Jane eyed the equipment with dismay. They would be spread across three vehicles with Duff fielding monster sightings from viewers, monitoring police activity, and coordinating the running fight. They needed seven linked headsets. Because the PB&G equipment was so old, her set of four weren’t compatible with the four that the Chased by Monsters crew had brought with them. She’d told her brothers to solve the problem; she didn’t expect this. “You didn’t tell our cousins about Boo or Sandcastle or anything?”
“I bribed Andy with cannoli and beer,” Duff stated. “He didn’t even think to ask.”
That sounded like their youngest Roach cousin. His older brother was the business manager of Team Tinker. He would have held out for the piece of whatever action the Kryskill boys were gearing up for.
The headsets were custom made by Tinker herself. They used voice-activated microphones to create a full-duplex tac net and had more bells and whistles than God. There were ten in all, so there were more than enough for their needs.
Duff was scared that he pissed her off. “They don’t use an open channel like the production truck’s headsets. We’ll still use code words—because yes, the oni could be monitoring the phone systems—but this is going to be much more secure. Plus I can patch in anyone with a cell phone, so if I need to, I could even call Alton or Mom at any point and link them in.”
“Don’t you dare call Mom!” Jane wanted to stay in control. Last thing she needed was her mom wading in and taking over. “I don’t care what happens, you do not call Mom.”
Duff nodded his understanding.
“Do we have a kill zone?” Jane asked.
“Hays Woods,” all her brothers answered.
“Here.” Duff picked up his tablet and flicked through some satellite pictures. “These images are really old but Pittsburgh hasn’t changed much in terms of roads and such. This is Hays Woods. It’s about seven hundred acres of forest on a steep hillside.”
Alton pointed out narrow dirt road meandering through the woods. “There’s lots of walking trails through it that’ve been widened so that foragers like me can get trucks in and out. Between the river and South Hills, the woods are isolated from the Rim, so they’re mostly Earth flora and fauna and are fairly safe. I hunt squirrels, deer, and fish. Some people cut hickory for smoking meat.”
“Oak for carpentry,” Geoffrey stated to prove he knew the woods as well. “There’s some cherry too.”
“Good. Good.” Jane headed off a flare-up of sibling rivalry. She studied the map. The woods occupied a steep bend in the Mon River with Hazelwood across the water. The trees would hem in monsters, but the width of the trail would also make turning difficult. They needed to stay out of range of the monster’s electricity attack. If they called in more than one monster, they could be trapped between the two with nowhere to run. As long as they fired downhill toward the river or east toward Sandcastle, it would be unlikely they hit anything important. Downtown, however, was within the gun’s four-mile range to the west.
“Viewer tips get us any sightings?” Jane asked.
“There were two from the Hot Metal Bridge.” Duff swept a finger down river, around the bend, to the first bridge across the Monongahela. The historic landmark used to carry crucibles of molten steel from the blast furnaces on the south bank to the rolling mills on the north bank. Originally a railroad bridge, it had been converted just prior to the first Startup. It was one of the bridges that linked the heavily populated South Side to downtown and Oakland.
“Shit,” Jane breathed. “Do we know the range of the monster call?”
“Not really,” Nigel confessed. “I was told that it might be up to a mei since it uses magic, but there’s no way to confirm that. So far, we’ve been practically on top of the monster when we used it. We were lucky that we’ve hit on the ‘come here’ command.”
“There’s a very steep dirt road here off of East Carson,” Alton pointed out. “It was a power line right-of-way for the electric company but it’s been expanded so you don’t need to drive all the way around to Glass Run to access the walking trails.”
“There’s also this path off of Becks Run Road,” Geoffrey added.
Jane shook her head. “We would have to drag the monsters under this railroad bridge. If they damaged the bridge, the connection to the East Coast would be cut short of the city proper. That could be critical if this goes to full out warfare.”
Jane hated everything about this fight. That they didn’t know how many monsters were in the river. That she needed to involve her brothers. That they were the only ones who could call the monsters out of the river. Short of handing over the monster call to the compromised EIA, no one else was as heavily armed as her family. “We’re doing a running fight. We’ll use the monster call here East Carson. Once we have incoming, we’ll head up this dirt road into the woods. We’ll pull the first one to this clearing and open fire. Lather, rinse, repeat.”
She ran her finger down East Carson. South Side Flats was about a square mile of flood plains beside the Mon River. Because of the steep hillsides that edged the river, East Carson had very few side streets beyond the flats. “If we set up the barriers here just after South Thirty-Third Street and here at Becks Run Road, and then here where it ends at Eight-Eighty-Five, then we can have two or three miles to ourselves to work with.”
Jane wished they could take advantage of the night cover but she didn’t want to fight blind. “We’ll head out at four-thirty. The production trucks will find hard cover at the top of this hill. The Humvee will set up the barriers, make sure the area is clear of bystanders, and do a dry run of shifting from East Carson to the walking trails.”
“What about me?” Hal had been studying the map intently. “How am I going to see anything with so many trees in the way?”
Jane smacked him. “You’re to stay behind hard cover in case we accidently fire in your direction.”
Alton zoomed in on the map to find a small side street. “There’s a vacant private school here. It’s all brick, so it would provide lots of cover for the production trucks. The walking trails edge the property, so the cameras will be in range.”
“I won’t be able to find that,” Hal stated firmly. “We’ve never filmed in that area. There are no backyards and gardens. It’s all abandoned and, knowing Pittsburgh, there were never street signs, even before the first Startup.”
Nigel eyed the maze of side streets they would need to take from Becks Run to the school. “Och, neither could I, not in the dark without GPS.”
Jane considered not filming the hunt.
If she just left Hal, Nigel and Taggart at Hyeholde…
No. That wouldn’t work. She’d have to lock them into the basement or something. If it had been just Hal, it would be fairly simple to just pick him up and carry him squirming and kicking to the bathroom and handcuff him to the sink. (She’d done it before when she decided his drinking needed serious intervention. The bathroom gave him access to water and a toilet.) She had four bathrooms (Hyeholde was a restaurant after all), but she only had one pair of handcuffs. It would be a mistake to underestimate any of the men. They were all intelligent and used to getting themselves out of all sorts of odd trouble. (Mostly because they also seemed to have the same level of common sense—which was to say very little.) Taggart and Nigel were wild cards; there was no telling what they might know. They could be black belts in martial arts and have Houdini-level escape skills. Locking them up could be tricky. If one got free, he’d free the other two.
Earth needed to see what the oni were doing in Pittsburgh. They had to see the forty-foot walking electric catfish to believe it. If she was going to put her little brothers at risk, she’d better reap the maximum gain out of it.