Dawn of the Giantess (Volume 4) - Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Hi there, if you are following the Dawn of the Giantess story then Chapter 6 is a very important read. It doesn't contain any GTS/ Shrunken material but it links the story. However it is quite short if you are not interested in the story, go straight to Chapter 7.

Chapter 6 – On the Trail

“Sir, I think we’ve got something,” Dawson burst into the office, he had pulled Sergeant Harvey and another officer in with him.

Peterson’s eyes snapped up from the tablet that he was using to read reports on.

“What have you got?”

Dawson’s eyes were wide and he looked wired with adrenaline; he behaved like this when he was hot on a lead.

“Fifteen women reported missing, a yoga class, young women or recently mothers,”

“Where?” Peterson stood up from his desk chair, his heart starting to pump in his chest, if Dawson’s interest was piqued it meant something tangible.

“I’ll show you sir,” Dawson switched on the large screen in the office and pulled up a package of files he had emailed Peterson. He pulled up several maps.

“Okay, so this is the Yoga… hut… I suppose it is, it’s a brick and timber built building from what I can see from the street-view,” he brought up a map of the county showing the location, it was relatively near the south coast.

Then he brought up another map with several large circles and many other circles overlapping.

“Our team has drawn out the longest range that plane that Katie Reed was taken in, on a full tank this circle is the maximum range. Now unfortunately this assumes that it didn’t land and refuel and that they didn’t then move on, but bear with me a second.”

He brought up another map. This one showed a series of red dots on it.

“These are the last recorded disappearances in the last three years,” they were scattered over quite a large area. “Looks like just a scattergun really,” there was a bit of an arc to the dots but generally Peterson agreed that it looked like there was no pattern.

“But if we overlay the radius range of that plane, it flew north to south or south west and then we drew all of the southern radius’ and suddenly the circles mostly cover the zones of these incidents and form a pattern of a sort. It’s not immediately obvious but using the range of the plane...”

“Quite speculative,” Peterson pursed his lips and walked over to the screen, examining it closely. “They would have to be quite sloppy if they flew directly to and from their destination, or an airfield as close to it as possible and straight back to their base of operations.

He rocked back on his heels.

“Assuming they have a base, to conduct these other kidnappings, of course.” He glanced at Dawson and then Harvey, “assuming that any, or all, of these kidnappings is indeed them,”

“We thought that, but just look sir,” Harvey pointed at the arc of the red dots, “most of them lie within the radius’ we have drawn, within thirty miles. They have been increasing with intensity over the last few months.”

Peterson walked right up to and leaned uncomfortably close towards the screen and examined their mark-ups with close interest and scrutiny. He didn’t say a word, his face was expressionless, not giving away anything.

The room was deadly quiet, only the murmur of voices of the teams working together outside Peterson’s office could be heard; and the hum of the air conditioning unit that had been rigged up at short notice.

Dawson cleared his throat uncomfortably. Either the air conditioning was making his throat dry or he was impatient to get to the point.

“Sir, let me remind you of the pattern of disappearances that we were tracking before,” he brought up another window with their older Operation Gulliver map.

The map that all of their senior managers had previously ignored them over, it was only the pleas of the parents, friends and relatives of the missing people that had placated them and prevented Peterson’s original two-man team from being shut down.

Now he had a temporary task force of 180 trained officers, plus support staff and countless volunteers. Students from Katie Reed’s College had almost forced themselves on Peterson to take them on board to assist, and what assistance they did provide, their IT skills were beyond his task forces’.

He knew that time was of the essence, he needed immediate results, or the higher-ups would lose attention or patience and move on. With a fickle media he had to be sharp and get a win. But that also meant they had to be as precise as possible and not stumble in the dark.

Looking at the older map brought back bitter memories, mostly of Manchester, where they had got so close to getting decent evidence on their lead, the place of operations was burning at a very high temperature when they arrived.

An hour or two could have saved many lives. He would never forget that moment.

He shook it off, focus, the same might happen again if he didn’t focus.

He rubbed his whiplash injured right shoulder and the side of his neck, wincing.

“Yes, Dawson, I get it, the previous kidnappings were clustered in cities around the country, they would focus on an area for a few weeks and then move on, it took us years to put that together,”

“Sir, I think it’s still them,” Dawson insisted.

“So why the sudden change of pattern over the last few months?” Peterson instantly asked, awaiting Dawson’s speculative response.

