Savage Road

by Chris Hauty

  Fortunately for her, the kidnappers’ need for money was greater than for justice. After her guilty conviction, life assumed something approximating a normal routine of any farmhouse in Gogebic County. The Yoopers, all committed paleo-vegans, subsisted on a diet of almonds, cooked lentils, and baked yams. Every other day, the kidnappers added blueberries to the otherwise drab diet as a special treat. Clare shed pounds from her frame and suffered from terrible fatigue exacerbated by extreme stress. Ironically, her treatment by the kidnappers improved following her death sentence. Freed from the cramped confines of the trunk, Clare began to get a better sense of her kidnappers as people.

  Susan, the daughter of college professors in California, had quit her PhD program at Madison and joined the cause after falling in love with Tony, a perennially angry ex-con who signed on with the WRL because being a career criminal was too dangerous. Louise was a minor poet who cried while watching the evening news and was responsible for cooking and cleaning. William, a former college football star, was simply insane. “Wild Bill,” as the others called their presumed leader, was quiet, brooding, and a rapid blinker, suffering from acute headaches that seemed to short-circuit his entire nervous system. Clare once witnessed Wild Bill force Louise’s hand over the open flame of an oven burner when she criticized him for his filthy bathroom habits. Everyone in the farmhouse feared Wild Bill, but no one more than Clare.

  He never addressed the kidnap victim directly, referring to her as “it.” “It” needed food. “It” must go to the toilet. “It” would die after “it” had served “its” purpose. William mostly harangued the other three Yoopers for their lack of commitment and true understanding of WRL polemics. A political science major at the University of Pennsylvania cut from the football team for drug use and other disciplinary problems, William was, by Clare Ryan’s estimation, an undiagnosed schizophrenic incapable of empathic response.

  On the fortieth day of the kidnapping, Susan and Tony took Louise into town to see a doctor about her sudden onset of severe abdominal pains. Despite lip service all WRL members paid to women’s rights, Clare feared being left alone with Wild Bill. His averted gaze and refusal to speak to her directly telegraphed a capacity for unpredictable violence. For the first thirty minutes after the others had left the farmhouse, Wild Bill sat in a chair staring at the floor. Clare remained seated at the kitchen table across the room, motionless and silent. Without a word, Wild Bill stood, strode into the open kitchen area, retrieved a rusty steak knife from a drawer, and, holding the blade to his captive’s throat, raped her.

  After he finished, Wild Bill went outside, sat on the ground, and conversed with whatever demons resided inside his head. Clare, refusing to cry, cleaned herself. The others returned two hours later, with a doctor’s determination that Louise’s history of Celiac disease had been aggravated by dependence on brown rice syrup, which contains barley, in the house diet. Clare said nothing about the rape. Wild Bill, in the throes of a true psychological break, might have killed them all if anyone made an issue of his sexual violence. Instead, Clare internalized the incident. Even after Boeing had paid a ransom and she was subsequently released, the future Homeland Security secretary said nothing about the rape. Her shame was too great. Dread mushroomed within her every time she recalled the incident. Clare obsessively avoided it, as if a subway’s third rail.

  The details were locked away, just like Wild Bill, who, after his conviction, disappeared into the bowels of a hospital for the criminally insane. No one must ever know. On the surface, it seemed as if the Boeing executive emerged from the ordeal remarkably unscathed. Clare was almost serene in the aftermath. In truth, the horrors of her captivity irrevocably transformed her. She laid down on loop tape an interior mantra: Protect the home. Monsters live in the shadows. Act now, or they will eat you alive.

  And so, it began. Walls built. Barricades erected. Where there is one Wild Bill, there are countless more. Clare Ryan will make it her life’s work. Protect the home. Nothing is more important. She must protect us all. No one must ever know.

