We dragged both men into the woods, stole their radios, and used parts of their own clothing to tie them up.
“Damned inconvenient,” Sergeant Crossno said. “We still have thirty-six hours until the time to go.”
I agreed. I had hoped to talk our way out of the situation until he slugged the guard. “I wonder how often they’re expected to check in.”
He shrugged. “When they don’t, their superior will call them. I’ll just try and bluff it through.”
“That might work until their shift is over,” I said. “Come on, let’s see what has them so on alert.”
A simple chain-link fence surrounded the airfield. It wasn’t electrified or magikally enhanced, so I figured it was mostly to keep any animals from wandering in and getting on a runway. The sergeant used a tool he was carrying to cut a hole in the fence, and we slipped through.
It didn’t take long to figure out why they had patrols out. A large jet with an Akiyama logo sat near a cluster of buildings. The plane and the area around it were lit up with floodlights.
“That plane is too large to use that runway,” the sergeant said.
Under normal circumstances, I would have agreed with him. “The plane’s probably magikally enhanced,” I said. Assuming I was right in all my suppositions, I might be looking at Sarah Benning’s ride out of North America. If they had a magitek on board, the plane could probably make it all the way to Japan or China without refueling. But even without a magitek, magitek enhancements would allow an aeromancer to get it off the ground with a runway half as long as it would normally require.
“This is the type of thing your team is supposed to disable,” Crossno said.
“Yeah.”
But I hadn’t planned on a magitek airplane. The rest of my team would have no trouble disabling a normal plane’s electrical or mechanical systems. And they could probably do it without actually touching the machine. To work on the giant Akiyama machine, I would have to at least affix a device to it.
“I have to actually touch the thing,” I said, holding up a small three-way box—enhancer, converter, and disrupter in a single package. Very expensive if one had to pay for it. “I need to attach this to it.”
He swore.
“Want to flip to see who goes out there?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Tempting, but this is what I’m here for. Does it matter where you put it?”
“Not on a tire or anything temporarily attached to it, like a fueling hose, or any wiring. On a wheel hub is okay. On the body itself is better.” I studied the plane. The sergeant was a little shorter than I was, and without elven blood, I doubted he could jump as high as I could. “Probably the best place is on one of the engines.” They were attached under the wings, and I was sure he could reach them.
“Got it.” He took the converter. “What do I do with it?”
“Just touch it to the metal, and it will stick. I’ll cover you.”
We worked our way through the shadows around the airfield until we were as close to the plane as we could get.
“Give me those cutters,” I said. He handed them over, and I cut another hole in the fence behind me.
“Good thinking.” He shed some of his equipment, keeping his rifle and sidearm.
I didn’t know if I was close enough to affect anything, but figuring it was worth a try, I cast a spell toward the control tower, hoping to disrupt their electronics. I unslung my laser rifle and nodded to my companion.
“Good luck.”
Crossno had a little over a hundred yards to travel, the last third under the bright floodlights. We hadn’t seen anyone moving around, but I was sure someone was on duty in the tower, and likely also in a security monitoring center somewhere on the grounds.
He ran in a crouch, covered about ten yards, then froze. After waiting for about five minutes, he did it again. It was excruciatingly slow, but it was designed to not attract attention to his movement. I knew that would change when he reached the edges of the light.
“Hanratty, report!” the guardsman’s radio spat.
Even with the garbled sound of the cheap radio, I knew I would never pass my voice off as male. So much for the sergeant’s plan.
Figuring that Hanratty’s watch commander would immediately dispatch someone if he didn’t get an answer, I punched the button, giggled, and said, “He’s kind of busy right now. Do you want me to have him call you when he sobers up?” I held the radio out at arm’s reach, giggled again, and said, “Stop that! I’m talking to your boss.” Then I hit the switch and cut it off. I didn’t know if I had slowed down a search party or not.
Sergeant Crossno had reached the lighted area. I saw him gather himself to sprint the rest of the way to the plane. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone else on the tarmac, and no alarms had been raised. I lay prone, the rifle cradled in my arms, and scanned the area, looking for any movement.
Crossno leaped forward, running as fast as he could toward the plane. The plane itself shielded him from sight of anyone on the first three floors of the tower building. I held my breath and waited. When he crossed into the shadow of the plane itself, I allowed myself to breathe. He reached up and touched one of the engines, then immediately dropped to the ground.
I could feel the electrical systems of the plane through the magitek box. The engines were turned off, so I couldn’t feel anything mechanical. But the major thing was that I could feel the three magitek devices on board.
The sergeant waited for five minutes, then leaped to his feet and ran back toward me. He almost reached the shadow line when I heard a sound like a shout from the direction of one of the low buildings to the right of the tower. Crossno must have heard it, too, because he dropped into a crouch, but kept running.
I swung my rifle to point in the direction of the shout. Peering through the magitek-enhanced telescope mounted on the rifle, I searched for movement. Just as Crossno got back to my position, I saw a man wearing mechanic’s overalls standing at the door of one of the buildings.
