Chasing Echoes (The Fallen Republic Book 3), page 39
“Show me,” Dez told Rawles.
He nodded. He drove out onto Congress, down the middle of the street, the vehicle moving slowly, not much faster than a bicycle, as he had to weave back and forth to avoid driving over bodies.
The triage encampment had been erected in the middle of E. 2nd Street between the Marriott and One Eleven Congress. The street was barricaded at either end of the block with emergency vehicles, and Dez saw medical personnel tending to dozens of people sitting and lying on the ground. Some were crying out in pain or screaming in anguish, and the Rangers had set up a perimeter to handle any incoming infected. Rawles stopped in the middle of Congress, across from the activity.
“I…I feel like I should…” Dez began, looking out at the wounded.
“Not looking like that, ma’am,” Teddy said gently.
She looked down at herself again. At the blood, which she could feel drying on her face. Rawles only took his foot off the brake when he caught Dez’ nod in the rearview mirror. He drove the block to the riverside park, turned right, and coasted along W. Cesar Chavez. She couldn’t see much of the river bank, it was below street level, and there were fences and bushes blocking her view. “There are a few bodies down there, but most of them are in the street, Congress and Colorado,” Rawles said. “Not counting what’s in the theater,” he added. He turned north on Colorado and went slow for several blocks, then sped up as the bodies thinned out.
* * *
The ride back to the capitol was quiet but for the chatter on the radio. The inside of the SUV smelled like gunfire and blood. There was another SUV in front, and a tail car behind. The drive to the capitol was short.
The vehicles pulled up in front of the Texas Capitol Building. Teddy and Beebers got out of the SUV with her. Dez leaned in and looked at Rawles, who was driving, “Captain,” she said, “don’t worry about me. Go do what you need to do.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Stay safe.” He gave Teddy a pointed look before driving off. Rawles had handed Beebers his rifle, and another Ranger had given Teddy enough loaded magazines to refill the pouches on his vest. The two Rangers struggled to keep up with Dez as she strode through the corridors of the capitol building, rifle in hand. Everyone who saw her—armed with a rifle and splattered with blood—did double-takes. But not the DPS officers guarding the capitol. Word had gotten out, over the radio, of what had happened inside the theater, and they just nodded as she passed.
There was a Ranger standing outside her office as she strode up. He was rawboned and lean, about forty, his white button-down tucked into tan Wrangler jeans. A red tie was mostly hidden beneath his tactical vest, and a white cowboy hat was sitting on a nearby bench. His tanned head was shaved bald, and he had an M4 slung over his vest, on which he was casually resting his hands. There was a wide leather belt around his narrow hips, and a holstered Glock rode there. His badge was clipped to his belt, and his ID to his vest. “Governor,” he said to her. “Wasn’t sure if you were coming back to the office today.” His eyes darted from the rifle in her hands back up to her face. If he was surprised by the rifle in her hands or the blood on her dress, and dotting her face, he gave no sign.
“I’ll be here for a while,” she said, striding past him, followed by Teddy and Beebers.
She walked through the anteroom into her office, then stood there, beset by sudden indecision. She looked around, then realized she smelled blood. She looked down at herself, and saw the drops and splatters across her dress.
Dez set the M4 down on her desk, then reached under her desk and pulled out the wastebasket. She set it on the desk next to the rifle, then was violently sick, her body shaking as she vomited. She puked until her stomach was empty, then a few more times. When she was done, grabbed some of the spare clothes she kept in a cabinet and went into the bathroom. The sound of running water wasn’t enough to mask the retching and sobs. Half an hour later she stepped out. She’d cleaned up as well as she could, using a wash cloth. She’d discovered her forearms were scratched up, perhaps from glass as she’d climbed out the back of the minivan, but the cuts weren’t deep and had already stopped bleeding. The M4 was still on her desk. Beebers had taken the wastebasket away, but the odor still lingered.
