Brucius Marino, son of Italian immigrants, son of a man who’d worked his way through law school delivering papers and booking at the tracks, son of a man whose mother had died when he was born and who had taught himself to read English before he was even four, took a breath and groaned, then stared down at his hands. “Bethany Rosen would be the next in line—”
“Dead now, Brucius.” James dropped a highly classified report on top of the metal table. “Died in her sleep within a few days of being sworn in. Remarkable, isn’t it?” The black man sat back and picked his teeth.
“With Bethany gone, then that—”
“Brings us to you. You’re next in line. The line of succession is not disputable. The SecDef should have been the next president.”
Brucius wet his lips. It was the last thing that he wanted, the last thing he had ever thought about.
“Whatever,” James went on after a moment of silence. “It doesn’t matter. What they’ve done is more than obvious, claiming you were dead and putting their own man in place.”
Brucius grew intent. “Someone else is president?”
James nodded yes.
“Fuentes?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“The guy’s got the moral compass of a fish.”
“That’s an unfair comparison, don’t you think?”
“I’ll apologize to all the carp.”
James almost smiled. “Anyway, they had to know we’d figure it out, but they don’t care. This isn’t a conspiracy any longer, this is out-in-the-open war. And we’ve lost the first battle, that’s for sure. They saw their opportunity and they took it. They knew if they could get their man in place before we could react, it would be impossible for us to push him out amid the chaos and confusion. Another thing they’re banking on—and I think they got this right—is that the American people are consumed with only one thing: survival. Nothing else. They don’t give a flying bag of bones who’s in charge as long as someone steps forward to take care of them. They would accept Stalin as their leader if he arranged to bring them food. Hunger has a way of focusing the issue, and the protocol of succession doesn’t mean squat to the American people right now.” He fell silent, thinking, then concluded, “Brucius, we’ve thought this out. The last thing the American people will suffer is a constitutional crisis over who’s next in line, especially with another guy already in place. He’s getting ready to address the nation. He’ll say the right things, make all the right moves, start getting the emergency supplies in place. They’ll look to him as their savior. It’ll be hard to move him out.”
Brucius shook his head. “Look, I want to be clear, I have no more desire to be the president than I desire to have toothpicks driven under my fingernails. But there is principle. Precedent. We can’t just go wandering off into la-la land; we have to do this right! If not now, then what about the next time? Who gets to be the president then? If we don’t have some kind of order—”
“Believe me, Brucius, you’re preaching to the choir.”
“It’s not about me. It’s not about what I want or don’t want. It’s about the truth, the principle, doing this thing right!”
James shook his head and leaned forward angrily. “I’ll tell you what it’s about,” he almost sneered. “In the long term, it’s about defending the Constitution. You won’t believe the things they plan to do. They will destroy the country. We’ll be no better than any third-world dictatorship with a worthless constitution of a power that barely moves along. In the short term, it’s about not letting a group of thugs steal the presidency. It’s about keeping the power with the people, not in a group of murderers’ hands. That’s what this whole thing is about. And that’s why we have to act.”
Brucius frowned. The smell of the food sitting on the table was making him sick. “Fuentes,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe that he’s the acting president.”
“He’s not acting, Brucius, he is the president. It is done. We couldn’t stop it.”
Brucius shook his head and swore.
James went on, his voice dark. “It’s too late, we know that. If you were to make a move on the presidency, the American people would perceive it as a greedy and pointless grab for power, especially if Fuentes is able to convince them that the measures he’s proposing are necessary for their survival.” James fumed, his breathing heavy, his eyes angry and alert. Brucius watched him, his head still bent, his eyes looking up through bushy brows; then he stood, moved toward the window, and stared out through the glass.
“They were coming for you, Brucius. Do you understand what that means? They were coming to your daughter’s house to kill you.”
Brucius took a deep breath. “I had a meeting with a few of them a couple of days ago. They tried to persuade me to join them. They were adamant, though adamant is probably too soft a word to describe what they said. It was pretty convincing . . . .” He stopped, his voice trailing off.
James stood and walked toward his friend. “Let’s be very clear about this, Brucius. Even if they are convincing, they are not right. They are traitors and deceivers. They thirst for power, nothing more. They know our country is on her knees now. She might not recover, we don’t really know, but if these guys have their way, it won’t matter anyway. We won’t be a republic or democracy, we’ll be a dictatorship and nothing more. Sure, we’ll still call our “leader” Mr. President, but it won’t mean a thing. Mr. President, Prime Minister, Party Chairman, King—call him what you want, he won’t be working for the people, he’ll be working for himself. Himself and his inner circle.”
James started pacing nervously, then dropped down in his chair. “You were sleeping when I came into the room?”
Brucius shrugged and nodded.
“I hope you got some rest, because I’m going to lay it on the line. I’m going to tell you everything we know. And when I do, it’ll be a while before you’ll be able to rest again.”
THIRTEEN
Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska
After leaving the confines of the interrogation room, Brucius Marino and James Davies turned right, walked down the hall, and climbed two flights of stairs. Down another long hallway, they walked to where the afternoon sunlight slanted through a set of glass doors. Two guards were positioned behind a thick pane of bullet-proof glass. James nodded as they walked toward them. The hallways and offices were busy with officers in uniform, none of whom paid any attention to the civilians in the hall.
