Blind Ambition - Just.Us.Friendz (free ebooks for android .txt) 📗

/> Auggie paused and centered his concentration on Annie's plate. "Are you going to eat the other half of that sandwich?" he asked.

Annie drew back in surprise. "How the heck did you know? That sandwich is sitting quietly on my plate. It never made a sound, and I sure didn't mention not eating it."

The long lines in Auggie's cheeks creased in a wide grin. "Not enough of the right kind of chewing sounds," he said. "Bread and meat chomp differently from salad. Was it any good?" He sounded hopeful.

"Actually, it's quite a decent steak sandwich," she told him. "It was just more than I wanted with that big salad and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Why, do you want it?"

"Yeah, I'm still hungry. Do you mind sharing?"

Annie pushed the half-sandwich over. "Right at your twelve, babe, happy for you to have it." She was glad to see him hungry. Far too often, he simply got busy and forgot to eat. "Can I get you something else: a glass of milk maybe and the desserts are good today? There's bread pudding with blueberries?"

"Yum." His mouth was half-full of her sandwich. He swallowed and said, "If you don't mind standing in line again, I'd love some."

"It's not too long now. Be right back."

It wasn't long until she was back with the pudding. "Your two o'clock." She put it down with a click. "Now, if we've staved off starvation, I'm dying to know what happened when you showed up at that kid's house."

"Who? Oh, Pete's folks, sure." His handsome dark eyes held a hint of mischief in their unfocused gaze as he shifted them to the sound of her voice. "They were horrified, of course. They were ready to banish Pete's buddy, Charlie, permanently from their basement and ground Pete forever. I managed to get them to give the boys a second chance if they would meet with me regularly. It must have sounded better than calling in the Feds, so they agreed. Both boys were 17 and played sports, so I guess they figured they would be safe from a blind guy." Auggie finished his pudding and licked the spoon.

"At first we just met in my apartment," he went on. "Then about two months later, it got complicated." Auggie shook his head and laughed quietly. "I just managed to block a sixteen-year-old girl who made a very smart run on our D.P.D. data base. It turned out she was trying to impress Pete – she had a huge crush on him at the time – but she had exposed some weaknesses in the system I had to fix in a hurry."

"A sixteen-year-old girl almost hacked our system? Are you kidding me?"

"No, embarrassing hardly covers it. I had to bring her in, but once I had Marla, she was way under age remember, we couldn't go on meeting at my apartment."

Annie reached across the table and patted his hand. "What, hero, you didn't want to get arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor or something a lot worse?"

"Just shows the mess you can get into when you try to be a good guy." Auggie made a very sad face, and Annie had to laugh.

"Go on, laugh at the trials of your poor, blind companion." Auggie waited for a bit of sympathy, and she patted his hand again. She loved his ability to laugh at himself.

"So, what happened then?" Annie said.

"I found another place and had her dad come with her to meetings until he got to trust me. So, long story short – we do have to get back to work soon – the group just grew. Charlie asked if Shane Northman could join; he's the current President of the club. Evie hacked the group's private website and turned up on our doorstep. Her parents are old school hippies – her full name is Evening Star Gomez, and she rebelled by being brilliant with computers. Tom Drummond's dad works for the Agency. He asked me to take Tom-Tom on. Seems they had some conflicts at home."

Annie collected their trays and dishes and dropped them off at the return station, while Auggie used his laser cane to edge toward an exit. She caught up with him there, took his hand and guided it to her elbow. Together they walked toward the elevators.

"We moved into the loft about eighteen months ago," he told her as they walked. "Members tend to come and go. A few drop out; others go away to college or into jobs. We have 12 members right now ranging from 17 to 25. I don't take anyone under 16. Six of them have been with me for 3 or more years; the others are newer."

They were at the door to Tech Services. "So will you come with me tonight, Annie? Please?"

It seemed to be important to Auggie. He was so darned good to her, Annie thought. Always considerate, always patient and tender, and generous to a fault – how could she turn him down for something this simple?

"Sure, Auggie. I'll be glad to go along and meet your 'geek squad'."

"Great!" his smile was wide and happy, "but remember 'geek squad' is just the way I think of them. They call themselves 'Hackers, Crackers and Trackers, Inc,' Wait …" Auggie took out his card case, quickly felt the Braille symbol impressed on the corner of a card and handed her one. "Check this out when you get back to your desk."

Before she could say more, he was through the door to Tech Services and someone in the bullpen was calling for his attention.

