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Chapter 91 – American McGeeAlex gently said, “I’m Terawatt. I’m a superheroine and I fly around the world helping people with powers who need my help. You saw my friend beat those guys up? She’s Action Girl. Would you like to have a superheroine name, too?”
“What would I haveta do?”
Alex replied, “Nothing. Just say ‘sure’ and think about what a good superpower name would be for you.”
“Umm … sure. What would be a good name for someone who makes lots of fires?”
Alex thought out loud. “I don’t know. Fireball? Flame? Firebug? Maybe just Fire?”
Hanna stepped closer. “In German that would be ‘Feuer’. Or in Finnish it would be ‘palo’. In Norwegian it would be ‘brann’. In French it could be ‘incendie’. In Danish or Swedish it would be ‘brand’. Or in Spanish it would be ‘fuego’.”
The girl sounded kind of freaked as she asked, “How does she know all those words?”
Alex gently explained, “She’s not American. She grew up in northern Finland so high up near the Arctic that she hunted caribou. You know, reindeer? She knows tons of languages. All I know is English and some Spanish.” She had a thought about SAT words, and she asked, “How about ‘pyre’? That sounds pretty neat.”
The girl paused and then slowly said, “Yeah, I like Pyre.”
Alex smiled. “Great. So how about I call you Pyre and you call me Tera and you call her A.G. which is short for Action Girl.”
Hanna stepped over. “You can call me Hanna if you’d rather. Tera does not think Action Girl is a good codename for me.”
The girl peeked out of the bushes. “Umm, how do I know I can trust you?”
Alex pursed her lips. “Okay, that’s a tough one. Hanna knew she could trust me, because badguys had shot her, and she was dying, and more badguys were hunting her with big snowmobiles and machine guns and grenade launchers and stuff, and I swooped in and saved her and made the badguys take off. I knew I could trust Jack because I went on a mission with him and I saw what he’s really like, and I helped him rescue a teenaged boy and the boy’s family. And since then, I’ve seen that Jack would give his life to save someone, especially a kid. So now I trust him. And I’ve worked with half a dozen of his people, so I trust them. So … maybe you should do a mission with me.”
The girl frowned. “John tricked me into doing a bunch of tests for them. And he said he wanted to help me, but he really wanted … I dunno. At the end, he just wanted to shoot me really close up. Daddy saved me. He made John jump out of the hayloft.”
He ‘made John jump out of the hayloft’? That didn’t make any sense to Alex. How do you make someone jump out of a hayloft? Do you throw a firebomb up into it? Maybe her daddy had some kind of powers, too.
The girl started crying. It looked like she’d been crying a lot lately. Her face was grimy and maybe covered in smoke, and there were tear tracks down her face. “Daddy’s dead, and Mommy’s dead, and … and …”
Alex dropped down to the road and used her TK to lift Charlie out into the air and over where Alex could hug her. She stroked Charlie’s hair and murmured, “It’ll be okay. Not right away, but in a while. It’ll hurt for a time, but it’ll get better eventually. When my grampa died, I was really sad for a long time, and it hurt every time I thought about him dying, but after a long time, it got better, and now I think about him and I remember the really great times I had with him when I was little, and I miss him a lot, but I don’t hurt like that.”
Hanna gently said, “My father — the man who raised me since I was two — he died saving me from killers who were after me. I knew he was not my real father, but he was as much a father to me as he could ever be, and I miss him very much. He died only a few months ago, but already things are better, and I don’t feel so awful when I think of him. So I know Tera is right.”
Charlie sniffled, “You’re not grown-ups.”
Alex admitted, “I just turned eighteen like a week ago. AG’s sixteen. Our friend Klar is eighteen. We’re sort of turning into a teenaged superhero group, even if we’ve also found some super-powered people who aren’t kids. Would you like to hang out with us?”
Charlie sniffled a little more and then finally asked, “Do you have any food? I’m really hungry.”
Hanna giggled at that. “Tera always has food. She eats enough for three of me.”
Alex stuck her tongue out at Hanna, because it seemed like something Charlie might laugh at. “I’ve got a couple energy bars in my utility belt. Would you like one?”
Charlie looked at her really carefully. “What if it’s poisoned? They kept me and Daddy on drugs for a really long time.”
Alex thought for a couple seconds. “I could take a bite first, so you’d know it was safe. But how long did they have you locked up?”
Charlie said, “It was March right after my birthday when they caught us. It took ’em almost six months to trick me into doing tests for ’em. What month is this?”
