I kept my promise and he didn’t suffer.

  After we were done disposing of the body in a ditch and back filling it with dirt, it was decided by all of us that going to the Safehouse called “Sanctuary” in Cedar Hill was the right choice. Turns out it’s a wealthy gated community in the southern suburbs between Dallas and Ft. Worth.

  We had to go, both to look for Frank and to get more information. As is often the way with questioning a captive, we left with lots of answers, but most of them brought up more questions. We were all struggling (well, not Sam) with the idea that this was a real situation. An organization dedicated to bringing back Gods and claims that it had already been done once accidentally? Madness.

  But I have to be honest, I was starting to believe them. And it scared the shit out of me. Because I’ve had a history with a lot of Extras, and the guy was right - Gods are considered fact by them, not “faith”. I had never wanted to admit that before.

  We walked out to the truck and Sam started going through the bags we had thrown in the back. “Ok.” Sam said, “What do we have as far as equipment? We have to break into a safehouse. I assume that’s not easy, right?”

  “It’s basically impossible.” I replied.

  “Well, how are we going to do it?” Sarah asked.

  “We'll try to use their overly complicated safeguards against them, and we’ll trust that Sam isn’t full of shit about his tech prowess. The recently deceased asshole told us that the safehouses are all essentially the same. Each house was a few improvements over a normal house in the middle of a wealthy neighborhood.

  Bullet proof glass is obvious, so it’s in hidden spots like on the sides and back windows where neighbors don’t look, it’s got a sheltered driveway in order to get people in without observation by said neighbors, and basically relies on soundproof inner rooms, reinforced doors, armed guards inside, and a silent alarm that goes directly to their own switchboard in the event that anonymity doesn’t work. Truth is, safe houses are only safe until the enemy - that’s us - finds out where they exist."

  “So why is it impossible to get in?”

  “Because there are three of us, not the twelve I’d like to have. It takes a large team to pull off a smash and grab, and reinforcements are about six minutes away once the attack starts. We would be lucky to even find the rooms where prisoners are stashed in five minutes, let alone Extract them. Assuming we’re not pinned down in a firefight with a crew of armed soldiers.”

  Sam interjected, “But we do have me and you, Dru. I’m not full of shit. There will be no alarm, so there will be no reinforcements arriving. You have a nice rifle here in the truck, so we can at least scope out the place to create a plan of attack - pun intended. And I do trust you to kill a lot of people very quickly once we get inside.”

  “Which leads us to the other problem. Once a gun goes off, the neighbors will be calling the police, and in a rich neighborhood like this, you can bet your ass they will be there quickly. And that leads to cops shooting anyone with a gun not in a police uniform.”

  “Yes…well…I can’t shut down cell phones.” Sam grinned, “But I can shut down the towers!”

  “You can do what?!” Sarah exclaimed.

  Laughing he claimed, “I really, really can!”

  “I really, really don’t want to know how, but you better be right.” I said. “Regardless, we should try to find a way to get in and out quietly, and that’s hard to do.”

  “Let’s go look at our problem.” He said, and jumped into the back of the truck and pulled out his phone. “I’ll get to work on the way. Those towers aren’t going shut off by themselves.”

  Sarah looked at me and I shrugged helplessly. “It’s what we need to do. I need a good look at the house.” She shook her head and walked around to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door to get in.

  “This is crazy. I need my husband back. All the rest doesn't matter to me.”

  “Believe me, that’s what I want for you as well. All that other stuff? It’s his issue, not mine.” I indicate, pointing at Sam.

  “It’ll be your issue too. Real soon.” He said without looking up from his phone.

  I got in the truck and headed out towards Cedar Hill. After a few minutes I asked Sarah, “Can he actually shut down a cell tower?”

  “It’s a lot more than that, Dru. He has to shut down several towers in order to create a dead zone in an urban area. Before today I’d swear it’s absolutely impossible to do that, short of an EMP or a massive, coordinated, physical attack on the towers themselves. There are a lot of safeguards to prevent exactly this scenario.”

  “Before today.”

  “I don’t know what on earth is going on anymore.”

