Knockdown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “I don’t like you, Cavanaugh,” Barry said. “Not even a little. You’ve got an arrogant little Washington bureaucrat’s mind, and you think you and your friends are better than everybody else. You believe that everybody who doesn’t live in the Beltway, New York, Los Angeles, or maybe San Francisco and Chicago are just redneck rubes who shouldn’t have any say in how their country is run. Because you know better than them, don’t you? The best and the brightest, that’s what you boys used to call yourselves. But you were never the best at anything except hoarding power, lining your own pockets, and turning yourselves into petty tyrants.”

  Barry paused and drew in a breath. After a second, he went on. “But I’m wasting time telling you things we both already know. What you need to tell me is what the endgame is. What have you and Bandar al-Saddiq cooked up that’ll ruin this country?”

  Cavanaugh’s eyes were starting to turn a little hazy now as the cocktail of drugs McIntire had given him began to affect his brain.

  “Saddiq is . . . a fool,” he said in a slightly slurred voice. “A useful idiot. As if we’d ever let them . . . actually run anything. They think they’re gonna come in here . . . with their sharia law . . . and turn this country . . . into a caliphate . . . That’ll never . . . happen.”

  “Well, what do you know?” Barry said. “We actually agree on something, Mitch. But if Saddiq and his people aren’t going to be running things when you’re finished with whatever this is, then who is?”

  “The people who . . . deserve to. Not a bunch of . . . self-aggrandizing buffoons . . . Time’s come . . . to take the government back . . .”

  Jake said quietly, “He’s talking about a coup.”

  Barry nodded and said to Cavanaugh, “You can’t get away with removing the President. And if you did, you’d still have the Vice President—”

  “No! Speaker of the House! The Speaker of the House . . . is third in line . . .”

  “Good Lord!” Jake said. “They mean to assassinate the President and Vice President.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Barry said with a shake of his head. “Too many people wouldn’t stand for that. It’d be the boogaloo to end all boogaloos. And since this group has never succeeded in disarming the American people the way they want to, I don’t think they’d even attempt such a thing. No, they’d have to come up with a way to get more than half the country to go along with—”

  “Only way . . . to keep the Chinese out . . .” Cavanaugh said. “Once the econ . . . economy . . . is just . . . smoking ruins . . .”

  Jake said, “Attacking the railroads has hurt the economy, sure, but not enough to make it tank to that extent. Barry, this isn’t making sense.”

  “I know.” Barry frowned for a long moment, then leaned closer to Cavanaugh and said, “We know about the eagle project, Cavanaugh.” The glance he threw toward Jake indicated that he knew he had tried this tactic before, but maybe this time it would work. “It’s too late. We’re going to stop it.”

  Cavanaugh moaned. His consciousness was fading, that was obvious. But he found the strength to shake his head and said, “You can’t . . . stop the eagle . . . The eagle . . . goes through . . . Silver . . . silver eagle . . .”

  His eyes closed, and he seemed to have slipped into a deep sleep.

  Barry leaned on the wounded knee again. Cavanaugh screamed as his eyes flew open.

  “The silver eagle,” Barry said sharply. “What’s the silver eagle?”

  “Can’t stop it!” Cavanaugh cried. “They’ll all be there!”

  His head fell back. He was out cold this time, and he wasn’t going to wake up no matter how much pain Barry dished out. Barry knew that, and despite what some might think, he wasn’t a cruel man.

  He stepped back from the table.

  “What in blazes is the silver eagle?” Jake asked.

  “That’s what we have to find out,” Barry said.

  CHAPTER 60

  By the next morning, Gretchen was feeling a lot stronger and her color was better. Jake knew she must have a lot of resilience to be bouncing back that quickly from everything she had gone through.

  Even so, she was going to need a lot of rest and medical care before she was completely recovered. Which meant she couldn’t continue trying to help Jake and Barry stop whatever the conspiracy was. She wasn’t physically capable of it right now.

  When Jake told her that, she was predictably irritated.

  “What am I supposed to do?” she demanded. “Just lie here and wait?”

  “Actually, Dr. McIntire is making arrangements with some other friends of his to have you moved to a safe house. Cavanaugh and the other prisoners will be moved, too, and cleaners will be here later today to make sure nobody will ever be able to tell that anything happened here.”

  Gretchen stared at him with a puzzled frown on her face.

  “You make the doctor sound like some sort of, I don’t know, superspy,” she said.

  Jake shook his head and said, “No, just a guy who’s made a lot of friends in, well, circles that might be considered a little shady . . .”

  “Friends like Barry,” Gretchen said.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  She shook her head and said, “I never knew there was so much going on behind the scenes. It’s like there’s a whole dark world out there that normal people aren’t even aware of.”

  “If people ever learned the whole truth about what goes on behind the scenes . . . well, most people wouldn’t want to know about it, I imagine,” Jake said.

  Gretchen started to say something but hesitated, then said instead, “While you’re trying to track down that silver eagle business with Barry . . . you’re going to be careful, aren’t you, Jake?”