Outside, they turned left and moved along the sidewalk that led to the base park. As the men walked, a black SUV followed them along the road. Occasionally, James glanced toward it, knowing his four-man security team was inside. Otherwise he paid it little attention, concentrating on explaining the current political and military situation to the Secretary of Defense. Thirty minutes later, the two men stood atop a ten-foot dam that held back a small pond on the west side of the base, a result of extraordinarily heavy rains over the past couple of weeks. Brucius watched the waves move across the murky water and wondered: drought in one area, massive downpours in another. Even Mother Earth was going crazy.
Turning, he looked toward the road. Funny how they seemed so out of place now, the military trucks and cars that filled the streets. Two weeks before, he wouldn’t have noticed them any more than he would have noticed the air that he breathed, yet now, just a few days later, the working vehicles seemed amazing, almost magical, as they moved along the busy road.
Designed to continue military operations in the event of a catastrophic attack upon the United States, Offutt Air Force Base was staffed with military personnel from every branch of service. Well maintained, trained, and staffed, all the base facilities were hardened and prepared to continue operations in a time of war and, while the senior civilian leaders were gathering, organizing, and taking up residency in Raven Rock, Offutt was preparing to execute whatever orders they received from those leaders in the underground Command Cente
r back in southern Pennsylvania.
The two men stood atop the earthen dam for a long time, the sun setting at their backs, the wind picking up, the brown waves slapping at the grassy shore. When he was finished, James nodded to a small bench near the water and the men sat, a flock of friendly ducks waddling along beside them, pulling feathers and fighting for position. The birds were hungry. With food in critical supply and a national calamity in the making, no one had stopped to hand out the chunks of bread and crackers they were used to receiving.
“Better watch yourselves,” James mumbled to the fowl. “Colonel Sanders will be coming for you.”
Brucius sat down, tugged at his pants, and stiffly crossed his legs. “Feels like winter’s coming early,” he said, his mood matching the coolness in the air.
James looked at the pale, gray sky. Seemed it was never clear or blue now, but washed out with plum-colored rain clouds and dust, though it was sometimes red, especially in the mornings when the night winds had blown. “We can’t afford an early winter,” he answered. “It’s going to be hard enough as it is.”
Brucius leaned forward and rubbed his eyes, his powerful fingers pushing onto the soft skin. “Can you imagine it?” he wondered. “Can you even imagine what it’s going to be like? We’re not prepared. No one’s prepared. We thought we’d planned for everything. We’ve got backups to our backups, redundant military systems all over the place. We’ve got counterterrorist operations, military operations, intelligence operations, offensive capabilities, and defensive countermeasures. We’ve got a triad of nuclear deterrence. Allies. NATO. The list goes on. The only thing we don’t have is—”
“Food.” James finished his thought for him.
Brucius shook his head in despair. “I don’t know; I just don’t know.”
James shooed at a duck that was pulling on his shoe. “Get some rest, Brucius. Get something to eat. Sleep on it. Things won’t seem quite so bad in the morning.”
Brucius hunched his shoulders and frowned.
“Do you have any final questions?” James asked.
Brucius shook his head.
“OK then, here’s the deal. As I told you, constitutionally, Fuentes has no right to claim the presidency, not as long as you’re alive, but I can’t recommend you go after anything until we understand a little bit more about who’s behind all this: who they really are, how they’re organized, where they come from, what they intend to do. We don’t know any of these things and it’s critical—and apparently very dangerous—that we find out as much as we can before we make a move. Yes, you could rise up and claim the presidency, we could fly you out to Raven Rock tonight, but it would do very little good. We could demand they relinquish power. Maybe they’d even do it, I really don’t know. But even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. As long as you’re not willing to follow the path they have laid out, as long as you’re unwilling to discard the Constitution and discontinue individual rights, as long as you insist upon defending our country, as long as you refuse to pull out of the Middle East or subject our military to the U.N. authority, they won’t allow you to hold onto power. They will kill for this—they’ve proven that already.”
The men fell silent, the evening breeze gusting stronger across the great Nebraska plains. A swirl of dead leaves blew before the wind, scattering brown and yellow across the grass.
“So,” Brucius wondered, “what do you suggest?”
James had been waiting for the question and quickly leaned toward him. “We’ve got to keep you here. Keep you safe. Keep you in hiding. No one’s going to know you’re out here, at least not for a while. As long as they don’t know about you, they won’t know about the threat. And as long as they don’t feel threatened, they won’t come for us. More, a false sense of security will bring them out. That will give us time and opportunity to shadow the government and see what they really intend to do. We’ll watch, see how far they’ll go, try to figure out who is pushing this conspiracy and what they really want. Then, once we understand them, once we really know who they are, we can bring you out of hiding and let you stake your claim. For good or bad, whether you want this thing or not, you are the constitutionally mandated president of the United States. But they have the powerful advantage of operating in secret from inside the government.”
