Knockdown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Sherman was quoted as saying it was vital that the current economic crisis be stopped in its tracks before it got bad enough to do any lasting damage to the country.

  “I know that name,” Barry said. “Alexander Sherman has given millions, maybe more, to so-called philanthropic causes over the past twenty years. The thing of it is, every one of those causes wound up giving the government even more power than it already had and furthered Sherman’s agenda. He’s a statist and a globalist who, despite what he’s saying right now, would like nothing better than to kill the free market.”

  “But he’s a billionaire,” Jake said in obvious confusion. “How can he hate the free market and capitalism that much when it made him into the richest guy since Scrooge McDuck?”

  “He figures he’ll still be the richest guy around once his side takes over, but then he and his handpicked politicians can tell everybody else what to do and control every detail of their lives from the proverbial cradle to the grave. They won’t have to deal with those uppity common folks believing they know what’s best for their own lives when it’s so obviously Sherman and his ilk who know best.” Barry shook his head. “I know, Jake. Guys like you and me and a lot of other people can’t even comprehend how anybody could feel that way, but trust me. That’s exactly what Sherman and his allies believe.”

  “I know,” Jake muttered. “But you’re right . . . I’ll never understand it.” A frown creased his forehead as he leaned forward and started typing on the keyboard again. “There’s something bugging me, something I seem to remember . . . Look!” He pointed to the news story that had come up on the screen. “The train that was derailed in Nevada, the first attack Lashkar-e-Islami claimed credit for, was headed for a hazardous waste containment facility owned by Sherman Global Enterprises.” His fingers flew across the keyboard again. “And as if you couldn’t tell from the name, that company is owned by—”

  “Alexander Sherman,” Barry finished as the results of Jake’s search came up. Jake didn’t even need to click on any of the hits for them to see what they needed to know.

  Jake turned in his seat to look up at his uncle.

  “Sherman’s behind this, Barry,” he said. “He’s got to be.”

  With a bleak expression on his face, Barry nodded and said, “Yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind. Orchestrate things so the economy’s in danger of melting down and use that as an excuse to get all of those CEOs together. Then there’ll be another terrorist attack that wipes them all out—except for Sherman himself, of course—and when the economy actually does crater because of that, they’ll use it as an excuse to remove the President and Vice President and form a new government. They won’t be able to do it overnight, but they’ll start beating the drums right away, and the Chinese will start making threatening noises, and it’ll make the Depression look like a picnic. I’ll bet within a year the country will be desperate enough to turn to them to take over and do whatever they want. Remember how Woodrow Wilson centralized the federal government during World War I, and then FDR strengthened the presidency even more during the Depression? Those extra executive powers didn’t go away after the crisis ended.”

  “A little before my time,” Jake said dryly, “but I remember reading about it. You really think that Sherman and his allies would inflict so much terrible suffering on the country just to get their own way? Just because they don’t like how a few elections have gone?”

  “Like we talked about, he’ll do anything to further their cause,” Barry said. “And he doesn’t care how many bodies it costs to get it done.”

  “Then we have to stop them.”

  “You said the train’s already left Denver.”

  “Yeah, but maybe we can catch up to it somehow and be there to stop whatever they’ve got planned.” Regret tinged Jake’s voice as he went on, “I know we weren’t able to stop them completely in El Paso, and we weren’t able to do squat on Long Island, but . . .”

  “But the stakes are higher now,” Barry said. “The highest.” He turned toward the truck’s cab. “Come on. We’ll figure out our next move as we go along.”

  * * *

  Bandar al-Saddiq had never seen such luxury. The thick carpet, the lushly upholstered furniture, the richly paneled walls, the gleaming brass and chrome . . . The money it must have cost just to furnish this one railroad car could have fed an entire village in Pakistan for a year!

  Soon, the Americans would pay for their immoral greed and arrogance, thanks to Saddiq and the man who sat across from him in this private train car. Outside, visible through the large windows, were rugged, snow-capped peaks. The mountains’ white crowns gleamed in the morning sun.

