Chapter 14 – Bunkering

His bunker really wasn’t going to look anything like what the word usually implied. There was no way that he could actually protect himself against a group of mages, and really all he needed to deal with vamps or shifters was some kind of panic room because all they could bring to the table was physical force. Though if they found the bunker, there was probably no point in fighting to begin with. Instead, he was relying on obscurity. It had worked well enough before, until his cover had been blown, and it was always the first and best way to stay hidden.

What he was actually building was a normal house out in deeply rural Oaxaca. Two bedrooms, two baths, though he wasn’t actually expecting to have company there. It was just absolutely bizarre to build a house of any size without at least two, and he could always use the extra room for something else. A large kitchen combined with dining room, a living room that would probably be a gym, an attached garage.

The basement was probably where most of his magic stuff would go. He was leaving it unfinished for the moment since he didn’t know exactly how his various tests would go, but a giant concrete room was good enough. He’d also put a separate workshop off to the side since he would be doing metalworking, and having a place for his own crucible and molds and things like wire-drawing equipment would be great, but also not in an enclosed basement.

For the moment he had solar panels planned to power the place, but he was optimistic about using a pair of portals to generate energy. Oaxaca had a lot more mana than the States, and it was pretty obvious that permanent portal enchantments made perpetual motion machines pretty straightforward. In fact, it was so straightforward that he had to imagine GAR and BSE used it themselves.

Just the thought of it really irked him. It was infinite electricity. Sure, there were limitations, but if they’d wanted to, the supernatural community could have provided the world with free and unlimited power. Among other things. He could do that, if it weren’t for the impositions of GAR authority and the fact that the grid wasn’t really cut out for some random person pumping huge wattages into it.

Instead, he was stuck using it for his own little house.

It was a damned travesty. If the various governments of the world were in bed with the supernatural, as seemed to be the case, it seemed pretty weird that they hadn’t asked for infinite portal energy. Of course, explaining that away without revealing the existence of magic would be difficult, but it could just be presented as a classified technology and just have wires run from a black site.

In the end it wasn’t his problem, but it was a bit of a personal peeve seeing potential wasted like that. Though it wasn’t like he was really living up to his full potential either, tromping around in the wilds of Mexico, so maybe it was a bit hypocritical. The forests were rather nice, though.

Callum had found a hundred-acre slice out near some township somewhere, mostly completely wooded, and with a few systems of caves that he could sense. His house wasn’t going to go directly atop any of them, but it would still be near enough that he could use one as a panic room. Once he’d freshened up the air in it and maybe furnished it a little.

It was just a matter of purchasing it. Callum drove his pickup to the outskirts of the nearby township, really hoping there was someone who could speak English. He had a translator program loaded on his phone, but that would just show he was ripe for ripping off.

In order to offset that, Callum was dressed in a nice set of slacks and a polo, and had gotten himself a nice silver cane to lean on. The pickup being somewhat beat-up undercut the image a bit, but he wasn’t planning to be seen driving it up to city hall. Instead he just teleported himself nearby and walked the rest of the way, even if that was not that great for his knee. He’d been doing the exercises, but it still was a point of weakness.

His attire and cane drew eyes as he approached what passed as the municipal building. That was fine; he’d made sure to turn his hair completely grey and was wearing glasses, so if for some reason it ever mattered, nobody would guess he was only thirty-one. The only thing he couldn’t do anything about was that he clearly wasn’t from Mexico.

The man inside the municipal building blinked at him when he walked inside, taking in Callum’s garb and straightening up. There was a certain amount of suspicion in those eyes, which Callum didn’t blame him for, but what Callum wanted was straightforward enough. So far as he could tell the land he’d picked wasn’t even being used for crops, and besides which, he had plenty of money to pay for it. Or rather gold, in the briefcase he carried in his other hand.

“I need someone who can speak English,” he told the man. “I need to buy some land.”

“Si, señor,” was the reply, along with a motion for Callum to follow him inside. He was led to someone’s office, given a chair, and the man vanished back out to the front. Callum followed with his senses, and when the man took out a phone, he formed a tiny portal to listen in. Considering there was no sign of supernatural presence, that didn’t seem like much of a risk.

Not that eavesdropping did very much when Callum didn’t speak the language. The translation application didn’t really do a good job either but he seemed to be calling someone else with more authority and who had actual English skills. That was all to the good, but Callum felt that was a bit too easy. Then again, it was probably the easiest thing for them to just see what the man with money wanted.

“Thirty minutes,” the receptionist or whatever he was told Callum in fairly broken English, coming back into the room after finishing the conversation. Callum nodded in return, and was left alone. The wait wasn’t unexpected, but he did worry about a possible ambush or attempted strong-arming by whomever was coming.

While he waited he surveyed everything around with his senses, locating the best places to teleport if he needed to make an exit. He had his glamor focus ready, and if people had guns he’d pre-emptively make sure they weren’t going to function. Most mages probably thought they had nothing to fear from normal folks, him included, but Callum was very aware that nobody was actually invulnerable.

The wait was closer to forty minutes than thirty, but he knew the local leader had arrived when a truck with a half-dozen people rumbled to a stop in front of the building. That was too many individuals to be comfortable, but only one of them actually headed toward the door. The rest spread out to simply hang around just outside.

There was a brief discussion between the man who’d arrived and the receptionist, before they approached the office. Callum stood as they entered, leaning on his cane, and studied the fellow they’d brought to talk with him. He looked weather-beaten and wrinkled, but his eyes were sharp as he took Callum’s offered hand and introduced himself as Miguel.

“I was told you wanted to buy land?” Miguel asked, moving to take the seat behind the office desk while the receptionist left to give them privacy.

