Thursday January 24, 2019

2:30 pm

Sons of Liberty compound, Northern Pa

Dante and Eve had made it inside the camp as they had expected. Nikki had found a militia member that had passed away a few months ago who had a son about Dante’s age and he and Eve had showed up at the compound “looking for his father”. They were brought inside and were being held in a room awaiting Marcus Tolliver. Simon was in the trailer outside the compound on a video conference with Nikki who was back at the farm. Simon would have liked to have Dead and Lee on this assignment, but he left them on the farm to watch over Nikki and Eva. Simon looked down at his laptop and Nikki was giving Simon a look that didn’t exactly say “Let’s go and make Eva a brother or sister”. Simon had every faith in the world that Dante would take care of everything inside, but it still felt like the Rage was inside his stomach working on his hammering technique. Finally, they heard a door opening over their comms and Marcus Tolliver’s voice could be heard. He was asking what they wanted and Dante recited from the script they had written about searching for his father.

Simon heard Tolliver explain about Dante’s father having succumbed to pneumonia several weeks back and was offering Dante his condolences. Simon waited patiently until he heard the code word from Dante. Simon had an engineered strain of avian bird flu in his bag of tricks so they put a false skin on Dante’s right hand. They put a small amount of the chemical on his hand and a transparent cover went over that. Once Tolliver came into the room, Dante had covertly removed the outer covering so when he shook hands with Tolliver, the strain would be delivered. Everyone on their team had been inoculated against the disease previously so there was no risk to Dante or Eve. Simon listened intently until he finally heard Dante say,

“Thank you for your words Mr. Tolliver, I was just hoping to have an opportunity to reconnect with my father. I can’t believe he’s dead.” Simon heard Eve consoling Dante when Tolliver asked them if they wanted to stay on for awhile and see what drew his father to the camp and to Tolliver’s movement in the first place. They had anticipated this tact and Dante again stayed on script and said that he was traveling to the west coast to start a new job the following week. Tolliver continued to press the 2 and when it became apparent that the two would not be talked into staying, the door opened again and they heard the sound of footsteps enter and then a scuffle ensued. Several long seconds later, they heard Dante and Eve being forced along somewhere and then a door opened and closed. Nikki had a frantic look on her face and was just about to say something when Simon held up his finger and a second later, they heard Dante whisper,

“Simon, plan B.”

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