Missy Makes Mayhem (Missy the Werecat Book 5) (24 page)

Nov 18, 2019

Robert and Connie met Millie’s flight and, after helping her get her bag and bring it out to the car he had waiting, they were driven across the airport to the special terminal which the military used for its flights.  They were waved through the gate and drove out onto the tarmac and up to the big C-17 transport plane sitting there waiting for them.  It had arrived only two hours earlier from Kabul.

When they got out of the car, they saw some familiar faces.  Not only was Oliver there but also Major Schermerhorn from Army Intelligence.  General Blake had managed having the major assigned to his command and was using him to handle things.  Things like having a bunch of civilians climbing on board a military aircraft to sift and sort through all the special items which Team Twenty-Two had captured and sent back.

Major Schermerhorn had been in Mexico when Robert had brought Oliver and Millie there to search for Candace.  Later, after Candace had been rescued from WIJO, the major had been part of the Army’s task force which had moved over to Bogota, chasing after the Manuel Rodriguez criminal organization.  After the success of that operation, the general had then fully vetted the major, who would soon be getting his promotion to lieutenant colonel, and had briefed him about various paranormal and supernatural activities.  The major now understood what Team Twenty-Two was all about and he also understood about witches.

The major had already explained to the contingent of other military personnel also present how Robert was heading the FBI’s newly established Psychic Division.  He had met Oliver’s flight from D.C. earlier and had brought him out, introducing him to the others as one of Robert’s psychics.  Now, after once again performing the introductions for the new arrivals, he led the way up the stairs to board the plane with the others following closely behind.

Millie had already been worried, due to the huge scale of this task, and on surveying all the equipment which was waiting for them, she quickly exclaimed to the others, “This won’t work, I’m afraid.”  She looked at Oliver and could see he was also looking a bit lost.  “We need to examine all of these items individually, and separately.  Then we can identify which things we can sense any energy signatures from.  There will be lots of stuff here which we won’t be able to use, for one reason or another.”

Oliver said, “I was thinking the same thing.  Can we bring everything into an empty hanger, perhaps?  Once we’ve sifted and sorted through them all, we can try seeing whether any of the items we do experience some residual energy from might point us to anywhere in Philadelphia.  Hopefully, we’ll get signals here from some of these things.”

Millie nodded in agreement and said, “Then, for those things we feel have signatures but which don’t seem to draw us towards anyplace nearby, we can have those packed up again for Chicago.”

It took a while to accomplish this plan but Major Schermerhorn was able to get them a special hanger and arranged for getting the complete contents from the aircraft brought inside.  Thus, a few hours later, Millie and Oliver were hard at work.  The variety of objects was surprising, with all sorts of military gear as well as personal items that had been abandoned.  And, of course, there were all those mattresses and blankets.

They both would handle each item, review what amount of energy signature they believed was present and then debate how to classify it.  While the majority of things ended up over in the pile designated as having no value, there were a few piles which slowly began to appear which contained items of significance.  These piles were small but growing.  However, it was indeed a tedious task going through it all.

Major Schermerhorn had allowed most of the personnel to watch all this, but from a distance where they wouldn’t overhear any conversations.  And, a few had been posted at the entrances and exits to ensure privacy.  He looked at Robert and Connie and said, “Those two so-called psychics of yours made quite a name for themselves down in Cancun last summer.  When you first brought them down, everyone on the task force was pretty skeptical, as you can well imagine.  That all changed, of course, when they led you out to that house where the kidnappers had actually held Candace Axtell.”

Connie said, “You mean, to that house that went boom.  I almost lost Robert when that happened.”  She looked over at her ex-husband, recalling how scared and worried she’d been.  Of course, that incident had triggered her realization that she truly still loved him and had ended up bringing them together again.  She was actually very grateful about that, now that they’d lived through it all.

The major nodded and said, “Yeah, we actually did lose three people in that explosion.  We were lucky everyone else made full recoveries.”

Robert said, “You mean, we were lucky Missy McCrea came down.  You do realize she used her healing abilities on all three of us, right?”  In addition to he and Millie, an Army Intelligence investigator had also been in a coma.

“Yeah, the general explained all that.  Missy the supernatural soldier.  She and that other one, Tracy McGonagle.  I’m still having trouble believing half the things he told me about those two.  I can accept there being witches like Millie and Oliver out there, who can find people.  But those girls are something else again, aren’t they?”

-----

It was getting late, so Robert finally insisted they all head over to their hotel, check in and get something to eat, and then return back to the hanger in the morning.  The progress had been excellent, with more than half the items now evaluated, but he could see it was really draining for both Millie and Oliver.  He wanted them to be fresh when they actually would attempt locating anyone using all the objects they’d identified as significant.  He was well aware of just how great an effort that required and it was important to get it right if they were to succeed in preventing the bombings.

The plan was to first locate each of the three cells, but do so without alerting anyone in them they’d been identified.  Otherwise, the concern was some of these terrorists might disappear, going who knew where, only to surface and bring death and destruction elsewhere.  These jihadists had all come to the U.S. prepared to die, intending to do so with maximum casualties for whichever group of American citizens they would end up choosing to blow up in the process.  Many of them were foreigners rather than Afghans, recruited by WIJO and trained for these suicide missions.  Hence, the camps where they had been staying for the months prior to this.

There were still ten more days until the parades, so once these cells had all been placed under observation, taking action to stop them could then be performed.  There was time and it was important to proceed with caution.  Failure was not an option.

Robert asked the major to join them for dinner and the five of them enjoyed a quiet meal, with the restaurant up on the top floor of the hotel; they were seated at windows which provided them a nice view of the city of Philadelphia.  They avoided any talk of the search they were doing until everyone had finished eating and a round of drinks had been served.

