“What’s going on?” Blake asked over my shoulder. “I thought you left your dog tag back at the vehicle.”
“I did.” I dug through my pack for the tablet. “This was an extra. It’s the test model. It doesn’t work like the others—glitches galore—and we never figured out why, but it has direct emergency message transmission ability. I thought I might need that, but only Damien knows I have this.”
“What about the GPS?” Blake’s concern was heavy in his voice. “Does that—”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Doesn’t work. At least it’s not supposed to. This thing is otherwise useless … but that’s good in this instance. Whether or not it’s actually Damien on the other end, if I don’t respond they won’t even know I got it. I can read the message and decide what to do from there.” I inserted the tag into the tablet. The screen flashed on, and I read the message.
“Barn burnt down* Storm coming* Cleaning house* Kaptured*”
What the hell? I looked at Blake.
“It’s four messages.” He pointed out the use of asterisks instead of periods.
True. “But barn burnt down? Hayley, come here a second.”
She joined us, and I showed her the message. “Does this mean anything to you?”
She reread it and shook her head. “No clue. Who’s the message from?”
“Damien. What barn?” I looked at Blake again. “He can’t know anything about the farmhouse we were at.”
“Only barn I know in Hawaii is—Governor Barnes?” Hayley offered.
“Maybe.” I nodded. That would make sense.
“If it’s that,” Blake agreed, “then by burnt he’s saying Barnes is the mole.”
I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. If that’s the case, my BS reader is shit. It was definitely possible.
“The storm coming is either an actual storm, or he’s telling us we’re surrounded, and not to move,” Blake continued.
“And cleaning house could mean they’re evacuating Redemption or …” Hayley paused.
“They’re getting ready to breach the house on Kauai.” I completed the alternative.
“And Kaptured?” Hayley asked.
That can only mean one thing. Coming from Damien, it wasn’t a typo. “It means Keena is not dead.” I looked at Blake. “And now everyone knows they have her.”
Blake was shaking his head. “If Damien already knows that—”
“Then he knows we made it here.” I interrupted him. “And he knows what they’re trying to make Keena do.”
“But how would they know that already?” Hayley asked.
“Because dickhead Baker has her, and he knows how to reach the Hexagon.” Blake’s voice gave away his anger. “This gets worse by the minute.”
By the second.
“But why send this message in code if only you ten had—”
I cut Hayley off. “Maybe because of Barnes and his tablet, or maybe Damien was worried about Keena having a tablet somehow. Maybe there’s another breach in the communication link I don’t know about. I don’t know for sure.”
“Do we know we can trust Damien?” Blake asked.
“In all honesty, my judgment on people has clearly been a little off, but if there’s anyone back there I trust now, it’s him.” That seemed good enough for Blake. I continued. “In any case, Damien clearly isn’t taking any chances. That—at least—is a good thing.”
No one disputed that.
“Danny, we can’t go back in there.” Hayley positioned herself to where she could see my eyes.
“I know,” I replied.
“Can Keena shut down the Shield?”
I nodded. “Pretty sure she can.”
“But would she?”
“I don’t know, Hayley.” I shook my head. “There’s no telling what someone will do when tortured enough. If anyone can get it out of her though, it’s Baker.”
“Danny, it’s my fault she’s still in there. I should have tried to run down that hallway and grab her. I probably could have.”
“Blake, that doesn’t even matter now. Baker might have already killed her, or he could have forced her to send a message to me somehow and make it look like it’s from Damien. She knows about this test model. Don’t think she knew I had it on me now, but she at least knows about it. This could simply be a ruse by Baker to try to draw us back out there, to make us do something desperate.” I knew most of that was unlikely—Keena would have resisted every bit of it—but it was at least worth considering.
Blake and Hayley also knew I could be right, but I could tell by the look on Blake’s face he still felt terrible. “Still, Danny, maybe I should stay and—”
“Forget it. That’s not happening.”
“But if she is alive and does shut down the Shield,” Blake reasoned. “I could get in there and blow the place. We still have the two demo packs we took from those snipers. It’s definitely enough C4 to do the job. And then they couldn’t launch any missiles controlled from here at least—”
“You’d have to get to the command room in there. You’d never make it. No, if they do shut it down we have to hope Trigger or Twix can get to the top of the mountain in time to power it back up manually.”
“And if they can’t?” Hayley asked.
We all knew there probably wouldn’t be enough advanced notice. There was total silence for a minute. I heard someone cough down the tunnel. I shook my head. “Listen, guys, I hate talking in hypotheticals. We can’t control what might happen. But I do know if we try to go back in there, we give away our only escape option. I’m sick and tired of having to leave people behind and losing people in general, but we’re all dead if any of us goes back.”
I let my words sink in. “If Keena is indeed still alive,” I continued, “then Baker is going to break her. Whatever his endgame is in helping Commander Boli now, he intends to follow through—he believes he’ll get whatever he was promised. You, me—we know how good Boli is with keeping his word, but Baker must believe this is his only out. All we can count on—all we know—is that Keena will hold out as long as she can to let us try to get back home.”
“She’s not a soldier though,” Blake mentioned then. “Not really.”
