Rebecca tugged on Davidson's tuxedo cuffs. "Tell me what the hell is going on."
"The tracker requires kinetic movement for energy..."
The woman had three PhDs. She could easily piece together the scenario.
"So if the tracker isn't transmitting, it means that Brandt isn't moving," Rebecca said in a rush as the helicopter veered to miss a high rise. "He must be unconscious again."
"Or..." Davidson couldn't bring himself to say it.
"Or," Rebecca finished his train of thought, "Brandt is dead."
CHAPTER 3.
Undisclosed Location 5:57 p.m. (EST) Frellan leisurely studied the soldier curled up on the floor of the helicopter. The Master had made this man out to be nearly a god. The man who had stolen Moses's tablets and destroyed God's twin cities. Bringing their most vaulted warrior, Aunush, his sister, to her knees.
Though, he did not think it took a god to bring Aunush down. Though they had bathed in the same womb, they could not be more divergent. Aunush, since her first squall, had wished the world to know of her might. She had flaunted her elevated position and taken pride in her accomplishments, indulging in her passions.
Including the man who sat across from Frellan. Her sniper, Mikhal.
She had toyed with the sniper. Baiting him, thinking her sexual conquest would keep her safe. In the end, Mikhal had turned her into the Master. But how long had the sniper played both sides against one another? Had he truly brought Aunush to the Disciples out of duty or out of expedience? Had the sniper hedged his bets?
Whether or not Frellan trusted the sniper mattered not. Mikhal was a weapon. A very useful one if the reports from Aunush's last operation were any indication. The only one to survive the encounter with Brandt and his team.
Frellan's eyes scanned farther down the row of mercenaries, who sat stoically through the long flight, until he paused on Monnie's face. Beautiful auburn eyes shone from a blemish-free mocha complexion. So young and tender to be a watcher.
However, after Nannan's untimely death in Jordan, the young woman was the most studied of the watchers. Monnie was seeped in the Messiah's prophecies. Not just the ones detailed in the Bible, but she was also well versed in the oral history from Moshe and Yoshua, carried down the line through the Disciples' history.
Frellan had been reluctant to bring the young woman along, but the Master had overridden him. The Master was concerned that if this girl in the Congo truly was the Messiah, that she might be naive to her station, her power. Their savior might think herself just a scared little girl. It might be best to have someone on the team who wasn't a mercenary forged by God's will. A feminine touch.
Monnie must have felt his gaze upon her, as she looked up from the scroll she had been reading. He saw the flinch of fear in her eyes as she surveyed the many tattoos and body piercings that riddled his face. Frellan did not balk despite the disdain he found in her features.
While his sister's life had been led in the light, Frellan's had been spent in shadow. The only mark of his passing were those etched upon his skin. For every quest, every victory, every defeat was recorded in ink or steel.
Few had seen his face and lived to tell the tale.
Her eyes flickered back to her precious scroll. That is right, child, Frellan thought. His piercings had another purpose. Intimidation. If he would do such to himself, what might he do to an enemy? Or an ally who had disappointed him?
Frellan looked back down the row of the mercenaries. They, too, had deep ritual scars, but even they gave him a wide berth. He found Unugo, his second-in-command. The man sported a new spiked rod through his cheek, after they failed to obtain the information they needed in the Congo.
The piercing was a work of art, really.
It was not that Aunush and he did not share the same desires. That they did not both revel in creating, nurturing, and exploring pain. He'd just found a way to elevate his to beauty. Something God would smile down upon.
He wondered what he might do to this supposed god at his feet, Brandt. The man had been trained to withstand torture, but torture was not what Frellan employed. He made sure even if his subject survived his ministrations, they bore his mark for life. Would his woman want him then? Knowing what Frellan had done to him?
When his spleen poked out through his flank? Or a hooked bar pierced his member?
The thought of all that he could do to the paralyzed soldier aroused Frellan. He took a deep breath. His was to experience pleasure but to serve god. Especially with the Messiah's appearance to be so close at hand.
This man-god's gnats were in the air, searching for their lost leader.
Little did they know that the tablets were but one of many secrets the Disciples held. In many ways, the tablets, while holding the fascination of the Master and Aunush, were of little consequence. They held only the announcement of the female Messiah. They did not hold where or how she would come into the world.
