ELEKTRA

O'Connell family history

The Potomac River House

Sue started block leave immediately after graduation. All of her classmates promised to stay in touch and most exchanged personal emails so that they could do so. Sue knew that this would be a promise made but never kept. She limited the email exchange to just three people – Stan, Melissa, and Nancy. She didn’t need to exchange contact information with her SOF partners. She would be seeing them soon enough at Ft. Bragg.

Along with the revolver, the box her grandfather had given had a set of keys to the house on the Potomac river, a letter from her grandfather, a note on the passcode for the security alarm and a memory stick. The letter was simple:

Sue, please accept the house as a graduation gift. It was a good place for me to hide and I suspect you will use it for the same purpose. Check out the wine cellar when youget there –especially the wood work on the wine racks. I hope to see you soon in Chautauqua.

All my love, Gramps

Sue loaded her clothes into her vintageT-bird and drove up I-95 to the house overlooking thePotomac River. It was an old farmhouse built in the 1880s. Originally, it had been the center of a larger dairy farm, but now was simply a few acres of woods, a house, an old carriage house that served as a garage and a boat house on the river. Sue opened the house, cleared the alarm system, and then proceeded to inspect the interior. Like all houses that hadn’t been occupied in some time, the house smelled of a mix of stale air and old memories. The memories got stronger as she walked up to her bedroom that she used when she was at William and Mary and Peter was in residence.

The house was small enough that it could easily handle one owner and one guest and little else. When Peter was the occupant, the house was filled with memorabilia from his tours as well as his extensive library of first editions of memoirs from the Far East, old maps, and a collection of leather bound works of Roman and Medieval classics as well as translations of Tolstoy (Peter’s favorite Russian author). The living room was now less cluttered. Peter’s favorite chair, table and reading lamp were probably in his place in Chautauqua along with most of the books, but still had a small collection of the classics and enough furniture to make the room comfortable.

Sue noticed that Peter had left her a well-stocked liquor cabinet and following his recommendation, she went to the basement to find a wine cellar with about 100 bottles of various French and California red wines. Sue assumed the reference to the woodwork implied a concealment of some sort and after tracing the wood along the back of the rack, she found the release for the concealment. What she hadn’t expected was a complete false wall and a full sized room behind the wall.

Sue turned on the light and a series of standard 60 watt light bulbs illuminated the room with a yellow glow. She realized the room was a Spartan mix of armory and computer research center. There was an old oak desk and rolling desk chair that belonged in a movie set from the 1930s. There was an antique Tiffany glass desk lamp. There was a large Caucasian rug on the floor and then the walls were covered with book shelves and a gun cabinet. In the gun cabinet, Sue found two short barreled shotguns (one pump, one autoloader), two rifles, and at the base of the glass covered case was an oak pistol rack.

Nestled in the pistol rack were a .22 High Standard, a 1911 .45, and a slot which Sue determined was designed for the Colt Python that her grandfather had given her in Buffalo. She pulled the pistol out of her shoulder bag, unloaded it, and put it back in its home. Below the pistols was an oak cabinet with three drawers. The first drawer held shotgun, rifle and pistol ammunition. Sue returned the .38 ammunition into the box in the drawer. The second drawer held cleaning gear for all of the weapons. The third drawer closest to the floor was empty.

On the wall across from the gun racks was a large LCD television screen that was mated to a desk top computer that looked to be an early Macintosh. Sue booted up the computer and the room went suddenly from the 1930s yellow light to the strong blue light from the screen. She used the passcode from the security alarm to access the computer which to her surprise already had her listed as one of the users. It was empty of files. Nothing.

For the first time since she left the Farm, Sue wished she had Melissa with her to see if there was some sort of virtual concealment on the computer. She could find nothing with her basic computer skills, so she inserted the memory stick that came with the keys and the instructions. The stick held a number of files including files on the various “special” modifications of the house (including several other concealments) and a file which outlined her grandfather’s notes on both his previous encounters with the NKVD, then KGB, and his suspicions regarding the death of her grandmother and her father. Sue opened the word file.

