A Guardian Angel

by Williams, Phoenix

  “Are you letting her go?” Andy asked.

  The Latina sharpened her eyes at him, as if being accused. “Of course, she's not our prisoner,” she replied. “What is it that you even think about the Knights, Mr. Winter? You do just think that we're terrorists, don't you?”

  “I think that's what a lot of people would call you,” Andy said.

  “What about you?” Rosa asked. Her voice softened up. “You of all people must understand the difference between what is wrong and what is necessary. You must be able to see that our actions, while unpopular, are crucial to this revolution.”

  Andy was silent for a while. He took a large drink from the glass of water he had been given before. The woman stared him down. He could not escape her expectant gaze. “I really don't think any of us are qualified to be right,” Andy said. “There is no such thing. There's just what's going to work and what's not.”

  “And what do you think is going to work?” the Knight leader asked.

  Andy hummed for a second. “I think you and Flynn have a lot to learn from each other,” he said. He took another large gulp.

  Rosa thought on that comment for a moment. She stood up and brought her seat up close to Andy's, then sat back down on it.

  “Do you know where the Knights come from?” she asked Andy.

  Andy said nothing.

  “I think if I tell you, you'll understand better what kind of world we are fighting against,” Rosa started. “I lived in a small little town at the very foot of the Sangre de Cristos. On the mountain, they had this little military supply depot. They have it there for training camps in the western states, in case weapons ever go missing, a vehicle gets totaled, or the men are using more ammunition than estimated. It was a good little reserve, and it was guarded by a group of soldiers who lived there. Most everyone in town worked there, or at least did something to help the troops.

  “When Decree started their little Standstill, there was no real warning. Nobody came and told us to pack up our things and grab our loved ones. They strolled into the village as if they had always been there, before anyone noticed them. No announcement was made, or some barrel-chested reading of bullshit law. Just gunfire.”

  Rosa stared down at the floor. Her head hung heavy.

  “It was a massacre,” she continued. “A lot of people took shelter in their houses, their apartments. Pedestrians were cut down in the street with such determination and effort. Overkill. They were unarmed, but engaged as if they were enemy combatants.

  “There was a little boy,” Rosa said. She looked back up into Andy's face. “I was in my classroom, during a lesson, when the shooting started. We tried to keep the children calm and help them take cover. We tried to hide out in the school building. They were so scared; so freaked out. This little boy, Brandon, he jumped out the window and tried to make a run for it. We screamed at him to come back, to stop fleeing. And they shot him down right in the playground. Right in front of his classmates.”

  Still, Andy said nothing.

  “I thought there was no way they wouldn't come into the school. To hunt us out like rats. Make us run. But it got quiet and still. Naturally, we didn't trust it, so we stayed in hiding and watched. We couldn't see the mercenaries. Finally, the time came when we decided that it was safe enough to make a run for it. Even when we got out in the open, none of the Decree dogs were in sight. We got everyone on a small caravan of school buses and left the town.”

  “So you lost a student,” Andy commented. Rosa just looked at him with stern eyes as she shook her head

  “We didn't have enough vehicles to get all of the children out in one go, so we had to make the nerve-racking second trip. Some of the staff had stayed behind to keep the children calm, to hold them all together. We didn't even get back to the town limits before these dark jets shot overhead. They were Air Force. 'Finally!' we had said. 'The government is coming to help us.'”

  Rosa looked like the words had left a bad taste in her mouth. Andy continued to listen, his expression blank.

  “The planes dropped fire bombs on the village,” she explained. “See, they saw that Decree had taken control of the supply depot. That was unacceptable. They added up the numbers and found it too risky to try to take it back; to try and save the town. So they ordered the deaths of our friends, our neighbors. Our family.”

  Andy averted his eyes and stared at the floor. He could never contribute anything to the moment to make it any more comfortable. Silence rested upon them for a while before he lifted his gaze again. Rosa was devoid of grief in her expression. She did not wince or hesitate as she told her story. It must have been told a hundred times, Andy thought.

  “I will help you,” Andy concluded. “But only to get to Leroy Graves.”

  Rosa smiled. “You know that that's our next move,” she said. Andy nodded. The woman walked across the room. “Do you know anything about the code Graves uses?”

  “Code?” Andy asked.

  “To communicate classified information,” Rosa explained. “With some effort, we dug up some old transcripts from Graves to an unlisted number. The message given was encrypted. And I believe his contact was you.”

  Andy's muscles tensed. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew who would.

  Rosa continued. “Lately, every single one of his messages has been in code. Even personal ones to his wife and his colleagues. We want to catch him by surprise, but it's impossible to get any information about where he is at any given time. Any messages sent between Grave's generals regarding him communicate the same way. Nobody else is cleared to discuss him.”

  Something in Andy resisted. “Why can't you get the information from his misses? Or any of his generals?” he inquired.

  Rosa gave him a soft look. “Andy, we're trying to protect people,” she started. “If we did anything as serious as that, we'd have a lot more than Decree blood on our hands.”

