Chapter 141

The boat arrived in San Francisco sooner than Cadon had anticipated. The little human boat captain had certainly been driving it as quickly as possible. He hoped whoever had arranged for the man’s payment had taken into consideration the great danger he’d been in. Even if the guy had insulted him by telling him he was a baby.
After they disembarked, Cadon looked around for the transport vehicles that Margie had said would be there. She said she’d get them to an airport. After that, they’d be relying on locals to help them. Elliott and Jamie knew some people who would be able to get them home. That was what his understanding had been, anyway. But as they stood on the dock of the bay, watching the boat roll away on the tide, Cadon saw no one who even slightly resembled the Australian military headed their direction.
“Well, what’s the plan, boss?” Elliott asked him. He was still a little damp, but the breeze on the open deck of the boat had dried him for the most part.
“You tell me,” Cadon said with a shrug. “I thought we were supposed to get a ride to the airport.”
“I’m trying to get my sister right now,” Jamie said. “She’s ignoring me, though. That’s not surprising. She essentially ignored me for the first hundred years of my life, so why would it be any different now?”
Jamie was chuckling, but the expression in his eyes said he wasn’t kidding, and Cadon began to think that perhaps that ride to the airport wasn’t going to work out.
“Elliott, is there anyone here that you know of who could get us a ride to the planes? For that matter, are there planes?”
“There are some locals who can probably hook us up,” Elliott said, looking more self-assured than Cadon felt. “Just give me a few minutes.”
His uncle walked away, probably so that he could concentrate on the conversations he needed to have in his head, and Cadon let him go, knowing that he needed to tell everyone that there’d been a change in plans.
He just didn’t know what that change in plans was or why it had happened.
He didn’t have to think about it too long before Cale asked, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “So rather than meeting us here and lifting us out of California, or whatever, the Australians used the manpower they had available to blow the hell out of what was left of the Vampires and not to take us home?”
“Uh… in a nutshell, I think that’s right,” Cadon said with a nod. “Though, in fairness, I wasn’t under the impression that they were planning on moving us all the way back to Missouri anyway.”
“Well, I’m not walking back. So… unless you’re renting a hell of a lot of cars….” Cale shrugged, looking annoyed, but then he seemed to be annoyed most of the time, Cadon had noticed.
Before he could respond, Elliott was back. “All right. We’ve got help on the way. We just need to hang for a few minutes, and then we’ll get a ride to the airport.”
“And… is there someone at the airport waiting for us?” Aurora asked. She sounded snarky, too. For someone who’d just gotten her freedom, she wasn’t quite as overjoyed as one might’ve hoped.
“Yes.” That was all Elliott said to her, and it came out like someone who was speaking to someone that he wasn’t particularly fond of.
Cadon couldn't remember if there was some sort of a history there or not, but from the sound of things, there had to be.
Jamie asked the question the rest of them were wondering about “What happens when we get to the airport?”
“Cargo plane. Our favorite,” Elliott replied, looking at Cadon with that last part. Aurora looked confused, but then she was still a prisoner when the team from Russia had come over in the cargo plane to rescue them. Most of these people had no idea what Elliott was talking about.
Jamie said, “They took a cargo plane from Russia to get us out of the Capitol Building, and we took one back over there to get Holland.”
“We just love them damn cargo planes,” Heather said, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed.
“And you’ll probably have to take one back to your husband, wherever the hell he is,” Elliott reminded her.
Heather growled and muttered a bunch of unintelligible curses under her breath. No one dared to say anything else to the Hybrid. The more time Cadon spent with the Hybrids, the more he began to think that something had to happen in the brains of these people who were half one thing and half something else. Because they sure were mean. And it seemed like they just kept getting meaner and meaner all of the damn time.
A silence fell over the group. Cadon looked around, checking their location for any potential threats. He didn’t think there were any Vampires nearby. He’d be able to feel them in his gut if there were, but then, he had no idea how quickly they might be able to materialize if they had the right transportation. As far as he knew, there weren’t any other large groups of Vampires hanging out near San Francisco, other than the cell they just took out. But it was possible they could’ve had more of their kind stationed on the mainland that he simply wasn’t aware of.
It didn’t take too long before Cadon and the others heard the whirr of engines in the distance. Cadon’s eyes focused on Elliott. He didn’t seem nervous, which made Cadon assume that these were people he was expecting.
“Are those your friends?” one of the prisoners Cadon didn’t know said.
“Yeah,” Elliott replied, looking bored more than anything else. “You guys ready to go?”
As the vehicles came into focus, Cadon was surprised at what he was looking at. Mostly, they were old trucks, a few smaller cars, and a van or two. Cadon hadn’t been expecting so many vehicles to show up, but then, none of them were big enough to take more than a handful of them to the airport, and there were plenty of them needing rides.
The cars drove up and came to a stop a few feet away from them. Doors opened, and grungy-looking people with automatic rifles, knives, and other large weapons strapped to them leaned out. “You Dr. Sanderson?” an older man with long white hair and a beard down to his waist shouted.
“That’s me,” Elliott replied, finally reanimating, to some degree. He loped over to the car. “Are you Rogers?”
“The same.” The old man offered his hand, and they shook. “Load ‘em up, and we’ll getcha over to the hangar.”
Elliott motioned for the rest of them to follow. Cadon looked around, making sure everyone in their group felt comfortable going with these people. Everyone seemed fine--except for Mallory. The older woman he’d seen her with, the one he assumed was her mom, had her arm around Mallory and was walking her toward the closest car that wasn’t full.
Cadon waited until everyone else was loaded up and then hopped in the closest truck, climbing into the back with a lot of the prisoners they’d rescued.
None of this was quite what he’d expected, but so far it was working out. Nothing horrible had happened. They’d managed to get everyone out alive. Thanks to Elliott, they were headed to the airport, and hopefully, they would all be back home in Missouri soon enough.
He still had some questions for Margie, but for the most part, he couldn’t complain.
As the vehicles took off, headed for the airport, he noticed Mallory sitting by her mom in the back of a car. She looked a little less worried than she had before, but she still had a frightened look in her eyes.
She looked at him, right into his eyes. He tried to smile at her, but he wasn’t sure if she saw before they pulled away. Cadon took a deep breath and sank down onto his bottom, ready to get all of this over.
He’d been jealous of his sister when his dad had chosen her to lead the team. It was difficult to accept that his dad didn’t think he was the best choice for the position. Now, though, after having had a taste of it, he was no longer jealous. He’d had no idea just how unbelievably difficult it was to run a mission like this. From now on, if Jo wanted to lead the hunts, Cadon would stand back and let her.
And if she didn’t, he would support that, too.
If he was ever to find himself in the position where he was in charge again, he probably wouldn’t change anything except for maybe to start delegating first thing. A lot of these people had more experience than he did. They had better resources and reasoning skills. He’d managed to make this work with their help, but if he had asked Elliott to handle transportation to begin with or had Jamie in charge of the withdrawal from the island, maybe he could’ve changed some of the more difficult parts of this journey.
At any rate, they were on their way out of San Francisco now, and he hoped there wouldn’t be another difficult mission anytime soon.
Something told him that he wouldn’t get that lucky.