Liberty

by David Wood

  With no warning, he leaped to the side, scrambling five feet up the angled schist in a fraction of a second. He could hear that Bones had reacted quickly and done the same thing. The key now was another half-second hesitation on the part of O’Meara. He felt sure that O’Meara’s men wouldn’t risk shooting them without some sort of sign from the boss, but O’Meara himself might react quickly enough to stop them.

  Two shots did come, deafening sounds coming from the Desert Eagle. A piece of rock exploded next to Dane’s head, sending chips into his face. He kept driving upward, though, and disappeared over the top out of firing range. He wondered whether Bones had made it, but he couldn’t stop to check. Instead he kept going and jumped off the other side into the creek.

  The water was only a couple of feet deep, and the fifteen foot drop jarred his spine. The cold hit his shins through his fatigues, but compared to any number of experiences during SEAL training, it barely registered as an annoyance. Then he heard a splash next to him.

  He whirled and saw Bones still crouched from absorbing the impact. Not waiting any longer, Dane forged the creek, splashing his way through water that rose until he was forced to swim. He reached the other side a couple of steps ahead of Bones and shook himself like a dog after a bath.

  “Bones, you okay?”

  “Never better. I told you we didn’t need a pool at our hotel.”

  “Yeah, well even big tough SEALS aren’t immune to hypothermia. The temp is high enough that we should be okay if we keep moving, but we need to focus on getting somewhere warm sooner rather than later.”

  “Silly me, I thought we need to focus on getting away from the guys armed with hand cannons.”

  “That too.”

  They launched themselves into the trees next to the creek, quickly leaving both the water and any chance of being spotted by O’Meara behind. They kept up a steady jog, though. The Mustang was parked on the other side of the river and Dane had to assume that O’Meara would have people watching it. They needed to get to a road, find a cab, and get back to the motel as soon as they could.

  Dane could feel the cold starting to seep into his marrow. The motel might not be completely safe, but it was much better than the wilderness in terms of confronting O’Meara.

  Plus, it had hot showers.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  O’Meara had given up on the old woman. She had her own agenda, her own sources, her own soldiers. Unfortunately she also had the Randolph document. It would be revealed at the rally in Washington. All fine with O’Meara.

  But he didn’t like the unknowns. Franklin’s copy of the agreement might be found in the lost Library of Congress. Although he didn’t know of any surprises it might hold, he didn’t share the old woman’s certainty that none existed. Even if none did, having his own copy held no downside at all.

  To avoid the old woman’s scrutiny, he’d moved from known buildings to a small hotel outside the city. She might have followed him and be watching him at this moment, but he doubted it. She was too self-confident to bother.

  He counted himself lucky to have caught Maddock and Bonebrake. Upon returning from Hamiltonban, two of his men had staked out the motel where they were staying. Maddock’s attempt to sneak in the back door had failed to escape their notice. But they had almost lost the two when Bonebrake floored the Mustang and went through several lights en route to their new lodging.

  From there, Maddock and Bonebrake had gone to Octavius Marshall’s apartment. Unfortunately, when one of O’Meara’s men went into the apartment after the two Navy men had left, Marshall wasn’t there. They had not seen him enter or leave, but it seemed to O’Meara that the two SEALs must have been meeting the man. O’Meara’s intuition from years on the police force told him that Marshall was hiding something, but he’d have to catch him before he’d know for sure.

  Losing Maddock and Bonebrake was a major annoyance, but he knew that three men couldn’t have reliably controlled two such skilled soldiers. Without the old woman’s resources, O’Meara only had five men at his disposal, so he hadn’t seen any better options. With one pursuing the Octavius Marshall angle, that had left two to cover the getaway and two to accompany him down into the tunnel. He wouldn’t agonize over it.

  Two of those men were out in Wissahickon in the small room right now, carefully examining the books. O’Meara couldn’t muster much optimism given the condition of the material, but he knew from long experience to follow every lead until it was exhausted.

  “Sir, we found something.”

  Smyers and Dantry stood in the doorway to his suite with muddy clothes. Rain had come in towards the end of the day and it flowed into the once dry tunnel and room. O’Meara knew that if he wanted to preserve the material—after all, who knew what surprises a thorough examination would uncover—his window for doing so before salvage became impossible was measured in days, not weeks or months.

  “What did you find?”

  Smyers, the one with the dark hair and hook nose, which gave him the appearance of a cartoon villain, walked over to O’Meara and handed him what appeared to be a book sized pamphlet. O’Meara opened it up and saw a map of Paris.

  He looked up. “What is this supposed to be?”

  “Turn to the last page.”

  O’Meara did and felt his blood pressure rising as he saw the signature on the hidden document.

  A map of Paris. Maddock was playing me and I fell for it.

  He quickly scanned it and exhilaration replaced his frustration. This was the final clue they had been looking for, the one that finally made sense of the clue about the creator of the five hundred.

  “Call the others. Get some shovels and lights and some gear that can handle the cold rain. Better bring a bunch of weapons as well. Meet me here in three hours.”

  O’Meara smiled as they left the room.