  I rapped on the rear window in the truck cab to get Sam's attention.

  “WHAT?” he yelled.

  “Can you shut off the power to the safehouse?” I yelled back.

  “I’D HAVE TO SHUT DOWN THE WHOLE GRID.”

  Hmm… not optimal. “NEVER MIND.” I yelled to Sam, turning back to Sarah.

  “Sarah, if Frank is there, he might not be in good shape. You know this right?”

  “Yes.”

  “If he’s in seriously bad shape, it might even kill him to move him. Have you thought about what we do then?”

  Staring through the windshield, she said, “If my Frank is there - If he’s alive - we take him with us. No matter what. We do not leave him. I can't leave him, do you understand?”

  “Understood. But that means get yourself ready. We will not have time to panic, freak out, or waste time doing anything but grabbing him and getting out. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. Unless…”

  Uh oh. “Unless what?”

  “What if there’s more than one person there?”

  “Huh? There’ll be lots of people there.”

  “I mean prisoners.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “Yeah. Shit.”

  “Alright, here’s the deal: Frank first, and if it’s hot, too bad for anyone else. Frank is the priority. But if there are more prisoners there, and we have time, we release them. We take them if feasible, but we at least give them a chance to flee. Fair?”

  “I hate the idea of leaving people in the hands of these monsters.”

  “Me too, but Frank is the mission. Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  When we reached the historic district of Cedar Hill, and we were about a mile away from the gated community, I pulled into a small retail shopping center and turned off the truck. Sarah and I climbed out of the cab and circled around to the back of the truck, where I dropped the tailgate. Sam sat up in the truck bed and moved over to the lowered tailgate, letting his legs swing off the edge. I started the conversation. “Okay, so let’s take a look at a map and make a plan. Do you know what house it is, Sam?”

  “Yup, and I think you’re going to like it.” He pulled up a map and showed us. “It’s at the end of a cul-de-sac.” and showed us the house at 330 Point View - a house with a cambered driveway conveniently hidden from view by all but their immediate neighbor to the south, and that view was obstructed by a tall fence made for exactly that purpose. More importantly, the back yard opened up to – you guessed it – a greenspace.

  “Am I seeing this right?” I asked. “Is that a bunch of empty space between a small electrical substation and the back of the safehouse? Could it be that easy?”

  “Well, I’m assuming we’re all smart enough to know that the wide open space is a killing field, right?” Sam quipped.

  “Only if we try to go in that way.” I said. “I’m thinking it’s the exit strategy. We kill surveillance at the substation and park ‘ole Bessie there, the circle around for a frontal assault when you kill the cell towers. If there’s nobody at the house left alive, and no one knows we’re there, it’s a straight shot to the truck. Hell, the truck is a four wheel drive. Sarah can drive it over the ground to us if needed. Obviously we need to recon the site first, but that’s the base of a plan.”

  “We’ll recon right from the substation.” Sam said.

  “How will we do that?” Sarah asked

  Sam lifted up a ratty old backpack neither Sarah nor I had ever seen before and said, “I’ll take out my drone and we’ll send it over there.” Looking at our blank faces, Sam continued, “What did you think we were going to do? Hike up the imaginary hill, hide under yon imaginary tree line, and spy on the house through the scope of your rifle? That was a joke! It’s the 21st century, catch up. We'll use my drone."

  So that’s exactly what we did. We drove out to the substation which was completely deserted, Sam jumped out of the truck bed and walked up to the gate keypad, fiddled with it for a few seconds, and the gate rolled open for us. I drove the truck into the gravel parking area and turned it off. Sam jogged up to the truck and began fishing through the backpack and pulling out his drone and controller.

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  The drone was a small, well used model with the four propellers and a camera fastened underneath the body. It was completely black and Sam whispered to it like it was alive as he prepped it for flight, “Hello my darling Cutiepie, I’m going to get you ready for a flight now. I want you to go out and have fun. Find us shiny new things to play with, Okay? Daddy loves you.”

  He glanced over at Sarah and myself and I guess we were both staring at him, because he said, “What?”

