Allegiance (21 page)

Outbreak - Day 15

Schriever AFB

Colorado Springs,
Colorado

Robert Christian jerked
awake. Whoever said “prayer works, worry doesn’t,” he thought bitterly, didn’t
know what the hell they were talking about. Because his prayer hadn’t been
answered. The A/C was still belting out cold air and the lopsided ball bearing
was still as noisy as ever.

Abruptly the door opened
and in walked someone he hadn’t seen since the very first session. The man was
taller than the others, a little over six feet, and looked like he would be at
home on a surfboard, not working security for the new President of the United
States.

“Hi Robert,” Special
Agent Cross said.

Christian said nothing.
He bowed his head, letting his chin rest on his chest.

“One more time,” the man
asked. “What was the
real
reason for the dead drop?”

“
I told you
. They
didn’t know each other... never met. The drop was so Francis could receive
information pertaining to the President’s comings and goings.”

“And that’s why they didn’t
meet face to face?”

Tired of hearing the
same question posed from a different angle, Robert Christian threw his hands
into the air. They made it only eight inches from the table top before the
links tightened, and like a dog that’s reached the end of its chain, they
crashed back down with a hollow thud.

“It’s how Francis always
operated,” he stated. “Safer that way, he said. He almost always worked
autonomously. This time was going to be the exception to his rule.
Unfortunately, before they could meet face to face and set up the hit, Francis
had his episode and went rogue. I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t
here. And I’ll say this for the last time...”

Cross brought a closed
fist down on the table. “I’m calling the shots,” he spat. “I’ll let you know
when you are done talking. What was Francis’s mission?”

The prisoner sat up
straight, regained a semblance of composure, and continued where he had left
off. “The
President
was the target.”

“So, Francis or Pug, or
whoever he was at the time,” Cross intoned. “He was coherent long enough to set
up the dead drop before he went... I think
rogue
is how you put it
earlier?”

“I wasn’t here,”
Christian said again.

“That other
thing—infecting the civilians. That was Elvis’s doing?”

“Entirely his idea. I
gave him the go ahead, though.”

“I appreciate your
honesty. Who else did you say was here with Elvis?”

“Just Francis.”

“And after Francis went
rogue, Elvis was your only remaining asset.”

“Yes. Put me on a lie
detector if you don’t believe me.”

No need. I believe
you
, the interrogator thought to
himself. “I have one final question to ask you,” he said. “And if I don’t like
the answer...” he nodded towards Christian’s gnarled hand.

“Oh, again with the
fingers. Since your friend already ruined my pinky... how about we go down the
line. Break these two.” He wriggled the index and middle finger on his right
hand, and nearly passed out from the pain.

The A/C unit made one
last coughing sound and then shut down.

Silence.

“You want a drink?” the
blonde-haired interrogator asked in a nonchalant manner.

The question hit the
prisoner harder than any blow. He straightened up. Could taste the scotch
hitting his tongue. Burning his throat. Warmth coursing through his limbs.
Every response subconscious, and Pavlovian in nature. The uncontrollable shakes
began instantly.

The interrogator
produced a fifth bottle of some type of Scotch that was far from upper shelf.
He poured a half an inch of the amber liquid from the bottle into a white
coffee mug, and placed the bottle on the table. He pushed the well-worn mug
forward until it sat on the outer threshold of the prisoner’s reach.

Christian lunged for the
offering but came up half an inch short.

Cross regarded this with
satisfaction though he didn’t let it show.

Christian dipped his
head to meet his hands and proceeded to massage his eyes behind drooping
eyelids.

“I’m not a bad guy,”
Cross said. “I’ll let you have the contents of that mug if
you
tell me
who Elvis was working with.”

Looking the interrogator
in the eye, Christian exhaled sharply. “Only Elvis knows, and that
is
the truth.”

Cross lifted the mug off
the table. “You want this?”

“I
need
that,”
Christian answered, his voice wavering. Then the shakes hit hard. In fact, his
detox had begun minutes after the soldiers had shanghaied him from Jackson
Hole.

Excluding the multiple
interrogation sessions at the hands of rough men who claimed to be President
Clay’s personal security detail, he had spent most of his time shaking,
vomiting, and begging anyone within earshot for a drink.

Breaking up the routine,
the President had visited him twice. The first time she strolled in had been
mere seconds after his arrival. And that was when he spilled his guts about the
ex-Presidents and their involvement in his Guild. When the President finally
left the room, he was rewarded for the information with a two count pour of
some sort of rotgut Scotch. By his standards, any spirit aged less than fifty
years was unacceptable. Still, he greedily consumed every drop.

By the second time the
President came calling, he had already blown his wad of information. Even after
the other interrogator mangled his finger, there was nothing in his hazy memory
left for him to add. In fact, the two weeks before the United States fell to
the dead were a blur of black tie parties, fundraisers with politicians past
and present, and booze—lots of booze. A never-ending torrent of the only thing
that made him feel less the failure for not seeing his dream of a one world
government come to fruition. He wasn’t getting any younger, and with the
Internet Age his old ways of doing business were becoming more difficult. It
had become too easy for Joe Blow to access personal data via the Freedom of
Information Act and see developing patterns in banking and influence peddling
and then connect the dots. Before the fall, there had been conspiracy sites
devoted to picking apart the Guild. He had even sent Francis to quiet the worst
offenders among the ranks of bloggers. A handful of them had disappeared as a
result of their meddling, and Francis was the only one who knew where the
bodies were buried.

