by Sharon Sala
Her eyes welled as she sent a message into the Universe. Find me. Help me.
And then she heard a voice.
Be ready.
She froze.
Oh my God, oh my God.
Breath caught in the back of her throat and then she blocked every thought she had as she turned away from the window and quietly crawled onto the bed. She covered up and tried to find a comfortable position, but she couldn’t sleep. She didn’t have to be told how important it was not to focus on the message her dad had just sent her. There were too many people here who would know it.
* * *
At 4:00 a.m., a convoy of black SUVs passed through Shawnee Gap and took the blacktop off the highway heading straight up the mountain. The only witness to their passing, a lone pickup truck going through town in the other direction.
At the five-mile count, the lead car took the turnoff from the blacktop onto the narrow road leading through the trees and to the cabin—their rendezvous point.
Everyone in the cabin was up and moving around downstairs. Some were eating cereal, some settling for toast and coffee, but all of them were unusually quiet. The imminence of the raid was affecting them all in different ways.
Wyrick knew her part. She would stay behind to man the computers and cut off the power, giving them access to the compound. Also, she would be wired to be in constant contact with Charlie throughout the raid.
Charlie had one role. Rescuing Jordan and the other girls with her. Armed with his Glock and wearing a bulletproof vest, he was out on the back deck with his second cup of coffee and third piece of toast. He was focusing on the mental image of the distance from the gate to the girls’ dorm in his head, and the short span of time he would have to get there and get them down in case of gunfire.
The men inside were hyperaware of Wyrick’s presence but gave her space. No one knew, not even Charlie, that she’d stayed up all night looking for a money trail between Universal Theorem and Fourth Dimension. And she’d found it—funneled through three separate offshore accounts and into a numbered account in a Swiss bank. How she’d found it would never be admissible in court, but that would be someone else’s problem to solve. Just giving the Feds the information that the link was there would be satisfaction enough for her. It was her payback against UT for taking something she’d created and using it to enslave children.
And then, all of a sudden, the mood in the room shifted from the tension of waiting to a surge of adrenaline, when they heard the sound of approaching cars.
“They’re here,” Willis said. Charlie heard them and came in the back door just as Hank walked out the front.
The drivers parked around the perimeter of the clearing, and then agents began emerging from the cars in rapid numbers. All armed.
All dressed in black.
All moving toward the cabin in total silence until they reached the porch where Hank was standing.
One man stepped forward.
“Good morning, sir. SWAT Team Hostage Rescue reporting for duty. And we have a man here to transport your witness.”
Hank turned back toward the open doorway. “Chavez, get Bien.”
Moments later, Jud came out, his hands cuffed in front of him and walking with his head down. Chavez handed him over.
“Take good care of Daddy Dearest,” he said.
The agent didn’t know all the details of what was going down, but he knew this man had been a part of it, and that it was a nasty.
“Will do,” he said and led Jud to the car with the prisoner cage. He put him into the back and buckled him up, then got in and drove away.
As soon as they were gone, Hank addressed the new arrivals.
“Good morning, officers. We’ll go over the plans inside.”
They entered without speaking, filling the large room to capacity and then some.
Uncomfortable being squeezed in around so many males, Wyrick retreated to the stairs to listen.
Hank introduced himself, then Charlie.
“The civilian to my left is Charlie Dodge. Army ranger turned private investigator out of Dallas. He and his assistant, Wyrick, who’s standing on the stairs, were hired to find a missing girl, and tracked her to this compound. They have been vital in helping get us the proof we needed for search and arrest warrants. Among other things, Wyrick will be in charge of cutting off the power to the compound.”
Wyrick accepted their stares with her usual disassociation as the meeting continued.
Hank showed them the map of the compound, assigning teams to take down different areas at the same time. Once they all understood where they were to go and what to do, he continued on to the aftermath.
“We will have a number of prison buses waiting down in Shawnee Gap to transport the men out, as well as commercial buses for the removal of the girls after the compound is secure. The prisoners will be transported to Lexington for booking, and the girls will be taken to one of the larger hospitals in the same city,” Hank said, then glanced at his watch. “Twilight will begin a few minutes after 6:00 a.m. It’s five fifteen now. Since the road ends at their compound, we can’t just drive up there and hop out because of the security cameras. And we can’t turn them off too soon or they’ll be alerted. We’ll have to go a mile uphill through the trees to get to the compound, and once we’re in place, Wyrick will cut the power. After that, everything has to happen in split-second precision. The SWAT team will go over the walls into the back side of the compound, while the rest of us go in through the front gates. You each know your targets. Knock on the doors, take the men down and keep the girls inside until we have everyone in custody and off the premises.”
“Yes, sir,” they echoed.
“May I interrupt?” Wyrick called out.
