The Yellowstone Event (Book 3): A Nation Gone Crazy

by Maloney, Darrell

  “Then where are you?”

  “We just passed the Little Rock city limit sign. We’ve got our GPS locked onto your house and it says we’ll be there in seven minutes.”

  Hannah squealed in glee.

  “Oh my goodness,” Gwen said. “That startled me. I hope you’re not screaming in fright because we’re coming to see you.”

  “Oh, on the contrary, it was a scream of joy.”

  “I was going to give you more notice but Melvyn said to surprise you. He said it would be more fun that way.”

  “Well he’s absolutely right, and I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “You don’t have to put us up. We were able to get a reservation at one of the motels not far from your place.”

  “Nonsense. You call them right now and cancel that reservation before it’s too late to get a refund. I’ll not have my best friend come to town and stay at a darned motel.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Would you like for us to stop and get something for dinner?”

  “Nope. But you can help me cook if you like, and if you’re not too tired from the trip. I was going to start cooking in half an hour or so.”

  “Oh, that would be lovely. We’ll see you in a little bit.”

  Hannah returned to the den and Tony asked, “Just how big was the mouse you saw in there?”

  “What?”

  “The scream.”

  “Oh. It wasn’t a mouse. It was Gwen.”

  “Gwen is in our kitchen?”

  “No, dummy. Gwen was on the phone. They’re in Little Rock and they’re coming to visit.”

  “Really? Great! I thought for sure they got her and you’d never see her again.”

  “That’s the same thing I said.”

  Bud asked, “Is this going to alter our plans?”

  “I don’t see why it would. I was going to stay here a few days anyway. I’ll just have some company.

  “Were you able to get flight reservations?”

  “Nope. They’re all booked for the next week. I asked about after that and she said they don’t have schedules more than a week out now, because they’re trying to get more planes into service and offer even more flights.

  “But she said it didn’t look good.”

  “Did you ask to be put on the standby list?”

  “Yes. She laughed at me. She said the standby list for every one of their flights is two hundred people or more. And she said they’re averaging zero to two no-shows per flight.”

  Bud said, “That’s okay. I’d rather drive anyway. I hate flying. Always have.”

  The doorbell rang and Hannah jumped up and ran to answer it.

  Bud and Tony went to greet their visitors as well and there were plenty of hugs and handshakes to go around.

  Tony walked onto the porch, then headed to the car to help with the luggage with Melvyn right behind him.

  Hannah noticed the old Chevy they were driving and asked, "What happened to your Cadillac?”

  “It was in the garage when the house blew up, I’m afraid. We picked this one up outside of Detroit.

  “It’s a great car despite its age,” Melvyn said.

  “That’s why it took two days to get down here. Melvyn insisted on babying it to avoid problems.”

  “Never drove it over sixty,” Melvyn continued. “People were honking at us constantly. But with a car that’s fifty years old you’ve gotta be careful.

  “But we made it. And looking back, I’ll bet I could have driven this old girl eighty and she’d have handled it with ease.”

  Bud stayed behind in the house because his shoes were in the guest room and he was too lazy to chase them.

  He opened the door and yelled into the front yard.

  “Tony! Get yourself in here, pronto!”

  Chapter 19

  Cable news networks in the United States have catchy slogans like “All the news, all the time,” or “America’s home for news,” or “Headline news, twenty-four seven.”

  But they give themselves way too much credit.

  They don’t tell all the news. Far from it.

  They tell the news their viewers like to hear.

  The liberal news network tells only the news its liberal viewers want to hear.

  The conservative news network tells only the news that puts the conservative movement in a positive light.

  The so-called “independent networks” tell a variety of news, but lean to whichever side its owners or board members happen to be on.

  All of them, without exception, lose their minds when a big story breaks.

  A terrorist bombing, for example, is all they talk about for days.

  Or a hurricane which hits the United States.

  When things like that happen it’s almost impossible to get any news at all other than the big story.

  It borders on ridiculous when they put short pieces of video on continuous loop in the background for hour after hour ad nauseum while the reporters interview each other.

  Because everybody else is sick of them and won’t talk to them anymore.

  That’s one phenomenon that’s taken place in the United States in recent years.

  Another is the habit of people all over the country who, when such a grand news event happens, tune their televisions into their favorite network.

  And then push the mute button.

  It’s a way of having their cake and eating it too. They can see what’s going on as they walk past the television now and then. They can see if there’s anything new.

  But they don’t have to hear the same tired announcers droning on and on about the same tired things.

  The “Yellowstone Event,” as the world was now calling it, was one such event.

  For days now every television station in America had talked of little else.

  When Hannah and Tony walked with Gwen and Melvyn to get their luggage Bud didn’t go because he was walking around in his stocking feet.

  He watched the activity from the doorway instead.

