“Tad’s dead?” The look of horror on Jeevan’s face is both satisfying and troubling to Hayden.
“He fried to death in the ComBom. But don’t worry. That’s not Starkey’s fault either.” He doesn’t know if Jeevan reads the sarcasm—he’s about as literal as computer code. Maybe it’s best if he doesn’t.
“I haven’t seen Trace here. He flew the plane, didn’t he?”
Jeevan looks down. “Trace is dead too,” he tells Hayden. “He didn’t survive the crash.”
“No,” says Hayden. “I imagine he wouldn’t have.” Whether Trace’s death was a result of the crash or secret human intervention is something Hayden supposes he’ll never know. The truth most certainly died with Trace. Or without a trace, as the case may be.
Hayden hears footsteps coming up the steep slope from deeper in the mine. The way the guard steps aside so obediently telegraphs to Hayden who the visitor is even before he comes into view.
“Speak of the devil! We were just talking about you, Starkey. Jeevan and I were reminiscing about your magic tricks. Especially the one where you made a commercial jet disappear.”
“It didn’t disappear,” says Starkey, refusing to be goaded. “It’s at the bottom of the Salton Sea.”
“He didn’t actually call you the devil,” Jeevan tells Starkey. Literal as code.
“We have a common enemy,” Starkey points out. “The devils are all out there—and it’s time they got their due.”
Starkey dislodges Jeevan from his seat with the slightest flick of his head. He takes his place, studying the image on the screen.
“Is that a harvest camp?”
“MoonCrater Harvest Camp, to be exact. Craters of the Moon, Idaho.”
“What about it?” Starkey asks.
“All of its security is focused outward!” blurts Jeevan, as if he actually knows why that matters.
“Yes,” says Hayden. “And they don’t have eyes in the backs of their heads.”
Starkey crosses his arms, making it clear that he doesn’t have all day. “And why does that matter?”
“Here’s why.” Hayden drags up another window, showing schematics, and a third that shows a standard geological survey. “Craters of the Moon National Park is a lava field riddled with caves, and all the camp’s utility conduits use the caves. Electricity, sewerage, ventilation, everything.” Hayden zooms in on a schematic of the camp’s main dormitory and starts pointing things out. “So, if we create a diversion at the main gate in the middle of the night—some smoke and mirrors, if you will—it will draw all their attention. Then, while the security forces are all focused on the gate, we go in through this utility hatch in the basement of the dormitory, bring all those kids down into the caves—and exit the caves here, almost a mile away.”
Starkey is genuinely impressed. “And by the time they realize their Unwinds are gone, we’ll be free and clear.”
“That’s the general idea. And no one gets hurt in the process.”
He claps Hayden on the back hard enough that it stings. “That’s genius, Hayden! Genius!”
“I thought you might appreciate a ‘vanishing act,’ approach.” He touches the screen, changing the angle of the schematic to show the levels of the dormitory. “Boys are on the ground floor, girls on the second, and harvest camp staff on the third. There’re only two stairwells, so if we man them and tranq any staff that tries to come down, we could theoretically be in and out before anyone figures out what’s going on.”
“How soon can we do this?”
There’s a kind of greed in Starkey’s eyes that makes Hayden close the computer’s open windows so it doesn’t prompt further scheming. “Well, after Cold Springs, I figured you’d want to lie low for a while.”
“No way,” Starkey says. “We should strike while the iron’s hot. One-two punch. You plan the rescue. I’ll take care of the diversion. I want this to go down in less than a week.”
Hayden shudders at the thought of something so theoretical becoming real too quickly. “I really don’t think—”
“Trust me. If you want to clean up your reputation around here, this is the way to do it, my friend.” Starkey stands, his decision set in stone. “Make it happen, Hayden. I’m counting on you.”
And Starkey leaves before Hayden can offer any more reservations.
Once Starkey is gone, Jeevan takes his seat next to Hayden again. “He called you his friend,” Jeevan points out. “That’s a really good thing!”
“Yes,” says Hayden. “It thrills me no end.” Jeevan takes that at face value, as Hayden knew he would.
Starkey had said they had a common enemy. So then is my enemy’s enemy my friend? wonders Hayden. Somehow the old adage doesn’t ring true if that friend is Mason Starkey.
? ? ?
The Stork Brigade hits MoonCrater Harvest Camp six days later. Hayden and a team consisting entirely of kids who knew Hayden from the Graveyard, map out the caves two days in advance. For the actual event, Starkey leads the way with his special-ops detail, but admits that it would be a good idea to have Hayden and his team there as well. Leaving a trail of flares in the jagged lava tunnels, they reach the camp’s plumbing and conduit lines at 1:30 a.m. and follow them to the basement hatch, which is locked from the other side. They wait.