Dez picked the M4 up off her desk, leaned it against the wall nearby, then wasn’t sure what to do next. The third Ranger entered the ante-room, standing behind Teddy. “Governor,” he called out, “at some point I’d like to talk to you. In private, preferably.”
Frowning, Teddy turned to the look at the man, who was unfamiliar, but looked capable. The man was smiling, relaxed.
Dez sighed, and leaned a hip against the front of her desk. She worked her neck, which was very stiff. “About what?”
He glanced at Teddy and Beebers, and saw they weren’t going anywhere. “Improvements to your security, among other things. Like those burners you’re using? They don’t do shit against voice recognition software. There’s a reason why the Taliban ended up going completely to hand-written notes passed person to person, and word of mouth. Seriously, nothing electronic is safe. I wouldn’t be talking to you now, here, except I’m wearing a jammer. You’re doing pretty good for amateurs, but I think you’re just not aware of what you’re up against. Their capabilities. And then there’s the fact that I just walked in here, ‘cuz I looked the part.” He shrugged and smiled, showing off big, white, uneven teeth.
Dez stilled, then straightened up. Teddy and Beebers were facing the man, who seemed anything but threatening. They had their hands on their rifles, but weren’t pointing them. “You’re not a Ranger?” Dez said.
“No, but I do love the uniform, such as it is,” he admitted. “Very modern western gunfighter. There is something to be said for style. And I love the smackdown the Rangers did of the FBI HRT. The only guys with bigger egos than those assholes are the SEALs.”
Dez’ eyes flicked up and down the man. “So who are you with?”
He shrugged innocently. “Technically, at the moment, I’m on what you’d call personal leave. But I have, what’s the phrase, a very particular set of skills. Been doing this kind of thing since I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth. The organization I currently work for isn’t allowed to operate inside the United States without a domestic agency attached.”
“CIA?” Dez said, her eyes narrowing.
The man shrugged innocently once more. “But I’m not here for them. Or even with their knowledge.” He looked pointedly at Dez, and nodded at her. “The truth, by itself, doesn’t do anything,” the man told her. “It takes willpower behind it. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, as they say. You’re on record as backing up your words with actions. Walking the walk. I’m here on behalf of some people trying to do the right thing. Before it’s too late. If it isn’t already. And if anybody can right the ship, it’s you.”
Dez thought for a few seconds, then walked up to the man. She looked him up and down. She reached out and turned his laminated Texas DPS ID card so she could read it. It identified him as Benjamin Martin and looked completely authentic, as did his badge. She let the ID card fall back onto his vest. “Since that’s undoubtedly bullshit, what do I call you?”
He smiled again, showing off those big uneven teeth. “Call me Q.”
Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.
Miyamoto Musashi
Chapter Thirty-Three: Cincinnati
“You’re sure you can trust him?” Jack asked, pacing.
“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have told him what’s going on,” Disco said. He nodded his head at Richardson. “What we’ve got. And I wouldn’t still have that in my possession,” he added, jabbing a finger at what looked like a baked potato sitting on the table. The prepaid phone, wrapped in not one, not two, but three layers of aluminum foil. “We did two tours together. Saw a lot of shit. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that I’d trust him, there are some guys I served with I wouldn’t trust to mow my lawn, but Q I do.”
“It’s a big ask,” Leslie said. She was chewing her lip, and had looked slightly queasy ever since the phone had first rung.
“I know that. You don’t think I know that? That’s why I’m keeping it wrapped up like takeout from Chipotle, and we’re displacing after every call.” He shrugged. “But what alternative do we have? We tried to figure out what the hell to do for how many days? And none of us have anything. I’m not sure who he’s in contact with. But he’s still in. Ground Branch. And he’s moved up halfway to management. He’s got access to guys, or info, that regular trigger pullers don’t. Last time I talked to him was in Vegas. He called to check on me, and to let me know the President was shutting down the cars. The day before it happened. So, officially or otherwise, he’s hooked in to some sort of power conduit, a stream of information or maybe a person.”
