He couldn’t see Journey—the professor had disappeared behind the rock wall. The short woman was moving along the Judge’s body.
The Judge.
I killed the Judge.
Lane squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. The air seemed to spin around him. A wind gust tugged at his sleeves.
He felt the Glory Warriors pin on his collar. Lane grabbed it and ripped it from his shirt, taking a good chunk of the fabric with it.
He sighted his pistol. The woman wasn’t important. The big man wasn’t important. He was Kevin Lane again, and Kevin Lane knew what he had to do.
* * *
Journey reached the end of the wall, close to the road. He braced himself against it, and a couple of loose rocks fell to the ground in front of him.
He could hear Tolman moving, and he wondered what she was thinking, what direction her mind was going, how she saw the situation unfolding. Journey adjusted his position and peeked around the corner of the wall. The man was coming in long strides. He was in front of the white picket fence that surrounded the main cemetery.
Journey cocked his head. His hearing, so intensely attuned, picked up distant steps. They were coming from the direction of the visitors’ center, a walk, a jog, a run. Boots crunched on gravel.
The assassin had stopped. Journey watched him. He saw the little glint of gold in the sun.
G.W.
The pin. The place this had all started, with the discovery of the guns and the document and the pin, just a few hundred yards from where he lay crouched against this rock wall.
The assassin ripped the pin from his shirt, dropped it in the dirt, and started to raise his gun again. Journey’s hand brushed one of the rocks that had fallen off the wall.
I don’t hide, he thought.
He had one chance, and only two or three seconds to gain an advantage. His left hand closed on the rock. He lifted himself up, stood to his full height, and turned.
The assassin looked at him, blinked, and sighted his weapon
Journey reached back and threw the rock as hard as he could. His follow-through was exact, the release point perfect, and the rock struck the assassin on the side of the head.
The man spun halfway around, but didn’t lose his grip on the pistol. Then Journey could see Tolman—he had bought her the precious seconds she needed to get the gun from McMartin’s hand, and now it was rock-steady in her own hand.
“Drop it!” Tolman screamed. “Drop the weapon!”
Ricky Parsons ran into Journey’s field of vision from the left. “Do it!” he shouted at the assassin. “We’ll take you apart! Put it down!”
Journey’s bad foot gave way and he started to fall. The assassin, blood streaming down the side of his face, raised his gun again.
“Last chance!” Tolman shouted.
The gunman looked at Journey, never wavering, as he fired. Journey felt as though millions of heated spikes had been hammered into his left shoulder. At almost the same instant, he saw the assassin cut down in a hail of gunfire from both Tolman and Parsons.
Journey fell on the shoulder that had just taken the bullet, and the needles jabbed him again, harder. His vision went black; he rolled over onto his stomach, and lay with his cheek against the grass. He could see the legs of the man who’d twice tried to kill him, he could see blood on the ground, and Journey could also see a little glint of gold beside him.
Journey kept blinking, trying to move, but his body didn’t want to work. He heard Ricky Parsons on the radio, something about an ambulance, something about an incident report, something about calling the office. Then Meg Tolman was beside him.
“Nick!” She slid down beside him. “Nick!” Her voice faded, as if she’d turned her head. “How long until we get an ambulance here?”
Parsons said something—Journey couldn’t tell what—and then Tolman had her hand on his back.
“All right,” she said. “All right, he just got you in the shoulder. It’s all right, Nick.”
Journey tried to nod, his cheek scraping gravel.
“Don’t move,” Tolman said. She waited a few moments. “Stay with me here, Nick. You’re losing some blood, but it’s okay. Talk to me … come on, talk to me. Hey, was that a curveball you threw with the rock? Damn, that was nice aim. You aim rocks better than most people can aim guns. Come on, don’t pass out, man.”
Journey felt her hand on his back again. “Five minutes, Nick. Give me five minutes.” He felt another set of hands—Parsons?—and then something was being wrapped around his shoulder. Tears welled from the pain.
Tolman was still babbling. “Come on, that’ll stop some of the blood loss. Tell me something.… Tell me something about Andrew.”
“Porcupine ball,” Journey said.
“What? Say that again.”
“Porcupine ball,” Journey said. “Don’t you know what a porcupine ball is?”
“No, tell me.”
“It’s a little plastic ball and it has these spikes on it, like a porcupine, only they’re plastic. You squeeze it and air comes out of a little hole. He likes to feel the air on his face.”
“Maybe I could get one,” Tolman said. “I’ll take it places when I play the piano and put it on top of the Steinway.”
“You do that.”
“Two minutes, Nick.” There was a long pause, and Tolman’s tone changed. “You’re going to be all right. You know, you’re pretty damn tough for a professor. Tell me something … Nick, can you hear me?”
“Of course I can hear you. You don’t have to shout.”
“The signature page,” Tolman said. “You knew. You knew all along that it wasn’t buried here with Williams.”
“Yes,” Journey said, and he was feeling light-headed.
He heard the siren, the crunch of gravel as the ambulance pulled into the clearing. Then he was being lifted. There were more hands, and it felt like they were all over him.
