Goin' the Extra Mile

Mary Jo Melendez = ex-USN Master-at-Arms and head of security for ACVE West

Mario Di Stefano = PI, ex-FBI agent, and MJM’s husband

Li-Ping = MJM and Mario’s adopted daughter

Nuru = MJM and Mario’s adopted son

Manuel (Manolo) = Angela Lopez’s autistic son

Angela Lopez = Manuel’s mother and MJM’s good friend

Kip Alston = programmer at ACVE and Angela’s husband

Marguerite Fontaine = physician, expert in prosthetics, and the MECHs friend

Jena Crowley and Ned Wakefield = the MECHs, ex-marines, and cyborgs

Felipe Garcia = local cop in the Silicon Valley (detective)

Carmenza Ramirez = another security officer at ACVE West

Zhang Wei = Chinese security VIP

Jang Wi = Wei’s aide

Jerry Jackson = FBI agent

Jacob Bell = Mario’s partner at the PI firm, ex-FBI agent, and ex-ACVE security

Benoit Lachapelle = Marguerite’s uncle

Weh Li = Chinese-American triad leader

Roberto (Bob) Barrera = SF Examiner reporter

Denise Paget = DGSE agent

Bertrand Marceau = DGSE agent

Martin Green = cultural attaché in the U.S. Embassy and CIA station head

Jacques Duguay = cultural attaché in the French Embassy and DGSE station head

Part One: Livin’ the California Dream

Perhaps the greatest utopia would be if we could all realize that no utopia is possible: no place to run, no place to hide, just take care of business here and now.—Jack Carroll

Chapter One

My husband Mario sometimes thinks I have a death wish. As I sprawled on the hood of a Honda Accord, left-hand fingers hooked into the windshield gutter and hanging on for dear life, I decided he has a point. I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life, but only riding a bull in a rodeo would beat this one.

My kids were screaming from inside the car. The Asian driver was glaring at me as I continued to pound on the windshield using my heavy silver belt buckle from New Mexico as a small hammer. I was trying to break it; the glass was already starred enough so he couldn’t see well. That meant he was weaving along the road, moving a bit more forward than sideways and bouncing off a few curbs along the way.

OK, Mary Jo. What’s your next brilliant maneuver? Thought it was natural that I, the kids’ mother, would lose it and go after their kidnapper. The ride on that hood had left me somewhat more calculating. Nothing like a Hollywood stunt ride atop a speeding car to calm you down, right? That cross between Texas longhorn and Brahman would’ve been an easier challenge, though.

Imagined my mind was racing like American Pharoah’s coming into the home stretch for the Triple Crown—plotting my next move, and reliving how I came to be on that hood…

***

They play well together, said Angela, watching her son Manuel chasing our kids, Li-Ping and Nuru, around our small backyard. Our daughter is twelve, or almost thirteen, as she puts it; our son is nine. I hasten to add that they’re legal immigrants—Mario and I adopted them.

Our yard is mostly grass. Neither Mario nor I have time, and we don’t have green thumbs, so planting shrubs and flowers would be doing a disservice to them. Besides, most of the time we were rationing water, as dust clouds stirred up by the children’s stampede indicated.

The sessions have helped Manuel, I said, watching my children laugh and become out-of-breath from Manuel’s pursuit. I’d been dubious, primarily because I thought her kid was just nerdy and brilliant, but high-functioning autistic was and still is his diagnosis. He’s a genius, but now he doesn’t disappear into his own parallel worlds as much. And here I was hoping to get a good sci-fi writer out of him.

Yeah, I’d started to read a bit more, mostly sci-fi. Wasn’t a stay-at-home mom—I had a steady job—but Mario kept long hours sometimes, so I could only do so much mindless TV and didn’t like video games at all. I suppose I should go into gardening, but it seemed as mindless as TV and video games.

