Threat warning

by John Gilstrap

  But they kept manhandling him. Finally, he just screamed-as close to the sound of the scared-shitless lady in a horror movie as he could get without cutting his balls off.

  “Stop!” a new voice boomed. “Take the handcuffs off. My God, I’m going to get sick if I watch his arm bend any more.”

  My arm is bending? He screamed again.

  They lowered him back to the floor, and they must have really bent it because there was another flash of light, and an instant later, he was back in the chair with both hands free, except his right one was propped on a pillow that had been placed on his lap. The arm didn’t look right at all. His hand and his wrist were already swelling, and his forearm looked funny under the fabric of his clothes. The lines weren’t straight anymore.

  Someone was holding him in the chair by his shoulders.

  “Are you awake now?” the sheriff asked. The big man had taken a knee in front of Ryan, and was looking him in the eyes. “I think he’s okay now,” he said over his shoulders to the others who had gathered around.

  Ryan had expected at least a small look of sympathy from the gathered terrorists, but he got nothing of the sort. If anything, they looked even more pissed than before. They all stared, but none of them seemed to know what they wanted.

  The sensible part of Ryan-the one that desperately wanted the pain to stop, and to just be left alone-knew that this was the time to be quiet, but the other part of him-the one that was pissed off and humiliated-overruled.

  “I wasn’t lying,” he said. It wasn’t until he tried to talk that he realized that blood had actually dried in the back of his mouth, leaving a kind of crust back there. “Your guy-Brother Stephen, I think was his name-attacked my mother.”

  “It’s true,” the girl with the K-name said.

  The point man-Ryan assumed him to be the leader since he was the guy who owned this big house-shot an angry look at her. “You were there?” he asked.

  “I was there when they found his body,” she said. She looked at the floor. “He was… exposed.”

  “That’s not proof,” Point Man scoffed. “They could have done that to him to make it look like he was trying to attack.”

  What, like I’m going to pull out some guy’s dick? Ryan thought.

  “I think that’s a stretch, Brother Michael,” the sheriff said.

  So the leader’s name was Brother Michael.

  The comment drew another angry glare.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” the sheriff said. “How likely do you think it is that they would really do that? Why would they?”

  “So that they could escape,” Brother Michael said.

  “And why would Brother Stephen have been in their room to allow that to happen?”

  Owned you, dude, Ryan didn’t say. He winced against a twitch of pain in his arm.

  Brother Michael’s face went blank, but then he came back. “Even if that were true, that doesn’t grant permission for prisoners to execute their guards.”

  “I didn’t execute anyone,” Ryan said. The words were out before he could stop them. Once launched, what was the sense of pulling back? “I couldn’t even see what I was doing. I just launched on him and tackled him. I guess I grabbed him around the neck and twisted it. We hit the ground, and when I got up, he didn’t. It was kind of an accident.”

  Brother Michael seemed to swell for a moment. Clearly, Ryan had said the wrong thing, but for the life of him, he didn’t know what it could have been.

  “Where’s my mother?” Ryan asked.

  “You will pay,” Brother Michael said in a tone so soft that Ryan could barely hear him. He leaned close, so that only inches separated their noses.

  Ryan broke first, shifting his eyes to stare at a point on the floor.

  “Look at me,” Brother Michael said. He placed his hand on the boy’s bad arm, right on the break, and he squeezed.

  Ryan howled as a spike of pain rocketed not just through his arm, but somehow through his whole body.

  “Brother Michael!” Sheriff Neen boomed.

  He squeezed tighter. “With God as my witness, you will pay dearly.”

  The sheriff stepped in front of Brother Michael, breaking his grip on Ryan’s arm, but not before the bones moved and the agony topped a new height.

  “Stop this!” Neen boomed.

  But Brother Michael’s eyes never left Ryan. It was as if he’d gone to a crazy place in his mind. He lunged for the boy again, but Neen restrained him.

  “Get him out of here,” the sheriff commanded to the room.

  “Where do we take him?”

  “Somewhere other than here,” Neen barked. “This is out of control. Take him to the basement. No windows this time, and I want guards posted at the doors around the clock.”

  A crowd moved closer.

  “Don’t touch me,” Ryan said. “Please, God, don’t touch me. I’ll come along.” Oh so gently, he slipped his left forearm under his right to splint the break, and then he stood. Movement was excruciating, and he thought he might pass out. His legs got wobbly, and some of the color drained from his vision.

  When a hand grabbed him under his good arm, the touch was surprisingly gentle. It was K-girl again. “We’ll just take it slow,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY – ONE

  They left Stacy Phelps quivering in her slippers over a threat to throw her in jail for obstruction of justice if she breathed a word of what they’d discussed. They also dropped a hint that they were actively listening and watching everything she did. Given their inside knowledge of Ryan Nasbe’s phone call, she was primed to believe every word.

  Back at the command post, Boxers fired up the audio-video satellite link and brought Venice into the loop on what they had learned. She, then, started tickling electrons in cyberspace to get them something to go on.

  “No Army of God has any charity status within the IRS,” she reported. “But they do have status as a private school.”