“Gather up your stuff,” I told the sergeant, “and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Aren’t you going to do something to the plane?”
“Later. Let’s go.” I slithered through the hole in the fence and melted into the shadows of the forest. He followed me.
Chapter 51
We soon found the main commando unit and the rest of my team. I set the magiteks to disabling the helicopters and small airplanes we could see on the ground. It was pretty basic stuff to simply break an engine or some of its components and could be done at a distance. Very different than what I would need to do to the intercontinental jet sitting out there.
Then I called Osiris.
“We ran into a problem,” I told him. “A pair of guards stumbled onto us, and we had to disable them. But they’ve already been missed. I’m afraid you might have to modify your timetable.”
I went on to tell him about the Akiyama jet.
“I wondered how Hiroku managed to sneak into North America,” Osiris said. “A full-sized cargo plane landing on a short airfield? Could you modify planes to do that?”
I sighed. “Yes, and I became a cop to avoid spending my life doing it. Osiris, do you have any idea how boring it is to do something like that day in and day out?”
He chuckled. “But, I assume you could teach another magitek how to do it? Dani, you sound as though that plane is something ordinary, but Findlay doesn’t have a single plane in our fleet that’s enhanced like that.”
“Oh. It shouldn’t be very difficult. I’ll tell you what, I’ll take some notes before I destroy it, okay?”
All the Akiyama magitek had done was put enhancers on the jet engines and install a magitek converter and a baffling system, similar to the one I’d installed on my police car but a lot larger. The enhancers increased the engine’s thrust, and the baffles increased the plane’s lift. I was sure the G-forces at liftoff would be a little uncomfortable, but the effect wouldn’t last more tha
n a few seconds.
“But what about the assault?” I asked. “Are you still going to wait until tomorrow?” It was almost dawn, and the original plans called for troops landing on the peninsula at two-thirty the following morning.
“I’ll get back to you.”
We sat in the woods outside the fence, about fifty yards from where most of the aircraft sat. I covered my anxiety by spending my time creatively disabling several of them. On one helicopter, I froze the ball bearings in the tail rotor assembly. On another, I disabled the air intake for the main engine. A small propeller-driven airplane suffered an electrical problem.
Around noon, I snuck around to where Sergeant Crossno and I had been the previous night.
Sloppy and arrogant, the Moncrieff guardians hadn’t investigated as thoroughly as they should have. The hole I had cut in the fence was still there, but the one Sergeant Crossno had cut a hundred yards away had been patched. I wondered what rationale they came up with to explain to themselves the one hole and their patrol’s ambush.
When I got in range of my box affixed to the giant jet’s engine, I used it to disable the two magitek enhancer boxes built into the engines. The boxes were still there, still functional, but no longer connected to the engines. Then I cast a spell into the baffle assembly to reverse the baffle’s thrust.
I didn’t think my alterations would be noticeable, even to another magitek. But without a significant amount of work, that plane was never going to reach the speed necessary to take off from that short runway.
When I got back to my team, I turned my phone on and saw Osiris had left a message. “Plan B2 has been activated. The first teams will start landing on Elk Neck half an hour after sunset.”
I passed the word along, but the commandos had already been notified.
The commando captain told me, “Our intelligence reports that there are about three hundred Moncrieff guardians stationed here, spread out across the peninsula, and maybe fifty more providing security at their facilities in Wilmington. But only a third of them should be on duty when we launch our attack. Any resistance should be brief.”
Right at sunset, Justus Benning called Moncrieff House to tell them that he was flying in to search for his daughter and asked for landing clearance. Twenty minutes later, a helicopter without any Family markings landed at the airfield. Even with binoculars, I couldn’t see who got on or off, but the copter shut down. A few minutes later, a car left the field and drove up the road toward the manor house.
The commando captain checked, and was told that Benning was still en route. So, I had no idea who was in that helicopter, but something weird happened when I attempted to disable it. Some kind of magikal ward protected the machine.
I didn’t have a lot of time to worry about it, because a few minutes later landing craft and helicopters full of guardians wearing Benning colors started arriving. I heard scattered shots, but no large-scale resistance.
A few minutes after that, the large jet sitting on the tarmac suddenly started its engines, and I saw people hurrying from the maintenance buildings and the main tower building.
“Oh, boy,” I told no one in particular, “It’s showtime.”
Three vehicles sped down the road from the direction of the main house, drove through the airfield gate, and screeched to a stop at the large jet. A number of people piled out and rushed up the airstairs into the airplane. I watched as the engines revved up, the stairs were retracted, and the doors closed. The giant jet began to move, slowly at first, then lumbered to the end of the runway, and turned.
The engines’ whine reached an ear-splitting level, and the plane began its journey, gathering speed as it rumbled down the runway. It reached the end, still on the ground, and toppled off the runway. Its wheels stuck in the soft sand of the beach, the tail tipped up, the nose tipped down and splashed into the water. The engines continued to drive it forward until the pilot cut their power and the great turbines wound down.
“That was rather spectacular,” Sergeant Crossno said, his face split in a smile. The people around me were cheering.
