“Now listen to me. We have lost nothing. We still have every resource we started with. Our soldiers are all present and accounted for. Our leaders are here in the room. We have an inexhaustible supply of funds and we have this paranormal power to control men in battle and this exclusive technology to see events beyond time and distance and project our will on those very events. Do you hear me?”
Randal fixed his glazed eyes on Frances. He nodded along with the rest of them.
“When I ask a question, your answer from now on will be ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Do you hear me?”
A scattered, muffled “Yes, ma’am” emitted from the indecisive listeners.
“I can’t hear you,” shouted Frances. “We will overcome our enemy, this Fly In The Ointment, do you understand?”
“YES, MA’AM,” Randal heard the assembled group shout en masse.
“And we have something else, now,” Frances said. “We have a very personal reason to be angry. This FITO has thwarted our efforts in Neddick, and they have dared to come into our house and cause devastating destruction.”
She peered into the eyes of each executive and each squad leader in the room. She let the silence hang in the air. “Are you angry?”
“YES, MA’AM.”
“Are you incensed?”
“YES, MA’AM.”
“Are you enraged?”
“YES, MA’AM.”
“Will you prepare our warriors for the next attack?”
“YES, MA’AM.”
“Will you get them as raging mad as you are?”
“YES, MA’AM.”
“Are we going to demolish our enemy?”
“YES, MA’AM.”
“You better believe we will. Our purpose is righteous. Our nation needs us to be successful. The future of America is in our hands, and we must be victorious. Executive board and Andrew, remain in place. Squad leaders, you will be given new training schedules at zero five hundred tomorrow. When you wake up in the morning, you will wake up with strength and confidence. Do you understand?”
“YES, MA’AM.”
“Dismissed.”
The Directorate’s squad leaders left the room. Randal and the other executives all gawked at Frances.
Randal Sanford nudged Romano Goldstein. “Where is our chairwoman getting all this Pattonlike command presence?”
“She’s plugged in to the powers of darkness,” said Romano.
Frances said, “All right, Andrew, let’s have the battle plan for Target Two in Magnolia, Massachusetts.”
“Let me begin with what I have seen and heard out on the ledges,” Sandy said, opening the daily council of war in the loft of the barn. “Whereas previously our enemy has been able to shield their actions with a dome of telekinetic energy, that capability has been penetrated. I am now able to observe their preparations.
“What’s the date today?” asked Sandy.
“October thirtieth,” said Peter.
Sandy’s emotions were conflicted about Peter’s transformation from a brainy graduate student to a resourceful operations officer. He’d fine-tuned Task Force Saber’s training plan specifically for their mission of ground defense, and he coordinated every activity and every resource for maximum efficiency. On one hand Sandy was amazed at the way he dove into his military assignment, on the other she worried about him losing ground in his progress toward a professorship at MIT.
Sandy assumed her role as the eyes and ears beyond the walls of Fortress Cielavista, and left the overall command of Task Force Saber forces to Carlos.
“Hank and his Special Operations buddies refer to this predawn time as ‘zero-dark-thirty,’” Sandy said to the gathered warriors in Task Force Saber’s ops center. “Right, Hank?”
Hank slouched in the outer ring of the group. He offered a slight grin, “Yeah. Sometimes it seemed funny. Sometimes it meant something else, you know. Something dark inside you.”
Sandy had decided not to rebuke Hank for his rash tactical error—making an unauthorized raid on the enemy’s encampment without angelic protection. What was done was done, and she needed to work together with her leaders to analyze their current threat situation and deal with it. She knew that her son, in his fragile emotional state, might buckle under the guilt of an indicting castigation and be rendered ineffective. And she needed every warrior in her fighting force to be at maximum effectiveness.
“Commander Carlos,” Sandy said, “would you lead us in prayer?”
“Blessed be the Lord my rock,” Carlos quoted Psalm 144, “who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle; my lovingkindness, and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and He in whom I take refuge.
