Chapter Eight – Supersonic Courier
"Lucre, have we received anything yet?"
"No sir, nothing yet," Frugal Lucre answered as he had done fifteen times before in the past two hours.
"Very well," Grim said, standing behind him in the dimly lit central computer room. The Smarty Mart employee was sitting at one of ten computer terminals set up around the semicircular room. Behind Grim was a large, blast proof metal door and beyond that, a long corridor to the conference room. Gemini had planned to use the warehouse as an interim base of operations after the conference was over while a new one was constructed for him in the Atlantic Ocean. So, the room had been fitted with some of the newest, most powerful computers available to the public. Networked into each other's systems, they had the computing power of something that usually cost three million dollars and was only available to certain governments.
Underneath the half-light provided by a few halogen bulbs set in the ceiling, Lucre and Grim's team of ciphers had managed to break through the building's lockdown system and regain use of the fiber optic line Gemini had installed weeks earlier. Now, with the fastest internet connection known to man and a computer powerful enough to crack almost any website or network, the building no longer seemed so isolated from the world. If he wished, Grim could clean out almost any bank in the world. But that was not part of the plan, and he was determined to stick to the plan. He knew that those stupid enough to try and pull something off in the heat of the moment paid for their hotheadedness with their lives.
After spending a night and half the next day setting up the warehouse as his headquarters, Grim had finally been ready to set his plans into motion. After explaining his proposal to the other villains, they had all been extremely willing to help. Possibly it was because he was offering them billions of dollars in repayment for their services, but more likely it was because they valued their lives more than their dignity. Grim made sure each villain had at least one of his own men following them around every second of the day, their weapons loaded and the safeties off. As long as they feared him, they would do as they were told. That was all that mattered to him since as long as they obeyed him, the plan was flawless.
As he stood rigidly behind Lucre, Grim heard the sound of approaching footsteps but kept himself from turning around. Constantly testing himself, he tried to identify them simply by the sounds they made as they neared the computer room. The first set of footsteps were almost too easy to put a face to; their soft fall and loud squelch as they rose from the tiled floor labeled them as those of an amphibian. Gill, without a doubt.
The second pair were a little more of a challenge; hard soles clicking against the floor meant they were hard leather – he guessed, not knowing exactly what kind of material. Short time between footfalls meant short legs, which meant a small body. Or unusually short legs, which Grim knew none of the people in the building had, and so ruled that out as a possibility. Narrowing the search down to those he knew to be short, he ruled out any member of his assault team, since they all wore gumshoes to keep their movements silent. Other than that, there was DNAmy, Senor Senor Senior, and Professor Dementor. The first was ruled out since Grim recalled her shoes as being moccasins. The second, being old, possessed a slower, less sure stride, so his name was also dropped from the list. So, by process of elimination, Grim labeled the second set of footsteps as those of Professor Dementor. The entire process took him less than two seconds.
"Professor Dementor, report," he ordered without turning away from Lucre's screen.
"The building is secure," Dementor responded, unimpressed by Grim's game. "We've sealed up the hole you made in the south wall and rewired the motion sensors around it."
"What about electronic surveillance – are we vulnerable?"
"Not enough to be a threat. Even the best in listening devices will be able to pick up only signals within five meters of the hole."
"Make it two meters, and I'll be satisfied," Grim ordered, turning to face both the other villains standing a foot from him.
"You can't stop everything from getting through," wheezed Gill, his body starved of moisture after being above water for so long. A webbed hand held onto the back of a chair for support as he tried to catch his breath while searching the room for a bottle of water. Grim's expression darkened, his brow furrowing and his mouth tightening to a thin line.
"Listen, fish," he growled, leaning into Gill. "I would prefer it if you would just follow my orders – questioning them wastes so much time. Do you even know how to stop an electronic signal from entering a room?"
"No," Gill murmured, staring at his webbed feet and wishing he had kept his mouth shut.
"Then I suggest you leave all of the brainwork to the professor and go jump in a fishbowl somewhere," Grim advised, turning back to Dementor.
"Continue with your report," he said as Gill left the room, sulking.
Just as the professor began to give a full status report on the building's security systems, Lucre whirled around from his terminal.
"We've got a reply!"
* * *
After a long afternoon and evening of doing very little, Kim and Ron hit the sack at close to midnight. Staying up late watching movies in the nurse's lounge and making quick trips down to the vending machines for 'snackage' it almost felt like they were at home, not out trying to stop some madman from decimating the world's population.
The next morning, this relaxed air disappeared when Kim was woken at close to seven in the morning by Wade. Finch had just sent him Grim's reply to the Secretary General's letter. It was brief, giving the time, date and location where the gold should be for Grim's men to pick it up. A standard ultimatum letter, one Kim had read a thousand times before on other missions. For some reason though, she felt it was different this time. Grim seemed more professional to her than other criminals she'd dealt with. From what Shego had told them, it sounded like he would spend less time gloating and more time killing. She had an irking feeling that facing any combination of her other foes would be effortless compared to confronting this man. This thought hung heavy in her mind as she and Ron sat down in the cafeteria with their breakfast.
