Tyranny (26 page)

S
omething must have warned the man who called himself Gardner, because he moved at the same instant the gun blasted, diving at Miranda and tackling her off her feet. She cried out in shock and pain as she fell heavily to the sidewalk.

Gardner rolled off her and came up in a blur of motion. Another shot rang out, but this one went up at a sharp angle because Gardner kicked the wrist of the man who came out of the shadows for another try at him.

Before the would-be killer could lower the gun and trigger it again, Gardner crowded in on him, hands flying too fast to follow even if the light had been better. The assassin made a gagging sound as Miranda sat up. Gardner must have struck him across the throat, she thought. The man sounded like his larynx was crushed.

He fell to his knees, making it even easier for Gardner to kick him in the head and send him sprawling across the sidewalk. Then Gardner whirled and leaped to Miranda's side. He held out a hand to her.

“Come on. There are probably more of them close by.”

She had no idea of what was going on here. She didn't know if the gunman had been aiming at her or Gardner.

But some instinct compelled her to trust him. She reached up and grasped his hand. He lifted her to her feet as if she were weightless and hustled her along the sidewalk.

“My hotel is up there—” she gasped as he turned into a side street.

“They probably know where you're staying,” he said with a quiet intensity. “Chances are they've been following you ever since you left the ranch. They don't want you to find out anything about what's really going on.”

“Were they after you or me?” she asked.

A grim chuckle came from him, then he said, “I don't think they'd mind seeing both of us dead. But I've been dodging hit men ever since I got back in the country, so I'm probably their primary target. I've got the proof they don't want to get out.”

“The proof of what?” Miranda asked. She had a wild thought that she might already know the answer.

“Of why the government wants G.W. Brannock's ranch so badly,” he said as he steered her into a dimly lit beer joint. The place was noisy inside, filled with students from the university that wasn't too far away.

Gardner sat her down in a booth, told her to stay put, and went to the bar for a pitcher of beer and a couple of mugs. Miranda didn't have the least bit of interest in sitting here and getting drunk, but she figured Gardner was doing that for appearance's sake. As long as they were in this crowd and looked like they belonged, they were probably safe.

But they would have to leave sooner or later, she thought. And then what?

He came back, set the pitcher on the table, and slid into the booth across from her. As he poured beer in the mugs, he said, “You're probably completely confused by now.”

The place was noisy enough that if they kept their voices low, no one could eavesdrop on them. Miranda leaned forward and said, “I'm confused, and I'm scared, and I'm angry.”

“I'd say you have every reason to be.”

“Mr. Gardner, if that's really your name, I think you'd better tell me what's going on here. Otherwise, I'm going to have to call the police.”

He nodded and said, “You might be all right if you called the cops. Most of them are honest, I'd say. But how would you ever know if there was one who wasn't? One who's working for the people who want to see me dead?”

“And who are those people?”

“The President of the United States, for one,” Gardner said. “Senator Charles Rutland, for another.”

Miranda felt her eyes widening. She couldn't help it. For all the distrust of the federal government she felt, to hear it stated so baldly that the President and the Senate majority leader would sanction attempted murder . . . it was almost more than she could grasp.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Senator Rutland—”

“Is going to get the Democratic nomination and be the next president, I know,” Gardner said. “Drink some of that beer, why don't you? Let's try to look like we're having a pleasant conversation.”

Miranda forced herself to pick up the mug and sip the beer. It was good, and under other circumstances she would have enjoyed it. Right now, though, her mind was whirling too much.

Gardner swallowed some of his beer, leaned back, and looked like a young businessman relaxing after a hard day's work. He smiled faintly and said, “I work for the CIA—”

“Oh, come on!” Miranda exclaimed, unable to suppress the impulse.

“No, it's true, I swear. Although, maybe I should say I
worked
for the CIA. The administration may well have convinced my bosses by now that I've gone rogue. I'm sure they've been trying to discredit me in advance, ever since I got my hands on the intel they don't want to get out.”