“We come to you Lord as your humble servants, simple soldiers in your army and we take confidence that you have already given us the victory over your evil enemies. We ask, Lord, that you guide us and your heavenly angels in the battle to come. And when you destroy this enemy we will give you all the glory, Lord, because we know, this battle belongs to you and you will have your victory. Amen.”
“AMEN,” responded every voice in the room. The dogs gave a short bark and the two horses snorted their agreement.
“Thank you, Carlos,” said Sandy. She launched into her intel briefing.
“In the two days since the Directorate’s failed attack at our decoy location on Cape Neddick and the demolition of their training camp in Sandown, New Hampshire, their leaders have reorganized and increased their combat forces to one hundred-twenty fighting men. All huge, very strong, brutal killers.
“They have replaced their previous ground commander with a new man, Romano Goldstein.”
Sandy noticed a startled look on Hank’s face. What she did not know was that this same Doctor Goldstein was Hank’s primary psychologist at the treatment center in Washington. Hank pulled out his cell phone and left the room.
She continued, “Goldstein is much more level-headed in his leadership of this demonic gang of barbarians than their previous commander. Their training has become much more organized and more focused on the specific objectives he has given to each of his subordinate units.
“In addition, they have developed a new weapons system. Still maintaining their principle of silent weaponry, they have come up with a rapid-fire, multiple launcher for their arrows and darts. Basically it’s a system of tubes where hundreds of arrows are loaded into launchers powered by elastic bands made of some kind of polymer. They have a range of about a quarter mile, and I estimate that they can fire about a thousand of them at a time and reload in less than a minute. In addition, it looks like they’re trying to develop a way to set the arrowheads on fire as they launch.”
Hank had returned to the briefing room. He said, “Mom, when you’re done, I may have some relevant information.”
“Okay, Hank,” said Sandy. “Now here is the enemy’s attack plan. Peter?”
Peter passed out a one-page sheet to each warrior-leader in the room. He projected a map of Cielavista and the surrounding area on the screen. He said, “You can read the plan and direct your attention to this map as you read. Then we’ll take questions when you’re done.”
As the leaders absorbed the details of the enemy’s plan, Hank came to Sandy and told her that the commander of the Directorate’s forces was his doctor at the Loving Center, Romano Goldstein.
“I thought that name sounded familiar,” Sandy said, “but I couldn’t place it. Okay, work up a profile on him and let me have it after this meeting. Thanks.”
Peter’s order described the enemy’s plan. They would be organized into three sections: a fire support company that would soften Task Force Saber’s defensive position with a barrage of fiery arrows; an attack force that would launch a ground attack on foot into fortress Cielavista; and the third company will remain in strategic reserve. The map on the screen animated the attack, and the precise tactics of Task Force Saber forces that would repel, delay, and if needed, evacuate Cielavista to the sea.
Sandy gave
her subordinate commanders time to process the new information and said, “Commander Carlos will review our defensive operations. Carlos?”
“Force protection is our first priority, ladies and gentlemen warriors. We believe with God’s help we can defend our position with no friendly casualties,” he said. And he took the best part of an hour detailing every action of every Task Force Saber fighting unit.
After the briefing, Sandy asked Carlos and Hank to join her in her office in the loft of the barn.
“So what do we know about their commander, Romano Goldstein?” said Sandy.
Sandy sat at her cluttered desk, a door sitting on two sawhorses placed against the open-frame wall of the barn. She sat in a straight-back chair, with her right boot resting on her left knee. She was using her Kabar knife to dig the mud out of the sole of her boot.
“Doctor Goldstein conceals a ruthless monster under what appears to be a compassionate, intelligent phycologist,” Hank said. “He’s brilliant, you have to give him that, but the reason he has risen to the top of his profession and amassed such a huge fortune is that he has systematically removed anyone who would rival him or stand in his way.”
