Chapter Eight
By: Winston deLeon
As the elevator rose, Tammy stood uncomfortably as far to the right as she could go, trying to keep some distance between Jade, on the left, and herself. Even moreso, however, she tried to keep some distance between herself and the opening to the elevator, as there was no door and someone who was incautious could easily fall out. Normally, as a squirrel, she wouldn't have been worried about falling, but it was always inconvenient, and besides, that concrete floor looked like an uncomfortable landing.
"Did you build this thing yourself?" Tammy asked.
"Yes. I moved into the skylight after the humans moved out. I was kind of sad to see them go, I loved fiddling with the machines they used while they were still here. I ran them up some frightening repair bills, at times, I'm afraid, because I used to experiment with their loading equipment at night, and although I tried to keep them from noticing, once in a while I wasn't entirely successful at reversing whatever modifications I'd made by the next morning. It used to drive them crazy trying to figure out exactly how a conveyer belt could suddenly kick into reverse on it's own. I think they finally chalked it up to... what did they call it? 'Gremlins', I think, was the term the foreman used to use."
"I guess you designed and built that airplane, too." Tammy ventured.
"Built? Yes. Designed? Not really. I'm no good at aerodynamics. I'd never worked on anything that was meant to fly before. As I'm sure Foxglove could tell you, I, uh, 'borrowed' a lot of design ideas from the rangerwing. Next time you see Gadget, tell her I said thanks for doing all the tough engineering." Jade commented with a smirk.
"Yeah... I'll be sure to do that." Tammy mumbled sarcastically.
The elevator soon reached the sheetmetal in the ceiling, rising up through a square hole cut in the metal until it's floor was even with the flat expanse of metal, and as Jade had said, there was indeed a skylight above it - a very large one. The skylight was made from two sheets of window panes, each on a diagonal angle, that rose to meet each other in the middle, giving it the look of a greenhouse, only smaller. In width, the room formed by the skylight and the sheetmetal floor wasn't much wider than the main room in Ranger HQ, but in length, it was far larger, about two and a half times as long as it was wide. The elevator was situated at the one end of the skylight, and at the other, there was a sheetmetal wall with a door built into it, apparently splitting the skylight into two rooms.
Looking up through the glass, Tammy could see the dark, overcast clouds hanging in the night sky, dimly reflecting back dirty orangish light from the city below. It illuminated the room, casting all it's contents with a hazy, slightly tinted light that, although dim, was sufficient to reveal many details. There was a large wooden worktable sitting in the middle of the half of the room nearest the elevator, with a single padded swiveling chair sitting nearby. The table was heaped with old wire, scraps of metal, gears, and the remains of various small machines. Some parts had spilled over onto the floor. The other side of the room (the one nearest the sheetmetal wall) was far neater, and other than a pair of heavily padded, comfortable looking chairs that offered an excellent view out of the skylight, that half of the room was empty, the floor bare and clean.
A vast expanse of sky in all directions was visible, and on a good day or night, the view would have been amazing. A slight drizzle of rain was still falling. Droplets of water tapped against the glass softly before rolling down the panes. Tammy was a bit awestruck. It seemed hard to believe that a person could actually live in a place like this without being detected by humans and quickly forced to leave.
As Tammy stepped out of the elevator, she turned around and looked up, and saw that a large electric motor had been fastened to a strong metal beam in the ceiling. The steel cable supporting the elevator was fixed to the motor's shaft. Attached to the motor, a heavy duty black electrical extension cord ran along the peak of the skylight, twist-tied to the metal framework that held the panes of glass. It ran across the entire ceiling and back into the other room, just barely squeezing above the sheetmetal wall.
"Built from an old garage door opener." Jade commented as Tammy studied the contraption. "It was kinda tricky to get it to raise and lower the right distance, but I've got all the bugs worked out by now."
The rig was impressive, but didn't seem particularly safe. "What do you do if the power goes out?" Tammy asked.
