Before leaving the barn, they took a moment to gather themselves and strategize. "We can't assume that we'll stroll in and get close like we did yesterday," Conor said. "They're probably on high alert."
Barb didn't reply. She imagined these people were probably on edge, sitting with fingers on triggers. That made any attempt to walk into their midst very dangerous. They'd already been over this though and she knew there was no talking him out of it.
"I'm going to go first," Conor said. He held up a pole he'd cut from the woods on their way down the mountain. "I'm going to lash this t-shirt to this pole and move forward from this point under a white flag. Maybe that will keep them from dropping me long-range. You'll need to find another way in. There may not be a chance for you to slip off to a position of cover once I have their attention."
"Obviously."
"So let me go on ahead. You watch from here and react accordingly. It might take me some time to get through to them so don't do anything rash. Don't get wound up if they clout me on the head a time or two. That comes with the territory and I fully expect it. They may have to get it out of their system before they're willing to listen. We have to let it play out. When they're ready to listen, I'll tell my story and we'll see where it goes."
"Acknowledged," she replied.
Conor noted that her response was not the same as agreeing to his request. She was only confirming that she'd heard what he said. There was no surprise there, really. This was exactly where she proved she was his daughter. Just as he was going to do what he felt was required, she'd do the same.
He used a couple of zip ties from his gear to fasten the t-shirt to the pole, then took a deep breath. "I think I'm ready, Daughter. Are you?"
She nodded. "As ready as I can be."
Conor gave her a quick hug, awkward due to their plate carriers and bulky gear. He unhooked his rifle from his saddle horn and handed it over to her, along with a handful of spare mags. "I'll hang onto the handgun for now, though I expect they'll take it off me once we get together."
"Be safe, Dad."
Conor stepped out of the barn with his white flag. Holding it aloft like a member of the Knights Templar marching off to the crusades, he strode boldly down the pasture toward the valley. This time he made no effort to hide himself in a ravine. He wanted to be seen and intercepted.
Barb watched him from the barn, shaking her head at his brash boldness. Her father was many things but he never lacked in courage. It was one of the things she most hoped to inherit from him and she hoped she could channel it today. This was not a day to let fear control her actions. To do so might condemn them both.
32
The Valley
Russell County, Virginia
Conor made it nearly to the paved road before anyone spotted him. He was almost ready to climb the fence and trek up the road when someone shouted at him.
"Stop and put your hands up!" a man barked from cover. "Drop that flag!
Conor did as he was told, each move slow and steady. Tensions were high and he didn't want to compel anyone to pull the trigger and end this meeting before it was even underway.
"Turn away from me!" the man barked. "And keep those hands up. You move, you die."
Conor did a slow turn, hands held high. He heard steps in the grass behind him and braced himself for a blow. This was normally the point where people cracked a rifle butt into your head and dropped you to your knees. Instead, a hand slipped around his side and extracted his Glock from its holster. Whoever had taken his pistol backed away from him. These people were experienced enough to understand that they shouldn't remain within arm's reach when they didn't know someone's abilities.
"On your knees!" This time it was a female voice.
Conor heard no fear there. These people were experienced. They'd done this before. He dropped onto his knees.
"You got him?" the male voice asked.
"Oh yeah," the female replied.
Conor heard the chirp of a radio. "Gary for Jim, Gary for Jim!"
"Go for Jim," came the immediate response.
"Randi and I have a stranger at gunpoint along the valley road, just west of your entrance. He walked down in plain sight carrying a white flag. We took a handgun off him but he doesn't have a rifle."
"Roger that," Jim barked. "I'll be right there."
Conor forced himself to stay relaxed, though this was certainly not the most comfortable of circumstances for him. No one enjoyed having their back to a loaded gun, especially when those guns were clutched in hostile hands.
"I take it you were our visitor last night?" the woman asked.
"That was me," Conor admitted.
"I would ask what your intentions were, but there's no point in making you repeat yourself. Jim will be here in a moment," she said.
Conor adopted a cheery tone. "Just the man I came to see."
"We'll see about that," said Gary. "He's not always receptive to unexpected guests. You may find it to be an uncomfortable visit. He's as likely to kill you as listen to you."
Conor didn't reply to that. He'd expected as much. He had no reason to believe it would be anything but an uncomfortable visit. He'd received ill-treatment at the hands of captors before and had braced himself for the worst.
After a few moments, Conor heard the clatter of hooves, a single rider approaching. He had to assume it was Jim Powell. He charged in front of Conor and reined his horse to a stop, glaring down at the kneeling man. Conor could feel the rage seething from him. He was a man who took intrusions into his territory very personally. Conor's nighttime foray onto his property had been a serious affront. A violation.
Jim hopped from the saddle and stuck the barrel of his rifle into Conor's face. He pressed it forward until the sun-warmed tip of the barrel lay against Conor's forehead, just above his nose. "Who the fuck are you?"
Conor observed that this wasn't a civilian AR-15. This was a select-fire weapon that had come from the military or law enforcement. Of course, such a detail was utterly irrelevant at the moment. It would only take one shot at this distance to deliver his death. "My name is Conor Maguire."