  Until something he saw in the corner of his eye grabbed his attention.

  Something he saw on the television.

  When he yelled for Tony, Tony came running.

  And he walked into his living room just in time to see Bud, leaning over his television and trying to turn the volume back on.

  Tony grabbed the remote control from its usual place on the couch and did it for him.

  Then both men locked eyes on the screen, mesmerized at the sight of C. Hastings Townsend, flanked by several men in gray suits, as they walked up the steps of the Capitol building in Washington.

  It seemed the President had finally succeeded in getting Congress to come back to work.

  And one of the first orders of business of the United States Senate was to form a select committee.

  A select committee to delve into the rumors the federal government had known about Yellowstone rumbling back to life for years.

  Yet still allowed unrestricted growth to go on in both danger zones.

  Congress is a strange organization, run by very strange people.

  They don’t like doing their jobs… to steer their country in the right direction and make laws which benefit the American people.

  They avoid their responsibilities as much as possible, which is why every man, woman and child in America hates them. And most dogs too.

  They spend precious few days each year actually in session, where they argue incessantly back and forth about nitnoy and petty things, while watching the calendar and counting the days when they can take a nice long vacation and go back to their districts.

  They say they’re going back to their districts to reconnect with their constituents and find out how they can help them.

  And every one of them is full of pigeon poop.

  The reality is they don’t give a tinker’s damn about working for their constituents.

  They only care about two things: getting re-elec
ted and taking care of the lobbyists and fat-cat donors who give them big money to get them re-elected.

  That’s why they pay a little bit of lip service to their constituents, and say the pretty things the constituents want to hear.

  And then spend the rest of their breaks from Washington doing fundraisers.

  It’s not a new phenomenon. It’s been that way for a very long time.

  That’s why Congress didn’t like it much when the President recalled them and told them to actually do something.

  Most of them were surly and looking for someone to take it out on.

  The Senate Select Committee on the Yellowstone Event was giving them the opportunity, at least in the upper chamber, to do just that.

  The lower chamber, the House of Representatives, was right behind them.

  As is often the case, both committees would be working at the same time, interviewing the same individuals, asking the same questions.

  Each of them would come to their own conclusions, which might or might not agree.

  And each of them would have their scapegoats.

  The scapegoats would take the fall, even as many of their superiors who either approved things that were illegal or looked the other way would go free.

  It was the Washington way.

  On this particular day, in Senate Meeting Room Two, it was C. Hastings Townsend’s turn in the hot seat.

  And in Little Rock, in Hannah and Tony’s living room, all eyes were glued to the TV.

  Chapter 20

  It turned out Mr. Townsend wasn’t as forthcoming as the senators would have liked.

  He invoked the Fifth Amendment a lot.

  And he forgot a lot of things.

  Dates and faces and names, in particular.

  Shown photographs of Tony and Bud, he claimed not to know them.

  “Are you saying you deny that these men visited you in your office on two separate occasions, Mr. Townsend?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, Senator Bledsoe. I’m saying that they don’t look familiar to me. If they came to visit me I do not remember it.”

  “Does your appointment secretary keep track of the people who visit you in your office?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would it distress you in any way to know that when we walk out of here today I plan to issue a subpoena for those records?”

  “Do what you want, Senator. But our office policy is for my secretary to shred all appointment records at the end of every workday. They no longer exist for the days in question.”

  “Why, exactly, do you shred such documents, Mr. Townsend?”

  “To protect the identities of whistleblowers and undercover operatives who might be doing work for the Department of the Interior. It’s very routine and very above board.”

  “You see, Mr. Townsend, that part puzzles me a bit. Exactly under what circumstances would the Department of the Interior have a need to conduct undercover operations?”

  “I… um… I plead the fifth amendment, Senator.”

  Hannah commented, “So that’s the guy you two dealt with?”

  Bud answered, “Yep. He was the head guy in charge. The big cheese. The one who gave all the orders.”

  “And he’s the guy who had you beaten, Tony?”

  “Yep. Beaten and tortured. They even water boarded me once. I thought I was gonna die. I was hoping I would die.”

  “The bastard,” she said.

  “Here’s a life lesson for you guys,” Bud offered.

  “Don’t ever trust a man who uses an initial for a first name. They cannot be trusted under any circumstances.”

  After three hours of testimony the committee didn’t get anything from C. Hastings Townsend.

  Well, nothing worth using, anyway.

  And certainly nothing they could use to charge him with a crime, and nothing to back up Tony and Bud’s story.

  In the end he walked out of the room a free man. A little frazzled, maybe, but confident in the feeling nothing would happen to him.

  He’d face no jury and serve no time for the people he’d ordered killed. For the people he had tortured and beaten.

  For others he’d terrorized.

