Mayhew hopped into the empty passenger seat and looked out the back window to the fading battle as Scott floored the gas, taking the Humvee south down I-87.
“Who were those guys?” Scott asked, struggling to pull the army jacket on.
“Local militia. Guess they knew the convoy was coming.”
“It’s a good thing they did or you’d be dead right now.” He looked back over at Mayhew. “What the hell were you thinking?” He didn’t respond, and Scott didn’t press the issue. “How did you know that was Daniel?”
“I told you, I saw him talking on a satphone right before he took off on the quad. I knew he had the ring, that he was making a break for it. Didn’t seem likely that he was planning on four-wheeling it all the way down the interstate.”
“Daniel called in the Hawk?”
Mayhew shrugged, stared out the window. “I don’t know.”
Scott didn’t know either. Didn’t know how long they had before the kill switch went off on their stolen Humvee, didn’t know where they were going, didn’t know who Titus Mayhew was, didn’t know what the stupid ring was, didn’t know what the priest had tried to tell him…
All he knew was that the gas pedal would stay against the floorboard until the last drop of gas was spent.
17
North would have taken them into Canada, which is exactly where Scott wanted to go — where he had planned to go, disappearing in the mountains forever if need be. But now he was stuck with Mayhew, and Mayhew wanted to regroup with his revolutionaries in Pennsylvania. And for a reason that Scott couldn’t quite determine, he felt a sense of responsibility to get him there. He guessed that deep down he was hoping it would be enough to get his conscious off his back, to make up for what he’d done. It wouldn’t be enough though, nothing would ever be enough. And so the only thing he knew for certain was that he was speeding south down I-87, and that the Canadian wilderness would have to wait.
“Does your Resistance group have a name?” Scott asked.
Mayhew answered wearily, “No. Not in the way you mean. It’s too easy to discredit a name.”
Scott squinted. “How do you differentiate between all the groups in the country?”
“We’re fine to simply be called the Resistance, but I guess we’re characterized by the name of our leader, though it’s not an official designation.”
Scott didn’t care what the name was. It wouldn’t mean anything to him anyway. Besides, he knew what they were called, he’d heard it every time he turned on the news — terrorists, right wing extremists, Nazis...
But Mayhew kept talking. “As with most of the Constitutional Resistance groups, our creed or ideology would probably parallel Orwell’s ‘Brotherhood.’ Though fighting to keep the country free should be the true mark of American patriotism. After all, we’re just following the founding fathers’ instructions, taking the Constitution literally.”
That might be all well and good, Scott thought, but he knew that the difference between a terrorist and a patriot would, as always, be determined by who won the war. Mayhew and his Resistance would go down in history as heroes or as hanged villains. “There is no Constitution anymore.”
“The Constitution will always be alive, living in the hearts and minds of men…”
Scott smiled. “Like the word of God.” It was a jab at Mayhew’s self-expressed faith, at the conflicting philosophies. But Mayhew didn’t take the bait, just looked out the window.
After checking the rear-view mirror and feeling satisfied that an army of tanks wasn’t yet bearing down on them, Scott asked, “Why’d you want me to talk to the priest?”
Mayhew looked over at him and thought for a moment before speaking. “Never really trusted Daniel, couldn’t get a feel for what side of things he was on. He told me about the ring, how important it is. But I sensed a tension between him and the priest, like they were working toward two opposite goals. I saw that Daniel had a satphone, and when I asked him about it, he lied, said he didn’t have one. I thought that maybe the priest might confirm some of my suspicion to you. He obviously wouldn’t trust me, since he thought I was in league with Daniel.”
“So you never talked to the priest yourself?”
“No.”
“How’d the priest even get in the picture?”
“They showed up at the same time, which is why I assumed they came together. They both wanted to help the Resistance.”
“The Mossad told you about the ring right away?”
Mayhew shook his head. “No, not right away. And then they only confided in a few of us, asked us not to spread it around. We didn’t really care what their true intentions were as long as they were willing to fight alongside us. They seemed to be pretty upset about how things were going in Israel and had no problems connecting the dots.”
“And you didn’t think there was anything peculiar about a priest showing up to join the Resistance?”
“Like I said, we thought he was with the Mossad. We didn’t really see him around that much anyway.”
Scott drove in silence for a little while, none of these answers helping him to make sense of the world around him. “The priest told me that Daniel only knew half of the story.” He wasn’t about to tell him what else he said.
Mayhew nodded. “Probably did.”
They drove another quiet mile. “So Daniel’s escape with the ring just happened to coordinate with the MAV and Hawk showing up?”
“Whoever bombed the house wasn’t interested in recovering the ring, and the MAVs were probably sent out from the prison camp. I know what you’re thinking, that Daniel set us up somehow, but I think it’s more likely that the van had already been waiting for him, that it was prepared to wait all day for him. He spotted the MAV, came in and shouted a warning to me before taking off on the quad. I went out to see what he was doing, and that’s when I noticed the Global Hawk. It’s a good thing the sky was clear this morning.”