“I’m going with him,” Tolman said. “No arguments.”
Then they were in the ambulance, and the paramedics were talking to the hospital in Durant, and Tolman said, “So where is it?”
“What?”
“The signature page. Where is the damn thing?”
Journey closed his eyes. “Go look in the library,” he said.
EPILOGUE
Thanksgiving weekend
President Harwell was dead. As the Continental flight touched down at Brownsville International Airport in the southernmost city in Texas, Tolman kept thinking about the president, and all that had happened since Fort Washita.
She and her father were summoned to the Oval Office in late September, after the FBI and ATF had made their arrests. On September 22, raids were conducted in cities from Seattle to Miami. Warehouses full of weapons were seized. Hundreds were arrested.
On September 23, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Carter Smith, was arrested in his office at the Pentagon. As Washington One, he had orchestrated the military component of the conspiracy—faking the deaths of military personnel who had been absorbed into the Glory Warriors, diverting “surplus” equipment and weapons to the Glory Warriors’ stockpiles. The official, public line was that Smith had been arrested for misappropriation of DOD funds. Senior Inspector Brent Graves of the U.S. Marshals Service had already been buried by the day of Smith’s arrest. Graves’s wife reported that her husband had been despondent over the death of Chief Justice Darlington and the lapse in security that resulted in her assassination. Timothy Delham and Rusty Hudson were being held in secret detention facilities somewhere near Washington. Delham had talked and talked and talked, giving the FBI names and locations and a wealth of other information about the machinations to overthrow the United States government. Tolman had not seen Hudson since Fort Washita.
Within two weeks, the Glory Warriors were dismantled, their bank accounts frozen, many of their people locked away. Jackson McMartin’s assets were frozen, and the long process of breaking up and selling his media
empire had begun.
The American public knew nothing of the fact that James Harwell had come within seconds of being assassinated outside the Anacostia Community Center. The words Glory Warriors were never mentioned in any mass media.
So Ray and Meg Tolman sat in the Oval Office, just the two of them with the president of the United States, and listened as Harwell thanked them for what they had done to uncover the conspiracy. He sounded like he was reciting from a briefing paper. After a while, Meg Tolman had tuned it out, thinking of the Rachmaninov piece she’d meant to play for the Vienna Kiwanis luncheon all those weeks ago, but never got to perform. She snapped back to attention when the president said, “I’m ill.”
“Sir?” Ray Tolman said after a moment, just to say something.
“I’m ill,” Harwell said again.
The three of them looked at each other; then the president dismissed them without another word.
He was dead ten days later. The nation mourned its leader, who had died of a heart attack in his sleep, at age fifty-five. But Tolman was haunted by the words, “I’m ill.” What had Harwell really meant? Did he have cancer? Some other physically debilitating disease? Did he have mental health issues, like her mother? And would the president of the United States really have been able to keep such things a secret from those around him? Late at night, Tolman had wondered if the Secret Service found an empty bottle of Ambien or Restoril or some other sleep aid at his bedside. She wondered how the First Lady felt when she woke and found her husband dead in bed beside her. Many questions. No answers.
The vice president was a former senator from North Carolina named Robert Mendoza. Grandson of Mexican immigrants, he’d proved himself capable during the transition, and had been a gentle, stable hand at the head of government.
“Now we must heal,” President Mendoza told the nation on the day Harwell was buried.
Twenty-four hours later, Tolman had sat in the Oval Office again and listened to what the new president had to say. She told him she had to think about it.
Now we must heal.
She rented a car, punching her destination into its GPS. Lonely Texas State Highway 4 wandered east out of Brownsville along the flat coastal plain. Mexico looked back at her from across the highway. The road wound north, and then she saw the Gulf of Mexico. Per the directions, she turned left, passing signs for Brazos Island and Boca Chica Beach. Pavement ended and the car passed onto a beach road. It had been a dry season along the Gulf Coast, so the sand was hard packed and smooth. Tolman caught sight of a couple of houses on stilts, but nothing else. Sand, rocks, a little grass farther back from the water.
She parked the car, got out, and walked around a bend. She heard them over the sound of the waves before she saw them: a high-pitched shriek, a loud piercing whistle, a bold laugh. She topped a little rise and saw Nick and Andrew Journey sitting on folding lawn chairs, ten feet away from the Gulf. Journey’s arm was still in a sling, and his foot was still wrapped. But his eyes were bright.
Andrew stopped what he was doing with his hands—something involving a straw and a pencil—and looked at her as she walked toward them. He made a sort of hooting sound that she thought sounded vaguely interrogative.
“Hi,” she said, raising her voice above the waves.
Journey stood up and they looked at each other. “You look good,” he finally said.
“You look like hell,” Tolman said, and they both laughed.
“There’s so much,” Journey said after a long moment. He looked toward the Gulf. “They killed Evan Lovell and they went after your friend Darrell.”
“I feel bad for Lovell. The poor guy just tried to help. Darrell’s case was self-defense, and the investigation is closed. I guess I feel bad for Darrell, too, but he’s … maybe ‘complicated’ is the best word. I suppose that describes my relationship with him, too.”