“The disappearance of Miss Reed in terms of timeline of this new pattern of disappearances is almost slap bang in the middle,” Dawson commented. “What if…” he was thinking out loud now. “What if this organisation is suddenly in a rush to gather more test subjects.”

Peterson and Harvey’s eyes widened in surprise together.

“My, that is quite speculative,” Sergeant Harvey commented first, her ponytail swished to the side as her head jerked directly to look at Dawson. They hadn’t discussed that theory before going in to see Peterson.

Dawson nodded.

“I know, but now is the time to be bold, we’ve already established a link. One,” he started counting on his fingers, “a group of people completely disappearing in one area and not necessarily people that might know each other.” Peterson nodded in agreement.

“Two, crime scenes completely wiped down and cleaned and cleared before we get there. Three, no witnesses.” He continued to count.

“Four, the disappearances are instant.

Five they are mostly younger people between the ages of 19 to 35.

Six there are more women than men in each of these targeted groups.” He counted the final one off on a fully spread hand plus his other finger.

“Then there is the plane taking Miss Reed, we’ve got the arc of it’s range,”

Peterson nodded at each of them.

Harvey looked at him incredulously as if he had caught Dawson’s bug.

“Sir, it’s quite a tenuous link,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I know it seems that way, we thought that for years hunting these bastards. They are great at hiding their tracks and throwing you off the scent. We have been chasing scraps of information for years. We’ve now potentially got a solid lead.” Peterson gave a thin smile, he didn’t want to say it too soon, in case they didn’t find anything, but he felt that this was a good lead.

“What shall we do sir?” Dawson asked eagerly. “I was thinking that we get some bodies in the areas undercover and try and root them out, we could make up a festival of sound or something,”

Peterson shook his head.

“Nice idea, but it would take too long to plan,” he looked back at the map on the tab on the screen. “No, we need to tighten the noose now. I feel that you’re onto something with your theory Dawson, I think that they are starting to rush for some reason,” he glanced back at each of them. “And when people rush they make mistakes.”

“Aren’t we at risk of doing the very same then sir?” Harvey replied evenly. She was a good steady asset to their team, Peterson liked her.

He nodded in agreement.

“Yes, we are, but this time we’ve potentially got a strong lead and this might give us enough to call in some favours,” Harvey creased her eyebrows awaiting for him to embellish on this. He rewarded her patience.

“I’ve got a friend from University. He works at NADOC in RAF Air Command,”

“And for those of us who don’t speak acronyms?” She asked, eyebrows furrowed.

“NADOC is the National Air Defence Operations Centre at RAF Air Command, High Wycombe,” Peterson replied with a slight smile, expecting her to be impressed. He was turning towards his phone, but paused at her lack of inspiration.

“My mate is a senior officer in Air Command, they track everything going into and out of the UK airspace, and I bet they have a pretty good set of records of the sea and the roads if we need it as well.”

She nodded in sudden realisation.

“I see sir, great idea. What a great contact to have, could’ve been useful earlier tracking that private plane,” she muttered under her breath.

“What, me ask a senior officer to track a single private plane for me, over a single missing student, not likely,” Peterson huffed. “But this,” he waved at the recent map mark-up, “from the stats that is 130 people missing in a few months, this is big. It should be enough to get his attention,” he picked up his phone.

“What shall we do sir?” Dawson asked.

“You’re welcome to listen to the conversation,” Peterson sat in his chair as he dialled.

*

“Staff Sergeant is on video conference,” Peterson’s head poked out of his office door, calling out to Harvey and Dawson. They rushed in eagerly.

They bunched around Peterson’s screen, not wanting to waste time logging into their own laptops.

They exchanged greetings and Peterson requested an update.

“We have spent the time using your data and sharing it with civilian air traffic control, under strict confidentiality I would add, and our own resources,” the RAF Flight Sergeant continued without further preamble.

Peterson’s friend was busy in meetings and had tasked a Flight Sergeant and a Lieutenant to run the search on his behalf.

“You’ll be pleased, to hear that we have found a pattern of activity. There have been numerous landing sites utilised. The flight identification references have been changed on each occasion but the radar profile of private plane matches on each occasion too.

It is flying to and away from nearby sites, approximately around the reported timescales of the disappearances schedule you sent over.”

“That’s incredible news,” Peterson leaned into the video, his head loomed towards the camera unintentionally.

“Can I ask what resources you have used?” Harvey asked.

“I am not at liberty to tell you about that Ma’am,” came the blunt reply. There was a brief silence after such a blunt response. The Flight Sergeant waited.

“Well is there a destination of this plane?” Peterson prompted impatiently.

