The Last Line

by Anthony Shaffer

  It made sense, in a twisted sort of way. Each of the groups involved in the plot had its own agenda—the Iranians wanted something to keep the Americans out of the Mideast, the drug cartels wanted a safe haven, the Mexican government wanted a safety valve for their poor. Behind it all was a gang of politicians, lawyers, and corporate executives interested in nothing more than stripping the new nation bare.

  “Takes corporate piracy to a whole new level, doesn’t it?” Teller growled. He was angry, angrier than he’d been in a long time, almost shaking with barely suppressed fury. Islamic fundamentalists were bad. So were drug cartel thugs. By far the worst, in his estimation, were the enemies who would tear the country apart from the inside, purely out of greed or a lust for power.

  “Why would you people do something like this?” Procario asked. “You’re all successful businessmen.”

  “I guess we all had our reasons,” Walker said with a shrug. “My career was going nowhere.”

  “My bank is being investigated by the FDIC,” Delaney said. “We’re expecting them to bring suit any day now. Mortgage irregularities.”

  “Same for Carl Fuentes. He’s being investigated by the FBI for ties to the Mexican cartels. Logan’s oil company is an empty shell right now, on the point of collapse. Carter’s personal life is shot; his wife’s leaving him. Joe Belsanno has political enemies inside the Beltway who are publishing unsavory things about his connections with certain groups.” Walker sighed. “Preston painted us all an attractive picture. A chance to say the hell with it and start over, relaxing on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific with hundreds of millions—maybe billions—invested in offshore banks and earning obscene amounts of interest.”

  “No worries, no cares, no extradition, eh?” Teller said. “Just warm sunshine, pretty girls, and drinks with umbrellas in them.”

  “So when did you find out he was going to attack Washington with nukes?” Procario asked. He sounded only mildly curious, but Teller saw the heat behind the eyes.

  “A week ago,” Walker said. “I wanted out then, but I didn’t see how I could pull it off.”

  “He has those cartel thugs working for him,” Delaney added.

  “Well, you have your chance now,” Teller told them. He didn’t like it, but the McDee had told him how to play it. “One chance you get, that’s all. I can’t promise you won’t be charged, but the attorney general is willing to cut you a deal if you cooperate with the investigation.”

  “Anything,” Walker said. “Anything. I just want this nightmare to end.”

  PRESTON

  BOHEMIAN GROVE

  MONTE RIO, CALIFORNIA

  0232 HOURS, PDT

  Preston’s cell phone rang. It was Escalante. “What?”

  “I sent two of my people over to the Security Office a little while ago,” Escalante told him. “They haven’t reported back. I definitely think something’s wrong.” There was a pause. “And Walker and Delaney aren’t in their cabin.”

  “Shit.” Escalante was right. There were too many suspicious things happening. A couple of security guards not at their post might be evidence of nothing more than drunkenness on duty—but this was four men now, plus the two on watch in the Security Office.

  It was time to get the hell out—now.

  “Okay. Meet me at the car.”

  If someone had infiltrated the Bohemian Grove, they would have the main gate guarded. However, there were several other ways in and out known only to a few—including a dirt road leading down to a spot on the Russian River where Preston had hidden a Zodiac a few days ago. That would get them into town unobserved, where a car was waiting at a local garage.

  He didn’t like abandoning the others; more than anything, though, he hated abandoning the Program. So many years of careful work, of recruiting, of nurturing to bring the plan this far.

  Long ago, Preston had decided that the United States of America was doomed. Even before he’d been tapped as the president’s national security adviser, he’d been convinced that the country had, at most, another twenty years before it was engulfed in bloody chaos and economic collapse. He’d begun making preparations then, while he was still a department manager at the Fed. He’d been asked to join the National Security Council seven years earlier, and only last year been tapped as ANSA. Access to security briefings and secret intel from every branch of the intelligence community had only served to strengthen his conviction that America stood at the brink of apocalypse.

