Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

“Yes, of course. They weren’t taking me seriously and I—”

  “Who were they?”

  “One of them was from the Oklahoma City FBI office. I think his name was Winters. He did most of the talking. The other was a federal marshal from the Judicial Protective Division. His name was Hendrickson.”

  Back into the phone: “Rusty, did you hear that? There’s your evidence. Page one of the document. Find this guy Hendrickson. Find out where he went after he came back to D.C. That paper is somewhere in D.C. right now!”

  “Meg, don’t say any more. You’re on a cell phone.”

  Tolman snapped her phone closed and said, “Goddamn bureaucrats.”

  “What?” Journey said.

  “My boss.”

  “The understanding one? The one who lets you play piano?”

  Tolman smiled without humor. “The same. A great guy, even a big-brother type to me, but he’s also the consummate paper-shuffler, the perfect administrator. He’s covering the office’s ass, and I guess that’s his job.”

  “And what does that mean to us?”

  “It means we cross every t and dot every i. It means we have to have the rest of this in hand, and hope to God your friends the Glory Warriors can’t get close to the president. It also means—” She looked sidelong at Journey. “It also means that we are on our own.”

  * * *

  Gold watched as the Ford Focus pulled away from the parking meter, made a sharp right on Fifth Street, and headed north. He went to his own rental car, a black Suburban, and called Silver.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “They picked up some papers. I’m going to find out what. I heard them talking as they went back to their car. They’re headed back to the park to pick up Journey’s car.”

  “This may be our opportunity,” Silver said. “Hold the line.”

  Sixty seconds later, she said, “Bronze just talked to Chicago Base. We are green light to do whatever is necessary.”

  * * *

  Evan Lovell was still coming down from the rush of the afternoon, the intensity of emotions he’d never felt before. Nick Journey—former Tigers organization pitcher and now a history professor!—had been in his office all afternoon, going through his dad’s things.

  And he’d helped. He’d found what Journey needed. All that business about Grant and Lee and Glory Warriors and Sam Williams, right in the middle of it. His old man would have loved it, and for a few fleeting moments, Evan Lovell thought the old man might have been proud of him for being the one who found it.

  Back at his computer, making updates to the association Web site, he looked up when a man came in. “Hi,” he said. “Do you need directions? Fourth Street is that way.”

  “I don’t need directions,” the man said. A black fanny pack—Lovell had always wondered why they were called that—was strapped around his waist.

  “Well, it’s my big day, then,” Lovell said.

  “You spent a long time with the two people who were just here,” the man said.

  Lovell’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah. How do you know?”

  “You gave them some papers. What were they?”

  Lovell drew himself up. “Hey, that’s a little rude, mister. That was Nick Journey, former pitcher for—”

  The man reached into his fanny pack and pulled out a gun, aiming it at Lovell’s chest.

  “Hey, whoa, whoa! I don’t have any money!”

  “I don’t want money. What did you give Journey?”

  “Papers. Some of my dad’s old history papers.”

  “You read them. What were they?”

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble, mister.” Lovell started to tremble. “That was just my dad’s old stuff.”

  “I can kill you with one shot, and I assure you, I will,” the man said, his voice calm. “Talk to me and I won’t.”

  “I … I … I … look, it was all about Sam Williams. He was this banker in Louisville and he disappeared in the Civil War, and he left some stuff in the bank vault, and there was this page about a—what do you call it?—a coup, like people overthrowing the government. There was a group that Nick and the lady kept talking about … the glorious warriors or something. Don’t shoot me!”

  “And you gave them these papers?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah! They acted like they were important, and I found the important page, and they’re going to make sure I get credit for it—”

  Lovell didn’t even hear the shot that killed him. He saw the muzzle flash, though he didn’t think the man had moved. How could he do that and not move at all? Lovell felt one moment of incredible pain in his chest, and he saw red gushing out all over his desk. It splattered his computer monitor, and all his spreadsheets that he’d printed out. He’d been working on stats from the New Orleans Zephyrs teams from 1995 to 2000, and now his spreadsheets were ruined.

  Then Lovell felt himself pitching forward. In an instant of bright clarity, while the world blazed around him, he thought that in all the excitement, he’d forgotten to get Nick Journey to autograph the baseball cards for him. Then Lovell felt nothing at all.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Tolman drove as fast as she could through the tail end of rush hour traffic on the I-65 bridge. She cast an eye for watchers with every move, every lane change, every acceleration. Journey used his cell to call Amelia, who sounded rushed. “How’s Andrew?” he asked her.

  “He’s eating, Nick. What do you want?”

  “Oh,” Journey said.

  There was a silence; then Amelia said, “What, are you surprised I actually feed him?”

  “No, no, of course not. I was just hoping you could hold the phone up to him and he could hear my voice.”

  “Now’s not a good time,” Amelia said. Andrew screeched in the background. “See what I mean? When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know. This may take longer than I expected.”

  Amelia was silent.

  Journey cleared his throat. “So did Paul meet him?”

  Amelia said nothing. Andrew screamed again, then whistled in the same breath.

  “Was there anything else?” Amelia said.