"I use that." Jade said, pointing to a coiled-up rope ladder resting on the floor near the elevator. It was made from the same kind of steel cable that the elevator was suspended from, and was anchored into the metal with large, strong bolts. "It's long enough to reach the floor. So far I've only had to use it once. Lucky for me, I've had a lot of success keeping the electricity turned on, even after the building was abandoned."
Jade started walking across the room to the sheetmetal partition. Tammy followed her at a cautious distance. "I've got a blowdryer in here, we can use it to dry off." Jade said as she opened the door in the wall and stepped into the room beyond, flicking on an electric light. As Tammy followed, she noticed how different this room was. It was part of the skylight, almost as large as the other section, but the windows in this room had all been blocked off with thin plywood. Instead of bare metal, the floor in here was carpeted, to Tammy's relief - her feet had been getting uncomfortably cold from the combination of being soaking wet and standing on bare metal.
A small television, a hand-held sized model for a human, was off to one side of the room, connected to a small VCR. A soft, heavily padded couch rested on the floor in front of it. The light that Jade had just turned on was actually a string of white christmas lights that had been run down the central ridge where the two slanted panels that made up the ceiling met. They filled the room with a pleasant, even glow that was neither too bright nor too dim.
Besides the TV, there were several bookshelves, filled with large numbers of rodent-sized copies of various works, hundreds in all, including several obscure and highly technical titles that Tammy was sure she'd also seen in the shelves of Gadget's workshop. Those were interspersed, however, with all manner of other books. Fictional novels of all genres were mingled with nonfiction volumes on every imaginable subject. Nothing was in any kind of order at all, with the sole exception of a set of thick encyclopedias that had an entire shelf devoted to them. Next to one of the shelves, nestled in a corner, an old pocketwatch with it's protective flip-out cover and retaining chain removed had been built into an ornate-looking wooden stand to create a clever small-scale imitation of a grandfather clock. Also nestled in between a pair of shelves was a human-sized electrical socket. Off at the far end of the room were a few wooden cabinets and a kitchen area.
"I've covered up the windows in here so that I can get some privacy." Jade explained as Tammy looked around. "I like the view from the skylight, so I've put my work area out there, but I actually live in here. Let me just go get the blowdryer from the storage room..."
With that, Jade opened up another door, on the opposite wall from the one through which Tammy had just entered this room, and stepped into a small, dark room beyond. A few moments later, she emerged, dragging a very small, battered looking blowdryer and closed the storage room door. She hauled it to middle of the floor, plugged it into the room's sole electrical socket, and turned it on. It emitted a loud roar and blasted out a torrent of hot air. Jade walked over to it's muzzle, standing directly in the blast of heated air, and slowly turned herself around a few times. Tammy followed her example, and found herself drying off and warming up extremely quickly. After just two minutes, she was as dry as a bone once again.
"You dry yet?" Jade yelled over the noise of the dryer.
Tammy nodded in agreement. Jade turned it off, unplugged it, and stuffed it back into storage. When she emerged from the storage closet once again, she was dragging a video cassette. "This tape should offer a bit of explanation of what I've done with the diamond." Jade said. "It's an exact copy of the one I gave the Rangers. Actually, it's the master that I made their copy from." She wrestled the video into the VCR with some effort, turned on the TV and hit the play button, and sat down on the couch.
Holding all the questions she had in the hopes that maybe the tape would answer them, Tammy took a seat on the couch just as the static at the beginning of the tape gave way to a clear image. Tammy watched in silence as she saw everything the Rangers had seen. As it had for the Rangers, it explained some things, but left other questions glaringly open.
Ten minutes later, once the tape had reached it's end, Jade stopped it and put
it back into the storage area. Tammy remained on the couch (glad to get some
rest after the ten hour day of walking she'd been through) and tried to decide
on her first question. So many came to mind, it was hard to just pick one and
ask it. She tried to decide whether to go by the chronologial order of events,
or just pick the question that bugged her most.
Just as she had decided and was about to ask, Jade suddenly interrupted her. "Cookie?" Jade offered, holding out a large chunk of a chocolate chip cookie that looked as if it had been broken down into pieces small enough for a rodent to handle by cutting it into wedges like a pizza. "It's not the greatest meal, but it's all I seem to have around at the moment, and I'm starving. Thirsty, too, come to think of it. If you want something to drink, I've got bottled water or Coo Coo Cola."