The two weeks following
the fall had been heady times. For if he thought there were no rules before,
now with FEMA and the federal government fighting to contain the Omega
outbreak, and local and state governments also finding themselves massively
overwhelmed, that left nobody to stand against him and his twisted vision of a
New America. The timing had been perfect for him to make his move when he did.
And all had gone to plan except that he had underestimated the true nature of
the dead. They had become wildly unpredictable, moving in large numbers,
herdlike. The government hadn’t been forthright with their initial assessment
of the Omega virus. Its high virility and the nature in which it was
transferred helped to swell the ranks of the dead exponentially with each
passing day. So he circled the wagons in Jackson Hole, hoping to let the virus
run its course and the dead to rot and eventually become nothing but
environmental biohazards that would merely need to be cleansed from the
countryside. In the end, he didn’t have the patience to wait for Omega to run
its course. Nor could he go a moment without a drink. Those two character flaws
proved to be his downfall. In an inebriated state, he decided to send Francis
to Colorado Springs to eradicate the new President, Valerie Clay, the former Speaker
of the House whom he loathed, and was the only person he thought who truly
stood in his way. And that decision, which was the result of years of having
everything his way, set forth the chain reaction of events which resulted in
him being in this cold room begging for a drink of ten-dollar scotch.

The interrogator nudged
the mug incrementally, torturing the prisoner with anticipation until it crossed
the invisible line of demarcation on the table top that Christian had burned
into his memory. Finally able to grasp the handle, he shakily brought the mug
to his lips, then downed the contents in one quick motion.

“I hope you savored
that,” the man said with a smile.
Because it’s your last
, he thought
grimly. Then he stood, grabbed the bottle and left the room without a backwards
glance.

The door banged shut and
as if on cue, the A/C belched to life.

Outbreak - Day 15

Near Winters’s Compound

Eden, Utah

P.J. stood just inside
the first row of trees, knee deep in a natural hedge of scrub oak that
delineated the forest from the softly undulating grass field unfolding before
him. He looked at the ground directly in front of him. A good expanse had been
trampled.
More than one person did this
, P.J. told himself. A large
circle stood out from the rest, matted and crushed. He had no doubt that this
is where Chance had set up shop. His gaze flicked over flattened grass. There
were no obvious signs of a struggle. No blood. No shell casings.

Where the fuck are
you, Chance?
Dad told you to
stay put until I got here
, he thought. As he stood there trying to decide
what to do, he suddenly wished he had inherited the same genes Chance had.
Sure, the size was wasted on the dolt, but considering the alternative, he was
fairly content with being smart and small.

P.J. took after Dad, who
wasn’t the biggest hombre in the valley. Years of being on the wrong end of
mean-spirited taunting, hazing, and later on good old fashioned whippings at
the hands of the bigger kids in high school had hardened P.J.’s hide. A hell of
an asset to have in times like these.

Somewhere above his head
a birdsong played out, a soft warbling that gave him an idea. He pursed his
lips and whistled three times. Short trills, close together. To a normal person
the calls were no different from the real thing. But if Chance was anywhere
nearby, he would decipher them for what they really were: a secret code shared
between them and one of the few rare things they held in common. Growing up
they had relied on the unique call to warn each other when Dad was drunk. A
clever defense mechanism devised by two young kids to avoid the belt, boot, or
during the worst of Dad’s benders—bruises and broken bones.

The fake bird call
didn’t slip by Jamie unnoticed. And when it came again, she focused on the
spot, twenty yards to the west, where they had overpowered the dreadlocked kid.
Dressed head to toe in woodland camo, a kid, or young man, she couldn’t tell
because of the baggy fatigues and drooping boonie hat, was standing very still
just outside of the sun’s reach. A pair of black binoculars were pressed to his
face, and some sort of rifle was propped next to one of the gently swaying
conifers.

The figure called out
one more time, with the same three short trills, and before she could get on
the radio to hail the compound he had backed slowly into the forest and was
gone from her sight.

***

After the three warning
calls had gone unanswered, P.J. had finally decided discretion was the better
part of valor. Truth be told, he was scared as shit. He held an opinion that
the folks Chance had been sent to watch were way above their league. It wasn’t
an educated guess. It was something in the air. Like a sixth sense he supposed,
trying to tell him something. Suddenly he felt another sensation. He was being
watched.
No doubt about it
, he thought as he hefted the Romanian AK-47
and retreated deeper into the shadows.

Ten minutes later he was
back at the forest road where he’d left the silver Land Cruiser he had pilfered
brand new off the lot on day three of the outbreak. It was parked bumper to
bumper with the black 4Runner Chance had taken from the same lot.

He paused in the tree
line and tried the bird call one final time.

Two or three minutes
later, after no reply, P.J. hopped in his eighty thousand dollar ride, turned
on the gravel road and headed west, a billowing trail of dust the only evidence
he’d been there.

Jamie parted the trees
just as the engine noise and scrabbling tires were receding out of earshot.
Though neither she nor Jordan had gotten a good look at the kid or the vehicle
he’d left in, the black SUV sucking in the sun directly in front of them was
rather intriguing.

“Call it in,” Jamie said
to her protégé.

Jordan hailed the
compound and reached Seth, who was pulling a stint in the communications
container. She relayed all of the pertinent information, and after a moment or
two their instructions came back: Don’t touch the truck, and get back to the
road. Gus and Phillip were coming up to relieve them.

With that, the two women
became one with the trees, and with the brush grabbing at their ghillie suits,
trudged the quarter-mile back to the sloped clearing.