  Not even for the lives he destroyed.

  Or the baby who went missing under his watch.

  Bud said, “Tomorrow he’ll be back at his desk, ordering more murders and locking more people up unjustly.”

  His reputation might be a tiny bit soiled, but he’d get past that.

  For C. Hastings Townsend the grilling was over. It was back to business as usual.

  It was the Washington way.

  The Carson home was a bit crowded that night, but it wouldn’t last.

  The following morning Bud and Tony were setting out for Washington, D.C.

  This time they were driving.

  Bud was just fine with that.

  Their mission was to stake out two buildings. One was the Department of the Interior building where, despite C. Hastings Townsend’s faulty memory and his unwillingness to admit it, they did indeed visit him twice.

  The other was the Department of Homeland Security.

  To cover both they’d have to split up.

  But they had no choice.

  They were at a dead end. As they saw it, they had only one chance to find baby Samson and to return him safely.

  That was to find and identify the woman who had Hannah released. The woman who called herself Rebecca.

  “She was obviously in charge,” Hannah maintained. “The others looked to her with deference. Like she was super important to them.”

  “And she was comfortable being alone with you?” Bud asked. “At the end, after everyone else had gone, it was just you and her?”

  “Yes. And my driver, who was waiting outside.”

  “That says to me she’s definitely a mover and a shaker,” Bud said.

  “Is that helpful?”

  “It might well be. It means several things.

  “First of all, you’re absolutely right. She was definitely in charge. If she had the authority to release you just on her say-so, and if she’d personally seen Samson well enough to describe him to you, she was mighty high on the food chain.”

  “And how is that helpful, exactly?”

  “It means she was likely the one who got her orders directly from Townsend. Or, whoever it was at DHS who gave the orders to take you into custody.”

  “Um… okay. Still not understanding how that helps us.”

  “Look, the federal government does shady stuff all the time. They always qualify it by claiming it’s essential for national security or to protect the identities of their operatives.

  “But the reality is they frequently do stuff just because they can.

  “Or because it’s the easiest way to do their job, even if it’s neither moral nor ethical.

  “Or even lawful.”

  “Okay. We knew all that already. But… so?”

  “So they know it’s dirty from the get-go. And because they know it’s dirty they don’t like to keep any kind of written or recorded records that would lead the Inspector General or FBI back to them.

  “So they give their orders and conduct their progress briefings not over the phone. And certainly not by email.

  “They always meet in person.”

  Chapter 21

  “So what’s your plan, Bud?”

  “We split up. We pretend to be tourists. And we camp out in front of our respective buildings and we watch.

  “We watch until we see a woman approach the building. Not just any woman, but a woman that fits Hannah’s description of Rebecca.”

  “And when we see her, can we tackle her and beat her like she had her people beat Hannah? Can I wrap my hands around her throat and tell her I’m going to kill her if she doesn’t take us to my son?”

  “No. We don’t do any of that.

  “We take her photo and let her go.”

  “What? You can’t be serious. You mean we
can’t follow her to see if she leads us to our son?”

  “No. Following her will be the last thing we can do. If she knows we’re onto her she’ll go to ground. She’ll change her appearance. She’ll stop reporting to her boss. She’ll be reassigned to somewhere else and we’ll never see her again.

  “It’s got to be this way. We take her photo and let her go.”

  “Okay, Bud. You’ve lost me again.”

  “I brought a couple of cameras with me when I drove up. One’s an idiot-proof camera in case you can’t use a real one.

  “But they’re both excellent cameras. And they’re not mine. They belong to a photographer friend of mine who’ll castrate me if anything happens to them. So be nice to whichever one you use.

  “Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of options. We don’t know anything about this woman, other than she’s very high up in the food chain and she knows where Samson is.

  “I think our best bet to identify her is to wait until she comes to us.

  “She’s moved on now. The Hannah Carson case is closed. They lost that one. The word got out. But these people have plenty of other irons in the fire, trust me.

  “Especially if she works for DHS and not the Department of the Interior.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning she’s probably already put Hannah and Samson out of her mind. She’s working a different case now.

  “And in all likelihood one of the requirements of her new case is that she has to report to her boss every two or three days and report her progress.”

  The light finally came on in Tony’s head.

  “So… we split up. You take one building and I take the other one. We take photos of every woman we see coming and going from the building that meets Hannah’s description of Rebecca.

  “Then what?”

  “I’m guessing she’s got to report in person at least every seventy two hours. That’s three days.

  “We’ll gather photos for six, just in case we miss her the first time she comes and goes. And also to determine her reporting time.

  “Then Hannah will join us. We’ll get all the photos developed and spread them all out on the hotel bed and let Hannah go through them one by one.

  “If she spots her girl she’ll pull those photos out of the bunch and we’ll toss the rest.