The reading also kept my gym visits from killing me with boredom. I chose my exercise routine to keep my thirty-eight-year-old body from sliding too fast into middle age. I often used audiobooks and earphones for those exercise periods. Between herding our adoptive kids and the gym, I compensated for my desk duty as security chief at Awesomely Cool Video Experiences (ACVE West). That’s a lot easier than herding sailors as a USN Master-at-Arms, one of my old jobs.

We all establish different priorities. Mine were for my family and our mental and physical health, including my own.

Kip’s helped too, said Angela with a smile.

Her husband Kip was dressed in Bermuda shorts and sandals, the shorts nearly matching my husband’s, but Mario had on an authentic guayabera shirt and an apron over that with BBQ KING—a bit of self-promotion displayed by the proud chef. I watched him flip burgers and wondered how I could be so lucky.

I had a soul mate in my hubby Mario. He was good-looking enough to make some other women jealous. Heavenly eyes. Rugged features. An Italian Daniel Craig as 007. Black hair streaked with some gray now. Five o’clock shadow at two p.m. Maybe not movie star material, but he was all mine. And he managed to make casual clothes look pretty spiffy. He enjoyed playing the enthusiastic host, which included making burgers matched to everyone’s preference. Not! They were all uniformly charred, but, with all the fixin’s and plenty of beer, who cares?

Kip’s a programmer at my same company. Cute. Hirsute chest, lean and mean, but also good-humored. A bit disheveled like many geeks. You would want to wash and rinse his long blond hair because it generally looked stringy and dirty. Wife Angela and son Manuel didn’t mind, though; Mario and I didn’t either. All part of the relaxed Californian lifestyle. All part of our wonderful circle of friends.

Angela patted her swollen belly. Looked like she was about ready to pop. I’m working on Father Xavier for a christening ceremony. Manuel and I are Catholics whether the Church recognizes my marriage to Kip or not. She had gone through a rough divorce and child custody battle. I want our baby christened by the good Father.

I nodded. Makes sense to me. We’re pretty much following all cultural traditions for our two. I take Li-Ping to the Buddhist temple when I can, and Mario takes Nuru to the Islamic mosque, and we all go occasionally to hear Father Xavier pontificate, no pun intended. Guess I’ll have to find a synagogue to cover all bases. Reformed, of course, ‘cause I need to be reformed.

Sounds confusing. What’s Nuru think about all the problems back home?

I frowned. If you mean terrorism, he’s as American as you are.

I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant that he’s bound to hear about it at the mosque and in the news.

Don’t go there. Islamic leaders in this country aren’t terrorists any more than Father Xavier is someone who can kill abortion doctors. Sensible people deplore all fanaticism and violence, no matter what religion fanatics use to justify their murdering ways.

Angela held up her hands as if to stop me. "Whoa, back down, amiga. We’re on the same side here. I only want the world and its people to live in peace. We’re all on spaceship Earth together, so we should just get along. Comprende?"

Did she realize she was plagiarizing Rodney King’s message? Of course, I didn’t have any problems with that. I smiled enough to disarm her. Back to your confusion comment. When the kids are old enough, they can decide for themselves, but there’s a common moral underpinning in most religions, so the more they see of that, the wiser their decision will be and the more tolerance they’ll have. ‘Course, I don’t give a rat’s ass if they’re atheists, as long as they aren’t fanatical about it.

Will your kids keep it all straight? No confusion?

Why should they? I’m still confused about religion. Kip’s a fucking atheist. He still goes to mass with you and is about as morally principled as you can be in the Silicon Valley where most high tech moguls have some dirty deeds in their pasts. Certainly more than someone who thinks murdering anyone who doesn’t agree with him is OK.

Has Mrs. Murphy gone beyond that? said Angela, changing the subject slightly by indicating our old friend who was setting the two picnic tables.

Glanced at the old woman, our friend. She’d nearly been killed by my stalker. Terrorism, yes, but not associated with religious fervor, unless you call being obsessed with me a religion. I’m sure Silicon Valley execs are still screwing their secretaries at her motel, I said, but they’re paying more for their dalliances. That loan we cosigned helped her to go beyond the simple replacement. It’s a nice, spiffy place now. Only VIP fornicators can act out their fantasies there.