  “You’re safe, then.”

  “Oh, God, Nick, don’t be melodramatic.”

  She hung up in his ear. Journey bowed his head and rubbed his forehead. His face felt hot again. He couldn’t remember if he’d taken his blood pressure pill in the morning. This morning seemed like a long time ago.

  Tolman came off the bridge, cut across three lanes, and took the first exit on the Indiana side. She came down into Jeffersonville, then two left turns and a right turn later, passed into Clarksville, “the home of the Falls of the Ohio.” They passed through Ashland Park, wedged between Riverside Drive and the river itself. They passed the dam, then under the railroad trestle that spanned the Ohio immediately behind the dam.

  Tolman bore the car left and passed the interpretive center, with its Lewis and Clark statue, pulling around to the parking lot in the rear. Journey stuffed the envelope with page two of the document deep into his backpack, along with his copy of the first page. Tolman leaned out the door and said, “I’ll follow you back to the airport so you can turn your car in.” Her eyes flickered to the rearview mirror.

  “All right,” Journey said, climbed in his car, and drove toward the front of the park.

  * * *

  Silver and Bronze’s car, another dark Suburban, was in a loosely graveled parking area on the other side of the railroad trestle. “This is him,” Silver said into her wrist radio, watching as Journey’s rental passed the stone sign announcing FALLS OF THE OHIO INTERPRETIVE CENTER and onto Riverside Drive.

  Silver felt in the pocket of her shorts and ran her fingers across the G.W. pin. She was ready.

  * * *

  Tolman snapped her phone closed after scribbling directions on the back of one of her own business cards. She and Journey would have to make a long drive together, but it would be safe, and would give them a place to think.
The man had been surprised to receive her call—he’d thought they would never see each other again.

  Put that away, Tolman thought. For now, it will be a safe house, and it’s a place where the Glory Warriors won’t be looking.

  Journey’s car was almost to the railroad bridge when Tolman turned the Focus in that direction. The sun was well on its westward arc, but it was still over an hour from setting, and the light was cascading out across the Falls of the Ohio. Tolman could see it glinting across the river.

  * * *

  Journey had turned on the radio as soon as he got in the car, and every station was airing news. Federal officials vehemently denied a connection between the killings of Speaker Vandermeer and Chief Justice Darlington. The attorney general called it a “horrible, terrible coincidence of timing, and a tragedy for our nation,” but stressed that the crimes were too different to be remotely connected.

  Idiots, Journey thought. As he approached the railroad trestle, a black SUV suddenly backed out of the parking area to the right. Gravel sprayed the road.

  Journey shouted into the windshield and whipped the steering wheel to the left. The SUV backed up farther. The vehicle was large enough that it blocked both lanes of the narrow roadway.

  He slammed on the brakes and the car fishtailed. The grille crashed into the limestone structure at the base of the trestle, and Journey whipped forward, restrained by his seat belt as the car’s air bag burst forth. His hands flailed.

  A car door slammed somewhere outside.

  * * *

  Tolman lost sight of Journey as she drove around the edge of the interpretive center. Her mind was in overdrive—Hudson’s steadfast refusal to take risks; the strange document that Nick Journey had unearthed; Journey himself, a multifaceted man who was still an enigma, her own assertions to him notwithstanding; the Glory Warriors …

  The thoughts came faster and almost on top of each other, like practicing scales at the keyboard … first slow, then with increasing pace, almost into a frenzy. Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, a military coup of the United States, a secret group of warriors waiting patiently for a century and a half …

  She merged onto Riverside Drive from the park. Ahead, she saw the SUV back into the street from behind the bridge support on the right. Journey’s car crashed into the wall.

  Tolman flinched, as if she’d struck the wall herself.

  Then, of all the things to notice, she saw a woman in shorts jogging along the trail beside the road.

  * * *

  Journey sat, breathing hard, the air bag warm against his forehead. He heard footsteps slapping the pavement, coming fast.

  He fumbled with the door lock, undid the catch on his seat belt, and tumbled sideways out of the car. His shoes slipped on the gravel and he went down, palms breaking his fall, scraping against the gravel. Then he remembered.…

  He reached into the car, grabbed his backpack, and started to claw his way up the steep railroad embankment.

  * * *

  They had him on two sides, Silver thought, and he was an amateur. Her H&K pistol was in her hand, and she gestured with it to Bronze, who was already out of the SUV and moving toward the professor.

  She wished Gold were back, but he was still en route from downtown. Bronze was not a field operative. He was actually an electronics engineer, with specialized training in communications, but every Glory Warrior, even the Bronze members, went through some field training. Still, Four Bronze was not known as a marksman, and he was not in excellent physical condition, either. Better shape than Nick Journey, to be sure, but still not in the shape of a field operative.

  Silver was thankful that this operation was not being uplinked live to the Judge. Dallas One had been ordered to do that on the first operation with Journey, and One Gold had wound up dead. The teams at Dallas Base had developed a bit of a superstition about live feeds.

  Silver preferred to do her business with no one watching.

  No one but the target.