“It’s early September. Those guys sound like real creeps. We need to stop them.”
Her earjack crackled, Jack checking in. “O’Neill to Tera. Is it safe for me to drop in?”
Alex didn’t answer him, because she was holding Charlie. She just told Hanna, “I think we need to get Jack in to help us, because he can get these jerkheads shut down faster than anyone.”
Charlie giggled wetly. “You said jerkhead. That’s silly.” She sniffed a couple times.
Alex asked her, “Charlie? Can I bring in my friend Jack? He’s a soldier, and he’s dressed like Hanna here, and he’s pretty worried about you. And he can help. He can take us to real generals who can really do something to stop these badguys.”
“The DSI,” Hanna said.
“The Shop,” Charlie sniffled. “They called it The Shop. I’ve been in shops, and they’re not like any shop I ever saw.”
Alex told her, “We have a computer girl who’s the best computer person in the world, and she’s already found half a dozen really bad things on the DSI’s computers that’ll let us close ’em down for good. But if you could tell your story to Jack’s bosses, they’d be able to arrest some guys and put them in prison, instead of just taking away their jobs.”
Charlie asked, “And they’d never be able to do bad stuff like this ever again?”
“Never,” Alex insisted. “And if they tried, you and I and AG and Klar and our friends would run in and beat’ em up. Hanna’s really good at the running in and beating up parts.”
Charlie sounded amazed as she said, “I saw. She’s like Bruce Lee.”
Alex smiled. “Oh, Hanna could take Bruce Lee easy.”
Charlie whispered, “Daddy says he’s dead. I mean, Daddy said it, because … Daddy’s gone now.” She began sobbing into Alex’s shoulder again.
Alex said, “AG, call Jack and ask him to land in the clear-cut area, and bring Klar with him, and get some people to arrest these jerks for attempted kidnapping, attempted murder, and attempted murder of a federal agent, even if we’re not really official federal agents.”
Hanna nodded. “Will do.”
Alex listened over her earjack as Hanna called Jack in, and Jack agreed, and Jack made some calls to bring in more forces to handle the DSI guys who were unconscious over by the cars. Hanna also asked for a fire crew to come in and bring some fire suppression equipment, because she could smell that some of the stuff near the end of the logging road was still smoldering where Charlie had put up her ‘hot spot’.
Alex checked, and Charlie was small enough that Alex could manage to lift the two of them into the air without straining. So she drifted a few inches above the logging road while Hanna hiked alongside them. They moved out into the clear-cut as the chopper came down. Alex made sure they stayed back far enough that they weren’t getting dusted by the rotors and Charlie wasn’t spooked by a big U.S. military helicopter.
Jack and Klar hopped out. Jack had wisely ditched his weapons and his tac vest and his web belt and his sidearm, along with his uniform shirt, so he was in pants and boots and a tight undershirt. Alex had to admit he looked pretty sexy like that. For an old guy. No wonder Willow was all hot for him. Klar was in a hoodie and jeans and gloves.
Alex carefully said, “Charlie, this is Jack and Klar. Don’t be afraid when you see Klar, because he looks pretty different from anyone you ever saw before.”
Charlie looked over. “I’ve seen guys in hoodies before.”
Alex told her, “I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen anyone like Klar before.”
Jack and Grover got closer, and Charlie asked, “How come I can’t see his face?”
Alex gently explained, “Charlie, you’re not the only person who’s the result of an experiment. Or a chemical spill. Or a lab accident. We all are. Only Klar’s experiment …”
Charlie looked intently and gasped, “He’s an invisible man, like in that movie!”
Alex and Hanna glanced at each other, because that was kind of a big leap in logic to make. Alex asked, “Do you just know stuff sometimes, and you don’t know how you know it?”
Charlie shrugged in her arms. “Umm, maybe? Mommy and Daddy got puh-sy-kic powers from a experiment before I was born, and Daddy said I had ’em, too.”
Alex said, “I have psychic powers, too.”
Charlie nodded. “I saw. Daddy says that’s tele-ki-nesis and Mommy had it but just a tiny bit. She could close the fridge when she was maybe ten feet away.”
Hanna asked, “What could your daddy do?”
Charlie sniffled, “He called it the ‘push’. He could push people to do what he wanted, but it was really hard, and it gave him nosebleeds, and it made him really sick, and he’d get horrible headaches for like a whole day, and one time one of his eyes got bigger than the other and I thought he was gonna die.” She burst into tears again. “And now he’s really dead, and I’ll never see him again!”