  “I always am,” Jake replied. Then, realizing how ludicrous that probably sounded, he shrugged and added, “Well . . . as much as I can be, anyway.”

  She reached out with a hand that had an IV needle inserted into a vein and taped down on the back. Despite that, she was able to slip her fingers into his hand and squeeze.

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done,” she said softly.

  “I haven’t done anything except get you right in the middle of bad trouble—”

  “That’s not true at all, and you know it,” she interrupted him. “I got myself into this trouble, and I could have gotten myself out of it any time I wanted to. It just so happens that I think it’s important to stop whatever it is that Cavanaugh and Saddiq and whoever else is mixed up in it plan to do.”

  Jake nodded and said, “Yeah, it’s a bad combination—”

  Barry came into the room behind him and said, “Hate to bother you two, but I may have a lead.”

  Gretchen took her hand away and used it to push the button that raised the head of the hospital bed a little more. Just like that, she was all business again.

  But Jake wasn’t going to forget the look he had seen in her eyes a moment earlier.

  “What is it?” she asked Barry. Jake turned toward his uncle, eager to hear the answer as well.

  “I did some research and found out that there’s a train called the Silver Eagle,” Barry said. “One of those luxury excursion trains that people take vacations on. It runs from Denver through the Rocky Mountains and on west to San Francisco.”

  Jake frowned and said, “Attacking a train like that might have some symbolic value . . . you know, striking against the wealthy, since I guess you’d have to be rich to afford it . . . and they’ve certainly made it clear that they like going after trains. But I can’t see that it would do much practical damage to the country, so what would their motive be?”

  “That’s what we have to figure out, and that means going to Denver.”

  “When are you leaving?” Gretchen asked.

  “Right away. The sooner we get there, the better. And we’re taking the truck,” Barry added. “Driving straight through, we can be in Denver by the morning of the day after tomorrow.”

  Jake said, “Wi
th everybody we have gunning for us, is it a good idea to travel in something as recognizable as that truck?”

  “If we have to make it through a gauntlet of killers, I can’t think of anything better to be in.”

  Jake nodded in acceptance of that. He knew from experience how tough that big Kenworth Z1000 was.

  “The doc’s going off the grid and taking you with him,” Barry went on to Gretchen. “Nobody will be able to find you . . . but when this is all over, I’ll get in touch with him, and Jake and I will come for you.”

  “I told Jake earlier, and I’ll tell you, too,” Gretchen said. “Be careful, Barry.”

  “Oh, I intend to be,” he replied with a reckless grin. “But you know what they say about good intentions.”

  “The road to hell is paved with them.”

  “Maybe this time that old saying will be wrong,” Barry said.

  Jake hoped so—but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.

  * * *

  With memories of his bittersweet farewell with Gretchen in his head, Jake had to force himself to concentrate on the mission. It was almost nightfall when he and Barry left McIntire’s place and headed west.

  By now, somebody was bound to have noticed that Mitchell Cavanaugh and the agents he had brought with him were missing. From the passenger seat, Jake asked, “You think we have eyes in the sky watching us?”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  “They may try to drone us.”

  Barry thought about it and shook his head.

  “Cavanaugh has to be pretty high up in this conspiracy. I’m not sure any of the others would make a move like that without his approval. And it’s possible they believe he’s with us. They wouldn’t want to blow him up.”

  Jake snorted and said, “I’m not so sure about that. From what I’ve seen, these guys would kill anybody if it helped their agenda. Like you pointed out, there’s a long trail of suspicious deaths and outright murder behind them, and they’re used to having the media cover up for them.”

  “That’s true. They were untouchable and could do pretty much whatever they wanted for close to a hundred years, until talk radio and then the Internet came along. Things have changed . . . some . . . but they’re still pretty blatant about their power grabs. They’ve got another one going on now, so you might be right. They’re working with Islamic terrorists and have already killed more than a thousand people to further their goals. They probably won’t hesitate to blow us up to keep us from interfering, even if it means a lot of collateral damage.”

  “So what are we going to do? It’s like we’ve got a target painted on top of the truck!”

  Barry smiled and said, “We’re going to be doing something about that.”

  “Well, don’t be all enigmatic about it.”

  Barry’s smile just turned into a grin.

  It was dark when Barry piloted the truck off the highway and turned onto a smaller road. It was paved but narrow and old, probably a hundred years or older judging by its macadam surface. It led into some thick woods. The trees that crowded in both sides of the road were tall, and their arching branches stretched out and tangled with each other.

  “I get it,” Jake said. “Darkness might not be enough to get away from their satellites, but they can’t see through the trees.” He thought of something. “What about thermal imaging? That big engine must put out a lot of heat.”

  Barry reached over and pushed some buttons on the dashboard underneath the computer screen.

  “Electronic countermeasures,” he said. “We can block thermal imaging, infrared, and just about any other kind of surveillance equipment you can think of. The trees take care of visuals.”

  “How did you know this road was here? No, wait, let me guess. You’ve used it for something like this before, haven’t you?”

  “Maybe,” Barry said. “Honestly, I didn’t know if it was still here. They could have bulldozed all the trees and built a bunch of McMansions, for all I knew. But luck was on our side.”

