Threat warning

CHAPTER TWENTY – SIX

“How’s that plan working for you now, Boss?” Boxers poked as they arrived at their parking spot to find the truck gone. His chest heaved for air.

“Well, what do you expect?” Jonathan poked back. “As slow as you run, they could’ve gotten to Ohio before you got to the fence.” In addition to the limitations brought by size and girth, Boxers had adopted a titanium rod for a femur after some unpleasantness while in the employ of Uncle Sam.

Without discussing a plan, they started walking down the road in the direction of the Dodge’s skid marks. “God had to make you fast to compensate for bein’ so small.”

Jonathan laughed.

They kept to the middle of the road as they walked because it was faster. On a bright night like this, out in the open, it was in many ways easier to see without night vision than with it, so Jonathan lifted the lenses out of the way. He’d have done it a minute ago, but Boxers beat him to it, and it was never a good idea to let the Big Guy think that you were imitating him.

“So, do you think she bolted on us?” Boxers asked. His tone was light, but Jonathan knew it was a serious question.

“No, she’s following them.”

They walked in silence. Their years together had imbued Jonathan with the ability to read his friend’s mind. He knew what was coming, and he knew that Boxers was twitchy as hell just thinking the thoughts.

“Hey, Boss, I’ve got a question for you,” he said at last.

Jonathan glanced over at him.

“It’s about Gail.”

“What about her?”

Boxers cleared his throat, readjusted his M4 against his vest. “Look, I know you two are close. I think you think that other people don’t know, but it’s pretty obvious-”

“Get to the question, Box.”

“Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat again. “Do you think she’s really up to all this?”

“Which ‘all this’ are you talking about?” Jonathan knew the answer, but there was something enticing about prolonging the discomfort.

“Look, I know she’s great at door crashing, and she can track down evidence like nobody’s business.”

“But?”

Another throat clearing. “Well, she’s, you know, a cop.”

“Not anymore.”

“I mean in her blood,” Boxers said. “I mean at the same level where you and I are soldiers. First and last.”

“You’re asking if she’s trustworthy? If she’ll do her job?”

“If she’ll do her job without hesitating.”

Jonathan craned his neck to look at the Big Guy. “She killed the sentry a few minutes ago.”

“Well,” Boxers hedged.

“She killed him. Shot him dead.”

It was Boxers’ turn to look incredulous. “Were you listening to the same radio traffic I was?”

“She shot him.”

“Right. About thirty seconds after you would have.”

“We weren’t there,” Jonathan said. “It’s not for us to judge.”

“Oh, really? Seems to me that I’m one of the first to get drilled if she screws up.”

Jonathan felt his blood pressure rising. “Careful, Box.” “Careful about what? I’m not talking about Gail the person, I’m talking about Gail the operative.”

Jonathan let silence reign for a minute or more. “I have the same concerns, okay?” he said, finally. “Warrants and probable cause are part of her DNA, and that’s a potential hazard to us. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Don’t treat me like I’m the bad guy here, Dig. We live and die as a team. This ain’t personal. Not toward anyone.”

Jonathan let it go.

“They’ve headed into the compound,” Gail announced on the radio. “The whole parade of cars went in there.”

Jonathan keyed his mike. “Where are you?”

“On my way to pick you up.”

Eight minutes later, they were outside the gate where Gail had seen the tail end of the motorcade disappear into the night. They sat in the Dodge, engine and lights off, watching.

“These guys love their fences,” Boxers said. As before, this one was chain link with barbed wire.

All three of them peered through digitally enhanced night optics. Jonathan concentrated on the construction of the gate leading to the interior of the compound. “Did you see them open the gate?” he asked Gail.

“It was already open when I got here,” she said. “Looked to me like it opened outward.”

“As any well-designed security gate should,” Jonathan mused aloud. He was becoming more impressed with the sophistication of the operation up here, and being impressed was not good. “Any blockades or blocks on the far side?”

“None that I saw. Traffic was flowing through at the time, though, so if they had any, they would have been down or disabled.”