Alex patted her back, while Hanna said, “But he died saving your life. Like my father did. A father wants to protect his little girl, no matter what she can do, and he got to save you and rescue you. You should be proud of him.”
Jack’s voice came in over the comms. “Mental domination. That’s bad. From her description, he was giving himself small strokes every time he did it, so he was probably on his way to killing himself or crippling himself from power use.”
Jack got close enough to talk to them, and Grover tossed back his hood.
Charlie gasped, “Wow, he really is the invisible man! Does he have ta take off all his clothes to be all invisible?”
Jack said, “Yup. But that’s his story to tell. Maybe you and him and Tera and Action Girl should swap stories so you’ll know each other better. And maybe you could come talk to some big, important generals about the bad stuff these dorks were doing, so we can shut them down before they have time to run off and hide under rocks like a bunch of cockroaches.”
Alex asked, “Jack, it’s Saturday. Can you get big, important generals to come out and talk to her?”
He frowned. “I can sure as hell get ’em to come talk to you. So I figure that’s a ‘yeah’. I’ll call Hammond and see what he can do. He’ll probably hit the ceiling when he finds out these guys have been experimenting on … How old are you, honey?”
“I’m eight. If it’s really September, I’m … eight and a half.”
Alex asked, “When’s your birthday?”
“March 24.”
Jack grinned. “I have a Charlie, too, only he’s a boy, and his birthday is in March, too.”
“Is he eight?” Charlie asked.
Jack smirked. “He’s a little old for you. He’ll be seventeen next March.”
Hanna said, “But he is very cute. And he asked me to the school dance in two weeks.”
Alex smiled. “And he’s a smart aleck. So he’s just like Jack.”
Jack gave her an affronted look and clapped a hand to his chest. “Moi?”
Alex ‘whispered’ to Charlie loud enough for everyone to hear, “See what I mean?”
Charlie pointed at Jack. “I like him.”
Jack asked, “Do you like me enough to take a helicopter ride with me and Tera and Action Girl and Klar?”
Charlie looked at the chopper nervously. “What if something goes wrong?”
Jack grinned. “Oh, I bet Terawatt can fly you out of the chopper and whisk you off to safety.”
Charlie asked, “Like a real superhero?”
Jack confidently said, “Tera is a real superheroine. The first real superheroine in the whole world. And Action Girl is the second.”
Alex asked Charlie, “Would you like to be the third?”
Jack winced a little at that. He insisted, “I think Charlie’s a little young for that, and we need to get some stuff cleared up, and I’d feel a lot better if we could find her a nice home with someone to take care of her. I already don’t like having you three out saving the world and stuff, and you’re twice her age.”
Grover told him, “Tera and I are eighteen now. I’ll be twenty-one in two and a half years. Eighteen’s old enough to join the army and get shot.”
Jack grimaced. “No age is old enough to get shot. Trust me on this one.”
“Oh. Sorry,” Grover apologized. “I … I forgot.”
“What’s the matter?” Charlie asked in Alex’s ear.
Alex softly explained, “You know how your daddy got shot right in front of you? Jack’s wife got shot right in front of him, and she died, too. Jack doesn’t like people to get hurt.”
Jack touched his ear and spoke into his comms. “O’Neill to Finn. Any luck?”
“Finn to O’Neill. We’re going to need excavation equipment out here. There are four buildings that are possibles, and no sign of any emergency exit that isn’t inside a building.”
“O’Neill. We should have DHS support here in under ten minutes. Once the DSI men out here are arrested, we’re going to swing by and pick you up. Be outside the compound and on the drive up to the front. We have a passenger who’s going to be spooked by that place, and we need her to go tell some generals her story.”
“Roger that. Over and out.”
Jack looked at Charlie. “Okay. We just need to wait a couple minutes until more goodguys arrive to arrest the badguys, and then we’ll go pick up some more goodguys and we’ll go talk to some really important goodguys.”
Charlie asked, “And will that stop ’em? For real?”
Jack nodded. “It’s going to stop them and give them a great big kick in the pants.”
Alex asked, “And then what? Charlie has nowhere to go. Do you think if I asked my mom and dad …?”
Charlie asked, “What?”
Alex looked her in the eye. “Would you like to come stay with me for a while? You’d have to pretend to be … umm … my cousin. You could still be ‘Charlie’. Maybe we’d pretend your last name was different, so badguys couldn’t find you or me or my mom and dad.”
