by D. J. Molles
Daniels was not a chess player, but he imagined that this must be what it felt like when you executed a winning strategy, and things fell into place perfectly.
He’d used Mosquero to get to Tully. Then he’d used Tully to lure Tex out of his bunker. Once they had him strung up, it was just a matter of finding the right buttons to push, which, in this case, was small populations of helpless civilians (Mosquero again).
Jesus, but the Coordinators were a bunch of Captain Americas.
Did they really think they could save everyone?
Maybe Lee Harden would be different. Daniels would have to wait and see. The usage of a civilian populace had been so successful getting Tully and Tex to cooperate, he’d figured, Hell, why not try it again? Sure, it wasn’t very original. But then again, if a plan’s not broke, don’t fix it.
One by one, the dominoes were falling.
Tully, then Tex, and soon Lee Harden.
And after that?
Mateo Ibarra.
Let the stupid wetback think that Daniels was crawling at his feet for oil.
Daniels had plans of his own.
In one masterfully executed stroke, Daniels was solving several problems at once.
And he couldn’t wait to see the look on Lineberger’s face when President Briggs handed him an official officer’s commission—at or above Lineberger’s own rank, of course.
That would almost be reward enough.
The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open.
Two of his operatives waited for him outside. Two black Tahoes sat with their engines running.
The two operatives fell into step with him as he strode towards the rear Tahoe.
“Any trouble with him?” Daniels asked.
“No, sir. He’s quiet.”
Daniels nodded. “We’re heading to Triple Rocker Ranch. Get on the horn with our units on the ground there and tell them we’re enroute. Get a status update on the civilians. Make sure everything is calm and settled. Wouldn’t want anyone getting uppity and fucking our plans up, huh?”
The two operatives acknowledged. One opened the rear door of the SUV for him. Daniels climbed in, and then the two operatives jogged off and got into the lead Tahoe. The two black SUVs immediately started moving again, heading south for Triple Rocker Ranch.
Daniels twisted and looked into the rear of the SUV, at the form that was hogtied, gagged, and hooded in the back. “Tex, I know that you must be horrendously uncomfortable. We’re on our way right now, and when we get to where we’re going, we’ll get you a little more comfortable, alright?”
He didn’t expect an answer.
Tex wasn’t able to answer with the gag in his mouth.
Daniels regretted having to transport him in this manner, but he was under no illusions as to how dangerous Tex was, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. Once they got to Triple Rocker Ranch, he needed to put Tex on display. Lee would be watching. And Daniels needed to prove that he held the cards that he claimed he did.
Daniels turned forward again, and looked out the window at the dusty Texas landscape as it flew by. In the distance, a cluster of shapes lounged in the shade beneath a copse of trees and watched the two SUVs roll by.
It was kind of like a safari out here.
Daniels began to whistle a tune.
***
“You can’t do this,” Menendez said, following Lee into the armory.
Lee brushed past another soldier who was working on a wounded man lying on a crate of grenades. He went all the way to the back of the room, where the gun racks were held. There weren’t many left. But Lee wasn’t here for them.
He stopped and turned to Menendez. “I’m not doing anything.” Then he stooped down and grabbed a large container, pulling the lid off and revealing a collection of pre-loaded magazines. He grabbed two of them.
“Then why are you grabbing fresh gear?” Menendez demanded.
“Because I’m going to go have a look.”
“At Triprock?”
“Yes.”
Menendez shook his head. “The fuck you need mags for then? You gonna storm the goddamned castle and rescue everyone by yourself? Shit, I knew you was crazy but this is off the charts.”
Lee smiled, but it was a bleak thing. “These are just to get me there. I need to put eyes on. Okay? I need to see if this Cornerstone fuck has what he says he has.”
“He’s trying to lure you into a trap.”
“Maybe. I’ll see about that too.”
“He’s just trying to get you out in the open, and then he’s gonna take you down, Lee. Don’t fall for this bullshit.”
“I’m not falling for anything.”
Menendez gritted his teeth, and made a growling noise. He turned as though he was going to leave Lee alone, and then spun back around. “What do you think’s gonna happen when you get there? When you scope it out? Huh?”
“I’m gonna see if he’s got what he says he’s got,” Lee reiterated.
“Yeah.” Menendez nodded, putting his hands on his hips. “You’re gonna see exactly what he wants you to see. You’re gonna see a bunch of sad little civilians, lined up. Waiting for someone to come save them. And then what, Lee? You just gonna walk away from that?”
“If I need to.”
“If that was true, you wouldn’t even be going.”
Lee held both magazines in one hand, and he began tapping them on his thigh, staring at Menendez.
“He wants you to look at their faces. He knows that if you do that, he’s got you.”
All the sudden, Lee wanted to hurt Menendez. He couldn’t say why, only that it felt like a reflex. And it was only the pure lack of logic to it that held Lee back, but his hand flashed out and hit Menendez in the chest—not hard, but enough to push him back.
Menendez seemed surprised for a second, and then his eyes blazed, and he looked like he might come back at Lee and start swinging. Lee stuck out his chin, inviting it.