Once at her desk, Annie took a good look at the sleek, professional appearing business card. Printed in white against a glossy black background, was a wide-brimmed cowboy hat with "Hackers, Crackers and Trackers, Inc" embossed in vivid red ink around the brim. Underneath was printed the statement, "We're the Good Guys. Let us go gunning for your troublemakers." There were two unfamiliar phone numbers in the lower, right-hand corner of the card.

She knew she would have a lot more questions after work.

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After briefing Joan on upcoming operations that might affect her section, Arthur opened a new subject. "Look, Joan," he said, "you may not like it, but Ben Mercer has raised some valid concerns about Auggie. He has a friend with connections to Saudi intelligence. He has a supposed ex-girlfriend who's not only Russian, but an expert with computer viruses. Then we know he lost his sight in an ambush that might have been avoided if we'd had better intelligence. What are the chances it has embittered him, turned him against the agency?"

Joan's stare was fierce. "Arthur, this is ridiculous! You're repeating all that poison Mercer has been feeding you. He's trying to smear Auggie with innuendo and half-truths. Auggie has been with the Agency since he was in his late teens. We educated him, trained him; you know he was being groomed for fast track advancement. He spied for us, fought for us; then he suffered a horrible injury in our service. Being blind limited his shot at the top levels, but his skills were too valuable to waste. We saw that he had the finest medical care available. He had extensive training in blind living skills and in-depth counseling."

Joan's fair skin was flushed, and her hands gripped the back of the chair before her so tightly that her knuckles were white. Arthur thought of a lioness defending her cub.

"He came to my section when he was ready, and I bought him the latest equipment to help him deal with his blindness. In return he has developed the finest Tech Support section in the entire intelligence community. His knowledge of field operations coupled with his technical expertise is invaluable. He is totally and completely loyal. I'd trust him with my life."

Joan pointed to the dossier that Auggie had compiled. It lay on Arthur's desk. "I showed you the information he brought me on Mercer: the association with known weapons smugglers, the possible false background and connection to Mossad. Then there are the funds that can't be accounted for. He's gone totally rogue, Arthur. Who knows how many masters he's working for? You should bring him in for interrogation!"

Arthur paced to his desk, picked up a paperweight and tossed it in his hand for a minute before turning back to his wife. "I have a better idea," he said.

The following week orders came down that all Tech Services personnel were to report to the infirmary for their annual flu shots. Along with the vaccine, and unknown to him, Auggie received a miniature RFID device in his shot. He thought the injection hurt a bit more than usual, but shrugged it off. The tiny radio frequency identification transponder settled under his skin and rested there quietly.

Chapter 9 Seafood and Surprise.

When Auggie shepherded Annie into the club's loft, she found it warm, bright and welcoming. She was quickly surrounded by a swarm of young adults eager to meet her. They were all well scrubbed and smelled fresh – something she suspected Auggie insisted on – but dressed in a variety of styles from the conventional jeans, tee shirt and hoodie to full-blown Goth. One young lady, dressed in a smart business pants suit, was introduced as Marla Ingram. She said she had just come from her part-time job as a data entry clerk for a local law firm.

Some of the kids smiled, shook Annie's hand and slipped away quietly to a computer station shortly after being introduced. Others lured her to the break corner for a longer chat. She identified them as Mark Henry, Evie Gomez and the current president of the group, Shane Northman.

They wanted to know who she was and what she did. She stuck with her Smithsonian cover story, and they were delighted when they learned she traveled a lot in her job. Of course, they wanted to know all about how she met Auggie and anything else about their relationship they could squeeze out of her. Fortunately, within days of moving in together, Annie and Auggie had agreed on a story that they told outsiders. It included an amusing fiction about how they met when she dropped her program and stopped suddenly. Auggie bumped into her and propelled her into the punch table at a Smithsonian function.

Annie was more interested in them. Mark Henry was 25, only four years younger than she was. He was a tall, dark-skinned, attractive African-American man, who shaved his head closely. He was a fully trained Emergency Medical Technician. He wanted to go on to medical school, he told her, and work in biomedical engineering.

Evie was Evening Star Gomez, whom Auggie had told her about. It wasn't hard to see that she was brilliant and deeply into computer science. She was studying high performance supercomputing at George Washington University. Pretty much everything she said went directly over Annie's head.

Shane Northman was an adult at 22. He had a calm, logical personality and a dry sense of humor that reminded her of Auggie in many ways. It was he who answered some of her questions about the group.

"What's this thing with cowboy hats?" she asked him. "Seems a bit old west for such an advanced group?'

"Guess the terms do come from old western movies," Shane told her. "White hats are the good guys – people who want to use computers in positive and legal ways. Grey hats are those in-between who fool around with trying to break into