Sue, I prepared this brief so that you know what you are facing as you enter this new world. It is a worldwhere you have to be prepared for friends to be enemies and enemies friends. You need to understand the O’Connell legacy as well. I want to tell you the whole story when I see younext, but for now, you need to know the following:

I killed a man in France in 1944. He was a member of the Russian intelligence service and worked for a departmentcalled SMERSH. Yes, I realize you thought that was a creation of Ian Fleming’s imagination, but it was not. SMERSH was a counterintelligence arm of the NKVD and it was filled with killers. I killed the man because he was trying to kill me and my partner. The man’s name was Boris Vladimirych Beroslav and he was the son of Vladimir Beroslav, a Soviet NKVD colonel who rose in the ranks after the war to General officer status in the Second Chief Directorate – the Counterintelligence directorate - of the Soviet intelligence service. Boris Beroslav had a younger brother, Vladimir Vladimirych Beroslav who was a First Chief Directorate Colonel when the USSR collapsed.

I believe the Beroslav father and son killed your grandmother. We were in Berlin at a time when the Cold War was nearly World War III and the Soviets were conducting black ops in the American sector – trying to eliminate our sources as fast as we were trying to recruit new ones. I was a good recruiter and we knew that they knew Iwas their biggest American problem in Berlin. There were two attempts on my life which were reported as criminal acts because we didn’t want to be the ones who started a shooting war at the Berlin Wall. I found out later that Beroslav the elder was trying to kill me when your grandmother was killed in the car accident. As you know in our trade, there are no such things as coincidence.

By now, you know about AGAMMENON. I tried to talk your father out of the operation, but he was convinced that he needed to do the job. It was a dangerous time in US-USSR rela- tions and there is no doubt his work allowed the FBI and CIC to track down key Soviet sources in the US and in NATO countries. The problem was that after the USSR collapsed, most of the KGB field operators ended up in the Russian mafia. I think one of the seniors in the Russian mob was Vladimir Beroslav. I think he killed your father both as part of the vendetta against me and because your father did not agree to work with the Russian mafia. It was never in the AGAMMENON mission to work against the mafia and your father paid for this with his life.

Sue, you are now the only O’Connell in the field and you need to know that the SVR and the Russian Mafia are dangerous adversaries who will eventually find out that you are the new case officer in the family. You need to be careful and trust no one except your closest friends.

Please come visit me in the new place as soon as you can. With love,

Gramps.

The note ended and there were no files attached. Sue was convinced there was more material, somewhere. Perhaps the material was in the house or with her grandfather in Western New York or secreted someplace else. There were no clues and Sue was not ready to start a room by room search. She had a plane to catch tomorrow for Christmas with her mother and brother and, if there was time after that, a brief trip to see her grandfather. If his premise was correct and this was a vendetta that had started in 1944, Sue was convinced a few more days wouldn’t make much difference one way or the other.

An O’Connell Christmas holiday

Sue spent the night in the house on the river. She had trouble thinking of it as “her house” at this point, but that was certainly how her grandfather viewed it. There was little in the pantry for breakfast, so she made some black tea, ate a granola bar that she carried in her overnight bag and then called the Dulles airport shuttle. Sue had decided to keep her car and the majority of her clothes locked up at the house and just take the carry-on bag to Chicago. Sue had no interest in leaving her vintage Thunderbird in airport parking over the holidays – there were too many ways that that could turn into tragedy. She would return to the house after the holidays and drive from the house to Fayetteville a few days in advance of her reporting date.

The shuttle arrived on time and took her to Dulles. The Southwest flight to Midway airport had one stop, but no plane change and Sue slept from the time they closed the door at Dulles until the aircraft landed in Midway. She hadn’t realized how tired she was and how weird the last few weeks had been. She needed to talk to her mom, but wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell her.

ELEKTRA was out of the question – it wouldn’t help to talk about it and it would only make her mom worry. Sue hadn’t thought about what she was going to tell her mom about Mary. It certainly fell into the category of need to know, but Sue also needed to talk to someone about the betrayal and treachery. Sue realized that she would have to share her time with her brother and while he had clearances, he definitely didn’t have a need to know. These were the thoughts that ran through her head in the taxi to her mom’s house.

About a mile out from the house, Sue realized that her world was now entirely different. Instead of wondering about the normal family issues of Christmas presents, meals, and family conversations, she was suddenly worrying about compartmentation, tradecraft and how or if she could have a heart to heart with her mom about her new life or her grandfather’s view on his family’s “curse.” Was this the way that life would be from now on? How does a case officer share all of her concerns? Does she ever share her concerns? And what about her mother? Does she still carry these around with her?

