by B. C. Tweedt
Baldy and Suk joined him in a corner of the room in hushed conversation.
“Are all of them here?” Captain Chip asked in a whisper. “No one would miss them?”
“This is all of their group,” Suk said, re-examining the documents in his hand. “They wouldn’t be missed.”
“Can you do it discreetly? Dispose of the bodies?” Captain Chip glanced at the somber kids. Sydney was eyeing him. He gave her a reassuring smile.
“All of them?”
Chip gave Suk a condescending stare as if he were a student caught daydreaming. “You don’t touch him. He’s worth more than a hundred of you. None of the Redmonds. We need them all.”
Suk jutted his chin out and his hand rested near the gun at his hip. “The others won’t be a problem.”
“Then we must. Just to be sure. We’re too close.”
Baldy sighed, shaking his head. “But what if they are missed? What if someone is expecting contact from them and reports them missing?”
“Excuse me.” The group turned to Avery’s dad, who had risen from his
seat, holding out his phone. “If you don’t mind, I have an important meeting in a few minutes – a video conference.”
Suk, Chip, and Baldy gave each other a long look. Their eyes spoke of a confirmation of their fears. It would be too risky to act so rashly, this close to the end goal.
Chip was the first to break through his apprehension. “Of course. Too bad for your vacation to be interrupted by work, though.”
Mr. Redmond laughed. “The world’s too small to get f’ah enough away.”
“True, true. You all must have things to get to – a vacation to enjoy.” Assured of their change in plan, Baldy stepped forward. “I accept your apology.”
The parents were the first to shake hands with him, followed by the kids. They exchanged pleasantries and parted ways.
When the room was emptied of the guests, Baldy walked to a corner, turned on the watch, and pored over the settings. “Even if they had seen the messages, they would mean nothing to them. It’s just gibberish to a kid.”
Chip sneered. “You better hope so.”
“So should you. We’re all in the same boat here.”
They shared a nervous smile at the pun, but Chip broke it first. “Word of this does not leave this ship.”
“The great CEO of Redmond Aerospace Defense can’t even keep track of his own kid,” Baldy complained.
“You’ll get your chance to mention it to him.” Chip glanced at his watch. “Ten hours until we port.”
“And Daryl?”
“Eighteen.” Chip scoffed to himself, thinking with a smirk. “Better keep the guests calm. Do nothing with the kids or their parents until Nassau. Then we kill them.”
Chapter 46
“Sam, you awake?”
Turning over on his bed, Sam squinted through the dark to the open door where his father peeked in. “Yeah,” he said sleepily, pushing the covers off.
“No, no. Don’t get up.” The Governor slipped inside and turned on the hotel room’s bathroom light so that he could make his way to Sam’s bed. He pulled Sam’s covers back over him.
“You doing okay?”
Sam nodded, rubbing his eyes and glancing at the clock. And then the memories he had so gladly let slip away into sleep came rushing back. The man with the gun – shooting Calvin. The interrogation.
He shoved one hand under his pillow, clutching the thumb drive. “I guess. You?”
His father smiled and sat on the bed. “I’ve been better.” He paused, and after a long sigh, placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “There’s been another attack, Sam.”
Sam’s eyes grew wide and searched his dad’s face for clues to its severity. Another nuclear bomb?
“A group of men derailed a military transport train in Georgia and then attacked the survivors. Soldiers from a nearby checkpoint came to their aid. They called in a Predator. It was bloody, but they fought bravely.”
“Did we win?”
His father swallowed hard, choking down his emotion, and squeezed Sam’s hand. “We did. But at a cost. Civilians, too. It was in the middle of a town. But that didn’t matter to the terrorists.”
The hatred swelled in Sam’s chest. He wanted to fight them, right in the bed if he had to. His cheeks swelled with heat. “Now what? What does it mean?”
“It means a lot of things. But it’s Foster’s problem to deal with. Not mine yet.”
