Chapter 20

The following character appears in this chapter:

The Spirit of Ordinary Magic,

The younger of the two brothers, he appeared to be a young man of eighteen or nineteen years of age.

The Spirit of Ley Line Magic was correct in his prediction. That evening shortly after sundown, just as it was getting dark, the Leaders of the Major Demons appeared outside of the Perimeter wards around the Dragon Queen of the West’s house. Their presence activated the Nesting Ward around the house. All of us inside quickly became aware of their arrival.

“We have visitors,” Dad announced as soon as we detected the Nesting Ward snapping into existence.

“Let’s go see what the problem is,” Mom said in a tired voice. She wasn’t ready to handle problems this late in the day. Mom, Dad, and I appeared just inside the Nesting Ward a few seconds later, still in our human form. We immediately recognized the two Leaders of the Major Demons standing outside the wards.

“We need to talk,” the Silver Leader told us on seeing us appear.

“We want revenge,” the Red Leader added in a loud, upset voice.

“What has happened?” Mom asked in a more alert voice.

“I lost one of my followers. It was the result of a fool accident, but those Iranians disrespected the body. They shot him a couple of dozen times and then tried to hide the body. They called a bunch of their high ranking leaders in and were going to display the body the next day. Fortunately, some of the others from his team sensed what had happened and prepared a little surprise for the Humans. When they exposed the body to the noontime sunlight, it exploded and set off the other explosives that his teammates had packed around the body along with a quantity of material to act as shrapnel,” the Red Leader finished in a somewhat satisfied voice.

“We want permission to increase the amount of trouble that we are causing. We haven’t really killed many of the Iranians yet, but our teams are upset about what happened,” the Silver Leader told us. Mom frowned for a few seconds before answering them.

“Yes, go ahead and increase the level of violence, but do it against the military and the civilian leaders, not the normal civilians. DO NOT start anything against the oil or gas fields yet. I am saving them for the next phase of the operation,” she told them.

“We’ll start tonight,” the Red Leader assured her before both of them vanished.

“Next phase?” Dad asked after we had returned to the house.

“Yes, we are going to need to become personally involved with changing the way the Iranians behave and conduct business, but not immediately. Let the Major Demons continue to soften them up for a while,” Mom told us.

The following day, Mom was anxious to begin work on the new Nest, or at least the entry tunnel.

“We should do some exploratory cutting using the new spell, at least enough to see how hard it is to use. We could extend the entry tunnel a short distance into the mountain to gauge how much work is needed and how long it may take to finish just a simple Nest,” she told us.

“Alright,” Dad agreed. “A few hours should be enough to show us what all is involved. We don’t have to cut the entry tunnel to its finished size. We can make it just large enough for us to move through. Later, we can finish it to size and length,” he agreed.

“Who all should go?” I asked.

“Steve, me, and you, Craig,” he told us.

“I’m going also. I want to see how you do this,” Mom told us.

“Okay, the four of us then,” Dad agreed. Mom needed to talk to Jorani and Chu about the children before we left, while Dad got with Keith about watching Dragon Security.

“You could take Stewart and Franklin also,” Keith suggested.

“No, not yet. We need to see how this is going to work first,” Dad told him. “There will be plenty of time later for others to help,” he added.

When everyone was ready, we transferred to the top of Sawnee Mountain in our Reality from Mom’s front yard. There weren’t any visitors there when we arrived, but we did remain there longer than needed to give Steve a chance to look around, as he hadn’t been with us on the previous visits. We transferred to the Dragon Reality after he had looked around. However, there were questions that needed answers before we transformed into our Dragon forms.

“Dallas told me that the initial cut for the entrance was about 80 feet (24 m) above the ground. How are we going to reach it? Can we transfer up to it from the valley, or could we land on the initial cut? Is it large enough and what size Dragon should we be?” Steve asked.

“I believe that the initial cut was for a twelve-foot-tall Dragon, so you would need to be that size or smaller to land there. It might be better to try transferring from the valley floor. I don’t believe that the initial cut would provide enough room to land there, and there’s probably not more space than two of us in our Human forms could fit in there yet,” Dad told us.

“Let’s fly down there and look things over on the way down,” Mom suggested. “We could also check out the rest of the area around the mountain while we are doing that,” she continued. We all changed to our Dragon forms at the forty-foot-tall level and took off to fly around the area of the mountain and check things out. There were some deer and other large animals in the forests around the mountain. They appeared to be rather wary of our shadows as we sailed over them. It appeared that Dragons had hunted in this area previously.

