Lesser Gods (15 page)

Terry shrugged. “I want to sleep outside tonight anyway. Adrian?”

“Sure,” I said, picking up my sleeping bag.

I wasn’t particularly keen on sleeping outdoors, but nor did I want to be too far away from Terry, who looked far more comfortable in these surroundings than I felt. I wasn’t exactly afraid of Mr. Simms or his Raven Knights, but I knew I didn’t fit in. Not by a mile.

By now, the campfire had burned down to a bed of hot glowing ashes, and fewer than half of the tents still had lights on inside. I also saw a few sleeping bags lying on thin mats on the ground. Terry and I weren’t the only ones planning for a night under the stars.

Terry didn’t bother with a mat, so neither did I. We unrolled our sleeping bags a few feet from the remnants of the fire.

I noticed Terry struggling with a stuck zipper on her sleeping bag. She had her bar attachment strapped to her left arm, and she was using it to hold the bag in place as she tried to remove the caught lining with her right hand. I watched her for a moment, and then said, “Let me help you with that, Terry.”

“I don’t need your help!” snapped Terry.

“I know that,” I said gently. “Let me help you anyway.”

“If you insist,” she said stiffly.

Terry stood aside and watched me fix the zipper. She had already removed most of the jammed lining so it didn’t take me very long. I was a little surprised at myself. I never offered to help Terry with something so trivial, knowing that my combat instructor absolutely loathed this kind of attention. I wondered why I had helped her this time, and Terry gave me the answer.

“You already miss taking care of Alia, don’t you?” she said.

“A little,” I admitted. “I’m just used to it.”

“How’d you manage to get her off your back for this?”

“I told her that Cindy needed her more. You know, Angels... I gave her the tracer band.”

We got into our sleeping bags, and Terry let me help zip her in. Then I lay on my back and gazed up at the spectacular infinity above us. We were far enough from the city that even the darkest stars were visible. I wished I could have brought the telescope Cindy had bought for me last year.

I heard Terry say, “So, Adrian, what did you tell Laila?”

“Laila?” I asked, not understanding.

Terry snorted. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

I sprung up into a sitting position. “Oh, no!” I gasped. “Laila! I have to call her and cancel the Sunday thing!”

“No can do, Adrian,” Terry said calmly. “Only emergency calls once we’re on the road.”

It felt like an emergency to me, but I doubted Mr. Simms would agree. I lay back down and sighed. “Oh well. Her mother probably knows I’m going on this mission anyway.”

I lay still for a moment. The ground beneath me was rather uncomfortable, and I wondered if I could get a mat from the motorhome after all.

“Terry?” I said quietly.

She didn’t reply.

“How does she do that?” I muttered to myself, turning onto my side and closing my eyes. Sleep felt like a long way off.

We struck our camp before daybreak the next morning. As the sun rose, I noticed that the distant mountain range, which had seemed so far away yesterday, was already nearly upon us. This season, only the few highest peaks had any snow left on them. By early afternoon, our motorcade was already climbing a steep mountain road that wound its way through a thick alpine forest, past one-stop-light towns, clusters of summer homes and lodges.

I was sitting in the front with Mr. Barnum again, mainly because the front seat was the best place to avoid getting car sick.

I heard Jack P call from the lounge space behind me, “Adrian, Terry, come sit with me.”

I obediently got up and made my way to the lounge.

Mr. Simms was in the rear bedroom talking with the other Jack, and Ms. Decker was riding in the minibus today, so Jack P was the only one at the table. Terry jumped down from the bunk bed where she had been resting and joined us.

Once we were seated, Jack P began, “You two are newcomers to the Ravens, and Mr. Simms just told me you’ll both be joining my assault team, Raven Two, so I figured I’d best get you up to speed on the details of this assignment. Terry, you already know a bit about the Slayer camp, but for Adrian’s sake here, we’re going to start from the beginning, okay?”

“Sure,” said Terry. “But before we talk about the camp, Mr. Pearson, you know that Adrian is a wild-born, right? I’m not even sure how much he knows about the Slayers themselves.”

“Oh,” Jack P said with a curious smile. “Well, that gives a new meaning to the word ‘beginning’ now, doesn’t it? Especially considering the nature of our mission.”

