Deeper Troubles

Becoming a saboteur was easier than he thought. No wonder his father had done it so often.

Although his situation still remained desperate, Jimmy Gordon was finding he could almost enjoy taking advantage of his status as a helpless, terrified, sixteen year old prisoner. He hadn't enjoyed being kept tied up for hours, of course. He'd enjoyed even less the screamingly painful bout of pins and needles he'd suffered through as circulation and feeling returned to his numbed limbs after Professor Niebhausen had finally untied him. But in a warped and thrilling way, he was enjoying what he was doing right now, finding many small ways to wreak havoc among the enemy as much as possible. Being at the center of trouble meant he was also at the center of where he could cause trouble – and oh, boy, did he wish to cause it now! It was amazing what you could get away with when people assumed you were nothing more than a helpless and cowed sixteen year old captive. As Jimmy's alienist friend and colleague had told him so often back at university, people see what they want to see rather than seeing what is. The huge, hulking and well-armed guards around the smuggling racket's hideout wanted to see a terrified and helpless youngling who wasn't going to give them a bit of grief. So that is what they saw, as opposed, say, to the tiny screwdriver he'd managed to slip into his pocket when they weren't looking. And it was really amazing, some of the things you could do with just a tiny screwdriver. The things you could take apart. Locks and duct covers, for example.

Not that Jimmy was going to be left unguarded or given unfettered access to Professor Niebhausen's laboratory or any other section of this secret lair anytime soon. No, he still wasn't trusted that far when he'd been here only hours. But who wants to spend every waking moment on unfaltering scrutiny of a scared and scrawny adolescent? Not the guards. Not Professor Niebhausen, who had to sleep and to relieve himself sometimes. So after being given a very limited tour of the enemy's underground facility, Jimmy was taken to a locked cell next to the Professor's lab on the amusing theory that he would stay there. It wasn't an 'official'-type prison cell, with bars and shackles and guttering torches such as the kind he'd imagined from his father's stories or his favorite adventure novels. This was more like a spacious and sturdy storage closet just off to one side of a laboratory. Dark, but he could feel his way around it. He'd been left with a plain straw pallet to sleep on, a chamber pot, a meagre ration of food and water and, apparently as some sort of concession to his comfort, a plain wooden chair to sit on. This object might have been some small attempt by the professor to compensate Jimmy for his earlier discomfort upon being untied. Either way, the chair, like the screwdriver, promised to make his hours spent in captivity a whole lot more interesting.

Thanks to his sickly childhood, Jimmy still looked like a 98 lb. weakling. Compared to muscular and athletic Tem, he still was one – but only by comparison. In truth, he was no longer as frail or as sickly as he might seem to others. Like smelted metal, he'd been tempered to a certain toughness by his ordeals. He wouldn't ever reach the physical paragon standard set by his brother-in-law, but he'd learned how to climb and swim and do a few other things. He could also be a bit gymnastic when a situation called for it, like it did now. Moving the chair around the edges of his prison as silently as possible, standing on the chair to feel along its walls, he'd located the large duct that connected this cell/closet to the laboratory next door. Very important, proper ventilation in underground facilities, after all. Jimmy knew he didn't have the resources, knowledge or physical skill to fight his way out of the bad guys' hideout past all those guards, but getting into the adjacent lab without their knowledge was right up his alley.

First, Jimmy laid the groundwork. He was amazed at how thoroughly the professor and the guards had fallen for his 'childish and helpless' act. Again and again, Niebhausen had seen only what he wanted to – a talented but weak young science tyro who couldn't possibly fight back. For all that Niebhausen was quite the con artist, it didn't seem to occur to him that Jimmy, scion of two talented thespians, could be quite the actor himself. Jimmy had whimpered and howled through his arm and leg pains while they were happening. He'd cried and he'd flinched and he'd groveled in what he hoped were just the right amounts. Anyone who knew him well would have been astonished by this behavior. Jimmy could be plenty emotional, but after the childhood he'd had, he wasn't easily fazed by physical pain. Any groveling or whimpering he'd done back then was an exaggerated performance to get more sympathy and cookies and his parents had figured that out very early. He'd met real physical distress with as much white-faced, silent stoicism as he could muster, not wanting to worry or upset his Mom and Dad any more than necessary. They figured out that part too. But now Jimmy had convinced his guards to have only contempt for their young prisoner. He continued to whimper quite a bit, with the occasional strangled sob, after being locked in this room. Then he asked the guards enough whiny questions as he'd been moving the chair around the chamber that they'd not only stopped looking in the tiny slits in the door, they'd yelled at him to shut the hell up and told him some of the things they'd do to him if he didn't. Perfect. When they didn't hear a peep out of him for an hour or two, they'd assume it was sheer terror of them that kept him silent, not the fact that he'd removed the duct cover and was no longer in the cell at all, but in the lab seeing what else he could get his hands on.

