Chapter Four
By: Winston deLeon
On the roof, Foxglove was standing around, listening for anything out of the ordinary and not picking anything up. It didn't seem as if anything was going to happen anytime soon. Her sonar and alert ears soon caught the sound of a moth flying overhead in the inky black sky, and, since she was getting rather hungry, she impulsively took to the air. After a short chase, she caught up to the moth, deftly snatching it out of the air. Having captured her snack, she wheeled around in the sky and returned, landing once again on the roof. After she had landed, she walked over to the roof's edge, and, out of curiousity, used sonar pulses to have a look around at the grounds surrounding the museum, since there seemed to be little else to do.
At first, she saw what she expected to see - Monty and Zipper patrolling around one side of the museum, and nothing out of the ordinary. She crossed the roof to the other side, and scanned around. She was puzzled, at first she couldn't find Tammy anywhere. Finally, though, Foxglove located her, and was instantly alarmed because she seemed to be lying motionless in the grass. Foxglove took flight off the roof once again, flapping down and landing next to Tammy. Foxglove could hear Tammy's heart beating normally, and she was breathing softly. Foxglove shook Tammy's shoulder. "Hey, wake up." She said quietly, thinking that perhaps Tammy had simply gotten tired and fallen asleep. Tammy didn't respond. She could tell by sonar that no bones were broken and there were no serious injuries. Her nose wasn't as keen as her hearing, but she was starting to detect the faintest traces of an odd smell that she couldn't identify. Foxglove shook harder. "Are you okay?" She asked, a bit louder. There was still no reaction. She was starting to get scared. "Um... Hello?" Foxglove tried once more, speaking much louder and shaking Tammy much harder this time. Still, nothing happened.
Foxglove took to the air in fright, acting on the first rational thought that came to her head, the one that told her that she should go find help. Flapping as hard as she could, she swiftly flew around to the other side of the museum, and within seconds, she had located Monty with her sonar. She flew to him so quickly that she almost crashed into him, stopping and landing roughly just in time. "Monty! Help!" She gasped as she breathed heavily from the effort of flapping so hard. "Something's wrong with Tammy! I think she's been attacked, drugged maybe. I can't get her to wake up!" Foxglove tugged at Monty's arm, urging him to move as fast as he could.
"Lead me there!" Monty commanded. Foxglove took to the air once again, but flew slowly enough that Monty could keep up with her by running as she led the way. "Zip, come with me, I think we got a problem." Monty yelled as they neared Zipper's area of patrol on their way to Tammy. Zipper swiftly joined them, buzzing something in a worried tone. "No, I'm not sure what, pally." Monty puffed as he ran. "But Foxglove says Tammy's in trouble. Sounds serious."
It didn't take them long to reach Tammy, still lying in the grass unconscious. Monty shook her and tried to wake her up just as Foxglove had, with no success. Monty soon seemed to notice the faint smell lingering in the air. "Yep, just what I thought." He said. "Chloroform."
"Will she be okay?" Foxglove asked, an edge of fright still in her voice.
"She oughta be fine, luv. But she's gonna sleep like a log for a while, and there ain't much we can do about it." Monty turned to Zipper. "Zip, go tell the others, quickly. Whoever did this might already be inside the museum." Zipper buzzed briefly, saluted, and flew away rapidly.
Zipper hadn't been gone twenty seconds when Foxglove's sensitive hearing started picking up the low rumblings of some sort of motor starting up. It sounded like the rangerwing, but the overall feel of the sound was different... the noise was lower and the source was somehow more spread out, as if were coming from something a bit larger. "I hear something strange... it's coming from the museum!" Foxglove told Monty.
"You'd better go check it out, then, but be careful." Monty told her. "I'll stay here with Tammy." Before Foxglove could act, however, her hearing told her that the source of the noise was moving. It was definately a vehicle of some kind... and it was coming in their direction.
"Up there!" Foxglove pointed out for Monty. Against the dark sky, there was just enough light for them to make out some sort of flying craft coming towards them. As it approached overhead, the noise coming from it got louder and louder. "Hey! That's not the rangerwing!" Monty exclaimed. "Ya better see if you can follow 'em, luv!" He told Foxglove. "I get the feelin' that whoever did this to Tammy is making their getaway!"
"Right, Monty. I won't let them escape!" Foxglove promised as she took flight. She climbed swiftly, reaching the craft's altitude and coming in behind it, trying to tail it without being spotted. Using her sonar, she examined the craft thoroughly. It was a lot like the rangerwing, but it had more swept back wings, a larger, wider body that seemed made for carrying cargo, and bigger, more powerful engines to support it's weight. It was fast, too, and Foxglove was really working hard to keep up with it.