“What . . . intel?”

“There's a USB drive in my pocket,” Gardner said. “On it are all the details of a deal between an American company and the Chinese government. The American company is owned by a man named Stuart McCauley. He's Charles Rutland's brother-in-law. His company has contracted with the Chinese to dispose of nuclear waste from their reactors. They're going to put the stuff in that valley where Brannock's ranch is, once the US government has taken it over and then sold it to McCauley in a sweetheart deal.”

As Gardner fell silent, Miranda stared across the table at him for a long moment. Finally, she said, “That's it? That's why they want to steal G.W.'s ranch? This whole thing has been over graft and corruption and a shady land deal?”

“A shady land deal worth billions of dollars to McCauley. Senator Rutland and the President are in line for a share of that payoff, too.” Gardner drank some more beer. “But that's not quite all of it. That Chinese nuclear waste . . . it's incredibly toxic, more so than any we've ever seen before. I got that info straight from a scientist who worked in the Chinese nuclear energy program. He was just one of many involved in the program who were dying of cancer. That's what's going to happen here, too. The stuff will contaminate the environment and in the long run will kill thousands of people. Maybe hundreds of thousands, or even more. Any sort of accident at the containment facility McCauley plans to build on Brannock's land would eventually render the western half of Texas unlivable.”

“That's insane,” Miranda said. “The government would never risk . . . I mean . . . all those people . . .”

“People in Texas,” Gardner reminded her. “The place that the administration in Washington hates for standing up to them over and over. Anyway, when there's this much money involved . . .”

His voice trailed off as his shoulders rose and fell in an eloquent shrug.

Miranda thought about it some more, then said, “You got this information from a Chinese scientist?”

“A terminally ill one who had no reason to lie about it.”

“What happened to him? Could he testify—”

“The cancer didn't have a chance to kill him,” Gardner said. “A rocket from a Chinese drone got him first, right after he'd passed the USB drive to me. They'd been trying to track him down ever since he slipped out of China, and they caught up to him in Manila. The explosion nearly killed me, as well. But I got out and made it back here. There have been half a dozen attempts on my life since then. You saw the latest one a little while ago. They know who I am, they know what I've got.”

“You have to go public with that information! The country has a right to know what's going on.”

“That sounds good, but who am I going to tell? The press isn't going to report anything that might make a Democrat look bad, especially not the one who's in the White House now and the one who's next in line to take over. Sure, there are still a few conservative news outlets, but for the most part they're preaching to the choir, the thirty-five percent of the country that still works and pays taxes to take care of the other sixty-five percent.”

“If that's true, then why do they care enough to try to kill you?”

“Because sometimes the wind blows in the other direction,” Gardner replied. “If something's big enough, and bad enough, like that nerve gas business a few years ago, people might wake up, look around, and see what's really happening in this country. The Democrats are scared to death that'll happen and weaken their grip on power.” He shrugged. “Freedom's a funny thing. Once it takes root, you never can tell what'll happen. Demographics say the Democrats can never be beaten again, but they're still running scared anyway. They don't want to take any chances.”

Miranda's head was still spinning. She said, “Shouldn't you at least upload what's on that drive to a secure server somewhere?”

“A secure server?” Gardner laughed. “What makes you think such a thing even exists anymore, Ms. Stephens? It's been years since the average citizen or business had any privacy in this country. They see everything. They have programs that monitor billions of e-mails and Web postings a day, and those programs are the closest thing to artificial intelligences that have been come up with yet. They flag anything that looks the least bit like a threat to the administration. Then before you know it, some guy who runs an auto repair shop in Idaho who bitches about the government in an e-mail to a buddy is facing years of harassment from the IRS. A woman who posts something the least bit critical of the President on her blog has her ISP shut her down because she supposedly violated their terms of service. Some poor sucker who writes a magazine article the administration doesn't like is arrested, and the cops find kiddie porn on his computer that he never put there, so he goes to prison and gets shanked the second week he's there. We're one step away from American gulags, Ms. Stephens. One step.” Gardner sighed. “Sorry. Didn't mean to get wound up like that. I didn't really realize all this stuff until recently. It's been quite a blow to a guy who always believed in his country.” He sat up straighter. “All of which still leaves us with the question of what we're going to do about your client's problem.”

