Empire

by Brandt Legg

  “What are we wanting the news to be?” she asked.

  “Start with the real stuff—markets around the world in turmoil and closed, banks collapsing, world economy in worst crisis ever, blah, blah, blah, and then hit them with the military taking over America by claiming a fake plague.” He smiled. “Brilliant idea, that slimeball, Coyne. We may be too late,” he muttered to himself, then continued dictating to Judy. “The idea is that the poor dumb bastards in America will think they’re picking up international reports, so talk a lot about how the Pentagon has taken control of the US media and so on. Then tell them about Operation White Flag.”

  “White Flag?”

  “Yeah, I just made it up. Catchy, huh? Anyway, secret US government plan to disarm the public—they’re coming for the guns! Fake plague. Taking guns. All linked to the Illuminati.”

  “Sir, there is no Illuminati,” she said.

  “No, but the conspiracy nuts always think it’s the Illuminati that’s going to enslave them. Ha! Fools. They don’t realize they’ve been slaves to the REMies for more than a century.”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  The president briefly speculated as to what Rex had been about to tell them before the line failed, but their attention quickly shifted to connecting to the outside world. After some time, trying all modes of communication in the safe room, the president, first lady, Schueller, and Fitz were forced to realize they were completely cut off.

  “We just have to hope Rex and Tarka can devise a plan to get to us,” the president said. “And that Ace gets word to Booker through Linh.”

  “It’s a tough one,” Fitz said, sounding weaker. “Camp David is no easy target even during normal times, and I imagine they have all kinds of extra heavy protection now.”

  “I wonder how 007 is,” Schueller said.

  Hudson nodded silently.

  “Can we really trust Booker?” Schueller asked.

  “I don’t know,” the president said. “But we can trust Linh.”

  No one said anything for a few minutes.

  Finally, Hudson sat next to Melissa. “Want to tell me what that was all about with your having Rex’s earth-line?”

  “No,” Melissa said. “No, I don’t.”

  He stared at her as if trying to read her secrets. “You have to.”

  “I know,” she said. “But not here.”

  “There may not be another chance.”

  Melissa nodded, wiping a tear as it formed. She looked at him, a soft, pleading look, desperate almost, begging forgiveness for what she was about to tell him.

  Hudson felt the implications of her wordless plea and gasped softly, bracing himself for what he suddenly feared was something horrible.

  Melissa took a deep breath. “Rex and I have been working on a plan . . . taking steps to put Schueller into position to get the CapStone.”

  Schueller looked over in surprise, but said nothing. He had found some painkillers and was handing them to Fitz.

  “I don’t understand,” Hudson said.

  “I know you don’t.

  “Why?”

  “The odds of your successfully defeating the REMies . . . Look where we are. We’re as good as buried alive in a concrete vault. The REMies are too powerful. All along, I’ve tried to make that clear to you; that the REMies don’t just run the world, they are the world. You’ve been trying to conquer the world all by yourself. It’s an impossible task. If I’d thought there—”

  “Wait, I thought we were doing this together. I wasn’t alone. I had you, Schueller, Florence, the Wizard, Fitz, Granger, Rex—at least I thought I had Rex. Apparently, you had Rex. Tell me exactly what’s been going on.”

  She looked at Fitz. “I can’t.”

  “Have you been sleeping with Rex?”

  “God, no!” She looked from Hudson to Schueller, shaking her head. “No, I just . . . wish it were that simple.”

  Hudson felt his stomach tighten. Worse than an affair? His brain swirled. “Are you an AKA?”

  She laughed. “I wish.” Her laugh collapsed into a moan. “Hudson, I need you to believe me. I love you so much. I fell in love with you during the campaign. Your determination, conviction, your sense of right and honor—you’re an amazing man, and you dazzled me. Everything—”

  “You fell in love with me during the campaign? We were together two years before the campaign. We were married before the campaign! Why did you marry me if you didn’t love me yet?”

  She stared at him for a long time, teary eyed, with the same pleading, desperate look from before.

  More than two minutes passed. Hudson never took his eyes off her, but his mind was replaying the past five years, reviewing details, putting pieces together. The crushing tension in the small room was suffocating. Fitz had closed his eyes. Schueller, a totally perplexed expression on his face, was trying to figure out what this was all about, at the same time wondering if they could possibly escape, and what was happening up there across the country; a country no longer like the United States of America, instead like a South American nation riddled with coup attempts.

  Finally, Hudson understood. “Tell me you weren’t working for Vonner.”

  Fitz opened his eyes. Schueller stretched so he could see Melissa’s face.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Melissa reached for Hudson’s hand. He pulled back.

  “Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I was working for Vonner.”

  Hudson felt dizzy, almost faint. “For how long?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “How long?” he asked angrily.

  “Since before . . . before we met.”

  “Ohhh no!” Hudson reeled around, hitting the wall with the side of his fist.

  Fitz closed his eyes again.

  Schueller looked at Melissa as if she’d just stabbed his father.

  All Hudson wanted to do was to get as far away from her as possible, but they were trapped, possibly forever, together.

