Chapter 56
They gathered at the front bumper as Manny unpacked the duffels he’d brought, handing out body armor, weapons, ammunition, radios, and night-vision gear.
The night was completely black and the wind had picked up, blowing the heavy wet snow sideways into their faces.
The snow still wasn’t really sticking, which meant their tracks wouldn’t show. A lucky break, June thought.
Lewis left the Tahoe unlocked with the keys above the visor. After a quick look at the downloaded map to get their bearings, they pulled on their packs and Lewis led them single-file across the road and into the trees.
June’s armor was heavy on her shoulders as she climbed, the land rising steeply beneath her boots.
The forest was dense with towering pines and smaller firs and cedars beneath them.
The air was perfumed with evergreens and the smell of decomposing mulch.
June’s night-vision goggles turned the world a surreal and grainy green.
Without them, she would have turned her ankle on a rock or impaled an eyeball on a branch in the first dozen yards.
After forty minutes of rising terrain, the slope leveled out and the shades of green began to brighten as new light filtered through the overgrowth. They were coming to a clear-cut. Still inside the shelter of the forest, Lewis lifted a fist. They stopped, sank to a knee, and raised their goggles.
They looked out on a chaos of ankle-high stumps, evergreen seedlings, and high slashing tangles of bare blackberry canes, dense and tough and studded with thorns.
Beyond that was a line of eight-foot chain-link that stretched to each side until it disappeared into the mist. Coiled razor wire gleamed at the top.
The light came from a row of pole lights inside the fence, pointing outward.
Faraday pulled out his phone. They gathered closer.
The downloaded satellite view glowed faintly, showing the overall layout.
“We’re here,” he said. “This line of buildings stretching away from us, those are the workshops. At the far end is the armory. It’s stone, and a fortress.
Running parallel to the workshops on the right is a gravel road, then a row of greenhouses.
On the left is the remains of the ground they cleared when they stood up the workshops, with raw forest after that.
Ahead, past the armory, is an open green space they call the meadow, with the lodge on the left and cabins on the right. ”
June’s hands were cold and wet on the rifle. Manny didn’t have any gloves that fit her. The climb had warmed her, but now that she had stopped, the wind chilled her to the bone. “Where do you think they’ll put Peter, Ellie, and Carlotta?”
Faraday put two fingers on the screen and zoomed in. “Just past the armory, off the right corner, there’s a small cinder-block building. They said it was an old generator shed, but the window openings had bars on them. I didn’t ask too many questions, but my guess is, that’s their jailhouse.”
It was in the heart of the compound. The muscles flexed in Manny’s jaw, the only outward sign of his distress. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear some thoughts about how to do this.”
“Any cameras?” asked Lewis. “Perimeter guards?”
“Not that I saw the last time I was here,” Faraday said. “Might be different now.”
“Either way,” Lewis said. “We shoot out the closest light, cut an opening in the fence, and slide up the outside of that line of workshops, head for the jailhouse.”
Unspoken was the fact that they were four people. Inside the compound were several hundred.
“And if the jailhouse is empty?” Faraday was playing devil’s advocate, gaming it out.
“We try the lodge,” Lewis said. “If they’re not in the lodge, we try the armory.”
“We’re going to bump into somebody,” June asked. “What do we do when they realize we don’t belong?”
“Pull a trigger, but only if we got no choice,” Lewis said. “That’s how Peter would do it. So that’s how it is.”
“I’m good with that,” Manny said. “Most people won’t be out this time of night, anyway. Especially in this weather. Not unless they’re seriously hard core.”
They all looked at him. Nobody said the obvious thing, which was that a heavily armed mountain compound run by a lunatic with a messiah complex was the definition of hard core.
Faraday said, “And if they’re not in the armory?”
“Then we’re fucked,” Lewis said. “Truth is, we’re probably fucked as soon as we hit the lodge. So if we can, we grab the fucking Messenger. He’ll tell us where they are. We keep a gun to his head until we find them. Then we beat feet for the Tahoe.”
