Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

  Silver shook her head, but saw the opportunity here. “I’m in control of the situation, but there are a few people around. We may have local police here soon.”

  “Then maybe this wreck actually works in our favor. Local jurisdictions from both sides are working it. They may be delayed in responding to your location. Exfiltrate as soon as you can.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Silver would be the one to take down Nick Journey and to retrieve the document that generations of Glory Warriors had sought. Silver sharpened her focus, watching the professor run. She turned slightly, angling her body to take her best shot.

  * * *

  Someone was still shouting from down the road—“Call nine-one-one! Someone’s shooting! Someone’s shooting by the bridge!”—as Tolman watched Journey run from his spot behind the car.

  Stupid, stupid, she thought, and then hard on the heels of that: He’s trusting me. The man is trusting me with his life.

  She watched him run, the green backpack slung over his right shoulder. The female assassin stepped from behind the Suburban, took one step, and fired at Journey. The shot went low, kicking up concrete a few inches from Journey’s feet. The professor dodged away from the road, toward the sidewalk the woman had been jogging down a few seconds ago.

  The woman’s head moved an inch or so in Tolman’s direction. Tolman gripped the SIG and sighted it. She didn’t want to kill the Glory Warrior, only disable her … and then bring her in. Hudson and Díaz and Graves and the attorney general and the president would have their evidence.

  The woman’s eyes didn’t meet Tolman’s, but settled somewhere over her left shoulder.

  Oh shit, Tolman thought, and half turned as the short man in the white shirt swung the butt of his pistol and smashed it into the back of her head.

  * * *

  Journey saw Tolman go down. He’d had his back to the road, and hadn’t seen the short man come sliding down the embankment, gun in his hand again. He winced as Tolman fell.

  The young woman—the same one from the interpretive center this morning—ran toward him. He angled away from the sidewalk. A large red sign with white lettering warned: LEAVE FOSSIL BEDS WHEN YOU HEAR SIREN—WATER SUBJECT TO SUDDEN RISE AND VIOLENT TURBULENCE WHEN GATES ARE OPENED. A smaller sign, just below it, announced that fossil and rock collecting were prohibited.

  The woman was behind him. She was young and fit, and she would overtake him in a few steps. She thought she had him. He was in a place where there was no way out. There was nowhere to go behind Journey.

  Nowhere but the Ohio.

  Journey had seen the steps this morning, when he first drove into Falls of the Ohio State Park. They angled away from the shore, down to the river. In good weather—meaning a typical August to October dry season, when the water level was down—they led to the uncovered fossil beds.

  Now they’re steps to nowhere, Journey thought.

  He ran for the steps, which were made of the same wooden planking as the deck behind the interpretive center. A short flight led down to a small rectangular platform, and a second, steeper set of stairs descended farther.

  “Journey!” the woman shouted. For a split second, she was out of his view.

  He raced to the edge of the rectangle. His momentum carried him down onto the next step, his body turning almost ninety degrees. As he twisted, the strap of his backpack slipped off his arm and caught on the wooden stair railing.

  Journey stumbled. One foot came down on the second step. The other slipped, his momentum still propelling him downward.

  For one instant, everything seemed to stop. Journey looked up and saw the female Glory Warrior at the top of the stairs, aiming the pistol at him.

  He lunged, trying to grab the backpack. But his balance was off and his feet wouldn’t work. The backpack was out of his grasp.

  “No!” he shouted.

  He thought he saw the woman smile and nod in his direction. She pulled the trigger. He heard the shot.

  Then Journey slipped backwards off the steps, rolling down into the swift muddy water of the Ohio River.

  * * *

  The pavement was hot against Tolman’s cheek, and the thought was hard in her head: Now who’s the stupid one? She’d let herself be decoyed, focusing only on the woman, forgetting the man who’d backed the SUV into the road, until he was right behind her.

  Her father had always said, Any agent who lets someone sneak up on them from behind deserves to get shot.

  Tolman’s head throbbed, and she felt blood. It ran from the wound on the back of her head, through her hair, and down her cheek into her mouth. She could taste it.

  She blinked several times. The man’s shoes, black and expensive leather, were right beside her, unmoving.

  Then she heard the shot, some scrabbling, and Journey’s voice—“No!”

  He’d trusted her, and she let herself get cold-cocked by the butt of a gun. Not only her father but also her instructors at the Academy would be disappointed.

  A siren sounded. She couldn’t tell from which direction it came. The pavement was still spinning.

  The woman’s voice: “Let’s go!”

  The man with the expensive shoes said, “What? Where’s Journey?”

  “He’s in the river. But I have the backpack.”

  Tolman heard the sound of a zipper, papers shuffling, a deep breath being drawn.

  “This is it,” the woman said. “This is it!”

  “What about her?” said the man.

  “Leave her. We have to go. Locals are coming—no time to clean up. Another team can finish her later if the Judge orders it.”

  The expensive shoes stepped over her. She saw the man’s face for a second as he bent over and picked up her SIG from the pavement. The steps moved away. Tolman moved her head an inch. She saw the woman, with Journey’s backpack in hand, sliding into the passenger side of the Suburban. The short man drove.