  * * *

  SATURDAY, 6:45 A.M. Hayley Chill wakes from a deep sleep, having gotten her best night’s rest in days. Later, reflecting on the events of this tumultuous time, she will suspect these hours of deep slumber were due to her subconscious awareness that the worst was yet to come. Recuperation, however brief, was of vital necessity. Her dreams had revolved around home, in Lincoln County, West Virginia, and of her father, Tommy Chill. In the kitchen. Dancing to music coming over the cheap radio on the counter. Younger brothers and sisters underfoot. Smiles and laughter. It had been a good dream. She awakes to the reality of seemingly intractable problems of epic scale.

  Hayley reaches for her smartphone and checks Twitter for the latest news, finding only the usual posts reflecting the general chaos of a world gone berserk. There is nothing about the White House or the president other than the everyday jeremiad. And so she is relieved.

  But what of April?

  Hayley is determined to discover what had happened to her friend and fellow Publius operative, regardless of her awareness that doing so will piss off Andrew Wilde. Time is in short supply. She will allocate ten minutes to tracking down April. Following that, she must get to the White House. Low-level staff may receive some weekends off but, amid an escalating crisis, this will not be one of them.

  With her third call, Hayley determines April is at George Washington University Hospital. Twelve minutes after springing from her bed, she is out the door and jumping in an Uber for Twenty-Third Street.

  The enormous medical facility is still reeling from the aftershocks of the previous day’s blackout. Anxiety warps the faces of hospital staffers and visitors alike. Taking the stairs instead of slow elevators, Hayley locates April in the ICU, where doctors have put her in a medically induced coma. The ventricular catheter continues to monitor pressure on her brain, diverting potentially dangerous excess cerebrospinal fluid into a drainage bag. None of the doctors on duty are willing to discuss her condition with Hayley, but, with some persistent cajoling, one of the intensive care nurses is more forthcoming.

  The harried nurse, stealing a few moments to answer Hayley’s questions, says, “Vehicle versus pedestrian. Your friend was the pedestrian, unfortunately.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” Hayley asks.

  “She’s in critical condition. The worry is for more intracranial hemorrhaging. They’ve induced a coma until the swelling can go down. Infection from the ventriculostomy is a risk, of course.”

  “Can I see her?”

  The nurse shakes her head. “What about family? Does April have anyone close by?”

  “There’s just me.”

  Retrieving her phone, the nurse says, “Give me your number. If there’re any developments, I’ll call you.”

  Exiting the intensive care unit, Hayley is vastly relieved to have established a line of communication with her friend’s caregivers. Nearly walking into Sam McGovern as he enters through the same doors upends that satisfaction.

  “Hello?” he says with an awkward grin on his face, slightly confused by the serendipitous encounter.

  “What are you doing here?” Hayley asks. Sam wears his navy-blue fire department uniform.

  “Just dropped off a patient downstairs at the ER. Thought I’d get information on a female car accident victim we helped last night.”

  “April Wu?” Hayley can scarcely believe it.

  “Yes! You know her?”

  Hayley is guarded, as they are veering into that part of her that she must wall off from her personal life. Normal life. “I do know April, yes,” she says warily, warding off further inquiry.

  Sam notes her reticence. And he is also aware by this point that the young woman whose life he saved the previous night is stationed at Fort Meade, with Cyber Command. “Okay. How is she? When we got there, your friend was in pretty bad shape. I just wanted to know she’d pulled through,” he says with exaggerated circumspection, keepin
g the conversation well inside the white lines.

  “She’s in critical condition. The doctors will know more in a few hours, but I think she’s going to make it.”

  Sam nods. He’ll leave it at that. “And how are you?” he asks.

  “Busy,” Hayley says evenly. The emotions she experiences seeing Sam again defy articulation or even her basic understanding.

  Sam wishes there was more he could do to help her. Why she had abruptly turned him out the day before is a question that weighs heavily on his mind. Too much self-doubt is in the space between them. He remains mute.

  She intuits his silent desires and is surprised by the feeling she is experiencing, a need to make him feel better. But no time for that. Never enough time.

