The Belial Stone(67)

Moving fast, they arrived at a makeshift landing strip another two thousand yards in. Jake’s heart hammered in his chest. This must be the cargo plane that filed the false flight plan every month. But why were they flying in now? Hadn’t they already made this month’s delivery? Could this operation be even bigger than they realized?

They settled into a small gully two hundred yards from the landing strip. The plane had just rolled to a stop next to a large farm truck and a Suburban. Four armed men exited the Suburban. Two other armed men leaned against the truck.

Jake grabbed his camera from his pack and started snapping away. Yoni watched the scene through his night-vision binoculars.

“It’s opening up,” Yoni whispered.

Jake fixed his camera on the cargo door as it slowly lowered. The commandos stormed into the belly of the plane. Their yells echoed through the open space. Seconds later, shackled men stumbled down the ramp. One man fell as he stepped off the ramp and was kicked in the face by a guard. Jake's grip tightened on the camera. Bastards.

Another man grabbed the fallen man and helped him stand. Then all of the men were rushing to get into the storage truck. Less than a minute later, the truck and SUV were driving across the field and the plane was turning around to take off again.

“I guess we’ve found the missing men,” Yoni said grimly.

Jake placed his camera back in his pack, trying to focus on the task. The anger burning in his chest was making that difficult. This must have been how Tom arrived. He looked at Yoni. “We need to know where they’re going. You up for a run?”

“Always," Yoni replied, already slinging his pack over his shoulder. The two men took off in the same direction as the vehicles. Jake’s boots pounded into the ground. But in his mind’s eye, each step pounded into the faces of the men responsible for this atrocity.

I’m coming, Tom. I’m coming.

Jake could make out a dim light in the distance. As they approached, more trees and shrubberies allowed them to move at a faster clip. They slowed down as the coverage began to lighten. Soon, it all but disappeared. They shifted to an army crawl and stopped at a rock encasement just out of the halo of the lights. Once again pulling out their binoculars and camera, they took in the scene before them.

Sitting in the middle of this barren acreage was a huge wooden structure. There were no lights along the top of the walls. The only available light emitted from inside the enclosure, bathing the area around it in shadows.

Jake noticed movement from in front of the enclosure and saw that the truck had pulled to a stop and all the men had been offloaded. They were now being led into the enclosure. The doors to the enclosure opened, but from his position, Jake could not make out anything inside.

“Jake, you need to see this,” Yoni whispered. He handed him night-vision goggles and pointed to the right of the enclosure.

Jake put on the goggles and looked to where Yoni had indicated. “What the…?”

There was a smaller enclosure of some sort with two guards sitting out front. Inside the enclosure, which looked like some sort of large animal pen, were about a hundred men sleeping.

“Well, I guess we found them,” Yoni said quietly.

“Yeah,” Jake replied just as quietly taking in the ominous structure and the highly-armed guards. “But how the hell do we get them out of here?”





CHAPTER 54



Baltimore, MD



Laney started as the phone rang. She was reading the Book of Enoch and had gotten lost in the story. She placed her e-reader down and flipped on her phone. “Hello?”

“Hey. Did I wake you?” Henry asked.

Stretching her arms above her head trying to work out some of the kinks, she grimaced. “Sadly, no. Sleep doesn’t seem to be happening tonight. What’s going on?”

Henry sighed. “I think I've found Paul's accomplice. I’m sending you a file. Call me back after you’ve read it.”

Laney stared at her phone as Henry disconnected the call abruptly. She might not know Henry well, but she was pretty sure practically hanging up on someone was not his usual behavior. Whatever was on the file must have really shaken him up.

She booted up the computer and pulled up the file Henry sent her. A chill came over her as she began to read and it seemed to get deeper as she kept going. She swallowed hard when she was done, her whole body felt numb as she dialed the phone.

She didn’t bother with a greeting. “Are you sure it’s him?”

“I ran it through some recognition programs to match up the features. It’s him, all right.”

“Which database did you find him in? FBI? Interpol?”

“No, none of those. I found him in Dom's database.”