"Does cafeteria lady outsource to this place, or what?" he asked her as he picked at his scrambled eggs.
"No, it's just a cafeteria Ron. Every one of them is like this," she replied, eyeing the sickly yellow hue of the gelatinous mass on his plate with suspicion.
"But I mean, how can you screw up scrambled eggs?" he said, reaching for the salt shaker.
"Ron, what's on that plate has probably never been within five feet of an egg," she pointed out as he tried a bite of it.
"How do you know that?" said Ron after he had downed an entire cup of orange juice to wash the taste out.
"Because you're having to eat it with a spoon."
Good point. So, run through this letter we got from Grim again," he said, taking a bite out of a piece of toast.
"Ron, you were in the room when Wade read it out," she reminded him.
"I'm a deep sleeper – didn't hear a word of it."
"Whatever," she sighed, not bothering to argue with Ron after the time he'd fallen asleep on a mission – while he'd been tied up. "The letter says that he wants the gold in three days, by 10 AM. He says that by then, it has to be sitting in an airplane sitting on the runway at some airport in Switzerland. It's gotta be fully fueled and capable of flying over 6,000 nautical miles with the gold in its cargo hold."
"How much gold?"
"About 750 tonnes of gold bullion. That's about 9 billion dollars at the current rates."
Ron jaw dropped low to a point where Kim could park an SUV in his mouth. "And he thinks that the governments will just hand over this much gold and not try to track the plane?" he asked incredulously once he regained control over his facial muscles.
"That or he's got a plan to hide it once it reaches him," Kim supposed. "He's using his own pilots to fly the airplane, so if he manages to turn off the transponder thingy inside the plane no one will be able to track him. No government's going to allow him to get away with the gold, so –"
"Let me guess," interrupted Ron, "it's up to us to stop him."
"When isn't it?" she asked sarcastically.
"True." He paused for a moment, buttering another piece of toast for Rufus. "Hey, do we still have to get that algebra sheet done by Friday? Because I kinda forgot it at home."
"We could probably hop over to Middleton for a day, pick it up. Don't see much else we can do around here until they find Grim or Drakken," she observed. "And we'll only be a couple of hours away if Wade calls in another one of those rocket trip favors."
"Awesome! This city's great, but the lack of Bueno Nacho is getting unbearable." Rufus nodded his head in agreement at this before engulfing the entire piece of toast in one massive gulp.
"Gee, and I thought you wanted to do homework," said Kim, an eyebrow raised in a questioning slant.
"Uh... yeah... homework too," he said haltingly, trying to recover. "But it'd be quite bon-diggety if we could stay away from space-travel for transport. Flying that fast just isn't natural."
"Hey, if you want to make a five thousand mile trip for a plate of nacho's, you gotta make some sacrifices."
"Good point." Ron's ears perked up, as did Kim's, when they heard a familiar sound issuing from Kim's pants. "Is that the Kimmunicator?"
"Hold up." Kim pulled the ringing mini-computer from her pocket and switched it on. "Go Wade."
"We've just got a hit on Drakken."
"Well, we can scratch the going home idea," Kim said to Ron.
"What?" Wade cut in, clearly confused.
"Nothing," Kim explained. "Go on."
"He's in Borneo, near some place called Samarinda." A map of south-east Asia, centered on Malaysia appeared on the computer's screen, with their quarry's supposed position signified by a small red dot. Though relatively near the coast, Kim could tell it was still a long hike from the nearest large town – so access would be a problem.
"Any favors you can call in?" she asked. "We're gonna need to get there and back pretty quick."
"None from my end," admitted Wade. "Why don't you try Finch?"
"Good idea – can you patch us through?"
"Sure thing."
"Please and thank you," she said as his face was replaced by the oscillating green line superimposed on a black screen – the usual image if the phone at the other end line didn't have a video camera attached. "Mr. Finch – Wade's just found Drakken," she said when he picked up his cell phone.
"I just heard about it – a British agent in Singapore reported a suspiciously blue-skinned man leaving the Metropolitan Hotel, heading for the airport. Your friend must have pulled it off our network."
"Yeah – he's a hacker. I've tried to get him to stay on the legal side of the net, but he doesn't listen very well," Kim smirked.
"As long as he's on our side, we don't mind." He paused, his deep intake of breath audible over the phone line. "We've discussed it over here, and everyone at Number Ten agrees that you should be the one to meet with Dr. Drakken."
"Why me?" Kim asked, puzzled.
"You're the only one we have who has had a good deal of contact with him. Or at least the only one who's itinerant," Finch replied, and Kim hoped he wasn't making a joke at Shego's expense. She might be a villain, but that didn't make it right to pick fun at her injuries.
