The Tehachapi Weekend
The Tehachapi Weekend
by David White
Music by David Newman
Exec. Producer - Ponsonby Britt, O.B.E.
ACT I
“She who knows, and knows not that she knows, is asleep. Awaken her.”
“Wake up, please.”
As Gadget Hackwrench drifted into wakefulness, she knew that some things just shouldn’t be. There shouldn’t be a night five hours short of sleep. There shouldn’t be an interruption to a dream of a golden grass field in midsummer. There most certainly shouldn’t be a steel-edged voice she had never heard before in her life, in her bedroom, calmly ordering “Wake up, please.”
Awaken she did, to the stomach-knotting knowledge that the voice was no dream.
She shifted slightly against the pillow and saw two distinct silhouettes in the darkness, one kneeling to the right of her bed, the other towering over her to her left. She laid her plan quickly. She would wait for one of them to make a grab for her. She’d flip him, or punch him, whatever worked, and shout for the boys. Five against two would make short work of these intruders.
The standing figure clicked on the lamp beside her bed and Gadget’s plan began to crumble. She sat up and saw that the standing figure was a gray squirrel with the build of a weightlifter, his bottle-brush tail held tight against his back. The kneeling one had the dark brown eyes of a flying squirrel, his physique was more that of a gymnast and his tail seemed to float behind him like a silky cloud. Both wore midnight blue military-style clothing with close fitting hoods that molded over communication headsets, the type of clothing commandos might wear. The outfits bore combat harnesses bristling with a variety of ordnance. They also wore bulky, four-barreled pneumatic dart guns, known as Crosman guns. Gadget doubted these two loaded the gun’s hypodermic darts with anything so benign as a tranquilizer. Some mixtures could kill almost instantaneously.
The Gray moved smoothly to the door, listened for a moment and returned. Although he was wearing a great deal of equipage, he hadn’t made a sound. She knew there would be no surprising these two.
Neither of them made a move towards her. They became almost unnaturally motionless. They watched her, studied her. Her every breath, every eyeblink, recorded and examined. Gadget had felt males undress her with their eyes before. These eyes tapped on the walls of her soul, looking for secrets.
“You met someone earlier today,” the Flyer said. “A rodent you know as Stan Kellerman.”
“I've known Stan a long time,” Gadget said, trying to be cagey. “I bumped into him at the university this evening. He didn’t give me any gold, gems, maps or secret plans...”
“We know,” the Flyer interrupted. “We searched your room before we woke you. If he’d given you anything, you’d have it close at hand.”
“...And I don’t know where he is now,” she concluded.
“We do,” said the Gray. “He’s on a slab in the morgue. He was found dead about ninety minutes ago.”
“He’s dead!?” Gadget said, aghast. “And you think I know something about his murder?”
“Who said he was murdered?” the Gray asked.
“If he’d choked on a piece of walnut, you two wouldn’t be here.” Gadget said, exasperated.
“That depends on the walnut,” said the Flyer. “But, yes. Stan was murdered. We want to know who did it and, more importantly, why. You were the last person to see him alive.”
“Are you from the police?” Gadget asked.
Now the Gray sounded exasperated. “The police come to the front door, not through the bedroom window,”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you.”
“We could have this conversation someplace less pleasant than your own room,” the Flyer said menacingly.
“My friends will come after me.”
“They’ll never find you,” the Flyer said.
The flat, final, unemphasized way he said “never” struck Gadget at the core. Suddenly, clues fell into place. Someone had dispatched a pair of high-end professionals, who had learned of her connection to Stan, found her, searched her room in the dark without waking her, and all in ninety minutes. She felt herself pale as the implications sank in. These two could do anything with her, and she wouldn’t have a prayer of stopping them. And if she screamed for the boys, she was sure, she’d watch them die at her threshold, one after the other.
“All right,” Gadget said, barely controlling her voice. “What do you want of me?”
“Your conversation with Stan,” the Gray said. “Was there anything at all unusual mentioned. Anything surprising or out of the ordinary?”
“No,” Gadget responded. “It was the usual, ‘long time, no see,’ sort of thing.”
“Did you give him anything?” the Flyer asked.
“We hadn’t talked in a while. He said he’d lost track of me, so I gave him my name and address. I wrote it down for him.”
The Flyer looked up at the Gray, who consulted a small notepad, then shook his head sharply. The Flyer stood up and fixed his gaze on her.
“That’s it, then. It’s you.”
Gadget felt owl talons at her heart. She began to crawl up the headboard, her eyes fixed on the Crosman, waiting for it to level at her chest, her throat suddenly so dry she could barely get the words out. “Ohhh, no. No, no, no, I didn’t kill him!”
“Not on your best day, kiddo, and especially the way he was killed.” said the Gray. “Stan was at the top of his game.”
