S Hunter - Longevity

“It doesn’t matter. I ordered the damned dog to stay down.”

“But he absolutely loves that ball,” Livvy said without hesitation. “You know, most of the shots I could see, at least when we were charging, and perhaps before, seemed to be aimed at you more than me. When I got grazed, I was running right next to you.”

“Again, we don’t really know. I could have been the primary target. Or maybe you’re just smaller, or, most likely, he got a good look at you before he started shooting. Your native armor,” Chris said. He turned around and leaned against the car as he watched the med techs carrying the prisoner to their van.

“I don’t know about that,” Livvy said. “With the kind of fanatics LLE probably deals with, I think I just infuriate them more.”

“Well,” Chris said. “Let’s find out.”

Livvy looked at him warily. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Why not?” Chris said, eyes widened with innocence. “You’re injured, aren’t you? Your arm needs attention, doesn’t it?”

Livvy sighed. “In the medivan? Seriously?” She looked at the already crowded vehicle without enthusiasm as she removed her helmet and tossed it onto the back seat next to Louie. Tucking an errant strand of fiery, sweat-dampened hair behind her ear, she shot Chris a reproachful glance before raising her hand and heading for the medivan. The medtech in the back had been closing the door, but when he saw her coming he smiled broadly and swung it wide again and even stepped out to let her climb in first. Chris could hear the first words of what sounded like a promising stream of outraged invective just before the doors closed and it drove away. Their prisoner was definitely in the mood to talk.

The bomb was simple, crude really, a typical design used by the groups that felt justified in casually killing LLE personnel because of what they represented. It was the efficiency with which it had been installed that caught Chris off guard. He didn’t usually bring an LLE car home, but after coercing Livvy into the medivan with their bigoted prisoner yesterday afternoon, he’d driven out to Josephson’s house and he and Louie spent hours performing a rigorous search. It was a huge house. They’d finished very late and he’d decided to go straight home in the car.

That made the placement of the bomb that much more impressive. He’d parked in a guest space in his apartment building’s secured garage, although the effectiveness of these private securities was an open joke in Enforcement, and neither a radical bomber nor Chris considered them an obstacle. No, what was impressive about this bomb was that Chris didn’t usually drive home and he’d gotten home after 10 PM, so whoever had installed the bomb had almost no notice that there would be an opportunity. This wasn’t meticulous planning. Someone was out there scattering a lot of resources around in the hopes of getting lucky.

LLE cars were unmarked and had tamper-proofing that needed to be disarmed, but everyone knew this. The true advantage for LLE officers was that they could check the tamper-proofing remotely to make sure it was intact. This morning, distracted and a little tired after his full day and a night crammed with too much preoccupation to be restful, Chris hadn’t checked the status of the tamper-proofing before approaching the car. It was a rookie mistake.

It was Louie, grabbing his hand in an insistent, toothy grip and pulling him away from the car, who saved his life. Chris guessed immediately that Louie had smelled something as they approached the car and alerted, he checked and found the tamper-proofing disabled. After a quick survey of the undercarriage of the car he spotted the device easily enough. Such crude devices occasionally could go off without being tripped, and Chris figured time was of the essence. Also, it looked pretty basic, at least superficially, and Chris had over six decades of experience with similar efforts, during which by observation and pertinent questions he’d picked up an expertise that matched all but the most durable Bomb Squad officers.

“What the hell. I don’t have time for this horseshit,” he murmured fatalistically. He fetched his tool kit and a light, set Louie in a firm stay a reasonable distance away, and slid under the car on his back to examine it more closely.

It was as crude as it looked, and within minutes he had it disarmed, double-checked, and detached.

He was already late, but he took the time to drop the now-harmless thing off at Forensics. He was pretty sure, though, that like everything else lately it would prove to be a dead end. Or if it did yield any information, the bomb and the record of its analysis would end up missing.

Sipping her first morning coffee, Livvy stared through the observation window at Robert Maas, the peasant in the tree from the previous afternoon, and reviewed what they knew about him. He’d been in a bed under guard overnight for observation at the City Central clinic, and was released to LLE this morning with a diagnosis of concussion and advice to keep an eye on him. That they were doing.

She was feeling especially virtuous. This morning she’d taken one of the new routes Meg had outlined for her and still arrived at work on time. She’d walked all the way up through garden after lovely garden. Even though the experience wasn’t as real as her morning jogs in her native San Francisco hills, it was heavenly.

Chris arrived with Louie a half hour later, with no explanation.

The uniforms who’d searched the neighborhood around Isabella’s house yesterday afternoon hadn’t been able to find a vehicle that they could connect to Maas nor had they found anyone who remembered seeing a peasant walking around before the shooting started. Given the neighborhood, Livvy suspected he would have been noticed. Chris was right. Someone had driven Maas to the tree, probably very early in the morning, before Livvy’d even been told about Josephson. The timing showed extraordinary foresight and initiative on someone’s part.

It turned out that the only reason Maas hadn’t started shooting before they went in to Isabella’s was that he’d wedged himself and his weapon in and taken a nap. That much he’d admitted. He may have been hoping to jolt Livvy out of her impassivity, because what he’d actually blurted out somewhat bitterly was, “You’d be dead now, but I fell asleep.”

So she’d probably been wrong to suggest Chris was a preferred target and correct in assuming she wouldn’t be popular with the local fanatical groups.

Irritated at having been strong-armed into the medivan and forced to listen to the prisoner’s incessant harangue during the early part of the trip to Central, Livvy couldn’t resist.

“You mean the nap… the nap impaired your marksmanship?” she’d asked with a faint note of surprise.

It wasn’t her fault that the tech had snickered and the prisoner had clamped his mouth shut and done nothing for the rest of the ride but glare at her. Still, the feeling that she’d let Chris down a little dampened her satisfaction during her morning commute.

Likewise, the gun had proven untraceable. It was a very common gun, freely available through black markets and with clean ID’s at the gun shows, and all of its unique markings had been thoroughly etched out.

This morning, Maas had again awakened in the mood for talking, and that continued during and after his transfer into LLE custody. Unfortunately – still – almost nothing he said was to the point, since most of it was a rehash of the irritatingly vague religious and Naturals Only rhetoric that had so annoyed Livvy in the medivan. For her, it was both reassuring and discouraging that no one else was having any better luck with the man. Any questions elicited repeated claims on the 5 thamendment and more rhetoric.