Then Jack P turned his head and called up to the front, “Mr. Barnum, you may want to keep an ear open to this too.”

“I’m listening,” Mr. Barnum called back.

“Alright, then,” said Jack P, turning to me, “what do you know about the Slayers, Adrian?”

“Not much,” I confessed. “I was shot at by a team of them a few years ago, and I know they’re a bunch of religious fanatics who think we’re demons or gods or something. I know they want to kill us.”

“Well, that’s about all you really need to know,” laughed Jack P. “The God-slayers are out to kill every god but their own god. They’re different from the Wolves in that they’re not as well equipped, trained or disciplined, but they are both more numerous and suicidally dedicated to their cause. And they’re not like the Angels or other psionic factions in that they have no interest in taking us alive. Worse, we can’t sense them coming because they don’t have psionic powers.”

“But they can’t sense us either,” I pointed out.

“Correct. They rely on tabloid news and wild rumors to find us, as well as tapping into a fairly extensive underground information network. You see, the Slayers are not in any form a unified organization. They’re more like how the Guardians were in the years following Diana Granados’s assassination. The Slayers have numerous sects, each with slightly different beliefs, agendas and hierarchies. They don’t all represent the same religion, if it can even be called that.”

“Why are they so keen on exterminating us?”

“In a word, Adrian, fear,” Jack P said grimly. “Like all uneducated people, they fear what they don’t understand, and what they fear, they try to destroy.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You’d think that in this day and age...”

Jack P shrugged. “Not everyone lives in this day and age. Anyway, that should be enough about the Slayers to be going on. Let’s move on to the mission now.”

Jack P unfolded a paper map of the mountain range. There was a small red circle around a part of the mountains that had no markings or roads running through it.

“We located the camp several weeks ago,” said Jack P. “Our advance team has been on site gathering info on them for quite some time now. The Slayers call it the Holy Land, but I guarantee there’s nothing holy about it. The training camp is shared by at least five Slayer sects, possibly more. It’s where the hopelessly pious learn to kill people with assault rifles, and we’re going to shut it down.”

Jack P pulled out another sheet of paper and placed it on top of the map. This was also a map, but not of the mountains. It was a copy of a hand-drawn map of the Holy Land itself. Numerous buildings were set in a large oval around a central clearing, and the compound was surrounded by a perimeter fence complete with four tall guard towers. It looked like a military base.

“We had actually known for several years that the Slayers had a large training facility disguised as a religious commune,” explained Jack P, “but less than a handful of Slayers, that is, only the sect leaders, ever knew its location. The trainees are taken to and from the base blindfolded so that they can’t be delved if caught.”

Jack P pointed to a pair of lines leading up to the southeast of the perimeter fence. “This here is the only road in. It’s just a narrow footpath through the forest. All supplies are carried in on foot by the blindfolded cadets.”

“Quite a project,” commented Terry.

“The Slayer sects here are far better organized than we had ever anticipated,” said Jack P. “Now, as you can see, our advance team has already pretty much mapped the place out. We’ve had phantoms and shape-shifters inside, so we already know what most of these buildings are.”

I looked at the labels written over the drawings of the buildings: Barracks, Mess Hall, Radio Station, Gym, Church, Guard Room, Library, Power Plant, Jail and Interrogation. There were a few houses with question marks over them, which I assumed were places the Guardian spies couldn’t enter for whatever reason.

“Adrian, pay attention!” said Jack P, and I looked up from the map as he continued, “As I said before, you and Terry will join me as Raven Two. On assignment, you will call me Blade. Don’t ask why. Swoop – that’s Mr. Simms – will lead Raven One, and each team will contain half of our fighters. Raven Three is our drivers, including Mr. Barnum, and they will stay with the vehicles and be prepared to aid in our escape should things turn bad.”

“What are the chances of that?” I asked as casually as I could.

“Not much,” Jack P replied confidently. “Now, there’s an old dead-end dirt road that runs a few miles south of the Holy Land. We’ll get as close as we can with the cars, and then we’ll cut through the forest to the target from there. The advance team reports that it’ll probably be a two-hour hike in the dark. You don’t mind that, do you?”

