Empire (31 page)

“I don't care if you're a damned SEAL,” said Drew.

“I'm a dead man if I stay in this car and on those roads,” said Cole. “So this is my best chance.”

“Then your chances suck, man.”

“I'll deal with the river if you guys can lay down suppressing fire.”

“Damn. It'll cost five bucks a car to get into the park.”

“Shut up,” said Cole. He ended the call and concentrated on driving.

The park entry booth loomed ahead. There was a car at the booth chatting up the ranger. Cole approached at top speed. The ranger saw him coming and ran out of the booth, yelling for him to stop. Cole didn't. He went around the booth on the other side. He didn't need the rearview mirror to know that the ranger was on the phone instantly, calling for whatever backup rangers called for. That was good. Because in a moment he would use that phone connection to tell whoever it was about mechs and hovercycles blowing through in hot pursuit.

For a crazy moment he thought about those two soldiers who had been left beside the Connecticut Avenue freeway onramp. That was the luckiest move of their lives, getting out of that humvee.

Cole didn't worry about parking nicely. He did take the Mollie vest and the M-240 because even though it was useless against the mechs, it would do fine against anybody who got out of a hovercycle.

He headed for the woods, at first on the path, but soon getting off it. He didn't want to get trapped at the observation point. And he wanted to improve his odds a little.

Sure enough, the bad guys tried to stay on their hovercycles along the path to the observation point. Only when they found he wasn't there did they stop, settle down to the ground, and get out. The mechs were probably still lumbering up the road. So it was Cole, his M-240, and now, by actual count, eight guys. Unless there were two others who had stayed behind and were now approaching on foot. Because his initial count had been ten. Had to remember the possibility that there were bad guys behind him.

The trouble is that a machine gun is best against massed troops. It isn't much of a tool for taking guys out one by one. And if he got close enough to use a pistol, they'd overwhelm him by sheer force of numbers.

But for the moment, as they were still getting out of their hovercycles, they were massed enough. Cole set up the weapon and let fly. Short bursts, to husband his ammo, because there wasn't much.

He was pretty sure he put four of them down. Maybe disabled another. But from this moment on, the M-240 was useless. He had to get to the river, where sniper fire from Reuben's jeesh would be his only protection while he negotiated the river.

Getting to the edge of the cliff wasn't bad. Getting down the cliff face wasn't all that hard. And he really had tried to pick the point with the narrowest gap over the rushing water of the falls. From above, it didn't look too bad. From here, it looked impossible. Because the boulders didn't conveniently line up with two flat surfaces. Instead, they were rounded and jagged and even though he could easily make the jump, there was nothing he could be sure of gripping on the other side. So easy—so
likely
—to slide off into the water and get carried down the rapids, the pieces of his body eventually assembling in the smooth water downstream.

He heard the slap-plunk-whine of sniper fire from the Virginia side. The guys had gotten there, even at five bucks a car.

But that didn't guarantee that somebody on the Maryland side couldn't get off a round at him while he was exposed on the rock.

A quick prayer. And then a little aside to Rube: I don't know if they give angel status that fast, but if you can, look out for me here. I've got your PDA and Cecily needs it.

Nothing for it but a run and a leap. So he ran. And he leapt.

And even though he scrabbled a little on the rock, he was solidly on and there was nothing for it but to make a shorter leap and then one that was more like a step and now he was on the big center island.

It was rough going. But the guys were doing a good job of suppressing sniper fire.

And then suddenly they weren't.

Because it wasn't sniper fire. It was mechs. They were just
stepping
over the gaps that had been leaps for Cole. And the sniper fire from the Virginia side couldn't do a thing against them. They knew it. And since the bad guys also knew it, they weren't exposing themselves anymore. Let the mechs do it, they were no doubt thinking.

His cellphone rang.

He cowered in a depression in the rock, trying not to present a target to the oncoming mechs. Fortunately, the mechs weren't really designed to walk on terrain as rough as this rock. One of them even tripped. It was keeping them busy. But eventually they'd get where his hiding place no longer hid him, and then he'd be dead. “Hello?” he said into the phone.

“Any way to take those suckers down?” asked Drew.

“Either an AT-4 or two guys pressing the legs apart while two cars run into it.”

“Nobody's willing to sacrifice their cars,” said Drew. “But hold tight. We've got backup.”

“From who? The U.S. Army doesn't know I'm on their side.”

“Think, Cole,” said Drew. “Our side doesn't have those mechs. Wherever we see them, it's okay to kill them.”

It was only a few more minutes, and the Apaches came up the river. No focused-EMP weapon now—where would they plug it in? The mechs didn't even try to run away. As hard as it was for them to get as far as they had gotten, there was no going back. They aimed at the choppers but before they came in effective range, the missiles the choppers sent by way of greeting ended the conversation.

Cole got up and waved his thanks. He knew there was no way they could land on the island. It was safer for them to get out before the guys from the hovercycles—if there were any left—tried out their antitank rockets to see if they could bring down choppers.

So Cole was on his own getting to the narrowest place on the Virginia side.

Arty and Mingo had both climbed down to the nearest point. What, did they think they were going to catch him?

No. They had a rope.

He caught it. He tied it around himself, up under his arms. Mingo wrapped it behind his back and sat down and braced himself. If Cole fell in the water, they could haul him out, hopefully before he had been beaten to death on the rocks.

He jumped.

He landed.

Arty caught him by the wrist and Cole didn't even get wet.

Arty and Mingo helped him get up to the observation point.

“Good work,” he said to them.

“You, too, sir,” said Arty.

Drew was waiting up top. He made a point of turning off his cellphone. Cole held up his cellphone and ended the call, too.

“Does Cecily know?” asked Load.

Cole nodded.