Charlie murmured, “Daddy had us doing that a lot.”
“For how long?” Jack casually asked.
Charlie had to think for a moment. “It was first grade. I was going to stay the night at a friend’s house. The bad men grabbed Mommy and hurt her and killed her and they grabbed me, but Daddy made them let me go. And we ran away from home.”
Alex felt sick to her stomach. She felt like crying. A first grader got ripped out of her life and had to be on the run for two years, and then got locked up in that ‘research center’ to be tested and experimented on, and then saw her father die. Those guys made Danielle Atron look like Mother Theresa. She hugged Charlie tightly and said, “Guys like that better not try anything around me.”
Hanna volunteered, “If your parents cannot take in Charlie, I will ask Janet.”
“Who’s Janet?” Charlie asked.
Hanna explained, “After my father died and I was shot, Terawatt rescued me, and Colonel Jack’s people got me surgery to make me well again, and then one of his doctors took me to her house, and now she’s my mother.”
Charlie wistfully said, “I’d like to have a mommy again, even if she’s not my real mommy.”
Alex clenched her teeth so she wouldn’t burst into tears. “Having a mom is the best thing ever.”
Jack cautiously told them all, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But we will take good care of Charlie, and we won’t let badguys near her. We can argue later if she’ll be safer at whose house. For right now, we just need …”
Hanna whipped around and stared off over the trees. “There is a helicopter inbound.”
Alex still couldn’t hear it, but she knew Hanna had better senses than normal people.
Jack touched his earjack and adjusted it. “O’Neill to unidentified helicopter. Please ID yourself with agreed-upon passphrase.”
Whatever he was doing was on a channel Alex wasn’t getting, so she didn’t hear the next bit. But he replied, “Acknowledged. Do you have the cars in sight?”
After a few more seconds, he snapped, “Yes. I want them arrested. Not ‘brought in for questioning’. Arrested. Attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, and attempted murder of a federal deputy. Plus accessory to kidnapping and first degree murder. The attempted kidnap, attempted murder, and one kidnapping is of an eight-year-old girl, so I think there are some ‘special victims’ laws that are applicable. Plus I want to pile on as many charges as I can get the Inspector General to think of. And assume these guys have friends, so full counter-terrorism protocols on transport and incarceration.”
He paused for a second while someone in the helicopter said something else. He spoke into his comms. “Fine. You can leave the cars for another team to pick up. I want the men out of the field. And you need to get wildfire control there ASAP, if my deputized people are correct.” He looked over at Alex and Hanna and added, “Which they always are.”
Alex asked, “Any problems?”
Jack frowned a little. “Nope. But now I’ve gotta make some phone calls to some guys who are not going to be happy to hear from me on a Saturday.”
Alex wasn’t feeling a lot of sympathy for old guys sitting around drinking beer and watching TV, or whatever generals did when they weren’t in their uniforms. Maybe they ordered people around so they didn’t have to mow their own yards, or something. She asked, “Hey, Charlie, do you want me to fly you around? We can maybe follow way, way behind the helicopter, but it’s a lot faster than me. I’d rather ride inside it with my friends. And we can get you something to eat.”
Jack chipped in, “And we’ve got some food that’s a lot better than the icky energy bars Tera eats.”
Alex murmured in Charlie’s ear, “He’s just teasing. He knows I eat energy bars because I burn up a lot of calories when I use my powers, so I get extra hungry.”
Charlie asked, “Really? ’Cause I don’t get extra hungry at all.”
Jack told her, “Makes sense to me. Wherever you’re getting all that heat energy from, it can’t be from inside you. People don’t have that much available energy. Even Tera’s probably not getting all of it from what she eats. She just eats like she’s trying to.”
Charlie whispered, “Is he teasing you?”
Alex just answered, “Uh-huh. He does that to everybody.”
Jack said, “What I wanna know is what’s the deal with pretty blondes with superpowers. Is this a regulation nobody told me about?”
Alex looked over at Hanna and at Charlie. It was kind of odd, now that she thought about it. On the other hand, it would be a lot easier to pass Charlie off as a cousin if she looked like this, than if she looked totally unlike anybody in the family. Heck, Charlie looked enough like her that Charlie could be her little sister.
Once they were in the helicopter and Alex had Charlie buckled into the seat next to her, Jack started making phone calls. She couldn’t hear what he was saying because of the racket of the helicopter, and he’d turned off his comm system. But he didn’t look like he was enjoying the phone calls.
