by Riley Flynn
“I didn’t kill Archer,” he said. “If you only believe one thing I say, believe that.”
Booth shook his head. “You must think I’m an idiot.”
“And you must think I’m a traitor. Neither of those things is true.”
Smith felt his throat constrict as Booth grabbed it in his left hand and squeezed. He clutched at Booth’s hands, but he knew there was no way he’d break the iron grip. It was time to end this.
“Enough lies,” Booth growled in his ear. “Enough secrets. It’s all going to come out. By morning, Raines, me and everyone else is going to know everything you know. And then you’re going to die.”
Smith gurgled something. Booth pulled him closer, still clutching his throat.
“What was that?” Booth asked. “I didn’t quite catch it.”
Smith put his lips against Booth’s ear. “I said… you’re… half-right.”
With that, he drove his right fist in a horizontal line against Booth’s sternum with all the strength he could muster. The blow was enough to make him let go of Smith’s throat. Smith rubbed his Adam’s apple, thinking about the irony, as Booth stumbled backward.
To their right, all three Echo Company non-coms raised their weapons.
“Back off!” Booth croaked. “He’s mine!”
And so it ends.
Booth charged forward to grab Smith by the lapels, but Smith pivoted and snared his wrists instead. He used the momentum and his right leg to flip Booth into the snow. Booth recovered almost instantly, but it was enough time for Smith to get into a proper stance. He blocked Booth’s first kick with a quick forearm, but the follow-up right elbow connected squarely with his jaw. The pain, combined with the hornet’s nest in his broken nose, forced him to stagger backward.
Booth pressed the advantage and followed up with a stomp to the inside of Smith’s right knee. He felt searing pain as the muscle there ripped, and he fell onto his back. The snow rose up around him on all sides, limiting his vision, but it made no difference: Booth was already on top of him anyway.
“I don’t matter,” he managed to mutter between Booth’s strikes to his face. The first only clipped his lips, but the second loosened several teeth.
“You’re right,” Booth grunted as Smith struggled against him. “You don’t matter. You aren’t fit to shine those men’s boots! You’re a disgrace to the uniform you wore! To everything the republic stands for!”
Smith fended off the blows with his left hand while his right crept down his side. He hoped that the snow surrounding him was enough to keep Booth and the others from seeing what he was doing.
“I’m a patriot,” he gurgled. It sounded like mapatrete in his own ears.
Booth grabbed his collar and pulled him forward, then brought his forehead smashing down against the remains of Smith’s teeth. He felt and heard the crunching sound they made as they shattered.
Meanwhile, his right hand found the t-shaped handle of the short triangular blade concealed in his boot; a simple tug pulled it free. His right fist was now a knife.
“It’s up to you,” Booth hissed in his ear. “You decide how much of you is left for me to question with Raines.”
Smith drew the blade slowly up his right side through the snow as Booth continued shaking him by the collar. His hand felt raw and sore against the cold steel in his fist.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said. It came out as snotgunappen.
With the last of his strength, Smith gripped Booth’s wet collar with his left hand and pulled him down so that their faces were almost touching. At the same time, he brought the blade in his right hand up so that it was next to his cheek.
This time, he made an effort to enunciate in Booth’s ear. “I. Didn’t. Kill. Archer.”
An instant later, he snaked his right fist between their two faces and pressed the blade against his own throat, right under the left ear. He pressed with all his strength as he drew the razor-sharp edge through the carotid artery and across the underside of his jaw, avoiding the hard cartilage of his esophagus because he didn’t have the sheer will to cut through it.
His last sight was his own blood gushing into Jackson Booth’s horrified face as his last breath puffed out in a cloud of vapor in the moonlight.
His final thoughts were of his old partner, the man he’d left behind in North Korea at the beginning of the end of the world.
34
Hayley was sitting in the middle of Emily Sidley’s living room, a blanket around her shoulders and sipping hot chocolate from a Styrofoam cup with her friends when Jax arrived. He’d stopped in at the resort’s quartermaster for a new fatigues jacket before stepping into one of the men’s rooms on the main floor, where he washed Smith’s blood off his face and beard with bottled water.
She locked eyes with him as soon as he stepped through the door. They stared at each other for a few moments before he knelt down and she fled into his waiting arms. The feel of her tiny, warm body next to his was almost enough to make him believe that things were still sane in Colorado Springs.
Almost.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her tears hot against his neck. “It’s all our fault. Sgt. Farries never would have been out there if we hadn’t gotten ourselves in trouble. We just wanted to have some fun, that’s all.”
“Shhh. It wasn’t you. It had nothing to do with you kids. It was all grown-up stuff.” He wrapped his hand around the back of her little head and pulled her even closer, as if he could somehow pull her inside his chest, where he could keep her safe forever. “Just a whole lot of stupid grown-up stuff.”
Brooke and Brandon both had wet cheeks, as well. Lucas sat on the sofa, nervously twisting his long hair around his index finger.
Ms. Sidley folded her arms over her chest. “I’ve already spoken to them about what they did,” she said. “That they should never, ever do anything like that again.”