“Yes, and build a house there. I have the plans for it, and I was hoping that you might be able to suggest local companies.” He opened the briefcase and took out a printout of a plat of the land he’d picked out that showed the boundaries, along with a copy of the schematics and items list. He arranged them on the desk, but Miguel focused on the land.

“The price for the land, Señor, it is quite a significant expense…” Miguel began. Callum silenced him by taking out one of the gold plates.

“I will be paying with these. If you could arrange for the construction companies and other such details, I would be grateful.”

He was pretty sure that Miguel thought he was with the cartels after that, which was not an implication Callum actually minded. At any rate, Miguel easily agreed to take care of all the details that a local would know after Callum displayed the gold. There was some discussion, and Callum didn’t push too hard, but he wanted to make sure that Miguel knew he wouldn’t stand for any ideas of just taking his money.

For some reason, that wasn’t very hard.

“One more thing,” Callum said, sliding across several of the hundred-gram gold plates. “What are the men outside for?” Miguel twitched, half-glancing around to check if there were some place Callum could have observed them from. There wasn’t.

“Ah, it was in case of any trouble, Señor. Men with money sometimes bring trouble, you see.”

“There won’t be any trouble.”

“Of course not,” Miguel assured him, taking the gold plates. Callum was sure he would siphon off some of that money for himself, but really, that was not a problem. He just wanted to make sure that the house was built to standards. “If there is no trouble, there is no trouble.”

“Good.”

“We will start clearing land tomorrow,” Miguel said, and offered his hand again. Callum took it.

“I’ll be by on occasion to check your progress. And see to expenses.”

“Of course. My door is always open to you,” Miguel said, offering to Callum an honest-to-goodness business card, which he accepted. Hopefully Callum wouldn’t have to spend too much time overseeing things. It’d be tedious enough running back and forth with some of the stuff he was going to source State-side, like the solar panels, but he did want to get the bunker done.

At least he didn’t have to drive the whole way each time. Being able to teleport sped things up immensely, and he was planning on making another set of teleport plates. Their placement was going to be a bit of an issue, but he figured it might be good to make use of the caves he was sensing. Probably even buy a local pickup, and use that in order to disguise how he was bringing things in.

The next few weeks promised to be extraordinarily busy. He was going to be making enchantments, ferrying equipment back and forth, and even learning some amateur metalwork stuff. Figure out some new transportation, too, since he wanted a van of his own. All the stuff he needed to do in order to harden himself against anything GAR might try.

***

“According to Duvall, he’s probably using a finesse tool to get past the wards.” Agent Danforth reported, breaking Jahn out of his contemplation.

“Enchanter’s Guild is going to love that,” Jahn sighed. A focus for working at smaller scales than that of standard vis was not exactly a common piece of equipment, since only certain kinds of enchantments actually needed them. “Either them or BSE, if he’s using a picker instead.”

“I don’t think so,” Danforth disagreed. “Again according to Duvall, everything was at the same scale, which isn’t how any of our pickers operate. What I don’t get is how he got the range on it. No matter what tool you use, those little strands can’t go all that far.”

“Another thing to figure out when we catch up with him. Or them, I suppose.” Jahn tapped the desk thoughtfully. “We can’t harden every ward, but there are some measures we can take for some place we expect him to be.” At that scale, vis threads were so fragile that they’d break just from the passage of someone’s field of authority, so making wards that way was no good.

Jamming did work, breaking those fragile threads, but it was mana-intensive and made normal spellcasting difficult, not to mention, once again, tripping wards constantly. But it could be done. Just not everywhere all at once, and if the wards kept going off they’d be useless against everyone and not just Wells.

“We definitely need to give him a target,” Jahn said at last. “We have to entice him to attack a place of our choosing. We had that chance with the mundane pair, but we weren’t careful enough.” That still rankled. Wells’ group was so devoid of handles that it should have been obvious the pair were more than just witnesses.

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The Department of Acquisitions hadn’t done nearly enough. Though they’d had the pair in custody for over a week and nothing had happened, Jahn would have still preferred if they’d been moved to a BSE safehouse. Of course, all that was hindsight. When they’d first acquired the couple, everyone had been focused on Europe and reinforcing the landings to the Portal Worlds. Wrestling with the Department of Acquisition over a pair of mundanes had not been on anyone’s mind.

That was not a mistake they’d make again.

“What about Ferrochar?” Jahn asked, turning to Agent Black. He’d tried applying some pressure to the fae in order to get ahold of the mundanes once again, but it was exceedingly difficult when he couldn’t even name the people in question. Such a powerful working meant that it had to be part of a bargain. A fae couldn’t summon that kind of thing of their own accord.

“He’s all but saying he had contact with Wells. As the Ghost, of course.” Black typed the words, displaying them on a portable monitor. While Jahn knew how to protect himself from Felicia’s talents, he appreciated the habitual caution.

“That idiot is going to get someone killed,” Jahn said bluntly, and Black nodded agreement. He wasn’t sure how exactly she’d wound up on the outs from the various fae enclaves, but she was loyal to GAR rather than any of the fae kings. For the fae version of loyal, of course, so it wasn’t like he trusted her implicitly.

“Well, if Ferrochar is determined not to support GAR, then we need not support Ferrochar,” Jahn decided. “I’m going to ban his fae from the Miami offices until he decides to start cooperating. Or rather, the Archmages are.” He tapped his breast pocket where the Archmage seals sat.

“You’re not worried about loading up BSE, under the circumstances?” Danforth asked doubtfully. “I mean, fae go kind of weird when they can’t do their thing.” He gave Black a look when he said that, something with a bit more feeling than that of an assigned partner. It wasn’t any of Jahn’s business, but he was pretty sure there was something there. They were just a little too much in tune, stayed a little too close to each other, for just coworkers.