by Alex Grecian
“Of course I will.”
She picked herself up and left him there, stumbled back out, following the women and little girls in their exodus from the truck. Travis was there passing out blankets and towels from the plane. Dr. Iversen had his black bag open on the bumper of the truck and was shining a penlight into a girl’s eyes. He reached into his pocket and produced a lollipop, which he handed to the girl. She gave him a tentative smile in return.
“She’s not here, Travis.”
“The church?”
Skottie nodded. She felt dizzy and nauseated with worry, but she tried to force her thoughts back along practical lines. Panic and fear would do nothing to help Maddy.
“My husband, Brandon, is in there,” she said. “He’s injured. He’s all the way at the back.”
Dr. Iversen picked up his bag.
“Well, let’s get some more light in there so I can see what needs doing,” he said.
3
A dark blue 4x4 pickup with lights flashing came down the narrow road and pulled in behind the trailer truck. A Comanche County deputy stepped out, a rangy man with a Sam Elliott mustache, and gave the Cessna a skeptical look before approaching Skottie. He introduced himself as Tucker, and they exchanged greetings and credentials. A minute later, three Highway Patrol cruisers came zooming in.
The truck had been carrying fifteen women and children, as well as Brandon. They were frightened and dehydrated, but they were all relatively healthy. The troopers passed out bottles of water, and Travis finished giving Emmaline’s blankets away.
Brandon had a concussion. There was a head wound that started bleeding again when Dr. Iversen cleaned away the clotting, and the doctor put twelve stitches in Brandon’s scalp.
“He should be all right,” Iversen said. “But concussions are tricky. He needs to get to a hospital as soon as possible.”
Deputy Tucker walked Brandon carefully back to his truck and waited while Brandon threw up in the dead leaves by the side of the road, then bundled him into the passenger seat and took off for the nearest emergency room, his array coruscating and his siren screaming.
The Highway Patrol had many questions for them, but Skottie was too impatient to answer them. The truck full of women and girls had not made it over the state line into Oklahoma, so the FBI wouldn’t necessarily become involved. But either the Highway Patrol or the Comanche sheriff’s office would call in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Meanwhile, whoever was buying girls from the church would soon be looking for their latest shipment. They would begin making inquiries of their friends in Paradise Flats long before the KBI could get rolling. And evidence would begin to disappear. If Maddy was still alive, Purity First might dispose of her as soon as they discovered their truck hadn’t arrived at its destination.
So Travis dealt with the troopers as quickly as he could. He said they knew very little, only that the truck had come from the Purity First Church in Burden County. The sheriff there had called for help, and Skottie had recruited Dr. Iversen and Travis to assist. There would be many more questions later, but Skottie had a badge and the officers on the scene had their hands full.
Skottie sat in the back seat of the Cessna this time. Travis took the copilot’s seat, and Dr. Iversen got the plane in the air.
“How long will it take us to get back?”
“Be a lot faster now,” Dr. Iversen said. “I know where I’m going.”
4
The mist was rolling away and the horizon was multicolored under the far eastern edge of an ugly cloud bank. Travis’s rented Jeep was still where he had left it, on the street outside number 437, the house where Purity First was storing Rachel Bloom’s furniture. Skottie dropped him off and then drove her Explorer around the block to the alley behind the church. Sheriff Goodman was around the corner in the other direction, waiting in his cruiser, and Deputy Griffith was armed with the Winchester and a scope, perched on a cell tower behind the long unbroken stretch of fence. Between Skottie and Goodman, they had scrounged four radios so they could keep in touch.
Much of their plan hinged on the lucky fact that Goodman had never returned his keys to the church. He would use his key to the main gate to sneak in and search the outbuildings while Travis let himself into 437 again and accessed the compound through the back door of the house. At the same time, Skottie would go through the alley and over the fence. She and Travis would approach the church building from different angles, and Quincy would cover them all with the rifle from the cell tower. He was ready to move in with his cruiser and get the others out of there as soon as they found Maddy and Ransom.
None of them was optimistic, but there wasn’t time to come up with anything better and they had no idea who else they could trust.
With Bear at his heels, Travis bounded up the porch steps and used his bump key once again on the front lock. They entered the house, and Travis closed the door behind them. He moved quickly through to the kitchen, set his radio down on the counter, and took a look out the small window above the sink. Rose-hued sodium lights illuminated the entire compound, and there were already people out and about, moving in focused patterns, some of them carrying boxes back and forth between the church building and the sheds, others performing calisthenics on the basketball court, all of them wearing identical brown shirts. There were perhaps twenty of them, their pink skin scrubbed clean, their fair hair neatly parted, their bellies full of pancakes and orange juice.
He heard a click at the front door and felt a momentary gust of cold wind. He reached for his Eclipse, but Bear was already in motion. A few seconds later he heard a clatter and excited shouting from the living room.
“Doc! It’s me, dammit!”