“We know what Stan carried on him. The only thing missing is your address,” said the Flyer. “That means Stan died trying to protect that piece of paper. Which is to say, you.”
“Stan must have busted up their plans when he went down,” said the Gray.
“He bought us time, and there’s probably not much left,” said the Flyer.
The Gray glanced at his watch. “One hundred two minutes since Stan bit it.”
“Overhead extraction. We go now.” announced the Flyer. “Miss, your life is in immediate danger. You’re coming with us.”
The lights went out. Before her eyes could adjust, Gadget was hoisted bodily out of bed. One of them threw a wide belt around her waist and cinched her tight. In a moment, she was thrust up piggy-back on the Flyer and the belt snapped tight into his harness. She saw the Gray’s silhouette at the window as it opened. The Flyer shifted, adjusting to her weight. The next instant, he rushed across the room and out the window, like a caped super hero from one of Dale’s comic books. He snapped his arms and legs out and gussets opened in his suit, allowing his gliding membrane to stretch. Gadget hugged herself against his back, partly in shock, partly an instinct to help his aerodynamics. Despite her flannel “Mother Hubbard” nightgown, the night air was as chilling as the suddenness of the exit.
Soaring across the park to an oak, the Flyer hit a branch and bounded upward. Once, twice, a giant swing at full extension, two more upward ricochets off the foliage and he launched into the air again. Gadget looked down and spotted the Gray sprinting across the lawn. He was so fast he was almost able to keep up. The Flyer steered toward an elm tree trunk and pulled into a stall that stole her breath away. He landed with a slap against the side of the tree. Not pausing, he rushed up the tree to a thick limb where an exotic helicopter rested.
This was not the sort of aircraft Gadget herself had assembled from whatever materiel was at hand; this craft was purposefully and expertly constructed. It resembled the Air Force interlaced twin rotor ‘flying eggbeater’ of the 1950’s, but much sleeker, faster, and up-to-date. The Flyer ignored the cockpit and piled into the ample cargo space behind it. He turned, Gadget still attached to his back, and firmly pinned her against the rear bulkhead, accidentally putting a painful kink in her tail.
At this, Gadget simply couldn’t hold herself in check any longer. “Please! Don’t take me away! I’ll take my chances with my friends! Let me go!”
“No. Be quiet.” The Flyer fastened himself to the deck with a carabinier, squeezing Gadget even tighter in place.
She gasped for breath. “Let me go back! Please, please, just let me go!”
The Gray had slipped into the pilot’s seat and began to power up. “Can’t do that, lady. If you’re home when those killers figure out who Stan saw last, they’ll kill your friends and force you to tell them everything you know.”
“But I don’t know anything!!” Gadget wailed.
“That won’t save you,” the Flyer said. “You’ll just have to trust us. If we’re to save your life and find Stan’s killers, we have to get you to a place of safety. Light it, Buckwheat!”
“We’re hot, Spanky,” said the Gray.
The rotors spun up. Built for stealth, they were amazingly quiet. The copter shot up and across the park, going high, then abruptly diving low. They dodged through the trees at a speed well beyond safe, taking a route northeast, toward the high desert.
Gadget remained pinned against the bulkhead despite the violence of some of the maneuvers. Abruptly, she remembered reading about this kind of operation. She was being treated like a rescued military pilot, who might be hurt or disoriented.
Well, if she wasn’t before, she was certainly disoriented now.
Flying, even as a rudely treated passenger, was familiar ground for Gadget. She took a couple of deep breaths and pushed back her fears. Finally, she tried to be heard over the engine noise. The Flyer just waved his hand for her to stop. He kicked a set of headphones loose from the bulkhead, picked them out of the air as they fell and handed them to Gadget. She clamped them over her ears and found the push-to-talk switch.
“Why are you flying like this?” Gadget hollered. “You’re going to get us all killed!”
“We aren’t the only ones flying.” said the Flyer. “We have to make sure we aren’t tracked or followed.”
No danger of that, Gadget thought. Foxglove couldn’t have followed these maneuvers for thirty seconds without spraining a wing. The chopper zoomed high again.
“Oh, looky!” The Gray pointed to another helicopter, a human sized one. “LAPD has another pursuit going.”
“Stay clear of them, Wilbur” the Flyer said.
“You bet, Orville” he replied as he threaded the tiny chopper among high-tension wires. The chopper cut too close to an insulator, provoking a thunderbolt-like spark to strike the craft, and sending Gadget’s heart rate into the stratosphere. “That pursuit flying’s dangerous,” concluded the Gray.
“Clock check!” the Flyer said urgently.
“Instruments are fine. Quit worrying.”
The Flyer glanced over his shoulder at Gadget and smiled. “Does he make you nervous?”
“I’m a pilot. I don’t make a good passenger,” she answered.
