HUGHES MANSION

HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA

What did people do for entertainment? Ely Wallace sat in the room that they had been letting him use as a den. There was a lot of comfortable furniture in here. The room even had a fireplace, although, Ely could never figure out why that was so. From what he had seen, it never got cold enough in southern California to ever require one. The room had huge windows that overlooked any number of gorgeous court yards and gardens but, after a while, even those got old. That left Ely doing what he had been for months now. Every day he would do it a little bit more.

This house belonged to Howard Hughes of all people. You’d think that such a rich and technologically competent guy like him would have had state of the art entertainment for the times. That led Ely to the scariest notion of all. Maybe Hughes really did have that and Ely was sitting at the small desk, rolling his fingers across it’s finish, and looking at the most advanced piece of technology on planet Earth, the radio. It was definitely not made for watching, even if that was what Ely was doing and with a glum and bored look too. He did it simply because it was more entertaining than the crap that came out of it’s speakers. He closed his eyes and squinted hard as he made a wish, “please be Socom Three, please be Socom Three.”

It was no great surprise when he opened his eyes back up and the radio had not been magically transformed into a plasma television and an X-Box. He was so disappointed that, at the moment, he would have even been satisfied with an old fashioned Atari!

Ely had to keep reminding himself that the government (and it was his grandparents, maybe even his great-grandparents, government and not his) was treating him as well as they could or, at least that was, they were doing so for a prisoner because no matter how gilded this cage was it was still a cage. They could tell him it was for his own protection but, Ely was not stupid and, more important, he knew it. Ely had repeatedly solved problems that had stumped every scientist on Earth, that was twenty-first century Earth, and had done so without even a third the education most of them had.

That got him to thinking and he mumbled to himself, “maybe I should just build my own video game. Wonder how these people would take to Pong.” He thought about it some more and realized, “no I could do better than that. Wonder how they would like Space Invaders.”

At some point, Annie had walked back into the room. It looked to Ely like she was in a rush. She walked around picking up things like someone had just discovered that company was coming in five minutes. Ely had to get up and walk over to her in order to get her attention. Since she was deaf, calling out was not always the best way to do that. He made the sign to her, “are you all right?”

She looked kind of startled at first but then broke into a smile that did not quite hide her nervous demeanor. She put down the items she had just picked up and replied, “It OK. All will be fine now.”

Ely had found that talking with other people was about the only entertainment he was going to get here. It made him wonder if everybody had to do that and the thought of it was, well, gross. Socializing had never been a skill that Ely was comfortable with if there was not at least a couple of keyboards between him and the other person. He had gotten better at handling people while he had been stuck on the Destiny. Of course, one had to consider that a relative statement. Destiny was also an alien spaceship that was filled with an incredible number of distractions which more than adequately substituted for playing a video game. In fact, Destiny was just like living in a video game and that had helped keep Ely sane.

Here, stuck in the world war two generation, the closest he had come, to that, was writing formula’s on a chalk board for Doctor Grant. That had gotten way too old, way too fast, and that left Annie. Ely had talked with her at length and, he now understood her body language or, so he had thought. Her statement made no sense to him on any number of levels.

She even went on to insist, “you stay here. All will be well soon. They move you.”

That last revelation caused Ely’s eyes to open wide, “move me?” He had to remember to sign it after he said it and then add, “nobody told me I was moving. Where too?”

The house keeper simply shrugged. She then turned to leave but, obviously, changed her mind. Annie turned back to Ely and put her arms around him for a big hug. She surprised him even more by kissing him! Then she walked back to the door, leaving Ely standing there in confusion. It only got worse when she opened the door and was suddenly enveloped in a crackling wave of blue lightening that left her laying on the floor and, hopefully to Ely at least, just unconscious.

Ely had very little time to think about that. He could not rush over to her either. Two men came right in the door, stepped over Annie, and fanned out into the room. One guy looked just like all the other agents that had been guarding this place. He had the right hat and coat for the part as well as the big gun. The other guy wore no hat and while his clothing had that 40’s flare he wore it very differently than most. He also had a big gun but, that was not what stood out to Ely. It was the Zat pistol in his hand that was most prominent as the guy moved to the window and drew the curtains. He then peeked out one corner as he said to Ely, “moron.”

Finally catching his breath Ely raised his hands and, not sure what else to do, he demanded, “did you kill her?”

The guy at the window looked at him with a scowl on his face, “no I didn’t, and you already know that, idiot.”

The regular looking G man told Ely, “you can put your hands down kid.”

Ely kept them up. Then he realized this guy with the Zat gun had to be the only person that had called him stupid since he came flying through the gate back in Manhattan. Ely just blurted out the only thing he could think of, “are you guys really from the SGC? How did you even know I was here?”

