Silo’s grin faded. “So what do you propose we do?”
“I want to divert our outside contractor in the area to find him. Or her. Whoever it is. Get them positioned so that once I talk this person in, we can get them before they can change their mind. Violence is escalating in the LA region. The riots are growing worse and spreading every day. I suspect it won’t be long, maybe two weeks or less, before it’s all-out war in that area.”
“Hmm. Yes, that’s true. All right, fine. Divert their efforts. Do not tell our friend in Arliss’ office about this, though. I don’t want him knowing all of our secrets. I also trust you will impart to whomever you have handling this situation how very imperative it is that this person be brought in without telling our contractor exactly who they are or why. It wouldn’t do for them to start a bidding war with others to obtain a more profitable return on the investment of their efforts.”
“Of course.”
“Let’s prepare a couple of canned messages to go out via commercial airwaves, too. Video and audio. Squeeze every last cent we can out of our parishioners in LA before the entire valley basin is turned into a smoking crater or overrun by Kite.”
“This afternoon?”
“Tomorrow. I want Mary there with me on the videos. Didn’t you say her presence always leads to an increase in donations?”
“Usually, sir. That’s what our numbers show.”
“All right. Meet me at the house tomorrow afternoon, then, after lunch, to pick us up. I’ll give my driver the day off.”
“Very good.”
* * * *
When Jerald left, it was all Silo could do not to stand up and shout hallelujah at the top of his lungs.
We finally caught a fucking break.
It had to happen eventually. He knew if they hung in there long enough that it would.
Looks like Jerald will redeem himself for his short-sightedness about the LA project’s logistical failures in security.
To be fair, part of that wasn’t Jerald’s fault. Part of it was just dumb bad luck.
At least, that was what Silo hoped.
Everything he knew about Jerald showed Silo that he was loyal, hardworking, and totally devoted to the church and Silo’s plans.
He chewed on his lower lip for a moment.
Isn’t he?
Maybe he’d need to take a closer look at his assistant. Maybe these “oopsies” they’d been having lately were more than just bad dumb luck.
He tried to clear that thought out of his brain. No, Jerald was loyal. Damn sight more loyal to him than Mary ever could have been.
But how do I know?
Hell, if Jerald was going to turn on him, he could have done it a long time ago. Siphoned off money from some of the accounts and left. Implicating Silo in anything corrupt would mean implicating himself by default as well, because usually Silo’s name was nowhere to be seen on a particular project, while Jerald’s fingerprints, literally and figuratively, could be found everywhere.
No, he’s loyal. I cannot allow myself to be eaten away by doubt and paranoia at this stage. Look at some of the great examples of that, and how poorly they’d done as a result. Hitler, Stalin. Turned on their closest advisors instead of listening to them.
Silo took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out again. He’d go by what he knew for certain—that over the years, Jerald had proven himself time and again. This was the first time they’d ever engaged in such a dramatic, crucial venture before. There were bound to be a few missteps as they sailed through uncharted territory. This wasn’t setting up a mission station in a backwater shithole of a pigsty.
This was setting himself up to get elected President of the fucking United States.
He smiled, reassured. Yes, Jerald was loyal. To a fault. He would keep him close and watch him, but not let himself fall victim to negativity.
If I ever change my mind about him, I can always correct things then.
For now, he’d watch.
And wait.
Chapter Six
By the six the next morning, Dolce had dozed for a couple of hours on their fifth-hand sofa, but the other three women still hadn’t returned.
Even though Dolce didn’t want to, she turned on the radio and walked over to the west-facing window.
Smoke hung like a heavy pall over the city, thick, cancerous. In the distance, the fires still raged.
The announcer was listing more official decrees issued overnight.
“…All California National Guard members are to report to their nearest barracks immediately for activation, by order of the President of the United States. All law enforcement and other public safety employees are to immediately report to their respective headquarters for duty. If you are unable to get to your usual headquarters, report to the nearest one. Los Angeles County remains under Martial Law until further notice. Unconfirmed reports from local hospitals place the number of dead due to violence from the riots at over seven hundred and rising, with the number of wounded at nearly six thousand…”
Dolce ran a quick mental inventory. She could pack her car and be gone in less than an hour. Head east toward San Bernardino, then up toward Palmdale, Bakersfield, Fresno… Go north, stay away from the 5 and the coast. Stay to the east of Sacramento.
She damn sure didn’t want to head east toward Las Vegas. She’d heard that place was a ghost town unless you were active military or uber rich. Or a criminal. People had mostly deserted it in favor of Reno over the past thirty years, between not being able to afford to gamble or afford to travel to the former desert paradise in the first place.
There were a lot of places she’d never been in her life. Places she’d never expected to go, especially once she left the military. Now, she could go.
How long do I wait?
She couldn’t aimlessly roam the city in search of her friends. Not without risking her own safety in the process. She felt horrible about that reality, but getting herself killed when her friends might be safely hunkered down in a protected utility building bunker wouldn’t change a damn thing.