And all the while, Jimmy had been doing one of the other things he did best – committing every single word he heard, every sound, every sight, every smell – everything – to memory. When Tem and Mandy rescued him – soon, he was fervently praying – he would have a very interesting non-bedtime story to write down indeed, one that the gang of smugglers was going to regret. He already knew the approximate location of the hideout he was being held in – deep underground by a set of limestone caves not far from the old Civil War battlefield Tem and Mandy had been searching. The caverns apparently had been useful for the Confederate generals to store hidden caches of arms and other goods in before the victorious Union forces had swept in and taken the area over. But the non-native Yankees hadn't discovered the caves, and now a series of tunnels allowed the new gang to store and smuggle their own weapons underneath the Slaughter Pen and up behind Hazen's monument to be shipped out by rail. Jimmy was able to piece all this together, while the guards and the smugglers didn't even realize he was listening and scrutinizing underneath the dramatic performance that he hoped would have made his father proud.

Then it was time to get to the task at hand. Compared to the meticulous, tiny adjustments Jimmy often made on his own gadgets, dealing with vent covers was easy. Keeping every movement concealed or silent enough was the tricky part. But there too Jimmy had an advantage. Secret Service agent Artemus Gordon had been not only an adept mimic, able to change voices or accents the way some people changed clothing, he'd been a talented ventriloquist as well. He could throw his voice to misdirect attention almost anywhere he wanted. With more affection than common sense, he'd taught both of his children these skills early on. Jimmy, like Mandy, had been an enthusiastic practitioner of the art when it came to getting out of a punishment, playing practical jokes, or raising competitive games of hide and seek to a whole new level. Their mother might not have been grateful at the time, but Jimmy was desperately thankful for those skills right now, as well as his father's sleight-of-hand lessons. He'd already succeeded in starting one small fight between two of the guards, which had them more focused on each other than on him.

Slithering through the vent silently, Jimmy found his scrawniness to be an advantage. When he got into the laboratory, he discovered an added bonus: more vents and more chairs! With enough lack of supervision, who knew what vandalism he'd be able to get done down here? What acts of mischief he could concoct? He might have access to far more of the underground complex than even he realized. He still doubted he could find his way all the way out and escape on his own, but now his sense of hope had returned.

He felt more than just hope, however. Perverse as it seemed, there was a kind of tingling thrill to what he was doing now. Realizing what he could accomplish behind his captors' backs was oddly amusing – he could almost call it fun. The thrill of deliberately doing something naughty and not getting caught, like the times he'd paid back the bullies who tormented him in college. Jimmy wondered if this was the same sort of thrill his father had felt when on his adventures with Uncle Jim. If so, he could almost understand someone wanting to do this for a living. It was definitely more exciting than most jobs – fascinating and challenging, too.

The hardest part was resisting the temptation to act like a kid in a candy store once he did get out of his cell. Darkness helped with that. Jimmy's vision wasn't as poor as others might think, only a slight blurriness he could live with. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, but combined with the need for absolute silence, it meant he'd have to stifle his excitement and move slowly. Much to his relief, though, one of the first objects he located in the laboratory was his own coat that he'd been wearing when captured – yes! And in one of its inner pockets he felt for the object he hoped he'd find – a spare, folding pair of eyeglasses. They were still there, and he took them. Now he could see better, at least when by himself. He'd have to keep the glasses hidden from everyone here. It had been in his plans to 'accidentally' break a few things in Niebhausen's lab when the professor tried to put him to work and blame it on his poor eyesight. That still seemed like a good plan.

As for what else he could get away with . . . .