“How did you figure out all this?” said Sandy.
“He uses some of his patients as—well, kinda like slaves, I guess. He had me and four of my fellow veterans on all kinds of drugs. I had a way of sneaking some of my pills into my pocket, so I could at least be halfway conscious in that place. So we would do all kinds of chores for him. You know, making copies, transcribing recordings, and other stuff.”
Sandy watched Hank’s eyes look downward to the floorboards. There was a long pause.
Carlos said, “Hank, what kind of stuff?”
“The five of us that he picked as his ‘assistants’—we were all special operators. We all had a certain skill set, you know what I mean?
“We never really knew what was going on with these people that Goldstein had us soften up, but we did what he asked.”
“Soften up?” asked his mother.
Hank stared at his mother through tears that began pooling in his eyes. He knew that revealing his moral wounds to her would break her heart, but he felt compelled to continue.
“Yeah,” said Hank, “we—the five of us—had been involved in this type of work before. In Afghanistan we worked with a CIA cell that interrogated Taliban prisoners. The prison guards kept these guys isolated in deep holes in the ground two feet wide, two feet long, and eight feet deep. They played all kinds of loud music and crazy noises to keep them awake, starved them, and threw cold water on them. My job, along with these four other operators, was to rough them up before the interrogation sessions and afterward.
“Goldstein knew all about our backgrounds, and he used us on some of the patients at the Loving Center.”
“My, God,” said Sandy, “he’s an animal.”
“And then there was the stuff he was writing,” said Hank. “This guy, this eminent doctor, was tied in with some of the most violent crime bosses in the world. I saw emails to Whitey Bulger’s ‘Winter Hill Gang’ in Boston, the Russian mobsters in Atlanta and Kiev, and the Mafia in Sicily.”
“Nobody knew about this guy’s criminal activities?” said Carlos.
“I guess not,” said Hank. “I mean my father is a data analyst for the FBI, and the doctor’s name obviously never came up on his radar or he wouldn’t have sent me to the Loving Center.”
“We thought we were getting you the best care,” said Sandy. “You would think with all Gabriella’s special knowledge and our commitment to avoiding the evils of mainstream medicine we would have realized what we were getting you into.
“I am so sorry, dear Hank,” Sandy said and she went to her son and held him in her arms.
After a long spell of tears and talk, the three stood and prayed together. Hank left Sandy’s office to tend to the horses.
“You all right there, Mama?” said Carlos.
“No, but I’ll get through it. Something else bothers me,” Sandy said.
“What’s that?”
“How did Goldstein and the staff at the Loving Center conceal their sick procedures from Gabriella and the rest of us? We are better than that. We have identified doctors and medical facilities that harm their patients with drugs and dangerous procedures, and charge obscene prices for them. We looked into the Loving Center, studied everything available about them and Doctor Goldstein, and all the information we got convinced us that the place was a holistic, healthy, healing place.
“Somehow they have succeeded in covering up what goes on there. And the same guy is commanding the forces attacking Cielavista.”
“The Center was probably under the Directorate’s security shield, wouldn’t you say?” said Carlos.
Sandy nodded; the rage in her heart burned in her face.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Halloween traffic in the center of Salem, Massachusetts, was paralyzed. Out-of-state cars jammed the small parking lot behind Firdos’ apartment building, so he had to park two miles away from the center of town and walk to his home. He hadn’t visited his tiny room in over a month, and he needed to get some cold weather clothing and his mountain boots. He spent a few minutes scanning the Salem News Online. The headline read, “Salem’s Population Swells from 46,000 to over 100,000.” The subtitle boasted, “Witch City’s Biggest Business Boon.”