"All right – I'll go," Kim conceded. "You guys wouldn't happen to have a way for me to get there? Wade's out of favors for the moment."
After a moment's silence, probably spent polling the room for transportation options, Finch replied: "I think we'll be able to provide you with something. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?"
"For sure," Kim said, glad they had gotten everything squared away so quickly.
"We'll have a car waiting outside," promised Finch.
"I'll be there." Kim switched off the computer, and turned to Ron, an apologetic look on her face. "Would you mind terribly staying back and keeping an eye on things for me?" she asked him, a pleading look on her face. "I need someone who knows the deal with Grim and Drakken and everyone – someone who'll keep his head cool."
"And you're asking me? Remember, I'm not usually the cool headed one in the Possible/Stoppable team."
"Right, but you know the score," Kim pointed out. "You and I are the only ones who've dealt with all of these guys – everyone else's just heard the news reports. I need to watch and make sure none of these guys do anything dumb – they all seem really ready to start shooting. And I think shooting Grim won't make this deal any better.
"Don't worry Kim – Agent Stoppable is on duty. I'll keep the world safe while you're relaxing on some Pacific beach," he joked.
"Correction Ron: sitting in some jungle hut trying to convince my arch- enemy to help me stop something he's been wanting to do since I met him."
"You know, now that I look at it, staying here isn't all that bad," Ron observed, letting Rufus finish off that last piece of toast.
* * *
The same car that had picked the two teens up from Heathrow was waiting outside the hospital's main entrance when Kim stepped outside. The driver nodded in welcome as she slid into the backseat and once her seatbelt was buckled he pulled out into the street. Like before, the driver followed none of the posted speed limits and barely heeded traffic lights, but instead raced past other cars at almost twice their speed. Kim hoped, as they raced through a red light and cut down the center of a busy four-way intersection, that there was some kind of siren or strobe light atop the car to warn drivers. That or her life would be over so fast there would only be time for half of it to flash before her eyes.
Quickly turning onto a motorway, the car sped out of the city, heading south-west past Heathrow and beyond the reaching tendrils of London's suburbs. For a few moments, as they shot down the M3 towards Southampton, Kim got a glance of the flat, green fields that made up a good portion of Britain's southern landscape. These were quickly replaced by houses and shopping malls as they entered the town of Camberley. Here, the driver exited the highway and veered south towards a place called Farnborough Field – where awaited, Kim guessed, her ride to Borneo. But as they pulled past the guardhouse at the field's perimeter fence, it looked like little more than a general aviation strip; and not a large one either. Nothing much sat on the tarmac outside a pair of large hangars, and that which did was no bigger than a Cessna. Previous experience told her that those aircraft would have trouble even making it to Frankfurt, so she hoped the driver hadn't confused Heathrow with Farnborough.
But her chauffer seemed sure of his destination as he drove across the tarmac to the largest of the hangars, which sat seemingly unattended and unoccupied like the rest of the airport. As the car reached the giant, lime green main doors they began to heave open slowly, stopping with just enough room between them for the vehicle to slip through. The driver entered the dim hangar with the headlights switched off and, as if by memory, swung it back round to face the sole exit after driving forward a few meters. Stopping the car, the driver swiveled in his seat and spoke to the single passenger sitting in the rear:
"This is your stop, Ms. Possible. Good luck."
"Thanks," she said, climbing out of the car and looking around in bewilderment at the cavernous, shadowy hangar interior. Only when the sedan had pulled out of the hangar and the doors closed behind it, were the lights switched on. Shielding her eyes from the sudden glow of large fluorescent lights, Kim turned to face an aircraft she had only ever seen in magazines, or on Knowing Channel documentaries. It's tapered delta wings, perfectly rounded white fuselage and drooping conical nose made it hard not to recognize, even though the airline liveries it usually carried had been painted over and replaced only by the words 'Property of BAE Systems' in small lettering above the forward landing gear. A team of ground-crewmen, all dressed in spotless white uniforms, approached the giant craft and began performing their final pre-flight checks as Kim stood in awe near the nose.
Another man, dressed in an orange flight-suit and who she presumed to be a member of the flight-crew, approached Kim from a series of tables covered in maps and paperwork. "Ms. Possible I presume?" he said in greeting, extending his hand to shake hers.
"That's me. This my ride?" she asked, a hint of disbelief in her voice.
"Yes ma'am. We should be ready to go within five minutes."
"But it's the Concorde!"
"Yes ma'am."
"And this isn't a little bit of an extravagant use of a twenty-five million dollar aircraft [1]?"
"We were told this was a matter of utmost importance, and in that case I've been trained to believe that nothing is too extravagant. Terribly sorry, forgot to introduce myself – Major Guilden, commanding officer of this aircraft and your pilot for the day."
