Circle Series 4-in-1

by Ted Dekker

“My lord, I demand an audience.” A tall albino stepped forward. Another one of the five they’d captured a few days earlier. Fear danced in his eyes.

  “You’re not in a position to demand anything.”

  “Then I beg. You will thank me.”

  Woref lowered his hand. “And you are . . . ?”

  “William. I am a council member, and I have authority in the Circle.”

  “What are you up to?” Martyn demanded of the albino.

  The one named William lifted his hand to silence Martyn. Interesting. What kind of man would Martyn both object to and respect with his silence?

  “Then speak.”

  “Alone. We aren’t people of violence; there’s no danger from me.”

  Woref grabbed Chelise by her arm and dragged her to the line of warriors. “Watch her.” The tall albino met him to one side.

  “Speak.”

  William spoke in a low voice. “I can assure you, General, that I argued in the strongest possible terms against this madness. Thomas has endangered the entire Circle, and now we will pay with our lives. You must believe me when I say not all among the Circle are so antagonistic as Thomas.”

  “You’re begging for your life? I have no time for this.”

  “I’m giving you my motive for delivering Thomas of Hunter to you.”

  “You can deliver him to me how?”

  “I know where he is and where he will be tomorrow. Let us live and I will go with you.”

  “Your word against the life of Martyn. Am I a fool?”

  “You know as well as I do that we’re bound by our word in the Circle. Consider my motive. Since the death of his wife, Thomas has been a detriment to us all.”

  “Then you would betray your own leader?”

  “He’s betrayed us! If I’m wrong, then you can kill me. Would I give my life for a man I despise?”

  Woref considered the man’s argument. He had the look of a despairing man, given to deception, perhaps. But who was he betraying?

  The tribe was looking at them in silence. Powerless.

  “I’ll kill Martyn and take you,” Woref said.

  “No. Then kill us all. Johan is a shadow of the great general you once knew. Let him live out his puny life. Take me and I will deliver Thomas, who’s the only threat among the Circle.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Near the city, planning another rescue.”

  Woref turned toward the captain. “Put this man in chains. The rest live. Keep the army here until morning. Make sure none of them leaves this canyon; I want no pursuit.”

  He’d come for Chelise. If he could also take Thomas, the last of Qurong’s reservations about his general would be gone.

  His mind turned toward the unconscious form on the ground. The woman who had brought him so much grief. The one he loved.

  His only regret was that he would have to exercise restraint for the time being. Bringing a battered daughter home to her father would not do. But there were always other ways.

  He glanced back at the albino and saw that he was staring at Johan. He wasn’t sure if it was a look of betrayal or one of regret. They would know soon enough.

  “So soon!” Mikil said, gazing down from her perch in the tree. The sun had just risen when the long line of albinos appeared at the edge of the field with a guard for each. A second row of guards marched into the field on either side.

  “What did I tell you?” Thomas said. “Qurong is no fool. He suspects that Chelise will be compelled by my captivity as much as the Circle is. Do you see Woref?”

  “No. There’s a general, but I don’t think it’s Woref.”

  “You’d think he would handle this himself.” Thomas looked back at the trees behind them. “The way’s clear?”

  “There’s no way they could have set a trap this soon. Give me ten minutes on them and we’re free.” Mikil gripped his shoulder. “You’re sure about this, Thomas? It’s bothering me.”

  “And you’re not bothered by their deaths?” He nodded at the albinos, who now sat on their horses in a long line, waiting for the next move. “Just make sure that nothing happens to Chelise. Without her my life is worthless.”

  “Johan would hog-tie her himself if he thought she might leave.”

  “Not like that. If she left me for Woref now, I think I’d rather be dead. And she still has the disease, Mikil. I don’t trust her mind.”

  “But you trust her heart.”

  “I’m staking my life on her heart.”

  They’d developed a plan for getting Thomas out—a risky move involving an exchange for Chelise in the desert—but it would require her cooperation.