Journey nodded. “So you met the new president.”
“Yeah. He asked me to take over RIO.”
“Really? Are you going to do it?”
“I told him I’d think about it.”
“You should,” Journey said. “You’d be good at it.”
“We talked about you,” Tolman said.
“I guess the subject couldn’t be avoided, as the Glory Warriors mess was being untangled.”
“The president wants you to work with me.”
Andrew whistled as a wave hit the shore. Journey turned abruptly. “Excuse me? I don’t think I heard that.”
“Don’t worry, you can keep your teaching gig and you can stay in Oklahoma. But the president wondered if you might consult with RIO when investigations come up that have a historical aspect.”
“You must be kidding.”
“You should do it.” Tolman smiled. “You’d be good at it.”
“You must be kidding.”
“They’ll match whatever you’re making at the college.”
Journey waited. “You’re not kidding.”
“Nope. Think about it.”
Journey shook his head and they were both silent for a long time. Andrew thrummed out a rhythm with his straw and his pencil, and it seemed to coincide with the impact of the waves on the shore.
“How’s Sandra?” Tolman said.
“She’s fine. We’re friends, and I guess that’s a good thing.”
“Yes, it is. I hope you two get to talk a lot more.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. Sandra’s a good woman, but it’s…” He let the sentence die, gazing out at the Gulf.
“Complicated,” Tolman said. “I get it.” She nodded toward Andrew. “How’s this guy?”
Journey squeezed his son’s shoulder. “He’s the best. He had a few tough days because his routine was off, but he’s been fine since then. Good days and bad days, just like anyone.”
They walked a few steps. “You’re a really, really good dad. You know that, don’t you?”
“No, I’m not.” Journey smiled. “But I try. Just like your father after your mother died. I try. Andrew deserves that, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Tolman said. “I do. And I also think you should give yourself a break sometimes.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Journey said after another bit of silence.
“Subject changer. But, since you brought it up, I didn’t come all this way to stand on an undeveloped beach, Nick.”
“This is where it ended.”
Tolman looked around. “What do you mean?”
“The Civil War. It ended here.”
Tolman stared at him.
“Did you see the historical marker along the highway outside of Brownsville?” Journey asked.
“No. I don’t read historical markers.”
“You should. I mean, the last shots of the Civil War were fired not far from this spot.”
Tolman folded her arms. “Grant? Lee? Appomattox? Ring any bells?”
“No, the war didn’t really end there. Yes, Lee surrendered his army to Grant. But armies were spread all over the place, even this far west. Several battles took place after Appomattox. It took a while for the news to filter down through the country that Lee had surrendered.”
“So?”
“So there was this little battle down here on the Texas coast. The Battle of Palmito Ranch.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Kids are taught in school that the war ended with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. While that may have been the beginning of the end of the war, it was another couple of months before all the Southern armies surrendered.”
“Did you drag me down here to give me another damn history lecture?”
“Yes, I did.”
They stared at each other; then they both laughed. “What the hell does this have to do with anything?” Tolman finally asked.
“It has everything to do with what we went through in September,” Journey said. “There had been a sort of ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ between the Union and Confederate forces early in 1865 that t
here would be no fighting here along the border. Most of the Union troops had already left, and the Southerners were just a ragtag group, not particularly well organized.”
“So someone broke the agreement.”
“Both sides knew Lee had surrendered, but they also knew that technically, the war was still going on in the West. But you had the Thirty-fourth Indiana posted here, and one of the black units, the Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry. They were commanded by a man named Theodore Barrett, and for some reason, on May twelfth, 1865, more than a month after Appomattox, Barrett ordered his troops to attack the Southern camp nearby. The Union headquarters was right here.”
“Here? On this island? What a lousy place to spend the war.”
“It was just about as far as you could get away from everything and still be in the Union Army.” Andrew ran a few steps ahead, coming close to the surf. Journey kept up with him, limping a little. Tolman watched the two of them together, then had to jog to catch up.
“So why did the Union attack?”
“Who knows?” Journey said. “Barrett wasn’t a very distinguished commander, and one school of thought is that he had political ambitions for after the war and wanted to make a name for himself before it was too late. Whatever the reason, he ordered his troops to cross to the mainland and march upriver. I could give you all kinds of details about the troop movements and the time line and all that, but I won’t.”
“But I’ll play along. The Confederates were surprised by this sneak attack, and then what happened?”
“Their commander was a major named John ‘Rip’ Ford, who was and still is something of a legend in Texas. Soldier, doctor, politician, newspaperman … he was quite a character. His group engaged the Union at Palmito Ranch, and it effectively turned into a rout. When the shooting was just about over, the North was in full retreat, scrambling back across the Rio Grande to the island.”
They rounded a curve. The mouth of the Rio Grande lay before them.
“There was still skirmishing going on as they retreated. According to one account, a Federal shell burst right over the head of a young Rebel soldier, and he was so startled, he fired his rifle back toward the soldiers who were retreating. That shot killed a Union private from Indiana. No more shots were fired. That was the last shot of the Civil War.”
Cold Glory Page 36