Sheriff Goodman had been chased halfway up the stairs to the second floor and Bear had him cornered. Goodman was holding a pair of bolt cutters, old and solid, its handles wrapped in friction tape, and he looked like he wanted to take a swing. Travis put his gun away and called the dog off. Bear backed off just far enough to let Goodman slide along the wall past him, then followed the sheriff down into the dark room.
“I don’t think he likes me much,” Goodman said.
“What makes you say that?” Travis said.
“He still wants to bite me,” Goodman said.
“If he wanted to bite you, he would have done so.”
Travis reached down and carefully ruffled Bear’s mane, got a sloppy lick in return. Emmaline had bathed Bear and stitched up the wound across his shoulder, and a few hours of sleep seemed to have done the big dog a world of good.
“They changed the locks,” Goodman said. “My key doesn’t work anymore.”
“Of course.” Travis shook his head. “It was too much to hope for.”
Goodman followed Travis to the kitchen window and squinted out at the activity in the yard. “Looks like they’re gearing up for something,” he said. He took a pouch from his jacket pocket and stuffed a wad of tobacco in his mouth. “If you could’ve got that driver to tell us where he was going, we’d have a better idea how much time we got.”
“We did not have the luxury of time,” Travis said.
“I could’ve made him talk pretty quick, if I was there,” Goodman said. “Guy was stealing little girls.”
Travis changed the subject. “Some of this activity may be for my benefit. They are expecting me later today. I surprised Heinrich with my visit to the church yesterday, but your brother invited me to return for the holiday meal.” He glanced out the window at the activity in the yard. “No doubt they are setting a place at the table for me now.”
“But why so early?”
“I think maybe this is their regular routine. Their brand of paranoia requires constant preparation.” Travis glanced at his watch. “A little after seven o’clock now.”
Goodman nodded and went to the back door. “Sun’ll be up soon. Better get moving.”
“Skottie will be anxious,” Travis said.
He picked up his radio and called her.
5
“About time,” she said. “I’m going in now.”
Skottie took her thumb off the button and clipped the radio onto her belt next to her handcuffs, LED flashlight, and Taser. She shut off the Explorer and got out, checked her Glock and holstered it. She had considered wearing her uniform, thinking she might need the extra edge it would give her, the deference to authority it engendered, but had decided against it at the last minute. Instead she had on a comfortable old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that fit over the top of her Kevlar vest. Her hair was fastened back under an old Cubs cap.
The fence was unbroken, but detoured down one side of the alley and back up the other, then continued along the rest of the block and around the corner. The alley was just wide enough for a garbage truck to back into, with thin grass strips running down both sides of a concrete driveway. At the other end was a gate built from the same tall cedar planks as the rest of the fence. The church had apparently recognized that the alley was a vulnerable spot and had accessorized with a few yards of barbed wire.
Skottie reached into the car and grabbed the blanket that covered the back seat. She shook out Bear’s heavy black fur and rolled the blanket up, carried it into the alley. On the off chance someone had been careless the last time the trash was taken out, Skottie tried the gate’s handle. It was secure. She went back and rolled one of the sturdy plastic garbage bins to the gate. She tipped it over on its side, then went back and got another bin. She used them as steps, folded the blanket in half and threw it over the wire, grabbed the top of the gate, and pulled herself up far enough to see into the compound.
There were more people moving about the grounds than she would have liked, but all the activity was concentrated away from the gate. She strained and pulled herself up a little farther and looked at the concrete below her. There was nothing there to cushion her landing, but there was nothing in her way, either.
She jumped down and paced along the alley to the street, breathing carefully and swinging her arms, aware that Maddy was depending on her, then she ran at the bins, took two steps up, grabbed the blanket-covered barbed wire, and vaulted over the gate.
She hit the ground hard on her good ankle and rolled, aiming for the shadows at the base of the church building. She stopped under a hedge and listened for alarms, then stretched out and raised herself to a crouching position. The ankle she had twisted jumping off the plane was still sore, and she had scraped some of the skin off the palm of her left hand, but she was otherwise unscathed.
She unclipped her Glock and stood, held the gun down at her side, and trotted along the outside of the stone wall, looking for a door.
6
“Where’s that generator you saw?” Goodman kept his voice low and adjusted his grip on the heavy bolt cutters. “Maybe we should cut their power? Give us a little advantage.”
“Up closer to the church,” Travis said. “But I think it was just for backup.”
Goodman nodded and they moved out along the inside perimeter of the fence. When they reached the first outbuilding, he wiped a window clean and looked inside.
“Somebody’s bunking down here,” he said. “You think it’s that army they got? Or maybe this is where they keep the women and kids before they transport ’em out?”
“I had the feeling the women were already in the truck yesterday. The driver did not wait to load it; he hurried out of here as soon as Heinrich gave him the word.”
“So they keep them in the truck? This just gets more awful. Dad’s nutty as a Snickers, but Heinrich’s always been the schemer. This has to be him. Gotta be about the money for him.”
