CHAPTER 8
About an hour into the rescue effort, Jim got a call. Hanging up, he relayed that his guys had lost Natasha.
"What do you mean, you lost her?" Lolita yelled at him, reminding me of our earlier encounter with Camilla. "You assured me that your guys were going to grab the van on the other side of the collapsed buildings."
"With the help of young Mr. McPharr of the PD, we tracked the van to the Bill Bird Marina. But when they got there, the van was empty, sitting at the end of the parking lot. My guys couldn't have been more than a few minutes behind them, but we don't know where the people went. No go-fast boats were leaving the marina when they pulled in, only a couple of solo fishermen in small boats, so we're stumped," Jim told Lolita with shame written on his face.
"How the hell could they have just disappeared like that?" Lolita asked.
"That's what we’re trying to figure out. Our guys are poring over whatever video footage they can find around that area, but so far, they've got nothing."
"I knew I should have run after that van when we stopped at the wreckage," Lolita growled.
"There's no way you could have kept up with a van driving 55 miles an hour," I reminded her.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Still. Maybe I could have helped poor Natasha," she replied.
Back in Bob's car, we were heading to the police station at Camilla's suggestion. She was steaming mad when I talked to her on the phone, so I knew better than to say anything other than, "We'll be right there," before she hung up on me.
We'd spent a couple of hours doing what we could to help the injured or those too dazed to understand what was going on. I made a few runs to the nearby 7-Eleven to get bottled water for people because of the heat. The top of my nose was a rosy red from too much sun, along with the area of my receding hairline. I was going to need some aloe soon, and I was not looking forward to my nose peeling in a few days. Not a sexy look.
Now we were all dragging and looked like we had been rolling around in a dusty field. Poor Bob's jacket looked especially rough.
Bob parked the car in a No Parking zone close to the front entrance, flipping down his visor with a Department of Homeland placard on it.
"Are you with Homeland?" I asked him.
“Sort of. We work for a small division that’s under the umbrella of Homeland.”
"What’s it called?" I asked as we walked to the front door.
"It's best if that remains a mystery for now," he said with a finger to his lips.
We entered the building, and immediately Camilla stomped toward us.
"What the hell...," was all that Camilla could say before Lolita put her hand out and whispered in a menacing tone, "Shhhhh! The cat is sleeping," as she looked down at the cat in her arms and once again started rubbing its ears.
"You can’t bring...," she tried again, but Lolita gave her a withering stare that shut her up. After a couple of seconds, Camilla straightened up to her full height of 5'2, crooked her finger at us, spun around, and started power-walking toward the rear of the building. I knew then she was leading us to the interview rooms and not the interrogation rooms, so I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Until that point, I wasn't sure if we were being questioned or arrested.
Camilla politely held the door open for us as we made our way into the interview room. Inside, there was a scratched-up table in the middle of the room with a few plastic chairs encircling it and a TV on the wall tuned to a news station showing the collapse of the building.
Lolita was the first into the room. She quickly made her way to the worst of the beat-up chairs and plopped herself into it, propping her feet up on a nearby chair. She promptly put the cat with Bob's jacket in her lap, bent over the cat, and started whispering sweet nothings in its ear. It was a side of Lolita that I still had a hard time accepting.
As soon as everyone else sat around the table, Lolita looked over at Camilla, and started barraging her with questions about Natasha's latest disappearance.
"Were you guys able to find out anything more about where they took Natasha?" was the first question out of her mouth, aimed at Camilla.
Instead of answering, Camilla turned her head towards Jim and said, "That's my question for you guys because Pharr-out couldn’t find anything else on the street cams in the area."
"Far-out? Who or what is that?" Jim asked her.
"That's what we call McPharr, our computer genius here."
"Interesting. Anyway, I'm still waiting for a call back from our guys to see what they found," was Jim's reply. And as soon as he said it, his cell phone rang.
He quickly answered it, but all we could hear were a few okays and uh-huhs until he hung up.
He looked at each of us around the table. "You won't believe where she went.” Since he got no reply, he continued, "She's in a submarine."