  “What does that mean?” Jonathan asked.

  “Which of those words didn’t make sense to you?”

  “No one likes a smart-ass, Ms. Alexander.”

  “Says the pot to the kettle,” Venice teased. “Among other things, it means that there are children there. But when I dig a little deeper, I can’t find anyone ever graduating from it. And before you ask, that means that it’s an odd kind of school. Who’d want to enroll their kids in a school that has no record of advancement? And I mean no record. We don’t even know who the attendees are. Of course, we don’t know who the parents are, either.”

  Gail raised her hand, as if this were a classroom. “Not necessarily as unusual as you might think,” she said. Until that moment, Jonathan had forgotten that Gail was involved with the Branch Davidian raid in Waco back in the day. She had street cred when it came to cults and nut-job militias. “They establish a school so that the government can’t use truancy as an excuse to shut them down. They don’t register their children for the record because they don’t have to. For a lot of these groups, the driving goal is to remain invisible all the time.”

  “So why no graduation?” Boxers prompted.

  Gail offered a one-shoulder shrug. “I can’t say for sure, but we investigated a Utah group that made it a point of faith never to leave the compound where they lived and bred. We’re talking two or three generations here that had never been beyond the fence.”

  Boxers gaped. “You’re shitting me. Who would agree to that?”

  Venice wondered, “Is it that much different from any exclusive and devout religious sect? If it’s not physically isolating, it can certainly be intellectually isolating.”

  “This is irrelevant,” Jonathan said. “I doubt that they’ve got the Nasbes in the school with everyone else. What we need is to find out where they do have them, and then get them out.”

  Venice said, “I took the liberty of asking Lee Burns to re-task SkysEye to give us a picture, but he warns that it’s going to take longer than normal. He happens to be s
wamped, but he’ll get us a link as soon as he can.”

  Jonathan said, “Did you emphasize-”

  “-that a life is in the balance, yes. I didn’t, however, mention the link to your friend Boomer. You didn’t give me permission, and I know that it’s sensitive.”

  “Maybe you should,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan shook his head. “No, if Lee could do it, he would. Add Boomer to the mix, and it just adds guilt.”

  “So, what are our options?” Boxers asked, clearly disagreeing. “Slinging a little guilt seems like a way better option than knocking on doors. ‘Excuse me,’ ” he mocked, “ ‘but are you harboring any kidnapped families? We’d like ever so much to have them back.’ ”

  “There’s always another way,” Jonathan said.

  “What about Rollins?” Gail asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Boxers said. “I’m not gonna be beholding to him for nothin’.”

  “Seems like a way better option than knocking on doors,” she countered with a smirk. “What is the big problem between you all anyway?”

  “No,” Jonathan said, effectively shutting down the issue. “We’re not discussing that. Not here. Not now.” He steadied himself with a big breath. “Ven, you’ve got Rollins’s card. Get him on the horn.”

  Venice didn’t hesitate as she disappeared off screen to work a different phone.

  Boxers seemed to expand with anger.

  “Dig-”

  “Mission first, Box,” he said. “Everything is second to the mission. The Nasbes need every resource we can muster. Period. Ven?”

  “I’m patching him through now,” she said. Then, almost at a whisper: “It’s like he was waiting for us.” There was a click, then: “You’re on with Digger and the team, Colonel.”

  “Is the line secure?” Rollins asked.

  “Encrypted,” Venice said. “That’s why I placed the call. We’re scrambling it.”

  Which meant, Jonathan knew, that anyone who had access to the right technology, and wanted the information badly enough would be able to listen to and understand anything they wanted to.

  “This is your op, Grave,” the colonel said. “Tell me what you need.”

  It took Jonathan all often minutes to do just that.

  Christyne was in a place beyond fear, beyond terror or despair. She was terrified for herself, and she was terrified for Ryan. Clearly, he had been caught, and no one would tell her what had been done with him. No one would tell her anything about anything, in fact. After the smash and grab in her little cell of a room in the basement, she’d lost consciousness.

  When she awoke, she was blind, although she was fairly certain it was from something wrapped around her eyes, rather than the actual loss of her sight. Her eyes felt glued down, and when she squinted, she could feel the stickiness on her cheeks, too. In her mind, she’d been bound with duct tape, but how could she know for sure?

  Her arms had been bound, as well-behind her, and so tightly that her hands were numb. Her feet were likewise tied together, as were her knees. The net effect was a near-total paralysis that had quickly morphed into an ache and then a screaming pain in her shoulders, hips, neck, and knees. She believed that she was lying on her left side, but even that was not a certainty. Such was the disorientation that comes from having no visual reference to key off of.

  The surface on which she lay was hard, but not especially cold, and from time to time, when she heard a door open or close, the sound seemed to echo, leading her to believe that she was in a big room, or maybe just one with a tall ceiling. If the thought weren’t so absurd, she might have guessed that she was inside a church.

  Wherever they’d deposited her, they’d made sure that her head was unsupported, and that her body was under constant strain. If they were going to kill her, she wished they’d just hurry up and get it over with. She supposed those are the thoughts of every torture victim.