  Sarah silently turned around and walked away. I shook my head and refused to answer. With a sniff, he turned back to the drone, set it on Bessie's tailgate and picked up his controller.

  “You’re going to have to catch up with the rest of the world soon, Dru.”

  “Sam, we used drones all the time. I’m all caught up.”

  “Not to mention your drone is positively ancient.” Sarah chimed in.

  “Not ancient. Well loved. That’s all.”

  “Okay, boomer.”

  We both turned towards her with surprise on our faces.

  “What? You two are so archaic, it’s the obvious response to your old drones, ancient movie quotes and general weirdness. Boomers.”

  I laughed. Sam went back to his controller and fired up the drone mumbling, “What does she know?”

  The drone took off and Sam expertly piloted it towards the house. We crowded around the controller to watch until Sam got frustrated with our closeness and snapped, “Back away and let me fly! I’ll stream it live on my throwaway Facebook page. Like and follow and all of that shit - watch it on your own phone. And yes, I have a Facebook group for exactly this kind of shit. I’ve been doing this stuff a while.”

  So, we both went to Facebook, found his group called, “Foods I like to peck at” and joined. There was a question we had to answer to join.

  “Am I hungry?” I read, surprised.

  “Type yes.” Sam answered

  I typed yes and I was allowed to join the group. I saw there were one hundred and thirty-seven members in the group and as I scrolled down, I saw nothing but silly little posts about food and a bunch of selfies of Sam eating food. For fucks sake.

  Soon, Sam had a live stream started with a note to “everyone” that he needed no help at this time, so no commenting, please.

  We watched a livestream of a drone as it took off and flew over the open green space towards the safehouse. As it circled at a high altitude, I was able to see the house was exactly as described.

  It was a multistory "McMansion" with a driveway that angled in from the approaching drivers left side of the house with a semi covered carport in the small courtyard like parking space. The garage was an extension to the drivers right that completely hid the parking area from view on that side. To the drivers left, the driveway was parallel to a high brick privacy wall that covered the view to that neighboring house.

  The road to the house was basically a boomerang left curve from the locked gates at the front of the neighborhood, all the way to the cul de sac where this house was located. It was well thought out, and a great way to bring multiple people into the house without the neighbors noticing. All it needed to complete the scene was an upscale SUV with tinted windows. Kind of like the SUV I stole from Broadhead a day ago.

  Kind of like the one we are watching drive down the street towards the house right now.

  Son of a bitch. “Do you see what I see?”

  “You mean that Black SUV?” Sam replied.

  “No way. Should we get that drone behind them and watch them?” Sarah joined in. “Maybe we can learn something if they are actually going to the house.”

  “This is crazy timing.” I said. “Like, suspicious timing.”

  “Suspicious?” Sarah asked.

  “Yeah, think about it. The drone has been up in the air 5 fucking minutes. We got here 15 minutes ago. A Broadhead SUV is driving up to the Safehouse? Right now?”

  Sam jumped in, “Nah. This stuff happens all the time, Dru.”

  “No it doesn’t.”

  “Sure it does. Trust me.”

  “Sam, every time you open your mouth I trust you less. What the hell is going on here?”

  “Dru, timing is everything. I’ve got great timing. Impossibly great timing. It’s part of my knack. You shoot shit, I arrive at the perfect time. Perfect time to hit a guy on the head with a frying pan, perfect time to catch a ride during a shootout, perfect time to see Broadhead fuck up. In this case, I think we lucked out big time. Think about it. If you were Broadhead right now, what would you be doing?”

  I thought about it for a second. Slowly, I said, “I’d be freaking out over two people who seem to be looking for Frank, better at fighting than professional kill squads, and who obviously escaped with a prisoner.”

  Sarah walked between us and said, “I’d be worried that this prisoner might talk, right? I mean, he actually knew stuff we needed. Even if he berserked as planned, they'd have to assume that we might get some knowledge out of him.”

  “More importantly,” I said, getting into the moment, “standard doctrine says after failed ops, you reassess and redeploy to make old intel useless.”

