The Last Election (14 page)

He could get into just about any car made in less than five seconds, but he never stole a car for money. Sure he went on a joyride or two, but he always returned the car to where he found it and the owner probably never even knew the car had been moved.

One day when he was just 16, he found himself home alone and very bored. For want of anything better to do, he decided to poke around Uncle Matthias’s room. This was a cardinal sin, he knew, but Matthias was out of town and he was just going to take a look around out of curiosity’s sake.

He popped the bedroom door lock with ease. Matthias kept his room Marine-quality organized. Clay briefly looked through the closet and then moved on to the dresser. The bottom drawer had a lock on it, and he picked it as well. Inside the drawer he found pictures from Matthias’s Marine days, military service medals and plaques, and even a box of bullets.

There was also a box, plain and simple with no markings. He paused for a minute to examine it. Finally he opened it and immediately tears came to his eyes, for it contained photographs of his mother. For the first time in his life he saw pictures of his mother when she was just a girl. She had a big bright smile in every picture. He laughed and cried simultaneously as he looked at picture after picture of his mother enjoying life with her mother, father and Uncle Matthias.

Clay set the pictures aside to see what else was in the box. There were several newspaper clippings about his mother’s murder. He looked at the headlines but he didn’t read the articles. He didn’t have to, he had been there when it happened.

He set the clippings next to the pictures and saw one last item in the box. It appeared to be a notebook of some kind. He lifted it out of the box and turned it over. He nearly lost his breath when he saw what was written on the cover. In big black letters was written, “Wade’s Journal.”

He slowly opened it and was immediately disgusted by what he had discovered. He skimmed through the pages and saw entries written by his father that told of his hatred of blacks, his love of the KKK, and his involvement in the Michigan Militia.

His disgust turned to outrage as he read further. His father described how he always felt like a loser when it came to women, and how he came to resent them deeply. Clay felt a wave of nausea run through his stomach as he saw his mother’s name for the first time. He squeezed his eyes tightly hoping he could make it go away, but he knew he had to look. There were only a few short entries involving his mother, but Clay read enough to fully understand just how sadistically his father had treated her.

His father had found his mother hitchhiking along a long stretch of open highway east of Jackson, and he offered her a ride. She was tired, cold, hungry and thankful for the chance to rest her legs and warm her hands. At last, his father wrote, he could finally take out the frustration and anger he held against women on this poor little runaway he had lured to his home. His next few entries described how he essentially held her in captivity, and violently raped her repeatedly. They were never even married. To his father, Clay’s mother was nothing more than his slave.
 

Clay breathed deeply as he rolled to his side to look out his bedroom window. He thought about how ironic it was to be discovered by Delgado and recruited to be on a mission that would give him the perfect chance to exact his revenge. Little did he know that Jorge Delgado had not ‘discovered’ him, Delgado had been studying him for a long, long time.

Chapter 32

Daniel and Ixchel stayed up late into the night talking about Patrick’s death. They were in a state of disbelief. Patrick wasn’t the most likeable guy in the world, but neither Daniel nor Ixchel could imagine why anyone would want to kill him.
 

“The police told Thomas that whoever did it tried to make it look like an accident, but they are convinced it was murder,” said Daniel grievously. “I feel so bad. I was never very nice to him. Now he’s gone.”

Ixchel was feeling the exact same way. Patrick could be irritating at times, but for the most part he was a pretty decent guy. She recalled how she felt a deep sense of foreboding when she first heard of Patrick’s disappearance yesterday. Then her thoughts turned to the strange feelings she had had when she first saw the Maya tablet today. These incidents were totally unrelated, but somehow the strange feelings she felt both times seemed to be interwoven in some mysterious way. She stared off into space.
What is the matter with me?

Daniel stood up and said, “I’m going to hit the sack.”

Ixchel snapped out of her daydream. “I can’t sleep,” she said. “I’m going to look through my databases to see if I can find anything about sky-fire.”

“Okay, but don’t stay up too late,” Daniel said. “Good night, Ixchel.”

“Good night, Daniel,” she replied. Their eyes met for a moment, and they both smiled.

Once Daniel was gone Ixchel plugged her flash drive into Professor Jameson’s computer and uploaded everything she had on Maya symbols. Next she ran a search through all her databases looking for Maya symbols related to sky-fire. She found several symbols that were vaguely similar, but the sky-fire symbol on the tablet had a quality of uniqueness about it.

She sat there staring at the screen, trying to decide what to do next. Finally she did what any serious scientist does in times of doubt; she turned to Google. She
googled
SKY + FIRE and briefly glanced through the list as it popped up, but then went straight to images. The first several images showed pictures of Senator Alexander Kirk’s plane as it exploded back in February.
This does me no good.

She was about to scroll down the page to see if there was anything relating to Maya relics, when she became mesmerized by one of the pictures of the plane explosion. She could not take her eyes off it. She downloaded the image, then used the zoom feature to examine it in more detail. After two or three clicks, all that was left showing was the ball of flames. Ixchel’s mouth fell open and she gasped. Hidden within the picture of the flames was the exact image of the tablet’s sky-fire symbol.

