“Isn’t the fact I know about Deep Thaw enough? And that you’re my Denver field agent?”
“I told that much to the general when I came in. Perhaps you could tell me a little bit about my objectives, or what I experienced at my secure location before going operational?”
Coulter frowned. “We don’t share information about objectives, Carson. Not even internally. Objectives can change at a moment’s notice, can be updated without notification. I honestly don’t know a thing about what your specific assignments were, or what you’ve been through. But I do expect you to report to me now.”
Carson sat back on his cot. “Perhaps you could convince the general to let me out of these palatial accommodations so that we can get moving. I’m sure your knowledge and expertise is in high demand these days. I’d love to ride along and get back to work, sir.”
“I will get you out of this place, Agent,” Coulter said. “I can promise you that. I’ve already spoken with the general about it. The timing is dependent on the outcome of our little chat. Right now I need to know whether you’ve had any success in achieving your primary and secondary objectives.”
Coulter fell silent, staring Carson down with an authoritative glare that had probably worked wonders in getting him to the top of the totem pole in the DHS. Combined with a silence that made obvious how little Carson had to bargain with, this glare worked in no small measure on Carson as well.
“My secondary objectives aren’t going at all well, sir,” Carson offered. “The federal facility I was tasked with assisting is practically leveled. The electrical infrastructure around here is set back to the Stone Age and there’s little I can do in the near-term. And a target I was assigned to pursue is, ah, shall we say… out of my reach at the moment. I’d prefer not to say more within earshot of the general and his men.”
Coulter digested this, obviously struggling to read between the lines of what Carson wasn’t telling him. “Okay. That’s a start. Disappointing, but not unexpected. How about your primary? Did you complete it when you delivered that coded message to the general?”
“No.” Carson hesitated, wondering how much was safe to say about Scala and her objectives. “My primary is also out of reach at the moment. If you get me out of here, I can make some progress on it.”
“Agent, you were assigned to Denver. Yet I find you rotting in a cell on a military base in Colorado Springs, seventy miles to the south. How is it that you got so far out of your way?”
“Colorado Springs isn’t out of my way,” Carson protested. “I’m still tracking my primary, I just haven’t delivered on it yet. The flash drive I handed off to the general was another agent’s objective.”
Coulter gave him a quizzical look. “You took over another agent’s objective? How did that occur? We have no protocols for inter-agent cooperation in Deep Thaw.”
“I ran into her at a safe house in Denver. We decided to work together for a short time.”
“This is interesting. You must be speaking of Agent Scala. The Fort Collins assignment. Where is she now?”
Carson barely vacillated, having made up his mind microseconds earlier. “Dead. We ran into a spot of trouble on the way south. She didn’t make it, and I decided to deliver her message to Tamare before continuing with my own objectives.”
Coulter rubbed his jaw. “I see. That’s… against protocol, to allow yourself to get sidetracked from your primary objective. But we value our agents’ independent initiative above all. Good work.”
Carson smiled. “Did the general manage to decrypt the message? He was very suspicious of me when I surrendered it. Hence the prison cell.”
“He did indeed. That’s why I am here, in fact. The message allowed him to get in contact with a hierarchy which I am a part of. When he mentioned he was holding a federal agent that claimed to be Deep Thaw, I came as quickly as I could.” He smiled back at Carson. “Sorry it took so long. Travel these days is difficult. I couldn’t just grab a flight into Denver International, like I used to.”
Carson held up his hands sympathetically. “Whatcha gonna do? Apocalypses happen.”
“So how about your primary? What are we looking at?”
Carson eyed his superior. He was convinced now that the man was in fact Deep Thaw, very high up if not the director of the whole program as he had stated. He knew the right questions to ask, he seemed to know about protocol, about primary and secondary objectives, and he knew Scala by name. The question now was whether he had anything to do with the strike team that had tried to kill Carson.