  “Or even to make old intel a trap.” finished Sam. “I’ll bet you that car is crammed full of Extra security.”

  “I’ll do you one better,“ said Sarah, getting excited, “If Frank is alive, I’ll bet you they’re about to move him!”

  Sam and I looked at each other and Sam started to laugh and did a little shuffle that looked suspiciously like an indigenous dance, “I have the perfect timing to upset things! It’s what I do!”

  “Can you fly that thing while we’re driving?”

  “Driving, yes. Chasing a car like in a Car chase movie? No. And it maxes out at about 45 miles per hour. And I can’t get too far away from it- say about 6 miles. But I can bring it in for a landing on a moving truck if we are going slow enough.”

  “How slow?”

  “Say, fifteen miles per hour?”

  “Okay, let’s get prepped. We’ll get back into the truck, watch the camera, and see what happens. There are three distinctly different outcomes we’ll face, depending on what we see. We will either be calling the whole thing off because it’s now a death trap, we’ll be assaulting the house as planned, or we’ll be following the SUV because they loaded our… target,” for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say Frank’s name, “into the SUV for transportation to a new location.”

  “We will not be calling the whole thing off!” Sarah yelled.

  “I don’t mean giving up, I mean not dying a horrible death today because we were stupid enough to attack a house with 30 armed men ready for us. If that SUV drops off five or six armed men, we’re going to go somewhere safe and make a new plan. Why? Because we have no idea if that’s the only SUV coming today, the tenth SUV to already come and drop off soldiers, or what.”

  Not backing down, Sarah ground out, “We are going to rescue my husband.”

  I matched her stare and said, “Yes we are. If he’s there, we’re going to get him. I promise you that. But it doesn’t do him any good if we die stupidly. First we watch and get intel. Then we decide on a final plan.”

  We got the truck ready, drove outside of the gate, and sat on the side of the driveway watching the live feed. By the time we did all that, the Black SUV had pulled into the driveway and parked. The driver opened that door, got out, and reached to the back door, opening it. A grim smile spread on my face as I realized there was nobody in the back.

  Sarah, unaccustomed to retrievals and actions of this sort, was confused. “Where are the soldiers? I thought you said there were soldiers in that SUV.”

  “They don’t need them,” I replied, “because there won’t be anything to guard. They either decided a trap was a waste of time, or they think they already have enough people there. This is a retrieval.”

  “You mean…?” Her breath caught in her chest.

  “Yup. You were right. They’re here to take somebody away.”

  As I finished saying that, the front door opened and a security guard came out onto the front porch. Then in what I can only describe as a total twist, a woman was led out of the front door with a hood on her head.

  “Okay,” Sam muttered in surprise.

  “Wait. That’s not Frank. That’s a woman or a small man. What’s going on? Where's my Frank?” Sarah was edging up towards hysteria with each question.

  “Wait.” I said. “Just wait, and watch.”

  After the woman was led into the back seat, the driver closed the door and went to the back of the SUV, opening the hatch. The drone moved to get a better view through the hatch opening, and we could see that the prisoner was in the seat behind the driver, but the other half of the back seat was folded down. The front door opened again and two security guards carried out a covered stretcher with a body on it. It was impossible to tell what was on the stretcher other than “a body”.

  “Oh my God. Is that Frank? What is that? Is it a body? Is he alive?”

  Sam answered her, “Sarah, try to stay in control. Nobody would bother to move a body right now. Whoever that is, they are alive.”

  I made up my mind right then, “We’re taking that SUV and we’re grabbing both prisoners.”

  Both Sam and Sarah agreed immediately.

  “Keep the drone in the air, and we’ll start heading towards Lakefield Parkway. If they are following standard doctrine, they will turn towards us to avoid congestion and traffic, we can set up at the corner where those cross-walks are and try to get them to stop. Sarah can drive the truck and pull a U-turn and come back to get us after we take out the driver and security. If I’m wrong and they head the other way towards Rt. 67. We’ll follow if we can and try to find a spot to interdict them on the road.”

  Sam said, “There are two Broadhead operatives in the front seat, but nobody else. They’ve got to be planning on meeting up with another vehicle, right? Two people isn’t enough security.”