Jax released Hayley and held her at arm’s length, his hands on her shoulders. “You’re going to be punished. You know that, right?”
She nodded meekly. “Ms. Sidley already said.”
He glanced up at the teacher. “I appreciate your help tonight. And I’m sorry about what they did. I should have been paying closer attention.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she said with a wan smile. “Three of them are my responsibility. I was distracted.”
“You and me both.”
“I heard.” She placed a warm hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Captain. Gen. Archer was unlike any man I’ve ever known. And while I didn’t know Sgt. Farries very well, I do know he was one of your finest soldiers.”
Jax nodded. “I appreciate that, Ms. Sidley.”
“Emily, please. It’s high time we got rid of the honorifics.”
He smiled. “Of course. And I’m Jax.”
“Capt. Booth?”
Jax looked down at Brandon. His pale face was streaked with tears, and his cheeks were as red as autumn apples.
“Yes, son?”
“Will there be a memorial for Sgt. Farries?”
Jax paused for a moment, then nodded. Out of the mouths of babes.
“Yes,” he said. “We always have memorial services for heroes. And Sgt. Farries was a hero.”
Brandon nodded seriously. “That’s good. We’ll be there. He saved our lives.” Then his voice broke. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
Jax felt Hayley’s arm wrap around his waist, felt tears prickling his own eyes. Ms. Sidley bit her lip and held a fist up to her mouth. Jax himself had the added burden of knowing the sentiment had come from someone whose own father didn’t deserve what had happened to him.
“No, he did not,” said Jax. “He helped us, but we didn’t help him. That wasn’t fair. But we’re going to try to do better in the future, so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else. How does that sound to you?”
Brandon nodded, snuffling. “That sounds good.”
Emily took Jax by
the arm and pulled him toward the door to her bedroom.
“Hayley is welcome to stay the night,” she said in a low voice. “I’m sure you need to meet with the president, and they’re exhausted themselves. I’m sure they’ll be asleep five minutes after you leave.”
Jax smiled. “Thank you, Emily, that would be great. I do have a long night ahead of me.”
She cocked her head, and for the first time, Jax noticed how attractive she was.
“Can you tell me what happened with Col. Smith?” she asked. “Unless it’s classified, of course.”
“It’s not classified,” he said. “Smith slit his own throat, ear to ear, to avoid being captured and interrogated.”
Emily blinked and shook her head. “What do you think makes someone do that? Did he say anything before he died? Give you some sort of explanation for it all?”
Jax thought for a moment before replying.
“Not a word. I guess we’ll never know what made him do the things he did.”
She put a hand on his arm again and smiled.
“Who knows why people like him do anything? I guess all we can do is deal with them, and try to keep them from spreading their poison around to others.”
To his surprise, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
“Thank you for doing what had to be done, Jax. I know you and your fellow soldiers don’t get much in the way of credit, but I want you to know that I appreciate everything you do.” She paused a moment before adding: “And the others, of course.”
“Of course,” he said, his mind suddenly drawing a blank. “Uh. I mean, I should go.”
She smiled and led him to the door of her suite. “Miles to go before you sleep. Hayley, Jax is going to go, sweetheart.”
Hayley ran over and gave him one last hug.
“I’ll pick you up in the morning and we’ll talk then, okay?”
She nodded. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Jax couldn’t see it, but Emily Sidley watched him until he disappeared around the corner of the hallway, and she stood in the doorway staring for a long time after.
Colton Raines offered Jax a drink as he entered the aptly named presidential suite, but he waved it away. After a moment of consideration, Raines put his own drink in the kitchenette’s sink before joining Jax in the living room.
“The republic owes you a debt, Captain. It was—”
“Save it,” said Jax, holding up a dismissive hand. He looked at Tate, the man who amounted to the last remaining Secret Service agent. “Leave us.”
Tate glanced at Raines, who nodded. The guard left the suite, closing the door behind him.
“We need to talk,” said Jax.
“Of course. It’s been an extraordinary evening.”
“What we need to talk about has been going on a lot longer than that.”
“What do you mean?”
Where to start? Jax took a deep breath and let it out as he organized his thoughts. What he had to say had been building for months, and he wanted to make sure it came out right. He wasn’t leaving without the answers he came for.
Might as well start at the beginning. “Who was John Smith?”
The resignation on the president’s face was an answer in itself. Raines drew a deep sigh and ran a hand through his thick, silver hair.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “Gen. Archer inherited him from Geoffrey Benton when he took over as the chairman of the joint chiefs, and then became the overall CO for the military. All I know is that Smith had been in army intelligence, and that Benton had ordered him to Colorado Springs at the beginning of the collapse.”
“With all due respect, sir, you’re the president. You expect me to believe you weren’t looped in on all this?”
Raines gave Jax a look that he couldn’t quite read. “In hindsight, I suppose you’re right. At first, Henry told me that there were certain realities that should be kept at arm’s length from the president, and I believed him. He said that I needed to stay above it all, so that the civilians could have someone to look up to, to trust. What else was I supposed to do? It’s not like vice-presidents go to president training school—I was thrown into this with the rest of you.”