After what seemed like a mile or so of flight, Foxglove was starting to get very tired, and suddenly, to her dismay, whoever was piloting the aircraft seemed to notice her. The craft zigzagged around, attempting to lose her in the dark sky, but Foxglove tracked with sonar and kept a fix on it. The longer Foxglove flew after it, however, she noticed more and more that there was a strange buzzing ring in her ears that seemed to be getting worse. It was interfering with her hearing. Soon, she was having difficulty keeping track of the aircraft because the buzz in her ears was so badly distracting. She could hardly get an image. It was like the auditory equivalent of trying to make out details on a distant object through thick fog. Foxglove was forced to try and follow the craft as best she could visually, but she was determined not to let it escape, so she persevered.
The aircraft was just starting to head out over the bay, straightening out it's flight path, no longer zigzagging so much. The irritating ringing noise was still plaguing Foxglove, but she continued following it. Suddenly, a faint orange glow streaked through the air, and Foxglove was puzzled for a moment - her sonar couldn't give her a clear indication of what it was because there was too much interferance. It suddenly became apparent, however, that something had been fired at her from the rear of the aircraft. Foxglove tried to dodge, but before she could react, a blinding, brilliant white flash exploded before her, and within a fraction of a second, two more went off in quick succession. With sudden panic, Foxglove realized that the harsh brightness of the flashes had momentarily ruined her ability to see in the dark. She was now flying both accustically and visually blind, and there was nothing she could go but wheel around in circles until her vision slowly started returning and she could make out where she was going once again. The buzzing in her ears was starting die down, too, and she found that her sonar was once again giving her clear images.
Once again she spotted the aircraft, a long distance away, flying out over the water. Floxglove flapped as hard as she could force herself to, trying to regain lost distance. As she started to close in, however, it became apparent that something was wrong in the aircraft. It was wobbling erratically in the air, dropping altitude. There was a faint orangish-yellow hazy light coming from it, and as Foxglove got closer, she realized that it was an onboard fire, spreading rapidly. A piece of one wing suddenly snapped off, and the whole aircraft tilted downward, nosediving towards the water. Oh no! Foxglove thought as she watched the scene unfold. Whoever's flying that thing will be killed! I've got to help them! Foxglove pushed herself even faster, trying to catch up, but it was to no avail. Before she could get close, the aircraft slammed into the water, breaking up into pieces, and sank rapidly.
Foxglove, somewhat in shock, slowly circled the area several times, looking for anything that remained of the aircraft, hoping that the pilot might have survived, but there was nothing to be seen no matter how hard she searched. Though it saddened her to leave the scene, she was soon reluctantly forced by her exhaustion to head back to dry land before she ended up crashing into the ocean, too.
Chip was sitting in a small room inside the walls, still trying to catch his
breath while waiting for the effects of the teargas to subside. His eyes were
steadily getting better now that he was out of the smoke, but that wasn't what
was worrying him the most right now.
"How are you feeling?" One of the guards asked him, after a few minutes had gone by.
"Better, for now." Chip replied. "At least my eyes don't hurt anymore. I hope nothing happened to the diamond."
"The display case was double locked, I'm sure no one could have gotten through it." The guard commented. "And besides, we've got four of our people at every entrance and exit, no rodent is getting in or out."
A few more minutes passed, and just as Chip was feeling well enough to go in search of the others to see they were okay, Gadget burst into the room.
"There you are!" She exclaimed. "You won't believe it! They finally manually started up the air circulation system and cleared the smoke out, and the diamond... it's gone!"
Chip jumped to his feet in slight panic. "What? But how... no!"
"I don't know, but c'mon, I'm gonna go review the security tapes to see if they caught anything." Gadget said, motioning for Chip to follow. He grabbed his fedora and followed her as she broke into a run for the rodent security force's central monitoring room. After several twists and turns inside the walls, they burst into a room with several monitors made from the LCD screens of handheld televisions, rigged to take a feed from the security cameras in the display room.
A rat was sitting in a swiveling chair, going back and forth from console to console. "Oh, you're back." He said when he saw Gadget.
"Yep. This is Chip, the person I said I was going to get." Gadget swiftly introduced him, but failed to tell Chip the name of the technician in her haste. "So, did anything get caught on tape?"