“Getting in will be easy,” Faraday said. “Getting out will be a lot harder. Especially if we start shooting people. Everybody in there is armed, even the kids.”
“Unless their attention is on something else,” June said. “Faraday, you said there were buried gas tanks, a propane tank. Maybe we could start a fire, something like that.”
Lewis gave her a tilted grin. “Ooh, I like that.”
“Me, too,” Manny said. “Faraday, you can find those tanks in the dark?”
The security man nodded. Manny looked at each of them in turn. “Anything else?” Nobody spoke. “Then I think we’re good. Lewis, you and Faraday take the diversion, do some damage. June and I will find our people.”
Manny checked his watch. “It’s eleven thirty-five. Stay on your radios. Meet back here. If we’re being chased, fallback one is the Tahoe. If that’s compromised, fallback two is the Lexus.”
—
June took out the light with a suppressed pistol. The snow dampened the sound. They waited for ten minutes, but nobody came to investigate. Manny pulled a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters from his pack. “Let’s go.”
Bent low, they worked their way through the tangle of brush, blackberry thorns tearing at their clothes.
At the fence, Manny bent and began to cut the chain-link from the ground up to his chest, then returned the bolt cutters to his pack and they slipped through.
The breach was large. Any capable patrol would see it.
But once they found the captives, they’d be leaving in a hurry.
Inside the fence, the clear-cut continued.
They stowed their night-vision gear and walked toward the nearest building carved out of the trees.
Eighty feet long, dull metal siding, metal roof with solar panels, no windows.
On the right, a rough two-track ran parallel to the line of structures toward the brightly lit center of the camp.
On the left, rocky ground with knee-high ferns.
They walked through the ferns to the far end of the building, where they saw a roll-up door and a weedy patch of hardpacked dirt between it and the next building.
They didn’t see a living soul. They continued through the ferns along the second building, which looked a lot like the first. At the far corner, Lewis peeked and waved them across another packed dirt patch to a third building, which was the same as the first two.
They kept moving forward. Their boots tore at the soft, wet undergrowth.
At the far end of the third building, a low rumble rose through the hush of the snow.
Lewis put up a fist and they all sank to the ground.
He peeked and drew back. The rumble grew louder and resolved itself into engine noise, at least two vehicles.
Then the thunk of heavy doors and men’s voices rising and falling, although the words were too faint to make out.
The wind gusted cold along the edge of the building.
June looked toward the trees and realized that the snow was beginning to stick on branches and undergrowth.
Soon it would stick on the ground. So much for luck.
The longer it took them to free the captives, the easier it would be to follow their trail.
She turned and peered past Manny and Lewis.
Across the clearing, which was gravel, the fourth building was made of stone, with tall, skinny windows and a steep roof.
The armory. Beyond it to the left, through a line of trees, June could see a large log building, all lit up. The lodge. They were close.
The men’s voices came and went. June checked her watch.
It was ten minutes to midnight. She heard car doors closing.
As the engine noise grew closer, Lewis peeked again.
Then the engine noise went silent. His voice came softly over her earpiece.
“Two trucks, at least four men, maybe more. I think they’re directly on the other side of this building. ”
Faraday said, “That’s the gas pump and the propane shed. Maybe they’re fueling up.”
“Any action we take starts the clock,” Manny said. “Unless there’s a threat, we hold here.”
“Roger that,” Lewis said.
They waited. June’s hands were frozen. She put them in her jacket pockets, clenching and unclenching to keep the blood circulating.
She wondered if she’d have to kill somebody.
She’d killed a man once before, out of self-defense.
She’d thought about it for months afterward. She didn’t want to do it again.
But then she pictured Peter, stripped naked in the rain in that mall parking lot, willingly trading himself for Ellie and Carlotta.
She kept thinking about what the Messenger’s people had done to him.
What the Messenger might yet do to all of them, if she couldn’t find them.
And knew she was ready to kill any man or woman standing between her and Peter, Ellie, and Carlotta.