“I know.” I nodded. “But I think she’ll be as tough as she can be. Our only hope is that she was…” I paused, then—insensitive or not—I continued. “That she is strong enough to buy us time.”
“What is time?” Hayley asked.
“One, two days … tops.”
“So we’ve got two days to get all the way home?” Hayley didn’t like my answer.
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Maybe less.”
“So…” Hayley spoke slowly.
“We have to go.” I turned and headed back toward the others, Blake and Hayley at my heels. My mind was swimming in the deep ends of that message. Storm coming? Cleaning house? It has to be an actual storm. But cleaning house? Why would they be going in now?
“Everything okay?” Ava asked as we rejoined the group.
I gave my most reassuring smile. “For now.”
“We ready to go?” General Niles asked.
I held a thumb up. “Ready as we’ll ever be.”
“Then let’s do this,” the general replied and shut his Hummer door.
Yes. I nodded. Let’s do this.
FORTY-SIX – Only Gets Worse (Ryan)
---------- (Wednesday. August 10, 2022.) ----------
Wednesday was a stormy, nerve-wracking day on Redemption. Since Deacon and Royce had left us last night—to join Trigger and Twix on Kauai—we hadn’t heard anything from them. No one at Area 52 had either. Due to the mole concerns at the Hexagon, we knew the “radio silence” was intentional—but that didn’t make it any easier to take. Tara was going crazy. Kaci was going crazy not hearing anything back from her brother. I was going crazy not hearing anything from Danny or Hayley. There was a lot of crazy.
Dad had suggested we all hang out at the Brady house—
Blake and Kaci’s—so we could stay by the computer and at least get weather updates from Nicole or Damien. That was fine for a while, but the Brady house was only spacious enough for maybe four people. Six adults and a baby were too much.
By mid-afternoon, Tara’s patience was completely fried. “I need to go take a walk.”
“It’s a little insane out there,” I objected. There were frequent wind gusts upward of fifty miles per hour. It wasn’t a good idea.
“I didn’t say you had to go,” she snapped.
I wasn’t in the mood for a fight. I raised my hands, submitting, and turned back to the computer. I heard the door open and close behind me. I had my hands on the back of the chair Dad was sitting in. He turned his head and looked up at me.
“What? I don’t want to fight, Dad.”
“Okay. But put yourself in her shoes. Do you think she wants to be alone out there?”
I glanced around the room. Kate held Ollie and was bouncing him around. She didn’t look at me. Jenna and Kaci had gone into the kitchen. “I don’t think she wants me with her.”
I expected an argument but didn’t get one. Instead Dad pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’ll go with her.”
“Dad, you don’t have—”
“She shouldn’t be out there on her own.”
I agreed with him, so I shut my mouth and nodded.
He hurried out the door after her.
They came back a half hour later, and Tara took Ollie from Kate to put him down for a nap. Dad closed the door to the office so no one could overhear what he was going to say. “You were right, Ryan. She didn’t want you out there. She is rather angry with you.”
I hung my head. I knew it.
“But.” Dad placed his hand on my shoulder. “She’s more angry at herself.”
I highly doubt that.
“Look, I know you—and I know you probably don’t believe me … but it’s the truth. Some of this you need to hear from her, but I do need to say that this wall you two have built between each other … it’s nothing—it’s imaginary—for now anyway. Tara has lost so much—not that we all haven’t, of course—but she only had her parents and Emily before the attacks. Now she’s got you, and us, but the thought of losing Emily … I don’t know if this makes sense but it’s more than just losing Emily. It’s losing her entire past. Everyone else here still has someone from that past. She doesn’t.”
I could tell by the way Dad was speaking, by the pauses and tone in his voice, that he didn’t know if he was saying it right or explaining it well enough. But somehow I understood exactly what he was saying. I nodded. “I get it.”
He hugged me. “Go talk to her.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
I tiptoed into the bedroom where Tara had put Ollie down for his nap and slipped over to the bed. I leaned in to see her face in the dark and saw her mouth was slightly open—her chest steadily rising and falling. She was asleep.
Ollie was lying beside her, his mouth open as well—also knocked out. There was enough room beside Tara for me to squeeze in and I really wanted to, but I didn’t. She needed her sleep more than she needed a hug. I grabbed my journal from my backpack and slipped back out of the room.
I sat in the kitchen and wrote for a couple hours. I found an envelope in Blake’s office and folded in the letter I’d written Tara. I took it into the bedroom at four to check on Ollie. He was stirring but she was still out, so I slid the letter into her bag and took Ollie out of the room with me. She hadn’t slept this well in quite a while. This would be good for her. We could always talk later.
FORTY-SEVEN – Darkness Falls (Ryan)
---------- (Wednesday. August 10, 2022) ---------
Tara joined us for dinner at seven. The sleep had certainly done her good. She wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t angry—somewhere comfortably in between. After dinner we checked in with Nicole at the Hexagon and moved everything valuable into the bunker under Blake’s office—all our bags, keepsakes, electronics, etc. Then we headed over to the Big House.