Then, at 2:00 a.m., a burning truck filled with ammunition crashes through the harvest camp’s outer gate, and gunfire erupts from the volcanic wasteland beyond. Bam is in charge of the diversion, and Hayden does not envy her. She has her work cut out for her—she and her own team of storks must make this look like a real assault on the camp, and they must make it last for at least twenty minutes.
The moment the gunfire starts outside, the inside operation begins.
“Blow the hatch,” Starkey orders his fairly psychotic demolitions kid. “Do it now!”
“No,” says Hayden. “Not yet.” Hayden knows that the building up above is going into lockdown mode—a security measure that will work to their advantage. Steel shutters are rolling down over the windows. Emergency doors are sealing. No one will be able to get in or out of the dormitory until the security system is reset.
Hayden counts to ten. “Okay, now!”
The hatch blows, and armed with only tranq weapons, they pile through the hole toward whatever awaits them.
The Unwinds in the dormitory, already awakened by the explosions and gunfire outside, are primed for death or rescue. Tonight, it will be the latter.
The rescue force tranqs a guard and a counselor on their way up the stairs to the main floor—a single huge communal room lined with row after row of beds. The space is dim. Only emergency lights shine now, hitting the beds at oblique angles, making the plywood headboards look like tombstones. The sounds of the battle outside are muted by the steel shutters. No one can see out, but that means no one on the outside can see in. With all the camp’s attention on the fake assault on the outer gate, the rescue team is effectively invisible.
Starkey wastes no time. “You’ve just been liberated,” he announces. The PFFTT of tranq pistols being fired herald several more staff members taken down by Starkey’s special-ops team, all of whom are disturbingly good shots. “Everyone to the basement. Don’t take anything but the clothes on your back and your shoes. Let’s move it!”
Then he goes upstairs to announce the girls’ liberation, leaving Hayden and his team to move the masses down and out.
In ten minutes, nearly three hundred kids are taken down into the caves and are on their way to freedom. Only the tithes, who are in a different building, and rescue-resistant by their very nature, must be left behind.
Hayden and his team lead the liberated Unwinds through the lava cave to the exit point, where four dark delivery trucks “borrowed” for the evening’s festivities wait on a lonely road to spirit them all away.
Gunfire from the fake assault still rages as they emerge from the caves, but it’s far away, like the sound of a distant battlefront. As the trucks are quickly packed with kids, Hayden dares to think that maybe, just maybe, he can turn Starkey’s guerilla war into something meaningful, and even admirable. Perhaps the road ahead isn’t all that bleak after all.
He has no idea that Starkey, who is still nowhere in sight, has just paved them a fresh road to hell.
46 ? Starkey
Performing magic was never just about the tricks for Starkey. There must be style. There must be showmanship. There must be an audience. Making three hundred kids vanish is, admittedly, quite the trick, but liberating a harvest camp is about more than just freeing its Unwinds. Starkey sees a bigger, much more glorious picture.
Once the girls on the second floor are on the move toward the basement and Hayden is occupied getting everyone through the caves, Starkey takes a moment to study the high ceiling of the large dormitory, taking note of the ceiling fans. None of them are spinning, but that’s fine. In fact, it’s better that way.
“I need you to go upstairs and bring me six staff members,” he tells his team. “Tranq anyone who gives you trouble, but make sure the ones you bring me are conscious.”
“Why?” one of them asks. “What are we doing?”
“We’re sending a message.”
They return with three men and three women. Starkey has no idea what their positions are here. Administrators, surgeons, cooks—it doesn’t matter. To Starkey they’re all the same. They’re all unwinders. He orders them bound and gagged with duct tape. He looks up to the ceiling fans once more. There are six fans, suspended about ten feet from the ground. And Starkey brought plenty of rope.
No one in his special-ops team knows much about tying knots. The nooses are crude and inelegant, but aesthetics don’t matter as long as they hold. With the diversionary battle still raging outside like the shores of Normandy, Starkey and his team stand the six captives on chairs and lasso a blade of a ceiling fan above each of their heads with the other end of their respective ropes, pulling the ropes tight enough so that their captives can feel it, but not tight enough to actually hurt them. Once they’re all in place, Starkey steps forward to address them.
“My name is Mason Michael Starkey, the leader of the Stork Brigade. You have been found guilty of crimes against humanity. You’ve unwound thousands of innocent kids—many of them storks—and there must be a reckoning.” He pauses to let it sink in. Then he approaches the first captive—a woman who can’t stop crying.
“I can see that you’re frightened,” he says.
The woman, unable to speak through the duct tape, nods and pleads with her tearful eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “I’m not going to hurt you—but I need you to remember everything I’ve said. When they come to set you free, I want you to tell them. Can you do that for me?”
The woman nods.
“Tell them that this is only the beginning. We’re coming for everyone who supports unwinding and mistreats storks. There’s nowhere you people can hide from us. Make sure you tell them. Make sure they know.”