  “Hudson, please listen to me,” she tried.

  “No!” He turned back to face her. “What could you possibly say to fix this?”

  “Please let me try to explain.”

  “Explain? Explain what? That Vonner hired you to marry me, to keep an eye on me? What else did he pay you to do? There’s no way to explain . . . you can’t make this right Melissa. How do you live with yourself? What kind of a person . . . ?”

  “There was no malice in what I did. Vonner always intended you to be the one who could change things, but he knew you didn’t know enough in the beginning, that you would stray, make mistakes, and he needed to know because, as you’ve learned, there’s no room for error when dealing with the REMies. But, Hudson, I really did fall in love with you. I love you so much.”

  “So you keep saying, but, Melissa . . . is that even your real name?”

  “Of course, it’s my real name.”

  He shrugged. “How would I know?” Then, remembering how close Schueller and Melissa had been, he turned to his son. “Are you okay?”

  Schueller’s dry response came out as almost a croak. “Unbelievable.”

  “I’m sorry, Schueller,” Melissa said.

  “How do you apologize for being a spy, a double-agent, a whore!?” Schueller screamed at her.

  “Schueller,” Hudson said. “Easy.”

  “Why?” Schueller’s response filled with even more fire. “Vonner paid her. I’m pretty sure you two had sex occasionally. Was that part of her deal? What do you call that?”

  “Vonner, like you, wanted to change the world,” Melissa said to Hudson. “He wanted to bring down the REMie empire, but believed in a slower approach than you, and I agreed with him. I think time has proven we were right. Look at what’s happened. The country is under military control. It’s safe to assume economies around the world are collapsing. For all we know, it’s anarchy out there. You were going too fast.”

  “You were the leaker, too, weren’t you?” Hu
dson asked, suddenly seeing it all.

  “I never leaked anything to hurt you. I was trying to steer you in the right direction.”

  “Incredible!” Hudson yelled. “Who are you?”

  “We wanted the same thing—Vonner, you, me. We all wanted to end the empire.”

  “Hold on,” Hudson said, turning to his Chief of Staff, still laying on a foam mat. “Fitz, did you know?”

  Fitz opened his eyes. “I did,” Fitz answered in a scratchy voice.

  “It keeps getting worse,” Hudson said. “You were supposed to have my back.”

  “I did what I thought was best. She wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  “Wasn’t hurting me?” he said incredulously. “This is way beyond hurt, this is Greek tragedy. You don’t think being cut in half is hurt? In half!” He stood as if he might hit someone, his hands shaking uncontrollably. Melissa reached for him again. He recoiled, more to prevent his fury from taking over than to get away from her. “But set aside the personal treachery of this acid attack . . . she was leaking, counter to all we were trying to do—”

  “I didn’t know about the leaks,” Fitz said. “I knew it could have been her, but it could have been any of us.”

  Hudson shook his head, a vile expression on his face, head pounding as if he’d been hit with a two-by-four. “Here we are then,” he said, waving his arm around the room. “What about this? The poetic irony here . . . Vonner must be laughing his ass off. He hired Melissa to watch me, then hired me to become president, then hired Fitz to watch it all, and finally, he gave all his money to Schueller. The four of us, Vonner’s puppets, trapped in a presidential tomb where we’ll probably all die.”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Coyne stood at the window of a high-rise on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, where he could see the small plume of smoke rising above Washington. “Was it a missile?” he asked.

  “We don’t think so,” a man in a military uniform answered.

  “And you’re sure General Imperia and Vice President Brown are dead?” Coyne asked as he turned away from the window and back to the men gathered—a mix of bankers, military, and a few of his top assistants.

  “No one could have survived.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about the general, that’s quite a loss for our cause, but at least the vice president is one less headache we have to deal with.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who did it? NorthBridge, or another REMie?”

  “It’s still too hot to really get in there, but we do have an F-team on site, and I’ve just been told that there are reliable indications it was Gruell-75, but we won’t know for sure until the tests—”

  “Damn it,” Coyne said. “It’s Booker. He’s going for the CapStone.”

  “You knew it was a risk when you opened this up,” a Federal Reserve Governor said.

  “I didn’t open this up, it was Bastendorff and his insurgents trying to bring on the chaos when they launched the uprisings.”

  “This was already planned before they started the riots . . . and they were over already,” the man said.

  “It was the only way,” Coyne admitted.

  “Apparently, others agree with you.”

  “Whatever, we’re still in charge.”

  “The Chairman of Joint Chiefs has assumed command,” another military man said, his chest full of decorations.

  “What’s going on out there?” Coyne, annoyed, asked the man.

  “Travel restrictions have been instituted. Road closures. Large quarantine zones. FEMA camps reopened in every geographic region.”

  “Excellent,” Coyne said. “Curfews tonight?”

  “Yes. Mandatory curfews, strictly enforced.”

  “Guns?”

  “We’re making progress seizing them in door-to-door raids, but, as you know, this will take up to eighteen months to accomplish.”

  “We’ve announced that everyone is subject to search and seizure,” another military man added. “The Constitution has been suspended for the general good. Identification is required for all travel outside the home. Firearms are being confiscated, but we’re maintaining a low profile with that one.”

