by Geof Johnson
Everyone looked up at the surreal disk that hung in the sky like a big dinner plate swirled with soft watercolors. No one spoke for a long moment until Lakshmi said, “It’s a different world all right. Beautiful, though.”
“Yes it is,” Coach Harrison said. “Let’s go back to Earth.” He stepped through the portal into his office.
Chapter 12
It was the Wednesday of finals week before Jamie thought of a way to help the two agents. He went to their house late that afternoon, alone.
“I think I know how to put a kink in Cage’s plans, so you might be able to go home for Christmas. I thought of this on my own and I haven’t told my friends yet because Fred won’t like it.” Jamie smiled fleetingly. “How about if we blow up Cage’s helicopter and airplane while they’re at his monastery stronghold? Then he wouldn’t be able to get to his next target, right? He’d be stuck.”
“We’ve already thought of that,” Eric said, “and ruled it out because it’s too dangerous. Someone would have to get in really close to destroy the aircraft, even if they used an RPG or shoulder-fired missile. We’ve never been able to come within two thousand yards of that place, not even with a drone, and the Romanians aren’t too keen on letting our bombers use their airspace.”
“What if I made a doorway for us right beside the runway and blew them up with my magic?” He smiled again and formed his hand into a pistol. “Boom—boom. Two blasts and they’d be nothing but slag heaps. We’d be done in a few seconds, and then we could pop right out of there.”
Eric rubbed his chin and stared at Jamie. “We’d have to know for certain that both he and his aircraft were there so that he’d be stranded.”
“That’s not all,” Terry said. “He might be able to replace one or both of them within days.”
“What if I blow a bunch of holes in his runway, too? Then he couldn’t fly unless he got a helicopter. Maybe I could blast his access road while I’m at it. He couldn’t drive or fly ’til it got fixed. Must be tough getting repair crews up into the mountains on short notice. I bet it’s snowy there, too. He probably couldn’t even climb down because it would be too dangerous.”
“Might work. It could buy us a few days’ rest, at least.” Eric continued to rub his chin and he nodded. “We’d have to make it look like it was done with real bombs instead of magic. I don’t want to tip our hand that we have you as an asset.”
“I’m an asset?”
“Of course. And, by the way, I just found out from a friend at the FBI that they are using someone they call a ‘magic consultant’ on an occult serial murder case.”
“What the heck is a magic consultant?”
“Supposedly, he can sense when other people are using magic. The FBI has hired psychics before on tough cases, but this is the first time they’ve ever used somebody like this, that I know of.”
“Well, he must not be very good, or they’d be knocking on my door by now. The spells I’ve been doing are really powerful, and they’re like a beacon to other sorcerers. Fred’s magic is like that, too, for witches.”
“Still,” Eric shrugged, “I thought you might want to know, in case anybody comes snooping around.”
“You mean, like you guys?”
“Yeah. Like us. I guess we were kinda clumsy about that.”
“You probably were following procedure, but you can throw that manual out the window when dealing with somebody who has magic.”
“Like Phillip Cage,” Terry said.
“So I say we go against the manual and do something gutsy and aggressive, something that he wouldn’t expect. Like blow up his toys.”
Eric clamped his mouth tightly and held Jamie’s gaze for a few seconds. Then he said, “I’m for it, if we can work out the details. We’ll have to wait until the low-orbit satellite passes over his compound again before we finalize our plans. Then we can see if his aircraft are on the runway by the monastery.”
“I’ll be back in Hendersonville on Friday for winter break. Text me when you know something, and I’ll meet you here.” He started to outline a doorway to his dorm, but paused. “By the way, let’s keep this between us, okay? Don’t tell any of my friends.”
“We’re secret agents,” Eric said. “We know how to keep a secret.”
* * *
Jamie was in Hendersonville, working at his older cousin’s veterinary clinic on Saturday morning, when he got a text message from Terry: We should hang out!!!