That got responses from all of us. What? How? And from Lolita, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what I said. Vladimir's guys hustled her into a small submarine that was waiting at the dock for them."
We all stared at Jim, trying to understand what he meant. A submarine? Isn't that something that Sean Connery would pilot and the thing is huge? At least that's my only knowledge regarding submarines.
"I know what you're thinking," he said, looking around the table. "A huge Russian nuclear submarine, right? But they now make small submarines for use by private owners, and that's what this was. It was about 20 feet long and probably had room for two or three people. In the video, we only saw one guy, presumably the pilot, open up the hatch. Then Vladimir's guys hustled Natasha into the submarine, one of them going inside with her. Then the last guy, still outside, closed and latched the hatch. It backed up, turned around, and went underwater. They could no longer track it with video, so we don’t know where it went. I'm waiting to hear if we have a satellite available to us that can track it underwater."
Lolita looked like she was ready to jump out of her chair and go chasing after Natasha. But after a few seconds, she realized the futility of that, sat back down, and resumed scratching the cat's ears.
"While we are waiting for word on the satellite, I'd like to visit the situation where the two of you, PK and Lolita, took it upon yourselves to go rescue Natasha," Camilla said in a quiet, polite voice.
Then she bellowed, "What the hell did you think you were doing?"
That tiny woman had a set of lungs on her, but I knew that from previous experience. I sat meekly in my chair, saying nothing. I knew better than to open my mouth lest some stupid answer leapt out. As they say, it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Lolita had no such qualms about speaking up. She jerked her feet from the chair, grabbed the cat, stood up, and barraged Camilla across the table.
"We went to the warehouse because it looked like you and your team were going to take forever to get over there and rescue her. She probably would have been long gone by the time you got there."
Lolita and the cat had their hackles up and looked ready to pounce. That kitten was ready to attack anyone who might be a threat to her adopted mother. It let out a small hiss in the general direction of Lolita's bombardment.
We all laughed at the show of spirit from the little thing, which put everyone at ease. That was fortunate, because the tension around the table had gotten way out of hand.
"Okay, okay, so what should we do now?" Camilla asked as she and Lolita sat back down, holding a temporary truce.
“While we’re waiting,” Jim said to Camilla, “Maybe you could have Pharr-out, whoever that is, find out what other properties Baryshnikov has in the area that the submarine might be heading for. In the meantime, I suggest we all get cleaned up and meet back here, in… two hours?” he said, looking at his watch.
We all wearily nodded our heads, got up, and headed out of the room.
Before I could make it to the door, Camilla grabbed my elbow and led me away from the others.
"Don't think this is over regarding the two of you sneaking off to the warehouse on your own," she said to me in anger, yet understanding. "I know you two meant well, but things could have turned out much worse for you. I’ve been worried ever since I heard what happened," she said with a small smile. "I'm just glad you're okay.”
Then she turned me facing the door and gave me a push and a smack on the butt. I turned back, and she gave me a wink and a smile.
What the heck was that all about? Maybe she was hoping to get back together? It was not the time to find out. It was time to get cleaned up and figure out what to do next to help rescue Natasha. Natasha was the one I was concerned about at the moment.
I made my way out of the interview room and toward the exit. But remembering how McGeek helped us out, I angled off to the break room. I bought a Mountain Dew from the vending machine and went over to his desk. He was hard at work on the keyboard, which seemed to be his usual activity, when I dropped the Dew on the desk next to him.
He jumped nearly a foot out of his chair and yelped, “Wh-wh-what are you doing?
“I appreciate your help tracking Natasha, and this drink is my way of saying thanks,” I told him, wondering why he reacted as if zapped by a live wire.
“Um, sure, no problem,” he replied, as he quickly hit a couple of buttons on his keyboard, making a small window in the corner of his huge display disappear. But before it shrank down to nothing, I noticed it said something about meeting at the library after work from a nerd-chick something-or-other profile. It seemed he was chatting up a girl. Good for him. Maybe he wasn’t the typical spend all his time on the computer, never enough time for a girl geek that I took him for.
Stay tuned
Another chapter of excitement coming next week!