problem.
“Base,” he radioed, “we’ve got another tree down.”
“Where?”
“Right on the fence. That’s what set off the sensors.”
“Can you fix it?”
“No chance. It’s crushed.”
“We can’t attempt large-scale repairs until tomorrow. You and Burns stay there to keep guard. Send Bravo Patrol back to the central compound. They’ll relieve you in a couple of hours. I want status checks every 15 minutes.”
“Roger that.”
Harding replaced the radio.
“You heard the man,” he said to the three other guards, who were all standing in front of the SUV, staring at the massive tree. “Looks like we’re pulling shit duty tonight.”
Harding heard a faint pop from the opposite tree line. Burns’ head flew back, and Harding smelled the blood shooting from Burns’ mortal wound for only a moment before his world went black.
The driver in Echo Patrol was the first to be taken out by the assault team’s snipers. Locke saw them adjust their silenced PSG-1’s and take aim at the other three guards. It was all over in less than two seconds, far too quickly for the guards to react.
The assault team had been monitoring the radio calls, so they knew when it was time to take the shots. The plan had worked just like Locke envisioned.
The ground was so wet that the trees’ roots were grasping at the soil to stay upright. He had remembered the windstorm that hit Seattle while he was gone had damaged trees all over the Puget Sound. With the ground still soaked, it wouldn’t take much to topple another tree.
He had selected one that was already tipping in the direction of the fence, enough to make sure he could control the direction of the fall. Then it was a simple matter of burying explosives from his bag of tricks in strategic locations around the base of the tree. He picked several with small charges so that they would sound like the crack of a rotten tree trunk when they went off. Using the ground-penetrating radar, they found the biggest roots. The shape-charges were placed so that they focused down at the largest of them.
The pine had fallen right across the fence. Literally in one fell swoop they had already cut a way through the fence, taken out four guards, had two vehicles at their disposal, and circumvented the motion detectors.
The team quickly crossed the 50 feet to the fence and went through the opening.
Locke saw the four bodies of the guards lying at the front of the SUV. The headlights were still blazing, showing the gory detail of the takedown. Locke felt no remorse for the surprise attack, not after all he’d been through in the last week.
“You heard the man on the radio,” Locke said to Turner. “We’ve got 15 minutes before they have to check in.”
“Right,” Turner said. “Let’s go.”
FORTY-EIGHT
The Lodge, as everyone called the Hydronast hotel building, was lit only sparingly. Once the main power to the Lodge was cut off, it would be completely dark. Given how many times he’d been in the Lodge before, David Deal thought he would be comforted by the building, but now the emptiness of it seemed disturbing. He had an eerie feeling that any minute the visions he’d had before would come back with a vengeance, and this time they wouldn’t be so benevolent.
He crossed the lobby and took the stairs to his room on the third floor. He’d told the faithful leader that he’d left some papers important to his work, but in truth what he’d left behind was something more valuable to him. He wouldn’t dare tell Sebastian Garrett that what he wanted special permission to retrieve was a letter that his daughter had written him long ago. A letter he had hidden under the mattress so it wouldn’t be discovered.
His wife had left him with their only daughter so that she could shack up with another man, a drug dealer who lured her into a life of debauchery and sin. Deal bid her good riddance. He could raise their daughter on his own. But two years later, his daughter succumbed to leukemia.
The loss devastated him, and he turned to religion to find answers. When his old church couldn’t satisfy him, he found his way to the Holy Hydronastic Church, which promised a utopian New World in the near future, something he would see in his lifetime. In the church, he found others like him, intellectuals who needed faith in something bigger than themselves, in which science wasn’t a boogeyman to be shunned but the answer he’d been seeking.
When he began having the visions during the Leveling, he became convinced Hydronasticism was the way he could find meaning in the world.
Then the faithful leader, Sebastian Garrett, revealed that the New World would be upon them soon and that David Deal was selected to be part of it. Deal didn’t know what it was, but Garrett promised them that after 90 days in seclusion in the underground waiting area, they would emerge to the New World, an earthly Eden that Deal would help shape.
Only a few in Garrett’s inner circle knew exactly what the New World meant, and though Deal was curious, he accepted the fact that he was not one of them. Garrett had told them that others might try to take away their Oasis, which was the reason for the extraordinary security measures — the guards, the fences, the guns, the passwords to get in and out of Oasis. This week, the safe word was “Searchlight,” and the warning word was “Heaven.” Deal was excited by the intrigue and the world yet to come.
Because he was taken into Oasis so hastily, he’d forgotten about the letter under the mattress. Normally, he kept it in a hidden pocket in his suitcase, but he read it every night before he went to sleep, so the mattress was a more convenient place for it. Only when he got to his quarters in Oasis did he realize that he’d left the letter behind. If the Lodge were burned or ransacked, he might lose the last communication from his daughter forever, and even Utopia would be meaningless without that.
He found his room and it took only a moment to locate the letter where he’d hidden it. He pocketed the letter, closed the door behind him, and retraced his path down the stairs.
He got three-fourths of the way across the lobby when the exterior door opened. Two guards in their black pants, sweaters, and caps walked in. He didn’t recognize them, one a tall Caucasian man with the hint of a smile and the other a powerfully built African-American, but then he was so new that he didn’t know most of the guards.
Deal guessed he had taken too long and they were sent to bring him back, which was fine with him. He’d retrieved what he wanted and was ready to await the New World.
“What’s your name?” the taller man said.
“David Deal. I’m sorry I took so long. Dr. Garrett gave me permission to get something from the Lodge.”
“Well, he wants you back now, and we’re supposed to take you there.”
Deal shrugged. He was already heading back, so this just seemed like overkill.
Locke had learned from experience that the best way to get through any security was to act liked you belonged there. This Deal just assumed he was one of the guards, so Locke ran with it.
They walked out the lobby door of the Lodge and escorted Deal to the SUV they had appropriated back at the fence. Turner sat in the driver’s seat, and Private Knoll from the assault team sat in the back. Grant got in the passenger seat and Locke got in the back with Deal, who squeezed into the middle. Turner drove toward the door where they’d first seen Deal emerge.
Once the dead guards had been dragged out of the way at the outer fence, Turner had ordered the rest of his team to stay behind with one of the vehicles and shoot anyone else who might come out to investigate. With two SUVs out there, no one would pay any attention to one of them driving back. No motion sensors would be