  Andy turned to the wall and hummed in thought.

  “Will you help us?” Rosa asked.

  He faced her again. “I need to get a hold of a colleague and then I can teach you the code,” he answered. “But only if you destroy all of Grave's past transcripts.”

  Curiosity bled onto Rosa's sharp features, but she asked nothing of it. “Deal.” She extended her arm for a handshake.

  Haley didn't much like the car that the Knights had given her to make her return trip to New York, but it was far more than she could have ever expected. They blindfolded her and drove for about twenty miles before meeting up with her new vehicle. One of them told her that if she drove straight for a hundred and twelve miles, she would cross into the state of New York. Then, without a spare word, they got back in their cars and waited for her to drive away.

  Rosa decided that it was the best decision to let Haley return home, even though she had not made up her mind about helping the Knights. Haley had been introduced to two men who were to be her designated bodyguards. She had been told that their presence would be minimal at most, and that she should just remember that they are near. Remember that she is protected.

  Something terrified Haley about Rosa and her organization. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. Perhaps it was her pacifist heart that hesitates to help such violent people. But, Haley thought to herself, I had wanted to help them or I would have said 'no.' Haley did want Leroy Graves to be brought to justice. His crimes would always go down in history as perfect justification to his execution, Haley thought, but what precedent would that set us off with? Am I wrong to think that starting off a new society with an act of violence is the worst thing we can do?

  That wasn't it, Haley decided. It was something else. Something about the look in Rosa's eyes was so alien, so hard for Haley to recognize, and it scared her. Rosa had the stare of someone who couldn't understand that they were in the real world. That their actions had real consequences and their words would be subject to realistic scrutiny. The woman spoke like someone out of a mo
vie, Haley believed. Like she didn't grasp this world.

  Almost, Haley thought. That's very nearly what it is.

  Haley oo'ed out loud when it became crystalline to her. What terrified her about the Knights of the Proletariat is that everyone else might be like them. That she was alone where she stood.

  -Chapter Twenty-Eight-

  The Expert

  It was difficult to say whether it was Andy or Steven that was more surprised to see the hitman back in the city of Lumnin. Mr. Amidon's expression would contend to say that it was himself. Andy stood outside on his porch with an idling orange van waiting on the corner. Steven's eyes ignited when he saw the vehicle.

  “Andy, my God, are you with them?” he asked as low as he could so that only Andy would hear.

  The former hitman waved back at the van. The driver killed its engine and watched the two men through the windshield. “No,” Andy said. “May I come in?”

  Steven opened the door and offered his friend entrance, peering out behind him as the door was closed. Andy hung up his coat while his host stood in the entrance.

  “They aren't going to follow me in,” Andy explained.

  “What's going on?” Steven asked. He seemed scared. “What are you doing with Decree?”

  “It's not Decree,” Andy explained. “Do you have any coffee?”

  “Not Decree?” Steven repeated. He ignored Andy's request. “Who then?”

  “There's a revolution brewing, Steven,” Andy started. “Please. Coffee?”

  Steam rose off the two mugs of coffee in fine, long strands. Steven had taken his place in his old recliner and Andy sat on the floor before him. He sipped on his cup as he watched the man across from him.

  “How have you been able to stay right in the same house?” Andy asked. “You didn't run?”

  “No one came looking for me,” Steven replied. “I thought for sure they would, but no one did.”

  There was a pause in which Andy accepted this answer. “Have you kept up with the news?” Andy asked his friend.

  “Of course,” Steven answered. “It's kind of hard not to these days. It's shoved right in our faces.”

  “Then you know that Graves has to be stopped.”

  “Yeah,” Steven started. “I pretty much assumed that from day one. Is that what this is all about, Andy? Who are those people dressed up as Decree?”

  Andy looked back out the window at the orange van that had moved a single parking space in his absence. Eyes stared back at him through the glass. “They're called the Knights of the Proletariat,” Andy said. “They, too, want to stop Graves.”

  “So why are you here?” Steven questioned.

  “I need your help,” Andy started. He gestured out the window. “The Knights need you. Do you still remember the code that you and Graves would communicate in?”

  Steven nodded with a stone still face. “Yeah, I do,” he stated. “So they're planning to kill him?”

  “I'm planning,” Andy pointed to his own chest. “But I need you, Steven. I need you to teach these Knights everything you know about Decree.”

  “No,” Steven said. The former assassin was a little surprised. Confused. “I will teach you how to break the code, but that's it. As soon as you leave here, I'm going to leave the country.”

  “Now?” Andy asked.

  “If you're going to kill Graves,” Steven started, “I'm not too sure I wanna stick around for the retaliation.”

  Andy was disheartened. “You won't come with me?” he clarified.

  “Not this time, Andy,” Steven replied. “Help me pack, I'll teach you this code as we move.”

  Sighing, the hitman started toward Steven to help him lift a suitcase. This was not how he planned it to work.

  “By the way,” Steven began, “have you heard anything about Flynn?”

  “She's safe,” Andy told him.