Using his temporarily corrected eyesight and the good ol' Gordon cunning, Jimmy found and pocketed a few more easy-to-conceal items that might help him on his sabotage quest. A packet of matches – always handy. Some small instruments for cutting and more elaborate lockpicking. He knew he had to be careful not to take anything big, anything conspicuous, anything that might really be missed, rather than thought to be merely misplaced. With gut-wrenching sorrow, he saw his mini-ornithopter sitting on one counter. How he wished he could take that from these villains as well! Its absence would be too much noticed, however – he couldn't risk it. What he could do, and did do, was subtly tinker with its inner workings so that it wouldn't be able to fly properly. If the professor tried winding it up and testing it, he'd get a spectacular demonstration of the ornithopter smashing itself to pieces against every object it encountered, and put it down as an ineffective child's toy rather than a useful invention.

But what proper laboratory of Professor Niebhausen wouldn't have in it lots and lots of handy chemicals? This, this, was what gave Jimmy his greatest excitement. It wasn't easy to read the labels in the dark, but it was possible. Too much of any one ingredient missing might be noticed too, but Jimmy didn't need much. Mixing together the compounds for an explosive putty almost made Jimmy's eyes mist up at the memory of his father – how much fun they'd had doing this sort of thing together! As with the mimicry, ventriloquism and sleight of hand, the lessons Jimmy had learned back then served him well now. It didn't take him long to whip up a few small but potentially very destructive globs. Combined with the matches and a few straws stolen from his sleeping pallet to use as fuses, these would give him real troublemaking potential. He also stole a stoppered glass vial which he filled with a potent acid. This would be more difficult to keep concealed, but it was also too potentially useful to pass up.

Unfortunately, Jimmy didn't have time to accomplish much more than that. A sound of the guards being restless from the hallway outside told him he had better skedaddle back to his locked cell, which he did, quickly. To distract them long enough, he used a bit of the mimicry and ventriloquism again to start another fight among them. It was a useful opportunity to try out some of the new vocabulary he'd learned from 'Maddy Luck' as well.

"What did you just call me?" one outraged guard yelled at the other.

Jimmy honestly wasn't sure, but he listened to the resulting fisticuffs between the two hench-hoodlums with great relish. When Professor Niebhausen came roaring back from somewhere nearby to scold the two guards and check on matters – he must sleep near his lab like at university, have to remember that, Jimmy thought – the young, eyeglass-free prisoner was back on his pallet and looking every inch the harmless little waif that he wasn't. The professor harrumphed, left Jimmy back in the cell with almost an apology for the grade of thug an organization could hire these days, verbally ripped both guards to shreds and disappeared back to wherever he'd come from, leaving behind two miserable, distracted sentries who now hated one another more than ever.

Yes, Jimmy thought. Things were definitely looking up . . . .

At least, until the start of a new day, they were. With all his excitement, terror and the thrill of midnight accomplishments, Jimmy had gotten precious little sleep the night before. Professor Niebhausen could put it down to the noisy idiot guards, and Jimmy continued to bemoan how much he ached in every bone as a result of the kidnapping ordeal and his thin, little straw pallet. He didn't need a great deal of acting skill to pretend he was nearly useless in the lab without sleep and without his glasses, however. Niebhausen seemed satisfied that the prisoner was meek and subordinate, and any great scientific assistance would have to come later. Jimmy didn't have to pretend dismay when Professor Niebhausen wound up his little ornithopter and it destroyed itself careening around the lab exactly as Jimmy had arranged for it to do. That tiny, cherished bit of tinkerwork had been the product of many months' development on his part, and he was glad that it couldn't be misused, but there was something unspeakably sad about the shattered blob of cogs, wires and foil that remained when it was done. He promised himself he'd work on rebuilding it as soon as he was free again.

Worse than the destruction of the mini-ornithopter, Ratch was back from wherever he'd gone with the man in the red hat as well. He still menaced Jimmy, and the professor still warned Ratch off. But in addition to Ratch's temper and general nastiness, there was something more . . . . unsettling . . . . about the way Ratch was behaving. Jimmy couldn't quite put his finger on what that was, but the slimy, greasy bastard seemed almost cheery about something. And Jimmy was pretty certain that anything that made Ratch happy would make Jimmy unhappy. Jimmy really did feel like a small, helpless captive when he had Ratch's leering, smarmy, one-eyed stare focused on him. He wanted the rotten, rotten man to slither back to whatever hellhole he'd come from and never return. In Ratch's presence, Jimmy shivered and caused an accident he hadn't actually intended, so that Niebhausen escorted Jimmy back to his cell to take a nap, since he didn't appear to be much good for anything else.