Miranda's crazy thoughts had settled down to what seemed to her like the one chance they had.

“Let me make a call,” she said. “I think I know someone who might be able to help.”

Gardner grunted and said, “He'd better be ready for trouble if he gets mixed up in this.”

“I think he's capable of handling it,” Miranda said.

I
f what Ben Gardner had said was true, somebody somewhere who wished them harm was probably monitoring Miranda's phone calls.

But there was only so much the enemy could do in the middle of busy downtown Austin. It was a little ironic, she thought. Austin was one of the most liberal places in Texas. Most of the other people in the bar were probably staunch supporters of progressive icons like the President and Senator Rutland.

Yet their presence was one of the things that kept killers who worked for those icons from sweeping in here and murdering a couple of their heroes' political enemies.

Twenty minutes later, while Miranda was still nursing her first mug of beer, Colonel Thomas Atkinson and four other men came into the bar. Atkinson was thirty or forty years older than most of the people in here, but somehow he didn't look out of place.

The men with him were all much younger, clean-cut, friendly looking but somehow with an air of danger about them. Miranda suspected that all of them were heavily armed, although you couldn't tell it from their casual outfits.

Atkinson spotted Miranda and Gardner right away and came across the room toward them. One of the men accompanied him while the other three spread out a little to form a perimeter.

Miranda slid over and patted the bench beside her. Atkinson sat down. The other man moved into the other side of the booth next to Gardner, who regarded both of the newcomers warily. Miranda thought Gardner probably didn't like being hemmed in like this.

“I'm glad to see you, colonel,” Miranda told Atkinson.

“I wasn't sure we'd hear from you again quite this soon,” he said. “When you called our mutual friend's private line, you didn't explain to her what had happened.”

“I think it's best we wait until we get back to her place to talk about that,” Miranda said.

Even in the governor's mansion, she thought, there might be listening ears—but the likelihood was a lot lower.

“I'm Tom Atkinson,” the colonel said as he extended a hand across the table to Gardner.

Gardner shook hands with him and said, “You can call me Ben.”

“All right, Ben.” Atkinson nodded to his dark-haired, handsome companion. “This is my buddy Dave Flannery.”

“Good to meet you, Ben,” Flannery said as he shook hands with Gardner, too.

“You have a vehicle outside?” Miranda asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Atkinson said. “Armor-plated. Bulletproof glass. You wouldn't know it to look at it, but it'll stand up to anything short of a rocket attack.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Gardner said. “That's actually one of the things we have to worry about.”

Atkinson raised an eyebrow quizzically and said, “Really?”

“I had to dodge one a week or so back in Manila. If it happens here, though, it'll be an American drone launching it.”

Atkinson frowned.

“You're not saying that one of our drones would fire a missile into the heart of an American city and kill hundreds of civilians?”

“I think they stopped being
our
drones a while back,” Gardner said. “Whoever's sitting in the Oval Office seems to think they belong to him, and he can do whatever he damned well pleases with them.”

“As long as he's a Democrat, he's probably right, for all practical purposes,” Atkinson said.

Flannery suggested, “Maybe we'd better not waste any time getting out of here.”

“Good idea,” Atkinson agreed with a nod. “Just so you two know, I've got five more men outside keeping things clean around here. You ready?”

“More than ready,” Miranda said. “There are things that the—our mutual friend needs to know.”

 

 

The governor's mansion was free of bugs, Atkinson assured them.

“We sweep the place every day, top to bottom,” he said. “When your enemy has the resources of the entire country at his disposal, you've got to stay on your toes.”

“How sad,” Miranda murmured, “that we have to regard the President of the United States as the enemy.”