Barbara answered the first knock on the door. She gave Sue a hug before she even got inside. Through the narrow entryway, Sue could see a Christmas tree waiting to be decorated, a fire in the fireplace and Christmas cards on the mantle. The holidays were certain to be relaxing and free from all of the concerns she had during the flight.

They spent the first few hours talking about the Christmas plans, last minute shopping trips and how good it was going to be to have the family together. Her brother Bill was scheduled to testify in the US District Court in Washington court on 15 December, so they had tomorrow to be together and then Bill would arrive late on 16 December and they would have a few days to be a family again. Sue started to cry. Normal was something she hadn’t expected and the emotion of it all was hard to take.

After a bath, a bowl of her mother’s beef stew, and a glass of wine, Sue felt more relaxed and decided it was time to have a conversation with her mother that needed to happen before Bill arrived. “Mom, I need to tell you some things before we go shopping tomorrow and before Bill arrives.” Her mother nodded and waved them away from the table and to the living room near the fireplace. “The final exercise was not what I expected.”

With this ice breaker, the story flooded out. Sue told her mom about the trip to the archives, her meeting with her grandfather, Mary’s treachery, and the final confron- tation in the hotel. She stopped short of ELEKTRA simply because she didn’t know how her mom would respond. The story was weird enough without the addition of double agents and future operations. Barbara sat on the couch and listened. She never interrupted and didn’t touch her wine throughout the whole story.

When Sue was finished, Barbara shook her head. “My God, what a twisted life Mary must have had. I never suspected she would become a traitor. What do you think they are going to do with her?”

“No one said and I didn’t ask. I was just happy to be out of there.”

“No doubt, dear. I find it interesting though that theFBI hasn’t made it public yet. I wonder if they are going to try to double her back against the GRU? It would probably save Mary from isolation in some supermax prison, though she is certainly going to pay for her crimes, eventually. The Russians will be after her eventually as well. Ugly. Just ugly. “

Barbara took a sip of her wine and looked at her daughter. “Dear, I have to admit, I knew more than I told you about your father’s last operation. We shared everything, but it didn’t seem to make sense to try to explain it to you over Thanksgiving. You had plenty on your mind and I had planned to tell you after graduation. In the long run, you probably learned more than I would have told you even now. It was not something I wanted to share with you or Bill.”

“Mom, we are a family. Don’t you think you owed it to me?”

“Yes, I owed it to you, but it is hard to stop keeping secrets once you get started. I suspect you already know that by now.”

The comment hit Sue hard. She had just accused her mother of not being forthcoming just after she was very selective of the truth about her own operational commitments. Of course, she could argue in her head that her mother no longer had the “need to know” but that just an excuse. Her mother was right, once you started keeping secrets, it was hard to stop that internal voice from asking the question “does she have the need to know?”

Sue thought about all the years that her mom and dad were in “the trade” and how many times they kept secrets from each other, from their family and, especially from Sue and Bill. What sort of people do case officers become as they work year after year in this environment? Surely the most successful had to be slightly sociopathic. This was not arelaxing conversation inside her head and she could see her mom was waiting for her to continue the conversation. Sue decided to use a classic technique– misdirection– to keep the conversation alive, but away from what was stomping around inside her head. “Mom, I need to see Gramps before I return to Ft. Bragg.”

“I think you should. In fact, I thought that maybe we all should visit him for New Years Eve. I haven’t raised it with him or with Bill, but we could easily drive from here on the 30th then spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with him and the return to Chicago on the 2nd or you could go directly from Buffalo to Dulles and then on to Ft. Bragg. “

“Sounds like a plan, mom.”

The next morning, Sue awoke to a completely silent house. It was early morning, false dawn as some call it and she laid in bed enjoying the quiet for some time. Eventually, she heard her mother in the kitchen and she decided to join her. She pulled on her sweat shirt and sweat pants, attached the running prosthetic and wandered into the living room. It was at that point she realized why the house was so quiet. Overnight, it had snowed another eight inches and was snowing hard still. Not a blizzard, at least not a blizzard by Chicago standards. There was no wind and the snowflakes just drifted slowly by the windows as they fell to the ground. The house was insulated by the snow and Sue thought it was lovely.

“Good morning, dear. Did I wake you?” Her mother was filling the French press with hot water from a copper kettle on the stove. The smell of coffee filled the room. Two cups and hot milk were already on the counter. “Would you like me to add some cocoa to the mix?” This was how Sue learned to drink coffee and while she had stopped making it that way when she joined the Army, she was filled with nostalgia as soon as her mom said it.

