Daybreak Zero (24 page)

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 4 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.

Deb Mensche arrived first, right at four. The directions had said not to come early. She slipped in and closed the door so quietly that Heather did not notice her before she looked up from breastfeeding Leo. She didn’t exactly jump, but Leo felt the difference and wailed. She helped him find his way back to the nipple. “That was spooky. You might as well be invisible.”

“Leo caught me.”

“Leo’s only been around a week. He’s harder to fool because he makes fewer assumptions.” Heather smiled at her. “Glad you’re here first. Come over here, there’s something I want to say softly in case the next people in might hear through the door.”

Deb put her ear to Heather’s mouth and Heather said, “Your mission will be a decoy, but you’re not supposed to know that. One of the two people I’m going to put in charge of briefing you might betray you to the other side. I don’t know which. Be super careful and—”

Deb squeezed QRT—stop sending—on Heather’s elbow, and went to the door, opening it an instant after Arnie knocked. As he was coming in, Leslie Antonowicz joined them, carrying a large load of books and papers.

“Well,” Heather said. “Thank you for being prompt.” In a few swift, brutal sentences, she sketched what had happened to Ecco and added that the encrypted station somewhere near Bloomington had been active not long after. That much was true—it had been Arnie’s direction-finding stations that had spotted it. “You’ll be going in another way,” she told Deb, “around Uniontown, Kentucky, a nice little town just above where the Wabash joins the Ohio.” She launched into a far more detailed than necessary description of Uniontown, all the while listening intently while she talked.

When she heard the first telltale cough-and-thud of the Gooney’s engine starting, she raised her voice, rising from her desk. “Now, listen closely, I can’t stress enough—”

She had put her lunch tray as close to the edge of the desk as possible, for just this moment, and now a little turn of one finger flipped it over. The crash of dishes was abrupt; Heather swore loudly, and from his crib, Leo woke screaming. It covered the DC-3 starting its run-up for takeoff; Leo, bless his sound little lungs, could easily have drowned out a missile launch and two rock concerts.

By the time Leo was calmed, the dishes retrieved, and the briefing resumed, Quattro, the DC-3, and the mission were far out of earshot. Heather slipped the note into Leslie’s hand as she went, telling her to come back for a different conference in ninety minutes.

“Well,” Heather said, as the door closed behind Debbie Mensche, leaving just Arnie for the next session, “my little man here seems to be back to sleep.” She kissed Leo and settled him back into the crib.
Sorry about that, kid. Probably not the last time you’ll lose some sleep because your country needs you.

“As long as I’ve got you alone, Arnie, let me explain that I’m partly compartmentalizing the missions this time. You’ve got to be in both compartments because you’ve got the radio direction-finding info our agents need to plan their approach to Bloomington, but I’d like you to pretend you’re two people and don’t let them talk to each other.”

“I figured as much. Who’s next?”

“Do you know Roger Jackson?”

“Barely.”

“Young guy. Everything I know about him is that he has an abundance of woodcraft and fighting experience and a lack of permanent assignments and family. We’re going to send him in along old I-64, a long way from where Deb’s going in. James Hendrix did some work on remaining resources in that area, so he’ll be the other briefer. I wish we had more than one briefer who knew the direction-finding data; nothing personal, Arn, but we could be much better compartmentalized.”

“I’ve been wanting to beef up our DF operations. If Tarantina Highbotham starts doing those for us, down in the Virgin Islands, the long baseline would let us zero in much more closely on the intermittent stations inside the Lost Quarter.”

“Ask her to start on that ASAP.”

A knock at the door announced James Hendrix. Because he was so quiet and self-possessed, Heather didn’t feel as attached to James, and if one of them had to be the traitor, she preferred him to Arnie, her friend from long before Daybreak, or to warm, funny, adventurous Leslie.

Roger came in while Arnie and James were still looking for something to make small talk about. To keep things consistent with the way she’d behaved in briefing Deb, Heather put an enormous amount of detail into a very simple mission: Roger was to cross the Wabash on the I-64 bridge, just south of Grayville, scout thoroughly before going over, return at the first sign that he was being watched, and otherwise hurry to Bloomington overland, where he would find out as much as he could about that transmitter.