They swooped down near the compound to pick up Riley and the sergeants. It turned out the guy she didn’t know, Sergeant Walters, had been on Team One for a little bit, but she just hadn’t met him when he first started. Riley gave Charlie a big smile, and Charlie shyly smiled back.
Mister Iowa strikes again. Alex could totally see why other-Buffy had dated other-Riley. Well, really, she hadn’t figured out why other-Buffy hadn’t kept dating other-Riley, because this Riley was pretty awesome. Alex would have totally been flirting with him if she was ten years older and she hadn’t had Ray and he hadn’t had a Mrs. Finn.
Jack did have food on the helicopter. He had a whole cooler of food and drinks. The drinks were all bottles of water, except there were two Diet Cokes stuck in there for her, and a bottle of blue PowerAde for Hanna. Charlie split a roast beef sandwich with Alex and fell asleep cuddled against Alex’s side. Alex had to eat one-handed after that, because she had an arm wrapped around Charlie.
They flew in and landed at the Pentagon, although Jack had to go through a bunch of protocols to fly something in close to it. Alex had seen pictures of the place, but she’d never realized just how massively ginormous it was. Jack put his uniform shirt back on and got ready to meet whoever was driving in. Riley waited with him. But the helicopter went up to two thousand feet with everyone else and waited there.
Finally, Riley said into the comms, “Tera, now please.”
Alex grabbed Charlie, who hung onto her with a death grip, and they flew out of the chopper. They floated down and landed right next to Jack.
Alex recognized General Hammond, but she had no idea who the two other generals were, or the two guys in suits who were standing with the generals. She landed gently and checked that Charlie was okay. Then she said in her best Terawatt voice, “General Hammond. It’s good that you’re here.”
General Hammond greeted her. “Terawatt. It’s good to see you again. I take it you resolved our latest crisis? This is General Flagg, General Jackson, Dr. Taylor, and Mr. Bryson. They’re all part of the DHS or the U.S. intelligence community.”
Alex asked, “What about whoever is the head of the DSI?”
He answered, “That would be Cap Hollister. Retired brigadier general. As we understand it, he may have been on-site at the DSI research center.”
Charlie flinched at the name. Alex softly asked, “Do you know something about Mister Hollister?”
Charlie admitted, “Daddy brought him to the stable. John Rainbird shot him. And Daddy.”
General Flagg winced. In a deep, gritty growl, he complained, “Rainbird? I can’t believe Hollister was stupid enough to bring Rainbird in.” He looked at the others and said in the same gruff voice, “Notorious wetwork specialist. The CIA marked him unstable and made him retire. He’s supposed to be taking it easy on a porch in New Mexico.”
General Jackson asked, “And how did you get away from Mister Rainbird?”
Alex patted Charlie on the back. “Tell them. It’s okay.”
Charlie said, “He tried to shoot me. I melted the bullet. Then I set him on fire and blasted him through the stable wall. Then daddy told me I needed to burn the whole place down and go tell everybody so they couldn’t ever do it again to someone else. And he died. And they tried to shoot me. So … I did. I don’t wanna do that anymore.”
General Hammond glared at Jack. “Colonel O’Neill, are you trying to tell us that the terrorist bombing of Shop Central was all done by … an eight-year-old girl?”
Jack stood his ground. “Yes, sir, and I’m telling you she could have done a lot more. She took the time to boil away an entire pond instead of destroying most of northwestern Virginia.”
Charlie timidly said, “It … kind of got away from me. It was really hard getting it back under control. It was scary.”
Jack then dropped his bombshell. “We have reason to believe that the DSI did an illegal project with Dr. Maggie Walsh ten years ago.”
“Dr. Margaret K. Walsh, who’s now America’s most wanted criminal?” Mr. Bryson looked like he wanted to strangle somebody.
“Yes, sir, that Maggie Walsh. We have an NIH grant number, and the names of three other cooperators, all of whom died shortly after the project ended, under suspicious circumstances. And we have a date and a university. Ten years ago. It just so happens that Charlene Roberta McGee’s parents Andy McGee and Vicki Tomlinson-McGee got married nine and a half years ago. Terawatt’s star computer hacker managed to trace them through Charlie’s name and the registration lists for the university where the grant experiments were done, and she found Andy McGee, which led to their marriage registry, which — fortunately for us — is mostly on-line now in that state. Vicki Tomlinson’s maid of honor’s name is on the marriage certificate, and she went to college with Vicki, and the office where she works has a website with listed phone numbers. She told said hacker the cutest little story. It seems Vicki met Andy when they both participated in a psych department experiment where they were given experimental ‘mind expanding’ drugs. She said Vicki and Andy were ‘so cute together’ and they did this thing where they would look at each other silently like they were communicating mentally, and then they’d come to a decision without saying anything. I think in light of what their child can do that they were doing real telepathy. The DSI did that to a bunch of college students.”
