Kim Possible and associated characters are © Disney, and used here without permission, for non-profit purposes.
A/N: This is basically a continuation of chapter 20 and does not have its own 'introduction' with a description of Kim's feelings etc.
HIDDEN AGENDA
"Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win!"
Jonathan Kozol (1936 - )
Chapter twenty-one, which cuts to the chase.
Kim picked the radio up from the floor.
"Yeah, hi! This is Susie. The cleaner. I'm afraid there's been an accident, here …"
"An accident? What happened?"
"Well, I was kind of mopping the floor. It was all wet, like. And the guy just slipped and hit his head …"
"Jed slipped and hit his head? Look, what's your ID number?"
Shit. Kim, of course, had no idea.
"ID? Yeah, it's 457 34 96."
A click and a beep could clearly be heard over the radio link, as well as the sound of sudden talk and activity in the background.
"You sure that ain't you phone number, girl?"
Kim shut the radio off and hurried over to the control desk instead.
"Shego?" she called into a microphone on the console. "Get out of there! We're blown!"
The little Shego figure in the security monitor feed from the vault snapped her head up and made a thumbs up. Kim watched for a few seconds, just to make sure that Shego did in fact pack up and get ready to leave. She then flipped the cover from a big red button on the control console and pressed it decisively. A loud ringing instantly burst forth.
She pressed another switch and spoke into the microphone again.
"This is security. We have a fire alarm. This is not a drill; it is a real fire alarm. Please just stop working and leave the building. Do not stop to collect any belongings or valuables. Just stand up and leave. Do not use the elevators. Shut all doors behind you. I repeat, this is not a drill!"
She then pushed the janitor cart onto its side and dragged the first guard they had encountered out of the trash container. She propped him up against the wall by the main stairs down to the front door, and started collecting some company for him.
When she was done, three guards and a cleaning lady were sitting in a row, waiting to be carried outside.
People started arriving in the lobby. First to show up were two more cleaners.
"You!" Kim shouted." How many of you were working here tonight?"
"Well, us two. And Mary-Lou … "
"Good! Get her outside, will you! Quick, now!"
The older man that had been typing at his computer and the younger man reading reports came next.
"Grab a guard each and drag them outside!" Kim commanded in a no nonsense voice.
"Oh shit," the younger man complained. "They're kinda heavy, you know?"
"It wasn't a suggestion, it was an order! DO IT!"
They grumbled and obeyed while the elderly gentleman and the secretary showed up.
"You take the last guard and get him outside. We've got to evacuate the building!"
The man was not inclined to just quietly obey. "Why don't you help?"
"Just do it! I'm going to get everyone I see out, and then I'm going to do the rounds of the building to see if there is anyone left behind. Would you rather be doing that?"
That didn't seem to meet with the man's approval, either. The woman, however, kicked off her high heels and lifted the remaining guard in a fireman's grip. From the ease with which she did this, Kim started suspecting that she maybe wasn't just a secretary, but more of an active agent.
"Come on, Parker!" she said to the man. "Do as you're told, will you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
And perhaps the elderly man wasn't the high level commanding officer she had thought him to be, either.
The couple went down the stairs and out of the building just as Shego arrived on the scene.
"Wazzup, Princess?"
"They're all out, I think! Let's blow this joint!"
Shego gave Kim a small back-pack, and pulled the straps tight on the one she was carrying herself.
"Okay! I got loads of stuff, anyway!"
They stepped up to the security console, once again putting key cards in two different slots at either end of the desk. The Bodge default code was once again put to use. Kim reached out and grabbed the lever of a large knife switch. "Ready, Sheegs?"
Shego nodded and Kim threw the switch.
As in all spy movies and thrillers, a countdown appeared om a screen, and a new alarm was added to the clangour of the fire bells.
They turned towards the stairs and the front doors.
At that moment, however, a red Toyota crashed into the right-hand stone pillar by the gate in the fence. Two police cruisers came to squealing stops around it.
"What the fuck? The nerd called the cops down on us?"
"Shit! He must have struck lucky, thinking a smart thought for once."
The two women watched the scene unfold. The people from the Central Planning Unit were talking to the cops, gesticulating alternately at the unconscious guards and the building in general. The policemen, however, seemed more interested in apprehending Bodge.