Hank turned. “Certainly.”
“Whether you believe in psychic abilities or not, you need to remember that all of those men are there because they claim to have special abilities that allow them to know things other people don’t. With that in mind, there is the real possibility that they will know you’re coming before you get there...and at the least, might know before you have them all contained. So keep that in mind. Let me know the second you are all in place. I will cut the power. After that, speed will be your ally.”
“Good point. We don’t have to believe. But we have to act as if their abilities do exist,” Hank said. “Let’s do this.”
Charlie started out the door, then turned around to look for Wyrick. She was watching him from the steps.
“Can you hear me okay?” he asked.
She tapped her earpiece and gave him a thumbs-up.
“Can you hear me?” she said.
He nodded.
“Good. Then pay attention to what you’re doing,” she said and headed back upstairs to where she was set up.
“This is not my first war,” he muttered as he jogged to catch up.
Then Wyrick’s voice was in his ear. “Just make sure it’s not your last.”
She had both computers up, and the screens open to what she needed to do. The power wouldn’t go off with one single keystroke. She had to take it down one layer at a time, beginning with the power generator and the alarm backups first, so that when the mainframe to the power went off, there was nothing but silence. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen or twenty seconds, but it had to be done in proper order.
And so she waited.
* * *
The men had spanned out about three feet apart, moving uphill at a steady pace while maintaining radio silence. Their dark face paint and black clothing blended in with the night and the forest through which they were walking to the point that, from a distance, they were little more than a ripple of shadows.
Some were carrying climbing gear with their weapons, and they all had handcuffs and zip ties to immobilize the men once they were in custody.
; According to Jud Bien’s accounting, there were about twenty girls there, six who would be on the married side of the grounds, while the fourteen others would be in the dormitory reserved for Sprites. He’d also stated that there were thirty-four men in residence. He’d been the thirty-fifth, but with his expulsion, the number was one less than before.
They knew the likelihood of at least three men being in the kitchen at the dining hall, in early stages of preparing breakfast for the camp when they arrived, so the men coming over the walls from the back of the compound were to get to them first.
It sounded good. It sounded like the perfect plan, except for the warning Wyrick had given them. If those men were real psychics, they might be armed and waiting to pick them off.
They reached the outer area of the compound just after 6:00 a.m. Twilight was a breath away as night gave way to the light of day.
Hank sent the climbing team to the back of the compound, then looked for Charlie and signaled him to let Wyrick know they were ready to go.
Charlie gave Hank a thumbs-up, then spoke into his mic.
“We’re here. Shut it down.”
“Shutting down now,” she said, her fingers flying across the keyboards as, one by one, she shut down the power sources to the backup generator, the backup power to the security systems, the backup power to the motion detectors, and then the gas feeding into the compound. The last to shut down was the mainframe to the electrical grid.
And then it was done.
“It’s down. You’re in,” she said.
Charlie gave a signal to Hank, and Hank delivered the message to his men.
“It’s a go,” he said.
When the climbing team rushed the walls and no security lights came on, they knew they were in the clear. They were over and inside the compound in less than a minute and a half, while the others began approaching the main gate.
* * *
Aaron Walters was in the habit of early-morning meditation, and was already in a state of waking up when the image of men in black clothing swarming the compound flashed through his thoughts. He sat straight up in bed and tried to turn on the lamp, then thought the bulb was burned out until he realized the ceiling fan over his bed wasn’t turning, and the nightlight in the bathroom was out.
He flung back the covers and ran to the windows. All of the security lights were off, as were all the lights in the dining hall. The power had gone off and no warnings had sounded! And then he saw the figures of two men in black clothing slip into the kitchen from the back.
At that moment, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. They were being invaded, and the only person who could have given them the information to take them down in this way was the man he’d just kicked out. Jud Bien!
“You bastard! You fucking bastard! I told you what would happen if you betrayed me!” Aaron cried, then grabbed one of his white robes and pulled it over his head, slid his feet into slippers and snatched the set of master keys from a drawer. He got the handgun from his nightstand and ran through the house, then out the front door, racing toward the Sprites’ dormitory.
The sky was growing lighter by the second. He didn’t have much time. This might be the end of Fourth Dimension, but Jordan Bien wasn’t going to live to see another day.
* * *
Aaron wasn’t the only one who’d sensed what was happening. Jordan had been antsy for the better part of two hours, walking quietly from window to window, sensing the imminence of danger.
When she suddenly flashed on men—lots of men—coming through the forest toward the compound, she knew instantly that the evil here was ending today. What she couldn’t see was if she’d survive to go home, or if this was the day that she would die. But after all she’d been through, this was not the day to quit fighting. She began waking up the girls.
“You need to get up and get dressed, and hurry,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Randi asked as she rolled out of bed.