"Good to meet you Major Guilden. What can I do to help?"
"Nothing at all – we've got the ground-crew finishing up a few diagnostic checks, and in the meantime I'll show you to your seat." He led Kim up the set of air-stairs and through the forward door into the cabin. It's fuselage smaller than that of most short-range jetliners, Kim had to fight the urge to duck her head as she stepped over the threshold. To her left was a series of cupboards, along with a narrow hallway the she guessed led to the cockpit. On her right, a single row of three standard sized airline seats had been installed just fore of a temporary grey bulkhead. Though it was slightly cramped, Kim could see how, by raising the armrests and stretching out across the seats, she could get comfortable. "Can I get you anything?"
"I think I'll be fine, thanks," she replied, taking her seat on the right side of the aircraft and strapping herself in.
"I'll just give you a brief rundown of our flight then. We should be taking off within five or so minutes, and then climbing to our cruising altitude of sixty thousand feet. Our route will take us over central Europe, and then into the Middle East over Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. At this point, we'll drop to thirty thousand feet and below the sound barrier to join up with a tanker aircraft and re-fuel."
"We can do that?" Kim cut in.
"We've fitted it with in-flight refueling capabilities – for the extended flight tests we use this aircraft for," he explained. "After that, we leave land and head across the Arabian Sea and southern India before re-entering the Indian Ocean over Chennai. Then it's over-water for remainder of the flight until we reach Borneo."
"And that's where I get off?"
"Correct."
"Okay. Anything I should know before we leave?"
"Nothing I can think of," the pilot replied. "We'll reach cruising altitude within thirty minutes after we take off, so if you have any questions just come up and ask us." He glanced at a checklist in his hand to make sure he'd done everything before heading to the cockpit. "I've, ah," he paused, re-reading the telex printed at the top of the sheet, "been told you have some sort of portable communication device with you?"
"Yup – this," Kim pulled the Kimmunicator out of her pocket.
"I'm going to have to ask you to turn that off for the entire flight. Safety regulations," the man explained.
"No problem." Kim turned the gadget off, and set it in the storage pocket beside her seat.
"Great – there are magazines and newspapers in the compartment up here," the man pointed to the set of cupboards. "There's some food and drink stored further up the corridor in the galley, so help yourself if you get to feeling peckish."
"Got it, thanks."
The pilot nodded, and headed up to the cockpit and closed the door behind him. Checking her watch, Kim quickly got up and grabbed a few magazines from the cupboard, knowing there would be little else for her to do on the flight. A ground technician soon appeared at the open door, wished her good luck, and pulled the heavy hatch shut. Once the door was sealed tightly and the air-stairs pulled away Kim heard the muffled groan of the main hangar doors being pulled open. Slowly the aircraft began to move forward, being towed outside of the hangar before it's the four massive Olympus turbojet engines were lit, filling the cabin with a dull roar. Once the tug was detached from the forward gear, and the ground-crewman saluted the pilot in the universal 'clear to depart' signal, the jet began to move forward under its own power.
Soon they were rolling down the taxiway adjacent to the main runway, stopping traffic on the perimeter road as drivers got out and gazed in wonder at the strange sight. Kim watched them in mild amusement for a few moments before turning back to her magazine. Feeling a shift in direction, she looked out the window to see the aircraft lining up on the runway, departure imminent. The pilots slowly pushed the throttles forward once they received the take-off go-ahead, and Kim felt the cabin rock gently as the engines spooled up. What was a dull roar turned into a full throated, earthshaking rumble as they reached full power, and the jet slowly began to roll down the runway. Even behind twenty centimeters of thick insulation and aluminum, the noise from the engines was deafening, and she hated to think of what it must sound like outside.
As they quickly gained speed, Kim checked to make sure her seatbelt was fastened before returning her eyes to the window. Scenery whipped past the viewport, and slowly she felt the aircraft begin to rise from the ground, it's pointed nose aiming skywards. Pressed into her seat by the inertia, Kim watched as the jet lifted off from the ground with what looked like only feet of runway left, and climb quickly over the town of Farnborough. A muted thump signaled the retraction of the landing gears, and the aircraft began to bank right, vectoring towards the Channel. Sitting on the right side, Kim only saw the houses and fields of southern England before they disappeared into the clouds. With no moving map projected on a television screen and her window obscured by clouds, there was little else she could do besides read.
The pilot was right; it did take them a little under thirty minutes to reach their cruising altitude and only a slight jolt, almost unnoticeable, was how she knew the aircraft had 'gone supersonic' and broken the sound barrier. With no Mach-meter on the bulkhead in front of her, and the uninteresting view of a cloud covered Europe below her, Kim had little else to do than read, and think about the task ahead. And as she contemplated how she would convince Drakken to, for once, bury their differences and help each other, she strangely found herself wondering what Ron was up to.
[1] Sorry, don't know the exact asking price, so it looks like Kim doesn't either.
