Storm of Lightning Read online

  I looked over at Taylor. She was staring at the screen in shock. When she could speak, she said, “When did this happen?”

  “Two days ago. Your mother went back to Idaho to tell your father and prepare to come back with us permanently, but then the Elgen attacked the ranch and threw off our timetable. We had to delay our plans and they beat us to her.”

  “I need to go to Idaho,” Taylor said. “I need to show myself to them.”

  “Absolutely not,” the chairman said. “That’s what the Elgen are hoping you’ll do. It’s a trap. You can be sure that the information the police are working off was provided by Elgen.”

  “I don’t care; they have my mother,” Taylor said.

  Gervaso said, “Taylor, right now your appearance will raise far more questions than it will answer. And we’re certain that you’ll disappear again as soon as the Elgen find you.”

  “They can’t charge your mother with murder or kidnapping without a body,” Joel said. “How can they prove a murder’s taken place without a body?”

  “There’s more,” the chairman said, motioning to his assistant.

  The woman advanced the DVD to another news clip.

  “In an ongoing investigation, Boise police discovered more than two kilograms of heroin in a car belonging to Meridian resident Julie Ridley.”

  There was footage of a police officer standing before a row of microphones holding aloft a plastic bag filled with white powder. “This is one of the biggest drug busts in the history of the Boise DEA. This much heroin has a street value in excess of a half million dollars. We’re happy to keep this off the street.”

  The clip returned to the anchor. “In addition to the drugs, Idaho forensic investigators have found traces of blood matching the DNA of Mrs. Ridley’s daughter, Taylor Ridley, who was reported missing nearly four months ago. Mrs. Ridley is currently being held in the Boise jail. Bail has been set for a quarter million dollars.”

  There was video footage of people screaming at Mrs. Ridley as she was led in handcuffs into the jail by police.

  Taylor was crying. “How could it be my blood?”

  “They took our blood in the academy,” I said.

  “This is bad. Really bad.” She looked at me. “Michael, we’ve got to do something.”

  Joel interjected. “We will. But in the meantime, you don’t need to worry. She’ll be safe in jail.”

  “They can’t protect her in jail,” Taylor said. “If the Elgen have someone in there, she’s as good as dead.”

  “They won’t hurt her,” the chairman said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Dead bait doesn’t draw fish.”

  Taylor’s lips pursed with anger. “My mother’s not bait.”

  “In this case, she is,” Joel said. “They’re using her to lure you to them. If they wanted to kill her, they would have done it already.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “They could have easily done it.” I looked at the chairman. “But we can’t leave her in jail.”

  “No, we can’t,” the chairman said. “And we won’t. We need to extract her and Taylor’s father. We’ve asked Gervaso to come up with a plan.”

  We both turned toward Gervaso. I wondered how long he had known about this and not told us.

  Gervaso looked at Taylor. “First, we’re going to get your mother out. I promise. But it’s going to be tricky.” He looked back at me. “You’ve both broken in and out of much more secure facilities. The challenge here is, we need to rescue Julie without the Elgen or the police knowing we’ve rescued her.”

  “How do we do that?” Taylor asked.

  “We need to get your father to post your mother’s bail; then, after she’s out, we disappear with both of them. This won’t be easy since it’s not likely the Elgen will let your mother out of their sight. And, of course, we have the Boise police to worry about. Which brings up another problem. Your father is a police officer, and we’re pretty sure that he still doesn’t know anything about you or the Elgen. From what I understand, he’s a stubborn man.”

  “As stubborn as a brick,” Taylor said.

  Gervaso nodded. “This is going to be a small, clean operation. In and out. My plan involves you two and Ian. Also, I have a friend we can trust in Idaho who will be helping us out with logistics. No one else. The more moving parts there are, the more that can break down.”

  I nodded. “Okay. When do we start?”

  “Timing is critical. I’d like to be in contact with Officer Ridley by tomorrow evening. Boise is a nine-hour drive from here, so we’ll leave early tomorrow morning.”