"You know what, Pumpkin? I don't think he called them! They're traffic cops. I just think he picked them up with his crazy driving skills!
"They're still cops! And here comes the fire brigade!"
"Let's lock the doors, Princess, and we'll just take the back door!"
"Is there a back door?"
"Perhaps not as such, no. Don't worry, though! I can make us one!"
Kim flipped some switches on the panel on the security console. "Okay. Let's go!"
There was a back door, a metal sheeted basement type door. The windows overlooking the street in the back of the building, however, showed more emergency vehicles from the fire brigade, as well as one or two police cars.
"Shit! Let's try the alley!"
There were no doors on the shorter sides of the building. They took the stairs up to the first floor.
"Hey, Shego! This is going to be a close call!"
"Yeah, Princess. Let's just find a room with a view and go through!"
The end of one of the long corridors ended in a right angle bend with an open door. As they ran towards it, the second alarm signal doubled in intensity and frequency.
"Shit, Pumpkin! Straight through!"
They ran into the empty office. Shego dove for the window head first, sending a blast of green plasma before her. Kim made a forward flip and approached the now shattering window frame in a tucked-in position.
To anyone watching from the outside it would have seemed like two figures shot out of the window in the crest of a green-tinged explosion. The forward momentum carried them over the wrought iron fence, although Kim had to launch herself over with a well-placed foot. It was a high and long jump, and they landed hard. Despite tucking and rolling with the impact, they bounced and sprawled somewhat painfully.
The instant they stopped rolling, the building exploded, flattening them to the ground again.
It did not look like big explosions do in action movies. There were no flames and not much smoke. There also was no drawn out sub-woofer bass sound , just a rapid sequence of sharp, dry bangs.
The building went down a bit like when a demolition crew handles a big old factory on an empty lot. The walls at the ground floor bulged outwards, and the rest of the house started sinking, almost intact until subsequent sets of explosions took out the walls higher up.
The building collapsed as if a giant had stepped on it. The roof settled, cracked but more or less intact, on a huge pile of bricks and rubble. The air filled with dust from mortar and plaster.
The fire crews and the police had been knocked flat. As hearing was regained, a lot of excited radio communications ensued. The less shaken and stirred started dragging their not so fortunate comrades away from the ruins. Luckily, nobody seemed to have entered the building before it blew.
"Wow! Let's do that again!"
"Let's not, Kimmie! You almost impaled yourself on the fucking fence! If you were to die, I'd be so angry I'd have to kill you!"
"Aw, Shego! I always almost hurt myself. It's how it's done!"
"Well, in that case, you'll just have to stop doing it!"
Kim made a face. "I'm never allowed to have any fun!"
"You just had it! Now, shall we make a drive-by and wave to the nice GJ's?"
Kim clapped her hands excitedly! "Yay!"
==##0##==
The bike had been parked two blocks away. They made it quickly on foot, even though Kim limped a little. Shego pointedly did not say anything about it.
Making a detour round a couple of blocks they approached the scene of the explosions. Police and rescue services kept gathering, as well as other curious passers-by; some cab drivers, a few people on their way to start work early, and a couple of delivery vans.
There was also a large, black BMW, from which an elderly man with horn-rimmed glasses emerged.
"Look, Princess! Dr. Laibach! Bodge is gonna get a royal ear-full!"
They drove by at low speed, but without giving the impression they were going to stop. They had not put any helmets on as they counted on being recognized.
"Hi, Bodge!" Shego hollered. "Thanks for your help!"
Kim blew him a big kiss. "We sure had a nice time in the woods!" she shouted.
Bodge looked like fainting, while Laibach started gesticulating and speaking loudly. He had not managed to elicit any response from the police before Shego let the bike show what acceleration and speed it was capable off, and tore away down the street.
Kim had her head turned, looking back. "That sure stirred them up! Like poking an anthill with a stick!" she said smugly.
==##0##==
By mid morning, Kim and Shego were sitting in the Starbucks coffee shop of the M Street Barnes and Nobles book store.
After leaving the scene of their crimes, they had hidden the bike and spent some time out of sight themselves. A fifty dollar bill had given them access to the cardboard-and-blankets nest of an old, homeless woman for a couple of hours, and a very efficient way of hiding in plain sight.