  “Most likely,” I replied. “It’s possible they are running fast and chose speed and anonymity over firepower, but I doubt it. So they will probably meet two more SUV’s about a short distance away from the Safehouse. Personally, I’d have the escort right there at the gates, but since I don’t see any, I have to assume they’re trying to save this safehouse and don’t want any attention of any sort. They’re running scared and overly cautious. I think they’re making bad decisions right now.

  “The escorts will probably be waiting in a nearby parking lot and will pull out to bracket them as they pass. This is why we need to hit them right fucking now. If this works, there’s got to be a check-in they’ll miss and the other SUV’s will be out looking for blood.”

  We started driving about the time the SUV reached the end of the neighborhood road and stopped to open the gate. Luckily, I discovered I was right as the SUV turned our way. Sam and I jumped out of the truck onto the crosswalk island and pushed the button to cross.

  “They might recognize me, Sam. If they do, they won’t stop. Their job is to get away, so we’ll probably be safe from harm, but we’ll miss this chance.”

  “Don’t worry. Stand behind this crosswalk pole and think thin thoughts. I’ll distract them plenty.”

  Sam walked out into the intersection as the walk sign lit up and the SUV had to stop to let him by. Perfect timing. Damn, that's a good knack to have. Kind of the opposite of my entire life, actually.

  Right before he got to the passenger side of the SUV he spun around and slammed both hands on the hood yelling “What the hell is wrong with you white people! You come in here and think you can just run over me and mine? Reparations!”

  While the driver was staring at the madman in front of his car, the passenger was far more professional and exited the car quickly and smoothly, drawing his gun and telling Sam to step back. By then, I had my pistol braced on the crosswalk pole and fired two shots into his chest, turned the pistol three inches to the right and put two rounds through the window into the driver who never even got a chance to look my way. My knack is pretty damn useful too.

  Being dead, the driver no longer pressed down the brake pedal, and the SUV began to slowly move forward at idle. Sam had already jumped in the passenger side and slammed his foot over the console and onto the brake and then he put the SUV in park.

  I rushed over as Sam unlocked the doors, I yanked it open, and he released the seatbelt, so I could pull out the dead driver and dump him on the street. Sarah had completed her U-turn and pulled up as Sam and I picked up the passenger body and threw it into the back of the truck. We ran around to the driver, picked him up, and tossed him on top of the passenger. Sarah took off and drove back to the substation.

  Sam and I jumped back into the bloody SUV. It had been maybe 30 seconds. Neither captive had uttered a word. No cars were around.

  “Reparations?” I asked.

  “Godsdamned right.”

  I drove back to the substation and Sarah opened the back hatch and jumped into the SUV, feverishly pulling the cover off of the body strapped to the board. Sam jumped out and ran around to the back seat on the drivers side, opened the door, and yanked the hood off of the female passenger.

  “Martina!” he cried, “I found you. You’re safe now.” Shocked, I looked up into the rearview to see a young lady furiously spit out a gag in her mouth and glare daggers at Sam.

  My head seemed to split open for a tiny fraction of a second and before I could even react to the intense pain, a face of a woman flashed through my mind. The face was similar to this Martina sitting in the car, but definitely not really her. It was a white face with blue paint across the cheeks.

  The image faded immediately and the pain went away almost as fast.

  I heard Sarah gasp and I froze: I couldn’t move. I sat in the front seat staring straight out the window breathing shallow, nervous breaths. Please. Be alive. Please. Please. Be Frank. Please. Be alive.

  “Frank! It’s my Frank! He’s breathing! Frank! Can you hear me, baby? Dru, help me!”

  I jumped out of the truck and ran to the back of the car. Frank groaned and seemed completely oblivious to the outside world, and I couldn’t blame him, because as Sarah pulled the sheets off, we all saw clearly that he was missing his right leg from the knee down and his left foot was gone, both stumps neatly bandaged and looking professionally amputated. Those motherfuckers had been amputating parts of his body as punishment during his torture sessions.

  But he was alive, and we had him back.