"Well, not a whole lot, really. Here's where the trouble starts." The rat reviewing the tapes pointed out to them as he hit a button and the monitors all started playing back a recording. They watched as the spotlight broke free from the ceiling and crashed down into the display box just as Chip remembered it doing. Almost immediately, the two silver canisters that Chip recalled were caught on tape as they were dropped into the room. The technician slowed the tape down to get a clear view of them.
"We can clearly see two grenades taped together when we look at it in slow motion." He explained. "I could be wrong, but my best guess from what I've heard and seen so far is that one was a standard riot-control teargas grenade and the other was a heavy smokescreen of some sort. Good combination for driving people out of the room and buying some time to work, especially since the main vent fan was sabatoged and there was no way to get clean air into the room."
The tape continued running, and the smoke swiftly filled the room, blocking every camera, both the visual and infrared images, with a thick solid cloud. Watching it on tape, it seemed to happen even faster than Chip had remembered. He had to admit that the timing was extremely good, definately up to the standards of true professional thief.
"This is the part I don't get." The technician frowned as they examined the tapes. "The visual spectrum cameras are blocked. No surprises there. But what happened to the infrared cameras? They should have cut right through the smoke and seen everything going on in there, but we can't see a darn thing."
"There must have been a chemical additive in the smoke to absorb infrared, too." Gadget theorized. "But those are hard to find, and that would mean that the smoke grenade they used was probably a stolen military version of some kind."
Military equipment? Chip thought that that was a pretty severe measure to take. "Then whoever did this really meant business." Chip said aloud.
The tape was fastforwarded until the counter on the image indicated that nearly three minutes had passed on film. Finally, the vent activated and the smoke began dissipating from the room. As the air cleared, the cameras revealed an empty glass display box. "And that's about all there is to it." The technician shrugged. "The diamond is there, we get a falling spotlight and two grenades, a few minutes of nothing but smoke, and the diamond is gone. And, oddly enough..." He watched as the human guards getting back into the room examined the display case, "As you can see, even with the diamond gone, the glass case is still shut tight. I heard the human guards talking about it over the radio, both locks are in place like nothing ever happened."
"It's almost like something you see on television. Are we dealing with a thief or a magician?" Chip wondered out loud with frustration.
"There's no such thing as magic." Gadget reminded him. She was about to say something else, but then she stopped herself and reconsidered. "Erm... well, actually, except for those couple of times..." She trailed off, obviously pondering something with concern. "You know, come to think of it, two sets of high quality locks would have had to be picked, the display case opened, the diamond would have to be removed, which for a rodent would require some kind of lifting machinery, and then the display case would have to be closed and both sets of locks relocked again, all in the timeframe when the cameras were obscured by the smoke. It does seem kind of improbable..."
"Yeah, it looks tough to pull off, but I'm sure they didn't really use magic." Chip said.
"Well... probably not." Gadget agreed.
Chip suddenly realized a touch of embarassment that the technician had been staring at them a bit oddly ever since the conversation had turned to the supernatural. "Well... I suppose you're the detectives, not me..." He said with a shrug as he went back to watching the recordings.
The black, timeless abyss of the anaesthetic gradually began opening up, and
Tammy started hearing faint voices as she slowly regained consciousness. At
first, she foundered in confusion, not sure of why she was lying there or where
she was. She could hear people, the Ranger's voices, discussing something. Their
voices were faint and indistinct at first, but started getting clearer and clearer
as she awakened. As her senses returned, she could tell she was lying on her
back on some kind of couch, in an unfamiliar building. What was going on? She
wondered in confusion, momentarily unable to recall much of anything.
She lay there, lost in thought for a moment as she tried to remember what had happened. It came back to her gradually. She remembered the person in the black clothes, heading for the museum, and she remembered tackling them and quickly losing the ensuing fight. Yes, that was what happened, she realized. She'd been knocked out cold, with that funny smelling stuff in the cloth rag. That must have been what did it. She opened her eyes and slowly started sitting up. Momentary dizzyness swept over her, but it faded quickly once she took a deep breath. She was dimly aware that as she sat up, the voices that had been chattering back and forth fell silent as everyone looked in her direction.
"Golly, you're finally awake! Are you okay?" Gadget asked with concern.
"Yeah... I'm fine, I think." Tammy answered slowly. Her head ached, and she was still tired, but forced herself into alertness. "How long was I out of it?"
"About an hour now, we think. Actually, Foxglove found you, but we don't know just how long you were down by the time she did, so we're not entirely sure." Gadget told her. "We brought you inside the museum. This is one of the guard's breakrooms, we've kinda commandeered it for ourselves at the moment since no one was using it."