Now they were nursing coffees and muffins, with a laptop each on the table before them. They looked entirely at home among the other guests in the bookstore coffee shop, studying, writing or reading in the calm surroundings. Famous writers drinking coffee were pictured on the wall behind them.
Shego was using her 'shegonator' as a computer modem, uploading the files she had gotten from the computers in the vault to Wade's system. Kim was copying files to MP3 players, USB memory sticks and other devices for multiple backups. She was just finishing loading stuff onto the hard disk of an iPod Classic.
"So, Shego, do you think we really got anything useful?"
"Well, Pumpkin, difficult to say, really. The juicy bits will need decryption, and everything will need to be carefully analyzed. It all depends on what they really committed to their records, and how they wrote it up. Perhaps we only managed to lift the bonus schemes and pension plans for senior management … "
"Shit. So we don't just walk into the nearest police station and hand it over? Or toss it in the lap of the Washington Post?"
"Princess, you know that was never the plan!"
"But it would have been such a nice surprise if we had been able to do that!" Kim whined.
"Sweetie, you know that would never work. The justice goons would have to many opportunities to suppress it, deny it and generally lean on the system!"
"So we do have to go through with the whole thing?"
"We do, if we want to bring the GJ down. We can still abort the mission, though, and slip away somewhere ..."
"Aw, fuck it!"
"Princess! Such language! Well, do you want out?"
"You know I'll never give up!"
Shego sighed. "Yeah, I know! There's no 'give-up' widget installed in your Operating System, is there?"
"Nope! I added some extra gigabytes of 'Stubborn' and 'Crazy' instead. But that's why you love me, innit?"
"Yeah. Sometimes, though, I'd just like to download the 1.2 Service Pack with the upgrades for the Common Sense software … Still, crazy or not, you need to tell me that you want to go ahead! We have done the easy part, breaking and entering. Now's the chance to quit if you want to!"
"No, we do it! I'm ready!"
"Okay!" Shego looked at her watch. "So, we call Betsy and Nerd Support?"
"Yeah, go ahead!" Kim plugged a mobile phone hands-free set into her laptop and adjusted the earpiece in her ear. Shego did the same, and initiated an encrypted three-ways call.
"Betsy? Geek-master? You there?"
Their faces appeared on the interconnected laptop screens as they answered. Dr. Director was in the lair. Wade was using his mobile set-up, and could be seen sitting in the back of a van.
"Hallo, Wade! Dr. Director!" Kim greeted them.
"Hi, guys! Howzit hangin'?" Shego said.
"Er … quite so." Wade was obviously a bit confused by the salutation. "Well, it seems to be going well. The GJ is quite agitated. The Operational HQ has ramped up to a Code Red Alert. A lot of mobile units have been called in, and quite a few vehicles have shown up at the scene of your recent exploits."
"Who's in charge, do you think?"
"Oh, this goes right up to the top of the food chain. We intercepted communications to the Board of Directors. The Head of Operations, North America, is flying in from New York. Until he arrives, Operational HQ is in charge, working through a Commander Spanner who's on site at the ruins of the CPU."
"Oh, they're all hot and ready to go!"
"Just so, Pumpkin, Now, calm down!"
"Yes, please do," Dr. Director contributed. "They do seem to take this seriously. They must be assuming that you may have gotten hold of something really compromising. And they're scared!"
"So, Wade, are they looking for us? Are they making a house to house search?"
"Well, not really. They have some cars on the street, and also a civilian type helicopter in the air, but they are not very likely to find you that way."
"So, we need to help them a bit, right?"
"Yeah, but we need to time it smart. Here's what you should do ..."
==##0##==
Mobile Unit 5 made a left up onto the freeway, going slowly in the Saturday noon traffic.
The MobU 5 was a black Ford Explorer SUV with a crew of three. The driver was a well-muscled man in his early twenties. The observer in the front passenger seat was approaching the mid forties, and was built on slightly more generous lines, especially round the middle. The communications officer in the back seat was also in his forties, but thin and wiry. His job mainly consisted of calling dispatch every 15 minutes and reporting that they had seen nothing.