  “Elyon’s strength, my friend.” He clasped her arm.

  “Be careful, Thomas.”

  “I will.”

  “If we get through this, I would like to dream with you. Become Kara.”

  “If Kara lives, I think she would like that.”

  Thomas lowered himself to one of the horses, took a deep breath, and walked out into the open field beside the apple trees.

  “We meet halfway,” he yelled.

  They saw him and held a brief discussion. The general Mikil had seen called out to him. “Slowly. No tricks. We have men on either side.”

  Thomas nudged his horse and walked toward the line. The albinos began to move forward.

  He passed them on the right, less than twenty yards from three archers who had their bows strung. If he bolted now, they would take him easily. He nodded at the albino closest to him, an older woman named Martha. She looked at him with fear in her eyes.

  “I’ll be seeing you soon enough, Martha. Be strong.”

  “Elyon’s strength,” she said quietly.

  And then he was past them and in the hands of the Horde. The tribe members trotted over the field and disappeared into the trees.

  “Off the horse!” the general ordered.

  Thomas dismounted and let them tie his hands behind his back with a long strap of canvas. “You expect me to walk all the way?”

  The general didn’t respond. They tied his horse to two others, pushed him back in the saddle, and led him away.

  Thomas rode into the Horde city for the second time in two weeks. Once again he saw the squalor caused by the disease. Once again he tried unsuccessfully to ignore the filth and stench of Scabs who screamed insults at him. Once again he approached the dark dungeon that had once been a great amphitheater built for the expression of ideas and freedom. This time they passed the castle without taking him to Qurong. That would come soon enough.

  No fewer than a hundred guards surrounded the dungeon, all armed with bows and sickles. These were no army regulars. They were scarred from battle and scowled with bitter hatred.

  The dungeon guard led him down the wet steps and along the same corridor he’d walked before. But they passed his old cell and took him down a second flight of stairs to a lower level lit only by torches. They shoved him into a small cell, slammed the gate shut, and left him in total darkness.

  Thomas collapsed in the corner, exhausted. There was nothing to do now but wait.

  And dream.

  35

  THE ONLY jump Thomas had ever executed was more of a cannon shot than a one-two-three leap, and that one out the back of a military transport that had been cut in half by a missile two weeks earlier. This time he would buddy-jump with Major Scott MacTiernan, army Ranger.

  The French defenses weren’t accustomed to engaging enemy aircraft over their soil—the sudden shift in power was only two weeks old, and the military was being coerced. All of this played into the Americans’ hands. The C-2A Greyhound cargo plane came off the USS Nimitz five hundred miles off the coast of Portugal, and flew south over Spain and then up western France, hugging the land below radar. As soon as they neared the drop point, the pilot pitched the nose up and let the plane claw for the dark skies.

  Air defenses painted them at two thousand feet.

  “You got ten seconds,” the master snapped.
They’d estimated the window based on the time it would take the French radar to confirm and respond to the sudden blip on their screens. The parachute was made of a fabric that would give them little if any signature, and even so, they wouldn’t be in the air long enough to cause alarm.

  “Remember, relax,” MacTiernan said, facing the wind over Thomas’s shoulder. He checked the straps that lashed Thomas to his chest. “On three.”

  Thomas fell into the darkness, eyes wide behind the goggles. The aircraft’s roar was immediately replaced by the rush of wind beating his ears. He was along for the ride—a very short ride, the major had warned.

  MacTiernan pulled the cord. The chute tugged them skyward. MacTiernan guided them in with night vision. The ground was a mixture of black swaths, which Thomas assumed were forest, and slightly lighter fields. They were on top of them, then drifting into a field.

  “Watch your legs! Coming up in five. Run with me, baby! Hit the ground running!”

  They feathered in for a landing, hit hard, and stumbled forward. Silence.

