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
