Chapter 124

Leading a team meeting was a lot harder than it looked.
Cadon McReynolds stood at the front of the conference room, staring out at almost three dozen faces. He’d seen his father do this more times than he could count. Aaron always made it seem like it was the simplest task imaginable. Just stand up here and talk, tell everyone what the plan was, and they would listen and then do it.
Now that he was the one standing here, he could see why his sister had had so many problems with it when she’d first started leading the LIGHTS team. Still, Jo had made it look easier than this.
“Well, Cadon, where do you want to start?” Elliott Sanderson asked from a chair to his right. The Guardian was slouched so low, he looked like a high school student in the back row of math class. Except for much, much bigger. “We’re going to the Rock, right?”
Cadon nodded. That much had been decided. After the Capitol, the next largest number of LIGHTS team members was being held in Alcatraz. It just made sense that they would go try to get those people out before the Vampires decided it was time to execute them, too.
But just waltzing over to California and opening the prison cells wasn’t going to cut it. In order to throw the Vampires off of their trail so that they could sneak in without being caught, they’d need a diversion.
Cadon was hoping that Margie Joplin and the Australians would be willing to launch some sort of an attack on the other side of the country to draw President Crimson and his armies away from the west coast. Exactly what her objective should be, he wasn’t sure. He was planning to get that nailed down during this meeting.
The leader of the Australian army, as well as that region of LIGHTS, was sitting dead in the center of the room across from him, her arms folded, her face puckered, her blue hair making her look even more intimidating. Cadon tried not to focus on her.
“Cadon?” Jamie Joplin, Margie’s brother, said from a seat just a couple down from Elliott. “You want to tell us where we are going?”
“Uh… yeah… yes,” Cadon said with a firm nod, running his hand through his hair. “Yes. I would like to tell you what our next mission will be. I have been talking to some of the senior leaders of the team, and we agree that our next objective should be Alcatraz. As you may know, many of our LIGHTS team members are locked up there. So… we need to go get them out.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Margie asked, not unfolding her arms, and not changing her scowl.
“Actually, I’m glad you asked, Margie. Ms. Joplin… uh… ma’am.”
In his IAC, the tiny computer inside of his eye that let him talk to his other team members, Elliott said, “Calm down, bro. You don’t have to call her anything but Margie. Or Marge. Or Large Marge.”
He knew his “funcle” was just trying to be funny. Margie wasn’t large at all.
But she was intimidating.
Cadon cleared his throat. He wished his dad was there. If Aaron was in the room, even if he wasn’t leading the meeting instead of Cadon, just seeing his reassuring smile would’ve made everything better.
“My plan is that the Australians will actually create a diversion on the east coast so that the Vampires don’t know that we are taking a smaller force to the west coast to attack Alcatraz.” There. He’d gotten that much out.
“All right,” Margie said. “That sounds like a decent plan. Where, exactly, would you have us concentrating our forces? Keep in mind, I will have to send a large chunk of my forces back to Australia because they were only here to take down The Capitol. Now that they’ve done that, the prime minister wants them back. They are having their own Vampire problems. Now that Holland is no longer controlling the Vampires running around the continent, it’s a lot easier to blow their ashy brains out. She needs troops to do that.”
Cadon nodded. “All right. That’s understandable.” A lot had changed in the few days since Holland had been taken out. The vice-like grip she had over the rest of the Vampires was gone, so their powers had lessened significantly. They were back to being able to kill Vampires with one well-placed bullet, instead of needing titanium bullets or silver knives plunged over and over again. “Will you be able to stay to lead the diversion attack?”
“Yes, I will be able to,” Margie said. “But I’d like to know where I’m attacking.”
“There’s Grand Central Station,” Elliott offered. “The Vamps have really taken over that place. I hear it’s a great place to get killed--if you’re a human.”
Cadon had no idea what Elliott was talking about, but he didn’t want everyone else to know that. “Hmmm, that’s a potential target,” Cadon said, stroking his chin. Everyone told him he looked so much like his dad, except he had his mother’s chin. Not that a chin made a face…. “What other intel do we have about Grand Central Station?”
“Tunnels,” Brandon Keen, Elliott’s son, summed up. After everyone turned to look at him, he elaborated. “There’s a hell of a lot of tunnels from GCS that veer off to the buildings all around it, so it’s a great place for Vampires to hang out. They can go up through the buildings, find someone to eat, and then bring them back beneath the terminal.”
“Great, just what we need. More goddamn tunnels.” Cale Ryan, one of the Healers, who had incidentally gotten shot by friendly fire in their last attack concerning a tunnel, did not look amused.
“You’ll be with us, in Alcatraz, Cale,” Cadon told him, hoping he’d feel better.
“Great--an island covered with Vampires surrounded by rocks, frigid water, and sharks. Just what we need.”
Cadon cleared his throat. Apparently, the Healer wouldn’t be happy no matter what he said. “I think Grand Central Station is a great alternative objective. Margie, can you and your team look into what you will need in order to attack that location and destroy as many Vampires as possible?”
“Sure we can,” Margie said with a shrug. “What’s our ETD?”
“Uhm… I don’t know.”
“It means estimated time of departure, Cadon.” Amanda Sanderson, Elliott’s daughter, who was sitting by her dad piped up with a wide smile on her face. Whether or not the smile was intended to be encouraging or if she was laughing at him, Cadon wasn’t sure.
He had always found her annoying.
“Yes, I know. I just don’t know when we’re going to launch. Thank you, Amanda.”
“You’ll need to get into position before we even leave here for it to be a true diversion,” Jamie told his sister. She only nodded, like she already knew that.
Everyone thought they were smarter than everyone else today.
“I would like to launch our attack on Alcatraz by Thursday at the latest,” Cadon said. That would give them a day to plan and two to get there.
“That seems quick,” Ashley, Jamie’s wife, said. Cadon was surprised she’d said anything at all. He figured she was still lost in her thoughts. Her son was gone--into the portal with Jo and her team--so she was obviously worried about him. Having just gotten her husband back from the president’s prison in the Capitol Building, she was obviously stressed about her son being gone now. Hopefully, Jo would be back soon with all of the team members who had gone with her.
And one more--their mom.