“Same here,” the Flyer said. “He scares the bejabbers outta me.”
Just to confirm the Flyer’s estimate, they swooped under an overpass and came perilously close to clipping an overhead traffic sign. Almost involuntarily, Gadget squeaked “UpUpUpUp!” as they sped much too close to the rooftops.
The helicopter raced further north, away from the lights of Los Angeles. The Gray donned a pair of night vision goggles. “You’re the nocturnal one, Thunderbolt. You should be the one flying at night, y’know.”
“I’m busy being a seat belt right now, Lightfoot. Get on with it,” said the Flyer.
“Isn’t the flight crew supposed to introduce themselves? With one set of names?” Gadget asked.
The Flyer glanced over his shoulder, catching her eye. “Call me Gary. He’s Gordon.”
“Are those your real names, Gary?”
He looked forward and said, “Hey, driver! Have we got real names?”
Gordon’s voice grated over the headset. “You are Number Six!”
Gary replied like a Shakespearian orator. “I am not a number! I am a free integer!”
“HAHAHAHA!” Came Gordon’s witch’s cackle of a reply.
Gary looked over his shoulder again and caught Gadget smiling in spite of everything. She knew the by-play was for her benefit, to make her more at ease. At the least, it kept her from feeling like a criminal suspect.
“I’m Gadget Hackwrench.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Gary.
“Mutual, I’m sure,” said Gordon, with a grin.
The chopper sailed over the San Gabriel Mountains and swept across the edge of the Mojave Desert. Flying low again, Gordon suddenly made a hard turn to the right. Looming out of the darkness was a vignette of desert circle-of-life. A coyote pursued a rabbit, who was losing the race. Gordon added a high-tech element to the circle, suddenly cutting between the coyote and his intended midnight snack. The shock made the coyote misstep, and he tumbled head over heels. Gadget saw the rabbit disappear in the darkness. Somewhere, a family would not be orphaned this night.
“Hey, Cratchit,” said Gary. “No side trips.”
“Take it outta my pay, Scrooge,” retorted Gordon.
He turned back to the original course and Gadget heard the engines spin up to an awful scream. The rotors were tilted at an extreme angle and they were way too close to the desert floor. Gadget gulped and tried not to imagine how many pieces she’d be in if they hit anything.
“Isn’t 300 knots a little fast for this altitude!?” she asked.
“We can do 425 wide open,” Gary said. “Wanna see?”
“NO! Not at night!” Gadget shouted.
Shortly after, the lights of a city again filled the windshield. The helicopter gained altitude and sped over an industrial complex that Gadget recognized.
“Hey, that’s Lockheed-Palmdale, “ she said. “I’ve been here before!”
“The Skunk Works did the original blueprints on this chopper,” Gordon
said
.
“You should see what they’re working on now!” Gary added.
The chopper swooped low again, amongst the buildings.
”Someone’s going to see you!” Gadget said.
“Everyone’s seen us,” answered Gary. “They all think we’re someone else’s project.”
“Except security,” said Gordon. “They think we’re a practical joke from Lockheed-Sunnyvale.”
Minutes later they approached a barren hillside. Gordon put the chopper into a climb that mashed his passengers, then he turned back on the course he’d just flown.
“Scope’s clear, pipper’s clear, no one following,” Gordon reported.
“You think there’s a parking space left for us, Norbert?” Gary wondered.
‘Let’s find out, Daggit.” said Gordon.
A patch of the hillside changed from dark gray to pitch black as a camouflaged door opened. Gordon adroitly flew into the concealed hanger, pirouetted about, and touched down firmly on the landing pad. Only after the hanger door closed did red night lights spring on.
The rotors, equipped with brakes, stopped quickly. Gordon was already at the cargo door, helping Gary and his living backpack out. They released Gadget from the lifebelt and steadied her as her own feet finally found solid ground again.
Gadget could see in the dim lights that the hanger extended into other bays. They held other aircraft, sleek and mysterious.
“This way to the arrival lounge,” Gordon lead the way through a darkened doorway. Gadget followed and promptly stumbled against an unseen obstacle.
“Sorry,” said Gary. “We’re used to operating without lights.”
“I noticed."
Light then flooded the sparse corridor, making her flinch at the sudden intensity. The corridor curved gently around to her left. There were side doors, none with doorknobs. Gordon opened a sliding door at the far end of the corridor and she followed him into a very large, comfortable and tastefully decorated living room. The thick blue carpet threatened to swallow her toes, and what part of the walls wasn’t covered in golden oak paneling was painted a deep royal blue. It reminded Gadget of a gentleman’s club in London, masculine and private, even considering the room’s oddly curved walls.
“Do you do your own decorating?” she asked, her estimate of these two rising a notch.