“And that Daniel cared enough to warn you. What did he want with the ring?”
Mayhew closed his eyes and started from the beginning. “Daniel and his Jewish friends showed up a month ago, just like he said. They blended right in, raiding the concentration camp alongside us. We had no idea they were Mossad. Not until they came to some of us and told us about this ring, how important they thought it was. They told us it was actually nearby and that they had to go get it while they could. We didn’t argue, they could leave if they wanted to. We knew they weren’t Establishment imposters. Besides, Daniel and the priest stayed back. I heard them arguing, though it was in Hebrew so I didn’t know what they were saying. Anyway, the rest of the Mossad team took a helicopter — don’t ask me how they got one — over to your neck of the woods. When they came back, they had you and the ring with them. Naturally, I now had some questions for Daniel, but before I could ask, Apaches were attacking the camp and soldiers were coming from the woods. Myself, Daniel, and the priest were the only ones left standing once the fighting stopped.”
Scott thought back to the conversation he had with Daniel and the priest right before the prison was attacked. And then he wondered about that Roswell nonsense, trying now to take a fresh look at Daniel’s response to the priest’s mention of it. Maybe it was a response he had interpreted wrongly at the time.
Mayhew was still talking. “So all that talk back at the house was just me going along with his little act. Let him think he was in charge, like I had joined his cause. Besides, I didn’t know who you were. Still don’t.”
Scott had to go back and reevaluate everything through the lens of this new information. There was no glaring hole in Mayhew’s story, though perhaps “glaring” was the operative word, which should be a red flag in and of itself, but he let it go.
With still half a tank of gas left, they might be able to get far enough away from things to lay low for a while. If, of course, the GPS didn’t give them away first. Scott wished he still had his bags from the cave with him; one of them had a substantial amount of
money in it. They could’ve used it to bribe silence from whomever needed silencing.
“What did Daniel tell you about the ring? What is it?” Scott asked.
“He said it had some sort of power that the globalists wanted to use against the world.”
“And you believed that?” he asked, surprised.
“No, but for the Mossad to show up here with a Catholic priest in tow, the thing had to be important.”
“So if you didn’t believe Daniel’s story, what did you think it was?”
Mayhew actually pulled the ring out of his pocket, stared at it. “I don’t know what it is.”
“You risked your life to get it.”
He seemed to think about that, like he was just realizing for the first time that it almost got him killed. “Stupid, I guess.” Then he added, “Just felt like the thing to do at the time.” He put it back into his pocket and fell asleep.
Scott wondered if Mayhew should be the one to have it, why he would even want to have it. It had been sent to Jack Cairns by Melisa Strauss, not to Mayhew. But he tried convincing himself that he didn’t really care, tried to ignore how the ring had made him feel. Back when Edward was still alive.
He watched the faded yellow lines fly toward him, constantly turning an upward eye to the sky. There were a lot of things that weren’t adding up in Mayhew’s story, the relationship between the priest and Daniel, whatever their different agendas could be, how they got here, and who they answered to. But the one thing that wouldn’t leave his mind was why Mayhew would have risked his life to get the ring back. It seemed to stand in stark contrast to the rest of his story, against his confession that he didn’t know what it was. But again, he tried putting it out of his mind. He didn’t care. He only wanted to get rid of Mayhew and head to Canada. The ring wasn’t his problem. It had been sent to Jack, and Jack was dead. But as Mayhew lay sleeping in the seat beside him, he found that he couldn’t ignore the mysterious puzzle that the ring presented.
He didn’t know, however, that a large piece of that puzzle was resting in the canvas bag still hanging over his shoulder, beneath the stolen army jacket.
18
Scott pulled the Humvee over to the side of the road just as Mayhew sat up and looked around.
“We out of gas?” he asked.
Scott threw the vehicle into park and pushed open the door. “No.” And then he slid out, shutting the door behind him and stretching on the shoulder of I-87. Peering down the road, he could make out two twin bridges. Hearing Mayhew open the passenger door, Scott said, “I think there’s a town ahead.”
Mayhew followed his gaze further south, over the bridges. “Probably.”
“I think we should ditch this thing now. We’re not gonna want to leave it anywhere near where we’re staying.”
Mayhew nodded and looked behind them, through some trees and tall grass. “In the river?”
“Yeah.”
They both knew it wouldn’t be wise to drive a fully armed stolen Humvee through the heart of town. The lane that was whispered down here was probably a pretty short one that ended right at the police department. Which would make for a real unpleasant visit. But they couldn’t leave it here on the side of the road either because a passing police car would bring the same results.
Scott looked nervously up the road again and half expected to see a line of red flashing lights. “Hopefully, they won’t notice that their missing vehicle is transmitting from the bottom of a river.”