“What’s happening?” Katie asked, fumbling around for a light.
“No! Don’t turn on the lights!” Jordan cried. “Get dressed in the dark. I think the police are going to raid the compound this morning. I think today is the day we are saved. Now hurry, and stay as quiet as you can. No lights. No noise. We’ll know within a few minutes what’s going to happen.”
The girls dressed in a panic. The idea of going home was now entangled with the danger it was going to take to get there.
Jordan took up a stance at the window overlooking the grounds. To her far right was the entrance gate. To her far left was the dining hall. She was trying to see past the glare of the security lights when they suddenly went off. The whole compound was in darkness.
Jordan ran to the bathroom and flipped the light switch, but it didn’t work.
“They’ve cut the power,” she said.
The girls began murmuring and whispering as they ran to the windows to see for themselves. The night sky was already disappearing, but seeing the security lights off was a shock.
And then one of the girls cried out.
“The Master is coming! I see his white robe!”
“He’s coming after me,” Jordan said, bolting for the other end of the building and into the janitor’s closet. She fumbled around in the darkness until Randi suddenly appeared with a flashlight.
“Here!” Randi said, giving Jordan the light she needed to find the old mop with the wooden handle that she was looking for.
She ran with it into the showers and began to swing it as hard as she could at the long metal sink, trying to break off the head of the mop.
The sound of broomstick against metal reverberated like a gong, and she struck it again and again until the mophead broke off and went flying into the shower, leaving the ragged wooden shards at the end of the handle in Jordan’s hands.
“He’s almost here!” Katie cried.
Jordan ran back to the front of the building.
“All of you, get behind me and crawl under the beds. He just wants me, but if he’s mad enough and crazy enough, he may try to kill all of us.”
They’d long since given up to Jordan’s authority, and now obeyed without hesitation, running headlong into the shadows, then going belly down onto the old wooden floor, crawling beneath the beds.
* * *
Wyrick could vaguely hear what was going on through Charlie’s headset, but it was more than enough to set her teeth on edge. Being here when he was there was worse than she could have imagined.
She needed to calm down in case there was something else they needed her to do, and made herself focus. Within seconds, she saw a man in a white robe, running through a house with a gun in his hand, and when he opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, she was in his head and seeing what he was seeing.
“Charlie! Charlie! Can you hear me?”
“Yes, we’re just moving through the gate. What’s wrong?”
“Aaron Walters—he knew! Somehow he knew. He has a gun and he’s going to the girls’ dormitory to kill Jordan. Big man in a long white robe. Hurry! Hurry!”
It was Charlie’s worst fear.
“They know!” Charlie cried. “Walters is on the move!” He pushed his way through the officers and went in with the first wave.
The sky was turning pearl gray as he entered the compound, and he was only a few steps in when he saw a white-robed figure running toward the building where the girls were housed.
“That’s Walters! He’s mine!” Charlie said and took off running, while the others dispersed in different directions.
Nineteen
Aaron was so intent on vengeance that he didn’t see the men coming in the front gate. But he was halfway across the yard when he caught a glimpse of men in black running between the buildings at the back side of the grounds. He kept thinking, This isn’t happening, this is all a bad dream.
He couldn’t go to prison. The Boss didn’t like failures. But he was out of breath now and there was a pain in his side. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real, and just in case it was, he kept running.
By the time he reached the dormitory, his hands and legs were trembling from exertion he wasn’t used to, and he began fumbling for the keys.
He jammed the first key in the lock, but it didn’t turn, so he tried the next, and then the next. By now, the twilight had added hints of a pink to the awakening day, and there was a yellow haze appearing at treetop level. Sunshine...putting a halo on the morning.
He chose another key and pushed it in the lock. It turned, and the door was suddenly swinging inward and he leaped over the threshold and came to a stop just inside the door, trying to acclimate his sight to the shadows in the room.
* * *
Jordan flinched as the door swung inward, and now only yards separated them. She stood alone in the middle of the room with a long stick held across her chest in a gesture of defense, and when he saw her, he laughed, and it was a horrible sound.
“I told your father what would happen if he betrayed me, and I am a man of my word. You die first, and then the others.”
Jordan was shaking, but she wasn’t going to die with a bullet in her back. She pulled back the mop handle like a spear, pointing the jagged edge toward him and started running toward him, screaming.
* * *
Charlie had tried hard to intercept Walters before he reached the building, but he was too far away, and he was still a good twenty yards behind when Walters finally got the door unlocked and leaped inside.
“Oh hell no,” Charlie said and grabbed his gun. He’d never shot a man in the back before, but if he couldn’t stop him one way, he’d stop him another.
He’d forgotten Wyrick could hear him, so when he heard a girl inside beginning to scream, Charlie shouted.