Everything in the big house was built around the kitchen so Dad felt that was where we should be—the least exposed place on our island.
It was only slightly after 9:00 p.m. on Redemption now, but it was dark enough to be midnight. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a blacker sky. Random light gray lines across the sky mimicked the sun’s rays but held no real glow—no warmth. An eerie chill had taken over.
The waves rolling past our island were huge—mostly ten to twenty feet tall, some approaching thirty feet. We knew they were pounding the western shore of Ni’ihau, which was—thus far—sheltering Redemption from the brunt of the storm. But we also knew the waves were getting bigger and stronger as they approached Kauai. The water level had to be creeping up—the flood surge moving through the streets—and the worst of the hurricane was still probably an hour or so away.
The winds were getting vicious. The tree house, as stable as it was, had begun to sway and creak around us. Best guess, we were currently getting regular gusts of sixty to seventy miles per hour, and the wind continued to pick up.
The kitchen was built around the thickest tree of the bunch, with walls to the north, south and west—it was wide open facing east. There was a large window on the west wall that we’d covered with blankets and roped off, and a railed veranda wrapping all the way around the kitchen. We had a number of escape routes if something went terribly wrong—or when something went wrong—but there really wasn’t anywhere to go that was safer than this.
Part of me wished I hadn’t convinced Deacon and Royce to go to Kauai. It would have been nice to have another male—or two—here with Dad and me. Kaci, Kate, Jenna, and Tara—with Ollie—were all sitting huddled—maybe even praying—against the tree in the middle of the kitchen. Ollie was amazingly calm, given the chaotic environment around him. He’d cry from time to time, but he mostly held tight to Tara. Dad was pacing, almost as much as I was. Our pacing was probably making everyone more nervous, but what else could we do?
The wind continued to howl. It was like being in a popcorn maker—or a vacuum cleaner. There were cracks and pops all around us, and objects swirled through the air. “Tell me if anyone sees a flying cow,” I joked. No response. “Like in Twister.”
Still nothing. Oh well. I don’t have any hurricane humor. I used to have the biggest crush on Helen Hunt—the star of Twister—until that Serendipity movie came out. Then it was all Kate Beckinsale. A large branch suddenly snapped off the tree above us and dropped mere feet from where I stood, crashing onto the east deck and splintering the floor. I’m certain I jumped. I looked up to where it had come from and then glanced back at the girls. I’d heard one of them shriek. There was another crash upstairs, and another…and another. It was definitely getting worse. I didn’t have any way of measuring the wind speed, but objects were starting to fly by the tree house—bushes, branches, and mud—lots of mud. I didn’t think the rain could get any heavier but it seemed to every hour. There was even hail mixed in. This was becoming more and more like the storm in that Karate Kid sequel, absent—of course—Mr. Miyagi or Daniel-son. There wasn’t anyone to help us out here.
Dad walked over to stand beside me. He put his arm around me. “I don’t know, son…this is getting bad.”
I looked at him and was alarmed by the sadness evident on his face.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” he reiterated.
“Dad.” I put my arm around him too. “It’s going to be all right.”
“I don’t think so, Ryan.” He shook his head. “You need to go be with your wife.”
“Dad, what are you saying?”
“Ryan, people don’t live through tornados as exposed as we are, and this hurricane is bigger and stronger than any of those. I was hoping it would lose steam like they usually do out here, but—”
“Dad, you’re freaking me out.”
“I’m trying to tell you what you need to hear right now. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I’m ri
ght, you need to go be with your wife. You need to stay with your wife.”
I stared at him in stunned silence. This is totally not like him. He’s the most optimistic person I know. I turned toward the island counter—in the middle of the kitchen—that Tara and the others were now huddled under.
Another large crash prompted more shrieks and tears from Ollie, as it was considerably louder and much closer to the girls and the baby. There was a large branch sticking through the wall behind them. The winds had to be around eighty miles per hour now—and these weren’t just gusts—it was constant. “Girls, maybe you should move.”
“To where?” Tara yelled back at me.
Good point. I could only imagine what was going through her mind. Here we were in the middle of the worst storm any of us had ever been in, and she probably wasn’t even thinking about it. Her mind had to be on Emily. It had to be so hard for Tara not to be there instead of here. But then, if she were there and not here, she’d be worried about Ollie in pretty much the same manner. There probably was no preferred alternative. I followed Dad’s suggestion and slipped under the counter with everyone else. I wrapped my arms around Tara and whispered, “I love you” in her ear. She didn’t reply, but it did feel better to have someone to hold on to. “I’ll always love you,” I whispered again.
Man, what I would give to have a live feed of wherever everyone else is.
---------- (At the same time on Kauai.) ----------
A live feed wouldn’t have helped much on Kauai at that point—at least not without infrared. It was pitch-black there and pouring like crazy. To make matters worse—or better in the long term, maybe—the compound was taking on heavy flooding.
From where the four members of the Pack were gathered, they could see a downed power wire flipping back and forth in the wind, sparking dangerously close to the water. It was keeping them from getting into their intended positions.
“Damn it.” Trigger watched the wire snap around. “We can’t move any closer than this until Damien cuts all the power.”
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