“Actually, this is all rented,” Gary quipped. He indicated a wide, cushy sofa. “Have a seat. We’ll be right back.”
They disappeared into different rooms, and Gadget took stock of her surroundings. A circular fireplace, cold at the moment, stood at the center of the room. There were several soft, overstuffed chairs and sofas in calming earth tones. Four wingback chairs, upholstered in burgundy leather, faced the fireplace. And the dining set was of the same oak as the paneling, and intricately carved. The place was intended to be comfortable, at least.
The odd curve of the walls gave the room an egg shape, save for one end. There, a curtained picture window tempted her. She went over and found the curtain controlled from a small panel. Upon touching the “open” switch, the room lights dimmed. The view seemed to be south. She could see the lights of Lancaster and Palmdale, and in the distant west a glow in the sky that would be Edwards Air Force Base. She estimated that she was somewhere in the Tehachapi Mountains. But that covered a lot of territory.
The window itself had no way to open. And it curved slightly inward. Gadget realized that was to kill any reflection. Wherever she was, she was well hidden. She closed the curtain and the lights returned.
She walked to her left, past an extensive set of bookshelves. The titles drew her interest. Plato and John Stuart Mill shared a shelf with the Hagekure. Part of another shelf was devoted to volumes on emergency medicine. The two shelves above that to military subjects that would make such books necessary. Or irrelevant. Yet another shelf held books ranging from Maxfield Parrish to manga in Japanese.
Ahead, there was a short hallway that led to three unoccupied bedrooms, furnished in a manner similar to the main room. Further along was an exercise room, well used judging from the musky male scent that permeated it, not to mention the duct tape that held the equipment padding together.
Gadget followed the curving wall past several closed doors that she didn’t quite have the nerve to peek behind. Behind a latchless swinging door there was a large and well equipped kitchen and, finally, a room filled with computer terminals, fax machines and a variety of radio transceivers.
She arrived back at the picture window and realized something was missing. As she looked carefully, she felt the fur on her neck rise. There was no trace of the door from the hanger she had just entered through. All the others led to interior rooms. The place was a well-appointed prison.
She heard a door begin to open, and scurried across the room to sit primly at the edge of the couch.
Gordon breezed through, heading toward the communication room. His lush black hair was now visible, and he had changed into a white shirt and khaki slacks. As he passed, he jerked his thumb at a closed door and said, “Bathroom.”
Oh, my, Gadget thought. I’d almost forgotten about that.
Upon emerging, Gadget found a pillow and two thick flannel blankets on the couch. She heard the hiss of an espresso machine from the kitchen. She dropped onto the couch and closed her eyes for a moment. It had been a busy morning.
She became aware of a delightful aroma, and opened her eyes to find Gary, now in jeans and a red plaid wool shirt. He had a steaming mug on a tray in his hands and an oddly wistful expression on his face, fleetingly, then it was gone.
“I’m surprised you aren’t asking questions,” he said. “Where am I, why have you brought me here, who do you think you are? No questions?”
“Usually,” Gadget said, a bit nervously, “they explain everything just before they try to kill me. I’m in no hurry.”
Gary chuckled. “Fine. No fatal explanations. Not until morning. We thought you might prefer to sleep here, where you can keep an eye on us. Have some cocoa.”
He set the tray next to her and she took the cup. “Hey! How’d you know I like my cocoa with a cinnamon stick?”
“Didn’t,” he replied, brushing back a lock of his copper-red hair. “I always make it that way.”
She carefully slurped the hot liquid, then felt as if nothing would ever warm her again. On the saucer was a tiny white pill, clearly meant for her.
“Knockout drugs? For me?” she quavered. “How sweet of you.”
Gary just smiled. “It’s melatonin, 30 micrograms. You won’t be groggy when you wake up. And no one is going to make you take it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry I’m so distrustful. Just twenty minutes ago I was asleep and toasty in my own bed, and now there’s been murder over me, and I’ve been involved in I don't know what, and flown off to what must be the most comfortable prison on Earth.” She quickly gulped down the pill. Whatever it was, she felt she may as well get it over with.
“This isn’t a prison,” Gary insisted. “Although we were concerned you might take the chopper and make a run for it. Our job now is to protect you, as well as figure out why Stan was murdered. But those are topics for the sunlight. Gordon will take the first watch. Get some sleep.”
She looked over to Gordon, who had switched on a TV set in the communications room. The screen was divided into nine different views, each a different security camera. Gary stepped over to the wall and dimmed the lights.
She relented, and lay down, pulling the covers over her. She half expected one of them to tuck her in, then realized that since she had arrived, neither of them had made any physical contact with her. It was as if they had granted her an impenetrable shield. She just hoped the shield would hold against the night that had now closed around her.
Sleep, she thought. As if sleep was a possibility. There was just no way I could fall asleep. Zzzzzzz.