They moved on, looking inside each shed as they passed, but every building stood empty. With only two sheds left to check, Goodman stopped and held up his hand. When he had Travis’s attention, he pointed past the outbuildings in the direction of the parking lot.
“You look in that garage?”
“No,” Travis said.
“You said they were keeping that truck in the parking lot. Right out in the open. Why do that if you got a garage you can park it in?”
Travis raised his eyebrows.
They left the shadows of the fence and crossed an open area, watching men in brown shirts run through a calisthenics regimen just a few yards away. Bear stayed nearer the fence, weaving between the outbuildings while keeping Travis in sight. They reached the back of the garage without being seen and crept around to a door on the sheltered side. Goodman tried the handle and shook his head.
“Solid lock, solid door. Didn’t come with the building when they bought it. No windows, either.”
Travis produced his leather pouch and went to work again. The lock on the garage was several steps better than the one on the front gate. Heinrich had gone to some extra trouble to keep people out of his garage.
Goodman shuffled from one foot to the other. “Hurry up.”
“This is difficult.”
It took him three minutes before he heard the familiar sound of a dead bolt drawing back. He straightened up and put the pouch back in his pocket, traded it for the Eclipse.
“A lock like that,” Goodman said, “building’s probably alarmed.”
“Maddy may be in there,” Travis said.
“Or your dad.”
Travis turned the handle and the door swung open. There was an immediate ear-piercing squeal, and they ducked down, entered the building low, and separated on either side of the door. Bear stayed close to Travis, breathing hard. Goodman straightened up and found a light switch. He flicked it and overhead fluorescents blinked to life. There was a plastic box mounted to the wall next to the switch that had a series of buttons and a red blinking light. Goodman gave Travis a thumbs-up and used his bolt cutters to chew through a thick cable that led up toward the rafters. The alarm continued to sound and he frowned at it, then raised the bolt cutters over his head and brought them down hard on the box. It broke in half and hung limp against the wall. Its lights blinked green and it went silent.
Travis shut the door and bolted it.
“Shit,” Goodman said. “Somebody’s gonna have a key to that door. We got maybe a minute before them goons are all over us.”
Maddy was not in the garage, that was obvious at a glance. The double-wide building was filled with pallets, stacked with crates that stretched from the door to the back wall. An olive-green truck with a canvas top was parked, nose out, in the narrow space between crates. Goodman went to the back of the truck and used his bolt cutters again to remove a padlocked chain, while Travis pried open the nearest crate.
“Guns,” Travis said. “Rifles.”
There was a commotion on the other side of the garage door and the handle rattled. Travis could hear men’s voices. Bear looked back and forth between the door and his master, his brown eyes watery. Travis moved to the next crate and opened it.
“Kalashnikovs,” he said.
“Machine guns?”
“A lot of them.”
Goodman lowered the truck’s gate and took a step back. “Come here, Doc.”
Travis went around and looked inside. The cargo area contained an enormous object that was dominated by tall metal cylinders that had been welded together and spray-painted matte black.
“A bomb,” Goodman said. “They’re going to war?”
“I think Heinrich may be supplementing his slave trade by selling weapons.”
“He’s selling bombs?”
“I do not think this is a regular bomb.” Travis pointed at a lever that protruded from a smooth panel that was welded to the right side of the device. “Unless I am wrong, this is an NNEMP.”
“A what?”
“A non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse generator. If we were to push that lever and arm it, we could potenti
ally kill every electronic device in the area. Everything would stop working.”
“How big an area?”
“I could not say. Possibly the entire compound.”
They stood contemplating the contents of the truck for a minute, listening to the people on the other side of the door.
“What have we got to lose?”
“Nothing, really,” Travis said. “Shall we?”
“How’s it work?”
“There should be a remote control somewhere.”
Goodman went to the driver’s-side door and opened it. He came back a moment later holding a small flat plastic box with a single red button on one side. He handed it to Travis.
“This all looks homemade.”
“It is,” Travis said. “We will not want to be near this when it explodes.”
“You said it wasn’t a bomb.”
“It still has an explosive component.”
“Keys are in the truck,” Goodman said. “How ’bout we send it on a little trip?”
“Yes,” Travis said. “Let us hope those people out there have the good sense to run.”
Goodman went back to the cab and climbed in. Travis reached out to the device and flung the lever upward just as the truck started. There was a low whine that made Bear back away and snort. The truck rolled forward and Goodman jumped out.
“I rigged the gas pedal,” he said.
He walked back to Travis and they stood side by side watching as the truck hit the garage door and kept going, crumpling the corrugated tin and pushing through it into the gray air outside. People in brown shirts scrambled in every direction and the truck rattled on, over the ruins of the door, through the brittle grass and away, finally bouncing to a stop at the far edge of the basketball court.
Travis pushed the red button on the remote control.
There was a muffled thump, the back end of the truck popped up and slammed back down, and the lights in the garage winked out.