Sarah had a good head on her shoulders. She of all people could help the other two women stay alive, if they listened to her and heeded her advice.
She also knew Sarah carried a concealed gun on her at all times, even though they hadn’t told the other two women about any of their weapons.
By two o’clock that afternoon, with no word from any of her friends, Dolce took a risk and went upstairs to Mark Pantieri’s apartment. The recently retired LA county fireman had cable TV, a phone, and Internet access.
When she knocked on his door, he didn’t immediately respond.
“Mr. Pantieri?” she called out. “It’s Dolce Quinn, from downstairs. We’ve talked before and I gave you a ride to the grocery store that time a few weeks back. Can I please talk to you for a minute?”
“What do you want?” he finally called out through the door.
She didn’t want to broadcast it to the whole building, in case anyone there decided to try to break in since she was alone. It was a pretty decent building, all things considered, but times were rapidly growing tougher by the day.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I need to borrow your phone and look something up on the Internet.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hold on.” She heard the door unlock, but it didn’t open.
Finally, “Open the door slowly, and keep your hands out in front of you when you come in.”
She felt nervous tension ratcheting tight inside her chest. Even more slowly than he’d probably intended, she turned the knob and kept both hands up as she bumped the door open with her hip.
He was standing across the room, a pistol-grip pump-action shotgun in his hands and pointed at her chest. “Close it,” he said. “Lock it.”
Nudging it shut with her foot, she reached behind her and snapped the lock. “I have a handgun in my waistband,” she said. “If you want to hold on t
o it while I’m here, fine, but please give it back to me when I leave.”
That drew a laugh from him. He lowered the shotgun. “If you were planning something bad, honey, you wouldn’t have told me that. Now, why are you really here?”
“That is why I’m really here.” She told him about her three missing roommates, his expression darkening as she finished.
“Wow. Okay. I think I know where the CTSC facility is in Downey. Come here.” He led her over to his small table, where an ancient-looking laptop occupied a corner of the surface. “It’s not the fastest or newest computer in the world,” he said as he sat, “but it works, and it’s sat-linked.”
With his fingers racing across the keyboard, he pulled up a map of the area and zoomed in. “Here,” he said. “That’s where they likely go. That’s the CaliTeleSatCom fleet and logistics operations facility for this area.” The satellite view showed a large two-story building surrounded by a huge fenced compound with a fleet of trucks and work vans parked inside the perimeter.
“Is there any way to look up a phone number for that building and call it?”
“Let’s see.” After some more tapping, he frowned. “No, nothing publicly listed, but don’t worry. I have contacts.” He grabbed his phone and made a call, gesturing to her to bring him a notepad and pen that lay on the counter.
Someone answered. “Hey, Eddie? It’s Mark Pantieri. I need a quick favor.” He detailed what he was looking for, got put on hold, and then jotted four phone numbers down a moment later. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” He hung up. “Friend in dispatch. He looked them up for me from the fire inspector’s database.” He called the first number on the list, looked a little confused, then tried the second number.
His look of confusion turned to concern.
She stood there, arms crossed over her chest, trying not to let her imagination race too far ahead of whatever the facts would reveal.
By the time he unsuccessfully tried the fourth number, he slowly set the phone down and looked at her. “You have other weapons in your apartment? Firearms?”
She nodded.
“Get them. Keep them on you. Keep them loaded, safeties off.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“Any of those numbers should have worked. I’m getting a fast-busy tone that means the numbers are not working because of circuit troubles. All four of them. Those numbers were verified and current as of a month ago, so that’s not the problem.”
“The riots?”
“We’re only a few miles from that facility. The lines shouldn’t be interrupted between us and them. The fires and stuff are on the far side of the facility, several miles past that.” He turned to the laptop again and started pulling up webpages, until he found what he wanted. “What’s that one girl’s name, the one you served with. Sarah?”
“Sarah Tacherson.” Dolce spelled it out for him. “Why? What website is that?”
“They’re slow in removing people from backend access now. Your government at work. I can still get into the system. I was a district chief and had full access to casualty reports.” He typed some more. “They’ve already got unofficial casualty lists compiled through the EOC.”
“Casualties?”
“Calm down, that means injuries or deaths, not just deaths.”
“What’s the EOC?”
“Emergency Operations Center.” He paused, skimming through the entries. “Okay, her name isn’t on here.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Not necessarily. If she isn’t on there yet it could mean they’re backed up, or they didn’t find her ID on her—” He seemed to snap his jaw shut on his last word.
She didn’t need much imagination to hear the word “body” even though he hadn’t spoken it.
“What about the other two girls?” he asked.
She gave him Colleen and Desiree’s names.
Also no entries.
“So I can’t relax, but I shouldn’t panic yet, right?” she asked.
“Right. Look, go pack a bug-out bag for yourself, leave them a note that you’re up here with me in case they return, and come back up here.”
“Why?”