  The only question was how to take advantage of the approaching collapse. He began—cautiously—to talk to others who shared his belief. Logan was a born-again Christian convinced that Armageddon was at hand; Walker thought that the international fiscal policies he was required to supervise would bleed the nation into economic collapse, and that his superiors didn’t care; Gonzales believed passionately that Aztlán was part of the inevitable future march of history. Slowly, Preston had built his little group, playing on their fears and on their convictions. If America was to fall, it wouldn’t hurt to nudge things a little—and to do so in a way that would make a few billion along the way. Not in dollars, obviously, or in unstable Euros. Gold, silver, platinum, and certificates of deposit easily converted to renminbi or Australian dollars or pesos or pounds sterling or whatever other currencies remained strong in the coming collapse. Preston had contacts within the PRC, and they’d been quite happy to have the Program invest in Chinese renminbi yuan. China’s leaders hoped to internationalize their currency during the next few years, to make it a strong reserve currency.

  In fact, the People’s Republic, he thought, might be a good place for him to hole up for a while, to reassess and to rebuild. If the intruders here in the Grove tonight knew about the nukes, as seemed likely, they would go to considerable lengths to apprehend him.

  He retrieved a pistol from a desk drawer, checked to see that it was loaded, then put on his jacket.

  His phone rang. There was no caller ID.

  Better not to answer it. During the past few years working with various intelligence agencies, he’d heard rumors, of course, of technologies allowing the government to turn cell phones into listening devices. The only hard information he’d seen on that had been reports of NSA intercepts of terrorist cell phone calls; the wilder stories, to the effect that the government could turn your phone into a listening device even when it was off, he’d discounted.

  Now, though, he was beginning to wonder.

  At his level, it wasn’t necessary for him to know the details of signals intercepts, or the technologies that made them possible. He’d read thousands of reports of phone intercepts in Pakistan, of satellite infiltrations of electronic networks in China, of computer viruses inserted into Iranian nuclear labs …

  He’d never once questioned how these myriad technological miracles had been worked.

  He was met at the door by one of Escalante’s thugs, a powerfully built Latino named Herrera holding an M-16 assault rifle. He looked nervous. “Señor Escalante, he says to hurry,” Herrera said. “Something here is not right!”

  “Let’s go, then. Adelante.”

  They stepped out into the cool blackness of the night.

  TELLER

  BOHEMIAN GROVE

  MONTE RIO, CALIFORNIA

  0236 HOURS, PDT

  The door to the Owl’s Nest swung open on Teller’s IR imager, and Preston joined the Mexican standing on the front porch.

  “All units, November Sierra is in sight,” a voice said over the Bluetooth clipped to his ear. The Owl’s Nest had been surrounded for over an hour now. Officially, the FBI was running this show, in the form of a Bureau special tactical team, but the real muscle was provided by Marcetti’s ISA assault force. Teller, Procario, and Marcetti had left the confines of the van to close on the redwood château where their main target had been residing.

  “He’s not answering his phone,” Teller said over the tactical net. “Get his attention.”

  Teller’s arm, nestled in a black
sling to keep it invisible in the darkness, was throbbing. The drugs they’d given him yesterday at Belvoir had long since worn off, but he’d decided not to take more. He wanted to be fully aware, alert, and functional when they took Preston down.

  “Randolph Preston,” Marcetti’s voice boomed out of the night, electronically amplified. “You are surrounded. Raise your hands immediately and—”

  It all happened too fast to follow. The cartel gunman raised his M-16 and opened fire, blazing away in a broad semicircle. Preston lunged to the right and started running. The assault unit’s snipers opened fire, sending multiple rounds into the gunman, who continued firing until his magazine went dry. Other shots directed at Preston missed as the man dodged behind the massive black bulk of a redwood.

  Floodlights winked on, bathing the Grove’s central area in a harsh white light. “Damn!” Procario snapped. “Where’d he go?”