I turned to the captain. “You probably want to send people in to capture everyone aboard. I have a feeling that the girl we’re looking for is on that plane.”
Unfortunately, I was wrong. They did take Hiroku into custody, along with a couple of gorgeous teenage girls, but neither of them was Sarah Benning. Several of the people taken off the plane were injured, but none seriously.
The commandos regrouped, commandeered a couple of vehicles, and escorted me to the manor house. The rest of the magiteks were evacuated to the western shore of the Bay.
Two hundred years before, there had been a community on the Elk Neck peninsula on the edge of the park, primarily consisting of large summer homes for the Mid-Atlantic’s elite who kept their sport boats at the old marina. Moncrieff had either confiscated the homes left empty or bought out the owners who survived the pandemics and the wars. Many of those buildings were converted to servants’ quarters, guardian barracks, or other uses, and the rest were torn down. But all the roads remained. My escort avoided a couple of firefights by choosing alternate routes.
The manor house was built where the main park buildings and nature center had stood. Surrounded by water on three sides, it was defensible but difficult to escape from. As we made our way north, we heard sporadic small-arms fire, but I kept waiting for the Moncrieff’s guardians to strike back.
When they did, it was spectacular. David Moncrieff had invested a significant amount of money in magitek devices to protect his estate. It didn’t take a strong mage to do major damage using magitek, and the Moncrieff guardians let loose on the attacking force with massive lightning bolts.
Storm clouds gathered. The commandos I traveled with heard on their radios that water in the Bay on both sides of the Elk Neck peninsula had developed huge waves that were interfering with bringing in more reinforcements by boat. High winds began lashing the forest we traveled through, and it started to rain. I wondered how much storm magik Courtney might have inherited from her father.
One thing about lightning—it is visible. As we neared the house, I could see where the magitek devices were installed by where the lightning originated on the roof of the building. The commandos drove off the road, and we abandoned the vehicles.
“I need to get closer,” I told the commando captain, shouting into his ear to be heard above the winds. “I can take out those lightning generators.”
He gave my laser rifle a disdainful glance.
“Magitek,” I yelled, and saw understanding dawn on his face.
A machinegun cut loose to our right, tracers stitching the night. A fireball arced toward it and hit with a splash of fire, illuminating the scene. The machinegun stopped firing, and a minute later, there was a series of explosions as its ammunition ignited.
People were dying based on my investigation. Based on my guesses. It was a humbling feeling, and I prayed I was right about Sarah Benning and who instigated the attacks on Olivia and me. If I was wrong, I had put Findlay, Benning, and Novak in a very uncomfortable position.
The rain was coming down harder as we worked our way through a copse of trees and came out into the open space surrounding the House. Lush lawns separated flowerbeds filled with rose bushes and azaleas. It was autumn, and nothing was blooming, but the bushes gave us some cover from the snipers and lightning wielders on the great house’s roof.
I took a look through my rifle’s telescope, switched it to night vision, and checked the range finder. We were about a hundred and twenty yards away, well within the range of the enhanced laser. Taking aim at one of the lightning generators, I fed magik into the rifle and pulled the trigger.
One thing about firing a laser is that you can misaim, but you can’t miss. My shot took out the generator and part of the parapet, along with two guardians standing there. I shifted my aim to the next source of lightning.
After I took out the four generators on our side of the building,
the captain got on his radio, and a surge of guardians in Benning and Whittaker colors started across the garden toward the House.
“Here, put this on,” a voice said. I turned and found Sergeant Crossno holding a military rain poncho. I didn’t tell him that he was a little late, as I was soaked to the skin, but I gratefully pulled it over my head. I discovered the poncho had another benefit as it held in my body heat, and I immediately warmed up.
The cease-fire order came about ten minutes later, and the commandos received orders to bring me to the House. As we walked in that direction, the rain let up, and the winds died down. I knew that it took an enormous amount of power to call a storm, but dispersing one quickly was almost impossible. I wondered how long it would rain.
My escort took me up the broad steps to the front portico and the main entrance with its fourteen-foot double doors. As I climbed, I realized how rarely I used the main entryway at Findlay House.
David Moncrieff’s residence was often called Moncrieff House, although its official name was Elk Neck House. The true Family home was in Stirling, Scotland, where David’s older brother Alan resided as Family head.
Elk Neck House was opulent, which I expected, but smaller than Findlay House or even Whittaker House, the two Family residences I was most familiar with. I felt rather defiant as I dripped water all over the marble floor in the foyer and entered the main receiving room, where cousin Courtney and David Moncrieff stood arguing with Justus Benning and the Whittaker general I had met the day before.
A Whittaker officer and Mychal Novak hurried to meet me.
“Take as many men as you need and search the place. They deny the girl was ever here,” the officer said.
“What about the girls Hiroku had with him?” I asked. “Has anyone asked about them?”
Mychal grinned. “We haven’t told them that Hiroku didn’t escape. We’re holding a lot of things back to use for their interrogation. We did ask about him, and they denied he was here.”
Magitek (The Rift Chronicles Book 1) Page 25