Jimmy needed that nap. But he couldn't sleep. Ratch was still in Professor Niebhausen's lab and Jimmy just had to be sure he could listen in on the conversation between the two senior members of the gang. As tired as he was, he stood on his wooden chair, removed the vent cover on his side of the duct again, and spied on his captors as best he could. He'd have heard a lot better if he dared to crawl into the duct itself again, but if he did that, there was too great a risk he'd be seen on the other side and caught at this activity. Therefore, he only heard snatches of talk. But some of those snatches chilled his blood.

"Caught another one of 'em." Jimmy heard Ratch chuckle.

One of who? Jimmy's heart sank. Tem? His sister? Had one of them been taken captive too? The thought almost made Jimmy's head swim. Was that why Ratch had been acting the way he was? It didn't seem likely that the slime-wad would be triumphant over catching cockroaches or anything as trivial as that. What Jimmy heard next from the man was even worse.

"Gonna kill 'em dead, this time."

'Em who? Ratch's addition of the 'this time' bit left Jimmy sure it was either Mandy or Tem that the two men were discussing, but which? Tem and Mandy's cover of being 'dead' was obviously blown, but perhaps not for very much longer. How much time did one of the two people Jimmy held nearest and dearest have before being killed by these villains? Jimmy could no longer hope for rescue now. The thrill he'd felt hours earlier vanished completely. Now, the only thing that mattered was wreaking as absolute much havoc on this gang and its headquarters as he could in hopes that it would give a trapped member of his family a chance to escape. He'd do whatever it took to buy his sister and Tem that chance. He had to be brave like his Uncle Jim and risk everything in order to bring this hidden hideout down, or at least bring it to the attention of authorities enough to amount to the same thing. Then he might perish in the rubble he created, and possibly one of his loved ones would perish with him, but it was clear that 'do or die' time had arrived sooner than expected. Jimmy hoped – he really, really hoped – that it would be only himself he sacrificed, that Tem or Mandy could take advantage of whatever chaos he caused and save themselves. But either way, he had to try. If Ratch and his buddies succeeded in killing the only family Jimmy had left, then Jimmy truly had nothing left to lose. Killing 'em dead, this time?

I don't think so!

Jimmy clenched his teeth and steeled himself for action. He needed a plan. How could he, an inexperienced combatant at best, manage to take down a facility this size armed with nothing more than some explosive putty and acid? Nothing seemed likely to succeed. But Jimmy remembered his father's words again: You can always do something. It was day. Jimmy knew that, in this windowless space below ground, because the electric lights in the hallway were turned on full. Last night they had been subdued, two out of every three lights turned off, presumably so as not to waste precious electricity and equipment while much of the complex slept and the electrics were not needed. All that electricity had to come from somewhere, though. A dynamo or generator of some kind on site? That was the likeliest option. Explosive putty could do quite a lot to wreck a generator if one knew where to put it on the machine, and Jimmy did. He'd be able to cause far more damage still if he could somehow get to one of the places where smuggled munitions were being stored. There, it wouldn't take much explosive, or fire or anything to cause a chain reaction blast-up of almost everything. Jimmy was willing to bet that was what Uncle Jim had done to the warehouse in Chicago. Jimmy would go with whatever option he could take. The former would do less damage, but the latter would increase the likelihood that his captured family member would perish along with him. Oh, please, please let that not happen! Please!

He knew they were both smart. He knew they were both more experienced and capable of surviving situations like this than he was. His Dad and Uncle Jim had never let each other down. Jimmy wasn't going to let them down. Without any more information than he had, he probably couldn't free another prisoner who wasn't in the same section of the hideout as himself. He was the only prisoner here. Well, that just meant more duct work explorations. Then, either the diversion or destruction, whatever he could do. Give his all and hope for the best.