“But…what can we do?”
“We can do our part. Whatever Foster asks us to do.”
Sam’s eyes searched the dark room as he thought. “We have to wait? Why?” He sat up, rigid. “Why do we have to do what he tells us to do? Can’t we do something on our own? And with Calvin. I told them. I told them who did it. Can’t we…”
“Hold on, buckaroo. I know, I know.” The Governor pushed him slowly back to his pillow and scooted closer to him. “You know what? You and me. We’re a lot alike. We look alike. We think alike.”
Sam nodded, though his mind still raced.
“And we like to fix things. Make them work right, the way we want them to. The way they’re supposed to.”
The way his father gazed at the ceiling and then at the lamp, finding things to look at, reminded Sam of the day his father told him his mother had died. He had that same sad look on his face that wavered between a forced smile and genuine despair.
A memory clicked for the governor and he smiled. “You remember when we set up that elaborate, really cool domino chain?”
“Yeah.”
“It started on your cabinet, down the drawers, under your bed, through the living room, across the piano keys, and ended in the bathroom?”
“In the toilet.”
They laughed together. Sam still remembered the ‘plunk’ sound it made when the final domino dropped in.
“What’d you call it?”
“The domino dump.”
They laughed again until the governor retreated back into the memory. “But…you remember when we were almost done – and me, being clumsy, accidentally bumped one of the first ones? They all started toppling, one after another – just like they were supposed to – but too soon.”
“Yeah!”
He leaned in, a serious gleam in his eye. “But you remember what I did?”
Sam searched his memory but shook his head ‘no.’
“I reached out and…” The governor reached out into mid-air and pulled at an imaginary domino like it was his prize, “… plucked two dominoes from the chain, further down.” He turned with them still in his hand. “And viola! The domino effect stopped at the gap. The crisis was averted and we returned those that had gone off to their proper positions.”
“Then we set it off when we were ready.”
“Just the way they were supposed to.”
He took Sam’s hand again and put his other hand on the side of his head. “Sometimes, Sam, we have to reach out in life, and pluck things that are in the way. Even if they’re good. Even if we knew they once had a great purpose, sometimes they become obstacles to a greater success. And if we have the privilege to see the big picture – the end goal – it is our duty to do what needs to be done. And some times it just takes…” He reached out and plucked another imaginary domino. “Pluck.”
Suddenly a wave blindsided Sam – a wave of understanding and nausea. The ‘pluck’ repeated itself in his mind, but in a new way. Something that had to be removed. An obstacle. What if it were a person? What if Calvin had been an obstacle?
“Calvin…” Sam whispered.
The Governor’s eyes gave Sam his answer.
“Did you…?”
“No.” The Governor said as if he were taking an oath. “But someone had to.”
Sam couldn’t believe it, and he couldn’t breathe. He was scared – scared of his own father. He tried to wrap his mind around it – to make it seem like the right thing to do, but he couldn’t see it. He knew Calvin. He was a good ma
n. He didn’t deserve to be ‘plucked’. Couldn’t there have been another way? Who had set off the chain, anyway? Whose fault was it that Calvin had to be…
“He had Pluribus files on his computer, Sam. Files with important government secrets that he intended to leak to the press. He was working with them – the terrorists.”
Sam swallowed hard, and his hand, still under the covers, grasped hard at the black thumb drive. It had the same files that had gotten Calvin killed. The same ones that had made him out to be a traitor. If I’m found with the same files – will I be plucked, too?
The governor pinched Sam’s chin. “But don’t you feel guilty in any of this, okay? It’s not your fault.”
“He got the files from me.”
“We know. But you didn’t know they were bad. We told you they were harmless so as not to scare you. And as long as there are no more files, you’re clear.”
A spurt of anger vibrated on Sam’s chin. It was an accusation – subtle, political. “They took my laptop. They searched me – patted me down. I don’t have any more!”