Then Robert asked the major, “Have you heard anything yet as to what strategy will be used for rounding up all of these terrorists?  I’m guessing it wouldn’t be good to show them being publically attacked by a bunch of storm troopers.  We don’t want to give WIJO any publicity, even if their attacks all fail, right?”

“True.  They might try and spin the story to show America as the bad guys, claiming all the explosive devices were planted evidence rather than anything their people had planned on using.  Showing American police or soldiers killing Muslims would be just the sort of propaganda they’d want.”  The major thought for a moment longer and then added, “Or, even though their attacks failed, they could still get lots of mileage from the story, by actually taking credit for their plans and then using the obvious threat about there being a next time to further instill a lot of terror.  We lose either way.”

“Well, you could simply send Missy McCrea in there.”  Millie had recently heard some interesting comments from other members in her coven concerning the Alessandra D’Amato rescue which Missy and Troy had done.  She hadn’t had a chance yet to ask Missy or Tracy about that and wondered if either Robert or Oliver had heard anything.

Everyone stared at her for a few moments, with blank expressions.  Then Major Schermerhorn asked, “You aren’t thinking about having her assassinate them all, are you?  General Blake was very clear she doesn’t do that, even though she’s quite capable of it.  He says she once admitted she could probably crush the life out of everyone inside a fairly large conference room.”

Robert said, “Actually, that was discussed back at “P” Branch.  It always gets back to our not wanting the general public to learn about witches and especially not letting it be known the U.S. government would actually use supernatural powers and abilities.  That’s on a par with our using nuclear weapons.”

Oliver nodded in agreement and said, “I’ve seen her in action, doing that, using her powers.  But, all those kills she did during Candy’s rescue were sort of covered up by that huge fire Tracy caused along with all the shooting which the Team Twenty-Two guys were doing.  At least, we were told WIJO never investigated any of those deaths.  Otherwise, if they had any evidence of supernatural weapons being used, they surely would have talked about that by now.”

“Very true!  Nothing supernatural was suspected about either the fire or all the gunfire.”  The major had actually discussed this with General Blake during the original briefing he’d received about witches.  “While we would all like nothing better than to let Missy make mayhem, there just doesn’t seem to be any good way for covering that up afterward.”

Robert laughed and said, “Drew told me how concerned all the politicians were about using supernatural soldiers.  That’s why Missy was asked not to reveal anything when she served with Team Twenty-Two during Campaign Angel’s Wing.  She did a great job, with no evidence left behind of her using her powers.  Of course, she was almost killed over there.  We are
not
looking to put her in harm’s way again.”

Connie realized the men had all missed something, too busy focusing on Missy killing lots of people without any way of covering it all up.  She looked at Millie and asked, “Why are you suggesting Missy might help?  What did you mean by si
mply send Missy in there?”

Millie laughed, glad to see Connie at least had tuned in on what she’d said.  “I was thinking she’d go in using her latest ability.  In her spirit form.  She can pause now during her Shifting.  In between her human form and her cat form, she can exist as a spirit, completely invisible.  She still has all her other powers, of course, including being able to communicate with Mike.”

-----

It was late, but Ron Quigby wanted to check in on his brother.  He and Martin King stopped by Don’s room and when Andrew Poarch opened the door so they could enter, they found Don sitting over at his desk, deeply engrossed with his studies.  Ron said, “Hey, little brother!  Getting ready for the mid-term exams?  How’s it going?”

Don looked up and smiled.  “Terrible!  Too bad you got all the brains in the family.  All I got was my good looks and my ability to play lacrosse better than you can.”  They both laughed.

“We’ll leave the very questionable matter of your lacrosse skills to be determined at a later time, out on the playing field.”  Ron would concede the fact his brother was a better player, but only to himself.  He would never come out and actually admit to that out loud.  “And, you definitely got the ugly gene.  Right everyone?  Marty?” 

Marty said, “You got that right!  Andy, how do you stand it, stuck rooming with someone so ugly?”

Andy felt compelled to say something in Don’s defense, so he said, “Wait a minute.  If it weren’t for my handsome roommate here, we wouldn’t be getting all the help those Quigby girls are giving us.  I think I might actually do okay on these exams we have coming up.”

“Yeah, I heard about that.  It’s partly why we stopped by.”  Ron knew Kelsey Powers and the other girls had organized things and, not only had Kelsey’s Korner been started back up again for their own third class yearling classmates but they’d gotten several of the top cadets to clone the idea for the fourth class plebes as well.  There now were special classes aimed at getting all those in need through the mid-terms, which Don and Andy were very appreciative of.  Cadets helping cadets was becoming very popular at the academy.

Don asked, “You want me to ask the girls to arrange some help for you also?”  He not only knew full well this was
not
what Ron wanted but, knowing what their father would say about the whole thing, he considered the idea quite hilarious.  Ironic how much his own views had changed in the few months he’d been at the academy.

Ron knew his chain was being yanked and was proud the way his little brother had gained the confidence to joke around with him.  “No, I wanted to be sure you really were getting enough help yourself, asshole.  Otherwise, when you wash out, it’ll make me look bad.”

“Okay, great!  Good to know.  Got it covered.  What’s the other reason you stopped by?”

“Well, remember Cadet Melo?  You asked me about him earlier when he got caught harassing Cadet Robinson.”  Ron knew his brother had started seeing Emily but he’d not actually talked with him about that, as yet.

“Of course!  That was when they assigned Missy as Cadet Robinson’s team leader.”  Don began blushing.  “I, um … I actually see Emily now all the time.  You know, since Tracy’s
my
team leader and … and since
she
has Missy, and Missy and Tracy … and, well … you know.”  The more he tried to explain, the more tongue tied he got and the more red in the face he got as well.