Jamie figured that the triple exclamation marks meant they needed to have a meeting right away. He glanced at the clock on the far wall. My break is in twenty minutes.
Jamie, still wearing his blue scrubs, stepped through a portal into Eric and Terry’s house. “What is it? I gotta make this fast ’cause I’m still on the clock at work.”
“Cage is at his mountain stronghold,” Terry said. “We just saw the most recent satellite image, and both of his aircraft are on the ground. It looks like a large contingent of visitors are there, too, judging by the number of vehicles parked at the monastery now.”
“He seems to be having guests for a Christmas celebration,” Eric said. “The phone traffic indicates something of the sort.”
“So what do we do?” Jamie asked eagerly, and a little anxiously, his heart rate kicking upward at the news.
“We need to attack at night, preferably really late, but there’s a seven hour time difference. If we leave at seven, it’ll be two in the morning there. Can you get away then?”
“Tonight? Um…maybe seven thirty. I’ll have to do the dishes after dinner. I can tell my parents I’m going out to do some Christmas shopping, so they won’t ask too many questions. Fred won’t, either, if I hint that I’m shopping for her.”
“We only have two bullet-proof vests. Can you borrow one from your dad?”
“Not without telling him what’s going on, and I’d rather not do that. He’ll insist on coming with us.”
“I think that we should keep this operation small,” Terry said. “Less chance of getting detected until it’s too late for Cage to do anything about it. But I’d feel better if you had a vest, too.”
“I won’t need one. I can use my shield.”
“While you’re destroying the aircraft?”
“Well, no. But I’ll only have to drop the shield for a couple of seconds at a time.”
“Then we’ll cover you,” Eric said. “Meet us here as soon as you finish the dishes, and we’ll go to Romania right away. Wear black. Even your socks.”
Jamie outlined a doorway back to the vet clinic and thought, I wonder if other special ops people have to finish the dishes before they go on a mission?
* * *
Jamie returned to Eric and Terry’s house that evening for the raid in Romania and was greeted by a sobering sight. Both agents wore black, head to foot, with bulletproof vests and heavy boots. They were preparing military-style rifles, also black and menacing, and a black duffle bag lay unzipped on the floor. Black was definitely the theme color of the party.
“I only have a dark blue coat.” Jamie glanced down at his heavy winter jacket and suddenly felt inappropriate, like a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a formal dinner. “I hope that’s okay. I thought about borrowing my dad’s black leather jacket, but I didn’t want him to start asking questions.”
Eric looked at Jamie’s attire critically. “That coat will do, as long as you’re warm enough. There’s definitely snow in those mountains right now, and it’s bound to be cold. Do you have any black gloves?”
“I can’t wear gloves. The magic blast would burn them up.”
Eric turned to Terry. “What do you think?”
“We need to do something about it. There’s a sliver of moon out and his white hands will show. I can put eye black on them.” Terry reached into one of the extra pockets of her pants and pulled out a plastic tube, took off the cap and said, “Let me see your hands.” Jamie offered them to her and she began rubbing it over the backs of them, leaving dark smears
as she worked.
“Where do you get stuff like that?” Jamie asked. “Spy World, or Spies-R-Us?”
“Sporting goods store,” she said without looking up. “Athletes use it under their eyes to cut down on glare. Now, turn them over so I can do your palms.”
“Is it flammable?” Jamie said.
Terry held the tube close to her face for a moment and furrowed her brow. “Doesn’t say.”
“Just do the backs, then. I don’t want them catching on fire when I use the blasting spell.”
“I see how that could be a problem.”
Eric reached down into the open duffle bag and pulled out a gray cake the size and shape of a half-sandwich made of modeling clay. “You can teleport stuff with your magic, can’t you?”
“Sure, but it’s called translocating. Why?”