His father read his anger. “I know, I know. Buddy, I know. But they were just doing their jobs. It’s their job not to trust anyone.”
“Like Calvin?”
The governor sighed with a slow blink for acknowledgment. Sam remembered what Calvin had said about trust. Trust no one.
“What were the secrets?”
The question hung in the air as his father blinked, examining Sam’s eyes like he was trying to figure him out. He was the first to look away. “Sam…I love this country. You know that. So do you. It’s exceptional in many ways, beautiful, free. But that freedom is not free. There’s a steep cost to pay to secure our freedom. And sometimes…” he sighed with regret, “…sometimes that cost is doing something that no one wants to do, but has to be done. Something that looks really bad, but in the end, works for the good.”
Sam stared at the American flag pin on his father’s suit, thinking over the words. The words sounded familiar.
“But if everyone knew all those things that look bad, they wouldn’t understand the bigger picture. They might want to rebel, like the terrorists. They would want to bite the hand that feeds them. Everyone has secrets, for whatever reason. But we keep secrets…for the good of our country and its people.”
Sam turned over on the pillow and acted like he was about to sleep. Underneath the pillow, his fingers wrapped neatly around the thumb drive. “He was a good person.”
His dad stood up from the bed and walked to the door. He shut off the light. “They always seem that way.”
Chapter 47
The next morning
Greyson’s eyes were heavy – swollen with tears and tiredness. It hurt even to breathe, so he did so slowly, staring ahead at the brush. The train tracks he sat on cut through the woods and curved away to the east and the west, leaving him alone with his thoughts. On the other side of the trees, where columns of smoke still rose in the distance, the rising sun was finally cracking the darkness with orange and red light, but it only made Greyson more aware of how tired he was, and how alone.
Kit.
Dead.
His breath staggered and he didn’t have to mask his crying anymore. Another friend had left him. And he had left another friend to die.
Memories of Kit ran through his mind, making him cry even harder. The times he had saved him. The time spent cuddling in the cold. The time he pawed at the moon. His whimper. His soft fur and wet nose. His licks.
Suddenly angry, Greyson kicked at the gravel. He picked up a fistful and threw it. He gritted his teeth and unclipped his slingshot. He loaded it with a rock and pelted the nearest tree. He did it again and again, harder and harder. If he had a punching bag he would have punched it over and over and over until his knuckles bled.
He drew back another rock, but stopped. He held the band back, stretched to its max, his hand and arm shaking with the tension. But he didn’t release. His eye had caught a cat slinking from the underbrush onto the railroad.
Sleek and white, it pawed silently along the gravel as graceful as a snake and oblivious to Greyson.
He twisted and put the cat between his crosshairs. He hated cats. He always had. Something about them – their selfish aloofness, their lack of obedience, their claws – just made them evil. And now, this one had come to mock him after his dog had died.
His shoulder ached with pain, sharper and sharper as he held the band. Sweat began to bead on his lip as the cat slinked in his direction twenty yards away. Now ten.
It stopped.
And he saw its collar. It belonged to someone.
Everything inside him wanted to take out his aggression on the cat, but something inside him had changed. The cat had an owner, somewhere, probably missing it as much as he missed Kit.
With a giant breath, he let the slingshot down, dropping the rock to the gravel. The cat meowed and walked up to him without any hesitation. Greyson tensed and put his hands up awkwardly as the cat pressed its flank against his knee and purred.
His eyes were wide as the last tears dripped away. Soon, his shy hands lowered, setting the slingshot down. Then, timidly, he put a hand on the cat’s head and pet it down its back. It purred louder and arched its back into his hand as if it liked it.
A smile worked its way onto his face as the cat continued pressing him for more. You’ll need a new self, John had said. Well, this is a big first step.
After a few more pets, he grasped the collar and took a look at its nametag.