  Hayley says, “I’ll be okay. Call you in a day or two, okay? Soon.”

  Sam knows she is more than capable of taking care of herself. “Yeah. Talk soon.”

  Hayley exits the hospital. She contemplates walking. The White House is just under a mile away. The hot, muggy weather has mercifully abated. Spring has resumed. But there isn’t enough time for such luxury. She is inside another Uber within two minutes.

  * * *

  HAYLEY WALKS INTO Kyle Rodgers’s office in the West Wing at half past seven. As usual, she finds paperwork and files that need attention. How did it appear on her desk overnight? Bureaucracy elves? Only one task looms in her mind: confronting Alberto Barrios. She assumes Monroe has done what she had requested and ordered the valet to meet her in the Palm Room, a staging room for West Wing visitors, at nine. Everything hinges on her hunch that James Odom knows the identity of Zamani’s secret client. As the former head of the CIA’s Office of Intelligence Integration, the disgraced deputy director formulated the cooperation of analysts, technical and human intelligence collectors across a spectrum of the US intelligence community. Odom’s offer of a quid pro quo to Hayley—his assistance in exchange for Alberto Barrios’s head—is, in her estimation, a significant indication the bet is a good one.

  Kyle Rodgers strolls into the office an hour after Hayley. Reflective of a more casual, weekend vibe, he wears Carhartt khakis and untucked button-down shirt open at the neck. He seems in better spirits than the day before.

  “I think the worst is behind us,” he says without Hayley prompting. His apparent relief is manifest in his irrepressible grin.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Just a gut feeling. Did you hear about this business over at Savage Road?”

  “Sir?” she asks, playing dumb.

  “Something about one of their contractors going rogue? I’m not sure. Bunch of crazies over there anyway, led by the biggest nut of all.”

  “General Hernandez.” Hayley pauses as she registers what her boss is saying. “The consensus is that Cyber Jihad is this NSA contractor? Russia is off the hook?”

  Rodgers nods. “Thank God, yes. We’ll walk back the war talk. The president is obviously with me there.” Monroe’s senior advisor holds his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “We were this close to blowing up the world!”

  “When is POTUS due downstairs, sir?”

  The president’s senior advisor is positively giddy. “He’s already in the Oval!” He gathers a few papers off his desk and heads for the door. “C’mon. I’m prepping him for a cabinet meeting at ten.”

  Hayley drops what she’s doing on her desk and follows her boss out the door.

  A few moments later, they’re waiting inside the Outer Oval. The president’s secretary is on the phone. Rodgers leans against the door frame leading inside the executive office.

  “When all of this is over, I’m taking three days.”

  Hayley stands next to him. “Where?” she asks absently. Her mind is still wrapped up with Alberto Barrios.

  “Barbados. Three days lying on the beach. I’m doing it.”

  Hayley nods. “Excellent, sir.”

  “I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more than me,” the senior advisor says, moments before the crack of a gunshot thunders from the other side of the door.

  Hayley pushes past a stunned Kyle Rodgers and opens the door leading into the Oval Office. She sees the president of the United States seated behind the Resolute desk, where he has clearly shot himself.

  9

  DEAD-ENDING

  Saturday, 7:48 a.m. The next seconds implode, events collapsing into one another. Hayley enters the room and sees the president slumped down in his chair. Blood splatter covers the drapery behind him. She moves forward, propelled by instincts that command her to give assistance. Before she reaches Monroe, however, Hayley is shoved aside by a phalanx of Secret Service agents who have entered the office only a few seconds after her. One of the agents forces Hayley to the floor and plants his knee on the center of her back. Immobilized, the deeper state operative cranes her neck to watch other agents swarming the president, only to have her head forced down, too. Her line of sight is now limited to the carpeted floor under the couch. Later she will register the half-empty bottle of vodka stashed there. But, in the moment, Hayley experiences the unfolding pandemonium inside the Oval Office exclusively with her ears. The barked commands of senior Secret Service, Kyle Rodgers’s anguished shouting, and the sobs of the president’s secretary all blend into a horror show cacophony.