  A wave of nausea hit her, and Tolman put her head down. She wasn’t sure if she felt sick because of the blow to the head, or because the Glory Warriors now had all the papers. The Fort Washita page, the one Williams had hidden in the vault, Williams’s “suicide” note—all of it. They had it all.

  CHAPTER

  36

  The sun was already down in the West Virginia mountains when the Judge assembled the secure conference call of the Washingtons. One of the group was absent—Washington Two was in the midst of the firestorm surrounding Chief Justice Darlington’s assassination. The Judge had even seen Brent Graves on television during the day. He and an FBI agent named Díaz, alongside the attorney general, were becoming the public faces of the investigation. Graves acquitted himself quite well.

  Standing at his desk, the phone on speaker, the Judge clasped his hands behind his back. “I spoke to Chicago a short while ago,” he said. “The Dallas Four team took the papers from Journey, and they’re on their way here with them now.”

  Washington One, the man with the military bearing, spoke first. “And Journey? Did they eliminate him?”

  “Apparently not,” the Judge said.

  “And exactly why is that?” demanded Washington Three, the youngest and brashest of the Washington men.

  “There were witnesses in the vicinity,” the Judge said. “The team did not have time or a window of opportunity to finish Journey.”

  “Or the government woman,” Washington Four said.

  “The woman,” the Judge said. “The rather tenacious researcher.”

  “She has gone considerably beyond research now,” Four said.

  “So she has.” The Judge shrugged. “She’s the only one who believes Journey. And in turn, only one person believes her, so she and Journey are not the pressing need. They will show themselves and we will know about it, and we’ll take care of them then. In the meantime, the pages will be in my hands in a few hours. The base commanders are all moving their infrastructure into place.” A moment’s silence passed. “Once we present the evidence of
the document to the mass media, the people will be with us.”

  “There will still be pockets of resistance,” Washington Four said.

  “Of course there will,” the Judge said. “The American people do not like change … at least on its face. But the people want us, whether they know it or not. Have you seen President Harwell the last few days?”

  The others murmured assent, some more vocally than others.

  “We’re doing the people a favor by creating the circumstances that Lee and Grant feared. There may not be as much resistance as we think. We’ll sweep into Washington within minutes after the president is dead. There will be no chance to swear in the vice president. We’ll occupy the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the Pentagon. The people and the equipment are already moving into place.”

  “In the last twenty-four hours, we’ve processed nearly a thousand of our people through Baltimore Base,” Washington One said. “Another fifteen hundred will be here within the next twelve hours, then they’ll move out into the safe staging areas in Rockville, Silver Spring, Arlington, and Alexandria. The choppers and the trucks are ready to move them into the District and the Pentagon. We’ll also have patrol boats on the Potomac ready to secure the District once we’re in command of the targets.”

  “What about the airspace restrictions in D.C.?” Washington Three asked.

  A trace of impatience crept into Washington One’s voice. “Leave that to me. You doubt that I have the resources to deal with it?”

  Washington Three almost laughed. “No, no. I know you do. I know you guys have the invasion planned perfectly.” He paused; then his tone was darker. “Seems strange to talk about an invasion of Washington, D.C., doesn’t it? Calling the White House a target.”

  “Your cynical nature is showing itself again,” the Judge said. “Maybe you’d prefer the term objective instead of target. After all, we aren’t going to destroy it, but liberate it.”

  “Okay, okay, no grand speeches, Your Honor,” Three said. “I get it. I’ll do my job and everyone else will do theirs. So what about the second wave?”

  Washington One cleared his throat. “The heavy equipment is staging behind the Blue Ridge in Virginia now. The tanks, the Humvees, more choppers.”

  The Judge smiled. “Just as General Lee used the same mountains to shield his army’s movements when he invaded Pennsylvania in 1863.”

  “Yes,” One said. “Though to me, it’s more logistical than symbolic. We own large tracts of land and buildings there that let us warehouse the equipment. But it’s still close enough to D.C. for us to move quickly. After the first raiding teams occupy the objectives—” He put a subtle taunt into his voice. “—the next wave will overpower any resistance and start moving the members of the old government into holding facilities.”

  “Even though there will be bits of insurgency around the country, we’ll be swift, we’ll be strong, and we’ll have control of the bureaucracy,” the Judge said. “There won’t be time for them to react. We will simply overwhelm them, my media will tell people what they should think, and I’m already working on my own address to the people.”

  More positive murmurings came down the line from Washington, and the Judge said, “Your patience is about to be rewarded. We will soon be in a position to reclaim our country’s glory, to fulfill Lee and Grant’s vision. America will command respect once again, thanks to all of us. No more bought-and-sold politicians ruling in thirty-second sound bites, no more partisan bickering, no more corrupt courts and ineffective executives. Our power will be respected, by our own people and by the world.”

  He ended the conference call and sat down slowly. Now he needed rest, his aging body growing weary. But he would wake when the Dallas Four team arrived. They were under strict orders to drive straight through, to bring him the pages. He would finally hold all of them in his hand.

  The troops were moving. All the disparate pieces were coming together. It would all happen very, very soon.

