Oh, man, he wasn’t getting this at all. “So anybody who has anything is a User? Is your enemy?”
Colleen rolled her eyes in that special way people do that really got his blood boiling. “Yes, you’re obviously one of them.”
“One of who?” He shouted that and, in the process, did something to make his arm bite him and he grunted against the pain.
“This is why it’s useless to try to communicate with anyone outside of the community. You refuse to see things as they are.”
“I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”
Colleen settled herself as if preparing to explain the obvious to a dimwitted child. “It’s not about owning anything,” she said. “It’s about wanting to own everything, and never being willing to give anything back. You’ll destroy other people, you’ll destroy other countries, you’ll destroy the earth itself, if that’s what it takes.”
Ryan felt like he’d entered the play of his life in the middle of the second act. “I’m sixteen,” he said, chuckling at the absurdity. “Even if I wanted to do some of those things, I couldn’t. Give me a break.”
“There it is again,” she said.
The second guard appeared in the doorway. “I told you it was a waste of time,” he said.
“Who are you?” Ryan said. He’d learned the hard way that when these nut jobs formed a crowd, life got difficult.
“I’m one you should be fearing,” he said. The guy was older and bigger than Ryan, but not by much on either count. “Brother Stephen was a friend of mine.”
“Then you should keep better friends,” Ryan blurted before his filter could slide into place. “He tried to rape my mother. What would you do?”
The guy smiled. “I guess I might have waited my turn.”
“Stop it!” Colleen commanded. She put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder as she spoke, as if to reassure him that this new guy was out of line. “This is Brother Zebediah. And sometimes he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”
“The fact is,” said Brother Zebediah, “it’s not about you. Nothing in this world is about you. Nothing is about anyone. We live or die together on this planet, and you Users are so intent on owning the world and its resources for your own gain that you kill indiscriminately. Not just with guns, but with power. It’s time to return the power to where it belongs.”
“To you,” Ryan said, still trying to wrap his head around it all. “And you do it by killing others. Killing to stop killing. Am I getting it right now?”
The expression in Sister Colleen’s face hovered somewhere between hurt and disappointment, yet Ryan still didn’t have a clue why. She stood abruptly and threw a tightly rolled ball of tan fabric onto his lap.
“That’s a triangular bandage,” she said. “I think you should tie a knot in it and put it around your neck as a sling. Try to keep your hand higher than your elbow if you can.”
Clearly, she was done, and even more clearly, she was angry. She turned to the door.
“What did I say?” Ryan asked after her.
Colleen said nothing. She stormed out past Brother Zebediah, who followed her and slammed the door. He was still refitting the padlock when someone flipped a switch and Ryan’s world returned to blackness.
CHAPTER TWENTY – THREE
“At least we know that Ryan is in Copley’s house,” Venice said. “That’s important data.”
“I disagree,” Jonathan said. “All we know is that Neen dropped him off there. Other than that, we’ve got only conjecture.”
“And what about the mom, Christyne?” Gail asked. “Nobody even mentioned her.”
“Baby steps,” Jonathan advised. “Explore the lead you’ve got, and hope that the others fall into place.”
“By sheer dumb luck?” she asked with a chuckle.
“In a perfect world, no,” Jonathan said. Her negative tone was beginning to wear on him. “But if the best I can catch is pure dumb luck, then I’ll take it.”
Boxers said, “I recognize that look, Dig. What’s the plan?”
Jonathan looked at his watch. “We know that the meeting of the elders-whatever the hell that means-takes place a little over five hours from now, at seven.”
Venice said, “Digger, do you agree that the conversation we eavesdropped on said that the meet was going to happen in Copley’s house?”
“I do,” he said.
“Good,” Venice said. “Because when he built the place twelve years ago, he used an architect and a professional engineer. And wouldn’t you know it? He had the decency to file all the plans at the assessments office at the courthouse.”
Jonathan grinned, yet again amazed by Venice’s capabilities to ferret out information. “Are you telling me you have drawings?”
He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I’ve got floor plans, electrical, HVAC, sewerage, you name it.”
Gail scowled, as if to say, Is that even possible?
“Only a fool bets against Venice,” Jonathan said.
“This is unbelievable!” Venice howled from Fisherman’s Cove. “Copley likes to buy his furniture from a place called Colony House in Falls Church. I can send you purchase orders, if you’d like.”
Jonathan assured her that that would not be necessary.
It took a few minutes for the floor plans and other architectural drawings to transfer, but once they did, the first stage of their plan became obvious. Jonathan discussed it with his team, spending the better part of an hour working through the details and the possible complications-of which there were too many to count-but when they were done, everybody had a job to do.
They’d changed into black, despite the brightness of the day.
Camouflage was a particularly difficult challenge in the wintertime, given the absence of leaves on the trees. Throw in the fact that every breath you took launched a cloud of condensation into the air, and blaze orange was as good a color as any to stay invisible.
Rather than trying to blend in with their surroundings, then, Jonathan’s team had opted to blend in with their adversaries. They’d still make every effort to remain invisible, but on the off chance that they were spotted, they hoped that the spotters might see armed people in black and assume that they were friendlies. It was a high-risk bet, but sometimes you just had to play the hand you were dealt.
They drove from the command post to a side road near the Copley house, but far enough away to remain undetected. Following their GPS, they hiked a quarter-mile due west to the fence line. From there, it would be another quarter mile to the house itself.
Contrary to Jonathan’s conservative survival plan, they forwent the heavy body armor that he generally would have insisted upon-ditto the Kevlar helmets-in order to match the kit worn by the resident guards. Jonathan also left behind the twelve-gauge Mossberg shotgun that he would normally have worn slung under his armpit, and the bandolier of ammunition that went along with it. You never knew what kind of spotters they had deployed, and that kind of accoutrement was just too easily identified.
There was a limit, though, to the extent Jonathan would go to blend in. They would each carry their M4 carbines, which looked enough like the M16s used by the staff to pass a cursory glance, but he insisted that each of them carry a full load of ten extra mags of ammunition, for a total of three hundred rounds. It bulked them up on their web gear, but ammunition was the one thing he would never scrimp on. They each carried a sidearm, as well. Jonathan had his Colt 1911. 45, Boxers his Beretta nine millimeter, and Gail her Glock. 40. Sidearms were the most personal of weapons. The smart warrior carried the one with which he was most comfortable. Gail’s years in the FBI had made the Glock. 40 second nature to her.
Jonathan also insisted on night vision. The violent side of his world was inescapably tied to the night, and the ability to navigate where others were blind was the single greatest playing-field leveler. Each of them, then, carried a rucksack that contained night vision, glow sticks, a couple of general-purpose charges with initiators, plus a supply of Pop-Tarts-a high-sugar and high-carb source of emergency food in case their PCs hadn’t been fed in a while.