Mayhew raised his eyebrows. “It’s been over an hour. I’m sure they know exactly where we are.”
Scott opened the door. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He started up the jeep as Mayhew stood off to the side, watching for anyone coming down the road. Scott took the vehicle over the grass and squeezed it between two trees, stopping at the water’s edge. Then he got out. “It’s in neutral,” he said.
Mayhew walked around and joined Scott at the back of the Humvee, and together they pushed it off the bank. It rolled into the stream, the current moving it only until something beneath the waterline prevented it from going any further. The water was just over the hood.
“Maybe the trees will conceal it for a while,” Scott mumbled.
“Yeah, right.”
And then Scott nodded to the AK-47 Mayhew was still holding. “You gonna walk through town with that sticking down your pants?”
Mayhew sighed before heaving it into the water. “You still have your pistol?”
He nodded, and they began walking toward the bridges.
“You have some kind of idea where we’re going?” Mayhew asked, his empty hands now deep in his pockets.
Scott shook his head. “Not really.”
Mayhew looked around. Trees to his right, the northbound lanes across the median to his left, the bridges ahead.
“That’s Albany ahead, across the bridge. I’m figuring it’s about one o’ clock.” His watch was in a billion pieces, back with the priest.
A gust of cold air made Mayhew pull his hands out of his pockets and fold his arms across his chest. “Do you have any money?”
“No.”
A car passed by them but didn’t stop. It crossed the bridge and drove out of sight.
“I do.”
Scott looked over at him, his stride slowing a bit. “How much?”
“Three thousand.”
“Ameros?”
“Yeah.”
“That should cover a motel for the night.”
“It better cover a lot more than that,” Mayhew stated.
Scott nodded silently. “We’ll see.”
After a few more minutes of walking, Mayhew asked, “So what else did the priest say to you?”
“He said to protect the ring.”
“From who?”
“Everyone.”
Mayhew took a couple of quicker steps to get up right beside him. “What does that mean?”
“I have no idea,” he answered. “He said that it was a key.” And before Mayhew could ask the obvious question, Scott stated, “I don’t know.”
“Anything else?”
Scott looked up ahead to the approaching bridges. “Something about a rose.”
Then he turned his head so that he was looking at Mayhew, deciding how much more he should disclose.
The twin bridges were an architectural beauty, a scene one would expect to see hanging framed on office walls. It was named the Thaddeus Kosciusko Bridge after Thaddeus Kosciusko, a Polish man who served as a colonel for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress honored him by making him Brigadier General, and, in 1794, he went on to lead the Kosciuszko uprising against Imperial Russia. At least that’s what the plaque hanging on the bridge said. Scott thought it strange that the sign was still there, references to the Revolutionary War having been scrubbed from most public places by now. Perhaps it was an indication that the little town hadn’t been as corrupted by what was happening in the rest of the country.
The bridges were actually a pair of identical arch bridges made of steel with cables connecting the deck to the arch. There were three northbound lanes on the east bridge and three southbound lanes on the one they were currently walking over. The Mohawk River was below them.
Scott looked over the side and down into the water as multicolored leaves floated by beneath them.
“Mohawk River. Some kind of importance during the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. Forget what, though.”
“Was that on the plaque?” Mayhew asked.
“Mohawk River was. Apparently, we just walked out of Halfmoon, Halfmoon being the name of Henry Hudson’s ship.”
Mayhew nodded ahead of them. “And this is Colonie?”
“That’s what it said.”
The view from the steel bridge was even more beautiful than the twin bridges themselves. The water reflected the colorful trees along the riverbank below, their leaves turning and fluttering away in the face of coming winter. For the next few days,
the sight would be a remarkable one. And then for the next few months, there would be no colors at all.
They walked off the bridge and went another half mile down 87 before crossing over the northbound lanes and entering a grassy clearing beside the interstate. From there they could see the town.
“Dunsbach Ferry Road.” Mayhew read the sign aloud as they passed by it. The road was lined with houses on both sides.
“Let’s hope no one calls the cops on us,” Scott mumbled, his eyes searching the houses as they continued walking.
They were almost to the last house when a man working on his car looked up and noticed them. Scott watched from the corner of his eye as the man stood to attention and watched them walk by. After stealing a look left and then right, the man started walking across the front lawn toward them.
“Excuse me!” he called out, stepping onto the street.
They stopped and turned to face him.
“Yeah?” Scott asked, his heart thumping in his chest.
The guy looked him up and down before shifting his gaze over to Mayhew. Their condition — soot-covered clothes, cuts and bruises decorating their faces — was not lost on him. “Where you guys heading?”
“We were heading to Manhattan, but our car broke down up the road. Now we’re just hoping to find an auto shop or a motel we can spend the night in.” Scott looked past the man, quickly examining his living conditions. The guy was barely getting by, most of his house in disrepair. Scott knew what he wanted.
The Solomon Key Page 13