"Lucre, have we received anything yet?"
"No sir, nothing yet," Frugal Lucre answered as he had done fifteen times before in the past two hours.
"Very well," Grim said, standing behind him in the dimly lit central computer room. The Smarty Mart employee was sitting at one of ten computer terminals set up around the semicircular room. Behind Grim was a large, blast proof metal door and beyond that, a long corridor to the conference room. Gemini had planned to use the warehouse as an interim base of operations after the conference was over while a new one was constructed for him in the Atlantic Ocean. So, the room had been fitted with some of the newest, most powerful computers available to the public. Networked into each other's systems, they had the computing power of something that usually cost three million dollars and was only available to certain governments.
Underneath the half-light provided by a few halogen bulbs set in the ceiling, Lucre and Grim's team of ciphers had managed to break through the building's lockdown system and regain use of the fiber optic line Gemini had installed weeks earlier. Now, with the fastest internet connection known to man and a computer powerful enough to crack almost any website or network, the building no longer seemed so isolated from the world. If he wished, Grim could clean out almost any bank in the world. But that was not part of the plan, and he was determined to stick to the plan. He knew that those stupid enough to try and pull something off in the heat of the moment paid for their hotheadedness with their lives.
After spending a night and half the next day setting up the warehouse as his headquarters, Grim had finally been ready to set his plans into motion. After explaining his proposal to the other villains, they had all been extremely willing to help. Possibly it was because he was offering them billions of dollars in repayment for their services, but more likely it was because they valued their lives more than their dignity. Grim made sure each villain had at least one of his own men following them around every second of the day, their weapons loaded and the safeties off. As long as they feared him, they would do as they were told. That was all that mattered to him since as long as they obeyed him, the plan was flawless.
As he stood rigidly behind Lucre, Grim heard the sound of approaching footsteps but kept himself from turning around. Constantly testing himself, he tried to identify them simply by the sounds they made as they neared the computer room. The first set of footsteps were almost too easy to put a face to; their soft fall and loud squelch as they rose from the tiled floor labeled them as those of an amphibian. Gill, without a doubt.
The second pair were a little more of a challenge; hard soles clicking against the floor meant they were hard leather – he guessed, not knowing exactly what kind of material. Short time between footfalls meant short legs, which meant a small body. Or unusually short legs, which Grim knew none of the people in the building had, and so ruled that out as a possibility. Narrowing the search down to those he knew to be short, he ruled out any member of his assault team, since they all wore gumshoes to keep their movements silent. Other than that, there was DNAmy, Senor Senor Senior, and Professor Dementor. The first was ruled out since Grim recalled her shoes as being moccasins. The second, being old, possessed a slower, less sure stride, so his name was also dropped from the list. So, by process of elimination, Grim labeled the second set of footsteps as those of Professor Dementor. The entire process took him less than two seconds.
"Professor Dementor, report," he ordered without turning away from Lucre's screen.
"The building is secure," Dementor responded, unimpressed by Grim's game. "We've sealed up the hole you made in the south wall and rewired the motion sensors around it."
"What about electronic surveillance – are we vulnerable?"
"Not enough to be a threat. Even the best in listening devices will be able to pick up only signals within five meters of the hole."
"Make it two meters, and I'll be satisfied," Grim ordered, turning to face both the other villains standing a foot from him.
"You can't stop everything from getting through," wheezed Gill, his body starved of moisture after being above water for so long. A webbed hand held onto the back of a chair for support as he tried to catch his breath while searching the room for a bottle of water. Grim's expression darkened, his brow furrowing and his mouth tightening to a thin line.
"Listen, fish," he growled, leaning into Gill. "I would prefer it if you would just follow my orders – questioning them wastes so much time. Do you even know how to stop an electronic signal from entering a room?"
"No," Gill murmured, staring at his webbed feet and wishing he had kept his mouth shut.
"Then I suggest you leave all of the brainwork to the professor and go jump in a fishbowl somewhere," Grim advised, turning back to Dementor.
"Continue with your report," he said as Gill left the room, sulking.
Just as the professor began to give a full status report on the building's security systems, Lucre whirled around from his terminal.
"We've got a reply!"
* * *
After a long afternoon and evening of doing very little, Kim and Ron hit the sack at close to midnight. Staying up late watching movies in the nurse's lounge and making quick trips down to the vending machines for 'snackage' it almost felt like they were at home, not out trying to stop some madman from decimating the world's population.
The next morning, this relaxed air disappeared when Kim was woken at close to seven in the morning by Wade. Finch had just sent him Grim's reply to the Secretary General's letter. It was brief, giving the time, date and location where the gold should be for Grim's men to pick it up. A standard ultimatum letter, one Kim had read a thousand times before on other missions. For some reason though, she felt it was different this time. Grim seemed more professional to her than other criminals she'd dealt with. From what Shego had told them, it sounded like he would spend less time gloating and more time killing. She had an irking feeling that facing any combination of her other foes would be effortless compared to confronting this man. This thought hung heavy in her mind as she and Ron sat down in the cafeteria with their breakfast.