“Yes, please. And, no, you didn’t wake me up. I was sitting in bed enjoying the early morning silence.”

“Snow storm last night off the lake. I would guess we will have a bit of trouble if we want to go downtown today. Still, the trains should be running and the station is only 10 minutes by car.”

Sue realized that she had no presents for either her mom or for Bill and she knew that this might be the only chance shehad to get them if she wanted to go into the city.“Mom, I need to do some Christmas shopping, but I don’t need to go into the city if you think we can find things in your town.”

“Sue, you can find just about anything in the local stores. That will make it easier for both of us and, once Bill gets into town, if we decide we want to go see the city decorations, we can do so anytime in the next two weeks.” As she was talking, Barbara used a tablespoon to put cocoa in Sue’s cup. Then she added some hot milk and stirred. After that, she added the coffee and additional milk. It was perfect.

“We may be a bit snowbound today, but the Rover will easily get us into town for some shopping. We will enjoy breakfast, let the snowplows clear the roads and then we will head into town. Did you bring anything resembling winter gear? And, not to be too blunt, but what do you wear on your prosthetic?”

Sue took another sip from the coffee. “Mom, I honestly don’t have any Chicago winter kit. Can I borrow your sweater and coat again? As to my foot, it is waterproof, but I have a pair of hiking boots that I just wore in Buffalo. I doubt the Chicago weather is worse.”

“I still wonder why your grandfather decided to stay in Western New York in the winter. He could live anywhere and instead he is living in a place where there are two seasons – winter and the 4th of July.”

“Mom, you were the one who told me he was from there. And he certainly knows the city. He talked about growing up there when it was a tough, industrial city. I suppose he doesn’t mind the snow. And, after all, what sort of schedule does an eighty five year old man have to keep? If the weather is crap, then he just stays at home, right?”

“Don’t count on it. Last winter, he complained they didn’t get enough snow for him to use his cross country skis. He also skates at the local rink which is about a mile away and he walks to the rink. He is not about to spend his time house bound.”

Barbara’s cellphone rang. It was a distinctive ringtone – the opening two measures from the 60s TV show “Dragnet.” She turned to Sue. “It’s Bill.”

“Mom, don’t even tell me what my ringtone is, ok?”

“Chicken.” Barbara picked up the phone. “Hello,dear.”

The conversation didn’t last long and it didn’t sound very promising. Sue started her second mug of mocca coffee and waited for her mom to come back into the kitchen.

“Our snow last night turned into a blizzard in DC this morning. Well, it is about three inches of snow but that is on top of an inch of ice. The city is closed. Bill’s testimony will be delayed by a day or two. He wanted us to know as soon as he heard. He will be here by the 20th for certain because if he hasn’t testified by that time, the court will be taking a Christmas recess. So, it’s just us girls.”

“More time for shopping, baking, and, assuming you are up to being beaten, games!”

“Well, let’s think about breakfast and then go downtown. Cheese and bacon omlettes sound ok?”

The trip to her little bit of suburban Chicago was almost too wonderful. The village had multiple coffee shops,boutiques and bookstores. Sue was able to purchase gifts for both Bill and her mom and still had time for a coffee and a Danish pastry that was tasted homemade because it was made at one of the coffee shops while she was waiting over her first cup of coffee. The second cup was perfect with the warm from the oven pastry.

Barbara walked up with her coffee. She dropped her phone on the table in disgust. “Sue, the call was from the watch office in Langley. They wanted me to know that Peter was found murdered in the house in Western New York two hours ago. He had one round in his head. It looks like a sniper shot. He had a pistol in his hand and appeared to have been trying to get out of his house when he was shot. The FBI has been called in. It looks like a professional hit.”

Sue was stunned. She could only think of her last moments with her grandfather in Schwables. The dark room, plates and coffee cups on the table, and the old man looking her in the eyes and giving her a hug. Now he was gone. Sue started to cry.

“Sue, the reason Langley called was they wanted both of us to know. Me because of what happened to your Dad. You because of what they called ELEKTRA. Sue, what is ELEKTRA and why does it have anything to do with your grandfather?”

“Mom, it is complicated and I think we are going to have time to talk about this as we drive to Chautauqua Lake to Gramps’ house. For now, it is an operation that I agreed to do with the Agency and the Army after I go back on duty in January. It is a CI operation.”

