Our job is to give them
a reason.”

“
So what are we going to
do?” Alex asked.

“
We are going to go onto
the roof of this building,” Angela said, pointing out the window at
the building in front of them. “It is a little taller than the
building across the street. We will be able to see exactly what is
going on up there on that roof.”

Angela opened the car door and got out. Alex
looked out the window at the top of the building and a lump formed
in his throat.

“
Cool,” Travis said as he
smacked Alex on the shoulder and got out of the car. “We get to go
on the roof of a building!”

“
Yeah … cool,” Alex said
before getting out himself.

Angela walked around to the back of the car
and opened the trunk. She grabbed the two LREDs and placed them on
the ground next to the car. As Alex and Travis walked around to the
back of the car, their eyes were immediately drawn to them.

“
Hey,” Alex said. “You
brought those shotgun thingies.”

“
They are not guns,”
Angela said. “They look like shotguns, but they are non-lethal long
range electroshock weapons. I brought these along just in case I
have to leave you two alone. So you have something to defend
yourself with.”

“
I get to carry one of
them?” Travis asked.

“
You don’t need them yet,
so I am going to carry them.”

Angela swung the straps of the LREDs around
her shoulder, so they hung down her back.

“
Okay, let’s
go.”

They walked the short distance to the
building and stopped at the back. Since the building was built in
the early part of the twentieth century, it had an external fire
escape. Angela found some old crates and placed them on top of each
other. She stood on the crates and jumped up to grab the fire
escape ladder, pulling it down to the ground. Angela led the way as
the three of them climbed up the ladder and then climbed the fire
escape stairs until they reached the roof.

“
Single file behind me,”
Angela said once they reached the top. “I don’t want you guys
running into anything in the dark.”

They made their way across the roof to the
front of the building until they reached a low wall at the edge.
They stood at the retaining wall and looked down onto the roof of
the building across the street.

“
Hey! There is my sister.
I recognize that shirt,” Travis said as he pulled on Angela’s shirt
and pointed to a spot on the roof.

Angela laid the LREDs down against the wall
and took her spotting scope out of her pocket. She scanned the area
where Travis was pointing.

“
You’re right, Travis,”
Angela said, still scanning the roof. “I see your sister and both
your father and Alex’s father.”

Alex sighed in relief.

Angela put the scope back in her pocket and
turned to put her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “But they are not alone.
I see three men up there with them. Two of them have guns, although
they do not seem to be holding them in a threatening manner.
Everybody seems to be listening to one man that doesn’t have a gun.
And if all this were not strange enough, that man appears to be
your father’s boss.”

Angela stepped away from the edge of the
building and pulled out her phone. She dialed a number, and after a
few rings, her brother answered the phone.

“
Good evening. Dallas
Police Department. Lieutenant Coleman speaking.”

“
Hey, it’s Angela. We
found both my co-workers. They are being held at gunpoint on the
roof of a building just east of downtown. Three men, two
guns.”

“
What’s the
address?”

“
Don’t know, but it is on
Elm street just east of Walton. Small four story office building.
It’s the only building on the street with any lights
on.”

“
Elm Street. East of
Walton. Okay. I’m dispatching squads and the tactical unit,” he
said.

“
Be careful,” Angela said.
“These guys are probably professionals.”

“
Don’t you worry, Sis,”
her brother said, laughing. “Dallas PD has ya covered. Gotta
jam.”

Angela put away her phone and turned to
Alex. “Okay, the cavalry is on the way.”

“
That’s great!” Alex said.
“Did he say how long before they get here?”

“
There will be a swarm of
police cars in front of that building in five minutes, but they
won’t do anything until the tactical unit arrives.”

“
The tactical unit?” Alex
asked. “You mean the SWAT team?”

“
That’s right, Angela
said. “It takes a little longer for them to arrive because they
need to assemble and prepare their equipment. They should roll up
in front of the building in about twenty minutes.”

Alex grimaced and then looked over at the
other roof again. “That’s a long time. I hope they can wait that
long. Can I borrow your scope?”

Angela handed Alex her spotting scope, and
he looked through it, adjusting the focus until he could see just
Melina and his father standing together on the roof. Alex zoomed in
further on Melina’s face. Clearly upset, she was having difficulty
holding her father back. There was something about the look on
Melina’s face that made Alex feel sad, angry… and helpless.

Alex pulled the scope away from his face and
looked at Angela. “We have to help them. They may not be able to
wait twenty minutes.”

“
What do you suggest?”
Angela asked.

Alex thought for a moment. Then he spied the
LREDs lying against the wall.

“
What about those things?”
he said, pointing to the LREDs.

“
Those are not sniper
rifles,” Angela said. “They shoot non-lethal electrostatic
rounds.”