"Oh... I see." Tammy fell silent as another wave of dizzyness came over her but then quickly subsided in a few seconds. "Did you catch her?" Tammy asked. At that question, everyone in the room stared at Tammy in surprise. "Huh? What is it?" Tammy asked, wondering why everyone was caught off-guard.
"Um... What do you mean, 'her'?" Chip asked, puzzled.
Tammy was suddenly confused. It was a her, right? She asked herself, wondering briefly if she could have been mistaken. Thinking as hard as she could, she was sure the person she'd tried to stop had been female. She realized that the others probably hadn't caught her, it would explain why they didn't know. "Oh... I meant the person who knocked me out." Tammy said. "It was a female. A mouse, I think... dressed all in black? Kinda like a ninja from a low budget movie? You didn't catch her?"
"I'm afraid not." Chip answered, as she expected. "But I think I caught a glimpse of her... if it really was a her. How do you know it was a female?" Chip asked.
"Because I tackled her while she was trying to get into the museum." Tammy explained. "Whoever it was, they were thin and light, too light to be a male, and they had the build of a female."
"You tackled her? Is that when she knocked you out?" Chip asked.
"She was fast, and she got out of my grip. Last thing I remember, she put me in a headlock and held a funny smelling wet cloth over my face, and it must have had something in it that made me black out before I could do anything." Tammy said.
"Yeah, I smelled chloroform when I first got to ya." Monty informed her.
"Do you have any idea why she was here?" Tammy asked, and as she did, she suddenly remembered her dream the previous night at Ranger HQ, the one she'd ignored. "Did anything happen to the diamond?" Tammy asked suddenly, burning with curiousity as to whether or not it had actually been her assailant's target.
A bitter look crossed Chip's face, and all other Rangers looked at the floor in embarassment. Tammy could instantly tell that the news wasn't good. "It was stolen." Chip said simply. "We're not sure how, but they got it, and no one managed to stop them." A few seconds later, he mumbled something else, barely above a whisper. "And I was right there, watching it. I still can't believe that I just couldn't do anything." His voice was heavy with disappointment and anger.
"Aww, c'mon Chip, don't blame yerself." Monty tried to comfort him. "They filled the room with teargas an' smoke, what were you supposed ta do? Besides, Foxglove's still out there, we jus' gotta hope she manages to stick with that weird airplane." He said optimistically.
All those details Monty was talking about were news to Tammy, and she instantly had more questions. Teargas? Smoke? An airplane? "What airplane?" Was the first question she managed to speak out loud.
"Right after Foxglove led me to ya, someone took off from the roof o' the museum in somethin' that looked a mite like the rangerwing, only bigger. Foxglove flew after 'em, and she still ain't back yet." Monty said.
"This just keeps getting stranger and stranger." Tammy commented, shaking her head. Hearing little bits of the story here and there was getting confusing. "Could someone please just give me all the details at once?" She asked. "I've obviously missed a lot while I was down."
Chip took a deep breath, as if he were preparing for a long speech. "Okay, here's everything we know so far..." He began. Tammy listened with interest for the next few minutes as he and the other Rangers recounted every piece of information they had about the case. When they were done, she couldn't help but notice that even when everything was layed out in order, there was still discouragingly little to work with. But she had to hope that it might just be enough - after all, the Rangers had a history of cracking tough cases...
Twenty minutes later, when Foxglove burst into the room, it was clear that she
was completely exhausted, and that she was on the verge of tears even before
she said anything. Chip instantly noticed the look on her face, as if something
absolutely terrible had just happened. He braced himself for yet another discouraging
development in the case so far.
"What's the matter, luv?" Monty asked in a concerned voice, obviously sensing that something was wrong.
"It was horrible!" Foxglove sobbed, breaking down completely. "There was a fire, and the plane crashed into the ocean, and there was nothing I could do... There was nothing left..."
"It's okay, just calm down." Chip tried to comfort her. Even as he tried to calm her, however, inwardly his spirit was already sinking. He'd have to hear the whole story, of course, but that fragment she'd blurted out already didn't sound good. He'd concluded that it was very likely that the diamond was on that plane, and their best hope for recovering it was to track it down and catch whoever was flying it. If it was lost in the ocean and had taken the diamond with it, the odds of anyone ever seeing it again were definately small.
"You look all worn out. Sit down and rest for a while, why don't you?" Dale said as he put his hand on her shoulder and led her to the couch, where she sat down. Dale sat on the couch next to Foxglove, trying to comfort her as she cried softly. Chip paced around the room, unconsciously twisting his fedora back and forth in his hands as his mind kept racing, even though he knew that most of the theories he thought up were nothing but blatant guessing.
