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Theo
Slowing to a walk, I approach James and Bane. They have a large map spread out on the ground, rocks holding it down. A drone and laptop rest on two of the stumps.
“Good, you’re back,” James says, looking up, an eyebrow raised. “Cleaning up? Guess you left everything back at the fort.” I feel my face heat and I just smile, shaking my head. Caught red-handed in that one. Tristan arrives in time to hear James and he shrugs, which is surprising as, in the past, he would have ducked his head or shown submission to James in some way.
“So where are we going and what is the plan?” I ask, squatting down to look at the map. This map is just a regular map of the county, showing roads, lakes and rivers. The computer on the other hand, is open to Google Maps and shows the terrain of the area.
“According to the Nerds, we are going here.” Bane points to a spot on the map that is on the other side of the mountain. “Your girl must have been running for a while to get all the way over here. It will take us two hours to get there by bike, four by roads.”
“Do we have an idea how many we are up against? Or what it looks like?” I ask. It’s almost six and we are supposed to be attacking in eight hours with no plan as of yet, besides four hours for the Elite’s van to drive there.
“Sending the drones up now. They will show us what we are up against.” Bane waves to a man standing behind him. This man has the military crew cut like all the others, but he is slightly less buff, slightly smaller and has something about him that reminds me of the Arachnerds. “Dax, here, will operate the drone for us.”
Dax takes the drone and a large console that looks a lot like a remote control for some game over to the parking area. He sets the drone down and with the push of a few buttons he has it rising off the ground. Slowly he steps back toward the computer that now shows a live stream of, well, us in black and white. The surrounding area- trees, cars, everything- are in shades of gray, with bright white images for the shifters.
“Let’s see what we are up against. This shouldn’t be detectable by any surveillance that they might have,” Dax says as the image blurs and the drone quickly picks up speed, zooming down the drive and out into the evening sky.
“How long until it gets there?” Tristan asks. Tension is evident in his stance and I know he is thinking of Rebby.
“About two hours, give or take. Enough time to grab some dinner and for you to look at the satellite images the Arachnerds sent over.” Dax doesn’t take his eyes off the laptop screen. The image zooms by as numbers on the bottom of the screen run by. I’m guessing latitude and longitude, otherwise I have no clue how he would find the compound with the image moving that fast.
Bane points us toward another laptop that I hadn’t noticed. “Here is what the Arachnerds were able to access. These images are from this afternoon, don’t ask how they got them.” He glares at us until we nod our heads. This guy is intense!
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BANE PULLS UP AN IMAGE. “As you can see, the compound is made up of a series of buildings, surrounded by a large wall. We will have to breach this wall before we can go in and clear each building.”
He clicks to another picture that is zoomed out, showing a road that leads up to the compound and a lot of forest. “Dax will send the drone over this road to look for any heat signatures. As you can see, this image does not show any buildings, but we can’t rule out that the road is not under surveillance, either by shifters, humans or electronics. We will use drones to take out any electronics within two miles of the compound.”
“Won’t that tell them we are coming?” I ask. “Give them time to prepare?”
Bane shakes his head. “It will cause confusion and we will have a window of about five minutes to get into the compound before they start to recover. Once in the compound we will use flashbang grenades to further disorient them.”
He clicks to another image that is zoomed into the compound. “Besides the main house, there are three buildings. We don’t know what we will find in these, but the layout makes it look like one may be for their research, one for barracks and the final one could be the zoo. This is hypothetical, of course. My men will go in first in two-man teams. One will stay in his human form, the other will shift. Each will be wearing protective gear. The shifters that are not military trained can follow and secure the buildings and any prisoners. We will need a perimeter around the compound to make sure that no one escapes.”
James nods. “We will follow your lead, Palmer.”
“Rest and eat. We will go over the plans with everyone at 20:30.” Bane turns with military precision and walks toward the van. A young man runs up with a plate of food and water bottle, handing it the leader. Bane takes it from him without a word, stepping into the truck.
I turn to James. “He is...intense. And what is up with you calling him Palmer?”
James smiles and looks at the van where Bane is currently glaring out the front window at us. “The story I heard was that during bootcamp the sergeant kept calling him Mrs. Palmer and asking him if he needed to take her five daughters for a walk.”
I choke back a laugh. “Palm...five...yeah I would start to hate that name, too. Wonder what other jokes he heard growing up. So how did he come up with Bane?”
James shakes his head, “No clue. I never was told, but I can tell you it fits. He might be good at what he does, but he can be a real headache.”
Dax glances over at us. “I can help with that. He is the bane of all of us. He is a detail-oriented conspiracy theorist whose motto is go big or die. You can’t imagine how hard it makes some of our training and operations, having to take into consideration minute details that never arise.”
“And that is why I recruited him.” James smiles like the cat that swallowed the canary.
“Hey, why don’t you guys grab some grub. I won’t be to the compound for another hour or so. I can holler when we get close,” Dax says, eyes on the laptop screen.