“Because I suspect that we’re going to be hunkering down for the long haul. I think you and I would do better together than either of us trying to tough it out alone if it gets really bad, really fast. Unless you don’t want to come back up here.”
“I do want to come back up here,” she quickly said. She wasn’t an idiot. Someone with Mark’s experience and connections could be a valuable ally.
If nothing else, he had firepower, and he didn’t seem afraid to bring it into play for self-protection.
“You have wheels,” he said, echoing her thoughts, “and I have firepower and contacts that can get us into safer locations outside the city when we’ll need them. Neither of us can afford to go this alone right now. I’m willing to work together if you are, kiddo. I’ll watch your six, and you watch mine.”
She stuck out a hand. “You got yourself a deal.”
They shook.
* * * *
Dolce couldn’t argue with his logic. She returned to her apartment and packed. It took her nearly an hour to gather everything together. She also made two trips, because she went back to her apartment to get food to bring up and share with him. No reason letting it go to waste.
She didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing that she could now see what was happening on the other side of the city through Mark’s TV. One of the local channels had actually gone off the air, their feed replaced by a static screen displaying their station’s logo and the message Having technical difficulties, please stand by.
“Been like that over six hours,” he said. “Their transmitter is over in La Habra, but their studio building is near Culver City. I think they got taken out.” He changed to another channel.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked.
“Considering it looks like we’re going to be partners for a while, I would encourage it.”
“I was thinking about leaving the city.”
“I agree wholeheartedly with that plan. I’d be gone already if I had a car and no bum hip. These damn elevators ever give out, I’m screwed. I can get down, but getting back up here will be a bitch and a half.”
“Then why did you stay here?”
“All I can afford. Paid it off years ago when my wife died. Used the insurance settlement.”
“Oh.” She knew some of the apartments in the building were privately owned, but hadn’t realized his was one of them. “I’ll warn you now, my car can be cranky. It’s still running, but I can’t guarantee how long I can keep it that way.”
“Hmm. Then let’s keep that plan as our Option B. I don’t want to give up on your friends just yet.”
“Neither do I, but I’m a realist, unfortunately. I’d rather be alive and grieving them than dead here in the city.”
People died. Her parents had died. Friends had died.
Karlee had likely died.
“I hope you don’t mind I’m not that great a cook,” she said to divert her attention from her morbid line of thought.
He laughed. “Kiddo, I was a firefighter. I can cook for us, don’t worry.”
They spent the afternoon talking and watching TV and forming what Dolce was quickly thinking of as their escape plan. While none of the TV reporters discussing the riots had said it yet, Dolce was beginning to wonder if there weren’t Kiters in that mess and the authorities were hiding the information to prevent a widespread panic.
From the footage she was seeing via international news outlets on Mark’s TV, footage she hadn’t seen before, the rioting in Los Angeles eerily resembled footage of the mobs shown in countries like India and Pakistan, which were already overrun by the virus.
Dolce checked on her apartment a couple of times throughout the evening, grabbing her pillow when she made her last check at eleven before returning to Mark’s apartment.
It felt g
ood not to be alone, even through her worry over her friends, who still hadn’t appeared on the EOC’s casualty list.
The phone numbers for the work yard remained out of service, too. Despite his contacts, no one could give Mark solid information on whether or not the facility had been destroyed, or if it was simply a matter of overloaded circuits.
Mark sat up in his recliner and watched the news while Dolce stretched out on his couch and tried to get to sleep.
If things kept deteriorating at their current rate, they would have to make their decision to leave soon.
Dolce hoped she found her friends first. She didn’t want the additional burden of feeling like she left yet another person behind just to have them die.
Maybe that wasn’t the realistic way to look at things, but Karlee’s absence had left a hole in her heart she didn’t know how to mend. The last thing she wanted was to add to that loss.
Chapter Seven
Roscoe and the others came up empty on their recon of the library at Downey, despite spending a couple of hours canvassing the area. Trying to nail down a possible hideout for Dr. Perkins would be next to impossible. Private residences, boarding houses, and apartment complexes dotted the area.
The next morning, Quack was added to their numbers. Roscoe kept his mouth shut regarding his comments about Ak the day before. Especially around Quack and Lima.
He did not need to incur an ass-beating from the men, and knew either of them could and would readily give one if necessary.
It was bad enough Pandora had pancaked him.
The six men headed out on their recon in two vehicles, Lima and Quack riding with Echo and Omega, who drove the lead car. Omega had been raised in LA and was more familiar with the area than any of them. They all were equipped with two-way radios.
Niner drove their car. “What kinds of signals are you looking for?” Roscoe asked Lima over the radio.
“Sat-link signal. She’s been using a hacked ID out of public Wi-Fi access points. Same couple of locations. Mostly libraries. Especially in La Habra and La Mirada. But once Bubba picked up the signals, he figured out what looks like her usual rotation schedule. She’s liable to hit the library near Norwalk this morning, if she follows her pattern.”
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