The Book of Truths (19 page)

“You told me you’d take care of—”

Ray cut him off. “Never said such a thing.”

“Ray, listen—”

“You got shooters out there in the woods?” Ray asked.

“Yes.”

“I got shooters too,” Ray said.

“You promised to look after my sisters and brothers.”

“I am,” Ray said.

“You got Parker working up here,” Kirk said. “How is that looking after him? Dee said you slapped her when she came here to get him. You don’t slap women, Ray. You know that. Especially not my sister.”

Kirk could see the woman wasn’t window dressing. She was supporting a good portion of Ray’s weight. She was like many women in the hills, possibly aged beyond her years. She could have been an old twenty-five or a young fifty.

“What’s wrong with you?” Kirk asked.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Ray said. “Tell your nigger friend to get out of the car.”

Kirk blinked. His uncle had never used that word even though it was more than common in the area. Deep in a dark drunk, Ray had told Kirk several times how his life had been saved twice in Vietnam by his best friend, an African American (which is the term Ray had always used) from Atlanta.

Eagle got out of the SUV and walked up beside Kirk.

“Couldn’t find the shooters,” a voice called out from behind as the two men who’d been blocking the road broke out of the tree line on the right, twenty yards away. “We looked, Ray.”

“You didn’t look good enough,” Ray said.

“I know he’s kin,” the man continued, “but look who he come down here with. We don’t”—the man didn’t get another word out as Ray pulled the Magnum and fired. The bullet hit the man in the shoulder, the large round pirouetting him 360 degrees.

At the sound of the gun, Roland came out of the back of the SUV, his M249 at the ready. A red dot centered on Ray’s forehead as Roland aimed at the house.

Kirk held his hands up. “Hold on, hold on! Everyone just calm down.”

“I never promised you nothing,” Ray said.

“He thinks he’s telling the truth,” Eagle said in a low voice to Kirk.

“What?” Kirk was confused, but Roland was ignoring both of them, his light machine gun at the ready. And the red dot was steady on Ray’s head.

“Ray,” Kirk said in a louder voice. “Come on. This isn’t you.”

Ray laughed and tapped the side of his head. “I see things now, Parker. I see the way things need to be.”

“I’m not Parker,” Kirk said. “I’m Winthrop.”

Ray blinked, and there was a window into him through his eyes. Kirk looked at the woman, then the other gunmen. “You let him do this? To all of you?”

The woman spit. “Shut your trap, boy. Your uncle is the toughest son of a bitch this here county ever made. You don’t be talking trash about him.”

“He doesn’t know reality,” Eagle said in his low voice. “Prefrontal cortex is fried. Wet brain, given what you say about his drinking. They all don’t know it. He’s fabulating.”

Roland caught that last part. “He’s what?”

“He’s inventing his own reality,” Eagle said. He took a step closer to Kirk, but spoke in a voice they could all hear. “You would never hit Dee, would you, Ray?”

Ray blinked, more twitched. “I never hit Dee.”

Kirk closed his eyes briefly. “Dee would never lie to me.”

“It just gets worse,” Eagle said to Kirk. “There’s no cure.”

“Get away from him!” Ray yelled as a young girl ran to the man he’d wounded, trying to tend to his wound.

“Ray!” Kirk caught his uncle’s attention. “You’re sick. Let me help you.”

“Girl,” Ray said, lifting his pistol toward the young girl who was pressing down on her father’s wound. “You git, or I’ll—”

Kirk lifted his arm and fired before anyone could react. The bullet hit Ray in the left thigh and knocked him down like a hammer.

No one else fired as Roland swept the muzzle of his machine gun back and forth.

Kirk walked forward. He knelt next to his uncle. “You’re sick, Ray. I’ll get you care.”

Ray was shaking his head, eyes blinking in confusion. “I didn’t do nothing wrong. I didn’t.”

Kirk cradled his uncle’s head in his lap. “I know. I’ll get you care. The—”

His next words were cut off as Roland’s cell phone began playing “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” followed by Eagle’s, then in the distance Mac’s, and lastly Kirk’s.

“We got to go,” Roland said.

“I’ve got 911 on the way,” Eagle said. “He won’t be hurting anyone, anymore. And it isn’t his fault.”

“It stinks,” Zoey said.

Nada couldn’t argue with his niece’s assessment of the La Brea Tar Pits. He felt uncomfortable in his civvies, never mind not having body armor. He did have his MK23 in a hip holster under his loose jacket because he’d as likely go somewhere unarmed as not breathe. They were seated at a bench facing the pits. It was a sunny, Southern California winter day.

“It’s got history,” Nada ventured, glancing at the brochure he’d taken from the museum lobby. “A lot of animals have died after getting stuck in there. They still do. Birds and things.”

“Gross,” Zoey said while Nada considered a tar pit as a weapon. He looked out at the black goo and imagined camouflaging it with a layer of sand and leaves. Static, but effective as an obstacle. A person could channel an attacking force using such an obstacle. He remembered the quicksand in Malaysia where he’d been sent from Delta Force to go through a tracking school
run by former headhunters. They had pointed out how game moved around such obstacles in predictable patterns.

At least they said they were “former,” but Nada had had his doubts. Lots of people said they were former whatever, but in the long run, one tended to go back to one’s roots.

“I’m hungry,” Zoey said in a voice pitched about a year less than her five, which any parent would take as a warning sign. But Nada wasn’t trained in those familial arts. He had picked up that his brother hadn’t wanted to let the two of them go out alone, but it had never crossed his mind it was because of him, not Zoey.