  “A beautiful day, isn’t it?” Alexander Sherman said.

  “A momentous day,” Saddiq said. “The day the Great Satan finally begins to taste defeat.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sherman said, nodding. His basset-hound face showed satisfaction. “All our plans are about to come to fruition, my friend. By the time this day is done, America will have experienced a fundamental change. Of course, people won’t realize at first just how fundamental a change, but this country’s history of evil will be at the beginning of the end.”

  “To be replaced by the holy reign of Allah,” Saddiq said. He couldn’t contain the boundless enthusiasm he felt. He stood up from the comfortable chair and went over to the window to watch the rugged, starkly beautiful landscape through which the Silver Eagle was moving. “This . . . United States . . . will be made over, molded anew into part of the worldwide caliphate.” He smiled over at Sherman, who joined him in looking out the window. “I mean no offense, my friend, but I hope you will embrace Islam. Sometimes Allah makes use of infidels, but I hope for your sake you have seen the truth and the light and know what you must do to take your rightful place among the leaders of this new world.”

  Sherman nodded and said, “Oh, I know exactly what to do to take my rightful place.”

  He slipped a small, flat pistol from his pocket, held the muzzle less than an inch from Saddiq’s head, and pulled the trigger. The spiteful crack of the weapon mingled with Saddiq’s shocked cry. Saddiq’s knees buckled, and he fell to the thick carpet. Shame about the blood, Sherman thought, but it could be cleaned—or the carpet could be replaced, if need be.

  With an expressionless face, he fired a bullet into each of Saddiq’s open, staring eyes, just to make sure.

  The car’s top-of-the-line ventilation system was already starting to clear away the smell of burned powder.

  Sherman put the pistol away and forgot about Bandar al-Saddiq except for a fleeting thought about useful idiots. The man and his ragtag organization had served their purpose of stirring up fear in the American populace, and so Saddiq could be safely dispensed with.

  Fear was the most potent weapon in his arsenal, Sherman mused as he left his private car, which was soundproofed well enough that the shots couldn’t have been heard from outside, even without the noise of the train’s wheels on the rails. Fear of the unknown, fear of the “other,” fear of poverty and hard times, fear of death . . . All of those made people easy to manipulate.

  Sherman sighed as he walked through the vestibule into the next car, where his guests were meeting. Some people just wouldn’t learn how to accept what was good for them. The ones who wouldn’t had to be taught—and taught hard.

  This car was set up like a boardroom, with a long table surrounded by his two dozen guests. Victims would have been a better word, but if they had known what was in store for them, they wouldn’t have accepted his invitation, now would they?

  Some of them had been reluctant to do that anyway, since they disagreed with his politics. But he had appealed to them to put those differences aside in the spirit of patriotism. He had talked stirringly about the need for fast action to ward off the worst financial collapse in almost a hundred years. And they had accepted, never dreaming that such a catastrophe was exactly what he intended to precipitate.

  The car was ful
l of talk when he came in, not all of it serious yet. They were still visiting among themselves, comfortable in these luxurious surroundings, at ease chatting with fellow members of their elite, super-rich fraternity. The trip was just getting started. They didn’t expect to reach San Francisco until the next morning.

  They had no idea that none of them would ever leave Colorado alive.

  Sherman raised his voice and said, “My friends, welcome! I hope you’ve enjoyed my hospitality so far.”

  “This is all so wonderful, Alexander,” a thin, silver-haired woman gushed as she smiled at him. She was the majority partner in one of the biggest hotel chains in the country. “You’re a real patriot for doing this.”

  Some of the others didn’t look convinced of that, but they were willing to give Sherman the benefit of the doubt for now.

