even if they’d done that, or won the resulting court case, they were too mean to grease the right palms when it came to getting an interstate re-routed so that it passed nice and close to where they were situated. As a result, it’s been closed for thirty years, a hunk of useless real estate accessible only by one or two small roads that wind through the tropics.”
“Not good for whoever was fool enough to put money in, but more than good enough for this cult’s purposes,” Bolan mused. “So what’s needed is a small force—maybe just one man—who can move quickly and without detection, to extract the Senator’s daughter. Once she’s safe, then that small force can blow them out of the water. That’s if that doesn’t happen during the extraction itself. And that one man would be me, or why else would I be here? Am I right?”
Brognola clapped him on the shoulder. “Striker, you are so on the money today that I’m tempted to send you to the racetracks en route.”
Elena Anders felt her breath catch as a sob rose in her throat. She tried to choke it back. Her heart was thudding so loudly that she was sure they could hear it as far away as Miami. Her clothes—ripped denim cutoffs and a soiled T-shirt—were clinging to her. She was dripping with sweat, yet her mouth felt as dry as a desert. Her ears were ringing and her head was thumping with the effort she had put in so far, and she could feel the lactic acid burning in her muscles, sapping them of strength as she tried to loosen the paling that was driven deep into the soil, supporting the wire fence. All the while, she was glancing nervously around, the tension and anxiety doing nothing for her aching head. Thoughts that were already a whirl of confusion became even more jumbled, making it an effort to concentrate on the task at hand.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, that part of the distant consciousness that was still able to attain any kind of clarity, she was sure that they were doping her up. She was pretty sure, in fact, that everyone in the compound was getting drugged, in varying degrees. She thought of the area as a compound, like a penitentiary, even though it was supposed to be a commune. Maybe it was someone’s idea of a commune, but it certainly wasn’t hers. Nothing about the Sanctuary of the Seven Stars had been how she had imagined it when they’d ensnared her in Tampa.
Ensnared. Again, that wasn’t what some would call it. Back then, she probably would have agreed with them....
Dammit, Elena, focus, she told herself. It was only by some miracle that she’d been able to slip away from the others. A chance like this wouldn’t come around again in a hurry, so she had to make the most of it.
She braced herself and pushed, so that the paling moved in a circular pattern, carving out a larger hole. Biting through her lip until she could taste the salt of blood, and feel at least a little moisture on her parched tongue, she used the pain to drive her beyond what she thought herself capable of. She gripped the paling, pulled it to her and heaved upward. Despite herself, the effort caused a gasp of pain to escape her bloody lips.
It was done. She staggered under the weight of the picket, letting it fall away from her before it could swing in the other direction and crush her. It dropped with a dull thud, and for a moment she stood panting, listening hard and not quite able to believe that it hadn’t created enough noise to draw anyone to the spot.
Elena forced herself into action. Every second mattered, as her absence could be noticed at any moment. She had to take advantage of this, even though her muscles protested and she felt as if she was moving through the swamp mud that she knew at some point she would have to face.
Where the paling had fallen, it had dragged the wire fencing out of shape, twisting it so that it was raised up from the scrub grass around the perimeter. It gave her a gap just big enough to crawl through. She fell onto her belly and dragged herself forward, ignoring the stones that scraped her stomach and knees, and the sharp ends of wire that snagged her T-shirt and the skin on her back and arms. The extra effort required to pull herself free was almost too much, but fear of what might happen if she was to be found like this, defenseless and with no chance of flight, was enough to spur her on. Finally, she pulled herself through to the other side.
Scrambling to her feet, she half stumbled and half ran into the cover of the thick undergrowth that threatened to encroach on the old theme park, and reclaim it for the Keys.
The main area used by the Seven Stars was on the far side of the park, where the entrance had once stood, the turnstiles now removed to make a large enough path for the cult’s traffic. There were administration buildings and chalets that had been designed for workers, with a cafeteria and shower block that suited the group’s communal lifestyle very well.
Farther into the park, where some of the rides had begun to crumble with age and disuse, the Seven Stars had converted several buildings into garages for the vehicles they had acquired. Farther back still, in the machine housing of some of the rides, was their armory. They used what had once been the operating booth for the park’s central attraction—a series of motorcycles that took riders over and around rows of buses, like a signature Knievel jump—as a safe block for the spoils of their bank raids and other money-gathering activities. This left great swathes of the park unused.
The cult was small—twenty people permanently on site, with a handful of others making forays into the outside world—and they preferred to stay in close proximity to each other. Vast tracts of land lay derelict, the rides slowly being absorbed back into the landscape as the humid climate took its toll on the metal and wood, and tendrils of vegetation crept through the fence and across the cracked concrete. Cult members patrolled these areas, ostensibly to ensure that any outsiders wishing to spy or cause harm were kept at bay. Elena was inclined to think, after a while, that it was more to keep the cult members in.
But what mattered right now was that the patrols were generally conducted at night. Daytime watches were intermittent and mostly assigned when Duane got too much crystal meth in his system and his paranoia got out of control. He wasn’t top banana, but sometimes he acted as if he was. Ricke called him the head of security, and what Ricke said was law in the compound.
It was Ricke who had got her hooked on the Seven Stars. When Elena was at Tampa, she had been determined to devote herself to study. Since her mother died, she had been driven to achieve what both her parents had wanted. The senator was never as demanding a parent as her mother had been, at least not overtly. His attitude was that people had to be motivated by their own inner will and drive, not by coercion. He would have been appalled if he had realized how close to nervous exhaustion she had driven herself, working constantly when she should have been enjoying all aspects of student life, and then returning home to diligently assist her father in his work.
That was where it had all started to go wrong for her. She had no doubt that the senator had the best of motives. But the information that he was privy to, and the kind of actions he would have to sanction should the need arise, made her blood run cold. It seemed so contrary to his nature to be able to sign off on acts of war. Now, removed from the hothouse pressures of her own making, she could see how her father could prioritize and keep a sense of perspective.
She could only wish that had been the case for her. She’d become too wrapped up in her own world, and could not see beyond the realpolitik of the papers she’d read when she was assisting her father. The documents painted a worldview that, for her, was unremittingly bleak, and she despaired of finding a way of life that offered her some hope.
So when a local organization hosted a series of lectures on alternate beliefs and phenomena, she’d grabbed at it eagerly, both as a means of escape and also as a possible pathway to answers.
Looking back, she knew she’d been incredibly vulnerable, and oblivious. Her devotion to