  “We’ll be ready,” I said.

  “Good. We’ll meet in front of the main house at oh-six-hundred hours.” Then he added, “That’s six a.m.”

  The chairman looked at us. “Good luck.”

  As we walked out, Taylor said to me, “Thank you for helping me rescue my mother.”

  “I owe you. You helped me rescue mine.”

  Taylor frowned. “My mom must be terrified.”

  “We’ll get her,” I said. “And your father.”

  “My father,” she said. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.”

  “He’s going to be happy to see you.”

  “Yes,” Taylor said. “And he’s going to be totally freaked.”

  Funafuti Island, Tuvalu

  The Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu consists of four reef islands and five atolls, a total of about ten square miles in area. The islands are isolated in the Pacific Ocean, a coral oasis more than five thousand miles northeast of Australia and forty-one hundred miles southwest of Hawaii. The nation’s population is less than ten thousand, making it the third-smallest populated country in the world. It also attracts few tourists, due to its remoteness and inaccessibility. The nation has one of the best of the Pacific island economies, with a peculiar source of income—their .tv Internet domain suffix, which generates millions of dollars a year.

  The Elgen had built their Starxource plant on the largest and chief island, Funafuti, then dragged power cables north and south to five of the other islands. Even though the plant had already been operating for more than four months, the natives had delayed the ceremonial ribbon cutting to honor Admiral-General Hatch’s wishes. Hatch had also insisted that for “security reasons,” all non-natives leave the island before the Elgen’s visit.

  Of course, Hatch had delayed the ceremony to suit his own plans. The Starxource plant was the Elgen’s fifth largest in the world, yet ranked near the bottom of their plants in actual energy output. But the plant wasn’t built for power—at least not the electrical kind. Unbeknownst to the Tuvaluans, the plant was built to serve as the home base of the new Elgen operations—the Elgen Kremlin.

  The vast majority of the plant was a bunkered fortress, with advanced weaponry and surface-to-air missile capability that the Elgen had clandestinely been stockpiling for more than a year, enough explosive power to demolish the entire nation seventeen times over and repel an attack from Australia or New Zealand. The plant also had an extensive prison, with more than two hundred cells and an advanced reeducation center patterned after the center in Peru.

  While the people of Tuvalu slept, the Elgen fleet sailed through the cover of darkness, securing the waters surrounding the islands. At three in the morning the Faraday docked off the coast of Funafuti and, using the Tesla as tender, began shuttling soldiers onto their base. The Edison, the Elgen’s new battleship, had taken up a defensive position off the southwest coast of Funafuti, and Elgen helicopters kept surveillance over the waters.

  Tuvalu spent no money on military, and the small police force, dressed in British uniforms, typically didn’t carry guns. In fact, the total number of firearms registered to civilians was twelve, and the entire police force owned just twenty-one guns, which meant a single Elgen patrol carried more weaponry than the entire nation. The peaceful Tuvaluan people were vulnerable to the extreme.

  The Starxource plant’s ribbon
-cutting ceremony was attended by the entire Tuvalu administration—the governor-general and staff; prime minister and staff; deputy prime minister; chairman of the Public Service Commission; assistant secretary-general; secretary of foreign affairs; chief immigration officer; the police commissioner; the ministers of education, finance and economic planning, health, natural resources, energy and environment, trade, tourism and commerce, and foreign affairs; and the ambassador to the United Nations.

  The UN ambassador was the one Tuvaluan official who had already been brought into the Elgen ranks and had, for some time, been receiving payment for his service.

  The ceremony began a little after noon at the nation’s capital, with a Tuvaluan proclamation of friendship followed by a traditional ceremonial dance. Then the party moved, at Hatch’s insistence, behind the walls of the Starxource plant.