  “I’ve got him,” Teller said. He’d pulled up a Cellmap image on his smart phone, showing the blue icon tagged as Preston moving through a graphic map toward the lake. “He’s headed for the Owl Shrine. C’mon!” Teller lurched from his hiding spot and raced through the trees, hoping that the surrounding snipers and tactical personnel got a clear ID on their target before opening fire.

  The ground was uneven and descending, the path twisting through the enormous trees, some of which were over a thousand years old. Up ahead was the Owl Shrine, a stage next to an artificial lake at the center of the Grove. During the July revels, Teller had learned, the Shrine was the location of the Bohemian Club’s Cremation of Care ceremony, as well as the venue for informal daily talks on public policy, government, and economic issues of interest to the attendees.

  Teller emerged near the shore of the lake. To his left, a car was pulling up in front of the entrance to the shrine—Escalante. When the driver saw the lights glaring through the trees, however, he floored the accelerator and sent the vehicle squealing around in a half circle, leaving the running Preston behind.

  “Preston!” Teller yelled. “Stop! Give it up!”

  Fifty yards away, Preston stared at Teller, then turned and ran, apparently trying to make his way around the man-made pond. A startling apparition loomed up above the water—a forty-foot-tall statue, concrete on steel and covered with moss, of a titanic owl. Preston ran across the small wooden stage between statue and water, ducking to slip through beneath a wall of evergreen branches. Teller followed, pounding onto the wooden stage.

  Gunfire cracked from the dark mass of evergreens ahead, two shots, and Teller felt the snap of one of the rounds going past. He was backlit, he realized, by the searchlight glare filtering through the forest behind him and immediately took the only option that presented itself, pitching to the side and over a wooden railing, hitting the pond with a noisy splash.

  The pond was quite shallow and choked with algae and weeds, but Teller stayed beneath the surface as he moved forward across the muddy bottom. It was an awkward swim, one-handed, with his arm bound and his shoulder screaming at him. Preston, he knew, would do one of two things—run, or stay put and wait for him to emerge from the water. If he ran, other members of the tactical team were already moving to cut him off, and Teller would emerge from the pond, soaking wet and too late to participate in the capture.

  If Preston was waiting to see if he had in fact killed the man chasing him, he would be staring into the glare of light in the trees, and his night vision would be gone.

  Teller was counting on that as he maneuvered his way through black water and carefully, carefully raised his head above the surface once more.

  The bank was lined with stone. Teller pulled his Glock from its holster and edged his way forward, crouched low to avoid silhouetting himself against the light. He could hear lots of noise in the forest around him, men running, men shouting and calling to one another. They’d heard the gunfire and were trying to create a new perimeter, not easy in pitch darkness. If Preston avoided that net—quite possible in the confused tangle of night and woods—it would mean a drawn-out manhunt, with every possibility that the quarry would escape. The Bohemian Grove was something like 2,700 acres, all of it thickly wooded, and plenty of wilderness beyond its perimeter where a fugitive could disappear.

  Teller stopped, holding absolutely still, listening. That sixth sense that combat operators relied upon was running full-tilt. He could feel Preston out there, silent, waiting, just a few yards away …

  He couldn’t see, though, could see nothing but darkness. Teller sank down lower, closer to the earth, and took a quiet breath. He needed to flush the fugitive out, and he could think of only one way to do it. Raising his Glock .45, he licked his lips, then called, “Got you, Preston! Hands up!”

  He heard movement, a rustle off to his right, and a sharp intake of breath. Teller rolled to the left just as Preston fired, the muzzle flash piercing the darkness just five yards away. Teller fired an instant later, aiming at Preston’s muzzle flash. He heard a gasp, a moan, and the thud of something heavy hitting soft ground.

  Cautiously, Teller rose and approached. Lights flashed and glared through the trees as tactical team members closed on the sounds of the shots. One light bobbed and jittered as it came closer. “You got him!” Procario’s voice said.