Instantly Tammy realized that she was indeed both very hungry and very thirsty, and she took the wedge of cookie from Jade. "Water would be good." Tammy said, choosing the flavorless drink because she thought it would be easier to taste it if it were spiked with anything.
"No problem." Jade replied. She went to the kitchen area, and Tammy watched from across the room as she poured two glasses of water. She handed one to Tammy, and drank the other herself without any hesitation. Tammy sipped the water, and was satisfied that there was nothing strange about it's taste. Still remaining cautious, Tammy waited until Jade took a large bite out of the piece of cookie that she herself was holding before eating any of the one that had been offered to her. Once Tammy did venture to try a bite, however, the cookie was delicious. At that point, she decided she was probably just being paranoid, it would have been far easier for Jade to take her by surprise and chloroform her again when she'd first entered the warehouse if her intent had been to harm Tammy. The fact that she hadn't probably means that I'm not at much risk of being poisoned, either, she reasoned.
"Okay, the first question I have," Tammy managed to ask between bites of cookie, "is how the heck did you get out of that plane crash alive?"
"Plane crash?" Jade replied with a secretive grin. "I was never in any plane crash..."
"You mean Foxglove didn't see your airplane catch fire, break into pieces, hit the ocean, and sink?" Tammy challenged.
"Oh, I'm sure she saw it... I just wasn't there when it happened." Jade answered.
"But you must have been, Foxglove didn't see anyone bail out." Tammy stated.
"Oh? You mean the Foxglove who was blinded and deafened for a while by the little tricks I had up my sleeve?" Jade asked.
Tammy suddenly understood what had happened. "You bailed out early and sacrificed your airplane as a distraction so that we'd think you were dead." She said, suddenly feeling a bit foolish for not thinking of it earlier.
"Bingo." Jade commented simply. "Parachuted out with the diamond, and left the plane empty. So obvious, I'll bet it never occurred to you Rangers."
"Yeah, you fooled everyone." Tammy admitted. "And to think, those guys from the museum were ready to go build a fleet of submarines to try and recover that thing..."
Much to Tammy's puzzlement, Jade actually laughed when she heard that. "What's so funny?" Tammy asked.
"They're so hung up on the perceived value of a fairly useless hunk of carbon that they'd go to all the trouble and danger of building submarines to get it back, that's what." Jade said, shaking her head sadly.
"So, what, you're saying that diamonds are worthless?" Tammy wondered.
"No, nothing is 'worthless'. It's just that things are worth what people perceive them as being worth, and I happen think it's a riot that they actually considered that hulking monstrosity of a diamond worth risking their lives to recover. I mean, what can they actually do with it? Look at it once in a while, say 'wow, it sure is shiny, all right!', and then walk away? What's the point? How is that worth risking your life over?"
"I don't think it's the visual appeal." Tammy pointed out. "I think it's more about the money."
"Ah, but then again, I also find it rather bizarre that anyone would pay much money for something like that. I've never understood why rich people throw their wealth away so easily just to get a nice piece of eyecandy when they could be throwing it away in so much more constructive ways. No, no matter how you look at it, I really do think that things like that are excessively overvalued." Jade said.
"But you risked your life to get hold of it." Tammy said, feeling confused.
"No. I risked my life in order to accomplish my goals, but the diamond wasn't one of them. It was never anything more than a means to an end." Jade said.
"What end would that be?" Tammy asked. "And why is it worth dying for?"
"An end that you, being one of the Rescue Rangers, should understand the value of. My goal is to help people. You risk your lives all the time to do that." Jade said.
"I'm not really one of the Rangers. Not yet, anyway. I just hang out with them and help out when I can." Tammy said, a bit flattered but still a little uncomfortable with the idea of people considering her a full member of the team, as Jade seemed to be doing. "And excuse my skepticism, but I'm not seeing the connection between snatching a big diamond and helping people."