"Does cafeteria lady outsource to this place, or what?" he asked her as he picked at his scrambled eggs.
"No, it's just a cafeteria Ron. Every one of them is like this," she replied, eyeing the sickly yellow hue of the gelatinous mass on his plate with suspicion.
"But I mean, how can you screw up scrambled eggs?" he said, reaching for the salt shaker.
"Ron, what's on that plate has probably never been within five feet of an egg," she pointed out as he tried a bite of it.
"How do you know that?" said Ron after he had downed an entire cup of orange juice to wash the taste out.
"Because you're having to eat it with a spoon."
Good point. So, run through this letter we got from Grim again," he said, taking a bite out of a piece of toast.
"Ron, you were in the room when Wade read it out," she reminded him.
"I'm a deep sleeper – didn't hear a word of it."
"Whatever," she sighed, not bothering to argue with Ron after the time he'd fallen asleep on a mission – while he'd been tied up. "The letter says that he wants the gold in three days, by 10 AM. He says that by then, it has to be sitting in an airplane sitting on the runway at some airport in Switzerland. It's gotta be fully fueled and capable of flying over 6,000 nautical miles with the gold in its cargo hold."
"How much gold?"
"About 750 tonnes of gold bullion. That's about 9 billion dollars at the current rates."
Ron jaw dropped low to a point where Kim could park an SUV in his mouth. "And he thinks that the governments will just hand over this much gold and not try to track the plane?" he asked incredulously once he regained control over his facial muscles.
"That or he's got a plan to hide it once it reaches him," Kim supposed. "He's using his own pilots to fly the airplane, so if he manages to turn off the transponder thingy inside the plane no one will be able to track him. No government's going to allow him to get away with the gold, so –"
"Let me guess," interrupted Ron, "it's up to us to stop him."
"When isn't it?" she asked sarcastically.
"True." He paused for a moment, buttering another piece of toast for Rufus. "Hey, do we still have to get that algebra sheet done by Friday? Because I kinda forgot it at home."
"We could probably hop over to Middleton for a day, pick it up. Don't see much else we can do around here until they find Grim or Drakken," she observed. "And we'll only be a couple of hours away if Wade calls in another one of those rocket trip favors."
"Awesome! This city's great, but the lack of Bueno Nacho is getting unbearable." Rufus nodded his head in agreement at this before engulfing the entire piece of toast in one massive gulp.
"Gee, and I thought you wanted to do homework," said Kim, an eyebrow raised in a questioning slant.
"Uh... yeah... homework too," he said haltingly, trying to recover. "But it'd be quite bon-diggety if we could stay away from space-travel for transport. Flying that fast just isn't natural."
"Hey, if you want to make a five thousand mile trip for a plate of nacho's, you gotta make some sacrifices."
"Good point." Ron's ears perked up, as did Kim's, when they heard a familiar sound issuing from Kim's pants. "Is that the Kimmunicator?"
"Hold up." Kim pulled the ringing mini-computer from her pocket and switched it on. "Go Wade."
"We've just got a hit on Drakken."
"Well, we can scratch the going home idea," Kim said to Ron.
"What?" Wade cut in, clearly confused.
"Nothing," Kim explained. "Go on."
"He's in Borneo, near some place called Samarinda." A map of south-east Asia, centered on Malaysia appeared on the computer's screen, with their quarry's supposed position signified by a small red dot. Though relatively near the coast, Kim could tell it was still a long hike from the nearest large town – so access would be a problem.
"Any favors you can call in?" she asked. "We're gonna need to get there and back pretty quick."
"None from my end," admitted Wade. "Why don't you try Finch?"
"Good idea – can you patch us through?"
"Sure thing."
"Please and thank you," she said as his face was replaced by the oscillating green line superimposed on a black screen – the usual image if the phone at the other end line didn't have a video camera attached. "Mr. Finch – Wade's just found Drakken," she said when he picked up his cell phone.
"I just heard about it – a British agent in Singapore reported a suspiciously blue-skinned man leaving the Metropolitan Hotel, heading for the airport. Your friend must have pulled it off our network."
"Yeah – he's a hacker. I've tried to get him to stay on the legal side of the net, but he doesn't listen very well," Kim smirked.
"As long as he's on our side, we don't mind." He paused, his deep intake of breath audible over the phone line. "We've discussed it over here, and everyone at Number Ten agrees that you should be the one to meet with Dr. Drakken."
"Why me?" Kim asked, puzzled.
"You're the only one we have who has had a good deal of contact with him. Or at least the only one who's itinerant," Finch replied, and Kim hoped he wasn't making a joke at Shego's expense. She might be a villain, but that didn't make it right to pick fun at her injuries.