Jimmy's heart was beating like a triphammer as he heard the conversation between Ratch and Niebhausen end, and what sounded like both men leaving the lab. He couldn't be sure what exactly was happening outside. Even if he'd been poised to peer out the small doorway window of his cell into the hall, he knew from trying that earlier he wouldn't be able to see much more than the guards' heads. Was Professor Niebhausen as well as Ratch out of the lab? More importantly, would he be staying out of it for any length of time? That was the crucial question. The vent in Jimmy's closet led only into the lab, but the other vents on the opposite side of the lab? Still unexplored territory, but the only option Jimmy had left. If, that is, Professor Niebhausen would be gone long enough for Jimmy to slip into one of those other ducts without getting caught first.

You can do this.

When several minutes passed without the sound of anyone returning to the laboratory, Jimmy decided he had to risk it. Moving fast and as stealthily as he could, Jimmy gathered up his precious concealed possessions and slithered through the ventilation duct again. On his way to one of the lab's opposite vents, he grabbed up the sad remains of his mini-ornithopter. No sense leaving it now. Hopefully Professor Niebhausen wouldn't want to disturb the nap he thought his former pupil was taking. If the professor came back and saw that the shattered device was missing, Jimmy hoped he'd think Ratch or one of the guards was responsible instead. Anything to cause more trouble right now.

Jimmy hoped he chose ducts wisely as he picked one of the two available and headed into the bowels of parts unknown. Past the lab, the duct he had entered ran in a long, straight line along what must be the hideout's main hallway, with shorter duct branches, some of them too narrow to squeeze through, leading toward other rooms. This facility couldn't be very old, even if the cave system was older. The ducts were too clean; the materials and wiring too modern. At least he didn't have to worry about giving himself away by sneezing in the dust. Jimmy drew his forward progress to a halt as, through the vents, he heard Ratch's distinctive, nasally, high-pitched voice again.

"It's done?" Jimmy heard Ratch ask.

What? Was what done?

The deeper voice that Jimmy had learned to recognize as belonging to the hated man in the red hat came back with a terrible answer.

"West is finished."

West!

Jimmy sucked in his breath sharply and almost couldn't let it out again. He was too late! He knew from the way the man in the red hat put it that Tem, rather than Mandy, had been the one captured. And now Tem must be dead. Dead and beyond Jimmy's ability to save. Jimmy's vision blurred and grief sharper than any stab wound made him want to cry out, though he remained silent by sheer force of will. Tem – finished! Of all of them, Jimmy had thought that Tem was capable of surviving anything. But then, Jimmy had believed Uncle Jim was capable of surviving anything too . . . .

James Ulysses Gordon blinked away his tears and remained quiet and unmoving while Ratch and the man in the red hat walked away from where they'd been standing. But if looks could kill, the glare of hate in his eyes now would have been enough to melt these steel ducts. First those . . . those sons of sea-cucumbers had killed his Mom and Uncle Jim. Now they had taken from him the big brother/brother-in-law he'd looked up to all his life, taken his sister's husband from all of them. For that they were going to pay, and pay as dearly as Jimmy could make them pay, if it took every last breath in his body. It was a much grimmer, and much more dangerous, Gordon who allowed only a few of the hot, salty drops to shed down his cheeks for Artemus West before moving ahead through the ductworks once more.

Oh yes, there would be a reckoning.

Jimmy wanted to find the weapons cache first as his best possible option. He wanted to cause maximum destruction even if he couldn't escape it himself, now that he knew there was no escape for Tem either. But he had no indication that he'd be able to get anywhere near the munitions stores, no idea where they were, if there were any being stored at the moment. So when he heard the semi-familiar, loud humming noise of a large generator, he headed toward this less destructive but still desirable target as best he could through the ducts. Once, he had to come all the way out of the ducts to cross another open room space again, and he only narrowly avoided being seen, ducking behind a stack of file boxes to avoid more guards before he could climb back in. But with bitter determination, he finally came to what he was looking for – the generator room. The source of all of the underground complex's power and light was here, a gigantic, black-red-and-steel spider of man-made machinery, thick support 'legs' rooting that vast, vibrating thorax to the cement floor, beautiful and terrible to behold.

Time to make the spider go bye-bye!