  “Thank you, Margaret,” he said graciously. “We’ll be getting down to work shortly, but for now, I think we can take the time for all of you to have a look at some of the most impressive scenery in the world.” He went to a console and pushed a button, and sections of the wall rolled up to reveal large windows through which the mountains were visible on both sides of the train. The Silver Eagle was climbing into the Rockies, and clichéd though it might be, “majestic” really was the best word to describe them. The route went through high passes and alongside gorges that seemed a mile deep, where rivers foamed and raced along the bottoms.

  One of those gorges would seem even deeper when the tracks running beside it blew up just as the train got there and the whole length of cars derailed and tumbled down the slope to fiery destruction. It was utterly unthinkable that anyone would survive such a crash.

  Which was why Alexander Sherman intended to be gone from the Silver Eagle before it ever reached that point.

  For now, though, he stood watching in satisfaction as the company presidents, managing partners, and CEOs stood up from the table and went to the windows to gaze out and ooh and ah at the magnificent mountain landscape. Actually, Sherman thought, one of the biggest challenges of the whole scheme had been to find enough companies still owned by American interests to make a sufficient dent in the economy when they failed. So much of the economy was dependent on China now . . .

  But that was good, because when the economy cratered, the Chinese would feel threatened enough by a possible worldwide collapse that they would be willing to send troops, and Sherman could play that off as an imminent invasion, an existential peril that only one man could defeat. The country would have to turn to him for salvation, and even though the Speaker of the House would ascend to the presidency, that terrible hag would be only a puppet leader.

  The real leader of the country would be Alexander Sherman. America would be his. His ascension had been inevitable for more than a hundred years.

  So it was blasted well about time. Sherman smiled as he pictured all the greedy capitalists in this car screaming in terror as they plummeted to their deaths.

  Soon, soon . . .

  CHAPTER 62

  Barry drove on toward Denver while Jake stayed at the computer. As Barry put it, Jake had been born to that technology, while he’d had to learn it.

  As he tapped away at the keyboard, Jake hoped he would be able to justify his uncle’s faith in him.

  He found surprisingly little information about the Silver Eagle and the special trip it was making with a large number of vital financial figures aboard. Alexander Sherman—if he truly was tied in with Bandar al-Saddiq, Mitchell Cavanaugh, and the other plotters—must have tried to keep a low profile on this part of the plan. It would have been difficult to get that many movers and shakers in one place without some news leaking, though.

  “The Silver Eagle is following the same route as Amtrak’s California Zephyr,” he reported to Barry after more Internet searching. “That Amtrak run has been suspended for a couple of days. Sherman must have a lot of clout.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Barry said from the cab. “Having billions of dollars tends to make other people sit up and pay attention.”

  “It’s making the trip nonstop, according to what I’ve read.” Jake frowned. “But that doesn’t make any sense. If Sherman plans to crash the train or something like that to wipe out all those big shots, is he going to do it with him on there, too? Is the guy the type to be a martyr? Honestly, from what I’ve read of him, he doesn’t seem to be.”

  Behind the wheel, Barry considered that for a moment, too, and then said, “I agree with you. I never dealt with him, but I’ve heard plenty about him, and it seems to me like he’s just the opposite, the kind who wants to be in charge and make sure everybody does what he thinks they should. He likes to pull those strings from behind the scenes, mind you, but I can’t see him killing himself for any cause, because then he doesn’t wind up on top of the heap.”

  “But it sounds like he was on the train when it pulled out.”

  “Then he plans to get off somewhere before things go bad. You can count on that.”

  “Go around Denver and head west as quickly as you can,” Jake said after studying a map of the Silver Eagle’s route. “Then cut northwest on Highway 40. The California Zephyr has stops at Granby and Glenwood Springs, so the Silver Eagle is bound to go through those places, too. Maybe we can get to one of them before the train does.” He paused. “Of course, even if we do, I don’t know how we can stop it.”

  “We’ll find a way to stop it,” Barry said in flat-voiced determination.

  “Maybe we ought to bring in the law . . .”