General Hammond frowned. “We’ve had some doubts about the DSI, but if you have solid evidence, that project’s all the evidence we need to close them down.”
Jack continued, “We still have no idea how many people the project experimented on, because nobody at the NIH knows anything useful, and the relevant files aren’t at the NIH anymore. But from what Charlie told us, her mom had very weak telekinesis, and her dad had mental domination, but in a weak form, and it tended to give him mini-strokes when he used it. The DSI probably wet themselves when they found out Charlie was pyrokinetic starting as a baby. The McGees must have been scared out of their minds. Terawatt’s hacker found out that when Charlie was a baby, Andy McGee suddenly used his credit card and bought fourteen fire extinguishers in one morning. Fourteen. Frankly, I don’t want to think about what the night before was like. And it doesn’t stop there. When Charlie was in first grade, the DSI murdered her mother, kidnapped her, and probably tried to kill her father. But they forgot her father could do something about that. He rescued Charlie, and they’ve been on the run from the DSI ever since, until March, when they were kidnapped and locked up at that research center for half a year. Unsurprisingly, when they got the chance, they escaped. Dramatically. We caught up with Charlie just about the time DSI hit teams were ambushing her yet again. According to Action Girl, they were about to use an M203 and a Barrett M82 on her.”
General Hammond growled, “This is unconscionable. I have granddaughters her age!”
Jack went on, “And the DHS currently has Red Tree Software running security audits on its firewalls and computers and access channels. We’ve gotten a report from them that the DSI HQ ‘office’ is actually a dummy organization with a fake intranet that they use to hide their real computers from everyone including their own government department and their own bosses and the GAO. The only things visible on that intranet are personnel files, which are mostly bogus, and files on research grants, which are a hundred percent bogus, so they’ve been stealing money hand over fist from the government for as long as they’ve been commissioned. The office director, Colonel Roger J. McNamara, also tried to obtain a sample of the Downingtown Blob from my people. God only knows what people like this would do with something that dangerous. According to that security audit, the DSI probably has hundreds of agents in the field operating from laptop computers like they’re working from home, and these field agents have no accountability. Even better, they’re on American soil, which is a direct violation of intelligence community agreements and federal law.”
Mister Bryson said, “Clearly, we need to close them down this weekend and get access to that office, so we can track down all these DSI agents.”
Dr. Taylor said, “Absolutely.”
General Flagg growled, “Fortunately, the DSI military office is in the Pentagon, so we can walk inside, get some MPs, and go address that situation. Right. This. Minute.”
General Jackson said, “And you managed all this since you got the alert this morning?”
Jack nodded. “Yes, sir. I have a good team.”
Dr. Taylor told him, “If what I’ve heard from other countries is true, I think that calling your people ‘good’ is like calling the Atlantic Ocean ‘damp’.”
Jack insisted, “We also need to publicize this. We need to make sure people don’t think we’re letting terrorists or supervillains get away with something on American soil. People need to know that the DSI was operating outside the rules, and if anyone shows up with a DSI badge, they’re a felon, not a government agent.”
General Flagg asked, “And what do you propose to do about the girl?”
Jack staunchly told him, “I propose we find her a good home and help her catch up with her fellow third-graders, since she’s missed out on almost two years of school. We already have three offers of potential homes for her. Two of them are on the SRI’s base in West Virginny, and the third would be through Terawatt at an undisclosed Western U.S. location.”
The general nodded. “It sounds like you’ve taken public safety and the girl’s safety into account. But at some point we’re going to have to deal with the legalities of the situation.”
Jack suggested, “Sir, I would rather we handled this in closed judicial sessions. I think Charlie would be up for telling a judge everything the bad people did to her, and how it all got out of hand today. Right, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded. “I don’t like hurting people, but Daddy said I had to so I could get away.”
General Flagg looked at Charlie. “I think that sounds good. I don’t want to have a witch hunt when she’s been through so much already.”
General Hammond paused for a moment. “Look, colonel, if your three families fall through, call me. My daughter has room for another girl, and my granddaughters would have another girl to play with.”
Jack cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”