"All right – I'll go," Kim conceded. "You guys wouldn't happen to have a way for me to get there? Wade's out of favors for the moment."
After a moment's silence, probably spent polling the room for transportation options, Finch replied: "I think we'll be able to provide you with something. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?"
"For sure," Kim said, glad they had gotten everything squared away so quickly.
"We'll have a car waiting outside," promised Finch.
"I'll be there." Kim switched off the computer, and turned to Ron, an apologetic look on her face. "Would you mind terribly staying back and keeping an eye on things for me?" she asked him, a pleading look on her face. "I need someone who knows the deal with Grim and Drakken and everyone – someone who'll keep his head cool."
"And you're asking me? Remember, I'm not usually the cool headed one in the Possible/Stoppable team."
"Right, but you know the score," Kim pointed out. "You and I are the only ones who've dealt with all of these guys – everyone else's just heard the news reports. I need to watch and make sure none of these guys do anything dumb – they all seem really ready to start shooting. And I think shooting Grim won't make this deal any better.
"Don't worry Kim – Agent Stoppable is on duty. I'll keep the world safe while you're relaxing on some Pacific beach," he joked.
"Correction Ron: sitting in some jungle hut trying to convince my arch- enemy to help me stop something he's been wanting to do since I met him."
"You know, now that I look at it, staying here isn't all that bad," Ron observed, letting Rufus finish off that last piece of toast.
* * *
The same car that had picked the two teens up from Heathrow was waiting outside the hospital's main entrance when Kim stepped outside. The driver nodded in welcome as she slid into the backseat and once her seatbelt was buckled he pulled out into the street. Like before, the driver followed none of the posted speed limits and barely heeded traffic lights, but instead raced past other cars at almost twice their speed. Kim hoped, as they raced through a red light and cut down the center of a busy four-way intersection, that there was some kind of siren or strobe light atop the car to warn drivers. That or her life would be over so fast there would only be time for half of it to flash before her eyes.
Quickly turning onto a motorway, the car sped out of the city, heading south-west past Heathrow and beyond the reaching tendrils of London's suburbs. For a few moments, as they shot down the M3 towards Southampton, Kim got a glance of the flat, green fields that made up a good portion of Britain's southern landscape. These were quickly replaced by houses and shopping malls as they entered the town of Camberley. Here, the driver exited the highway and veered south towards a place called Farnborough Field – where awaited, Kim guessed, her ride to Borneo. But as they pulled past the guardhouse at the field's perimeter fence, it looked like little more than a general aviation strip; and not a large one either. Nothing much sat on the tarmac outside a pair of large hangars, and that which did was no bigger than a Cessna. Previous experience told her that those aircraft would have trouble even making it to Frankfurt, so she hoped the driver hadn't confused Heathrow with Farnborough.
But her chauffer seemed sure of his destination as he drove across the tarmac to the largest of the hangars, which sat seemingly unattended and unoccupied like the rest of the airport. As the car reached the giant, lime green main doors they began to heave open slowly, stopping with just enough room between them for the vehicle to slip through. The driver entered the dim hangar with the headlights switched off and, as if by memory, swung it back round to face the sole exit after driving forward a few meters. Stopping the car, the driver swiveled in his seat and spoke to the single passenger sitting in the rear:
"This is your stop, Ms. Possible. Good luck."
"Thanks," she said, climbing out of the car and looking around in bewilderment at the cavernous, shadowy hangar interior. Only when the sedan had pulled out of the hangar and the doors closed behind it, were the lights switched on. Shielding her eyes from the sudden glow of large fluorescent lights, Kim turned to face an aircraft she had only ever seen in magazines, or on Knowing Channel documentaries. It's tapered delta wings, perfectly rounded white fuselage and drooping conical nose made it hard not to recognize, even though the airline liveries it usually carried had been painted over and replaced only by the words 'Property of BAE Systems' in small lettering above the forward landing gear. A team of ground-crewmen, all dressed in spotless white uniforms, approached the giant craft and began performing their final pre-flight checks as Kim stood in awe near the nose.
Another man, dressed in an orange flight-suit and who she presumed to be a member of the flight-crew, approached Kim from a series of tables covered in maps and paperwork. "Ms. Possible I presume?" he said in greeting, extending his hand to shake hers.
"That's me. This my ride?" she asked, a hint of disbelief in her voice.
"Yes ma'am. We should be ready to go within five minutes."
"But it's the Concorde!"
"Yes ma'am."
"And this isn't a little bit of an extravagant use of a twenty-five million dollar aircraft [1]?"
"We were told this was a matter of utmost importance, and in that case I've been trained to believe that nothing is too extravagant. Terribly sorry, forgot to introduce myself – Major Guilden, commanding officer of this aircraft and your pilot for the day."
"Good to meet you Major Guilden. What can I do to help?"