  He now knew exactly where to find Ben Franklin’s copy of the agreement.

  Dane and Bones reached the apartment about an hour after dark. Long showers at the hotel had taken the edge off the cold from their mid-winter swim, but Dane knew it would probably be another day before the chill completely left. In some ways he didn’t mind, as the unfamiliar sensation kept him on his toes.

  They took a cab to Marshall’s apartment, figuring one of the ways O’Meara could have been onto them was by bugging the Mustang. They’d have to recover it eventually, he knew. Dane admitted to himself that O’Meara probably knew where they were staying, but he and Bones had done everything they could to leave the motel without being seen. He was about ninety percent sure they had succeeded.

  Marshall opened the door dressed in a black tuxedo and a bow tie. The outfit transformed him from a bald, skinny and mild-mannered man into an image of a power broker that Dane wouldn’t have thought possible.

  “Hi guys. I’m glad you’re here.”

  They sat down and Dane preempted any questions about their activities with one of his own. “What did you find out about the plane?”

  “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “I never saw much point in it.”

  “Yes, well, it’s registered to a Delaware company called the Vindication Corporation. The officers are all lawyers, not directly associated with the corporation, but it turns out that a single individual is the majority shareholder, a woman named Edmonia Jennings Wright.”

  Bones snorted. “That name sounds like someone who made her money the old fashioned way— inheriting it.”

  “Interesting observation. She’s not a public figure but you find the occasional article in the newspaper about her. You’ll never guess who she’s descended from.”

  Dane raised his hand. “Edmund Randolph, right?”

  Marshall’s eyebrows rose almost in slow motion. “How did you know?”

  “Well it fits, because Randolph has been floating around this whole puzzle. But there are two other reasons. One is that Randolph had a daughter named Edmonia. But the more curious one is that he was involved
in a bribery scandal involving the French government and forced to resign as George Washington’s Secretary of State.”

  Bones interjected. “You mean Samuel Washington’s Secretary of State.”

  Marshall’s mouth twisted in confusion and Dane shot Bones a wicked look. “As I was saying, he resigned but was later cleared. He wrote a book about it called Vindication.”

  Bones shook his head. “Now you’re just showing off, Maddock. How the hell do you know these things?”

  “I’d like to say I knew them all along, but I noticed them when we were at the library this morning doing research. Anyway, my question is, who is she besides a Randolph descendant? And what does the Vindication Corporation do?”

  Marshall looked from Bones to Dane and then back. “I can answer the second one. It’s a political think tank. Very critical of both of the major parties. They are sometimes considered Libertarian, but that’s just because they hate both parties equally. Their research generally focuses on exposing corruption by specific individuals as opposed to commenting on general freedom and rights. I looked at a couple of their papers and they were big on talking about how the corruption is a pattern and things have got to change.”

  “Hey Maddock, that sounds a lot like the people who keep trying to kill us.”

  Dane processed this latest revelation. “It does. And you’re saying you don’t know much more about Wright?”

  Marshall sighed. “I didn’t spend a lot of time, but no. She attends the occasional rally, and like I said, she’s not a public figure. I did find one picture of her.”

  He handed a folded newspaper clipping to Dane. “Aside from that, the only other thing seems to be that she was quite the martial artist when she was younger.”

  Dane looked at the picture. It was taken outdoors on a cold day, as evidenced by the hood framing her face. The woman was seventy-five if she was a day, but the strong jaw and cheekbones gave her a presence that he could sense even through a newsprint-quality snapshot.

  “A martial artist, huh? She could be the woman who asked about the medallion. But I guess it’s a dead end at this point.”

  Marshall cleared his throat. “So what did you guys find?”

  Dane gave a quick summary of the events of the afternoon. He didn’t bother holding anything back besides the location of their motel. When he finished, Marshall collapsed into a chair.

  “The lost Library of Congress. Hard to believe you found it buried in a ruin in a city park. Have you let anyone official know?”

  “Bones and I talked it over and we couldn’t come up with a way of doing it directly that doesn’t open us up to uncomfortable questions about how we found it. Not to mention that O’Meara may have already destroyed it. We’ll put an anonymous letter in the mail to the current Library of Congress tomorrow.”

  “Makes sense, I guess. And no idea what the Ben Franklin document is, the one that could rend the union?”

  “Nothing more than a guess it has to do with the Constitution.”

  Bones smirked. “Speak for yourself, little man. I know what it is”

  They both turned to him, faces expectant.

  “It’s about how the Freemasons were secretly meeting with aliens who directed them what to put in the Constitution.”

  Dane rolled his eyes. “Really? That’s the best you could come up with?”

  “On short notice, yeah.”

  Marshall said, “Are you guys always this way? You sound like an old married couple.”

  Neither Dane nor Bones could stop from doubling over with laughter. Marshall sounded even more uncomfortable.

  “What?”

  Dane grinned. “Wasn’t too many weeks ago we were in a constant state of wanting to kill each other.”

  Bones looked at him. “And that’s different from an old married couple how?”

  Marshall stood up from the table. “Forget it. So you say you know where the document is now?”