  By the harsh glare of an LED flashlight, Teller could see Preston on the ground, clutching his chest, still breathing, his eyes open and aware, a 9 mm automatic lying on the ground nearby. He was sprawled at the foot of an unusual statue—not the immense owl on the other side of the pond, but a life-sized wooden figure of a man in clerical robes, holding his forefinger in front of his lips.

  “You … don’t know … who … I am,” Preston managed to say, his voice gurgling a bit, and broken by pain.

  Teller knelt beside him, moving his hands to look at the wound. “Randolph Preston,” Teller told him. “Adviser to the president, domestic terrorist, and traitor. Anything else we should know?”

  He began to work to stop the flow of blood.

  Epilogue

  INSCOM HQ

  FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA

  0915 HOURS, EDT

  25 APRIL

  “You are still in a world of shit, Captain,” Colonel MacDonald said. “I wouldn’t want you to think any differently.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Teller replied. He glanced at Procario, who said nothing. The two had been summoned into the McDee’s office that morning, interrupting their ongoing round of debriefing sessions. Teller decided it was best to hold his tongue, to stick to “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” until he knew just how this summons was going to play out.

  “Operating independently of this command, without authorization,” she said. “Creating an international incident in Mexico and in Belize. Conducting illegal wiretaps of American citizens on U.S. soil. Initiating military action on U.S. soil in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. I could go on.”

  “Permission to speak, Colonel,” Procario said.

  “Well?”

  “Just how were we in violation of Posse Comitatus?”

  The act was designed to limit the powers of local government to enforce the law on U.S. territory. Contrary to popular belief, it did not prohibit the army from engaging in law enforcement activities—so long as the orders to do so originated with Congress or the Constitution.

  “Neither Congress nor the president officially gave you any orders to act,” MacDonald replied.

  Oh, God, here it comes, Teller thought. They’re going to lock us up where the sun never shines, and flush the key.

  He desperately wanted a drink. He’d been holding off for the duration of the debriefings. Now he was wishing he’d submerged himself at Executive Sweets once he’d returned and never come up.

  “However,” MacDonald said after an agonizing hesitation, “the TJAG is looking into it. The president did grant certain broad powers to government personnel while we were searching for those suitcase nukes. It might be argued that you two were operating under his verbal
instructions. The charges of kidnapping and illegal arrest … that will probably be covered by the current NDAA.”

  That again. Teller didn’t know whether to be happy that he wasn’t facing criminal charges, or furious that his case was actually justifying that piece-of-shit legislation undermining the Constitution.

  “Chris did save Congress’s great collective ass,” Procario said, “when he tracked down those nukes. Damn it, you ought to be giving him a fucking medal.”

  “The language is unnecessary, Colonel,” MacDonald told him. “And, believe me, the fact that they didn’t incinerate most of Washington, D.C., will mitigate in your favor. Normally, we can’t condone cowboy tactics, but in this instance…”

  Only then did Teller catch the twinkle in MacDonald’s usually cold eye, and realize that this was going to work out okay. Damn it, she was playing with them!

  “Needless to say,” she went on, “the public doesn’t need to know just how close we came to a major … incident in the Capitol. Or about how drug money was connected both to members of Congress and to the White House itself. All of that will remain classified.”

  “Permission to speak, ma’am?” Teller said.

  “Yes?”

  “What about Preston? When he goes on trial—”

  “Randolph Preston is dead,” MacDonald said with stiff finality.

  “Dead? I thought we got to him in time. The medics were there in—”

  “Randolph Preston is dead,” she repeated. Obviously she was going to say no more.

  Which left Teller wondering. Dead, as in he’d died of his wounds while being medevacked to the hospital? Or dead, as in someone high up in government had decided that they couldn’t risk a public trial … or that what might come out about cartel connections and federal banking irregularities would be embarrassing for the president? Dead, perhaps, as in “disappeared,” locked away at Supermax while the government decided what to do with him?