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structure.
    “What the hell is that?” someone asked. 
    No one answered.  Disbelief flowed through him.  It was a walled enclosure, lined with barbed wire, and boasting two guard towers.  It looked like a prison.
    No , he thought.  I did my time.  I’ve been doing everything right.  This can’t be happening .
    As they drew nearer, he noticed there were no paved roads, just a single dirt road leading to the entryway.  And the wall wasn’t made of cinderblocks. It was wood, and huge.  He couldn’t actually see the end of the wall when they pulled up in front of the entrance, which looked like an enormous castle gate.  Whatever this thing was, it was not a prison. 
    Tom caught sight of a smaller structure outside the walled enclosure. 
    “Oh, this is not good,” he mumbled. 
    The cage was made of chain link with barbed wire running through it.  The top was also covered in barbed wire.  A small tarp had been thrown over it to serve as a roof, although it covered little more than half of it.  About a hundred men slept inside the cage, crammed together on bedrolls, spread across the ground.
    Two armed guards in the same grey uniforms as the commandos played cards at a makeshift table in front of the only entrance to the cage.  They glanced up for a moment when the truck pulled in and, uninterested, went back to their game.
    A bear of a man decked out in head-to-toe grey camouflage strode from the entrance of the enclosure to the truck.  The commandos from the plane fell in step behind him.  Obviously, this was the guy in charge.
    The man reached the truck and, without warning, shot off a volley of automatic gun fire above their heads.   Tom dove for the ground, his head crashing into the man next to him, who’d had the same impulse.
    “Out,” the man bellowed. 
    His head throbbing, Tom scrambled out of the truck with the rest of the men.  Most fell a few times, their bound hands leaving them off-balance.  They lined up in front of the camouflaged man in a sloppy version of military formation. 
    He glared at them.  Tom straightened his posture in response, noticing most of the other men with him doing the same. 
    “I am Commander Gregory.  I am in charge of this facility.  You have been deemed unfit for society due to your own actions.  You now work for us.  Food, shelter, sleep are all at my discretion.  If you work, you will be treated well.  If you do not, you will not be treated well.  Any questions?”
    A hugely muscled man standing two down from Tom stepped forward.  “Yeah.  How the hell are you going to make me?” 
    Tom watched the commander inspect the man like a bug under a microscope.  He cringed.  Oh, you idiot.  Shut up and get back in line .
    The commander walked over to the man and stood directly in front of him.  His face was calm, but violence radiated from him. 
    The man met Gregory’s look with a belligerent glare.  Tom knew what was coming and tensed.
    Without changing his expression, Gregory kicked the man in the groin.  The man crashed onto his knees with a moan.  Gregory pulled out his sidearm and shot the man in the side of the head.  The man crumbled to the ground, not moving.
    Gregory returned his sidearm to its holster, and turned back to the group with a smile. “Any other questions?”
     
     

CHAPTER 8
     
    Dewitt, NY
    D rew's dead.  
    The words crashed through Laney’s mind over and over again.  He was gone.  She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, a sharp sting in her eyes.  She was cried out.  There were simply no tears left. 
    She dragged herself from the bed and glanced at her reflection in the mirror.  Rumpled sweats, bed hair, red-streaked eyes, paler than normal face.  “Yup, looking good,” she mumbled. 
    Stopping by her office, she grabbed her laptop and her keys from the floor where she’d dropped them  the night before.  In the kitchen, she hung the keys by the back door, placed her laptop on the island, and