  “We have a pretty good guess.” Dane told Marshall the suspected location.

  “That makes a lot of sense. Do you think O’Meara knows?”

  “I’d like to say no, but it could only have been a matter of time until he found the document inside the map. Who knows if he’ll make the connection. The sooner we get there, the better.”

  “I’d love to go with you, but I have a function I can’t miss. I’m already late. You’re gonna let me know what you find, right?”

  Dane gave silent thanks that he didn’t have to tell Marshall he couldn’t come. No way would he and Bones have brought the man along into what would almost certainly carry major risk of getting shot.

  “Of course.”

  “All right, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Unless something happens to you. How will I know?”

  Bones looked at Marshall. “There are two possible ways you’ll know what happened. One is we’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “You’ll have to read the obituaries.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Hell yes! Eventually it had to happen that we got the drop on them instead of the other way around. I am going to enjoy this.”

  “Bones can you raise your voice any more? I don’t think they heard us back in California.”

  “Aw, get that stick out of your butt, Maddock. They’re being loud enough to wake the dead. Which come to think of it might be a bad thing in this place.”

  Dane looked around. He and Bones crouched behind a tree near a wall that crossed the middle of the Christ Church Burial Ground. Located at Arch and Fifth Street in Philadelphia, it contained the graves of several famous individuals, including Benjamin Franklin as well as one half of the printing partnership that printed the Constitution: John Dunlap.

  They had discovered the location almost by accident, in a brochure in the lobby of their motel. He and Bones had already concluded that Dunlap’s grave was the most likely location. The other printer, Claypoole, died much later and was not as well known as Dunlap. Dunlap died twenty-four years after Franklin but still well within the time during which Franklin’s executor John Jay could have arranged for the document to be buried with him. It seemed strange, but no other option made any sense at all. They’d probably never know for sure.

  Dane had resigned himself to one more call to Jimmy Letson to find the location, which surely would have required a truckload of Wild Turkey to pay off the favor. However, the brochure for Christ Church Burial Ground had saved him the trouble.

  Looking out over the graves, they could see his marker in the distance. Digging up the document carried a lot of risks. Walking into a cemetery at night with shovels and a crowbar couldn’t be explained away as anything but what it was. Not to mention that the area was patrolled by a security guard and Dunlap’s grave was right near the well-lit front gate. They had arrived at the location unsure exactly how they would overcome these obstacles but determined to do so anyway.

  Sneaking over the wall, Dane just hoped they weren’t triggering some sort of silent alarm. The first thing they saw was a group of men near Dunlap’s grave. When one of them stepped into the light, Dane recognized him instantly.

  O’Meara.

  Almost without thinking, he and Bones ducked further into the shadows. Scanning the area, he noticed a couple of shapes on the ground between them and O’Meara. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he found himself looking at two crumpled figures dressed in standard security guard uniforms. He felt bad for the men, but it was one less problem to deal with.

  Bones put a hand on his shoulder. “What now?”

  “Well, there are three of them there. They have to have at least one lookout. Maybe two. We better sweep the perimeter and see if we can find them.”

  “Should we split up?”

  Dane considered the layout. “For once I’m gonna say no. We won’t be able to sweep all the way around and meet in the middle; they’re too close to the wall. But stay about ten yards behind me. Slow and steady, okay?”

&nb
sp; “Your command is my wish.”

  Dane started a slow and even sweep along the wall. In one spot it jutted into the middle of the area, and for a short period he was visible if O’Meara or a lookout chose the moment to look in that direction. But he made it around without incident and let out a breath.

  As he neared the end of the circuit, he could hear the low voices of O’Meara and his two men mixed with the sound of shovels striking the earth. He almost missed the shadow that passed in front of him, but stopped just in time. A man stood just outside the fence. Dane watched him for a few minutes, vaguely aware that Bones had maintained his position ten yards away. Twice the man walked by the main gate and then returned to where Dane had first spotted him. Clearly this was O’Meara’s sentry.

  He motioned to Bones, who glided over. “Think you can get over the fence and take him out without any noise?”

  “Did a spaceship really crash in Roswell?”

  Before Dane could comment, Bones slid over to the fence and disappeared from view. Dane watched the man patrolling outside. Less than a minute later, he saw a huge shadow move at breakneck speed toward the man. A moment later, both figures disappeared.

  When Bones returned, Dane asked, “What did you do?”

  Bones said, “Vulcan death grip.”

  Dane raised an eyebrow.

  “Relax, man, I used the one Spock used on Kirk, not the one that actually kills you.”

  “Bones, sometimes I wonder about you.”

  “Only sometimes? I’ll have to try harder. Now we take out O’Meara, right?”

  “Yeah, but it’d be nice if we can do it without any shots fired. Someone’s bound to show up if we start a gunfight.”

  “If you go around that side, pull your AR and tell them to freeze, the one guy who’s standing a few feet away from O’Meara and the guy with the shovel will never see me behind him and I can do the Vulcan thing. Can’t guarantee O’Meara doesn’t decide to shoot it out instead of surrendering, but that doesn’t seem his style.”