  While Hatch, his personal bodyguards, and nine of his twelve EGGs led the delegation on a tour of the facility, the plant’s electricity was shut down across the rest of the islands and throughout most of Funafuti. A small commando squad of Elgen frogmen commandeered the sole Tuvaluan naval ship—a Pacific-class patrol boat—taking the captain and crew as prisoners.

  All radio frequencies were jammed, and the Elgen’s new amphibious vehicle, the Franklin, began the landing assault on Funafuti and two other islands, Nanumea and Nukufetau.

  As Hatch had planned, inside the Elgen facility the leaders of Tuvalu were completely isolated from the outside, oblivious that their country was under attack.

  After an hour-long tour of the facility, the delegation was seated for dinner in the large, crescent-shaped observation room above the rat bowl. The metal blinds were drawn so that the dignitaries could not see the actual bowl, and as Hatch had planned, they still had no idea how the electricity was generated, outside of the Elgen’s standard explanation of a hybrid form of cold fusion and organic composting.

  Two roast pigs were served for dinner, along with grass-fed Australian beef and lamb, salad, and sweet potatoes. For dessert the Elgen served two Australian–New Zealand favorites: Pavlova, a large meringue filled with fruit and cream, and Lamingtons, a cubed sponge cake coated in chocolate and coconut.

  Hatch made sure that the best regional wine was available and had purchased three cases of a Penfolds Grange at nearly eight hundred dollars a bottle. The Tuvaluan dignitaries were well fed and slightly inebriated when the dinner was over, and a dozen Tuvaluan women, wearing ceremonial outfits with grass skirts and crowns woven from palm leaves, performed another traditional Tuvalu ceremonial dance.

  As the dance concluded, one of the young women approached Hatch, dropped to her knees, touching her forehead on the ground between them, and then offered the admiral-general a flowered lei. Hatch accepted the lei but did not put it on.

  Afterward the prime minister of Tuvalu, a slim, silver-haired man dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt, approached the lectern near the center of the room. He turned to face Hatch.

  “Our esteemed benefactor and friend. In the Tuvaluan anthem we sing,

  “Tuku atu tau pulega

  Ki te pule mai luga,

  Kilo tonu ki ou mua

  Me ko ia e tautai.

  ‘Pule tasi mo ia’

  Ki te se gata mai,

  Ko tena mana

  Ko tou malosi tena.

  “Please, esteemed admiral-general, allow me to translate to your language.

  “Let us trust our lives henceforward

  To the king to whom we pray,

  With our eyes fixed firmly on him

  He is showing us the way,

  ‘May we reign with him in glory’

  Be our song for evermore,

  For his almighty power

  Is our strength from shore to shore.

  “You, esteemed Admiral-General Hatch, have come as a gift of the God above to bless our humble island nation. The gratitude of our people will forever shower down to you from heaven. I hereby bestow upon you, esteemed admiral-general, our greatest honor, the Tuvaluan star, and declare you a citizen of Tuvalu.”

  The crowd broke out in applause, then stood in an ovation. Hatch almost looked moved by the gesture. Then, at the prime minister’s bidding, Hatch rose and walked to the lectern while the prime minister returned to his table.

  Hatch looked out over the congregation, then slowly raised a glass of wine to toast the assembly of Tuvaluan dignitaries. “To a new day,” he said.

  “To a new day,” the audience repeated, clinking their glasses.

  Hatch set down his glass without drinking from it. “Prime Minister, dignitaries, friends, I am very much entertained by your ceremony and hospitality, as primitive as it may be. You have come here to celebrate the completion of a new Starxource plant, our thirty-sixth in the world. I say ‘you,’ because we, the Elgen, are here to celebrate an entirely different matter.” He looked around the room, and his expression darkened. “Guards.”

  At Hatch’s word a force of more than a hundred Elgen guards ran into the room with drawn automatic weapons. At first the confused guests watched with curiosity, as if the display of force were just another part of the day’s entertainment. But as the moment dragged on, their amusement turned to fear. A few of the dignitaries attempted to leave, but they were forcefully returned to their seats. The noise in the room grew as the Tuvaluans began talking with one another in their native tongue.