  The door opened again, seemingly far away, and this time it remained open for a long time-long enough for the cold air from outside to roll to her, triggering a chill. When the door finally closed, the room returned to silence again.

  Then there were footsteps.

  They sounded heavy, so she assumed them to belong to a man. Clearly, they were approaching her, each tick of sound just slightly louder than the one that preceded it. He said nothing as he approached, and his gait seemed abnormally slow, as if he were intentionally trying to intimidate her. It was working.

  When the footsteps finally stopped, they seemed very close. When he remained silent, Christyne wondered if it was a test of wills to see who would speak first. “Who’s there?” she asked.

  “You killed one of my soldiers,” the man said.

  Christyne said nothing. She’d heard this tone only a few times in her life, and it was always tied to impending violence. She sensed that nothing she said could take the edge off his anger.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he asked.

  “Where is Ryan? Where is my son?”

  The man let out a roar, an animal sound of pure anger or perhaps anguish. It shook the room, and continued to echo for a full second when he had finished. “Is that really all you have to offer?” he shouted. “Is that really all you have to say after you murder one of my best men? You want to know what became of the man who murdered him?”

  “He didn’t murder him!” Christyne cried. Something inside her seemed to have broken, and her own anguish poured out in her words. “Your soldier was attacking me. Ryan protected me. He didn’t intend to kill that young man. Ryan couldn’t hurt a soul. Please don’t hurt him.”

  Silence returned, and then the footsteps started approaching her again. They were smaller steps this time, and as he got very near to her, she thought perhaps that she could see a shadow fall across her eyes.

  “So it was he who killed him,” the man said. “Thank you for verifying that.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “That’s not what I meant.” Her heart and her brain both raced to find a way to undo the damage. How could she have been so stupid? “I didn’t mean that he was the one who killed him.”

  “But that’s what you said.”

  “I know. I-” Words were gone now, replaced with blind fear and guilt and shame. She heard herself sobbing, trying to beg for mercy, but all that came out was noise.

  “That’s all right,” the man said. His tone took a softer edge to it. “It wouldn’t have mattered in the end. Dead is dead, and someone has to pay.”

  “Not Ryan,” Christyne begged. “No, please, please not Ryan. He’s just a boy.”

  “Not anymore,” the man said. He place something heavy and wet on the floor near her. It made a dull thump as it hit.

  “What?” Christyne begged. “Oh, my God, what is that?” Jesus, was that blood she smelled?

  “We’d have killed him anyway,” the voice said.

  She gasped. This isn’t possible. Please, God, don’t let this be possible.

  “I thought you might like to have a chat with him.” “What? What did you do? Oh, my God, what did you do?”

  “I brought your son’s head to visit you. I thought you two had some things to discuss.”

  Christyne Nasbe screamed until her throat was raw.

  Jonathan and his team killed the next three hours poring over commercial-grade satellite maps of the Army of God compound. The photos were fuzzy at best, but by overlaying them with tax maps and a few ancient permits to tap into public water supplies, they were able to get enough of a rough layout to know that a random assault was out of the question with just the three of them. If they had the three of them times ten, it would still be out of the question without good intelligence on where the Nasbes were being held.

  As Sam Shockley had indicated, the compound was huge, and a continuous fence showed clearly through the blur of the substandard imagery. There appeared to be several dozen buildings arranged in a pattern that suggested streets or pathways between them. According to utility compan
y records, the compound had no electrical service on site; but Venice had been able to leverage Yellow Pages leads to tap into the sales records of local vendors who delivered gasoline, diesel, and propane to the compound. The amounts and frequency told Jonathan that the propane was likely used for cooking and the gasoline for fueling vehicles. They would have consumed fifty or maybe a hundred times those quantities if they were powering an electrical plant.

  “Looks to me like we got some kind of cult working here,” Boxers said, reviewing the data. “They don’t appreciate the last hundred fifty years of progress.”

  “They’re also dispatching death squads around the country,” Jonathan said. “What is it about the Stone Age that terrorists admire so much?”

  Gail looked very concerned by it all. “You make light, Jon, but if the people in there are as armed as we’ve been told, we’re going to need help.” Her eyes bored into him. “You’re going to hate to hear this, but we’re going to have to call in the FBI for this. At a minimum, the West Virginia State Police.”

  Boxers watched his boss expectantly, not agreeing, but not arguing, either.

  “That’s the worst thing we can do,” Jonathan said. He kept his tone dismissive and authoritative. “We’d expose Security Solutions, we’d go to jail, and all the evidence they gathered would be thrown out because it was tainted by the fact that we violated laws to obtain it. Everybody loses.”

  “I don’t accept that,” Gail said. “There has to be a way around. There has to be something other than a suicide mission.”

  “Whoa, Sheriff,” Boxers said. He alternately used her former title as a term of endearment or as a weapon. This time it sounded like the latter. “We don’t do suicide missions.”

  “Are you looking at the same data as I am?” she said, pointing at the map.

  “I am,” he said. He looked at Jonathan, who looked away to let the Big Guy do a little verbal roaming. “Here’s the thing. Once Digger and me start something, we finish it.”