Every time she looked at photos of Kirk’s plane exploding, she saw the sky-fire symbol. She pulled up video footage on YouTube, and again she saw the symbol within the flames as the videos played. She could not think of any sane reason to explain why this was happening, yet now she could not escape the feeling that the symbol and the explosion were connected.
This is crazy
.

She continued to flip through picture after picture of Kirk’s plane exploding and every time she saw the sky-fire symbol buried within the flames. She racked her brain to come up with an explanation as to why an ancient Maya symbol could be connected to a modern day tragedy, but she came up blank.

Unexpectedly, Daniel entered the cabin, so Ixchel quickly closed the Google window. “I can’t sleep,” he said.

“Are you doing okay?”
 
Ixchel asked.

Daniel wiped his hand over his mouth and replied, “Yeah, I’m ok.” He was still distraught over Patrick’s death, but he didn’t feel like talking about it. He looked at the computer and said, “Did you find anything?”

“No, nothing yet,” she replied. “I’ll need to do more thorough research when we get back to UVA.” The mention of UVA reminded them both of Patrick, and they sat in silence for several minutes.

“Well, since neither of us can sleep, why don’t we start preparing for the trip back to Charlottesville,” said Daniel.
 
“We need to be sure that we have copies of all of Professor Jameson’s information on the tablet and that we take plenty of pictures of it before we leave.”

“Good idea,” Ixchel replied. She paused several seconds, then looked at Daniel and said, “Dan, this is completely off the subject, but what do you know about the plane crash that killed Senator Alexander Kirk?”

Daniel took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, one thing I know is that many people believe that President Bonsam had something to do with it.”

As Ixchel heard those words, foreboding images stormed into her mind.
 
Kirk, sky-fire, Bonsam.
 
She could not comprehend their relationship, yet still she sensed an ominous connection.
 
As the images faded away, she once again heard a soft voice call out in her mind, “I am here.”

Chapter 33

Tonight would be the beginning of the end for Colonel Lane. Clay would see to that. The time spent with Lane and his ilk taught him well about the ways of the militia. He now knew the best way to get their undivided attention. Weapons. Lots and lots of weapons.

The overarching belief of Lane and his followers was that the best way to stop a tyrannical government from taking over their God-given white-American way of life was to arm the nation’s citizens and arm them well.

Clay backed his car alongside Lane’s, put it in park, and switched off the engine. Lane slowly walked over with Kenner and Boyd in tow. Clay could sense Kenner and Boyd’s excitement. They could hardly contain themselves as they peered over Lane’s shoulders. Lane, on the other hand was smooth as ice. “You got them, Clay?” he asked.

“Right here,” Clay replied as he moved toward the trunk. He took his time sliding the key into the lock. He was playing this to the hilt. Slowly he popped the lock, lifted the trunk lid, and took a step back. Boyd nearly tripped over his own two feet as he tried to move forward, but Lane held out his arm and stopped him. Clay felt the tension in the air rising.

Lane remained standing in place, looking straight at Clay through squinted eyes. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his jacket and slowly removed a cigarette. He never took his eyes off Clay as he tapped the cigarette against the pack before placing it between his lips. He lit a match and used it to light the cigarette, and for the first time in several minutes he took his eyes off Clay.

Lane took a long drag on his cigarette, and then slowly let out a lung full of smoke. He looked back at Clay and said, “So tell me again how it is that you know this arms dealer and I don’t.” Lane tilted his head to the side as he waited for his answer.

“He’s new to the arms trade, I’m telling you. He is very secretive, and all I know is that he was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula and has been importing drugs from all over the world for years. He hates coons as much as you do and he steers some of his profits to several small Klan groups in the U.P. That’s how I learned about him. He’s got large estates on both the American side and the Canadian side of Sault Ste. Marie and has everybody in Customs on his payroll. He moves everything through Canada because it is much less dangerous that way. Back when the drawdown began in Iraq, he found creative ways to get his hands on military weapons and he imports them through the same pipelines that he uses for his drugs.” Clay remained calm on the outside, but he was a complete wreck on the inside.
I sure hope that was a convincing performance.

Lane took another long drag on his cigarette. Finally he said, “Let’s take a look.”

Clay took another small step back as Lane stepped forward and peered into the trunk. “
Hoo
,” Lane gasped.

Inside the trunk lay over a dozen firearms. Not your standard hunting rifles and shotguns, but heavy-duty military weapons; M-4 Carbines, M-16 Assault Rifles, including four that were equipped with M-203 grenade launchers. There was even an M-202 rocket launcher. Lane reached into the trunk and pulled out an M-4. As he examined it, he let out a long whistle and said, “You say this guy can get us lots of these, Clay?”

“Truckloads,” Clay lied.

Chapter 34

“So the president is going to make a last ditch effort to win the Michigan delegates? He knows he can’t win Michigan, yet he’s coming to Detroit and holding a rally at the Palace of Auburn Hills this late in the game. Doesn’t that seem a little unorthodox to you?” Kenna Martineau asked Governor Clark.

“No, I heard it is open to people of all religions,” Brett Mason said with a grin.

Clark, Martineau, and Mason had gathered in Clark’s office to discuss the unexpected announcement that President Bonsam wanted to make a last minute change to his campaign schedule and hold a rally in Detroit.