As James talked, two of his security men climbed out of the backseat of the black SUV and leaned against the doors, a signal that he had to go. James caught the lead agent’s eye, nodded almost imperceptibly, then turned back to Brucius.
“To defend our nation against all enemies, whether foreign or domestic,” he said. “That’s the oath we both have taken. Our fathers were wise, Brucius, wise enough to see the possibility of this day. But we can’t defend against domestic enemies until we know for certain who they are. So we let them move, let them act, watch them while they work. When we understand them, we bring you forward and put you in place.”
Brucius bit his lip. Another duck snapped at his feet. He closed his eyes to the dying light and let his head fall upon his chest. He was hungry, frustrated and weary to the bone. He needed food and rest. He’d been running on only fumes. Fumes and fear.
How long he sat there, deep in thought, he really didn’t know. Time passed and his breathing settled into deep and measured sounds. But though his eyes were closed, his mind was racing. And as he thought, it seemed a deep darkness settled over him. He felt his body becoming heavy, as if he was being crushed by the very air above his head. He swallowed and tried to hide it, but the fear rolled up inside. Opening his eyes, he slowly turned to James, his face tight with dread. “Are you one of the enemy, James?” he wondered. “Are you with them in this accord? Are you really who you say you are, or did they send you here to me to kill me or to keep me out of sight?”
James didn’t move, his dark eyes unfeeling as he looked straight ahead. “I’ve wondered the same thing about you, Brucius. I’ve wondered every day. Will you betray me? Can I trust you with my life? Because it’s going to come down to that one day. If I can’t trust you, is there anyone? Who am I to turn to? How deep does this go?”
Silence. The blowing wind. A car slowly passing by. A jaybird flying overhead. Then Brucius finally answered, turning slightly on the bench. “I guess all we can do is trust our friends.”
James slowly shook his head. “All of those who are dead now made that old mistake.”
Brucius didn’t answer as he wet his lips against the drying wind.
FOURTEEN
Four Miles West of Chatfield, Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee
“I saw an angel last night, Mommy.”
Caelyn looked toward her daughter and listened carefully. “Really baby? What did she look like?”
“It wasn’t a she, it was a he-angel, Mom.”
Caelyn’s heart skipped a beat and she put her work down, resting the raw potatoes on the plate that was balanced on her knees. “A he-angel? Really? Like what, a little angel, a little boy or something?”
Ellie turned from her mother and looked off, her face crunching as if she were trying to remember. “Not really. He was older. Like a man.”
Caelyn sensed her hands begin to tremble. Don’t do that! she scolded herself. It’s just a little girl’s dream. Don’t read so much into everything.
Still, a strange thought, cold and terrifying, slipped into her mind. “It wasn’t . . . you know, it wasn’t Daddy, was it, Ellie?” she asked in a breathless voice.
The blonde-haired girl shook her head. “No, it wasn’t Daddy.” She seemed puzzled by the question. “Daddy’s not an angel, Mom.”
The two were quiet for a moment. Ellie eyed her mother keenly, as if she knew something so obvious that it confused her how her mother couldn’t know it too. “Daddy’s not an angel, Mom,” she said again.
Caelyn sighed with relief. “Did DoxMax see the angel?” she asked, referring to Ellie’s imaginary friend. Caelyn didn’t know a lot about DoxMax, how old she was, what she was like, how sh
e had gotten her name—all she knew was Ellie spent hours talking to her, sharing tea parties, playing in the tree swing, hiding under the porch. And it seemed Ellie spent more and more time lately with her invisible friend, which worried her just a little.
Ellie turned and frowned. “Of course not, Mom.” She shook her head in disbelief. “DoxMax was asleep. You know she has to be in bed by eight.”
Caelyn made a face. “Silly me.” She turned back to her work, cutting the potatoes into cubes for the soup.
Ellie thought while looking off again. “He was a pretty angel.” She turned back to her mom. “And very nice.”
“It was a good dream, then?”
“Was it a dream, Mom?”
“I think so, honey. It must have been.”
Ellie nodded, accepting.
Caelyn watched her again. “Did he talk to you, baby?” Her voice remained tight.
Ellie tried to remember. “No, I don’t think so. But it felt good to have him close. I like him a lot. I hope I see him again tonight.”
Caelyn hesitated. “You mean in your dreams?” she prodded.
The little girl didn’t answer as she reached for a small cube of potato that had fallen onto the ground. She tried to toss the dirt-covered bit into the metal bowl, but Caelyn caught it. She used a dish towel to brush it off, then dropped it into the bowl with the other pieces of cut potatoes. One didn’t throw food away anymore just because of a little dirt.
Ellie frowned, then nodded at the barrel beside the porch that they used for a garbage can now. “It smells bad.” She held her nose.
“It’s some of the fat trimmings from the meat that we were smoking,” Caelyn explained, though she knew her daughter wouldn’t understand.
“Ugh!” Ellie held her nose again and turned away.
Caelyn watched the back of her head, the blonde curls just above her shoulders. The thought of Ellie talking to an angel lingered in her mind. “Did he have wings, Ellie?” she tested. For some inexplicable reason, she desperately wanted to know more.
(Wrath-08)-Evil In The Darkness (2013) Page 7