“It’ll be safer than manually placing this on the targets.” Eric showed Jamie the rectangular chunk in his hand. “This is plastic explosive. We don’t have much, so I had to split it into smaller charges, but it won’t matter much, since your magic will be doing most of the destruction. These are just for show. Phillip Cage is an expert on munitions, so after we blow up his aircraft, he’s going to study the wreckage carefully to try to figure out how it was done. This stuff will leave a chemical residue on the debris, and Cage will detect that and assume it was a standard act of sabotage.”
“Does he have any enemies who would even try something like that?”
“He has a ship load of enemies,” Terry said. “That’s why he has such a large security force.”
“So,” Eric continued, “if you can translocate this stuff onto the aircraft before you blast them, it’ll leave a false clue that will cover up your involvement. We don’t want to give him any hints of what our true capabilities are.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Jamie said. “Anything else?”
Eric reached into the bag again and pulled out another hunk of gray clay, only larger, and attached to it was a small electronic device with a keypad. “This explosive has a detonator with a timer. I figure that our biggest problem tonight is that we have to blow up the aircraft and the access road at the same time, because once the explosions start, that place is going to be swarming with security men and the bullets will start flying. We’re not going to have enough time to do the jobs separately.”
Jamie pointed at the device in Eric’s hand. “So what do we do with that?”
“This is for the road. You’ll arm this as you place it, then return to our position. When it goes off, you can blast the aircraft.”
“Where’s the road?”
“On the far right of the building, east of where we’ll be. The best place to put the bomb is where the road goes over a narrow ridge that’s about fifty yards downhill from the monastery. It’ll do the most damage there and make the repair much harder.”
“I’ll need to carry the bomb there,” Jamie said. “I can’t translocate stuff accurately unless I can see where it’s going, or if I’m really familiar with the area, which I’m not.”
“You can’t put a doorway by the access road because the glowing lines will give you away. If you fly there, you’d probably have to go over the trees and his radar might pick you up. Do you have another way to get the explosive in position, besides on foot? That might be too risky.”
“I can translocate myself in stages. I can go pretty fast, too, once I see where my next spot will be. Do you have an aerial view of the compound?”
They led him to the big table, which was still covered by electronic equipment. Terry pressed a key on the laptop, and an image appeared on the external monitor, showing an overhead view of the sprawling stone building. A runway stretched off to the left of the monastery, and a narrow ribbon of road snaked away to the right. “This is it.” She pointed to an area at the bottom of the screen, on the southernmost side of the compound. “This cliff is probably the best spot for you to make the portal for us to enter the area. There’s a small ledge just below the top of it that’s hidden from view, and there’s a steep drop below that. It’s sheer rock, probably covered with ice right now. Nobody would expect intruders from this location because it’s nearly impossible to scale this cliff in the winter, especially at night.”
“Why can’t I make the doorway by the runway?”
“Because your doorway glows. It’ll stand out like a flare.”
“Right, I forgot. So nobody can see us on that ledge?”
“No, but it’s at least twenty or thirty feet down, so Eric and I will have to climb up to the runway. Unless you can fly us there.”
“I’ll levitate you. It’s easy.”
“Yeah, easy,” Eric said with a straight face. “Normal, run-of-the-mill magic.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to sound cocky.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you can do that stuff.”
Terry pointed to a line of trees that framed the bottom of the image on the monitor. “To get to the access road, you can translocate around this way. It’ll give you a little cover. There probably won’t be any guards there because it runs along the edge of the cliff.” Then she tapped a spot where the small road ran eastward. “Your target is down this way. Can you manage that?”
Jamie nodded. “How do I work the timer on the detonator?”
Eric showed him the device, which consisted of a number pad and a small display, and touched a button on the controls. “Tap this to set the countdown, then punch in the numbers. If you type thirty, it’ll be thirty seconds. Three hundred is three minutes. Then press the red key twice to arm it.”
“Uh…can’t you do that?”
Eric gave Jamie a steady look. “It’s better if you do it at the last possible second.”