“My primary is back up north,” Carson said. “Get me out, I’ll go for it, and you can come along. If you have a helicopter, then you’ll be even more welcome.”
“So you never even came close, then.”
“No, not geographically close,” Carson admitted. “Before I came south, I learned that the area surrounding my primary objective was irradiated. I decided to verify that I’d still have someone to deliver it to here in Colorado Springs before trying to get the goods, which seems to be the really tricky part now.”
Coulter nodded. “Aha. The black box. What’s it called, nine-oh-five something? The data dump. So you never retrieved it?”
Carson’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t know anything about specific objectives.”
“Not who’s assigned to what. But don’t forget I’m the one that makes most of these assignments. I’m actually very interested in that black box, Carson.”
“Then maybe you can tell me whether it’s still worth pursuing, sir. If the rumors I heard are accurate, it’s no longer feasible.”
Coulter’s glare returned. “You abandoned your primary objective on a rumor?”
“It’s complicated, sir. Based on the intelligence I had at the time, and the options available to me, I decided that coming south was the best option.”
“Sounds to me like you and Agent Scala got a little too cozy, agent.”
“No, sir. Professional at all times.”
“Really? You sure she didn’t get under your skin? Because they tell me you came into town with a woman, but checked into the base alone.” Coulter was raising his voice and leaning toward the bars now, letting Carson have it as if he were a drill sergeant. “And you delivered her objective instead of yours, which is a hundred and twenty miles north of here. That puts me way behind schedule, agent! I need that black box, and frankly I don’t have any more time to waste on you squirrelly ones.”
“Squirrelly, sir?”
“You had one job to do, agent. I came all the way out here to meet with you, and now I have to go to Longmont to get the black box anyway. The least you could have done if you were going to leave your cabin at all was get me that box!” The director made a visible effort to calm himself. “Well. At least in tracking you down here wasn’t entirely worthless.” He fished something out of his coat pocket and held it up: the electronic key from Carson’s Envelope 2.
“Tamare surrendered my stuff to you,” Carson surmised. “Great. Maybe you can get him to turn me loose too, and we can go put that key to good use.”
“I think I’ll handle that from here,” Coulter said. “You haven’t exactly impressed me with your ability to get the goods.”
“Sir, I hardly think you’re being fair. I’ve broken past some serious obstacles so far, and I—”
“You’re rotting in jail, agent. Spare me the sales pitch. You failed, and now it’s up to me to do your job and recover that box. So I’d better be on my way.”
“Why’s this black box so important to you? What’s in it?” Carson fired back, hoping Coulter would let loose with more information. He didn’t fully understand what he was hearing, but he sensed that he was on the verge of hearing things he desperately wanted to know. He had to keep Coulter talking.
“Secrets, Agent Anders,” Coulter explained, pocketing the key with a smug smile. “All the secrets that my superiors don’t want to exist. And they wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for screw-ups like y
ou and Scala, who just couldn’t sit still in your cabins for a few weeks as ordered.” He shook his head and gave a sarcastic, angry laugh. “The very first time you get activated, you go off protocol, you don’t even wait around for one month. Why did I ever think you people were worth paying?”
Carson was mystified. “Did Scala leave her cabin early?”
“Yes, she left early!” Coulter thundered, rising from his chair and grabbing a bar with one hand. “Oh, she didn’t tell you that? Maybe you two aren’t as intimate with each other as you thought. Did you confess to her that you also left before your time was up? Or were you both lying to each another as well as to me?”
“I didn’t…” Carson began, but then it clicked in his head. He had been right to distrust the Deep Thaw director from the beginning. “Wait. Why are you assuming I left early?”
Coulter backed away from the bars and glared at Carson.
Carson stood. “Is it because you expected something to happen to me if I stayed? You didn’t expect me to make it into the field?”
A slow, cold smile spread across Coulter’s face. “That’s right, agent. You were never meant to leave your cabin. Neither was Scala.