The paper listed all the “Festivals of the Dead” that attracted people from all over the country and abroad: “Nightly Seances by authentic Salem mediums, Speaking to the dead, with Salem’s own official witch, Lady Crandall, Graveyard Tour with Conjurer, Seth Morris, Portals to the Spirit World with paranormal expert Eleanor Gilford, Witches’ Halloween Ball, Death and Rebirth session with High Priestess Salome Wainwright, the Mourning Tea, the Dumb Supper: Dinner with the Dead, and on October 31st, Halloween Night, the Climactic, Salem Witches’ Black Mass.”
Firdos scoffed at the last line of the article, a quote from www.festivalofthedead.com, “Defying the boundaries of religion, culture, and continent, death captivates our imaginations and ensnares our minds, beckoning us to journey to destinations beyond the tattered shroud of mortality.”
Firdos packed a few items in a backpack, slung it on one shoulder, and stepped out into the throngs of costumed people swarming the streets of Salem. His body quivered involuntarily as he walked through the crowds of possessed people, many of whom were warlocks and witches, giving off reflected spiritual energy from the gates of hell.
In the seven months that Firdos had developed as a seer for the Directorate under Carlene’s supervision, he had refined his talents. He could mentally flick a switch, turning on or off his seer mode. When he turned it off, he would go about his business like any normal human, but when he turned it on he saw far beyond the physical world through a powerful paranormal lens.
He walked from his first floor apartment in the three-decker wood frame house on Jefferson Avenue, past the metal industrial buildings and parking lots where men were waving flags for motorists to buy parking spaces for ten dollars, to the downtown streets snarled with cars. Charter buses occupied most of the public parking lots in this congested center of Salem.
Firdos took notice of the sky. Even at noonday, a dark grey quilt of clouds obstructed the sunlight. To the naked eye the misty fog in town was natural, but to Firdos’ supernatural eye the foglike mist was inhabited by hordes of microscopic unclean spirits.
At the corner of Front Street and Derby Square, where the mob of black-clad pedestrians was thickest, Firdos detected a singular column of clear light. He was just out of earshot of the man with the bullhorn who stood at the base of this refreshing beam. Stationed in a perimeter around the preacher stood a ring of helmeted policemen. Firdos was drawn to the power of the words radiating from the bullhorn. The man read from a thick black-covered book with gold leaf on the edges of the pages.
“Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is s
hameful even to mention what is done by them in secret,” said the bearded man with the bullhorn.
Firdos’ head was filled with static, distorting the words of the prophet.
“Everything exposed by the light is made clear, for what makes everything clear is light. Therefore it is said: ‘Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and the Messiah will shine on you.’”
Fear possessed Firdos’ mind. Carlene’s image swirled around in his garbled mental chaos.
“Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. And don’t be drunk with wine, which leads to reckless actions, but be filled by the Spirit—Ephesian 5:11–18.”
Firdos got sick and ran down a vacant alley where he vomited and shuddered in violent convulsions. He leaned against the brick wall of a building and looked down each end of the alley to see if anyone noticed him. At one end swirled the grey darkness. At the other end where the prophet was preaching, sharp beams of light pierced down the alley and struck Firdos in the heart. Eyes wide and mouth agape, he sprinted in panic toward the darkness where the screaming voices in his head calmed down and he escaped the discomfiting light.
He made his way through the crowds of revelers and devotees until he reached his car in the lot at the edge of Salem’s city limits. He would never return.
Anna Stone pulled into the parking lot of her office in Sherwood, Arkansas, her tires squishing the shards of smashed pumpkins. She said a silent prayer thanking God that no other pre-Halloween vandalism had visited her building. Her cell phone rang as she walked through the waiting room to the kitchenette. Her phone identified the caller as Frances O’Donnelly.
“Hello, Frances,” Anna said.
“Yes, Anna,” Frances’ voice was different—aggressive, angry, “I want to tell you I am on to your schemes, you wicked woman.”
Anna was not surprised. She had known that her connection to this powerful woman was tenuous, and that Frances would, at some point, have to make a decision as to which spirit she would follow. Anna’s inner voice had become very clear over the past months. It was informing Anna how to respond.
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