As an added bonus, Jimmy saw another set of complex machinery, along with what appeared to be telephone and telegraph cables stationed in the same room, mere yards from the generator itself. The arachnid metaphor was apt indeed – this was the center of the complex's web, its nerve center. Better and better. Jimmy would be able to take out the electricity and the gang's communication equipment all at once. Of course, there should have been guards stationed in the room itself to protect such a precious resource, but what employee could stand to be this close to the humming throb of the generator for more than a few minutes without being driven to irritability by it? Jimmy was glad of the lack of oversight as he climbed down from the duct through this room's vent cover and placed his explosive charges where they would do the most impressive and permanent damage to the generator possible. For good measure, he poured his vial of strong acid onto the communications cables, where it began smoking and doing its work instantly. Jimmy knew his acids. Once this one ate through the insulation on the cables the liquid wouldn't stop there. Assuming any part of the cables survived the destruction of the generator, it wouldn't do so for long.

The problem remaining was the length of Jimmy's straw fuses. The straw was dry enough to stay lit once Jimmy took a match to it, but he'd have no way of controlling the burn or knowing how many seconds the flame would take to reach the balls of explosive putty. Jimmy could do the most – and most permanent – damage to the huge generator by placing his putty in two different places on the body of the dynamo. He'd have time to light both, assuming the matches in his packet were all good, but that might not leave him enough time to climb back into the ventilation shaft and get very far through the ductwork before the explosions came. He managed to shove a crate underneath the entrance to his escape duct to make a climb into it easier and quicker. Then he rehearsed his planned actions before taking a deep breath and getting out the matches.

Do or die time, Gordon. Do or die.

He didn't want it to be do and die, but if that's what it took, so be it. He was as ready for this as he ever would be.

Jimmy lit the first match and fuse with hands that had been trained through a thousand chemistry experiments not to shake. Then he lit the second. And then he scrambled back up into the ductworks as fast as he could, not caring in the slightest how much noise he made, knowing that what was behind him was about to make a whole lot more.

Jimmy was right. He didn't have time to get very far before the twin explosions came.

He felt the concussive force all the way through the duct, felt deafened by the sound of the blasts and the scream of outraged metal machinery as the dynamo died. The world shook and collapsed underneath him and for the split second before he lost consciousness from the impact, he felt the memory he never wanted to relive again, of the hospital exploding behind him with his mother and Uncle Jim inside . . . .

Dust. Smoke. Hard to breathe. Again.

Head and ears ringing, Jimmy thought it was some kind of miracle when he awoke and didn't feel any bones broken. But not a very kind miracle, as it turned out. He hadn't escaped the destruction of the generator, not really. His arms were being gripped by two gang guards, one on either side of him barely visible in the darkness, and from the way he was held, it felt as if the guards wanted to pull him apart and make a wish. His befuddled brain wondered which of them would get the bigger piece . . . .

"Where?" A gruff, deep voice that was sort of familiar-sounding demanded.

Jimmy was tugged along limply, still barely conscious, until he felt some sort of clamp or vise grab him by the neck, right underneath his jawbone, as he was halted and hauled upright by a terrible strength. Not a vise . . . a hand . . . a big hand . . . . strangling him so that he couldn't breathe . . . .

Suffocating, what little presence of mind Jimmy had left could barely register the fact that when he opened his eyes he was staring straight into the cruel, cold orbs of the man he hated most in all the world. The man with the jagged scar running across his jaw. Close enough to see clearly despite the lack of electric light. Jimmy wanted to shout his hatred at that man, wanted to claw and to bite, if only he could . . . . But he was pinned and unable to get any air.

"Ratch!" the big man shouted, and somehow Jimmy heard the sound. The vise-like grip loosened and Jimmy sucked in as big a breath as he could. But the hand tightened around the front of his shirt instead, and even as the guards let go of his aching arms, Jimmy could do nothing more than gasp and try to fight the pain as the man in the red hat tossed him as if he were nothing more than a broken doll – tossed into the grip of an equally cruel tormentor with an eye patch . . . . "Do what you want with him!"

Ratch, fixing Jimmy with a sadistic grin that indicated he was all too happy to obey orders first, heaved the stunned boy over the shoulder of one of the guards and ordered the guard to follow his shuffling steps out of the disaster zone. From his new vantage point behind the guard's back, Jimmy saw other members of the gang stumbling through the rubble by the smoke-filled gleam of battery light beams. Professor Niebhausen was there, looking lost, and the man in the red hat gripped the professor by the front of his shirt too and screamed into Niebhausen's face.

"You! Fix this! Now!"

That was all Jimmy could take in before he passed out again.