“In my misplaced optimism, I had hoped the failure of the strike team to exterminate you would prove serendipitous after all. Scala’s code put Tamare in control of the hardened communications arrays at Cheyenne Mountain earlier than we expected. The Correctionists will be able to move against Denver with little to stand in their way now. It was an unlooked-for stroke of luck in an otherwise botched operation.
“But I’m very, very disappointed that you failed to bring the black box down here with you. You slipped past my cleaner crew, you eluded us by mere hours at your house in Denver.”
Coulter noticed Carson’s face flinching. “Yes, I went through your house, and I met your neighbor. She told me everything she knew, begged and pleaded, but it wasn’t enough. And now I have a very long journey ahead of me to go get 905T4 from Longmont. At least I can take solace in the knowledge that Scala is dead, and you’ll be rotting in prison, awaiting your execution. Everything will be wrapped up neatly after all.
“I’d put a bullet through your head right now if I could make it look like suicide. But I’ll let the general do it his own way. Less mess for me.”
He turned to leave. Carson stepped forward and gripped the bars, shouting after him, fighting back sudden tears.
“Coulter, you traitor, you murderer! I knew it had to be an inside job. Who are you and Tamare working for? Who’s behind this?”
Coulter didn’t turn around. Carson heard the door slam at the far end of the corridor, and he was again left alone. In his six by eight-foot cell, with the cot, and the toilet, and an empty MRE packet in the corner. And nothing else.
General Tamare came back an hour later without Coulter. His adjutant was with him, and Brunson too. The short Marine wouldn’t look Carson in the eye.
“Your boss recommends I either execute you immediately,” the general told Carson, with an air of genuine regret, “or move you to a labor camp. He says you’re a treacherous liar and a security threat to the entire nation.”
He got no reaction out of Carson, who was sitting cross-legged on his cot, back against the wall, trying to keep his mind strong and sane despite the infuriating, damning things he’d heard.
The general continued. “I’m not going to have you killed. As far as I can tell, all you’ve done is follow orders.”
Carson looked over at him. Brunson perked up, too, waiting for the general’s next words.
“That’s right, secret agent man. I don’t like that Coulter fellow any more than you do. He represents elements of our country’s former leadership that I never liked, and can barely stomach now. But unfortunately for us all, we find ourselves in desperate times. Time so desperate that we’ll be lucky to survive another five years like this. Coulter and his ilk are the only way that’s going to happen, so it’s a path we have to tread, distasteful though it may be to us.”
Carson stood. “If you’re not with them, then why cooperate, sir? Why give them what they need?”
Tamare sighed. “Have to. That key you brought, it let us into Cheyenne Mountain, gave us control of the comms and routed us straight to the remaining military infrastructure on an old hardline cable that somehow weathered the cataclysm. It’s hardly better than Morse code, but it was enough to learn how things are outside of this town.
“The Correctionists are the only ones out there now rebuilding and gathering strength. And make no mistake, we will need strength. I’m certain that even now our enemies overseas are gathering their forces, eyeing our shores with hunger and hatred. One division of foreign troops could occupy an entire state in our current disarray. If we don’t get some men together with working weaponry, our civilization may not be around for another decade. Unfortunately the Correctionists are our best bet.”
Carson shook his head. “Sir, this is a terrible mistake. I don’t know who these Correctionists are, but you can’t cooperate with a snake like Coulter. He’ll betray you. He betrayed our country. He’s murdered good people, civilian women, even! He tried to have me killed as part of this big coup.”
Tamare sighed, tired and almost forlorn. “We don’t have to like it. We don’t have to agree with everything our leaders are doing in order to keep doing our job. But these guys are our only chance, the only way we’ve got to pull through this. Believe me, I’ve studied it out. There’s no other way.”
He gestured at Brunson, who produced a set of handcuffs and passed them through the bars to Carson.
