The room’s furniture was what Cabrillo expected—desk, credenza, a couple of chairs, a sofa along one wall with a coffee table. He recognized it was all expensive. The Oriental rug under the coffee table was a flat-weave antique kilim that would fetch a considerable price at auction. Framed photographs adorned the walls, Martell’s shrine to himself. Juan didn’t know some of the people smiling into the camera with Martell, while others were easily recognizable. He spotted several with Donna Sky. Even in these candid shots, the movie star’s beauty was undeniable. With her dark hair, almond eyes, and the sharpest cheekbones in the business, she was the epitome of Hollywood royalty.
Cabrillo wondered idly what part of her life was so miserable that she would allow a cult to take it over.
Another picture caught his attention. It was an older photograph of Martell and another man on the deck of a sailboat. It was signed “Keep the faith. Lydell Cooper.” The snapshot must have been taken shortly before Cooper vanished at sea on his ketch. He’d read the Coast Guard report, and it appeared that the boat simply capsized in a storm that had come out of nowhere. Five other small craft had also been caught unaware, and an additional three people drowned.
If Juan could use a single word to describe the scientist-turned-prophet, it would be bland. There was nothing distinguishing about Cooper. He was in his mid to late sixties, paunchy, with an egg-shaped head, glasses, and a hairline in full retreat. His eyes were a plain brown, and the gray beard and mustache neither added to nor took away from his appearance. It was as if the facial hair was expected on a retired researcher, and he’d grown it out of obligation. Juan saw nothing that could inspire thousands to join his crusade—no charisma, no charm, none of the things that would attract followers at all. Had he not known what Cooper looked like, he could have guessed Martell kept a picture of his accountant on his wall.
“Got it!” Murph cried, then looked around guiltily for speaking so loudly. “Sorry. I’m into their system.
Piece of cake.”
Juan strode across the room. “Can you find which room is Kyle’s?”
“They have everything cross-referenced. He’s in building C, which is the newest one right near where Eddie and Linc climbed the wall. Kyle Hanley’s room is number one-seventeen, but he’s not alone. He’s got a roommate named, let’s see, Jeff Ponsetto.”
“Well done,” Cabrillo said, and relayed the information to Eddie and Linc. “Start to download what you can off their computer.”
Linda Ross came over the tactical net: “Chairman, check your view screen. You’ve got company coming.”
Juan glanced at his sleeve. Two men dressed in maintenance workers’ overalls were crossing the compound. They carried toolboxes, and appeared to be heading toward the main building, where he and Murph were. Had there been some sort of emergency call to the engineering staff, surely they would have heard voices. Whatever was going on, Cabrillo didn’t like it.
“Murph, forget the download. Let’s go!”
As Juan went toward the door, he tucked an electronic bug under the desk lamp. He knew it would be found quickly, once the break-in was detected, but it would transmit the first critical moments of whatever took place in Gil Martell’s office. He paused at the window and checked the view screen once again. The maintenance workers were approaching the building’s front door, which gave him and Mark the time they needed to get clear.
He slowly opened the shade and eased himself over the window sash. His Glock was in his hand, though he had no conscious memory of drawing it.
Keeping low and following their carefully laid map to avoid the cameras, they moved toward building C.
The grass was dry under their shoes and crackled with each step. Like the others in the Responsivist compound, building C was one-storied, with whitewashed walls and a barrel-tile roof.
Linc and Eddie were pressed to the wall next to a door, out of view of the camera mounted above it. A security keypad was to the right, and its faceplate had been removed and left dangling by a bunch of wires. Linc had already installed his bypass. Despite having such large hands, the former Navy SEAL was the best lockpick the Corporation had, and he worked his tools with the delicate touch of a brain surgeon. With a pick and torsion rod in place, he gave the lock a jerk to the left, and the door snicked open.
“Fourteen seconds,” Eddie whispered.
“The maestro strikes again,” Linc smirked, and stepped into a long hallway running the length of the building.
The hall was lined with dozens of identical doors and was illuminated by shaded fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The carpeting was an institutional gray, not much softer than the concrete slab on which the building was constructed. The four men started down, peering into a large kitchen to their left and a room lined with a dozen commercial washing machines to their right. Juan didn’t see any clothes dryers, and assumed they had drying lines behind the building. Part of Responsivism was to reduce one’s impact on the natural world, so not having dryers fit their beliefs, as did the solar panels they’d spied on the roof of one of the buildings.
They quickly found room one-seventeen. Linc reached up to remove the cover over the closest light fixture and pulled the fluorescent tubes from their brackets. The four donned night vision goggles, and Juan turned the doorknob. The room beyond looked like a typical dorm room, with two metal-framed beds, a pair of desks, and matching bureaus. The adjoining bathroom was a small tiled enclosure, with a drain on the floor for the shower. In the eerie green cast of the goggles, shapes were indeterminate, and colors washed out to shades of black, but the silhouettes of people sleeping on the beds were unmistakable. So was the snoring.
Eddie pulled a small plastic case from the thigh pocket of his fatigue pants. Inside were four hypodermic needles. The narcotic cocktail inside the barrels would incapacitate a grown man in under twenty seconds. Because Kyle had willingly joined the cult, he would surely resist their efforts to get him out.
The deprogrammer, Adam Jenner, had recommended drugging the youth to Linda, when they’d spoken, although Juan had planned to do it even without the advice.
Eddie gave a needle to Cabrillo and approached one of the beds. The man was sleeping on his stomach, his face turned to the wall. In a fluid movement, Seng clamped his hand around the man’s mouth and slid the needle into his neck, his thumb coming down on the plunger with even pressure. Across the room, Juan did the same thing. His victim came instantly awake and bucked against Juan’s arm, his eyes wide with panic. Juan held him down easily, even when the man’s legs began to thrash.
Juan counted down from twenty in his head. When he reached ten, the man’s gyrations were slowing, and when he hit three the guy was totally still. Juan flashed his penlight into the man’s face. Although Kyle Hanley took after his mother, Juan saw enough of Max in the boy to know it was him.
“Got him.”
As a precaution, Linc whipped FlexiCuffs around Kyle’s ankles and wrists before tossing him over his shoulder.
“All set, big man?” Juan asked.
Linc grinned in the darkness. “I carried your sorry butt for eight miles in Cambodia three years ago, so this boy’s nothing. Can’t weigh but a buck-twenty.”
Cabrillo checked the e-paper screen on his sleeve. Everything looked quiet, but he radioed Linda for confirmation.
“The janitors are still in the main building. A light came on across the compound from where you are but went out again a minute eight seconds later.”
“Pit stop.”
“My guess, too. You’re clear for extraction.”
“Roger.” He turned to his team. “We’re good to go.”