“And what do you want me to do then?” Lee demanded.
The soldiers on the other end of the room watched them, and Lee saw they were trying to figure whether this was something they should intervene in, or leave alone.
Menendez’s expression softened. “Don’t go. Stay with us. Fuck them. Fuck Daniels and his plan, and fuck the civilians.”
“And what about Tex?” Lee grated. “Fuck him, too?”
“You know as well as I do that Tex doesn’t want you to give into this shit.”
Lee pushed a breath through his clenched teeth. He said nothing, because he knew that Menendez was right. Tex would want Lee to ignore this.
“You can do more good with us,” Menendez pressed on. “Triprock was already lost—you said so yourself! You and Abe left them, and told them to get out, and they didn’t listen, and that’s on them, not you.”
But there was a difference, and Lee knew it. You could tell someone to stay out of danger, and maybe you could wash your hands of it at that point. But if the person was in danger, and it was in your power to stop it, what kind of a person were you if you still turned your back on them?
This isn’t who you are, the raging part of Lee argued. You left all of that savior-complex bullshit behind you. It died with Julia.
But then why did he feel sick to his stomach at the prospect of turning his back on Triprock?
And why did the idea of going hold so much allure?
Menendez could sense that he had Lee questioning himself, and he pressed his advantage. “Stay with us. Keep fighting.”
Lee felt the tension suddenly dissipate out of his shoulders.
His mouth opened and he let out a short sigh.
He brought his hand up to Menendez’s shoulder. “Take care of my dog, will you?”
Then he pushed past the man, and headed towards the door. The other soldiers in the room looked down at the men they were supposed to be helping, as though they were deaf and hadn’t overheard anything.
At the door, Menendez called after him.
“You want to die, don’t you?”
Lee stopped in the doorway. His heart thudding like a burglar caught in the act. And then, without responding, he pushed through and out into the hall.
A quick glance to his right showed Breckenridge, standing in the hall outside of the control room, watching him. Lee turned his back on him, and kept walking. All the way down. To the common area. To the cot where Deuce lay.
A soldier with a bandage around his head and a bloody patch showing through where his ear should’ve been, sat next to Deuce. To Lee’s surprise, Deuce let the soldier pet him. Deuce had always been so skittish around strangers.
But…
Deuce was a survivor.
And he’d been in this bunker with these men for weeks.
Lee didn’t know how much dogs thought, how much they reasoned. But he thought that perhaps Deuce hadn’t expected Lee to ever come back. Perhaps he’d figured it would be best to find a new human.
And for a moment, standing there and watching the two of them, Lee wanted to lie down on that cot, and close his eyes, with the familiar scent of the dog’s fur in his nose, and go to sleep, and maybe wake up someplace else entirely. Someplace where no one else was.
Some place with a lot of green grass and a sun that warmed you, but never baked the life out of you.
Some place that didn’t exist.
Lee stepped up to the cot, and the soldier looked up. He straightened and looked self-conscious.
“Captain Harden,” the soldier blurted. “Is…is this your dog?”
Lee bent down, then settled his knees on the ground.
Deuce looked up at him, his ears perked. He leaned towards Lee and licked at his face a few times, brushing his chin with warmth.
Lee put his scarred hands up, sinking his dirty fingers into the dog’s fur on either side of his head, scratching behind his ears. And Lee felt himself slipping away. Like this reality was just a shoreline that a riptide might pull him away from.
“No,” Lee eventually said. “He’s never been anybody’s dog.”
“He seemed pretty happy to see you,” the soldier pointed out.
Lee kept scratching behind the dog’s ears. A sensation that had roots spreading down to the parts of Lee where he never bothered to go anymore. “Yeah.” He looked at the soldier. “He seems to like you, too.”
The soldier smiled. “I’ve been feeding him. I like dogs. My family always had a bunch of dogs. You know. Back before.”
Right.
Back before.
Lee removed his fingers from Deuce’s fur. Retracted his hands.
Deuce watched him, his golden eyes taking in Lee’s face in that oddly perceptive way. Like he knew what Lee was doing, even though Lee wasn’t sure of it himself.
He grabbed his rifle, and pressed himself up onto one knee, the rifle butt braced on the ground. He nodded to the soldier. “I’m gonna go. You keep taking care of him while I’m gone. Okay?”
“Don’t you want him to go with you?”
Lee shook his head. “No. And he needs to heal. Look after that wound. See if you can’t get some clean bandages for him. And make sure it doesn’t get infected. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Pearson, sir. Julian Pearson.”
“Alright, Julian.” Lee stood up. “You take care of him.”
“Will do, captain.”
Lee turned and left. He thought he might’ve heard Deuce whine, but it was hard to say over the murmur of conversation in the room.
Lee stopped at the control room.
Breckenridge and Menendez were both inside. Their quiet but heated conversation came to an abrupt halt, and they looked at him expectantly.
“Any teepios topside?” Lee asked.
Breckenridge blinked a few times, then turned his attention to the monitors that showed the various views of the outside world around the bunker entrance. From Lee’s vantage point off to the side, the pictures weren’t all that clear, but he saw the shapes of the two technicals, and the bodies around them.