"The video explained part of it." Jade replied. "One of my goals was to get people to see how meaningless these shiny little toys really are. I've shocked a whole lot of people by making an 'impossible' theft, snagging a giant, famous diamond out from under their noses. But you know what? One of these days, one by one, some of those shocked people are going to wake up, and realize that despite losing their shiny little toy, life goes on. They'll come to the realization that, in truth, their life hasn't actually been impacted in any way. The loss of that nice piece of crystalline decadence doesn't affect them. It's not as if they've been blinded, or lost a limb, or deprived of anything they need to live. Maybe once they realize that, they'll realize that they don't need pointless luxuries in general."
"So... so you really did do all this just to teach a few people a lesson? To help make them better people? Risked your life for that?" Tammy asked, not really believing that it was that simple.
"Yep. If I can get through to anyone, then that, in itself, was worth the risk." Jade said. "But there's also another way in which this is going to help people besides that."
"And what's that?" Tammy asked.
"Are you familiar with Rat Capone?" Jade asked in return.
"I've read through the case files we've got on him, but I've never been around while the Rangers were tangling with him." Tammy answered.
"Well, he's got a new scheme in the works, one considerably more dangerous than anything he's thought up before." Jade said.
"What's he got planned?" Tammy asked.
"If you're read his casefiles, you oughta know his usual drill. Usually he deals in the mundane, and relies on unfair practices to derive a rediculous profit, like the time he cornered the entire cheese supply. Recently he's gotten fed up with that, though, and he's decided to take his chances with a more exotic product that ensures a large market of repeat customers." Jade said grimly.
The realization that occurred to Tammy was a dark one indeed, one that was all too common in the human news but was generally mercifully rare in the world of rodents. "You mean narcotics? He's going to sell drugs?" Tammy asked with a sinking feeling.
"Exactly. You might have noticed he's been absent from the city for the last few months. That's because he's been in Columbia, working hard and bargaining like mad with dozens of small-time South American dealers to scrape together and smuggle out a large shipment of the highest quality cocaine he can find. Usually, things like that aren't in any kind of demand in the rodent population, but I'm sure that Rat Capone thinks that once he's got enough people addicted, he'll create a self-sustaining market and end up making a fortune bigger than anything he could have amassed selling mere cheese. He's smuggled his shipment into the city in the past couple of days, but he hasn't started moving it into the streets yet. Nor do I intend to let him start moving it." Jade said.
"How are you going to stop him?" Tammy asked nervously. "And how does the diamond enter into that?"
"I made a special arrangement with him, almost as soon as he arrived back in the city two days ago. He knows I stole the Devil's Eye diamond. I sent him some photos proving that the diamond is very much in my possesion. He also happens to be one of many misguided people who puts incredible value in big, shiny eyesores, like gold and gemstones, for example. Therefore, we've cut a deal. He's going to trade me his entire cocaine shipment, in exchange for the diamond. I'm going to stop him by getting him to voluntarily give up his entire supply of drugs." Jade explained.
Tammy thought that perhaps she was missing something here. "Wait, hold on... You mean you're going to trade his cocaine for a diamond that you don't have anymore? How do plan to accomplish that?"
Jade grinned. "He only knows that I stole it... He doesn't know it's been destroyed. As far as he knows, it's still safely in my hands, just waiting for him to come pick it up. It's amazing, really, how much leverage one simple diamond gives you. Capone sees the instant opportunity to trade all his cocaine for one great big shiny thing right now, rather than having to wait and slowly trade it bit by bit for a whole bunch of smaller pieces of treasure. I wave the big prize in front of his nose, and he wants it so badly that I call the shots as long as he still perceives that I have it. That kind of power gives me the perfect opportunity to break him once and for all."
"When is all this supposed to happen?" Tammy asked.
"Tonight at midnight is the time that me and Capone agreed on." Jade told her.
Tammy looked at the clock in the corner. It indicated that it was 9 PM. "Then there's still time to go get the Rangers." Tammy said, with a sense of urgency. "They can help you take Rat Capone by surprise, if you want..."