“Oh, Lord. Not again.”

“Mom, it was the right thing to do and it is certainly the right thing to do now. What I want to know is, what do we do next? This is your turf, mom. I get the route and I get why we are here. But, can we go home or do we leave for New York from here?”

“I have a neighbor who is the head of Cook County Sheriff SWAT. I will give him a call as soon as we can find a Kroger’s where I can buy a throw away phone. He will help.”

They drove to a local Kroger’s and picked up two phones which they paid for with cash. The phones were pay as you go and came with 100 minutes preloaded. One phone was on the Verizon network, the other on ATT. While her mom did the purchase and bought some basic food and travel essentials, Sue opened the bag with the cellphones and added both her and her mother’s credit cards. Barbara returned, started the car and headed to another park in the area. This one was directly on the lake. She pulled up at the first parking space that allowed her to face the Rover toward the entrance way. She called her neighbor in Cook County Sheriff ’s Department. The call was short, to the point, and Sue was surprised how easy her mother convinced her friend to help. When Barbara hung up, she saw Sue looking at her with the “Well?” face.

“Jim is dispatching two undercover detectives in a panel van to our neighborhood right now. They will provide overwatch until he can get over to the house with a pair of his SWAT guys. No lights, no sirens, no uniforms. Jim has a key to our house and I have a key to his so he will just enter the house and do a room by room check. He will call when that’s done. Probably have an hour and a half to wait. I know a place where we can hang out for that time.”

“Mom, you had a plan all along, didn’t you?”

“Something like that, dear. I certainly didn’t expect it would be needed because of your grandfather. That was a shock.”

“So, let’s get to the safe site and start planning our next move.”

“That’s my girl,” Barbara started the Rover and pulled back on the road.

—————————-

It took 20 minutes to get to the new site. It was a diner along the state road heading North named Dorothy’s. It was a throwback to the 1950s. The front of the diner was clearly an old Pullman dining car that had been on blocks since sometime after World War II. Squared off behind the “dining car” was a small building that served as the kitchen. There were six stools at the counter and two tables at thewindows with only two seats at each table. There were no cars in the parking lot. Sue didn’t see any signs of life. “Is it open?”

“Open for us, dear.” Barbara walked to the back door on the building behind the dining car. As she approached the back, Barbara pulled her wool, Turkish scarf over her head, just covering her hair, but not covering her face. Sue followed and did the same with her paisley wool scarf. Barbara knocked on the door and a short, stout man in his sixties with an enormous mustache and not a single hair on his head answered the door. He was in a t-shirt and very old work pants – Sue’s father would have called them dungarees – and lime green Crocs.

“Anna, what can I do for you? You need a cut of good halal meat?”

“Mike, can my daughter and I sit down in the dinerfor a while? We need some peace and quiet and we need to be someplace where no one can find us.”

“My good friend, if you need peace and quiet, Mike can give you this. Pull your truck to the back, we enter here. Your friend was cleaning after a long day of feeding stew to customers. Still enough stew for three and always there is tea.”

“Mike, you are my most trusted friend. I knew you were the right man for me.”

Barbara handed the keys to the Rover to Sue and walked into the building. Sue pulled the vehicle into the back parking lot, combat parked the vehicle so it could drive away quickly and returned to the door and knocked.

“Ms. Janice. You do not need to knock at Mike’s place. You are family. You are Anna’s daughter. You come in anytime.”

Sue entered a very small, but very clean kitchen area. She immediately kicked off her boots and placed them next to her mother’s boots. She hoped “Mike” would not notice the difference in shape between the left sock and the right sock. Mike took her through kitchen area and then into a small room at the very back. It served as the office, the living room and, if Sue had this correct, Mike’s bedroom as well. The floors, walls and couches were covered with Central Asian carpets. Barbara had already sat down and Sue joined her. Mike arrived almost immediately with a tray of pistachios, cashews, dried fruit and two glasses of very hot, very sweet tea. He said nothing as he entered and said nothing as he departed.

“Mike, please let us know if you see anyone come by who does not belong.”

“Anna, do not worry. Mike will protect you. Mike will be your guard. I have the shotgun you gave me. Beautiful gun. Do not worry.” He left and closed a parquet door that was also covered in a very thin, very old Persian silk carpet.

“Mike?”