"Golly, you're pacing a lot. What's bugging you, Chip?" Gadget asked suddenly, catching him by surprise.
"Just the obvious." He shrugged, trying to act calm. Inwardly, in the mood he was in, he wanted to explode at the question, but he bit his tongue and kept silent. Pulling a chair out from the small table in the room, he sat down, tossing down his fedora on the table in frustration. His thoughts kept dwelling on how easily the theft seemed to happen. They'd been given a good 32 hours of advance warning, and they'd still failed to do anything to deter it, or give the thief a signifigantly more difficult time. They'd even had Tammy and Foxglove's help, and between the seven of them, plus all the regular museum security, they'd been utterly defeated by what seemed to be one person acting alone... and who had taunted them ahead of time, to make it even more bitter. Everything about this case was making him feel helpless, and that helplessness was in turn slowly breeding anger inside of him.
I've got to snap out of this, he told himself as he realized the negative mindset he was slipping into. It's not as if we're necessarily predestined to lose the diamond, he reasoned with himself. There's no reason to lose your temper so easily just yet, we still have some hope. After all, we haven't yet heard what Foxglove has to say... Then again, creeping pessimism reminded him, that little part of the story I've heard doesn't look too good so far... He tried to shake off that last thought and force himself to ignore the voice of doubt and stay optimistic.
After another minute or two, most of which was awkward silence, Foxglove had finally calmed down and regained her composure enough to tell them what had happened:
"I started flying after that thing right after it took off from the roof of the museum," She began, "and I followed it for a long time. At first, I don't think that whoever was flying it saw me. Once we started to get near the bay, though, I must have been spotted because they started flying in zigzags trying to lose me. They had some kind of weapon, too - a siren or something. It scrambled up my sonar, so I had to try and follow them by sight instead. I was doing okay until they shot something at me. It exploded with some terribly bright white flashes and I couldn't see for a while."
"I'll bet it was a flash powder bomb, designed to blind anyone following them." Gadget pondered. "And if they had an ultrasonic siren of some kind, they must have actually anticipated being chased by a bat. We must be dealing with a very serious professional. But flying blind and deafened - Gee Willickers, that must have been hard." She said sympathetically.
"It was terrifying." Foxglove said. "All I could do was fly in circles right where I was, because I was so afraid I would hit something if I tried to go anywhere."
"That musta been awful! So then what happened?" Dale asked with concern.
"Well, after a minute or two, my eyes got back to normal, and I started to be able to see again. The sonar jamming thing they used was wearing off, too. The airplane was kind of far away, but I went after it again as fast as I could. They were flying away over the water, out into the bay. When I was starting to catch up, I could see that it was on fire, but there wasn't anything I could do. Pieces were breaking off of it, and then it just crashed into the water. I tried to look and see if anyone survived... but I don't think so. It just hit the water too hard, and everything sank so fast." Foxglove finished sadly.
"No one bailed out?" Gadget asked.
"Not that I know of." Foxglove responded.
"Could you lead us to the spot where the plane crashed?" Chip wondered.
"I don't know how easy it would be to find the exact spot again. The water all looks the same, and it was a long way from shore. It was also too dark to really see any good landmarks. It could have been almost anywhere, really." Foxglove shook her head. "I can give you a very rough guess, but even then I can't be sure of being right."
"And even if you were right, with all the layers of currents in the water, there's no telling where any wreckage might have drifted to." Gadget said.
"So you don't think we'll be able to find any of it at all?" Chip asked in disbelief.
"I'd have to say that we'd just be wasting our time if we tried." Gadget shook her head. "Golly, we might end up spending years searching and never come across anything at all."
"I'm sorry, I should have..." Foxglove started.
"No, don't blame yourself. It's okay. You did the best anyone could possibly expect you to." Chip interrupted, trying to reassure her. Inside, though, he could feel dismay and worry building within himself - it was probably one of the most important cases they'd ever ended up with, and hope of bringing it to a successful conclusion was fading away swiftly.
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Disclaimer:
The charactors of Chip, Dale, Gadget, Monterey Jack, Zipper, Tammy, Foxglove
and any other charactor originally appearing the animated series "Chip
and Dale's Rescue Rangers" are all © Disney and are used here without
permission. Any other charactors appearing herein that are not © Disney
are my own creations. This story may be freely copied, transmitted, printed,
distributed, used as bird cage liner, or whatever, I only ask that it is not
modified from it's original form and it is not used for profit in any way. I
believe that that concludes the legal mumbo-jumbo for now... On to the story!
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