  “As far as every lawman in the country knows, you’re a rogue FBI agent and I’m your unidentified companion, and we’re both murderers—and probably considered domestic terrorists, to boot. Nobody’s going to take our word for anything, let alone stop a train on our say-so. Especially a train being paid for by Alexander Sherman.”

  “But you have friends in the intelligence community,” Jake argued. “High-up friends. Surely you can call in a favor . . .”

  “I’ve already called in a bunch of them. I don’t know anybody with enough pull to step in and stop that train, Jake. It’s up to you and me.”

  “Even if we’re successful, we’re liable to be arrested,” Jake pointed out.

  “I’ll run that risk if it means keeping Sherman from wrecking that train.”

  “We’re convinced now that he’s the brains behind this whole thing? He pulled in the Islamic terrorists and the Deep State?”

  “It’s the explanation that makes the most sense,” Barry said. “He’s the only one I can think of who could bankroll this operation . . . and he’s egotistical enough to do anything as long as he ends up in charge.”

  Barry circled Denver on the I-470 beltway, which had finally been completed a year or so earlier after many years of controversy and delays. Where the beltway connected with Interstate 70, Barry swung the Kenworth west again, with the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains looming right in front of them.

  Barry pushed the truck’s speed considerably higher than the limit. He was an excellent driver with decades of experience and the reflexes of a twenty-two-year-old professional athlete. It was easier to maintain such standards when your life might easily depend on them.

  In addition, the truck had state-of-the-art radar-detection equipment built into it. They didn’t want to risk being stopped by the cops for something as simple as speeding, so now and then when the alarm went off, Barry slowed down until they passed the unit running radar.

  Each of those delays gnawed at their guts. They had no idea how much time they had left to stop whatever it was Alexander Sherman and his cohorts intended to do.

  Dupes might be a better word to describe those helping Sherman, Jake mused. So far, it had been Saddiq’s men carrying out all the actual sabotage of the rail lines. Jake suspected they had no idea what Sherman’s true intentions were. No way was Sherman going to turn control of the country over to a bunch of terrorists. They were just cannon fodder for him.

  Th
e Deep Staters like Cavanaugh likely would fare better in Sherman’s New World Order. Any bureaucracy needed soulless, heartless bureaucrats to run it. Cavanaugh would fit right in.

  Jake didn’t want to think about a country in which Sherman and Cavanaugh were completely in charge. It would be a totalitarian nightmare, worse than the old Soviet Union, worse than China, worse than Venezuela or Cuba. Sherman’s plan had to be stopped.

  Jake moved back to the passenger seat in the truck’s cab. He had done all the computer work he could. Now it was up to Barry to coax all possible speed out of the truck.

  The Kenworth roared along the interstate until the GPS told Barry where to turn to head for Granby. Their route led up U. S. 40 from Clear Creek Canyon to Berthoud Pass, the high mountain pass that marked the location of the Continental Divide. The steep, pine-covered slopes and deep valleys with creeks bubbling through them were beautiful, but the grade was steep enough that even the truck’s powerful engine labored slightly, not to mention how tricky it was navigating the big vehicle through the frequent switchbacks. Some might have looked at the two-lane road snaking its way through the mountains and shaken their heads in refusal.

  Not Barry Rivers. Not Dog. He kept them heading toward their goal, no matter the risks.

  Jake was a little white-knuckled in places where the earth seemed to drop away forever on the right and sheer rock walls rose to the left. The road in front of them looked extremely narrow from the vantage point of the truck’s cab. It seemed impossible that Barry would be able to make it around some of the turns without driving right off the side of the mountain. The Kenworth’s tires hugged the road, however.

  “Nervous?” Barry asked at one point.

  “I’m not part mountain goat, if that’s what you mean,” Jake replied. “I’ll be glad when we get over this pass.”

  “This is God’s country,” Barry said with a grin.

  “Yeah, well, I just hope we don’t meet Him personally before we get down from here.” Jake sighed. “Funny. I didn’t know I was afraid of heights . . .”