Liberty

by David Wood

  “I like it, Bones. As soon as you take the guy out, step over to the grave and see what they’ve found.”

  Bones held out a fist and Dane struck it with his own. Unlike the largely ceremonial gestures used by rappers and sports figures, a SEAL fist bump usually carried a serious undercurrent of violence and a very real risk of a bone bruise. With combat imminent, they took it easy this time.

  “Hands in the air. Now!” Dane had decided to take a chance with a loud voice in the hope of increasing the surprise factor.

  It worked. O’Meara and the man digging turned and stared at the barrel of the AR-15 from a few feet away. With disgust on his face, O’Meara raised his hands and gestured to the other man to do the same. He nodded in the direction of the third man just as that man collapsed, revealing Bones with another rifle.

  “O’Meara. Good to see you again,” Bones said.

  “Just when I’d almost put you out of my mind. Remind me, are you the one who’s smart or the one who’s good looking?”

  “Tough words from a guy in your position. Normally I might take offense and kick your ass, but I’ll forgo that if you just step aside.”

  O’Meara stared for another few seconds before moving. Bones stepped towards the grave.

  “I’ll take that.” Bones tore the shovel out of the hands of O’Meara’s digger. He could see the coffin already exposed.

  “Looks like they did all the work already, Maddock. Doesn’t look like they’ve opened it yet.”

  Dane watched O’Meara’s eyes for any kind of sign that O’Meara already had the document, but he saw none. “Seems to me it wouldn’t be with the body itself. Too much chance of damage. It could be in a compartment inside the lid or outside the lid.”

  “A compartment outside the lid? Are those even a thing?”

  “I couldn’t say. But Franklin was pretty big on ethics. He wouldn’t have wanted it to require desecrating the body to recover this. I say look on the outside, first.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Less than a minute later, Bones let out a whoop. “You da man, Maddock. It’s invisible unless you’re looking for it, but there’s a small removable compartment here. Would you believe it contains a brown oilskin envelope?”

  Dane felt a surge of excitement which exceeded even the discovery of the lost Library of Congress. That was great, but now they’d found the item that had triggered everything. He wondered what it said.

  “Bring it over here, Bones. Open it where I can see it.”

  “Sure thing.” He came around and stood next to Dane, AR-15 tucked under one arm and the envelope in his hands. Both men stared at the envelope.

  “I’ll take that.” A raspy voice came from behind them.

  Bones sprung around, bringing his weapon up. It took all the concentration Dane had not to do the same, but he knew if he took his focus off O’Meara, the cop would be on him in no time. He just had to trust that Bones could handle it.

  The raspy voice spoke again. “Mr. Bonebrake, you have exactly two seconds to drop the weapon before you get a third eye. No warning shots.”

  Dane’s hope sank when he heard the AR-15 clatter to the ground.

  “Mr. Maddock, there are five of us with weapons trained on you. Kindly drop your weapon as well.”

  “Hate to say it, but she’s telling the truth, Maddock.”

  Dane heard the frustration in Bones’ voice and dropped his rifle.

  “O’Meara put down your hands, you look ridiculous. Go search them for more weapons.”

  O’Meara walked towards Dane, taking out some sort of pistol as he did. He threw an elbow to Dane’s jaw. “No gun in your mouth. Let me check elsewhere.”

  The rest of the frisking was less forceful but still involved pain. It also involved the confiscation of the Glock from the holster around Dane’s calf. Then O’Meara moved onto Bones.

  His initial elbow struck Bones in the sternum, but the big man didn’t show any sign he’d felt it. When O’Meara reached Bones’ waist, Bones giggled and bent over slightly.

  “Careful there, people might get the wrong idea.”

  O’Meara scowled and drove a knee into Bones’ groin; the blow didn’t strike particularly hard, but instinct took over and Bones double over with his hands in protective mode. O’Meara ignored this and continued his search, eventually finishing without finding any additional weapons.