“
I don’t care what they
shoot,” Alex said. “Will they reach the other roof?”

“
Their range is a hundred
yards,” Angela said. “Your father and the others are less than
fifty yards from us, so they will easily reach the other
roof.”

“
All right,” Alex said as
he walked over and grabbed an LRED. “Show me how to fire this
thing.”

Angela put her hand on Alex’s chest to stop
him. “It’s not that simple. There are three men over there. We know
two of them have guns, and I would bet the third one does, as well.
If we start shooting, they are liable to start shooting too. We
don’t want to be the catalyst. The police are on their way. They
will be able to contain the situation.”

“
Okay,” Alex said as he
stepped back and looked over at the other roof again. He sighed as
he thought about what they were going through.

“
What if we just point the
guns at the bad guys and be ready to shoot them if necessary,”
Travis said, walking up to them.

Alex and Angela looked at each other.

“
Now that’s a good idea,”
Angela said. “But I want you two to be the ones holding the LREDs.
I will use my scope to monitor the situation and give the firing
order. Nobody will fire unless I say so.”

Angela turned to Travis. “Are you going to
be okay holding this weapon and maybe having to shoot it?”

Travis gave her a look that said she had
just asked the stupidest question possible. “Uh, yeah,” he
said.

“
All right,” Angela said,
picking up an LRED, “I’m going to give you a quick tutorial. As I
said before, it shoots a non-lethal round. It has already been
loaded, so don’t worry about that. There is a sensor here on the
barrel that detects a human heat signature. It is aligned with the
optical sight on the top. The sensor beeps when it is on target.
Just make sure you have it aimed at the right human. The round is
self-guided, and it will strike whatever the LRED has targeted. It
fires like a regular gun, but you have to pull the trigger and hold
it for two seconds for it to fire. Any questions?”

It was quiet as two blank faces stared back
at her.

She held up the LRED and pushed some buttons
on the stock to turn it on and arm it, and then she held the gun in
a shooting position for a moment before handing it to Alex. She did
the same with the other LRED and handed it to Travis. His eyes
widened as he reached out both his hands to grab it.

“
There are two men over
there on that roof that we know have guns. We are going to target
them. Alex, I want you rest the barrel of your LRED right here on
the edge of the roof and point it at the man on the extreme left.
Travis, you rest your barrel over here and aim it at the man on the
far right. They are standing well away from everyone else, so you
should not have any trouble getting the LRED sensor to target just
them. Remember not to fire unless I say to. We are just covering
them until the police get here. We don’t want to start something
unless we have to.”

Alex and Travis knelt down and rested the
barrels of their LREDs on the wall. As they looked through their
sights, the LRED sensors let out a few intermittent beeps as the
sensors were aligned on the gunmen, and then there was a steady
stream of beeps as the sensors locked in.

Angela stood next to the boys and pulled out
her spotting scope again. She held it up and pointed it back across
the street to the other roof, setting the focus so that she could
see all of the people at once. Nobody said a word and there was an
eerie calm as they all focused on the other roof.

Off in the distance, there was the sound of
sirens.

…………………………
.

“
What do you mean, ‘She’s
not in a coma?’” Evan said.

William could sense that Evan was getting a
little too mad to be standing next to, so he discretely stepped
backward.

“
Do you know what my
background is?” William asked Evan. “What I studied in school, I
mean.”

Evan looked confused at the non sequitur. “I
don’t know … jerkineering.”

“
Funny,” William smiled.
“No, I have a Ph.D. in Chemistry. And long before I became head of
the tools group and before you even started at the agency, I worked
in the chemistry department of the group. For my first assignment
at the agency, I developed the formula for the nerve compound in
the FCAN. It is the same formula used today in all of the agency
FCANs.”

“
Congratulations,” Evan
sneered. “So you are not a complete moron. What does this have to
do with Laura?”

William began to walk back and forth in
front of Evan, looking around aimlessly as he continued.

“
Over the years, when I
have had a little extra time, I have experimented with the formula.
You know, as a hobby. The agency has always been happy with the
formula, but I thought that maybe I could improve on it. Make it
work a little faster or perhaps in a lower dose so the canisters
could be made smaller. I just wasn’t satisfied with
perfection.”

“
You speak of the formula
as if it were a work of art,” Evan scoffed.

William stopped and smiled at the thought,
and then continued. “Then, late last year the agency purchased a
far more accurate spectrometer, and I was able to make a key
breakthrough in the gas partition coefficient of the formula. I
wasn’t trying to do this, but this breakthrough would allow a nerve
compound to be made that would last for a month instead of just
hours. I tested it on mice, cats, and a few larger animals, but I
would not be sure it truly worked until I tested it on a
human.”