“That's what you get when you keep electing people who can't figure out if they want to turn us into a communist nation, or an Islamic one, or some other radical flavor of the month that's supposed to usher in some sort of progressive paradise,” Atkinson said. “What they never seem to remember is that the communists have murdered more people than anybody else over the past century and a half. They make the Nazis look like amateurs. And if the radical Islamists ever take over, the first thing they'll do is chop off the heads of about half the people who like to whine about how Islam is a religion of peace. And yet the Democrats are unwavering in their support of those types.”

From behind the desk in her private office here in the mansion, Governor Delgado said, “I want to hear what Mr. Gardner has to say about this information he's brought to us.”

Gardner, who seemed to have relaxed once he finally realized that he was safe among allies and didn't have to run for his life anymore, held up the little metal rectangle.

“If you want to open these files, governor, they'll tell you the whole story.”

Delgado took the USB drive from him and plugged it into a port on her computer.

“Why did you head for Texas when you got back to the states, Mr. Gardner?” she asked as the files were loading.

“I'd looked at those documents you're about to see enough to know that the whole thing centered around Mr. Brannock's ranch. I did a little research, found that you'd had your own squabbles with the Feds—”

“Squabbles,” Atkinson said. “I like that.”

“Anyway,” Gardner said, “I found out as much as I could about what's been going on, and then I figured I would try to get in here and dump the whole thing in your lap. That's why I was outside tonight. I saw Ms. Stephens leaving and recognized her, so I decided on the spur of the moment to approach her first.” He looked at Miranda, smiled, and shook his head. “I owe you an apology. I almost got you killed when that assassin came after me.”

“What's important is that you're here now,” Miranda told him. “And between all of us, we're going to figure out what to do to help G.W. and Kyle.”

Delgado leaned forward in her chair to frown at the monitor in front of her. In a stunned voice, she said, “I know what you told us, Mr. Gardner, but to see it all laid out like this in black-and-white . . .”

“Yes, it's pretty sickening that our country's leaders would get mixed up in something like that, isn't it? To put so many people at risk, just to make money—”

“It's not just the money,” Delgado snapped. “That man hates Texas and everything about it.”

No one had to ask her who she was talking about.

“I'm sure Senator Rutland is more interested in the profit that he and his brother-in-law will make,” the governor went on. “But the President, what he wants is to dump millions of tons of poison on us and see what happens. He wants to ruin our air and our water and sit back and laugh while we die of cancer and radiation sickness.”

“Why would that surprise you, Maria?” Atkinson asked. “Remember when there was a chance a hurricane would strike the city where the Republican National Convention was being held, and one of the Democrats said he hoped all of them washed out to sea. How many times has some Democrat politician gone on record as wanting Republicans to get cancer and die? Remember the Ebola scare? A Democrat said she wished all gun-rights supporters would get Ebola and die. They say things like that all the time. The so-called party of peace, love, and diversity is just stewing in their own bitter hatred for everybody who doesn't agree with them a hundred percent.”

“I know!” Delgado shouted angrily as she slammed a fist down on her desk. “But it shouldn't be that way!”

“No, it shouldn't,” Atkinson agreed in a quiet voice. “But we have to deal with the world the way it is, not the way we wish it could be. So what are we going to do about this? Are we going to stand by and let those so-called UN
peacekeepers
sweep over G.W. Brannock's ranch like a Mongol horde? You know good and well the Chinese government insisted that they would provide the troops for this mission.”

“Of course, they did,” Gardner put in. “They don't want that toxic nightmare in their country, and they've got to have somewhere to put it.”

Governor Delgado sat there breathing a little heavily while Miranda, Atkinson, and Gardner watched her. Finally, she gave a little nod, almost to herself, and looked up at them.

“They're not going to get away with it,” she said. “Not in Texas.”

“We don't know how those crooked bastards in Washington will react if we step in,” Atkinson said, but the grin on his face made the statement sound like anticipation, rather than a warning.

“Not in Texas,” Governor Delgado repeated.