  The parachute flapped once as it folded in on itself and settled to the ground. Thomas shrugged off the harness and checked his gear. Black pants with a knife strapped to one thigh and a nine-millimeter semiautomatic strapped to the other. Canteen, compass, radio with a homing device that could be picked up from Cheyenne Mountain. Black T-shirt, black ski cap, black sweater wrapped around his waist. NightI watch an armed man climb my roof, vision goggles.

  The prospect of using a weapon gave him mixed feelings, but he wasn’t sure that he was meant to be a pacifist here in this reality. He still wasn’t sure what he felt about a whole slew of issues here, particularly religious issues. He wasn’t a man of the cloth, for crying out loud. He was a man deeply affected by his dreams of another reality, but in his short few weeks of tripping between the worlds, he hadn’t had the time to unravel theology here as he had there. He might never have the time.

  “One piece?” MacTiernan was kneeling, penlight on a small map, compass in hand.

  “Looks like it,” Thomas said. “Where do you put us?”

  The major pointed to their right. “One mile that way. I have you on GPS; if you drift left I give you one click. Right, two clicks. You got it?”

  “Left one click, right two clicks.”

  “No other communication unless absolutely necessary. Remember, two hours. We have to clear this sector and make our rendezvous in five hours. We miss the window, we miss the chopper. It’s already en route. Missing it would cost us ten hours—this isn’t like a fixed wing.”

  They’d come in on the much faster transport to make the drop tonight, but they wouldn’t have the same luxury on the return trip. With any luck they wouldn’t need it.

  “Two hours.” Thomas checked his watch.

  “You get in a bind, I come after you. That’s the plan.”

  Thomas didn’t bother responding. He was up to much more than this, and much less at once, depending on the reality, depending on the enemy, depending on the day.

  He reached the edge of the compound in thirty minutes of careful going. MacTiernan corrected his course only twice. The return trip, assuming there was one, would take only ten minutes. He had an hour and twenty minutes to execute the mission.

  The farmhouse sat in the middle of the field, a hundred yards distant. Except for a dull glow from the windows on the first floor, it was dark.

  Thomas pulled on the night-vision goggles, squinted at the green light, and then slowly scanned the perimeter. One guard on the north side. Two by the road that snaked into the forest on the far side. Lighter than he would have guessed. Had they already vacated? Their cover here was blown; they knew that. They’d depended on secrecy, not high-tech security for protection, but they’d never planned on one of their corpses coming to life and escaping to tell the world of the location. Their only option would have been to abandon the facility.

  He ran in a low crouch, straight toward the basement window that he and Monique had escaped through before. The effectiveness of his mission now depended on speed and surprise.

  He squatted with his back to the stone wall and caught his breath. No light from the hallway past the window. No light from the upper floor. That would be his entry point.

  Three weeks ago an ascent like the one that dared him now would have been unthinkable. Climbing the stones that formed the fifteen-foot wall would be difficult, but not impossible. Transitioning to the roof that jutted out at least four feet was the problem.

  Night goggles still in place, he checked his surroundings, and then, hand by hand, foot by foot, he scaled the wall. The soffit stuck out just above his head. He leaned back and gazed at the gutter, two feet up, four feet back. Or was it five feet back? Missing this leap would end the mission as quickly as a bullet to the head.

  He set his feet, thought of how Rachelle would have laughed at the ease of this particular attempt, and sprang backward like an inverted frog.

  He’d overestimated the jump. But he arched his back and corrected. Still upside down and flying with good speed, he grasped the gutter, folded at his waist into a pike position, then whipped his legs back to continue their natural arc. He treated the gutter as a high bar, and his momentum carried him up and over like a world-class gymnast.

  The gutter creaked and began to give way, but his weight had already shifted. He released, floated over the edge of the roof, and landed on his hands and feet, like a cat.

  A shingle came loose, slid over the edge, and fell into the grass below. No other sound. He scrambled to the only dormer on this end of the house and listened beside the window. Still no sound.