I was happy for Mrs. Murphy. The old woman deserved all the breaks she could get. I no longer felt that I was responsible for my stalker from previous adventures burning down her motel. ‘Course, cosigning that loan hadn’t helped us obtain a mortgage for our own hovel, a three-bedroom box that was already old in Californian terms. Back East, you can find functional hundred-year-old homes. Out West, they’re dumps after twenty or thirty years. Ours was thirty-five.

Chow time! said Mario. Kip rang an old cow bell.

Barbecue dinner at the Di Stefanos was served.

***

Despite all the grass, our backyard wasn’t big enough for an impromptu soccer game, and it had three nice old shade trees in it as obstacles (I hadn’t planted them—thought they were left over from when the subdivision was a farm), so, after dinner, we went to the front to kick the soccer ball around a bit in the street. I never let the kids play alone there, although it never had much traffic, a positive feature for a Silicon Valley house. I even objected about some of the adults playing this time—too many were inebriated and not getting any younger—but others wanted to work a bit of the barbecue bloat off. Hamburgers aren’t much, but all the fixin’s had filled up everyone, and we hadn’t eaten dessert yet.

Heard the car’s roar and squealing wheels before I saw the Honda. Car! Get out of the street!

We all ran to stand in front of and protect our cheerleaders, the kids, pushing them back from the sidewalk like cops on parade patrol. Manuel then grabbed the soccer ball and the three of them began bouncing the ball along the sidewalk, moving away from us. We often let them play when it was only Mario and me pretending we were soccer stars, but the BBQ group was bigger and tended to be rambunctious. Angela couldn’t play, of course, so she had kept the kids company on the sidelines.

The Honda slammed on its brakes beside the kids. Driver jumped out, rounded the front of the car, pushed Manuel aside, grabbed Li-Ping first, threw her into the back seat, and repeated that same action with Nuru, who had frozen in fear. Angela’s screams were a mix of English and Spanish profanities as all soccer players ran toward the car.

When the driver circled the car to get back in, I went into action.

No surprise. He still took off with me on the hood…

***

You see stunt people in movies doing what I was doing. They’re pros and plan all the stunt’s many details. I was making it up on the fly, flopping around on the hood like a fish on wet beach sand. Found it amazing what had blasted through my mind like a discharge from an automatic rifle. First: the kids who are kidnapped don’t often survive. Second: why are they being kidnapped? Third: why my two kids? Fourth: who’s this asshole doing the kidnapping? Fifth: where are the fucking cops when you need them? ‘Course the last was unfair—the Accord had come out of nowhere. True, it had been speeding, but cops can’t patrol every street, and usually don’t patrol quiet ones in old, peaceful subdivisions.

Almost flew into a neighbor’s rose bushes when the Honda sped around a corner on two wheels, but I held on. Was now sprawled across the windshield hanging on to a wiper. Didn’t have a gun—wanted to kill the bastard—but had thought of the belt buckle, which was now somewhere back on the road. I was partial to that buckle; it had turquoise studs buried in silver and went well with blue jeans—a Southwest adornment I’d picked up once while passing through New Mexico.

The car slammed into the useless little wall with red Spanish tiles on top at our subdivision’s entrance where a sign said Rancho Pacifico—ironic name, considering. Most of the time it was peaceful, though. I went flying over the wall instead.

Didn’t worry about the gash on my forehead or possible concussion. Mothers can’t follow NFL protocol. Ran around the wall and stopped. It was over. The driver was staring into infinity with vacant eyes. The kids were bruised and still scared but appeared to be OK physically. Mental trauma was more likely. Hell, I was crazed too. Took the kids from the car and hugged them.

Is the bad man dead? said Nuru.

I don’t know, honey. Let’s take you two home.

Mario came running. What the hell were you thinking!?