  Dane had turned around during this time and came face to face with a slender figure dressed all in black. The hood covered most of the face, but Dane knew who it was. “Ms Wright, I presume.”

  Her head raised enough that he could make out her face. It looked just like the newspaper clipping.

  “Very good, Mr. Maddock, though I don’t exactly try to hide.”

  “No, you don’t. Too busy trying to expose corruption. Corruption like Edmund Randolph engaged in, right?”

  Her face tightened. “He was—”

  “Vindicated, I know. Still, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.”

  She took several steps closer to him, carrying her small pistol. The men around her all had long guns, and shifted on their feet as Wright stepped toward him. She stopped and reached her wrinkled fingers up to his cheek. Dane couldn’t stop an involuntary shudder at her cold touch.

  “Mr. Maddock, I expected better of you than some transparent attempt to make me angry. The truth is that you’re going to die after you tell me all you know. The only variable is how much pain you’re in and for how long before that happens.”

  Dane saved his breath, but internally he was thinking of and eliminating options as fast as his brain would operate. He couldn’t think of any scenario for escape where he and Bones weren’t both cut down instantly.

  Wright removed her hand from his face. “Hold out your wrist, Mr. Maddock.”

  He hesitated, then shrugged and offered his left hand. She gripped his wrist with loose fingers and met his eye. He saw the cold blue there, a mirror image of what he saw when he shaved every day.

  The next thing he knew he was on the ground, chin pressed into the grass. She had tightened her grip and somehow twisted his arm and caused him to go down. It didn’t hurt, but it was fast, as fast as anything he’d experienced in the military. He looked up and saw her looking down at him. When she spoke, her voice betrayed no sign of having expended any effort.

  “I would offer you a hand, but you’d be a fool to take it. I trust you can get up on your own.”

  She whirled, the first visible movement with any speed. Without stopping she snatched the envelope from Bones and moved back towards the men with the rifles. She stopped next to O’Meara, who had also moved to where they were.

  “Were you going to tell me about your little midnight digging session?”

  O’Meara opened his mouth but nothing came out. She shook her head slightly and then unleashed a movement with her arm. Dane sort of made out the shadow of it, but the movement was too fast for him to really pick it up. The end result was clear, though: O’Meara collapsed to the ground.

  Without looking at his prone form, Wright opened the envelope and peered inside. She looked at Dane and Bones.

  “This will have to wait for a more suitable location. We wouldn’t want to damage Mr. Franklin’s copy of such a special agreement.”

  Bones exaggerated a sigh. “Sheesh. It’s just an order for pizza.”

  “I assure you, it’s more than that.”

  “Yeah? Then what is it?”

  “It’s something you won’t live long enough to find out about.”

  “Easy for you to say standing over there with guns. How about you try your Bruce Lee crap on me, or are you chicken?”

  She moved towards Bones, and to Dane it seemed as if she almost glided over the earth. Part of Dane was truly curious to see how Bones would handle this. He couldn’t imagine an old woman weighing less than a hundred pounds taking him down, but he couldn’t have imagined her doing it to him, either.

  He never got a chance to f
ind out.

  Automatic gunfire erupted from at least two sides. Dane and Bones reacted with the speed ingrained by endless training, heading for the dirt. Dane couldn’t have said what made him do it, but instead of diving straight down, he launched himself at Wright. She reacted just as quickly, sidestepping him. His right hand grabbed nothing but air.

  Fortunately he had two hands, and his left snagged the oilskin envelope from her grip. He paid for his attempt with a full superman right onto the sidewalk. He could feel himself drifting when his head made impact, and in the final moments before he passed out, he tucked himself in a fetal position, protecting the envelope against his chest.

  “Dude, wake up.” Hard slapping on his cheek caused Dane to open his eyes. Bones’ face took up nearly the entire range of his vision.

  “I’m awake, I’m awake.”

