Point Pleasant, the New Jersey beach town in Corbin’s second drawing, sat on the Atlantic Ocean just sixty miles north of them—less than a twenty-minute flight in the Black Hawks. Seven miles northwest of the town was the Monmouth Executive Airport, where the intel magicians had determined that a large corporate hangar, owned by a farm equipment manufacturer, was the hangar in Corbin’s first drawing. This hangar was the target, the site where Victor’s minions—and dare he hope Victor himself?—had set up shop to deploy the directed energy weapon. The hangar sat off by itself, on the south side of runway 14/32—a baseball field to the west abutting a football field and two matching soccer fields adjacent to the south, all surrounded by trees. It was a perfect location for the Dark Ones—away from peering eyes at the outskirts of suburbia. Tactically speaking, however, Jed could use this to his advantage. Off by itself, the hangar was hard to defend, with a wooded field south from which to make an initial approach.

“Sword One, Variable,” Ben’s voice said on the comms channel.

Jed smiled. He was glad to know his boss was in the TOC. “One,” he said, acknowledging the query.

“We just received the feed from a drone pass over the target. Two vehicles in the lot with a single tango by the parking side entrance, midhangar, apparently having a smoke. Four tangos inside—two in the north corner close to one another and stationary, perhaps seated. Two other midhangar are moving about. Will give you final pass when you’re on approach but sent the last image to your tablet.”

“Sword One, roger,” Jed said, but he didn’t pull the tablet out. He could see in his mind what Ben reported, and the layout of the hangar was already burned into his brain from the brief.

What he really needed was confirmation that the tangos at the hangar were bad guys—part of the threat—and not just innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Watcher, you have anything on the tangos?” Jed asked.

“Negative, Sword,” came a young man’s frustrated voice. “I don’t get it. We can get to them but just can’t get in. It’s like they’re inside some crazy cone of silence or something.”

Jed frowned. He wondered a moment if Corbin could get inside but assumed she was already working on it. There wasn’t anything bigger than this going on INCONUS for the Shepherds, and he knew both Ben and Pastor Dee would not have their best Watcher on the bench.

“Seven minutes,” came the call from the pilot in his headset, his encrypted radio set to both the tactical and air channels.

“Seven minutes,” Jed announced in the voice-activated mic, holding up seven fingers and showing them to the other three Shepherds. He got nods back.