“Any idea who?” Matt asked. “Guys in Washington? Guys willing to go against the White House? Because isn’t that what we’re dealing with? Isn’t that what his evidence shows, that the Attorney General was involved in this? Because she’s still there.”
Disco shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “But I have to trust him. I think we have to.”
“While wrapping the phone up in-between calls, and moving after every one,” Jack pointed out.
Disco shrugged. “He found us. First. But there’s a lot of other people looking. He confirmed that. A whole fucking task force, just for us. It wasn’t my imagination.” Disco felt vindicated in his paranoia. But was it paranoia when, in fact, there were a lot of people out to kill you? Or was it just proper situational awareness….
“What bothers me is how they were able to track us down,” Matt said, frowning. “They spot Larry’s truck in the area of that crashed helicopter in Kansas City and run his plates. See he’s got a brother, and then see his brother got a call from a burner phone. They check store receipts and see it was bought together with a second burner, and then call us on a hunch? A fucking hunch?”
“That’s actually damn good investigative work,” Leslie admitted. “Whoever pulled on those threads knows their shit.”
“Yeah, well, we’re damn lucky it was one of the good guys, and not the guys trying to kill us,” Disco said.
“Probably,” Jack added, flashing a big cheery smile.
Richardson scowled at him. At all of them. “That’s some 1984 bullshit right there,” he said sulkily.
“You heard him, he said they’ve got a guy on the inside. Or did, Q’s not sure if he had to bail, or how far behind the government is on tracking us down. Which is why we’re doing the tinfoil shuffle.”
“Which is getting really fucking old,” Richardson said. “When is he going to call us with some actual news?”
They all glanced at the phone sitting on the small scratched table. During that first surprise call Q told them that he was going to make some moves, reach out to some people who might be able to help, but as things were so “spicy” it might take a few days. He’d check back in at nine a.m. and p.m. every day even if he had nothing to report. Ten seconds after that first surprise call with Q had ended Disco had shouted, “Tin foil!” and while Leslie wrapped the phone up like a baby in a three-layer metal cocoon he’d stomped on the Toyota’s accelerator and gotten as far from that location as possible. And they’d done that five more times, moving immediately after every call. Most of three days, waiting, on edge.
During the most recent call with Q the soft-spoken man had sounded different. “I’m making some progress,” he’d told Disco, although the phone had been sitting out, speaker on, so everyone could hear. Disco had told them to stay quiet, so only his voice was picked up by any surveillance software. It wasn’t much, but he was doing everything he could to keep everyone safe. “I’ve touched base with someone with some pull, who might be able to help find your information an audience. Which would take the heat off you. But there’s a lot of moving parts. And things have gotten…complicated. Even more so. Um, you heard the President died, right?”
“Yeah, that’s old news.”
“No, not Hellar. Diaz.”
That news was greeted with stunned silence and wide-eyed looks. “What?”
“Yeah. Night before last. Heart attack, officially.”
“Officially?”
“And unofficially. It was a heart attack. And no one will ever be able to prove it wasn’t natural. But it wasn’t, and everyone in Washington knows it, and don’t seem to want to pretend otherwise, which is…different. There’s a palace coup going on.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jack muttered, shaking his head. He traded a look with Matt.
“So what…who’s President now?” Disco said, at a loss.
“It would be Speaker of the House, but she’s dead, and they haven’t picked a successor, so it is the President of the Senate, Robert Burr.”
“Isn’t he like a hundred years old?” Jack asked. Disco glared at him for talking. Jack just shrugged.
“Yeah. He’s been sworn in, but word is he’s sick. Not the virus, he caught pneumonia, or something similar. It is that time of year. But at his age….”
“So what if he’s too sick to do the job? What if he dies?”