"Fucking hell!" the driver summarized his assessment of the situation. "I could have been at home, sleeping in and taking it easy! Instead I'm driving round at random in this goddam traffic! Totally bloody pointless! A complete waste of time!"
"Don't complain," his colleague in the front seat said. "This is soft work, just cruisin'! And you get overtime pay, don't you? Relax! Nothing will happen! It's easy money!"
"Well, shit, I'm glad I'm getting paid, but I'd like it better if we did something useful! I do wish something would happen!"
At that moment, the communications officer turned round and looked out of the rear window.
"Hey, guys! Green bike, two babes! One brunette, one red-head! Ring a bell?"
"Shit! Where? Where are they?"
"Just coming up from behind! They'll overtake us in a few seconds."
"Yes! We got them! Call it in as they go past, Ted, and we'll nab 'em!"
"No, we won't! We'll wait for backup so we're sure to get them!"
"Man, you're a waste of space! Wait for back-up? We get 'em, we get the glory!"
The bike drew level. The red-head pushed her sunglasses down on her nose and gave them an evil smile. The driver gave them the finger.
"The cheeky bitch! Don, get the gun up and the window down, for Pete's sake, and take them down!"
The bike surged ahead, however, with an acceleration the heavy SUV couldn't match. As it went past the front of the car, the red-head emptied a large cloth bag full of caltrops on the road in front of them. All four tires blew instantly, and the SUV made a close encounter with a lamp post. The air-bags deployed.
"Al, please let this be a lesson for you!" the older man in the front passenger seat said in a muffled voice. "Never, ever, wish for something to happen! Boring is good!"
==##0##==
The earpieces that Kim and Shego wore enabled them to talk to each other as well as to Wade and Dr. Director. Wade was currently informing them of the information he had gathered from watching satellite images and monitoring radio traffic.
"They are moving in to intercept you three junctions ahead! I doubt they'll shoot on sight, just yet!"
"Ah, but we will, right, Pumpkin?"
Kim did not answer, but removed the sawn-off shotgun they had used to scare Bodge from it's holster on the bike.
"There they are!" Shego said. "Now, mind that you don't shoot to the side or we'll overturn. Wait until I line us up!"
Kim gripped Shego's waist tightly with her right arm and brought the shotgun up in her left. Shego leaned the bike into a slight left turn across the lanes, disregarding the red lights and aiming straight for one of the black SUVs up ahead.
The driver of the car slammed the brakes as he found himself targeted, just as Kim blasted both barrels of the shotgun into the near-side front wheel.
Loosing a front wheel when braking hard is an invitation to disaster. The vehicle instantly went into an uncontrollable skid, going broadside first into the intersection before flipping over.
Shego put the bike into a sharp right turn to avoid the wreck and to get past the other SUV coming in from the right. Others were not as alert to the dangers of the situation, and the air was filled with honking horns and squealing tires. These noises faded seamlessly over into the sounds of metal crumpling and glass shattering.
The bike now met the second vehicle that had been supposed to stop them, but they were in separate lanes. Kim threw the now empty shotgun as hard as she could at the windscreen of the black SUV as they passed each other. The glass didn't break, but shattered into an opaque mosaic of shards. The front seat passenger started removing the glass by smashing it with the butt of his gun, but the temporary loss of forward visibility was enough to ensure the close acquaintance with the rear end of a brewery truck that had stopped in the intersection.
The green bike roared down the road, heading towards Constitution Avenue and the National Mall.
"Boojah, if I may be so bold," Wade said after a couple of minutes. "Commander Spanner just authorized the deployment of two of the black helicopter gunships. They've taken the bait!"
"I'd be a lot happier if the bait wasn't us," Kim muttered.
"Cheer up, Princess! We're guaranteed to make the headlines of the national news!"
"Yes, heads in the game, kids!" Dr. Director broke in. "This is all going according to plan, but you've got to stay in race until the chequered flag!"
"Oh, shut up with the metaphors, Betsy! We all know what to do, so let's do it!"
==##0##==
N/A. Another chapter that is almost all action. The story is coming into the home stretch and the final confrontation is just ahead. Sorry it took some time, I had a lot of things on my plate this week. Also, I wanted to participate in a challenge over on DeviantArt…
Oh, and I don't own Barnes and Nobles, or the Apple iPod, of course...