21. determination of the Red Dragon

“What have you got for me Smithers?” the Red Dragon bade.

“We have been focusing on the phone in Mexico.  All the signals from the phones at the house where Vincent was …”

“DON’T mention that name again” she snapped.

“Yes ma’am.”  He pushed his glasses back up his nose, and continued his report, looking at his notes.  “The phones at the house all predictably lost their signals in the same minute.  The phone in Mexico seems to be turned off during the day because it disappears from the historical network logs most of the day; but the network has been overloaded this past 24 hours, anyway.  Another phone from nearby the house in New York sent a text to the phone in Mexico, and when that phone was turned on, we were able to identify a single cell tower in Mexico that sent the message to the phone.  I’m sending the text message to your screen right now … and as you can see, we have the correct phones.

“The cell tower has about a 25 mile actual signal radius as well as we can figure; that’s only about 1960 square miles, so we sent a team of GVT6000s down there to look for clues.”

The Red Dragon replied “send the entire available fleet.  I don’t care if they have pictures on the front page of the Hindustan Times.  That’s got to be that whore’s daughter, hiding down there.  She’s a young city girl from New England, so focus on the industrialized areas first.  Fly a disk in front of every car and look in the windows if you have to.  Find her and her escort, and bring them both to me.”

“Yes ma’am.  We have her face from her friend’s social media posts when we initially gathered data on …” he caught himself, knowing if said her name, Ms. Draghôné would snap “… the whore.”

“Now what about that whore?  What have you found out about her escape?”

“The vehicles at the house all scattered in the dark, except for the van.  We found traces of them via road cameras, but the sky was cloudy, so no satellite images at night.  It cleared this morning, but all we found was the rental car.  We sent agents, but the vehicle look abandoned — left for the rental car companies to collect.  We haven’t found the bus, but it’s not on the roads, as far as we can tell with the time-limited satellite data; you know, it’s a complete snapshot, but it’s just a snapshot.  We figure that the bus is covered with a tarp, hidden under trees, or something.  We are using the Sally Assistant to analyze the entire upstate New York imagery from the last month, and look for changes that may correlate with a hidden bus.  That will be complete within the hour.  Once we have targets, we can send GVT6000s to check them out.

“We of course looked for car rentals.  None in the homeowner’s name this morning, but we don’t think they would be foolish enough to do that anyway, when someone else with them could do it.  We did find 7 late-night truck and van rentals at a late-night U-Haul center last night within 2 hours drive of the house.  Road camera data was able to trace 3 of them to various locations as far south as Long Island, but we had little confidence those leads would pan out; we sent local drone agents for video, and we found no trace of our targets, only other random people confirming they were the wrong leads.”

“There is only one real problem we have encountered.  I’m sorry ma’am, but you’re not going to like it.”  Smithers stopped a moment, trying not to cringe.

“And … ?” the Red Dragon scowled.

“The GVT6000 at the house has disappeared.  We have no communication with it.  The retrieval team said the new drone-interface-pilot found nothing there.  The tracer signal is not functioning, either.”

The Red Dragon stared Smithers deep in the eyes, as laser beams and swords shot from hers into his.  He knew she was moody, and quite bitchy at times … most times, but usually more respectful and patient with him and his dedication to her, but he had never seen this level of anger in her before.  Several seconds passed, before she finally said “find it.”