  Still, the Judge couldn’t help but wonder at all he had done to bring the country—and himself—to this point. He believed in the Glory Warriors’ mission; of that, there was no doubt. The United States of America needed the Glory Warriors—needed him. That much was painfully obvious.

  But had he ever really had a choice? And what of achieving the objectives? If one strives for a single objective for an entire lifetime, what does one do upon achieving it?

  Never question me again, his father’s voice whispered.

  The Judge slapped his hand against the side of his chair. These ruminations were poison. They clouded his thinking, obscured the mission. They were the thoughts of either a child or an old man, and neither would serve him well now. The Judge undressed and lay down on top of his sheets. The mountains were utterly silent and dark. It felt as if even the natural world were waiting, waiting for what was to come.

  Despite his exhaustion, the Judge could not sleep.

  CHAPTER

  37

  In the water, Journey had no concept of time. He’d heard the gunshot just as he slipped from the wooden steps. He felt the rush of air, and he thought the bullet tugged at his shirtsleeve and touched the flesh of his upper arm. His last thought before he fell into the water was that if he hadn’t been off balance, if he’d been standing right where he was a few seconds before, the shot would have hit him squarely in the chest.

  As it was, he slipped backwards and rolled onto his side, his ribs coming down hard on the piles of driftwood at the water’s edge. When he moved from his side to his back, it felt as if someone had kicked him from a raft made of logs into the river itself.

  With the water level as high as it was, the Ohio was moving swiftly. Journey’s head went under. Water flooded his nose. He waved his arms, trying to turn his body yet again. He slapped the surface of the river. He kicked out with a leg; then his foot caught on something—the tightly packed logs where he’d just been. His foot wedged between two pieces of wood.

  He tried to twist his body so that he could get on top of the water. He couldn’t free his foot from the logs, but then the logs themselves were turning, and with a mighty jerk—the rest of his body flopped like a rag doll, now pulled by one foot—the wood broke free of the shallows by the shore and drifted into the river proper.

  Journey’s head broke the surface of the water, and he let out a growl, water running out of his nose and mouth. The two logs had some kind of vine wrapped around one end of them, binding them together, and his foot was tangled in the vine. He tried to shake his leg, and the vine loosened only about half an inch.

  Now the logs were headed straight out toward the river, where the current was stronger. His head went under again, and he twisted his body in violent motions. He raised his head, slamming his temple into the side of another floating log, and for a couple of seconds, everything was black. He blinked, coughed, raised his head again.

  He could see an outcropping of rock where the river bent slightly. Far above the rock was the curving rail of the Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center’s observation deck. Journey glimpsed it for a couple of seconds before his head went under again.

  His foot, dead weight with the log, dragged him relentlessly, but he wasn’t into the swiftest current yet. He had a few seconds before he would be carried into the center of the Ohio.

  He hung suspended for a long moment. His neck was sore from lifting his head against the current. The next time he came up, he gulped air, and as soon as he went back down, put every ounce of strength he had into changing his body’s position. His hands worked like a swimmer, cupping the water and displacing it. His body contorted, and for a crazy moment, he was almost upside-down, his foot directly above his head.

  He felt his foot slam into the rocks, and for several seconds, nothing happened. Then he felt the vine around his foot loosen and finally break. The logs bounced off the rocks and floated toward the center of the river.

  Journey whipped his body around, even as his foot sc
reamed in agony, and he clawed at the rocks. Several fingernails split and began to bleed. A few rocks sloughed away.

  This is it, he thought. I don’t have the strength to hold it.…

  But he did, and then he wasn’t moving anymore. From the waist down, he was still in the river, but his grip on the rocks held. He heard a child’s voice from above: “Hey! Hey, Mom, there’s a man down there!”

  He heard footsteps thumping on the wooden deck, and a woman’s voice: “Oh, Dylan, don’t be silly. There can’t be a … Oh my God!”

  The woman was young and had brown hair tied back in a ponytail. The little boy, who looked about six, looked just like the woman.

  “I told you,” the boy said, then waved down at Journey. “What are you doing down there?”

  Journey laid his head against the rocks and tried to smile in the boy’s direction. “Just waiting for you,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Kerry Voss was often oblivious of the law enforcement aspect of RIO’s mission. Of course, she knew that people on the staff were former federal marshals and FBI agents and such, and they had authority to arrest people, though that seldom occurred. Arrests—and the credit for them—went to the “real” law enforcement agencies.

  Voss liked what she did, as well as the fact that RIO was away from the noise and the stress of some other government agencies. She spent her days digging through financial records, she wrote reports, she turned them in. She’d made a couple of friends in the office, including Meg Tolman, and she went out to lunch nearly every day. At night, she was either with her kids or, if they were with her ex-husband, she had time to herself, time to read, to think, the occasional date.

  Five o’clock came and went. The TV in the break room stayed on with more news about Chief Justice Darlington’s death. Hudson was gone, Tolman was gone, other people in the office were coming and going. Her children were with their father this week, so Voss stayed. She didn’t know how the strange request Meg Tolman had made tied in with Darlington, but she’d read the urgency in Meg’s voice and face.