Jax felt a twinge of regret at putting Raines in the hot seat like this. He knew better than most that the chaos of the collapse left gaping holes in the former rules of protocol.
“So Archer was the one running Smith?”
Raines shrugged. “I always assumed so, yes. He put Smith in command to keep an eye on him, because he didn’t know what else to do. We all know now that was the wrong call. Again, hindsight is 20/20. But you have to remember, Jax, that was a time where we needed hard men to do hard things.”
Jax recalled the first time he’d met Smith at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, where he mistook him for an admin clerk—until Smith put a bullet in the head of three cops in riot gear, that is.
“Look, Jax, I don’t have a lot of answers,” said Raines. “But I got the impression that keeping a lid on whatever secrets Smith was keeping had started to wear on Archer in the end.”
Jax nodded. “I agree. The Henry Archer who died tonight wasn’t the Henry Archer I knew even four months ago. If you’d seen him in his prime, you’d know—he was a hawk’s hawk. We used to have a saying in Germany: I’d sooner fuck a bobcat than bring Archer bad news.”
Raines chuckled, but Jax felt a lump swell in his throat as the memories threatened to overwhelm him. He managed to bite down on it; even now, his control over his emotions was almost absolute.
“I think Henry knew that there were certain secrets every state needs to keep,” said the president. “Even one as new and fragile as this new republic of ours.”
“But what secrets? What were they hiding? And what possible reason would Smith have to kill Archer?”
“I wish I knew, son.”
“Maggie Stubbs was looking into some disappearances before she got sidetracked by Lisa Blume’s murder. Two men on a team looking into the cyber weapon attack.”
Raines nodded. “I don’t know details, but I’ve heard.”
“She said Smith tried to convince her that Farries had killed them as well as Blume.”
“Well, we know now that none of that is true.” Raines stroked his chin. “Which begs a pretty obvious question.”
“Two questions,” said Jax. “Did Smith kill those men, too? And if he did, why?”
Raines leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. Jax noticed that, like Archer, the president had aged significantly in the six months since the collapse.
“I think people like Smith are addicted to secrets,” he said. “They start with one or two, then they add more, until they end up spending all their time and effort trying to keep people from finding out the truth. I wonder if he even knew why he did anything, in the end. But whatever the case may be, we’ll never know the truth ourselves. It died with Smith and Archer.”
Jax ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. It was all too much to take in, and he was exhausted. But he couldn’t get Smith’s final words out of his head: I didn’t kill Archer. It was a lie, of course—it had to be.
Didn’t it?
“Son,” said Raines, “if you don’t mind my saying so, you look like you took a trip through hell in the front seat of a rollercoaster. Don’t even bother going back to the mountain, just grab a bed here. Have the sergeant at the front desk find you one.”
Jax thought about it for a moment. “Now that you mention it, my daughter is staying at Ms. Sidley’s tonight.”
“The teacher? Well, that’s perfect, then. And that way, I can have you here in the morning.”
“What for?”
Raines draped an arm over his Jax’s shoulder and walked with him to the door.
“The commander in chief can’t be without a chief military advisor for more than a day,” he said. “The sooner we get you in place, the better.”
He opened the door
for Jax, who blinked at him stupidly.
“Sir?” he asked.
“Get some rest, Colonel Booth,” the president said with a gentle smile. ”You’re going to need it.”
35
“Ye of little faith.”
Wallace Todd sported a wide grin as he appeared in the doorway of the Penrose lounge with a bottle in each hand. He’d been rummaging in the Broadmoor’s cellar for the better part of a half-hour, and it showed: the knees of his black wool suit pants were gray with concrete dust.
Hutch held up his hands in surrender. In his own suit and without his trademark dreadlocks hanging to his shoulders—he’d cut his auburn hair to a respectable length for the services—he looked more like a banker than a Bohemian philosopher. Jax grinned at the thought of how Hutch would react if he were to tell him that.
“O, mighty hunter,” Hutch intoned as he plucked the bottle of 50-year-old Glenlivet from Todd’s right hand. “I shall never doubt your prowess again.”
The lounge was empty except for their table; the place had been reserved specifically for them to gather after the memorial for Henry Archer and Brad Farries under the mountain. The usual patrons had been told to drink in the other bars, or in their rooms, or out on the soggy grounds that had been revealed by the unseasonably warm temperatures over the past two weeks.
The ceremony itself had been short and somber: Jax and Raines had both spoken, but neither went into details about the men’s deaths. As far as anyone knew, they had been murdered by John Smith, who was then killed by Jax Booth. It was just true enough that people wouldn’t ask questions, and just enough of a lie to make Jax’s head ache. It was the Eric Peterson situation all over again.
Maggie took a seat next to Raylene Van Dyke and Brian Price at the large, round table. Price grimaced as he stretched his leg out into the aisle.
“It gets better,” said Ruben, pointing at Price’s knee. He and Jax were both in their dress uniforms.
“I’m a marine,” said Price. “We don’t get better, we get best.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Okay, you two can Indian leg wrestle later. Can we get that booze flowing, please?”