  CHAPTER

  35

  Journey looked back once, in time to see the man from the SUV—who was short and balding, wearing suit pants and a white shirt—raising a gun. Journey twisted his body around, flattening against the embankment, as he heard the shot.

  He was already breathing hard as he worked his way around the limestone and up toward the railroad tracks. He heard the man say, “Dammit.”

  Then a woman’s voice: “Go around the other side! Move!”

  Journey’s foot slipped again, and he almost slid all the way down. But he dug his hands in and pulled himself forward. In thirty seconds, he was at the top. To his left, the railroad track ran into a wooded area. To the right, it opened onto the river bridge. A three-foot-wide metal catwalk extended between the track and the waist-high metal safety railing.

  He heard steps across the track. Journey cocked his head, judging exactly where they were. He steadied himself against a metal sign atop a rusting pole. The sign was bowed inward on the sides, as if someone had taken a hammer to it, and read: KEEP OUT—PRIVATE PROPERTY.

  He strained to hear the footsteps. Journey swung his backpack off his shoulder and stepped across the railroad track.

  * * *

  Tolman saw the gun in the woman’s hand, saw her jogging faster. The man from the SUV had disappeared on the other side of the trestle.

  Now her training came back to her—she had never been in a real situation like this. It just didn’t happen in RIO. But this was no longer about databases and computer searches and historical abstractions. She braked the car and tumbled out the door. In three seconds, the SIG was in her hand and she was moving forward, but still a good sixty feet from the woman with the gun.

  She moved, zigzagging, the gun held straight in front of her in firing stance, not pointed at the sky or ground, as movies so often liked to portray. In the real world, an officer was always ready to fire, and the gun felt like part of her hands. She was thankful she’d bought the SIG and hadn’t stuck with the standard-issue Glock.

  “Federal officer!” she yelled at the woman. She didn’t bother with the melodramatic stop or drop it. She’d identified herself—that was all she had to do.

  The woman in the shorts turned, and Tolman instantly thought that she had been trained well, too. The woman came out shooting, and Tolman dived back down alongside her car.

  * * *

  Journey listened, hearing the man scrabbling for purchase on the embankment just as he had.

  Timing was everything. The Glory Warrior would expect him to run, to put as much distance as possible in between the two. Journey would have a couple of seconds at best when his assailant would be surprised. He would not have force or strength on his side. All he had was his sense of hearing, and the right timing.

  Journey stopped at the spot where the railroad track began to cross the road as it headed toward the river. He wrapped his hands around both straps of the backpack and held it at waist level.

  He listened. He had perhaps five seconds.

  He adjusted his feet, spreading them apart, bending his knees.

  Three seconds.

  He could hear the man’s breathing, and gravel sloughing away under him.

  The man’s head appeared, then the rest of his body in a crouch. At the instant he began to straighten, Journey swung the backpack straight around his own body.

  The man was holding the gun in his right hand, close to his body, and the backpack caught him perfectly. His hand opened; the gun fell. The man’s feet slid out from under him as though he were walking on ice. He swung his arms in a wide arc, then he reeled backwards down the embankment.

  * * *

  Tolman shot back, and the other woman dodged behind a tree. From somewhere, a man’s voice, low but strained, shouted, “They’ve got guns!”

  The woman in the shorts emerged from the tree, keeping low. She was in the open for five steps; then she was behind the black Suburban. Tolman couldn’t see the man, and she couldn’t see Journey, eith
er.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit!” Tolman whispered.

  * * *

  As soon as the Glory Warrior fell out of sight, Journey ran back across the track and scrambled down the other side, feet skidding. He hit the ground six feet away from where the car was crumpled against the limestone, door still standing open. He pulled himself into the seat, then instinctively covered his head as a shot shattered the passenger side window.

  He couldn’t see where it had come from, but he didn’t think the man he’d hit with his backpack could have recovered, found his gun again, and been in position to take a shot that quickly.

  So there are two of them.

  In both his encounters with them—in the SCCO parking lot, and on the highway near the ranch—they had worked in pairs. He crawled back out the way he’d come in and hugged the side of the car. At the rear fender, he popped his head above the trunk and scanned the road.

  “Dr. Journey!”

  A woman’s voice. All the other Glory Warriors he’d faced had been male. Journey was still, listening to his own breathing.

  “We only want the document,” she called. “Surely you know that.”

  “Like hell,” Journey whispered. He looked over his shoulder. Tolman was moving, coming from her car, which was stopped in the middle of the road, twenty yards or so in the direction of the park entrance.

  Tolman was holding a gun.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Journey said.

  He caught her eye, the two stared at each other for a long second, then he turned back toward the car.

  Cover me, he thought. I’ll draw them back out. Please cover me.

  He thought of his son, and he suddenly wished the boy hadn’t been eating when he’d called, and that Andrew could have heard his voice on the phone.

  Journey bolted from behind the car and ran across the road toward the river.

  * * *

  “Where the hell are you?” Silver said into her wrist radio.

  “There was a goddamn accident on the goddamn bridge,” Gold coughed back. “A truck just spilled a load of pallets, and six cars are piled up. I’m still on the highway, on the Kentucky side.”