  The room inside was dark, and with the goggles he could see that it was also vacant, unless someone was crouching behind the boxes. Storage room.

  Thomas fumbled for the duct tape he’d brought and ran three long strips down the glass. Then he unwrapped the sweater around his waist, covered the window to muffle sound, and smashed it with his elbow. A crunch but no shattering glass. Good enough.

  He shoved the tape roll and sweater in his belt and carefully pushed through the broken glass. Two minutes later he stood in the dark storage room, staring at a dozen stacks of boxes.

  Thomas withdrew the gun and cracked the door. Small hall. One other door. Clear.

  He stepped out carefully. Only one way to do this.

  The first door looked as though it led to a closet. It did.

  The second appeared to lead to a larger room. It did. A bedroom. Thomas extended his gun and pushed the door open.

  The blinding light hit him then, while he had one foot in and one out, door still swinging.

  The goggles! He swept at his face and knocked the contraption from his eyes.

  “Hello, Thomas.”

  Voice to his right. This was Carlos.

  “I see you insist on coming for me until I finally kill you for good.”

  Easy, Thomas. This is what you expected. Play the game.

  He dropped his gun and lifted both hands. “We need to talk. It’s not what you think.”

  Carlos held a gun on him at five paces. He still wore a bandage over the cut on his neck. A grin nudged the corner of his mouth. Small red dots peppered his face. So the man hadn’t taken the antivirus. Or the antivirus didn’t work.

  “I watch an armed man climb my roof, sneak through a window wearing night-vision glasses, and am expected to consider the possibility that my judgment of his intentions is false?” Carlos asked. “Don’t tell me: you came to save me.”

  “I came because I know that you met with Armand Fortier yesterday,” Thomas said. “He showed you a list of the people he expects to survive the virus. Now you have to ask yourself how in the world I could possibly have this information.”

  The grin faded. Carlos blinked. “You’ve tricked me one too many times. This time you will fail.”

  “And if I do, then you will die. We both know that your name’s on that list only as a lure for you and only for the moment.
Tell me how I know so much. Tell me how I walk off your gurney after two days without a pulse. Tell me how any of what you’ve seen me do with your own eyes is possible.”

  Carlos just stared at him. But his mind was bending—Thomas could see it in his eyes.

  “I came here for two reasons. One, I’ve come with proof. If you let me, I can show you beyond any possible doubt that my dreams are real and that you play a significant role in those dreams. The second reason I’ve come is to save your life. The simple fact of the matter is that we need you, but you’ll do us no good if you’re dead. You may hate Americans and Israel and all that, but unless you know what’s really going on here, you can’t possibly be in a position to make informed decisions.”

  He said it all in a rush, because he knew that he had to plant these seeds in Carlos’s mind before he pulled the trigger. His words seemed to have made an impact. But the man wasn’t unnerved as much as he was irritated.

  “I don’t know what kind of sorcery—”

  “We don’t have time for this, Carlos. I just came five thousand miles to make contact with you, and what I have to show you may save the Arab world from extermination. What does it take to get your attention? You still have a cut I gave you last time without touching you, for goodness’ sake! You have to let me prove myself.”

  Too much had happened for Carlos to dismiss this as a game of wits. His neck, Thomas’s escapes, the knowledge of his conversation with Fortier—all of it unexplained.

  “How?”

  “By letting you dream with me.”

  The man’s face reddened. “Do you take me as some kind of fool?” His fist clenched. “I cannot accept this! This . . .”

  Thomas moved while the man was momentarily distracted by his frustration. Dropped shoulder to his left, single spin, heel to the man’s gun hand. Even if Carlos had fired, the bullet would have gone wide.

  Fortunately, he didn’t even manage that.

  His outstretched hand flew wide. Thomas followed with an open palm to the man’s solar plexus. Carlos stepped back, shocked. Unable to breathe.

  “Sweet dreams.” Thomas hit him on the side of the head, and the man dropped.