  “Luck and a bunch of electronic gizmos. Whatever it takes, I guess.”

  “That’s right.”

  They drove on in silence for a moment, but Jake’s frown deepened until he said, “Wait a minute. If you had all these countersurveillance measures available, why weren’t you using them all along? Then they wouldn’t have been able to track us to Dr. McIntire’s place.”

  “True, there’s a chance we could have lost them, I suppose.”

  “Blast it!” Jake burst out. He stared at his uncle. “Barry . . . you wanted them to find us!”

  “I thought there was a chance that if somebody made a move against us, it might wind up giving us another lead.” Barry shrugged. “And it has. We wouldn’t know about the Silver Eagle if we hadn’t gotten our hands on Cavanaugh.”

  “But that nearly got Gretchen killed! You were willing to risk her life . . . all of our lives . . . just to get a lead.”

  With a grim note in his voice now, Barry said, “What the people plotting against this country have in mind isn’t just harassment, or even a body count. They’re after something a lot bigger than that. We know they plan to cause enough trouble to make it feasible for the President and Vice President to be removed. Anything that big will cause more death and misery than the U.S. has seen in a long time.”

  “I suppose you’re right—”

  “You know I am.” Barry stared straight ahead through the windshield. “We’ve both suffered losses in the past from battling these people, Jake. And there’ll be more pain in the future, because they won’t give up. They’re so convinced of the rightness of their cause that they’ll cause countless deaths to get what they want. And if they ever succeed in forcing their deranged beliefs on this country, they’ll just keep on hurting people, over and over again—”

  Barry shook his head and blew out a breath.

  “Sorry I started preaching,” he said. “I just know how dangerous they are. I’ve been battling against that encroaching evil for three decades now. Sometimes it’s frustrating because some people can’t see . . . refuse to see . . . what these people are trying to do. There’s no ‘live and let live’ with them. You agree with their philosophy . . . or you die. Whether they put you up against a wall for a firing squad or you starve to death in some gulag, if you don’t think like them, they want you dead. That desire might be buried deep enough in some of them that they won’t admit it, even to themselves, but it’s there. And it comes out whenever they get any power. That’s why we have to keep fighting them. This country won’t survive if we don’t.”

  Jake sat there in silence. He knew, logically, that his uncle was right. He had observed certain politicians long enough, and keenly enough, to realize the truth of everything Barry said.

  But he still wished that Gretchen hadn’t been hurt, and he was looking forward to seeing her again when this was over.

  Sometimes the small things were just as important as the big, epic ones.

  They emerged from the long, tunnel-like road and turned onto a smaller highway that also led west and eventually brought them to the interstate again. In the middle of the night, they stopped for gas and food at an isolated convenience store, avoiding the big truck stops where they were more likely to be spotted.

  Then they rolled on through the darkness, with Jake behind the wheel while Barry dozed in the passenger seat. Jake punched up some jazz on the sound system to keep him company through the long night.

  They continued across the Midwest and the Great Plains, the strong beating heart of the country so despised by those who huddled together in the great coastal cities congratulating themselves on how much smarter and better educated and just plain better they were than those rubes and yokels who couldn’t be trusted to vote the proper way.

  Jake had never tried to force his beliefs on anyone, only defended himself and others who were under attack. Even after all this time, he struggled to grasp the fact that so many of his fellow citizens were filled with
hate for anyone who didn’t support their so-called progressive agenda. As far as Jake could see, it wasn’t progressive at all. Instead, it was a throwback to an earlier era, a time of thugs banding together to take down those they disagreed with—“canceling” anyone they wanted by shaming them on social media. He knew from bitter experience that a few of the modern-day leftists would be happy to do far more than just that if they ever got the chance.

  It was a fight worth fighting . . . but it got awfully wearying after a while.

  A day and another night of driving, and they approached Denver with the sun rising behind them and turning some of the heavily glassed downtown high-rises into towers of flame. Barry was at the wheel while Jake studied the computer screen for anything that might relate to their mission. They were still on the vast flatland east of the city when Jake said, with a hollow note in his voice, “Barry, here’s something.”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Barry said, “Something wrong?”

  “Well, there’s a news story talking about how the owners and CEOs of more than a dozen of the biggest companies in the country are meeting to discuss ways to limit the economic damage from the recent terrorist attacks.”

  Barry had to turn his head for that. He glanced back at Jake in the sleeper and said, “You mean they’ll all be together in one place? The people who run the corporations that drive the huge majority of the economy?”

  “Yeah,” Jake said, and now his voice sounded like it was coming from a grave. “And to keep distractions at a minimum, they’re getting away from everything else by having their summit meeting on a train.” Jake swallowed hard. “The Silver Eagle. And it rolled out of the station fifteen minutes ago.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Barry pulled over into a rest area so he could join Jake in the sleeper and look over his nephew’s shoulder at the computer screen. Jake had found several news stories about the corporate summit meeting on the excursion train, which, according to the stories, had been chartered by the billionaire industrialist and financier Alexander Sherman.