“He was an Iranian Kurd who worked with me years ago. He was an asset in Northern Iran and I used to meet him in Istanbul about once every six to eight weeks. Among other things, he was a carpet dealer. I made sure he got out of Iran when we stopped working together. We put him in the relocation program and he ended up here. He was the one who decided to run a diner – he had more than enough money from his final payment to do anything a middle class American might want to do. He liked to cook. I never knew where he was until one summer day I was cruising along this highway and pulled over to see what sort of meal you could get at Dorothy’s. It was a surprise to find Mike.”

“What is his real name?”

“He is a Nestorian Christian so he really is Mike, well, Micah.”

“Are we safe here?”

“We are safe here for now. My only concern is that we don’t leave a trail of breadcrumbs that brings someone who might harm Mike. He has risked too much already.”

That was obviously a story that would have to wait. Sue picked up the glass cup and carefully tasted the hot tea. It was sweet tea with apple juice. It was delicious. Sue grabbed a handful of pistachios and dried apricots and started to eat.

“Danish and coffee and now tea and dried fruit?”

“Mom, you know the rule one of any operation – always eat when you can.”

“I thought rule one was always pee when you can.”

“Well, ok. So always eat when you can is rule two.”

“Agreed.” Barbara started drinking her tea and eating pistachios.

“Now what?”

“We wait for Jim’s call. If we don’t get a call by 1800hrs, we have Mike give us dinner, we drink tea with him until we get a call or we decide that there is some trouble at the house. I promised to call Jim again at 2100hrs if he didn’t call before that. If the house is under surveillance by these villains, then we leave from here and head to Buffalo. “

“And Bill?”

“The watch office said that FBI headquarters had already informed Bill and he would head West as soon as his testimony was complete. He will drive there in his Bureau car since this may end up being a case that has a link he needs to know about. If nothing else, we may need his access to LEO databases and his trunk full of guns.”

“Don’t you have a trunk full of guns, mom?”

“Ok, your interrogation techniques are too much for me. Yes, the Rover has a shotgun and two more pistols in a cavity next to the spare tire. It has a cipher lock. Don’t forget the number – it is 7229.”

“Got it.”

“We need to sort out what happened at Peter’s house and that may be hard if the Buffalo FBI Field office has already taken over the case. Bill may be able to help, but we are going to need to play the role of grieving relatives so we can get into the house as soon as possible. We need to sort out why Peter was killed.”

“Did he ever tell you the story of his series of run ins with the Beroslav family?”

“No, Sue. How did you find out?”

“He gave me the keys to the Potomac River house and down in the basement is a secure storage room. I pulled up a letter he wrote to me on a computer in the room. “ As Sue proceeded to describe the details from the note, she started to quietly sob.

“Dear, Peter had a good long life and it appears he died fighting. I’m not sure he would want us to grieve.”

“But he would want us to find his killers.”

Less than an hour later, Jim called Barbara and told her that the Cook County team had identified surveillance on the house. If the individuals transitioned from surveillance to breaking and entering the house, the SWAT contingent working with the Cook County sheriff ’s office would arrest the individuals and sort out the rest downtown. Barbara said thanks and rang off.

“Time to go” was all she said. After farewells to Micah, Barbara asked him to give her the duffel bag he was holding for her.

“Sure, Anna. You need my help? You need some muscle?”

“Mike, the kind of trouble we have right now is like the old days. We need to just disappear for a while. Our friends in the police will help, but it will be easier for them if we all disappear. Can you afford to go away for a few days – someplace where no one knows where you would be?”

“Anna, I am a Kurd. I know how to disappear. I will leave right after you. No phones, no mail, no credit card, no problems. After Iranians chasing me in Shiraz, don’t you think Mike can disappear?”

“Of course, my friend. Just for a few days. You can be back by Christmas. By then, the police will have done their job.”

“Just like the old days, Anna. I will follow instructions.”

Sue walked out to the Rover with her mother. Once they got to the vehicle, they opened the back and accessed the compartment near the spare tire. Sue took the shotgun out and put it in the low visibility set of clips under the dashboard.She left the two pistols in their concealment – if they needed that many guns all at once, they were in far more trouble than Sue figured. Barbara opened the duffle bag and pulled out $5,000 in $20 dollar bills and passed half to Sue. She pulled out a new purse and a set of New York license plates.

“Can you put these on front and back while I make the change over in docs?”

“Sure, mom.”