The regular looking G man replied, “the what?”

The man at the window walked away from it and put away his Zat. He was quite stern when he told Ely to put his hands down. Ely quickly complied. Then the guy told him, “we’ll get into all that later. Right now we have bigger problems. This place is crawling with Nazi commando’s and, unless I miss my guess, they’ve neutralized the last guard posts by now.”

Ely’s eyes nearly popped out, “what? Where… what are you talking about?”

Cam Mitchell tossed some plastic zip ties to Ely. He noted how those made the boys gape grow even larger. Then Cam pointed to the unconscious housekeeper, “do me a favor and tie up your girlfriend for me. I got to find us a clear path out of here. The boy was even more revolted by that so Cam put it to him straight, “she was a plant kid. She almost knocked out every interior guard post, single handedly.”

Ness pulled a bottle out of his pocket and it was not even whiskey. He tossed it to the kid and said, “we found this in the kitchen next to where she cooked up lunch for the guards. She drugged them. After that, all the bad guys had to do was wait for them to pass out.” Ness then looked to Cameron, “what do we do now?”

Cam checked out the other door and it looked clear for the moment. He then thought about it, “well it’s a fair bet that getting in was the easy part.” He rubbed his chin and thought about it before saying, “going back out the front gates is suicidal by now.” Cam pulled, what looked to Ely as, an unusually large walkie-talkie off of his belt, “if I understood them right, they’ve occupied the snipers post on the roof now.”

Ness grumbled in frustration and then shot back, “I told you we needed to call for back up.”

Cam slapped Ely on the arm and pointed to the girl on the floor. Ely suddenly jumped back into action and began doing as instructed. Then Cameron told Ness, “let me be the pessimist here, all right? They wanted this job to go down silent, or else, they would have just stormed this place. That means their extraction is going to be pretty quiet too. You guys don’t have helicopters which means…”

Ely was having a hard time with Annie’s wrists. He suspected that was mainly because he really did not want to hurt her. He forgot all about it when he heard Cameron say that one word. Ely looked at him and repeated it, “helicopters? You really are…”

“Shut up kid,” Cam told the boy and he went back to the window, “Ness, they left you alive for a reason.”

Elliot replied, “of course. I’m the main contact they have with their back up. If they wanted the maximum amount of time they had to make sure it went down after my daily inspection.”

Cam rolled his eyes and mumbled, “yep, disappointing as hell.” He then looked away from the crack in the curtains and told Ness, “you mean your mail call. Don’t you get it Ness? You were the extraction. These guys want to play G-Men. That’s their cover.” Cam looked to Ely, “did anybody tell you that you’re moving?”

Ely found that he was now just plain frightened. He pointed down at Annie, “she just did.”

Ness suddenly realized, “so we use that? We just take him out of here and pretend to be them?”

“I only wish it were that simple,” Cam complained as he went to check the rear door once more. It still looked clear out in that direction and, he had to wonder if it really was. If he had been running the German operation he would have had somebody on the rear side of the property before they even made their move. Then Cam considered it and realized he was in Hollywood’s version of a sub-division. They might not have been able too do that.

One of their most important mission parameters had to be not raising the alarm. If worse came to worse, Cam realized, he could always just start shooting and the police would be rushing in here in the blink of an eye. The Feds would probably not be too far behind since they, more than likely, had some kind of reaction force. Cam had his own reasons for wanting to keep the cops out of this but, it was obvious, that these commando’s absolutely had too. They were on their own and operating in a hostile country. If they screwed up then they were just plain out of luck in a very final sense.

Taking that into consideration, it meant that Skorzeny’s men were moving from front to back. From what Mitchell knew of this German guy, he was both meticulous and very methodical. That meant Cam and his little crew might have a realistic chance of slipping out the backside of the property. The only thing that they would have to avoid was the sniper on the roof and this place was so segmented they might have a fair shot at it.

Cam pulled his Zat out again and said, “ok we’re going out the back door. If we’re lucky that wall doesn’t go all the way around the property.”

Ness was horrified, “if we’re lucky? This is Hollywood! Every one of these properties are enclosed!”

“Agent Ness,” Cam replied sternly.

Ely had finished with Annie and was now standing between them. He suddenly realized who the G guy was, “you’re Elliot Ness?” Then his excitement dropped when he said, “you don’t look like Kevin Costner.”

Ness grumbled and pointed at the kid, “I take it he’s one of your guys?”

Now Cam was really getting frustrated, “that has yet to be seen. Now can we please get moving. I’m pretty sure our window is closing fast.”