His question was directed exclusively at me. “I wouldn’t be here if I was afraid of the dark,” I informed him.

“Good man,” said Jack P, smiling. “We have night-vision goggles but not enough for everyone, and we’ll have to cut the flashlights well before we’re near the Holy Land.”

Jack P brought his thick index finger to the hand-drawn map as he continued, “Once we’re on site, the two Raven teams will enter from different places.” He pointed to a spot on the perimeter fence that was on the south side of the Slayers’ camp. “Raven One enters from here.”

Looking carefully, I saw that Raven One’s entry point was fairly close to the main gate, but neatly hidden behind a large rectangular building labeled as the barracks.

Jack P moved his finger to another part of the fence, this time on the northern side of the camp, near a square building marked as the radio station. “We enter here,” he said. “The advance team has already dug holes under the perimeter fence and then refilled them with soft earth to hide them. I may have forgotten to mention this, but the fence is electrified, so don’t lean on it.”

We laughed lightly.

Jack P continued, “Once both teams are inside, Mr. Simms will give the command to go. Raven One will start with the guard towers around the main gate so that we control the exit and no one escapes. Leaving a few men to guard the gate, they’ll move on to the barracks. If they’re fast enough, they may get most of the Slayers in bed.”

“We’re going to kill them in their sleep?” I asked.

“Raven One will do that,” said Jack P. “Our team starts with the radio station. There’s an antenna tower on the building so you can’t miss it. Bust down the door and kill everything that moves. It’s their only link to the outside world, and we have to shut it down immediately. We don’t want the Slayer leaders to know that we’ve captured the Holy Land. That way, we’ll be able to take a few more as their next shipment of cadets arrive.”

I couldn’t help frowning a little. It was bad enough that we were talking about killing everyone in their sleep. Even if they were our enemies, using their own base against them like a roach motel didn’t feel like a very sporting thing to do. Still, they were Slayers, cut from the same cloth as the men that shot at Cindy, Alia and me with hunting rifles as we were minding our own business. Tough luck for them.

“As soon as the radio station is neutralized,” said Jack P, moving his finger from the radio station clockwise around the map, “we clear out the rest of the compound one building at a time. We’ll use CS gas and smoke grenades as needs arise. Once Raven One clears the barracks, they’ll head in the same circle as us so that we don’t run into each other. If Raven One reaches the radio station before we reach the barracks, they win, and they’ll come help us. If we reach the barracks first, we win, and I buy you a drink once we’re back in New Haven.”

“We’re taking no prisoners?” I asked, just to be sure.

“None deliberately,” replied Jack P. “The Slayers will outnumber us considerably, and it’ll be on their turf, so we’re not going to waste any time taking them alive. Still, there is bound to be a survivor or two.” Jack P grinned at me and asked, “Why? Did you want to chat with them?”

“Mr. Simms mentioned that this base might have information about the Angels’ second master controller.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” said Jack P. “Well, we’re hoping to find something on Number Two in writing or on a computer file. We’re going to take every data storage device they have back to New Haven and let our technicians figure it out, so do your best not to shoot any of the computers.”

Kill the people and spare the computers. Check.

“Any other questions?” asked Jack P.

Terry remained silent. I slowly shook my head.

“Excellent,” said Jack P, rolling up the map of the Holy Land. “Adrian, if you were standing at the north entrance to the barracks and facing away from the door, which three buildings would you see on the other side of the compound?”

“Um...” I said, glancing at Terry, who just shrugged.

“Okay, let’s try an easier one,” said Jack P. “Which building do we hit after the radio station?”

“Um...” I said again. I knew it was clockwise, but I hadn’t a clue what the next building was. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pearson. I don’t know.”

Jack P smiled. “Alright. What’s my call sign?”

“Blade,” I answered quickly.

Jack P passed the map to me. “That’s your copy. Burn it into your mind, Adrian. Imagine yourself walking through the Holy Land. Imagine yourself running through the Holy Land, because soon you will be, and if you get lost, we might lose you.”

Jack P then pulled out a few more papers with diagrams of several buildings’ interiors. “Learn these too, including the ones Raven One is in charge of, in case we have to help them. Terry, you already have these?”