  Bones moved back and Dane lifted his cheek off the concrete, shaking his throbbing head to disperse the cobwebs in his brain. He still felt some dizziness, so he only raised himself to a seated position. He peered around and noticed a number of bodies lying still in the immediate area.

  “Are they...?”

  “Yep, they’re dead.” Bones didn’t sound upset at the situation.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Only a minute.”

  Another voice sounded behind him, one he recognized. “How’s the head, Mr. Maddock?”

  He shifted to see Octavius Marshall, still dressed in a tux, a pistol dangling from his right fingers with the barrel aimed at the ground. “I don’t know. If you’re here, am I hallucinating?”

  Marshall laughed. “You hit pretty hard, but I am actually standing right here.”

  “I heard an automatic rifle. That wasn’t you, was it?”

  “No. That was them.”

  Marshall gestured to a man standing a few feet away watching them and two others who stood near the gate focusing outside. All of them carried long guns at the ready, not dangling in their grip like Marshall’s pistol. Dane pegged them as professionals, light on their feet with their weapons almost an extension of their limbs.

  “Maybe you better start from the beginning.”

  “Sure. But first can I just say that unless I miss my guess, the mild concussion was worth it. Is that what I think it is in your hands?”

  Dane moved his fingers around the oilskin envelope and nodded.

  “Excellent. Anyway, I went to that function I mentioned. But I couldn’t shake the idea that the two of you going up against O’Meara and Wright by yourself carried a lot of risk. As soon as I could, I grabbed three of my associates and we headed this way. Arrived just in time it appears.”

  Behind Marshall, Bones mouthed a silent word with a grin. “Mafia.”

  Dane debated asking more questions, but he decided that he probably didn’t want to know any more. He reached his hand up and Bones hauled him to his feet. “What about you, Bones?”

  “I’m sorry to say that unarmed and facing half a dozen men exchanging automatic weapons fire, I did the only sane thing and hit the deck. I won’t let it happen again. It was over in two seconds anyway.”

  Dane chuckled. “Well I’m glad you’re okay. Did any of your guys get hit, Marshall?”

  “Not even close. No one even got off a shot.”

  Dane started walking around to the bodies. He stopped next to O’Meara’s corpse. Three ragged holes in the forehead had done the trick, and there was a lot of blood from the head wound. Hopefully, there were no more O’Meara brothers to trouble them in the future.

  As he finished his circuit he looked up at Marshall. “What about Wright?”

  “What about her?”

  “Her body isn’t here.”

  “What?” Bones and Marshall spoke in unison.

  “I don’t see her body,” Dane repeated.

  “Are you sure? She went down right when you grabbed the envelope.”

  “Then she should be right near where I landed, but she’s not.”

  Another minute of re-checking each body confirmed it. Bones shook his head. “That lady is some kind of magician. Not only did she take you down, she managed to dodge a bullet and then sneak away.”

  He looked around the shadows of the cemetery. “Think she’s still around?”

  Dane said, “No way. With all her guys down and four armed men targeting her, she’s in the wind. Which means there’s only one thing left to do.”

  “A trip to the nearest bar?”

  “Maybe later. But now let’s see what the fuss is all about.”

  He carefully removed the document from the oilskin envelope. It felt the same as the letter from Bache and the letter in the Library had, solid and relatively unscathed by the passage of time.

  “Don’t keep us in suspense, read the bedtime story, Maddock.”

  Dane did.

  Be it resolved,

  On this the sixteenth day of September in the year of our Lord seventeen-hundred and eighty-seven, we do agree that the following shall be appended to the first clause in Article IV, Section 3 of the draft of the new Constitution:

  “A State may leave this Union only with the Consent of the Legislatures of three quarters of the States in the Union.”

  Signed,

  Alexander Hamilton

  Edmund Randolph

  George Mason

  Elbridge Gerry

  James Madison

  Benjamin Franklin

  William Jackson, Secretary

  When he finished, Bones let out a whistle. “Short but to the point. Secession as an option in the Constitution? Our history could have been very different if this had passed. There was a point in the middle of the Civil War where most of the states would have let the South go.”