  “Okay, so you hear the music?” Andy asked the young man he taught. The two of them listened through large headphones to a transmission from Leroy Graves to his wife, Loretta. It was a voice mail that they had recorded on tape and was being dissected by Andy for instructional purposes, as his agreement to the Knights stood. The young man couldn't be more than nineteen. He was a redheaded boy with freckles and braces. He was intelligent, but sometimes irritatingly slow.

  “No,” the lad replied.

  “Turn it up, and listen past Graves' voice,” Andy said. “If you can tell, there's some light music playing in the background.”

  “But what about the code that Graves is speaking in?” the young man asked.

  It was true, the message was strange and structured to hold a second meaning. Graves explained to his wife how America and “the kids” must adjust their diets and praise the lords of nature. He said a few other cryptic things of the sort, and at the end provided a series of numbers. It was an encoded message. But Andy knew where to look for the code.

  “Ignore it,” Andy instructed. “It's gibberish made up to divert anyone eavesdropping.” They played the message over again. “Did you hear how the music changes about every fifteen seconds or so?”

  “It's so quiet,” the boy said.

  “Listen harder,” Andy said. He had started deciphering the message in his head as he listened. This time around he had broken the code. The information startled him.

  “Okay, so what?” the young man said. He waited for Andy to reply, but only received concentrated silence. “Mr. Winter, what about the music?”

  “This message is useless,” Andy said.

  “Sorry?”

  “It's just propaganda,” Andy explained. “Nonsense. Let's use a different one.”

  Reluctantly, the boy obliged. He loaded up another audio file, this time from one of the Decree generals to another.

  “Hey,” the young Knight said, “I hear the music again. What does it mean?”

  “What you do,” Andy started, “is you identify what song is playing in the background.”

  “It sounds like The Who.”

  “Good, that works too,” Andy said. “You need to know the band performing the song.”

  “Then what?”

  “You identify the bassist of the band. For this first one, it's Entwistle,” Andy explained.

  Light sparkled in the young Knight's eye. “So the first letter is E?” he guessed.

  “Not quite, that's too simple,” Andy explained. “You figure out what album the track being played is from. For example, this one is 'Bargain,' which is the second track from Who's Next. The encoded letter is N, the second letter of Entwistle.”

  “Ah, I see!” the young man moaned. “Brilliant! I'll start my research and we'll get these messages deciphered immediately.”

  “That's just one code,” Andy explained. “We have a lot more to go through.”

  A short amount of time passed before the Knights intercepted and cracked another encrypted message, from Graves to his generals. This one explained that he was going to come out to his office in New York in order to meet with someone from the federal government. The instructions were to go about business as normal so that he might be able to get in unnoticed. Merc-cops were meant to guard the Decree Tower from the inside. The Knights of the Proletariat found this as their one and only window in the foreseeable future to assassinate Leroy Graves.

  Rosa wanted Andy's help during the operation.

  “No,” Andy answered. He cleaned his three-eighty auto while the leader of the Knights approached with her request.

  “Why not?” Rosa asked. Andy didn't know whether to read her reaction as surprise or not. “I had thought that you would want to be there more than anyone when we take down Graves.”

  “I do,” Andy replied. “But I can't.”

  Rosa questioned the former hitman with silence.

  “I'm needed elsewhere,” he explained. He didn't raise his eyes from his methodical work. He carried on cleaning and scrubbing any imperfections along t
he pistol's inner mechanisms.

  “Now?” Rosa inquired. “Why?”

  Andy raised his gaze. He met her dark brown eyes with his own and an exhausted look stamped itself on his face. Rosa felt that she only served to annoy the man. That maybe he was older than his age. Andy didn't answer her, and after a long moment of staring returned his concentration to his gun. Rosa lowered her eyes to the floor.

  “We really need you,” Rosa explained. “When you finish whatever it is that demands your attention, please, consider helping us. Removing Graves is hardly the last step to a long process.”

  With a smile, Andy nodded. “I will think about it,” he said.

  -Chapter Twenty-Nine-

  Decree Tower

  Sergeant Milo Winestock was a proud, barrel-chested mercenary. His face reddened with sweat, uncomfortable in the heavy riot suit that he made his squad wear. It wasn't mandatory to do so, but Sgt. Winestock demanded his men wear it. His defense to this decision was what he liked to call the blow fish effect. The intimidation that his squad had mastered so well was the sergeant's greatest weapon, as he saw, and the reason they had been designated to control riots in several New England states.

  His strong mustache bristled like a steel comb in the wind. He always rode shotgun in the vans that his squad was issued. He turned his helmeted head back over his shoulder and soaked in the portrait of his men. There were five of them excluding himself, and he had a fatherly respect for each and every one of them. Winestock's mercenaries had named him “the Grandfather.”

  Sgt. Winestock loved his nickname. It explained how the man thought that more leaders should believe; these men are family.

  There was a new member to his family today.

  Barney watched the other men speak out of the corner of his eye. Sergeant Winestock observed his face tremble.