As she got up and began spinning and twirling, another sign of wanting to move on from the bubbling black graveyard, he thought of Scout and he felt a pang of something.

A more normal person could have told him he missed the young girl from North Carolina who’d helped him on their last mission. Nada figured it was the hot dog he’d eaten.

“Can you do a cartwheel?” he asked Zoey.

She paused and looked at him. “I think so.”

“On the grass,” Nada said, having at least that much kid-sense to get her off the paved path.

Zoey gave it a pretty good attempt, ending up in a ball on the grass. “It still stinks,” she noted as she got to her feet.

“I’ll help you,” Nada said. “You have to keep your legs straight.”

Zoey was less than enthused but gave it a try. As she cartwheeled to the right, her hand came down on a dead bird buried under the leaves. She instinctively tried to pull her hand back as her body toppled over and Nada lost his grip on her ankles. She landed in a heap, saw the bird, and gave a little girl shriek, the kind that carries much farther than tiny lungs should be capable of.

“Easy, Zoey, easy,” Nada said. “It’s dead. It can’t hurt you.” He leaned over and tried to pick her up, but she was scrambling away from the body, now crying and hyperventilating.

“You okay, little girl?” A young man stopped jogging and was walking over.

“She’s fine,” Nada said.

“You her father?” the man asked suspiciously, because Nada looked like no one’s father.

Nada hated being asked questions, especially by strangers. “Go back to your run.”

Zoey got to her feet, crying and looking totally forlorn.

A few more people were being drawn in and Nada tried to put his arms around Zoey and comfort her.

“You know this man?” the jogger asked Zoey.

Nada ignored him and leaned his head close to hers. “Scout, it’s just a bird.”

She shoved herself out of his arms. “My name is Zoey,” she shouted. “Not Scout!”

“Somebody call the cops,” the jogger yelled, taking a step to get between Nada and his niece.

Nada’s instinct was to run, to avoid the confrontation, but he couldn’t leave Zoey. He had his federal ID and could clear it up with the cops. And that depressed him, to realize that he was going to have to use his false identification to prove he was what others take for granted. Because he knew he wasn’t an uncle, not in the real sense. He was the outsider, the weird one, and because of that, he was going to have to be the one doing the accommodating in this, the normal world.

“I’m her uncle,” Nada said to the jogger, raising his hands slightly and spreading them in the universal sign (in Nada’s world) of “I won’t kill you right this second.”

The guy didn’t appreciate the gesture.

“He’s got a gun!” the jogger screamed, spotting the MK23 in its holster, and then more people screamed and everyone began running away. No heroes here, especially not with someone who looked like Nada who had a gun, not even for a little girl like Zoey.

Maybe it was an LA thing.

Nada sighed as he heard the distant siren coming closer and pulled out his real fake badge and ID. A clusterfuck.

And then his cell phone began its distinctive ring, “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” and as he sprinted away to the call of duty, no time to talk his way out of this, knowing the cops would reunite Zoey with his brother, he realized the irony of what he’d always told the team:

Zoey leads to getting Zevoned.

An Hour Earlier

“Trust no one,” the president said.

The Keep had her quill pen poised over the latest page in the book, but didn’t write his words of wisdom down. “That’s been on every president’s list.”

“Maybe they should highlight it?”

The Keep carefully laid the pen down and flipped through some pages in the book. “It’s been highlighted and scored and given extra stars and exclamation points. You read it years ago when I in-briefed you after you took office.”

“Maybe it needs its own page?”

“Good idea, sir,” but it was apparent she wasn’t going to make any special note about it.

“I’m surprised JFK didn’t put that on a separate page,” the president said.

“He didn’t make it to this meeting,” the Keep said. An awkward pause followed that. “Terribly sorry, sir. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She picked up the quill and held it carefully and with respect. Its original owner, after all, was Thomas Jefferson. It was antiquated
and archaic, exactly the way it should be as she entered the president’s observations from his four years in office in the Book of Truths with ink and quill from the third president.

The quill was archaic, not the ink, although it was specially made with the same formula Jefferson had used centuries earlier.

Templeton smiled sadly. “How about this: Especially don’t trust someone who tells you not to trust anyone? I learned that the hard way.”

The Keep nodded. “Very good.” She wrote in large, flowing letters, almost calligraphy, and he wondered if that was part of why she’d gotten this job or if she’d been taught it after getting the job.

Everyone in the White House thought the Keep was part of someone else’s staff. She wore the same type of bland business attire, had an access badge that gave her the highest clearance, and kept a low profile. In housekeeping, they thought she worked for the social secretary. In social, they thought she was a senior staffer at housekeeping. The cooks (chefs, since it’s the White House) thought she worked for maintenance.

There was only one other person on the top floor of the White House, seated too far away to hear, a shadow that always was behind the president, even when the sun didn’t shine: a military attaché who carried the “football.” Technically, it was just a metal briefcase. It weights forty-five pounds and a satellite antenna pokes out of the side. It is not locked to the aide, as many commonly thought, since they were in the relative safety of the White House. The case holds the key ingredients needed for the president to annihilate any enemy at a moment’s notice: a transmitter (never used); a black book listing options for nuclear strikes based on current threat analysis and updated at least daily, more often in times of crisis (peered at several times by presidents with reactions
ranging from morbid interest to shock and dismay, but never used); another book containing options of classified sites the president could be taken to in case of emergencies (used on 9/11/2001); and most importantly, a three-by-five card with the authentication codes for launch (never used). There is also a sat phone and a pistol, the latter an object of speculation as to whom it was to be used on and why. The dark humor was it was the attaché’s last way out if the case had to be used.