"No. Absolutely not." Jade cut her off abruptly. "I've got this perfectly worked out. I've had it worked out for a month. The last thing I need is a sudden complication like them showing up."
"But you brought me here." Tammy pointed out. "Why'd you do that, if you don't want anyone else involved?"
"I let you in here to observe, not to get entangled in this mess. I know Capone better than any of you do. Trust me, I can handle him and his goons, and I'll destroy his drugs quite thoroughly." Jade said.
Something about her familiarity with Capone was starting to seem odd to Tammy. "How do you know Capone so well?" Tammy asked.
"I used to work for him, that's how." Jade said. "Until about a year ago. I guess you could say I was like the 'Gadget' of his operation. Just like you Rangers need the machines Gadget builds in order to do your jobs, Rat Capone needed my skills at tinkering with machines to accomplish a lot of his schemes. I'm the one who built all that milk-siphoning and cheese processing machinery he used to corner the market a while ago."
"Why didn't the Rangers ever see you?" Tammy asked suspiciously. "No one matching your description is in any of the casefiles about Capone."
"Because I was smart enough to keep my distance. My job was just to build things, not to be one of his thugs and tangle with people like the Rangers. Enforcement is Sugar Ray and Arnold's department. Besides, I never really wanted to work for Capone. The only reason I did is because he kept me under his thumb through coercion and threats. So as you can imagine, watching his plans get trashed suited me just fine. I wasn't about to stop the Rangers, but I thought it wisest to keep my distance rather than end up in the middle when the fur started flying." Jade explained.
"But if you knew the Rangers are so good at messing up criminal schemes, why'd you leave the warning note about stealing the diamond?" Tammy asked.
"Because this time I needed them. I needed their help to clear the coast. Trying to pull of what I did with just one person isn't easy, you see. I can come up with a great plan, but can't execute it entirely by myself. I knew that other people might have their eyes on the diamond, and the last thing I needed while I was trying to take it was someone else trying to do the same thing. By leaving that note, I was trying to stir them up, get them looking for anyone trying to plan a theft. They stand guard and clear out my competition, then all I have to do is get past them, and I get the diamond all to myself. Or, at least, that was the idea. You didn't find anyone else planning anything, did you?" Jade asked.
"Nope." Tammy replied. "You were the only one who had anything in mind, as far as we know."
"I knew it. Figures." Jade said with a smile and a helpless shrug. "You go to the trouble of arranging for some insurance, only to find out you've really only made it that much harder on yourself. Oh well. At least I rather enjoyed the challenge it posed to get past all of you."
"That doesn't make a whole lot of sense." Tammy said. "You preferred the presence of the Rescue Rangers over the presence of another thief? Wouldn't the thief have been easier to handle?"
"Let's put it this way: The devil you know is better than the one you don't. When it came to the Rescue Rangers, I knew exactly who I was dealing with. I knew they would be there. I planned around their presence because it was predictable, and when you can predict a problem, you can deal with it and overcome it. But another thief... I couldn't handle that. I had absolutely no way of predicting how another thief would have acted, or how many of them I would have had to deal with. Even though the Rangers were undoubtedly a more dangerous obstacle if all things were equal, they were the obstacle I could see clearly and get around. Does it make sense now?" Jade asked.
"Yeah, it makes perfect sense. You tricked them and wasted their time in order to clear your own way." Tammy said, feeling a bit disconcerted and a little angry at the thought that the Rangers had been used as a strategic insurance policy.
"I know, it was a rotten thing to do, I'm sorry I used them that way. I don't like tricking people, Rat Capone used to do it to me all the time and I hate how it feels. But there was no way around it, and I'm doing this for a worthy goal." Jade said apologetically.
"I sure hope so, after what you put everyone through. You upset Foxglove so badly that she was crying. Chip's been torturing himself for days trying to figure this out." Tammy said severely. She found herself tempted to angrily recite that old saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions, but she didn't think that antagonism would help the situation right now, so she held back. All she could really do was hope that this mess turned out to have a good ending.
"It'll be worth what it costs." Jade reassured her. "Believe me, I wouldn't have done any of this if I didn't know for sure that it was worth it."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------