“Then it’s…one of the secretaries. Treasury or State. Both of which were pure political appointees, and will do whatever Johnson tells them to do. Same goes for Burr. State and Treasury are ideologues, true believers, and Burr’s a party man. It seemed pretty clear that after Hellar passed, Johnson was the one pulling the strings in Washington, and now there’s no doubt. Everyone seems to know she ordered Diaz taken out, presumably because he wouldn’t play ball. And whether it’s Burr or Secretary of Treasury or State, we’re going to be on our third or fourth President in as many weeks, and most of America won’t even recognize their name. It’s incredible. Plus, there’s supposedly leaked surveillance footage from the White House showing some mystery man leaving the master bedroom in the West Wing just hours before Diaz died there. Banana republic stuff. Even the people who are on Johnson’s side, politically, are, well, I guess shocked is a word. I mean, nobody will ever be able to prove it was murder, or that she was behind it, but with what you’ve got in your hands…if it comes out, that might be the pebble that breaks the dam.”
Disco ran his hands through his hair. “She’s the one directly implicated by what we’ve got. Directly spearheading the effort to find us, right? This is only going to make her more determined to take us out.”
“She’s already assuming you’ve got some evidence of what she and Hellar did, why do you think you’re the subject of the biggest manhunt since bin Laden?” Q paused a few seconds, thinking. “Moving big pieces around the board will just draw attention to you. But we need to get you in pocket. How long would it take you to get, say, halfway across the country?”
Disco looked around at the tense faces of his team and tried not to laugh. “Dude,” he said. “Please. It’s taken us over two weeks to get from Vegas to here. And most of that was not with the federal government trying to track us and kill us. Since you reached out we’ve been scavenging forgotten fridges and vending machines in businesses and have enough food for a couple of days, but that’s it. Two of us are injured. We’ve got a quarter tank of gas and I don’t know where or even if we can get more. We’re good on water, and okay on ammo, but that’s it.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, but I had to ask.” They heard the soft-spoken man sigh. “Okay, I’ll check back in in twelve. Talk to you in the morning. Hopefully I’ll have news. Stay safe, brother.”
After that conversation everyone was almost hopeful despite the news about Diaz, who’d been President barely a week. They were talking animatedly as they wrapped up the phone in its improvised Faraday cage, piled into the Toyota, and headed south to a spot they’d scouted before the sun went down. They’d been hopscotching through the suburbs north of Cincinnati, going to ground in light industrial areas, gradually working their way south. The businesses were all shut down due to the pandemic, with no nosy neighbors to spot them or their vehicle, which they parked out of sight.
The day before, as they’d rolled through a small industrial park, scouting their next hideout, Matt had asked Disco, “Wouldn’t it be smarter to be hiding out in the middle of nowhere? Farm country? Fewer people to see us.”
“Fewer places to hide. Blend in. Nobody’s fleeing the country, they’re fleeing to the country, and we try to crash a homestead we’re more than likely going to get lit up with buckshot. You get outside the city, people care about their neighbors. They see a strange car, they’re going to come investigate. You remember what happened in Kansas? We were in that house an hour before the Sheriff showed up. And country isn’t necessarily safer. You remember how we were literally in the middle of nowhere Colorado when we ran into that first roadblock?” The memory made Matt frown. He’d shot a lot of people since then. Not just zombies, people, but he would always remember those first two. The look on their faces. For the rest of his life.
“We can park out in the middle of nowhere,” Disco said, “dirt roads or fields, under trees or whatever, but I feel safer with a roof over our head. Safer in the city. More places to hide. More buildings, which stop bullets. And even if people see us, they won’t care, or if they do, there won’t be any cops on the job to give a shit.” Matt thought about it for a while, then nodded, seeing his point. They didn’t have a lot of options, and none of them was perfect.
After Q’s call they drove south for five minutes, finally pulling into a narrow slice of land between I-75 on the east and a huge trainyard to the west with dozens of tracks. In-between the two were very few residences, likely due to the noise, and instead they saw auto repair garages, warehouses, and small manufacturing shops—sign makers, tool and die houses, a scrap iron dealer, a tire disposal center, and a nondescript big brick building which did steel heat-treating. Most of the buildings were low one-story edifices, blank brick and plain metal siding, with a lot of roll-up overhead doors. There was one very old Catholic church.