Nothing moved.
Breckenridge looked back. “All’s quiet. From what I can see.”
Lee nodded. “I’m taking one of the technicals.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
Lee ignored him. “Menendez, you remember the code?”
“One-five-three-nine-eight-zero,” Menendez recited. “We’ve already used it to get the bunker defenses back.”
Lee nodded. “Keep a look out for Abe, too. When he comes back.”
Menendez’s face looked scrunched and unhappy. “Right.”
Lee considered things as he looked at them. “If there’s a way out, I’ll come back.”
Breckenridge looked uncomfortable. Menendez only nodded.
Lee rode the elevator topside. The doors opened and he stepped back out into the hot Texas morning. The air was heavy and scalding, and yet, as Lee walked to the technical, he found it easier to breathe than he had in the bunker.
TWENTY-FIVE
─▬▬▬─
CHAIN OF COMMAND
Sam trudged through a soup of his own weariness, and his uniform clung to him, dirty and sweaty and used up.
His socks felt like slimy coatings inside of his boots. His mouth tasted dusty, and for the first time, he felt like drinking some of the horrible brew that the soldiers concocted.
They’d released him from his After Action Report only moments ago, at eleven in the morning.
He walked out of the interrogation room of the Sheriff’s Office, and gave it a look over his shoulder that was both exhausted and disdainful. He didn’t care for the fact that this was a room where they used to interrogate criminals, but he supposed they used what they had around here.
He left the Sheriff’s Office and walked a few blocks down to the high school.
But his mind would not release him.
His mind pulled him ever onwards through his desire to go back to Squad Four’s Underworld and get some sleep.
He walked through the halls of the former high school until he reached the place where they had erected their temporary hospital, and there he found one of the nurses.
Sam stood in front of the teacher’s desk that had been wheeled out into the middle of a hallway to serve as a receiving area. The nurse sat there behind it, staring up at him with bright curiosity and helpfulness, and he thought that he could spend the rest of the day just hanging around with her.
“Sir?” she said.
“What?” Sam drew in a breath, as though waking.
“I said, is there something I can help you with?”
“Yeah. I need to speak to Sergeant Loudermouth.”
“He’s resting right now. He had a long night.”
Sam actually laughed.
The nurse’s smile waxed somewhat confused.
Sam waved it off. “Nevermind. What about Doc Trent? Is he still in?”
“Not normally, but as it so happens, he’s been locked up in his office all morning and hasn’t left.” She frowned. “But he asked not to be disturbed. And he’s not technically on duty. Doctor Hughes is, though. Would you like to speak with him?”
Sam leaned on the desk, for no other reason than he was tired. He shook his head. “No. I’d like to speak to Doc Trent.”
“Maybe I can leave a message?”
Sam sighed. “Look. Ma’am. I don’t want to be a dick. But I need to talk to Doc Trent. Now, you can either show me where Doc Trent is, or I can just go around opening all the doors until I find him. And, no offense, but there’s probably not much you can do about that.”
The nurse bristled, and her pleasant expression fully soured.
Sam’s fleeting fantasy of spending the day relaxing in the glory of her presence fled him. But he was not to be deterred. Partially because he was too tired for bullshit, and partially because he was too keyed up from what he had witnessed. He meant what he said.
“Well,” the nurse said, standing up. “Come with me. B
ut if Doctor Trent gets mad, I’m going to blame it on you.”
Sam followed her, thinking, If Doc Trent gets mad, that will be the least of my worries.
She led him down the hall a ways, to a portion of the school that looked like it had formerly been the domain of the faculty. She pushed into one glass-walled main office, and then stopped at a door on the other side.
Sam looked around, wondering if this was the principal’s office.
Interesting.
Back when things like schools had existed, and Sam had been in one, he’d never been to the principal’s office. He’d never been to detention. He’d never gotten a bad grade. He was roundly unpopular. The less enlightened of his peers would harass him verbally about being from the Middle East. The more enlightened ones just ignored him and considered themselves merciful for doing so.
The thought of things like that made him want to laugh again. The ridiculousness of the things that had once been his entire world.
Now, standing in dirty, scraped up fatigues with the smell of gunsmoke clinging to his skin, and violence curdling in his heart, he could barely even recognize that former iteration of himself.
He’d once had excellent college prospects.
Now he had bodies.
Not that having bodies on you made you a badass. Simply that it was a horribly poignant dividing line between what he once was and what he was now.
The nurse knocked on the door. “Doctor Trent, there’s a…soldier here to see you.”
Sam dragged his attention back to the door, and to the pretty young woman knocking on it. For a brief moment, he thought about asking her to hang out with him. But then he remembered that she was probably ten years his senior, and what on earth were they going to do together?
Besides, despite his best efforts to not be a dick, he’d kind of been a dick.
The door flew open, and Doc Trent drew himself up as though loading a rebuke, but then looked at Sam, and frowned as recognition came to his eyes.
“Oh. Angela’s kid. Right?”
Sam didn’t have the energy to be defensive. “Sure.”