“By the way, there are three changes of clothes in the duffle, they should fit both of us – at least well enough – and an overnight kit of toothbrushes, hair brushes and soap. The rest is going to have to be acquired on the road.” Sue nodded and got to work using her Swiss army knife screw driver blade to change the plates. Once they were changed, she handed the old Illinois plates to her mom.

“We will store these with my docs in the concealment in the spare tire compartment. Don’t worry, the NY plates are current and registered to the VIN number on the Rover and in my new name. Well, another old name – Anna Percheron. It’sone of the aliases I used years ago. Home, Fredonia New York. Occupation: Adjunct professor, Fredonia State.”

“Does that hold up?”

“Well, for now it will. Fredonia State is on Christmas holiday. Once we are back in New York and matched up with your brother, we will return to Illinois plates and my identity. It is just to be sure that we don’t leave too easy a trail of breadcrumbs.”

Barbara pulled out a curly red headed wig from the bag and put it on. She handed Sue a New York Yankees baseball cap. “With your short hair, no one is going to notice two women in the car until we get out. If there is any question, you are just going to have to be my butch partner. You ok with that?”

“No problems, mom. I’ve been worse.”

“OK, then. You drive. Remember – no speeding or anything that gets us into a traffic stop. We need to be the most boring pair of dykes on the road.”

“I can do boring. I would like to do boring, but it seems it doesn’t come with the O’Connell name.”

“Not for now.”

After a half hour on the local roads, Sue transitioned to state highway that would take them to the interstate. A few minutes later that she said, “Mom, we have some guys following us. Three Caucasian males, dark jackets.”

“I thought so. Turn my mirror out a bit so I can watch from my side.” Sue used the cruise control on the Rover to slow down one mile per hour per half mile. In about two miles, the vehicle appeared in the mirror. It was a Black Explorer with Illinois plates and a rental bar code on windshield. As soon as they saw Sue had slowed, they did the same.

“Friend?”

“Sue, my pals would be driving classic police undercover vehicles – gray Crown Victorias or black suburbans. I have been trying for years to explain they weren’t real discrete and, honestly, they replied, they didn’t care all that much. They definitely don’t use to rental cars.”

“So, what’s the plan, Anne?” Sue smiled at her mom.

“This is a fairly lonely highway, so I want you to accelerate to 65 for about a mile and then stop in the middle of the road. OK?”

“Didn’t you just say something about being discrete?”

“We can’t get to New York with this tail.” Barbara’s voice was muffled as she reached under the dash for the shotgun and Sue pushed the Rover to its red line. Barbara pulled the shotgun out and then dropped her seat back to almost flat,unbuckled her seat belt and crawled into the back seat as Sue continued to accelerate.

“When you stop, I want you to use the hatch release. The hatch will go up on its own. When you hear my shot, accelerate immediately. Clear?”

“Check. By the way, what if it is just a couple of tourists?”

Barbara put the shotgun into battery – the reassuring sound of the pump locking into place. “Oh, well…”

Sue stopped at the first curve and popped the hatch. “You might want to cover your ears, dear.”

They could both hear the Explorer accelerating to catch up. As the Explorer came around the curve the driver saw the Rover stopped in the middle of the road and skidded to a halt about 10 meters from the Rover. Sue covered her ears.

Bang. Bang.

Before the Explorer had stopped, Barbara had put two rounds into the radiator of the SUV. Sue accelerated and Barbara reached over and closed the hatch from the back seat. Two passengers got out of the Explorer and opened fire. The 9mm handgun rounds were not accurate enough to hit the Rover as it accelerated away.

Sue shouted “ALL GOOD?” Sue’s ears were still ringing from the noise of the shotgun.

Barbara crawled back into passenger seat, cleared the shotgun and returned it to its home under the dash. She then reached up and pulled the earplugs out of her ears.“What did you say, dear?”

“YOU COULD HAVE GIVEN ME A PAIR OF THOSE.” Sue was shouting – over compensating for the ringing in her ears.

“Sorry. Only one set in the Rover. You know the ringing will stop… eventually. I think we are good for a while. Two in the radiator means at least one ended up in the engine block. No one hurt, and I doubt the followers are going to report to the police given their response by shooting at us. Eventually, they may have some real explaining to do to the rental car company, but that’s not our problem.”

“Just another quiet weekend with the O’Connells, eh?”

“Exactly, but we recommend tourists don’t get too close for comfort.” Sue could see her mom’s smile reflected in the glow of the dashboard as they saw the I-90 East sign pointing to the on ramp ahead.