“With any luck, the most dangerous players will already be at the meadow area or in the cave leading to it. We feel they will send a few people back, but mostly try and continue down there, figuring that their security people can handle it. There may well still be innocents in the Lodge, but you can’t tell who’s who and it’s certain death to try. Anyone who comes upon you must be killed, as quickly and as silently as possible, with no hesitation. Man, woman, child, dog—I don’t care what. If you’re discovered, do what damage you can and blow what you can. If you’re fatally down, there will be a way to blow whatever you’re carrying all at once.”
The understood the plan.
“Bishop, your main job, if you think you can handle it. is to carry and place as many charges as possible at the antennas in the common. You’ll be exposed there, but you should wait until all hell breaks loose in the Lodge, as it inevitably will, and everyone rushes there. There are seven small enclosed boxes that simply have to be placed on the concrete pads and a trigger switch thrown on each. Their combined weight is about fifty pounds. Not much, but forty five seconds after each switch is thrown they will go with enough force to wreck or possibly topple those antennas, putting SAINT off the air.”
“I think I can manage that,” the Bishop said. “I’ve carried heavier packs than this. But what of the eighth outlet at the meadow? If they can’t put it out for good, it will still have at least a local outlet.”
“We’ll have to forget it and hope that Lord Frawley’s blast does the trick,” MacDonald replied. “It’ll be well defended and will have those of greatest power there, making it next to impossible to get near. If you somehow can, then all the better—take out whoever you can. After the dishes are blown, you’re on your own.”
“Don’t fret about me, old boy. I can think of quite a lot of mischief to do in the—what?—half hour or so until Pip’s thing blows. Don’t fret.”
“What about me? What am I supposed to do?” Maria asked him. “I can’t carry much weight, and one of those automatic popguns would probably knock me over.”
“Your first objective will be in getting them in and settled at the first assembly point,” MacDonald told her. “Then you’ll have to do some reconnoitering. You’re small and light and you know the place well. That night, you’ll get the team up to the Lodge. After that—you’re on your own.”
“Why don’t Maria and I blow the oil line first?” the Bishop suggested. “She can come with me and assist on the common, and, after that, she might be able to get me down to that meadow.” Unspoken, of course, was that she would be under someone’s watchful eye after things broke loose who would see that she didn’t then try and renew old friendships.
“Maria?”
She nodded.
“O.K., then. We’ll start now with a cross-section of the Lodge itself…”
Over the next week, they practiced and rehearsed over and over again. Shadrach, the Sikh, was unhappy that the rope and ladder assembly, which arrived on the fourth day, couldn’t really be tested, but it was understood that they were probably being watched and, even if they were undiscovered, finding a suitable cliff in the region and climbing it would be sure to attract unwanted attention. They were, however, able to rig up a forty-foot rope off an inland cliff area and try climbing it at night. It was only a fraction of the distance they would have to go, but it helped.
The three professionals had no trouble with it, nor did MacDonald or the Bishop. Frawley had considerable problems, but he made it, and swore he’d make it no matter how long it was. Maria, too, had extremely sore arms after it, but since both would have a rope ladder affair they felt certain they could get up there if they had to—which they did.
Treating Maria as one of the team helped her ego enormously, and MacDonald continued to pay real attention to her in the evenings, giving her rubdowns and being gentle with her. He still didn’t agree with her actions back in California, but he understood them, he thought, and that made her betrayal a little easier to take.
They had gradually adjusted their schedules forward, sleeping much of the day and up all night, and the time passed all too quickly. They weren’t ready, it was clear. They needed more time, more information, more practical exercises—but they weren’t going to get any of them. The thirtieth came, and MacDonald and Maria sat on the beach and watched the dawn. For the first time, all of them, including him and her, felt the finality that was approaching quickly.
“Greg?” she asked nervously. “Do you think there’s a God? A real heaven and hell?”
He sighed. “I don’t know, and that’s honest enough. Frawley’s a brilliant man, and he’s convinced there’s nothing but the laws of science. The Bishop’s every bit his equal, I think, and he’s just as convinced that God, heaven, hell, and the rest of it exists. Me, I’ve always just sort of felt there was a God I guess, but I can’t tell you who or what God is. Take that trio in there. They all are believers and all believe in one God. The woman’s a Catholic and her view is pretty close to the Bishop’s, although I think she doubts and has doubted since they blew her kids away in a random shooting spree. The Nigerian is a firm believer in his God as the only one, and in some ways his god’s the same as the Christian one. The Sikh has a lot of Hindu stuff in his religion, even some reincarnation I think, but he’s still convinced that his god’s the same one the others have. The Hindus and the Buddhists and the like have different ideas and many gods, but they may have a little of the truth. There’s no way to know without being there.”
“I know. I never thought of it much until I went into the convent, even though I was forced to be a good church goer all the time I was growing up. For all its complicated rituals and beliefs, Catholicism is an easy religion, really. It doesn’t demand a whole hell of a lot. Go to church every Sunday and on certain other days, take communion, confess your sins, say some prayers or do other penance, then go out and sin all over again. It’s an easy thing to fall into, particularly when the Church makes sure you get all the basics, but deep down I never was able to swallow it whole.”
“Do you believe in heaven and hell?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I think that there’s got to be a hell, just so people like the Dark Man and Sir Reginald and folks like that will get it. When you see some good people corrupted, when you see a kid who just happened to be in the way lying there beside his bike bleeding to death… There’s got to be a hell someplace. I’m not so sure about heaven, though. In a way, you have to go along with the Dark Man. If this isn’t hell, then the blood of all those innocents, the babies who die blameless, all the horror with no purpose—it just isn’t any kind of place a good and merciful and just god would allow to happen. Oh, I heard all the arguments—all the priests with their high-sounding long-winded explanations of just about everything—but I can’t buy it. Even the Bishop can go on for hours, but the Dark Man makes more sense. Either God is crazy, or He isn’t what we think at all.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it’s just one of those things our brains can’t solve, even with these super computers.”
“I like to think maybe Frawley’s right,” she said, “but I can’t. I’ve seen babies being born, and I look around and see how complicated it all is and I just can’t believe that it came from nothing. I just kind of think sometime that we’re just higher animals in His playground, though, that He never really listens or cares about us except maybe the way a farmer cares about his cows or sheep or pigs. I look back on my life and I’m just going to pretend we’re just animals, anyway. No inhibitions, no thinking, no caring. Think you could pretend, just for a little bit?”