Of course they would, Jonathan thought. It had been a stupid question.

“I count three sentries at the gate,” Boxers said. He looked at his watch. “It’s ten till eight. How do you want to handle this?”

“Without a lot of subtlety,” he said. Then he gave them the details.

Christyne no longer felt human. Consumed by grief and crushed under the weight of total exhaustion, she felt drained not only of energy and will, but of life. When the hands finally fell upon her and sat her up, she barely felt them.

“Stand for us,” a female voice said.

She stood. If they’d told her to fly, she’d have flown.

They supported her-braced her, really-as the bonds on her ankles and knees were sheared.

“Spread your feet apart, please,” the female said. “We need you to find your balance.” Clearly to someone else, she said, “Get the blindfold off.”

More manhandling. This time, everything was made more complicated by Christyne’s hair, which apparently was tangled in whatever they were removing from her eyes.

“She’s tall,” a second voice said. This one was male, and he seemed to be explaining his difficulty in removing the tape from her eyes. It was definitely tape. She could tell by the tearing sound.

They’d killed her son. These terrible, terrible people had killed the sweetest boy in the world, and Christyne had done nothing to stop them. Nothing they could do from this point on-literally nothing, including burning her at the stake- could possibly hurt more than that. And all because of… what?

What had she done-what could anyone do-to justify this level of cruelty?

The last strip of tape pulled painfully at her eyebrows and eyelashes. She yelped, but no one cared. When she opened her eyes, she tried to focus anywhere else, but there was no fighting the temptation to see that which she dreaded seeing. Almost involuntarily, she shifted her eyes to the floor, where she fully expected to see Ryan’s remains.

Instead, she saw only a blood smear. On an altar, it seemed. Truly, this terrible place was a church. What level of blasphemy must that speak to?

“How can you do this to us?” she asked the woman who stood closest to her.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” the woman said.

“Do not speak to her!” a voice boomed from the back of the room. Christyne jumped at the noise, but so did her captor, whose eyes snapped away from Christyne’s face and down to the business of removing the rest of her bonds. The man who had just boomed his command stood in the middle of the center aisle, his hands on his hips. He wore a black robe that covered his entire body, from shoulders to floor.

When her hands were free, Christyne brought them around to the front, and she was aghast at how much they had swollen.

“You there,” the robed man said. “Stand tall.”

The words triggered a memory in Christyne how Ryan would have popped off to someone who had spoken to him like that. God bless Ryan, ever prideful. Forever dead. Christyne started to cry.

And she stood tall.

“Take off your clothes,” the man said.

“No way,” Ryan said. “I’m not taking off my clothes for you, you perv.”

Even as he said the words, though, he was already shrugging out of what was left of his sweater and shirt. “Why are we doing this?” he asked.

“Soon enough, it will be very clear,” Brother Zebediah said. They’d driven back into the compound, but stopped at a different little house from the one in which he and his mom had been imprisoned. It was the same design, but this one looked more lived-in than theirs. It had well-worn furniture, and there appeared to be books on the shelves along the walls. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the kerosene lamps.

“Where is my mother?” he asked. “Is she all right? She had nothing to do with the killing.”

Brother Zebediah remained focused on the wall just beyond Ryan. He and Sister Colleen appeared none too comfortable with their assigned duties. They both made a show of not watching him while in fact they watched him carefully.

Bare-chested now, he sat on the sofa to unlace his shoes. His hands were trembling, and tears spilled from his lids. This was wrong. This was so terribly, terribly wrong. If he hadn’t messed up his escape, they’d be away from this god-awful place. Instead, he’d made everything worse.

With the laces undone, he pulled his Nikes off with his opposite feet. Trembling miserably, he stood and unfastened his jeans, letting them drop as a puddle of fabric to the floor. Cold and exposed, he stood there before his captors in his boxers and socks, covering himself as best he could, his left arm supporting his throbbing right.

“Good thing I wore clean underwear,” he joked. Anything to preserve a little dignity.

“Those, too,” Sister Colleen said.