Pushed him away. Don’t criticize me. Why the hell didn’t you do something, Rambo?

Chapter Two

Marguerite had made a copy of the key to the drug supply cabinet on the hospital’s third floor. The original’s usual home was a security guard’s little office not far from her own. The room was also on her way out of the hospital to head home from work.

She put on rubber surgical gloves and raided the cabinet. She ignored the strong opioids and took a large bottle of liquid, only one of many, and a small bottle of post-surgical morphine. She made sure she left the cabinet like she’d found it, except for the missing bottles, whose spaces she filled by sliding bottles around. They might catch the morphine theft in an inventory. She shrugged. Ned is more important to me than my license. She exited the supply room. Farther along the corridor, she removed the gloves and tossed them into a waste bin.

The janitor stopped her on the way out to say hello. Working late, Dr. Fontaine?

Paperwork, Maurice. Hospital bureaucracy takes up more of my time than patients do. How’s your little girl doing?

The new prosthetic is working out well, thanks to you.

Tell her hello.

She has another appointment in two weeks. She truly loves you, doctor. You’re good with kids.

They’re easier to treat than adults, as far as prosthetics go. Of course, they grow so fast, they’re constantly in need of new ones. She’ll soon be dating, you know. The janitor rolled his eyes. I’m sorry I couldn’t save her leg.

Maurice now made a sad face. They arrested the hit-and-run driver. He’ll get what he deserves. But it won’t bring back her leg.

I know. Thank goodness it wasn’t worse. Have a good evening.

Have a safe drive home.

***

Marguerite didn’t go home, though. She took a taxi to an old building not far from the hospital yet near her studio apartment, circled around to its rear, and parked beside some rickety stairs. She climbed them, careful not to stumble in the dark of the building’s shadow. She knocked twice at the door at the top.

Jena Crowley opened the door for her and looked around. No problems? she said.

They’ll never notice one bottle. The other is iffy, but so what? Maurice saw me, but he’d never believe I’d steal drugs. They’re not likely to suspect a doctor either, and the thief could be anyone. How is he?

Feeling like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz, said a baritone voice from the back of the artists’ loft.

Irritable, said Jena in a whisper.

Marguerite nodded and went to see her patient. She bent over and kissed him. Ned, that’s a bad metaphor. You do have a heart. You’ll have to get in a better mood. Thrashing around won’t do either of us any good. Let me see your stump.

Ned Wakefield turned onto his left side, exposing the stump of his right arm. There were hundreds of little blue dots spread throughout the stump’s red, irritated flesh.

"I’ll have you as good as new tout de suite, mon ami. You’ll still be on antibiotics for a while, though."

We can share duties for buying groceries, Marguerite, said Jena. Let’s get to it.

That was usually Wakefield’s job. More French vets were men, and many had prosthetics because many primitive IEDs in the Middle East now maimed more soldiers than they kill, thanks to improvements in battlefield surgical centers.

***

Dr. Marguerite Fontaine was a prosthetics specialist. Modern devices had come a long way, so she was both an excellent surgeon and precision mechanic who had to keep pace with developments in both areas of expertise. She’d never had a patient like Ned Wakefield before, though, or friends like Crowley and Wakefield.

Several years earlier, Jena Crowley had developed a similar problem with one of her prosthetics. Ned Wakefield had taken her to the doctor’s apartment where they waited in the dark until she arrived after a hard day’s work that had involved two procedures in the O.R. Crowley’s case was easy, and Marguerite had long ago recovered from the scary violation of her apartment. Wakefield’s case would be more difficult.

Marguerite looked younger than her years. School and internships had meant bad dietary habits with many visits to delis and meals made with the Parisian equivalent of fast food, so she was a bit overweight. She always wore a bright smile and her curly, black hair and fair skin had caused both Jena and Ned to call her Shirley Temple. The doctor wasn’t up on American trivia, though; the pair had to explain what they meant by that name.

Both Jena and Ned were five years older. Marguerite had liked them the minute she