Terry smiled thinly. “Relax. It’s a piece of cake.”
“Easy for you to say. I’ve never worked a bomb before.”
“So you’ll learn something new tonight.” She turned to Eric. “Have we covered everything?”
Eric narrowed his eyes and mouth for a moment. “Keep the noise to an absolute minimum while we’re exposed. Whispers and hand gestures only. There will probably be security lights on the runway and around the monastery, so stay low. You want to offer the smallest possible target to the enemy.”
“Target. Never thought of myself that way.” Jamie gritted his teeth and stared at the view of the monastery displayed on the screen. “Call up a wider map of the area, please.”
Terry clicked the mouse and the display changed. Jamie studied the layout and the distances, and fixed them into his magic sense of space. “Okay, I got it. Should I make the doorway now?”
“Hold on.” Eric reached into the duffle bag again and pulled out three black ski masks. He handed one to Jamie and one to Terry. “Put these on.”
They pulled them over their heads and Jamie considered the two agents, now completely covered in black except for their eyes and mouths. “We look like terrorists.”
“We are, in a way,” Eric said. “We’re going to terrorize Phillip Cage.” He turned off the overhead light and said, “Let’s give our eyes time to adjust to the dark.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Jamie said, and after about thirty seconds, started to make the doorway to Romania. “I’ll go first in case the ledge is unsafe.”
“I should go instead,” Terry said. “I’m a trained climber.”
“But I can fly. If it’s icy or unstable, it won’t matter to me.”
“Good point. Nice to have that capability on a mission.”
Jamie finished the portal and pushed it open to face cold darkness. He took two tentative steps forward and felt snow crunch underfoot. He found himself standing on an outcropping, less than five feet wide and barely ten feet long, which jutted out from the side of a steep cliff. The stars overhead were brittle and bright in the black sky. He crept to the edge, glanced down over the sheer drop and saw nothing but gloomy vastness below, untouched by moonlight, waiting to swallow anyone wh
o made a misstep and fell. I’m glad I can fly. He sucked in his breath and was shocked by the sharp bite of the frigid air. “Brrr,” he muttered and tucked his bare hands under his armpits.
He tilted his head back and his gaze followed the rock face to where it ended twenty feet higher. This is the spot.
Jamie motioned to Eric and Terry and they followed him onto the ledge with their weapons ready, Eric with the duffle bag over one shoulder.
Eric leaned close to Jamie’s ear and whispered, “Check to see if there’s a guard up there.”
Jamie ascended slowly and silently until he could see over the top of the cliff, and he hovered while he studied the situation. Directly ahead and perpendicular to him was the runway, only a stone’s throw from his position, and lit by security lights on tall poles set fifty yards apart. The helicopter sat on the concrete to his left, and the airplane was on his right, closer to the monastery, which appeared as a massive pile of stone that loomed into the night, the bulk of its expanse disappearing into sinister shadows.
He stiffened when he spotted a sentry nearby with his back to Jamie, leaning against a tree, hunched against the cold with a rifle slung over his shoulder. His frosty breath appeared as cloudy puffs, lit by the harsh glare of the security lights. Jamie realized that the man must be miserable, and he suddenly seemed less threatening. Poor guy’s freezing. What a crummy job he’s got.
Jamie rejoined the agents on the ledge below and whispered, “I saw one guard. Close by on the right, facing the other way. What should we do?”
“I got this,” Terry whispered. “Can you float me up there?”
Jamie levitated her over the top and she disappeared without a sound. Moments later, she stuck her head over the edge and signaled for them to come on. Jamie sent Eric first and then followed him. When Jamie settled beside them, he looked around for the security guard.
A dark heap lay in the shadow of the nearest tree. I hope Terry didn’t kill him. Now I wish I’d gotten one of Fred’s pendants. He didn’t have time to worry about it because Eric was motioning for Jamie to kneel next to him.