  “Silence!” Hatch shouted. After all were quiet, he continued. “Today, you, the former leaders of Tuvalu, came to celebrate a new power in your country. In this you are correct. But it is not electrical power as you supposed, but political power. We are celebrating a new regime.

  “While you have been here in our facility, our Elgen forces have been at work. Of course, our work started more than a year ago when we demolished your last diesel power plant and took complete control of your electricity.

  “This afternoon, we seized your lone radio station, destroyed your phone towers, and jammed all communications. You are now completely cut off from the outside world. There will be no broadcasts and no phone calls.

  “Our takeover continued this afternoon when we overthrew your navy, if I might be so presumptuous as to call it that. No one will be allowed on or off the islands. All seacraft have been confiscated or sunk, and our fleet is patrolling the islands, destroying anything that enters or attempts to flee these waters. Now you understand the true reason we insisted that all non-Tuvaluan residents be sent off the island weeks ago. We did not want any foreigners meddling.

  “Your police force has been imprisoned in their own jails, and my Elgen guard has taken control of this nation. I would say the nation of Tuvalu, except it is no longer to be known as such. From this time forth Tuvalu shall be known as the Hatch Islands. Speaking the word ‘Tuvalu’ will be punished by public flogging.

  “In this time of transition there will be many floggings. Those who do not attend the floggings, which will become my nation’s prime amusement, will be dragged from their homes and flogged themselves. In other words, you will enjoy the entertainment or become it.

  “From this time forth the nation of Hatch is a dictatorship, and I, as supreme commander and president, declare your constitution null and void. My Elgen forces have authority to make and enforce all civil and criminal laws as they see fit.

  “To ensure that we have your utmost cooperation, we have established reeducation camps, where all of you, beginning right now, will be admitted.

  “Prime Minister, you will now again come forward and bow down to me as your new sovereign and kiss my hand as a token of your allegiance.”

  The man, visibly shaken, stood. He looked over his own bewildered and frightened subjects. Then he turned to Hatch. “I will not bow to you or any man. I bow only to God.”

  “God,” Hatch said, smiling. “Where is your God in your time of need?” His eyes narrowed. “I will tell you where your God is. You are looking at him.

  “As to you refusing my order, I was hopin
g you would. I made you the offer out of mercy, not desire. I had a much better plan for you.

  “You will be stripped of your clothing, bound, and your tongue will be cut off; then, for the rest of your life, you will be kept in the central square in a cage with monkeys. You will sleep with the monkeys, you will be fed with the monkeys. And the good people of Hatch will be brought to see your humiliation and mock you.” Hatch turned to the audience. “From this time forth, this man will be known not as the prime minister of Hatch, but as the Prime Monkey of Hatch.” Hatch turned back to the prime minister. “For the rest of your life, you will live with the monkeys, and, someday, you will die with the monkeys. If you try to take your life, your sons and daughters will take your place. Do you understand me?”

  The prime minister’s face flushed bright red with anger and fear.

  “Do you understand me?” Hatch repeated.

  “Yes,” he said bitterly.

  “Mr. Prime Monkey, you are an educated man, so you have, no doubt, studied history. You will recognize that I have much in common with another great man who changed the world, the great Spanish explorer Hernando Cortés.

  “We both came from the sea to a primitive culture who welcomed us as their savior. Like them, you, and your people, did not know that I came to rule you and claim your land as mine.

  “But I am more merciful than Cortés. I will spare you and your subjects their lives. This revolution has taken place without a single shot. And even as it was with Montezuma, the great Aztec king, it will be with you. In the end, your own people will turn on you. They will mock you in your new cage and stone you with their insults. They will sell T-shirts with pictures of you in your cage.”

  “The joke is on you, Hatch,” the prime minister said. “Our nation is sinking into the ocean. There will be no Tuvalu in thirty years.”