The tablets might be lost again, but the Disciples' purpose was redoubled.
Since the moment Aunush had sent word that the tablets were in play, Frellan had listened for the whispers in the night of the Messiah. Was she already born, or had she yet to be conceived? The Disciples must be the first to find her, bring her into their fold, so that she might be raised amongst the true Word.
Even in this modern age of computers and the Internet, combing through a world filled with nearly seven billion people was a laborious task. Then a scout assigned to shadow Brandt and his men had stumbled out of the Congo jungle, telling of a girl who could heal even the most mortal blow. A girl who Brandt had saved. A girl who he had personally seen to it had been secreted off, deep into the forest.
Did the soldier know whom he had come upon? Or was he as blind as he was impotent?
Many within the fold were shocked that this soldier might have been in contact with the possible Messiah. To Frellan, there was a perfect symmetry to their meeting. God, in His great wisdom, did not unfold his plan for all to see.
He lived in the shadows as did Frellan. But now, in this glorious age, it was time for both of them to taste the sun on their skin.
"You must have heard wrong," Rebecca said, shaking her head so hard her neck muscles complained.
Still, Lopez lay off the throttle, banking them toward the north. "Nope," the corporal said. "We have been ordered to stand down."
"They want another team to take over the search?" Davidson asked, clearly as befuddled by the orders as Rebecca.
"Yep," Lopez replied as they flew toward the Charleston Airport. They had stayed in the general vicinity of the abduction, awaiting another signal from Brandt. They needed to know in which direction to head, but nothing. Over an hour and nothing.
Rebecca really didn't think that she had any more tears to shed, but moisture sprang to the ready. In disbelief, she watched as Lopez angled them toward the helipad of the airport, prepping them to land.
She looked to Davidson, but he just shrugged. "That's brass for you."
This couldn't be happening. Brandt couldn't be kidnapped. They couldn't be losing control of the search. And what the hell was wrong with the men? Why weren't they throwing a huge fit? Her own fists shook in quiet rage as her mind raced to find a way to convince the men to stay on the trail.
The only huge problem? That would require her to convince the men to disobey a direct order, not from Brandt, but from the Pentagon. At the least, that would be a court-martialed offense. At worst, it could be construed as treason punishable by death.
Words caught in her throat as Lopez lowered them to the large red-and-white helipad. Could she really ask that of them?
Um, as she stepped on her wedding dress and tore it, again, hell yes she could.
Lopez brushed past her as he exited the chopper. Rebecca was right on his tail. He was in charge. She had to convince him.
Rebecca placed an arm on his. "Ricky."
The corporal seemed vaguely annoyed. Like her asking to save the man she loved to be a bother. "What?"
"We can't just give up."
Lopez cocked his head. "No kidding." He turned to Davidson. "I'm guessing you are in."
The younger man shrugged. "How much more trouble could I really get into?"
"Talli?" the corporal asked. After the sniper nodded, Lopez turned to the new point man, Levont. "You've only been with us a few months. No one will think you're a bent helmet for waving this one off."
"Are you kidding me?" Levont said with a broad smile. "I see this going down one of two ways." The point man swung his assault rifle onto his shoulder. "One, you guys save the world, again. Or two, you go down in a flaming blaze of glory. Either way, I am so going to be there."
Lopez put his hand over Rebecca's. "So, little missy, if you aren't too busy questioning our dedication, would you like to help me steal a plane?"
These men might not wear Brandt's ring on their finger like she did, but they were equally bound to him. Having no other way to apologize, Rebecca just threw her sweaty, grimy, torn wedding-dressed self into Ricky's arms.
He laughed, picking her up, swinging her around, so she was pointed in the direction of the private plane hangar. "That's more like it."
Brandt felt his body slosh over. Actually, not slosh. There was no water, yet that's what it felt like. Had someone replaced his muscles with lumpy oatmeal? Or Jell-O, maybe Jell-O. Whatever the hell it was, it wasn't responding to his mind's repeated, urgent request to get up. Now.
The best Brandt could manage was to crack open his eyelids. He was on some kind of air cargo plane. Not US military. It felt Italian in manufacture. Although his brain was about a hundred times more functional than his muscles, he wasn't about to ask it to come up with the exact make and model. Besides, it didn't matter. The Disciples probably stole it from a maintenance yard or plane graveyard making the transport nearly impossible to trace.
