John Gilstrap - Threat warning

Jonathan noted all of it. The two mags still gave them sixty rounds apiece-a little over three seconds per mag on full-auto, plenty of bullets to create a very bad day-but most inexperienced warriors wasted the first sixty rounds on either the sky or the ground just a few yards in front of their feet. The real takeaway from this photo was the lack of body armor. Jonathan’s team would not make a similar mistake. It would be heavy and limit mobility, but he’d already had enough holes blown into him, thank you very much. After the last incident in Pennsylvania, he’d made a promise to himself to keep all of his blood confined to its assigned vessels from now on.

He said, “Okay, Colonel, while you’ve got the controls, give us a tour of this compound.” He figured it was what Rollins was dying to do anyway.

The virtual camera resumed its bird’s-eye view again and the ground fell away. From above, they viewed twenty-three well-constructed buildings of various sizes. Frame built and brick veneered, this was a community designed to last. The largest of the buildings-Jonathan guesstimated it to measure thirty by fifty feet-sat in the middle of the occupied acreage and was served by a straight access road that appeared to lead directly from the main gate. Jonathan’s money said that the central structure was the church or common meeting hall. Most of the other buildings could well have been houses, maybe fifteen hundred square feet each, and they were arranged in a sharply defined grid pattern, reminding Jonathan of the residential areas of suburbia everywhere.

“Any idea of how many people in total live here?” Jonathan asked.

“Hard to say,” Rollins replied. “A couple dozen, certainly; maybe a couple hundred. Watching the place in real time, we see lots of movement, but there’s no way to tell without more detailed analysis whether we’re seeing different folks or the same dozen or so over and over. There are a couple of features of this place that I think you need to concentrate on.”

The image shifted to reveal a wood-frame building that could only be a school, built in the classic old style, complete with a tiny steeple out front.

“If I took you to a ground-level view on this one, you’d actually see the word ‘School’ over the door,” Rollins explained. “I show you this because of what it implies regarding children on-site. I want to make it extraordinarily clear to you, Digger, that dead children are not part of the package. I will not authorize that.”

Jonathan exchanged glances with Boxers. “Last time I checked, you’re not authorizing any of this. We’re not in the habit of killing children.”

Rollins cleared his throat. “I heard about an op in Colombia a while back that left a lot of blood on the ground. Rumor has it in the community that you might have had something to do with that.”

“Move on,” Jonathan said. There had in fact been such an op, but the children hadn’t been killed by the good guys. Either way, he didn’t owe an explanation to Roleplay Rollins.

The colonel got the hint. The picture moved again, this time swinging in for a close-up of the main building.

“I figure that to be the church and meeting hall,” Jonathan said.

“Agreed,” Rollins confirmed. “But it’s got an interesting feature. Here, look at this.”

The image flashed, and then there were looking at an infrared scan of the same building. In IR imagery, warmth is white and cold is dark. Here, the main building looked like a negative image of itself.

“Look how cold that building is.”

“Maybe it’s unoccupied,” Gail offered.

“Maybe, but that wouldn’t explain it being this cold.”

Jonathan had seen images like this before, and he didn’t like where his imagination was taking him. “You think it’s armored, don’t you?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Rollins confirmed.

Gail scowled. “I don’t get it,” she and Venice said together.

Jonathan explained, “No matter how cold the weather, on a nice day like this, the radiant heat of the sun raises the surface temperature of buildings-brick in particular. Put a layer of steel behind it, though, or build it out of reinforced concrete, and it stays relatively cool. This heat signature at this time of day tells me that the brick facade is covering up some heavy-duty shielding.”

“Which means they’re expecting an assault,” Boxers said.

Jonathan closed the loop: “And none of that is good news for us.”

Over the link, Venice said, “So you’re telling me that you’re raiding a fortress?”

Jonathan looked to Boxers, then shrugged. “Well, it’s not going to be a walk in the park, but I think calling it a fortress might be overstating it. Think of that assembly hall as the castle keep-the place to administer the Kool-Aid if all else fails. Colonel, have you analyzed the other buildings?”

“In a cursory sort of way, yes. This appears to be the only one reinforced like this. I like your analogy to the castle keep. I think that’s probably pretty accurate.”

“So we need to try to engage them outside of that,” Boxers said. “If they retreat to the keep, then we’ll have an interesting day.”

“Suppose that’s where they keeping the Nasbes?” Gail asked. “Isn’t that the most sensible place?”

Jonathan said, “Not necessarily. They clearly think they’re out of reach or else they wouldn’t be so aggressive with their communications to the world. If they don’t feel endangered, then there’s no reason to be on high alert.”

“Didn’t all of that change when Ryan escaped?” Gail asked.

Jonathan sighed. “Maybe.”

“Maybe not,” Rollins said. “We’ve got a cell phone intercept. I need to set the scene a little bit for you. Tell you where the voices are coming from.” Papers rustled on the other end of the phone. “Okay, you’re going to hear two voices, both of them picked up from encrypted telephone conversations. I leaned on a friend at the NSA to program a computer to monitor every telephone conversation coming out of Maddox County, West Virginia, looking for certain key words that we thought were important.”

Gail’s mind reeled. If the New York Times ever got wind of this, the jail time would be the least of their worries.

Jonathan placed his hand on hers and brought his lips close to her ear. “Remember the end game,” he whispered.

Rollins continued, “The first voice you hear-the one that wants to just kill the captives and dispose of the bodies outright-comes from a cell phone that traces to a location outside the compound. I can send you a map if you want, but I don’t think the location itself is in play. Because we’re dealing with cell phones, we can only get within so many yards of the signal, but our friends at Fort Meade narrowed it down to a residential street that happens to be where Sheriff Kendig Neen resides. We printed the signal against a known recording, and we came up with a four-nines reliability quotient.”

“Four-nines” meant ninety-nine point nine-nine percent likelihood that the voice belonged to the person they suspected.

“The other voice-and there are only two in this recording-traces back to a location where there happens to be only one structure within a half-mile radius. Watch your screen.”

The picture moved rapidly and then the camera settled onto a familiar sight.

“That’s the home of Michael Copley,” Jonathan said.

“So you’ve been busy,” Rollins said. “You’re exactly right. I’ll run the recording now. It’s truncated at the beginning because it takes a few seconds for the computer software to kick in. Okay, here we go.”

Jonathan listened to more movement, and then the quality of the sound changed to the characteristic scratchiness of a telephone recording. As promised, this one picked up in the middle of an ongoing discussion.