  “Resistance?”

  “Skirmishes have broken out with people trying to protect their guns. They were treated as criminals. Killed, or captured and imprisoned. Fewer than four thousand today, but the situation has substantially shifted since Beta-Pi was implemented.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” Coyne said. “The prospect of a rapidly spreading fatal virus tends to make people docile.”

  The man nodded. “We’ve dubbed the virus ‘Masama,’ which is Filipino for evil.”

  “Filipino?’

  “We’re saying the virus originated in the Philippines.”

  “Nice touch,” Coyne said.

  “There were some demonstrations prior to the news of the virus against the suspension of civil rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press, but we’ve made it clear that we still don’t know if the weaponized virus is part of a foreign invasion, NorthBridge, or some other terror group. Just that it’s spreading fast, and with the president and vice president dead, the Pentagon is acting to protect the population, and the loss of basic rights will be only temporary.”

  “The troops are there for your protection, the loss of rights is temporary,” Coyne mocked. “It’s all only an extreme measure to regain control since the civilian government had broken down, only until the threat is neutralized and the insurrections put down.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve announced that food is expected to be rationed and could even be confiscated if hoarding takes place. All large grocery stores and distribution centers are now under military guard.”

  “Sir,” another man in uniform said, “you said the president is dead, but—”

  “I know.” Coyne held up a hand to silence him. “It’s under control.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the briefing, Coyne quietly took a few key people aside and told them that the president had locked himself in an underground safe room with no way to escape. “We’ve cut off all his communications. He can rot in there. No one will ever know that he didn’t die as we said he did—in an earlier attack. Hudson Pound is no longer a problem.”

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  The vice president crawled out of the false bottom section of the SUV that NorthBridge had previously used for smuggling weapons. Inside the garage of an $8 million Georgetown mansion less than three miles from the White House, she stretched her legs. The messenger escorted her inside. The home was anything but a residence. Although the first floor appeared to be an upscale living area, on the upper floors were extremely advanced communications equipment and a large store of weapons.

  A doctor was waiting to examine her. A few cracked ribs, contusions, and some bad gashes requiring stitches, but otherwise she was in seemingly good shape. Her hearing had improved enough to converse. The doctor did warn there might be some permanent loss. After getting cleaned up and downing a bowl of soup, she was ready to take on the world again.

  It was in a small upstairs room, layered in hi-tech shielding, that Vice President Celia Brown learned the full extent of the coup. She listened to uncensored reports coming in from NorthBridge operatives and BLAXer units around the country. Another channel was summarizing international reporting. Forty-five minutes after her arrival, she joined a secure multi-encrypted video conference with Booker, Fonda, Thorne, and AKA Franklin.

  “I’ve spoken to our people inside,” Booker said, referring to people on his payroll who worked in the upper levels of the CIA and NSA, as well as several within the hierarchy of the US military intelligence agencies. “This coup is extremely fragile. It’s being pushed by Titus Coyne and a handful of other REMies he’s roped into a cartel.”

  “So we can break it?” Thorne asked.

  “Yes,” Booker said. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  “
And then what?”

  “It depends on whether President Pound is still alive.”

  “Why? Either way, he’s finished.”

  “I don’t think so,” Booker said. “Vonner Security is mobilizing. I believe he’s alive and they’re going to rescue him.”

  “And he’s our best chance,” Fonda added. “The revolution needs stability and legitimacy.”

  “I disagree,” Thorne said.

  “We all want the empire destroyed,” the vice president said. “Not civilization. We need to compromise, work together. It’s our only chance.”

  “What about you, Franklin?” Thorne asked. “Are you with the wimps?”

  “I am,” AKA Franklin said. “Picking up the pieces is going to be a big job. Pound’s Fair and Free can work, but not without him, and if for some reason he doesn’t make it, then Adams will carry the flag.”

  “You all wasted my time!” Thorne said.

  “Think about it,” Fonda said. “The REMies have it all. They can battle out of this chaos, rebuild their empire. Money, weapons, resources, they’ll kill millions to win . . . billions.”

  Thorne nodded. “Yeah,” he muttered bitterly. “They always win.”

  “Let’s try it with Hudson,” Fonda said. “If it doesn’t work, NorthBridge 2.0 will rise from the ashes and start again.”

  “Okay,” Thorne said. “But he has to go after every REMie on the list. Prison or death.”

  Everyone agreed.

  “Then the rebels are united,” Fonda said.

  “Yeah,” Thorne said. “Until the empire falls.”

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  The Wizard had gone into hiding at the first sign of trouble. Gypsy had picked up a major coordinated domestic move by the military before the internet went down. He’d tried unsuccessfully to warn the president, and then fled. The Wizard had contingency plans as back up and fail-safes on top of that. In the event of a sudden attack with less than a few minutes’ warning, he had already set up a temporary storage shed in the woods behind a church up the road from the Hunter Mill mansion. He’d equipped it with a Tesla wall-mounted battery and had a buried electric line he could easily connect to a box at the church.