His limited, ground level vision swept the area in front of him. Pairs upon pairs of combat boots were lined up. A tactical team. No great surprise there either. The Disciples were transporting him from South Carolina to somewhere not in South Carolina.
Even if he had full, or even minimal use of his limbs, he probably couldn't figure that out. Not without one hell of a fight ending in a huge body count. One of those probably being his.
No, instead, he needed to concentrate on his tooth.
Closing his eyes and marshaling every reserve he had left, which wasn't much, Brandt tried to clench his jaw. The best he got was his incisors barely grazing each other. That was not going to do.
Brandt clearly remembered the briefing by the scientists. They were so giddy. "All you have to do is chew," they said, nearly giggling.
It sounded so fucking simple. Chew or, more appropriate in Brandt's case, grind your teeth, and the motion fueled the transmitter. So simple.
So not happening.
"Just ten good chews and the activated transmitter will send out a burst with your coordinates."
Ten good chews. Who couldn't chew ten times? Apparently Brandt. Plus, come to think of it, what about if you had a ball gag in your mouth? How could you chew then?
Yeah, those were two scenarios the squints hadn't thought of.
Knowing that his life depended on his ability to masticate, Brandt bit down harder. He nicked the side of his tongue, but who cared? Pain shot up from the broken shard of porcelain cap. Concentrating, Brandt bit down again and again and again. At least ten times, but nothing.
The first time he'd activated the tracker, the damn thing had given him a little jolt in the gum. Now nothing.
Ten chews his ass.
Clearly, that had been an optimistic number.
Taking in a slow, deep breath, Brandt prepared for another round of overriding a massive paralytic.
He could only hope someone was watching on the other end.
Davidson allowed the whine of the plane's engines to soothe his jangled joints. The last few hours had not been kind to any of them. This was the fourth plane they had lifted, and Lopez was having a harder and harder time staying clear of any civilian or military's radar.
But they needed to stay close to Charleston. To strike out in any one direction could cost them hours later if Brandt had been taken in the opposite direction. So they had stayed as close to the church as they could. However, word had clearly gone out that their team was AWOL. The Pentagon was probably spending as much time tracking down them as they were Brandt.
No one was taking the waiting harder than Rebecca. She sat across the aisle from Davidson on the twin-engine prop plane, her stained and tattered wedding dress a visible accounting of the hell they had all been through.
Her veil, the anchor of it so firmly tangled in her hair that the best they could do was cut off the shiny fabric, no longer flew in front of her face. However, it looked like some sort of mutant white tulle creature growing from her head.
She had been such a beautiful bride, for all of about two minutes.
And this waiting wasn't aging well on her. She bit at her manicure, ripping the polish off until she could chew at the nail itself. If she didn't stop soon, she'd have nothing but bloody finger tips to show for it.
Finally, it appeared that she couldn't wait any longer. She unlatched her safety belt and pushed herself between Lopez and his copilot, Talli.
"We've got to do something," she implored.
Equally frustrated, Lopez answered. "Tell me what to do, Rebecca," the corporal said, turning to her, "and I'll do it. Anything."
Rebecca threw herself back into her seat, knowing that Lopez was right. There was absolutely nothing else to do but wait. She must have known that flying around in circles simply wasn't Lopez's style, either.
"Wait," Levont said, pushing the tracking monitor toward them, "I think it's pinging."
"What do you mean think?" Lopez asked.
Davidson looked at the monitor. Rapidly, the screen was realigning itself, squeezing the search grid down and down again. "Something definitely is happening...But it's not showing Brandt's location."
Rebecca leaned over, her stubby veil brushing Talli's back. "Why is the screen doing that?"
"Doing what?" Lopez asked, clearly agitated that, at such a critical juncture, he still had to fly the plane.
Davidson watched as the map pulled in tighter and tighter, expanding the area covered to far beyond their search area. Then the screen took an abrupt leap to the right.
"Oh my God," Rebecca breathed out.
"What?" Lopez demanded.
"He's gotta be..." Levont started, then stalled.
The little light flashed brightly against the blank blue background.
"Which way do I turn?" Lopez begged, glancing over his shoulder.