At the end, she told James she had more material to go over with him about possibly re-opening some old coal mines on the Western Slope; since he was, among other things, their paper maps wizard, with a phenomenal memory for anything he had seen once, it was a logical reason for him to stick around. She had been afraid Arnie wouldn’t go, but instead, he seemed eager, if anything, to leave.

Arnie didn’t ask one question. When did
that
ever happen before? But he and Ecco were friends. I don’t want him to have sent Steve to his doom.

Ten minutes after Arnie left, Leslie returned, her backpack loaded with papers and books; Dan Samson was almost at her heels, unclipping his stringy gray hair and wiping his face with a rag. “We raced,” Samson explained. “This psychotic child not only runs like a bunny, she’s rough with the elbows when you try to pass.”

Neither sweating nor breathing hard, Leslie shrugged. “Part of any game is using your fouls—especially when there’s no ref.”

Once again Heather laid it out: Ecco’s death, the need to penetrate the Lost Quarter and find out what was going on, and the too-elaborate discussion of everything, in the hope that if either Leslie or James were the traitor, a telltale detail might make it into an intercepted enemy message. For a long time after Leslie and James departed, she stood by the window, holding Leo, trying to think.

I don’t want it to be Arnie, but I don’t want it to be Leslie, either. I keep hoping for time to go fishing, hiking, or climbing with her; I bet before Daybreak she was one of those Rocky Mountain woman athletes that barely ever slept under a roof.

Heather drew and re-drew the diagram in her head; each of the three agents had been set up with two of her potential traitors. One agent should get through without being intercepted; the two people who had briefed that agent would be cleared, the one who had not condemned.

The sun was already low in the sky. Leo woke and announced mealtime, and Heather did her best to stop thinking, but after Leo went back to sleep, and she stretched out on her bed, she lay awake for a long time. Her thoughts were cold, dark, and sad.

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:25 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.

“Hey, I know I’m being a big sissy and all, but are you heading up to the 18th and Blake area?”

“We wish
more
people would be big sissies; it’s more fun to have company than to pick up bodies and run for medics when we find them in alleys.” Mandy, the watch sergeant, wore a not-quite-fitting steel-pot helmet.
Wonder if she had that in the attic or picked it up from a museum?
“Yeah, we’re headed that way, Doctor Yang, we’ll take you right to your door. Have they decided whether your place is going to be inside the walls yet?”

“Not yet,” Arnie said. “They really ought to settle on where the walls are going to be.”

“What I hear, arguments from all the retired officers here’s what holds it up. God knows why but a lotta ex-servicemen settled in Pueblo.” She pronounced it
Pee Yeb Low
, the way old natives were said to do; it was actually the first time Arnie had heard it that way. “So at every meeting there’s fifty guys who think they know the best way to lay out a defense.”

“Same at the national level,” Arnie said. “Everybody’s qualified to plan the train route and nobody’ll shovel coal.” He hadn’t actually found that to be the truth but he knew from past experience that ordinary people liked to hear it.

The lantern created a small pool of cheery light as they left the occupied streets.

Chatting with Mandy, he learned she’d been a kayaking guide, liked militia duty better than salvage work, approved of the new Pope’s move to Buenos Aires, and wanted to vote for General Phat. The warm chatter of the healthy young optimist distracted him, but not enough; most of his mind listened for a scrape or thud where there shouldn’t be one, told him he needed to strike at Aaron the moment he saw him, and knew he couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Oh, God. Ecco was my friend.

For tonight, he would not meet Aaron. From now on he would always walk with the watch—till he moved in closer to town, and he would, soon. He could . . .

Pauline said they blinded him with a hot screwdriver.

The empty city was so still. The watch would keep Aaron away for tonight. But Daybreak was there, always, in the dark voids of the windows, where nothing looked or saw.

