Smallville: Annual

Chapter 18

4/16/05 - 4:05PM  - Observation Room - Fort Riley, KS

        General Lane looked at the scans provided to him by Captain Trevor and was furious at what the information was telling him.  Clark Kent and Diana Prince had escaped and where completely in the wind.  That car crash they engineered should have either killed them or was an exceptional diversion that held nothing but empty seats.  The only thing he could rely upon now was granting Captain Trevor authority to tap into every telephone, email and of the 200 million cameras the United States government had access to.

        Hardcastle as well as Captain Trevor were correct, these people were good and could very well be planning an attack on them soon.  Unless they struck first.  But right now he needed to contact his superiors.  Especially with the newest lead he now had available.  He was still rubbing his jaw as he reflected back upon what happened earlier after he picked up his daughter, his niece, their friend and the Kents.

"Are you sure you don't require a medic, sir?" said Lieutenant Ferris.

"No, Lieutenant." said Lane.  "Please be seated."

General Lane then spoke up as he turned his attention to Captain Trevor.

"All right Captain." Lane said. "Make contact."

        Steve Trevor had opened the link with general Blankenship, Wilson, Swanwick and the present day Hardcastle as the same monitor which had established the identification of the woman out helping Clark Kent evade justice.

"General Lane report." replied Blankenship.

"As of 1245 hours I had placed the identification of a woman who had used a falsified authorization on the US Naval Diving and Testing Grounds in Smallville, Kansas. That she was armed and extremely dangerous.  Followed closely with the news that a Clark Kent was declared a person of interest, for it was believed she and the woman posed a threat to national security.  Somehow both reports reached  the Granville Sheriff's department.  Granville, Kansas being the town closest to Smallville.  Somebody jumped the gun and the report was overheard by the female suspect while enjoying a cup of coffee alongside my niece and daughter.

Whoever this woman is, its clear that she is involved deeply with Clark Kent and I have been doing my best to garner any information on the associates of Clark Kent.  After a brief assault that included the sheriff as well as two civilians the woman escaped with Clark Kent in a patrol car chase down the streets of Smallville culminating  in an apparent accident off the Loeb Bridge, yet forensics at the scene report that the car's tires where punctured from bullets taken from a custom made automatic that belonged to the perpetrator.  There was no cameras around the bridge and it was presumed either the Kent boy and Prince woman had willingly fallen to their deaths or had engineered the accident so as to successfully escape.  Yet the road blocks in place discovered no one leaving the town.  A preliminary scan shows activity up the Elbow river but other than hearing a few disturbances in the woods, there was no sign of either fugitive.  I have only one lead to follow, Clark Kent's family and friends. As the video I'm about to show, these interrogations are legitimized under the provisions of the Patriot Act as to what they truly know about Clark Kent."

        General Lane showed a video with his daughter Lois Lane in which Lois seeming to have endured a pretty painful beating.

"In these recordings I realize I have a conflict of interest, but I am supported with intelligence officer Lieutenant Ferris."

***

Lois was furious.  It had been over three hours and she was still painfully sore in her left eye and after being picked up in the Smallville Med Center by her father it seemed to have been the start of an interrogation technique as she waited in her room alongside Lana and Chloe as they wondered what was going on.  After everyone offered what they knew about the unknown woman who had threw down with her and Lana.  The room was relatively comfortable but Lois noticed that Chloe was particularly quiet almost as if she was afraid of talking about anything on the base.  Eventually Lois was called by her father into a room with a pretty kind, but serious air force officer.