Alien vs. Alien

Peregrines’ arrival or not. Bruno pulled his head out from under his wing and stared at me. Check. If an enemy Tarantula had been there, the Peregrines would have destroyed it. Good to know. I’d worry about my complete mental breakdown later. For right now, I was going to embrace the Dr. Doolittle and just run with it.
    “Why use them, though?” Armstrong asked. “Doesn’t it just give them away?”
    “Only because you came to us, instead of going elsewhere. And only because we figured it out.”
    “And maybe they needed a better shot of Jeff,” Amy said.
    “Ames, again you bat a thousand. There are lots of pictures of the senator out there, I’m sure, but most of them won’t be of him making the o-face. So the few that would work have to fit onto a specific body position. We gave them new options, they ran with them.” Very quickly. Meaning they were either really good or had A-C traitors on staff. It was, like most of today’s problems, a fifty-fifty bet either way.
    “I believe the important question now is, what do we do?” Adriana asked.
    “That is the question of the moment, isn’t it? So, what do we know? Whoever’s in charge wants Chuckie out permanently.”
    “Or to have him so disgraced that nothing he’s ever said or done will be regarded,” Armstrong said.
    “I’d assume both,” White added. “But they also want to steal our children.”
    “That cannot be allowed,” Olga said, and I knew she wasn’t saying it just because she liked us and didn’t want to see Jamie hurt.
    “True enough. Okay, so, what did we tell them about how the Embassy’s set up, how we protect the kids, and all that jazz?” White handed me the papers he and the othersdisgrace had written. “Dude, seriously. It’s me.”
    “She
can
read, you’d just never know that she does,” Amy said dryly. “In addition to how we handled the children, with focus on dealing with their powers and how we protected them, my questions were about lockdown and how it worked, where we took people for lockdown, what we did when we couldn’t get to a secured A-C facility, and things of that nature.”
    “Ours were similar,” Len said. “Only with a lot more emphasis on actual tactics.”
    “Fabulous. So, they definitely know our playbook, or most of it, which is probably more than enough, since they most likely already had some of it. You know, whatever they didn’t ask about.” And they’d done a live test less than a half an hour ago, too.
    That meant Dulce was out. So was NASA Base. Caliente Base was probably out, too. We always ran to these places. I ran through options in my mind. The last place we’d want to be was Euro Base, since it was in Paris. But I wasn’t coming up with a lot of options. Decided to forge on. “Hiding here is out.”
    Adriana nodded. “Even if we hadn’t been the test target, so to speak, we have none of the defenses your locations do.”
    “I believe hiding is the right answer,” Olga said. “For some of us.”
    “Mister White, where is the last place you’d choose to hide someone?”
    “I assume you mean other than ‘in plain sight’ or similar. And what you’re asking is where could we go that would have all the security we’d need that, at the same time, our enemies wouldn’t expect, correct?”
    “As always.”
    He was quiet for a few moments while I tried to come up with not only who we should hide, but who should hide with them. I knew Jeff and Chuckie would both want me hiding, but that wasn’t going to happen. However, someone had to be along who could and would kick butt. More than one, if possible.
    “Are our phones tapped?”
    “Mister Reynolds checks regularly,” Len said.
    “I would assume they are,” Olga countered. “If not your Embassy’s phone lines, or even your cellular phones, certainly some of the phones you wish to call will be.”
    I contemplated some more. Jamie had a full diaper bag, complete with bottles, formula, food, and change of clothes. I could ensure everyone else I needed to hide would be adequately prepped. But we were going to have to make it look like we weren’t actually going into hiding and then hide somewhere effective.
    “I believe I may have an option,” White said finally. “It’s not actually a Base.”
    “But it has the A-C bells and whistles on it?”
    He smiled. “And then some. It has the added advantage of being the most secured place on, I believe, Earth. And yet, it’s very easy for us to