THE NEXT DAY. I-57, JUST WEST OF THE FORMER GILLMAN, ILLINOIS. 5:35 AM CST. TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025.

“You wouldn’t think those guys would be able to sleep at all,” Bambi said quietly to Quattro. “Another shot of coffee?”

“Yeah, rank hath its privilege—but make sure we save enough to jumpstart the team.”

“We’re on our own thermos, Quatz. I’ve got a gallon of hot coffee in a thermos and a box of leftover wedding chow for them. They can have breakfast as soon as we dump them out.”

“So we’re going to deposit our friends there and run like bunnies.” Quattro sounded grumpy; probably the idea sat uneasy with his romantic view of himself.

“Yeah. Well, we all volunteered. How come you and I don’t just settle in to become the Duke and Duchess of California?”

“Because we’d have to fight a war with your crazy dad. Because we’re loyal Americans and we have a neurotic sense of duty. Because it’s more fun to fly.”

Sometimes Bambi thought she’d married him for that smile.

Morning twilight revealed the bare, dusty fields, wind-drifts of burned cars, burned-out buildings, and knocked-over water towers. On December 3 last year, one of the five biggest bombs in all of history had created a new, artificial bay in Lake Michigan, sending tornado-and-more force winds across the prairie.

“Gillman,” Quattro said. The place they were supposed to drop the team. “Highway looks totally clear—should we just land?”

“I think that’s all we can do.” She unstrapped, went back, and shook them awake.

I-57 ran straight north and south for more than two miles between two overpasses choked with dust dunes; Quattro touched down easily, taxied to lose speed, and came around to be ready to take off into the wind again. “All right, everybody out, and please remember that if you leave anything behind, you can reclaim it in Pueblo.”

Bambi opened the door and the three men shuffled off the plane. Larry looked like he was going fishing; Chris humped his pack with something between a sigh and a shrug; Jason looked around in all directions like a coked-up bush baby. They hurried away to be well clear of the stabilizers and the idling props.

While they checked to make sure they had everything, Bambi took a last look around for anything forgotten. She exchanged thumbs-ups with Larry, brought in the steps, closed the door, and buckled back into the copilot’s seat.

The engines roared; they raced along the empty highway and into the sky. Sunlight suddenly flared to their left. Quattro turned west. For the next hundred miles over the blown-flat, burned-black prairie, neither of them said anything.

THE NEXT DAY. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 10:20 AM EST. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2025.

Grayson laid the documents down carefully as he went through them. “Expedition from Pueblo.” He jammed his finger down on the long memo from Heather. “Direct espionage into the Lost Quarter, launched from an area we claim.” He pointed to Marprelate’s report from Pale Bluff. “Without our permission. They couldn’t have given us a more perfect reason to cancel the summit.”

“Except we’re not going to cancel it,” Cameron said, coolly.

“We have a chance to preserve everything we’ve worked for,” Reverend Whilmire said. “An almost providential chance, if you see what—”

“Oh, I understand you, Reverend.” Cam waved a hand as if trying to shake off a booger. “But I don’t care what
you’ve
worked for; what I am working for is the restoration of the Constitution. Full stop, period, that’s that. If you think Providence is doing this, then Providence can damned well be my enemy.” The Natcon looked from one face to the other. “The RRC in Pueblo is an agency of our government, charged among other things with researching conditions in the areas that have not yet called in. This mission is as legitimate as if I had ordered it. And it’s a tragedy that this man Ecco was killed, but among other things, we’re getting the fullest report yet, from Pauline Kloster, about what actual conditions are in the Lost Quarter—and General, you should note that it’s clear we need military expeditions up that way, soon, because what’s building up in the Lost Quarter can’t be allowed to build any longer. So my first order on this subject is that you begin preparations for one or more punitive raids across the Wabash or the Ohio; at the least, we need to trash this Castle Earthstone. The successes you had in the Youghiogheny make you my first choice for the job.”