We all made a pass or two by the entrance cut on the east side of the mountain. Even flying as slowly as we could, it didn’t allow us much time to study the initial cut for the entrance. It didn’t appear to be more than about three feet (0.9 m) deep by about 12 feet (3.6 m) high and 10 feet (3 m) wide. We would definitely not be landing there for some time. Eventually, we all landed in the valley after checking out the surrounding area. Our appearance startled the few animals grazing there.

“So that’s the scar that Dallas was talking about,” Steve said as we all looked up the east face of the mountain.

“Yes, that’s it,” Dad agreed before continuing. “After seeing the cut that the Spirit of Ley Line Magic made, it appears a bit small and not somewhere that we could land as Dragons presently. In fact, it may require a sliding platform just as the Stone Mountain Nest has. For now, we’ll have to do a direct line-of-sight transfer up there being very careful. That recess isn’t very deep presently. Our first job will be to deepen it so we can work in there more easily. I’ll go up there and see what we need to do,” he told us. I didn’t think that was a good idea.

“Why don’t you let me transfer up there first, Dad?” I asked. “That way I can help you when you transfer up,” I continued.

“Do I look helpless, Craig!” Dad asked, offended.

“No sir, but I’m younger and can recover more quickly,” I told him.

“What about me?” Steve asked, also offended.

“Give us a chance to see how this spell works first, Steve,” Dad told him. “Then you can join us.”

“I want to get a look at it also, but after you have deepened the entrance some,” Mom told us.

“Alright, dear, just have a little patience while we see how this will work,” Dad told her. “Go ahead, Craig, and transfer up there. I’ll join you in a few minutes,” he continued.

I transferred up to the entrance. It really wasn’t a problem, but there wasn’t much space. Fortunately, the entrance was around ten feet wide (3 m wide), so there was space enough for the two of us. Dad joined me a minute or so later. We turned to look at the back of the recess.

“A nice clean cut,” Dad said after looking at it for a few seconds.

“Yes, he appears to have had a bit of practice,” I agreed. The back of the cut was solid granite and very smooth.

“How large should we make these blocks?” I asked.

“If I remember correctly, granite is around 168 pounds per cubic foot (76 kg per 30 cm cube),” Dad told me.

“So a cubic yard is going to be around... 4500 pounds (2690 kg per cu m),” I said after doing a little mental arithmetic.

“Yes, about that. So we need to balance the size of the blocks we cut against how much weight we can move,” he told me.

“So how large do we make the blocks?” I asked again.

“Let’s start with a three foot square block 18 inches deep ( 90 cm square by 45 cm deep),” he suggested. “That should be somewhere around 2200 pounds (1000 kg),” he finished.

“Okay,” I agreed. “We can start by cutting the sides, top and bottom of the tunnel and then cut the blocks to size,” I told him but quickly realized that we had a problem.

“How do we get behind the blocks to cut them off?” I asked.

“Yes, I was just considering that also, Son,” Dad said but didn’t go any further for a time.

“Woodworkers often have the same problem when making a hole or a recess in the middle of something,” he stated after a time. Dad had been doing some woodwork lately.

“Now if you have a drill or a router, it’s not a problem. If you don’t or can’t use one, as we can’t, there is another way. First you drill holes where the opening changes directions. Then you insert a narrow saw blade and either follow the outline of what you are cutting to the holes to change directions, OR you can cut at an angle up to another hole or point in the outline. With sufficient cuts, depending on the outline of the figure, you wind up with the desired hole.

“We’ve already cut the outline. Now we need to remove the blocks of waste with an angle cut. Let’s cut the block faces at three feet square (90 cm sq), and then carefully make the angle cuts to the side of the tunnel. This will allow us to remove the wedges of rock. We can make angle cuts to both sides from the middle of the tunnel. This will eventually get us deeper in the tunnel,” he explained while drawing lines on the smooth granite face.

“It’s going to be slow work,” I said.

“Yes, but we aren’t the Spirits of Magic and can’t appear inside the rock to make the cuts,” Dad said with a grin.

“Alright, I’ll go along with that idea, but we should work on the two middle level blocks to do this,” I told him after a minute of thought. “Also, maybe we should make the top layer of blocks smaller, say one and a half foot cubes (45 cm cubes) instead of larger ones. I don’t like the idea of large blocks of granite falling when they are cut loose,” I told him.

“That’s a good idea, Son. We’ll also work the bottom level of blocks last, so the falling blocks don’t mar the floor,” Dad agreed, but had more to say.