“Put ‘em on, agent. Your stint with us is over. Brunson here tells me you were a Marine, and I won’t have your blood on my hands. But I can’t let you run loose and cause trouble, so I’m sending you to the new prison camp they’re setting up east of here. That is all.”
Chapter 3: Southward Alone
Dana picked her way carefully through the broken glass and rubble at the roadside gas station. Judging by the vehicles, someone had arranged a roadblock here at some point in the past several weeks, but it was abandoned now. She also saw bloodstains on the concrete, but if any bodies had fallen here as a result of a firefight they had long since been carried off by their surviving friends, or by animals.
She wondered what had happened at the station roadblock. Obviously a violent altercation of some sort. Probably two rival gangs of marauders shooting it out for rights to the checkpoint, so they could shake down travelers. They were gone now, thank goodness, but she still didn’t want to spend the night in such a place. She continued on and camped that night far out in the sage brush.
Carson had been surprised to see how Dana had changed when he met her after six weeks of urban scavenging. But she almost laughed to herself at the thought of his reaction if he could see her now. She was even leaner, far dirtier, and she had cut all of her hair off two days earlier, shaving it down to a close buzz cut with her knife.
The cutting of her hair was an emotional act as much as physical. She couldn’t wash her hair and the short buzz was far lower-maintenance. It also made her less of an obvious target for predatory men. But more than anything, it was an acknowledgment that she was no longer the same woman that had been the social heart of Hemingway Circle. She was transforming, and the physical act reflected what she knew was occurring inside of her.
She was hardening. She no longer thought of food the same way, no longer needed physical comforts so much. She could feel the hard muscles in her stomach and legs now, something she had never experienced when her body was softer. She knew without looking in a mirror that he jawline was sharper, her cheekbones more pronounced.
Her psyche had hardened too, and she knew it wasn’t finished. She had shot people in the weeks since leaving Hemingway Circle. She had fought with dogs and coyotes for first pickings at a fresh animal carcass. And she had given herself permission to do whatever it took to survive.
These weren’t good changes,
and they weren’t bad. They were just the reality of what she was going through in the world she now found herself in. It was one price she was paying to continue onward in her quest to undo whatever damage she had done to Carson and to fashion herself into someone capable of being with him.
She wondered, for the hundredth time, as she sat by her small, smokeless fire amid the sage, whether Carson would even recognize her when she finally found him. Or whether he would remember the words he had spoken to her before leaving to pursue his objectives. Would he even be capable of liking the woman she was becoming?
And what would she do if he was not?
It didn’t matter at the moment, she decided, just before drifting off to sleep that night. She had nothing to lose except for Carson. She would simply take things as they came. It was all she was capable of now.
Chapter 4: Hard Time
Carson scratched his chin. Time to shave again, before the guards decided he was in violation of one of their randomly-enforced regulations and chopped it off for him. That was never pleasant. He dug out the rusted scrap of iron he kept hidden next to one of the tent stakes that held his little tarp shelter taut. It was too small to be used as a weapon or a digging tool, but the guards would confiscate it anyway if they found it. He started sharpening it on a rock.
He was tired. Everyone in Camp Carrion was tired. They were all worked hard, but Carson had been on tear-down duty all day, ripping apart old cars for their useful components now that they were no longer fit for transporting people. The hand tools he was given didn’t make the job easy, and the guards were punishing in the pace they demanded of the prisoners.
The prisoners were fed just enough to keep them going, usually some sort of flavorless mystery-stew with whatever potatoes or cabbages the scavenge crew had been able to find on their forays outside the wire. Carson forgot what it felt like to be full of food as his body, already hard, became harder and much leaner. Muscles bulged in new places, not the juicy, rounded products of trainers and gym workouts, but corded knots of working muscles, strength to drive a pick deep into frozen earth, to dig trenches for hours with a dull shovel. His hands became pure callus.
Assault on Cheyenne Mountain (Denver Burning Book 4) Page 2