Jim studied Conor's face carefully. "I don't recognize you, Mr. Conor Maguire. Can I assume it was you lurking around my property last night?"
"Indeed it was."
Jim grimaced, struggling again with that anger Conor saw in his eyes. "Why?"
"I needed to speak with you. My intention was to catch you visiting the outhouse, then hold you quietly at gunpoint while I pled my case."
"How'd that work out for you?"
"Obviously it didn't," Conor said. "So here I am. Back again."
"So you are." Jim pulled his rifle away from Conor's face and leaned forward, rage in his eyes. He could barely speak, his teeth gritted. "My family was there last night when rounds started flying. My kids. We all had kids there. Opening fire on us with our children around is unacceptable. Give me one reason I shouldn't put an end to you right now."
Conor sighed. "I came alone today. I willfully surrendered myself for an opportunity to speak with you. Surely that must say something."
"It might say you're an idiot," the woman cracked.
"That it might," Conor acknowledged.
"Keep your weapons on him," Jim instructed. "I need to get this armor off and search him."
Conor cooperated while Jim removed the body armor and emptied Conor's pockets. Conor had a few knives, which Jim took, but his ankle holster was empty. He'd left his backup in his saddle bags.
When he was done, Jim removed a pair of zip ties from a pocket. He looped one around one of Conor's wrists and pulled it tight. He threaded another beneath the first, the tightened it around Conor's other wrist, binding them together behind his back. Jim pulled a pillow case from his back pocket and yanked it down over Conor's head. With his friends' help, they hauled Conor to his feet.
Jim leaned close and hissed in Conor's ear, "It's all I can do not to bash your face into a pulp right now. This better no
t be a trick. If we come under attack from whoever you have hiding out there, I'll make an example out of you. I'll beat you with a hammer until you're nothing but a sack of jelly."
"It's no trick," Conor said. "I assure you."
Jim grabbed Conor by the collar and led him toward the paved road. "Grab my horse, Gary."
Jim and the woman escorted Conor down the road. Gary, leading the horse, brought up the rear. Jim led him through a steel gate and they walked a short distance along a paved road, which Conor knew to be the road through the valley. After a few minutes, they hung a right onto a gravel road. Another gate was opened, the chain rattling as a padlock was removed, and Conor was marched up the driveway to Jim's farm.
Jim plucked his radio from a pouch and keyed the mic. "This is Jim. We have a visitor in custody. We'll be speaking in the barn. Hugh, Pete, and Charlie, there might be others out there so keep alert. Everyone else stay where you're at until you hear from me."
They walked perhaps a half-mile, alternating between gravel road and stretches of high grass. At some point, they entered a structure that Conor assumed to be the barn he'd hidden in last night. It felt cooler, his body now out of the direct rays of the summer sun. He was shoved down onto a metal folding chair, then someone wrapped a length of chain around his neck and snapped a padlock on it, securing him to a ringbolt like a dog tied in a yard. Conor didn't lodge a complaint. He knew things could get a lot worse than they were at the moment.
The voice that spoke came from perhaps eight feet in front of him. It was Jim Powell. "Okay, Conor Maguire, you have my full attention. I suggest you get on with whatever it is you're here to talk about. I'm still pissed off about last night and, trust me, you don't want to give me too much time to dwell on that. I've had some personal struggles lately but I've come to terms with them. I'm ready to embrace my inner asshole and you don't want to meet him."
Conor wasn't the most comfortable he'd ever been. As if the bag over his head wasn't suffocating enough, the weight of the chain tugged on his neck. "I live about thirty miles north of you. I'm what you might call a government contractor. There's been some reshuffling at the top of the ladder and I've ended up with a new boss. Somehow you've shown up on his radar."
Jim cracked a laugh. "A year ago I'd have found that to be an absurd idea. Not so much these days. I realized I was no longer flying under the radar when helicopters started scattering wanted posters around the community with my name on them. I guess that was the point that I realized I was making powerful enemies."
"Those flyers weren't just scattered around your community," Conor said. "They were scattered around this entire region of the state. The man who was hunting you didn't know exactly where you lived and he needed to flush you out."
"I'd have thought the government had better resources than that," Gary commented.
"That wasn't a sanctioned operation," Conor said. "You did piss off some important people by taking out that power plant, but the man who came after you did that on his own time. You were a personal project of his. It's funny how it worked out, but you probably put a bigger target on your back by tangling with him than you did by flooding the power plant. There are a lot of insurgent forces out there sabotaging power restoration, but there aren't many folks taking out high-level operators like the one you tangled with."
"And you're his replacement?" Jim asked. "You the next one I have to take out?"
Conor shifted, making the chain rattle. "Technically, I guess the answer to that is yes. My orders were to take you into town and publicly hang you from the red light in the center of town. I was also to make sure that I killed everyone in this valley who had allied themselves with you."