  Dane frowned in agreement. “I think the Sons were thinking more about changing the future with it.”

  Marshall tilted his head. “It would have an impact, that’s for sure. A lot of people who don’t like the government would now feel okay talking about secession openly.”

  “I think Franklin was concerned about that. That’s why in the letter in the Library of Congress, he ended with, ‘Those who would use it to rend the Union shall be branded as traitors to all who hold dear the ideals of our revolution.’”

  Bones said, “It’s as if he knew about the Sons of the Republic.”

  “Maybe he did, Bones. Or at least something like them. Groups like the Society of Cincinnatus and the anti-Federalists threatened to derail things before they even got started. As long as there’s been a union, there have been people willing to destroy it for not taking the exact direction they want.”

  Marshall broke the silence that followed. “So what are you going to do with it?”

  Dane glanced down at the document. “Do either of you think we shouldn’t make it public? The Sons thought it could shake things up.”

  Marshall shook his head almost imperceptibly. Bones nodded. “The Sons are tools. Of course we should make it public. With today’s media, it’ll be spun and played like a rap CD before the first news cycle is done. Nothing to worry about. Might be good if Franklin’s letter can accompany it, though.”

  Dane reached a decision. “Unless Bones objects, I’d like you to have it.” He handed it to Marshall.

  “Me? Why?”

  “We’re soldiers, Navy SEALS. We try to stay as far away from politics as possible. We’d have to do it anonymously anyway. I’m guessing you have enough connections to deliver both the document and the Library to the media all wrapped up in a bow.”

  Marshall didn’t disagree. “I’ll do it anonymously of course, just as you would have. I imagine O’Meara has the letter from the Library. We’ll take the body with us, see if we can find any clues to its whereabouts.”

  Bones raised his eyebrows. “You have experience with transporting dead bodies?”

  Dane saw a trace of a smile grace the man’s lips, but Marshall as usual remained silent when asked a question related to mob activities. Dane punched Bones i
n the shoulder. “If his answer is yes, idiot, you don’t want to know. You okay with giving this to him?”

  “Hell yes. If you can’t trust the guy who unexpectedly saved your bacon when an eighty year old ninja had your balls in a vice, who can you trust?”

  “Well put. I think.”

  Dane reached out his hand to Marshall. “Octavius, you saved us. We won’t forget it. Hard to imagine you’ll ever need anything from us, but if you do I have a feeling you can find us.”

  Marshall smiled and took the offered hand, then winced as he took the one Bones extended. “Thanks for helping me find out who killed Cornelius.”

  “Don’t mention it. Wright is still out there, though.”

  Marshall nodded. After a moment, Dane and Bones turned and prepared to leave. They grabbed the guns, which had been taken when Wright surprised them.

  “Hey Bones, what happened to your Glock?”

  Bones pointed to his crotch. “Same place it’s been all night. O’Meara was too flustered to do a complete search after I accused him of enjoying it too much.”

  “You’re a piece of work, Bones.”

  “You don’t totally suck, either.”

  They walked back past Marshall, heading for the side fence where they had first come in. After all they’d been through they didn’t want to get caught now. It had been less than ten minutes since the shooting, but cops could arrive any minute.

  Marshall stood staring at the ground, his fingers tightening around his gun. Dane thought to say something, but the man clearly was lost in his own thoughts. Better to get while the getting was still good. He could hear Marshall talking to himself in a low voice, though. And the words were clear.

  “Wright is still out there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Maddock! Bonebrake! My office.”

  Dane’s head whipped toward the doorway from which the voice had come, but its owner had already disappeared. Dane and Bones had been back in the barracks for a couple of hours, unpacking and swapping stories with their fellow SEALS about their R&R. They had decided not to reveal most of their adventures.