He let that sink in for a moment; he was frustrating Whilmire, but this was a potential enhancement for Grayson’s political career.
That’s right, Grayson, think about being able to run for president of the whole United States as a military victor, eh?
Then, more softly, he said, “We will attend the summit in Pueblo and we will attend it in good faith. We will reach an agreement with the Weisbrod government and in 2026 there will be a restoration election in every part of the country that we control; in 2027 a fully Constitutional government will take power. That is what I’m sworn to achieve, and that is what I will achieve.”
Listen close, Grayson, listen close, do you hear the chance to be president of the whole thing, instead of the reverend’s cat’s-paw?

“Subject to the Board’s approval and—”

“I reconstituted the Board, Reverend, I didn’t give it any legislative power this time around either, and the final decision is mine. Which you have heard.”

“Reverend Peet will hear about this.”

“No doubt. He not only reads the paper, he owns it. Nonetheless, I am still the NCCC, until General Grayson acquires the nerve to do anything about it, anyway.”
If that’s really ambition and understanding dawning on that male-model face, they always said in interrogation class that the way to set the hook is to pull it away.

Grayson’s face went flat. “That isn’t funny.”

“It’s not a joke, General. You don’t want me as NCCC; you’ve made that clear enough. But you swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and I’m a presidential appointee of the last universally acknowledged, fully recognized President of the United States, and your civilian superior. You can take your chance that if you help me put the country together, the people will follow you. I think that’s a smart bet. But perhaps you judge the road of Caesar, or Cromwell, or Napoleon to be less of a gamble.”

Grayson looked straight back at him, and Cameron thought,
Now say it, now say yes, that’s the deal I want. Just inside yourself, for now.

Whilmire, perhaps afraid of what Grayson would say, jumped in again. “This is all beside the issue of attending the summit. We must not do anything to make the Olympia government appear legitimate.”

“And what does the Bible have to say about peacemakers?”

“Your constant sarcasm is—”

“One of the few pleasures I still have. The decision is made, gentlemen. General, if we walk into the Defense Planning Bureau and tell them we need to do raids in force into the Lost Quarter, especially into the Warsaw/ Palestine area, can they spec some list of options out for us in the next day or so?”

“It’ll make more of an impression if we go there ourselves,” Grayson said, with a half-suppressed grin. “Those guys could use a wake-up and shake-up anyway.”

“Good, let’s go.” Though Cameron was a slight, short man, set against Whilmire’s beefy lineman-type and Grayson’s tall, rangy, physique, when Cam walked between them, they parted like old-time supermarket doors, and then hurried after him, trailing their dignity behind them.

He was out in the corridor before they caught up with him. He was careful not to walk fast, because that might look as if he ran away from them, but by surprising them with that first step, and forcing them onto their back legs, he had gained enough of a head start to force them to conspicuously hurry after him.
My ancestors were Confederate diplomats and the bodyguards of emperors,
Cam thought.
Back when yours were learning to wear shoes and not
publicly
lust after sheep.

After they caught up, Cam spoke softly. “I think Graham is sincerely trying to bring us together. We might yet manage real peace, maybe even reconciliation, if we’re smart enough. We won’t throw that out over a snit over authority.”

“But if we sacrifice—”

“I was including the other side in ‘we,’ Reverend. And if you were referring to sacrificing the un-Constitutional expedients that have been forced on me by circumstances, good riddance. We’re getting our Constitution back. I know that the general, at least, understands the words ‘uphold’ and ‘defend.’ ”

Grayson’s tone was polite, even deferential—a good sign. “Sir, I think you are unnecessarily antagonistic—”

“I’ll accept that I’m antagonistic. I’m not sure I’m as antagonistic as necessary, but I’m doing my best.”
Nice fishie, swallow that hook hard.
He hoped it wasn’t only in his imagination that Grayson had seen the advantages.

Of course he could also just shoot me, frame a PCG agent, declare war, and rule by decree. Petty harassment and pranking of guys who are already thinking of shooting me
—Cameron emphatically finished the thought with—
keeps them off balance, makes them look silly, reminds them of all the times they’ve chickened out before, and gives me some badly needed amusement. Funny how free you are once you just do the right thing; after that all they can do is kill you.