“We need to be careful how deep we make the angle cuts, so we don’t cut into the tunnel walls past where we have made the side, top, and bottom cuts. We don’t want to have to try to repair deep cuts,” he warned me.

We started on the angle cuts then on the two center rows of blocks. Even being only 18 inches deep (45 cm), the wedges of rock were still quite heavy. After removing a couple of wedges, we had another decision to make.

“Where are we going to dispose of these wedges?” I asked.

“That does present a problem,” Dad agreed, looking at the wedges on the floor. “Perhaps we should take a short flight to look for a good disposal area,” he continued before we both transferred back to the valley floor.

“How is it going?” both Mom and Steve asked.

“We have started but need to determine where to send the waste rock,” Dad told them. “There will be a lot of it,” he added. We all changed to our Dragon forms and took off to look for an appropriate area to dump the removed rock. After a bit of searching, we all wound up circling a relatively clear area about three quarters of a mile (1.2 km) southeast of the valley where we could dump the rock and not interfere with any of the small ponds or streams in the area. Dad and I both left markers to define the area that we had selected, before returning to the valley and then the entrance.

“Are you ready to try this?” Dad asked as we looked at the wedges of rock that we had already extracted.

“Yes, let’s wrap a spell around each piece and transfer them to the dump area,” I told him and cast the spell around the first wedge before transferring it to the marked area. It seemed to go pretty well, and it wasn’t too heavy to move. Once the wedges were gone, we returned to cutting out more and larger wedges. We had made fair progress on the two middle layers of blocks when Mom appeared in the entrance.

“How is it going? Steve and I are bored and want to help,” she told us.

“Craig, why don’t you and Steve continue to work on removing the blocks, while Mom and I take a flight to look at the dump area, and see how the waste is spreading out,” Dad suggested, before they transferred back to the valley and Steve joined me. After I explained how we were removing the waste, we got started again. We were about ten feet (3 m) deep in the two center layers when Dad returned.

“That’s going to be enough for today,” he told us. “We’re returning home. There are other things that require our attention,” he added before we all returned to the valley and then transferred home to the Human Reality.

This new problem involved some of Dragon Security’s customers. The agents that China’s State Security Department had sent here to replace the Guoanbu’s agents, who were to set off an atomic device near our houses, had not returned to China for some time it seems. Instead, they had managed to hack into the banking system’s computers to learn who our largest customers were. They then sold this information to the Iranians, who sent operatives from their Revolutionary Guards unit here to organize terrorist cells to attack our four largest customers at the same time. They hoped by this to destroy our reputation in the Security business.

The Iranians had smuggled weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment and supplies into the country to arm and outfit these cells of locals that they had organized. They had selected the members of the cells from the worst gangs in several states and had trained them at several locations in the desert of the southwest U.S. They had to move them to Atlanta to await activation earlier than they intended, as their activities had drawn the attention of not only local and state police forces, but from several Federal organizations including the FBI, the ATF, and the Border Patrol among others. This led to their eventual undoing.

The people they had recruited were NOT the kind to sit and wait quietly until it was time to strike, especially after spending a number of weeks in the desert training. They had large egos and a belief in their own importance, plus in their right to do whatever they wanted. They were also into drugs and drinking as well as bragging about their own importance and how bad and dangerous they were plus what they were going to do. Their Iranian trainers had also been unable to keep them undercover once back in the city by any method short of shooting them, which would have destroyed their plans; not to mention getting them shot also, as these people were dangerous.

It is not surprising then that word of their intentions got out and was picked up not by the police or Federal agents, but by some of those in the Magic community who were less than scrupulous about who they hung out with or worked for. They in turn passed it along to some of those working for us, and this is how we learned about the plot. Not all of the details mind you, but about the attacks. We learned more from the survivors of the attacks and from the Iranians who we eventually captured.

“So, when are they going to attack?” Steve asked after we had been briefed on the plot.

“All that we learned was that they were going to attack four of our largest customers, but not which specific ones,” Dallas told us, as she and Doreen were the ones who had learned about the plot.

“The Iranians again! This is starting to sound like a broken record,” Dad injected, obviously in a bad mood.

“They just don’t seem to get the message,” Keith added.

“So, four of our biggest customers? Biggest at what? Jewelry? Manufacturing? Retail or wholesale?” I asked.

“We don’t know, but have looked up the accounts of our largest local customers. We came up with eight names. The problem is they are spread out all over the city and not located near each other,” Doreen told us.