“Pawl”
374 Damascus Avenue
Camden, GA
706-342-3532
“Pawl?” Greyson whispered, sniffing. The cat meowed and Greyson picked it up. “You lived in Camden, huh?” His eyes glazed over and he stared into the brush, remembering the panic there. Families had been sleeping, only to awaken to a train wreck and a battle in their neighborhood – and for some, inside their home. And Pawl had been one of them. Some little girl or boy could be missing him right now, like he was missing Kit.
And then the emotions came back to him again. He hugged Pawl close and laid his head on the cat’s back, choking back the sobs. He had loved Kit. He needed him. He was his guardian angel. Angels weren’t supposed to die.
He cried until his head hurt too much and then cried a little more. He was too tired to overcome them.
But soon Pawl squirmed, slithered from his arms, and slunk down the railroad toward another figure approaching from the east. Greyson looked up through blurry eyes.
The figure was dressed in all black, with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Though he was far away, Greyson could tell that he was carrying something.
The breath caught in his throat.
He wiped away his tears.
And like he was in slow motion, he stood up, shaking with fatigue and a rushing sensation surging in his veins.
“Kit?”
It started as curiosity, bloomed into hope and then burst into unquenchable joy. He surged forward at a sprint, scaring Pawl and shouting at the top of his lungs.
“KIT! KIT!”
Kit barked in reply, feeble, but unmistakably Kit.
Greyson ran until Kit was in his arms, but the man held him close. Kit’s entire chest was wrapped in white gauze, but he was panting – alive.
“He’s alive! He’s ALIVE!”
He buried his face into Kit’s fur and let him lick anywhere he wanted. He wanted to pet him everywhere at once, to love him as much as possible, but he could only do so much.
The soldier spoke with a slight Hispanic accent. “He’s going to need more attention.”
For the first time, Greyson acknowledged Kit’s rescuer. The other soldier had referred to him as Forge. “What happened?” Greyson asked Forge. “Will he be okay?”
The man showed no emotion. The sweat had beaded on his brown skin, but the mask pulled over his wavy hair kept most of it from his piercing eyes. “They had left him there.”
&
nbsp; Greyson’s energy dimmed for just a second as he thought about what could have happened to Kit. “Thank you, sir. So much. Thank you.”
“I had a combat dog once. He was a great soldier…and friend.” He squinted at Greyson. “Yours was brave. But I had to hurt more of our own. It’s…it’s not right – just not right at all.”
Greyson let him pass on his way to the camp, taking in what he’d said. It wasn’t right. It was hard to believe that their own would try to kill him, but they had. How could American soldiers be enemies? They were defenders of freedom around the globe, standing up for good when others couldn’t. Greyson had looked up to them since he was young enough to stand.
But now they were trying to kill him. Am I on the right side?
Though it made him pause, he shook it off, catching up to Forge and Kit.
Before long they entered a clearing and met the bearded Grover, who seemed to Greyson to be in charge. Still dressed in full gear, he was putting away the cameras that had recorded Greyson’s testimony.
After bandaging Greyson’s wounds, it had been the first thing they’d had him do when they had reached the clearing on the four-wheelers. He’d been distracted, depressed, and bruised, but he had told his whole story, sparing nothing – even the stuff about betraying Sam and searching for his father. Grover had listened from behind the camera, stroking his beard with only a flicker in his eyes signaling his comprehension. The third soldier, the sniper, never said a word. He had only listened from afar, his long rifle stretched across his back like a sword.
“Forge found Kit!” Greyson shouted to Grover, too ecstatic to hide it.
Grover looked up and stared. And then he went back to work. Greyson wasn’t affected by his lack of enthusiasm. He nearly danced around Forge as he laid Kit on the bed of a pickup truck and tended again to the bandages. And he couldn’t help smiling – a goofy kind of smile that made the soldiers give him looks – but it wasn’t all for Kit. He knew what was coming.
“When will they get here, sir?”
“Soon,” Grover said brusquely.
“He said he’d fly me to the Bahamas.”