  Approximately three minutes after the crack of gunshot, she hears what she guesses is the US Secret Service’s Rapid Intervention Safety and Command team rushing into the room with a wheeled stretcher. What Hayley can’t know, given her inability to see the newly arrived team, is that the first responding medical team is from DC Fire and Emergency. Fortunately for the president, the EMS unit had been passing the White House at precisely the same time the Secret Service put out the call and, with more experience in precisely this type of emergency, was prioritized over the on-site RISC unit by the senior agent on detail.

  Assessing what appears to be a single shot to the head, the EMS technicians apply a gauze bandage around the president’s skull to staunch the loss of blood. With the assistance of Secret Service agents, they get Monroe on the MOBI Pro X-Frame stretcher and wheel him out of the Oval Office, west down a corridor that has been cleared by other agents, out of the West Wing, and into an EMS vehicle waiting on West Executive Avenue. Two Secret Service agents climb into the back of the coach to accompany the gravely wounded president. Only after he hears the emergency vehicle on its way—presumably to George Washington University Hospital, the nearest medical facility—does the agent kneeling on Hayley allow her to get up from the floor.

  She bears witness to an Oval Office in the grip of panic. In time, a more orderly process of review and investigation will commence. For now, Hayley Chill is completely ignored by the flood of officials and authorities surging into the room. Retreating from the Oval Office, she heads up the corridor to Kyle Rodgers’s deserted office and closes the door behind her. Her thoughts threaten to overload her ability to process them all. Her potential culpability in driving the president to suicide is too awful to calculate. Right now, in these early minutes after the disaster, Hayley’s recognizes the absolute importance of speaking with Andrew Wilde. Texting news of this magnitude is unthinkable. She connects with Wilde on the third ring.

  “I don’t like talking on phones!” he snaps at her in greeting.

  “Sir, Monroe has shot himself.”

  “What?”

  “Just now. Seated at the Resolute desk.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I’m not sure. There was a lot of blood. I only had a momentary glimpse of the president before being forced to the floor by Secret Service agents.”

  “Christ…”

  Hayley can almost hear Wilde crunching the contingencies over the phone.

  “Sir, what should I do?”

  “Sit tight. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Rafi Zamani—”

  “Not now, damn it!”

  But she persists. “Sir, there could be more attacks planned. Russia—”<
br />
  Wilde interrupts her a second time. “Your mission was to keep Monroe in a box, not put him in a coffin!” His last word is a slap across her face.

  Andrew Wilde disconnects the call. Hayley sits at her desk for a moment, motionless. She feels all-too-familiar anger welling up within her. No time for it. Never enough time.

  * * *

  THE EMS TRUCK carrying the injured president races up Pennsylvania Avenue, bracketed by a frenzied scrum of DC Police patrol cars and Secret Service SUVs. Without street closures that typically precede a presidential motorcade, city traffic soon impedes the progress of the speeding caravan. No amount of wailing sirens and flashing emergency lights can dislodge the gridlocked vehicles. Frantic radio calls from the police patrol cars determine a serious accident at Twentieth Street is the cause of the jam. The driver of the EMS truck abruptly bails left, cutting across lanes to travel west on H Street. Surprised by the maneuver, accompanying Secret Service vehicles attempt to follow the EMS truck but are held up by snarled traffic in the intersection.

  Agents jump out of the lead SUV to open a path for the Secret Service vehicles to pass through the intersection. Racing west on H Street, the agents in the lead SUV can’t see the EMS truck ahead. With the assumption that the paramedics turned right on Twenty-Third Street, which leads directly to GWU Hospital only a few blocks north, the Secret Service agents take that route. After making the turn, however, they still don’t spot the emergency vehicle containing the injured president.

  “Where the fuck is it?” asks the agent behind the wheel of the lead SUV.