The Flight Sergeant took a deep intake of breath.

“There is, but… it is restricted,” the Flight Sergeant seemed uncomfortable.

“What do you mean? You’re telling me you know where these people are being kidnapped to and you won’t tell us? We’re the police,”

“I understand that sir,” came the polite response. “I’m calling you from my personal computer,” the Flight Sergeant’s eyes flicked quickly over his shoulder, it was fleeting and could easily have been missed but all three of the police saw it and registered the nervous gesture.

The Flight Sergeant pulled his boom microphone closer to his mouth.

“I spoke to your friend sir, he has been immediately called away by Senior Command, it was as soon as he put out the request for information, he told me to keep looking, on the down low, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” he winced.

Peterson sighed, leaning back into his chair.

This sounded very dirty indeed, something was not at all right here.

He didn’t know much about military hierarchy and reporting but if it was not usual for a police search to pique the interest of senior officers.

“What can you tell us Flight Sergeant?” He prompted, he would settle for anything, he felt that they were so close.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more sir, I’ve already told you more than I should have,”

“So what harm is there telling us some more then?” Dawson prompted. The Flight Sergeant winced again.

“Your line of enquiry has rattled some cages sir,” he ground his teeth at the screen, Peterson suddenly realised he was trying to give them a clear indication.

“Understood, are we encouraged to stop our lines of enquiry on this?” Peterson asked, tapping Dawson’s leg to dissuade him from protesting.

The Flight Sergeant nodded slowly.

“Is there anything we should know before we close down this enquiry?” Peterson asked, trying to grab at something.

“Nothing sir,” the Flight Sergeant, he then paused looked directly at the camera, “now if you’ll excuse me, I need to re-route a pair of Typhoons over the Isles of Scilly,” he stopped there.

Peterson looked directly into the man’s eyes on the screen. He locked his jaw and nodded slowly.

“I hear the Isles of Scilly is very nice this time of the year,”

“I wouldn’t know sir, but I would love to check it out if I had the free time, I hear St Mary’s is particularly pleasant.”

Peterson pursed his lips sombrely, but his mind was racing with excitement.

“Very well, it’s unfortunate that the RAF Senior Command will not collaborate with us, and I appreciate you taking the time to let us know that is the case, have a good day Flight Sergeant, thanks for your time.”

“Sir,” the Flight Sergeant nodded and the video call ended.

Peterson looked back at both of them with a wide smile. His phone suddenly rang interrupting him as he was about to speak.

It was his boss, he picked it straight up, putting it on speaker.

“What the fuck are you doing Peterson?” the speaker squawked. No greeting at all.

“Sir?” Peterson asked.

“What the fuck are you doing calling in favours at the RAF?” the angry voice bellowed at him. “I’ve just had the fucking Home Secretary and Secretary of State berating me via the Commissioner,” the angry voice continued, “and I’ve just received an email, marked strictly confidential telling us to back the fuck off. What are you doing over there?”

“Sir,”

“Don’t fucking answer, I don’t want to know about it.” There was a long pause as neither person said anything. Dawson and Harvey glanced at each other, wondering if Peterson was about to get fired.

There was an audible sigh through the speaker.

“Carry on Peterson,” the voice was suddenly calm and subdued.

“Sir?” Peterson asked in surprise. It was the first time his boss had conceded something to him or not wanted to cover his own arse.

“I said carry on,” there was a pause. “Look, I thought you were just a fucking nut job with this Gulliver theory, but… I’ve just got this email in writing, the shit storm that you have just kicked up means that you are uncovering something quite sensitive, and whatever it is it’s not in any of my briefing papers from central government. So it’s not my fault that they didn’t brief us not to investigate our leads. It’s a shame I didn’t have time to relay those instructions to you, before you go off doing whatever the hell you’re about to do,” the voice was firm and had a tone of congratulation to it, then the phone cut out.

“What the hell just happened?” Dawson asked in shock.

“They’re on St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly,” Peterson spun round with a shaky smile, “that Sergeant at the RAF just told us where they are, our boss has had the shits put up him by central government, but now he’s got it in writing, albeit confidentially. Basically if we stumble on whatever this is, he’s covered his arse with deniability, but he isn’t going to obstruct us.”

“So we’re going to the Isles of Scilly,” Dawson replied with a wide smile. “Do you think he was right?”

“About what?” Dawson asked.

“That St Mary’s is very pleasant this time of the year?” She asked. Peterson huffed a mild chuckle as he grabbed his coat.