"Nothing at all – we've got the ground-crew finishing up a few diagnostic checks, and in the meantime I'll show you to your seat." He led Kim up the set of air-stairs and through the forward door into the cabin. It's fuselage smaller than that of most short-range jetliners, Kim had to fight the urge to duck her head as she stepped over the threshold. To her left was a series of cupboards, along with a narrow hallway the she guessed led to the cockpit. On her right, a single row of three standard sized airline seats had been installed just fore of a temporary grey bulkhead. Though it was slightly cramped, Kim could see how, by raising the armrests and stretching out across the seats, she could get comfortable. "Can I get you anything?"
"I think I'll be fine, thanks," she replied, taking her seat on the right side of the aircraft and strapping herself in.
"I'll just give you a brief rundown of our flight then. We should be taking off within five or so minutes, and then climbing to our cruising altitude of sixty thousand feet. Our route will take us over central Europe, and then into the Middle East over Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. At this point, we'll drop to thirty thousand feet and below the sound barrier to join up with a tanker aircraft and re-fuel."
"We can do that?" Kim cut in.
"We've fitted it with in-flight refueling capabilities – for the extended flight tests we use this aircraft for," he explained. "After that, we leave land and head across the Arabian Sea and southern India before re-entering the Indian Ocean over Chennai. Then it's over-water for remainder of the flight until we reach Borneo."
"And that's where I get off?"
"Correct."
"Okay. Anything I should know before we leave?"
"Nothing I can think of," the pilot replied. "We'll reach cruising altitude within thirty minutes after we take off, so if you have any questions just come up and ask us." He glanced at a checklist in his hand to make sure he'd done everything before heading to the cockpit. "I've, ah," he paused, re-reading the telex printed at the top of the sheet, "been told you have some sort of portable communication device with you?"
"Yup – this," Kim pulled the Kimmunicator out of her pocket.
"I'm going to have to ask you to turn that off for the entire flight. Safety regulations," the man explained.
"No problem." Kim turned the gadget off, and set it in the storage pocket beside her seat.
"Great – there are magazines and newspapers in the compartment up here," the man pointed to the set of cupboards. "There's some food and drink stored further up the corridor in the galley, so help yourself if you get to feeling peckish."
"Got it, thanks."
The pilot nodded, and headed up to the cockpit and closed the door behind him. Checking her watch, Kim quickly got up and grabbed a few magazines from the cupboard, knowing there would be little else for her to do on the flight. A ground technician soon appeared at the open door, wished her good luck, and pulled the heavy hatch shut. Once the door was sealed tightly and the air-stairs pulled away Kim heard the muffled groan of the main hangar doors being pulled open. Slowly the aircraft began to move forward, being towed outside of the hangar before it's the four massive Olympus turbojet engines were lit, filling the cabin with a dull roar. Once the tug was detached from the forward gear, and the ground-crewman saluted the pilot in the universal 'clear to depart' signal, the jet began to move forward under its own power.
Soon they were rolling down the taxiway adjacent to the main runway, stopping traffic on the perimeter road as drivers got out and gazed in wonder at the strange sight. Kim watched them in mild amusement for a few moments before turning back to her magazine. Feeling a shift in direction, she looked out the window to see the aircraft lining up on the runway, departure imminent. The pilots slowly pushed the throttles forward once they received the take-off go-ahead, and Kim felt the cabin rock gently as the engines spooled up. What was a dull roar turned into a full throated, earthshaking rumble as they reached full power, and the jet slowly began to roll down the runway. Even behind twenty centimeters of thick insulation and aluminum, the noise from the engines was deafening, and she hated to think of what it must sound like outside.
As they quickly gained speed, Kim checked to make sure her seatbelt was fastened before returning her eyes to the window. Scenery whipped past the viewport, and slowly she felt the aircraft begin to rise from the ground, it's pointed nose aiming skywards. Pressed into her seat by the inertia, Kim watched as the jet lifted off from the ground with what looked like only feet of runway left, and climb quickly over the town of Farnborough. A muted thump signaled the retraction of the landing gears, and the aircraft began to bank right, vectoring towards the Channel. Sitting on the right side, Kim only saw the houses and fields of southern England before they disappeared into the clouds. With no moving map projected on a television screen and her window obscured by clouds, there was little else she could do besides read.
The pilot was right; it did take them a little under thirty minutes to reach their cruising altitude and only a slight jolt, almost unnoticeable, was how she knew the aircraft had 'gone supersonic' and broken the sound barrier. With no Mach-meter on the bulkhead in front of her, and the uninteresting view of a cloud covered Europe below her, Kim had little else to do than read, and think about the task ahead. And as she contemplated how she would convince Drakken to, for once, bury their differences and help each other, she strangely found herself wondering what Ron was up to.
[1] Sorry, don't know the exact asking price, so it looks like Kim doesn't either.