There was silence for a long moment. Beneath the pillowcase, Conor could only hear his own breathing. He assumed the people around him were processing that information. Then the woman started laughing, Jim and Gary quickly joining in with her. Conor wasn't sure he got the joke.
"They sent how many people to perform this task?" Jim asked.
"Me and one other."
"You must be something special," Jim said.
"Eh, I don't want to go about bragging on meself but I've taken a few scalps in my day. I specialize in hard cases like yourself. It's why I make the big bucks."
When Jim spoke again, he was closer to Conor and the anger was back in his voice. "Should I just kill you now while you're trussed up? Because that's what I'm hearing. If you're here to kill me, am I simply supposed to let you go so you can carry on with your mission? I'm not sure if you're crazy or just some kind of dumbass."
"I said those were my orders. I never said I intended to carry them out."
"What happens if you don't?" Jim asked. "Most people in a position of handing out orders like that don't take kindly to 'the help' ignoring them."
Conor considered his words before answering. "There will be consequences, mate. I've already been warned. If I don't do as I'm asked, I lose my little home in the mountains. I lose the place where I raised my daughter and where I support a few friends. It may not sound like a big deal to you, but these are hard times for a man to reestablish himself. Not a good time for moving, you might say."
"So this man will evict you if you don't carry out your assignment?"
Conor chuckled. "You might say that, except he intends to do it with a missile strike. I'll have nothing to go home to but a smoldering crater."
Though Conor couldn't see it, worried looks passed between Gary, Randi, and Jim. The idea that some man intent on killing Jim had missile capability suddenly made things a lot more serious.
"If this man has missiles," Jim asked, "why isn't be just blowing my place up? Why go to all this bother?"
"As I said, he wants to make a public statement by hanging you in town. He wants to send a message. The other side of the equation is that this particular bastard, Browning is his name, doesn't particularly like me. Making me do his dirty work is a way of him rattling my chain."
Jim grabbed a five-gallon bucket, overturned it in front of Conor, and took a seat. "With so much to lose, why did you throw up a white flag and let me bring you in? Is this some kind of trick? What's your angle here?"
Conor shook his head, the movement causing the chain around his neck to rattle. "I figure if these assholes running the country now are labeling you as a dangerous insurgent there must be more to the story. There's a lot going on behind the scenes now. There's a battle for the heart and soul of the country."
Jim snorted. "That's always been going on. Surely a man in your line of work understands that."
"Oh, I do," Conor assured him. "But without a constant barrage of news, without congressional oversight, and without public watchdog groups, the people in Washington are running rampant. They're killing enemies and forging alliances with the most powerful allies they can get. I'm sure you've seen the United Nations troops already. That's only the tip of the iceberg, my friend. If the people who are on the top of the heap at this very moment succeed, the nation will be unrecognizable when the lights come back on. Worse yet, the general public won't care because they'll be so happy to have their microwave ovens, iPhones, and television sets working."
"We're in agreement on that. That's exactly how I managed to alienate so much of my community here. I don't know how much you know, but let me tell you what happened. I've mostly kept to myself back here in this valley. I'm surrounded by friends and family and we've worked together to keep living the best we could. We've done a pretty good job of it, both through the preparations we made in advance and through our own resourcefulness. We've also been willing to fight when it had to be done. Now I'll admit that I probably went off the rails a little bit when I heard the government wanted to open up comfort camps and restrict aid to people who turned in their weapons. That idea ran all over me and I lost my cool."
"And blew up the power plant?" Conor quipped.
"Eh, I didn't blow it up so much as I dammed the river and flooded the plant. It accomplished the same th
ing. Next thing I know my face is plastered all over this wanted poster and everyone in the community wants to turn me in for the bounty."
"How'd that work for them?"
"To be honest, I didn't deal with it very well. My family was targeted. My friends and their families were targeted. My rash decision had done nothing but cause a lot of trouble for the people I cared about. For most of this summer, I thought the best solution was to simply lay low and hide out. I even went on a little sabbatical into the mountains to process it all. I've only been home a couple of weeks. While I was away I came to the conclusion that hiding wasn't going to fix this. Jim Powell is going to be in their face from now on. If people in the community have a problem with me, we'll deal with it then and there."
"Sounds like a plan where a lot of people will die," Conor said.
"That's about the size of it,” Jim said simply. “Which brings us back to you, my friend. What are we going to do with you? You see, I strongly believe that one of the concepts that has kept me alive this long is the belief that I don't turn an enemy loose to have to fight them again later. If someone crosses me, they don't get a second chance. It's best to just kill them right then and go on about my business. It's something my grandfather taught me when I was a kid, much to my mother's disapproval."
"That's sound advice," said Conor. "But despite my assignment, I don't consider myself to be your enemy. That became clear to me as I observed your community over the last few days. If I'd felt we were truly at odds, I'd not have made myself available for capture."
There was a touch of humor in Jim's voice as he responded to that. "You'll have to forgive me if I don't immediately take that as justification for letting you go. I need some time to think about this."
Ultraviolent: Book Six in The Mad Mick Series Page 27