Then he staggered to the railing and stood there, leaning on it, and trembled from the spent adrenalin, and then found himself crying, and he decided that it wasn't for the ordeal he'd just been through, and it wasn't for the fear, and it wasn't from killing a bunch of guys in Rock Creek Canyon and back on the Maryland side of the park.

“I only knew him for three days,” he said.

“He makes an impression,” said Load softly. One by one they each touched his shoulder. And the kind touches were enough to revive him. Calm him. He walked back with them along the path, around the ranger station, ignoring the civilians and rangers who were being watched over by a heavily-armed Benny.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” said Benny. “I'm happy to tell you that the operation was successful. You can resume your normal activities.” Then he joined them on the walk to their cars.

They also serve, who only sit and type.

It was Reuben's PDA that got Cecily through the first month of widowhood. Recording the shipments and financial transactions, following the trails, searching for patterns, tracking corporate entities, passing along names and leads to FBI and DIA agents: It was a vast spiderweb, with Reuben's notes like dewdrops that reveal where the otherwise invisible strands must be.

It was an urgent task. And they were Reuben's notes. Reuben's words. It was his trail that she was following. All those days when he traveled on assignments he couldn't tell her about, all those trips abroad and in America, all those nights when she could see that he was troubled and yet knew he couldn't talk about it. Now he was telling her.

Meanwhile, Aunt Margaret brought the children down to Gettysburg and stayed with them. “I'm an old widow myself,” she said. “I know how hard it is. You need the children near, and you also need to lose yourself completely in something that isn't your family. So here I am and here I'll stay while you save the world.”

It wasn't the world Cecily was saving. It might be America. It might be herself.

But one thing was certain. It was not going to save Reuben's reputation. There was no way that he could have helped but see that something wrong was going on. Too much of what he did was within the borders of the United States. Most of the shipments seemed to go from port city to port city, so some illusion could be
maintained that these weapons shipments were going overseas. But who would bring weapons from China or Russia to the United States in order to ship them to pro-U.S. partisan groups in Iran or Sudan or Turkmenistan? Reuben had to at least wonder if some or all of these weapons were meant to be used domestically.

Which was why he kept these notes on the PDA—and why he was so reluctant to give it into anyone else's hands. Because he knew something dangerous was going on and he was helping with it—yet he believed he was doing it for a President that he admired and trusted, and so he acted the good soldier and did the jobs he was assigned to do.

Yet if it turned out to be wrong, he would have the paper trail—well, the digital trail—that someone could use to track it all down. Reuben never needed records like this. He had trained his memory like a Jesuit. So he was deliberately creating evidence.

He knew he was only guessing about the integrity of the people he served. If he guessed wrong, then he was serving traitors, and he could not claim that it had never occurred to him. All he could do was make sure that the full confession was here. The evidence to unravel what he had helped them do.

If only he had talked to me, she thought again and again.

And most of the time she answered herself: What did I know? What would I have counseled? Of course, caution, yes—I'm the woman who set aside the political career to raise a family. I choose safety. That's what I do. But I also loved Reuben. Still love him. And I knew how unhappy he would be, to walk away from something that
might
have been in service of a cause, a President, he believed in.

So few seemed to believe in that President, and yet Reuben was sure that he was pursuing the right course. So
would
she have counseled him to give it up? To denounce it?

And . . .
could
he have given it up? It was clear
now
that he had been working for and with murderers and traitors. Would they have let him walk away, even
if
she had advised him? No. There was too much danger that he would then denounce them—they would have killed him. And she would have spent the last year or so consoling
her children about their father's apparent suicide. Or traffic accident. Whatever method they used.

Things happened as they happened. Reuben accepted the hand dealt to him, and bet on it. Bet his life on it.

Whatever others may think of the choices he made, I know his heart. I know that he would and did sacrifice anything for the cause of freedom, in support of those he believed also fought for it. He took the long view of history. He cared about the world their grandchildren would inherit. He despised those who thought only of themselves, their immediate advantage. Whatever I might have advised him, he would have done what he did. I could not have changed him.

I wouldn't have tried.

So she shed tears over her work, but she kept working.

Reuben's jeesh came in and out of the Gettysburg White House, as the media were calling it now. She knew them all by their noms de guerre now: Cole, not Coleman; Load, not Lloyd. Mingo, Benny, Cat, Babe, Arty, Drew. Very young men when they first trained to be soldiers, but now men, seasoned veterans.

LaMonte knew an asset when he saw one. Eight extraordinarily good soldiers whose loyalty had already been tested. He turned them over to his National Security Adviser, and Averell Torrent used them for missions that required deftness, quickness. Seize this. Destroy that. In twos and threes they went out, sometimes in uniform, sometimes in civilian clothes, sometimes heavily armed in attack choppers, sometimes on domestic flights with no weapons at all.

They would find the agents of the Progressive Restoration and follow them to where their weapons or funds were stashed. The weapons were to be used to eliminate opponents of the Progressive Restoration in key states, as they had been used in the attempt to kill Cole, or to serve to defend states or cities that came over to the rebel side. The funds were to be used to bribe legislators, governors, mayors, and city councilors who needed a little help making up their mind.

Some of their small victories were kept secret; others, though, Averell Torrent went before the cameras to announce. Cessy soon
realized that publicity depended on whether any rebels were killed who were not under arms. Take down a mech or blow up a hovercycle, and Torrent would go on the news, calmly and reassuringly telling the American people that an attempt had been made to assassinate a loyal American official, but the violent Progressive Revolution and its terrifying weapons had been stopped in their tracks.

But if the dead bodies were not men in body armor or ensconced in the new machines, then the event had no national significance. It was a matter for local law enforcement. If anyone noticed that the victims had been sympathetic toward the rebels' cause, the killing was assumed to be the work of local right-wing vigilantes.