THE ROOSEVELT CONSPIRACY

by Matt James

  This is a wonderful disaster!

  He, once again, forced himself not to smile.

  “Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Durham.”

  “Thank you,” he replied, circling around the front desk.

  Hawk stepped into the nearest elevator and rode it up to the third floor. As soon as he stepped off, he made a left and found himself at the nurse’s station. He waved to Julie, who motioned for him to wait. They had worked together at the casino for a year while she had been in college. Hawk was happy to see that she was the one taking care of Nina.

  “Hey, Hawk,” she said, hanging up a phone. She stepped over. “How are you holding up?”

  The question caught him off guard, but then he realized that she was asking how he was holding up because of what had happened to Nina. It had nothing to do with yesterday’s events. As far as everyone knew, he had nothing to do with any of it.

  “I’m okay. How’s Nina?”

  Julie smiled. “She’s awake—but very tired.”

  “That’s great!” Hawk was enthused that she was conscious. “Can I see her?”

  Julie frowned. “I’m sorry, but she’s only allowed one visitor at a time.”

  Hawk’s breath caught. “Who else is here?” He reflexively groped the pistol at the small of his back, playing it off as an annoying itch.

  “Her uncle,” Julie replied, looking a bit confused.

  Hawk leaned in close. “Nina doesn’t have any family in the area.”

  The nurse’s eyes went wide, and she dove for her phone, presumably to call security. Hawk rushed away. He made sure no one was watching before he drew his weapon. He stopped at room 316, readied his pistol, and charged in. As he had feared, Zietz was here, and he was holding a gun to Nina’s temple.

  “Hawk!” she cried, tears running down her face.

  Nina looked awful, worse than before. The deep bruising on her face and neck had set in. There were obvious signs of strangulation. The shape of a hand was plain to see.

  Zietz’s hand.

  Hawk wanted to pull the trigger and end the wretched man’s life. He had caused Nina so much pain. And for what, money? But Hawk, like his uncle, wasn’t a man of violence. He took solace in the fact that Zietz was too close to miss if he did decide to act. Still, he couldn’t risk the bigger man getting a shot off. If he did, Nina would die.

  He didn’t back down. “Drop the gun, Zietz.”

  “The hero, are we?”

  Hawk shrugged. “At least I’m not you.” He stepped closer. “I’m not a soulless monster.”

  Zietz snarled, but he didn’t move the gun away from Nina’s skull. Hawk needed him to turn his attention on him and off of her. She whimpered, and a second set of tears streaked down her face. Her eyes pleaded for Hawk to help. But he couldn’t do anything without also harming her. There wasn’t a way out of this that he could see.

  Then, it hit him!

  “There’s an entrance into a cave system beneath Devils Tower.”

  It took Zietz a moment to respond. He was trying to, nonverbally, gauge whether Hawk was lying or not.

  “Why should I believe you?” Just for a second, Hawk could see fear in the killer’s eyes. He was afraid of failing.

  “Because,” Hawk said, lowering his pistol, “you don’t have a choice.” He slid the firearm back into his pants. “Leave her alone, and I’ll help you find it.”

  Zietz swung his weapon around on the unarmed Hawk. “Fine, but if you’re lying, then you’re both dead.”

  Both men exited the room and marched down the hallway. Neither held a gun. Zietz followed closely behind Hawk as they passed the nurse’s station. Even if he wanted to, Hawk couldn’t, and wouldn’t, draw his gun on Zietz. He wasn’t that quick of a draw, and the action would only risk Nina’s life further.

  Julie locked eyes with him, concerned. Hawk said his goodbyes and quickly flashed the numbers nine, one, and one. He kept his hands in front of him and out of Zietz’s line of sight. Julie nodded and casually picked up the phone and dialed.

  At worst, the police—the uncorrupted ones—would come and interview Nina. She would tell them what had happened, and that Hawk was now a hostage of Tom Zietz under the orders of Bartholomew Creed. Nina would happily spill the beans.

  At best, there would be units in the area, and Zietz would be apprehended before they arrived at Devils Tower.

  Hawk also had an ace up his sleeve. Zietz didn’t know that Jack and his uncle were already there. And with any luck, they had already found the entrance into the underworld.

  16

  Devils Tower

  Crook County, Wyoming

  “Where the hell is this thing?” Jack cried, turning and kicking a fallen tree limb. It didn’t budge an inch. “Ow, dammit!” He growled and limped away. They had been looking for Chaska’s grandfather’s hidden entrance for nearly two hours and hadn’t found anything except a headache and, possibly, a broken foot.

  Bull watched in silence as his friend stomped around, cursing the existence of everything he saw. Birds, rocks, clouds… Nothing was safe. He had never heard Jack scream so many obscenities back to back. Out of breath, Jack paused his outburst, panting hard.

  To make matters worse, the weather was deteriorating. The air was moist and cool, signaling that a storm was coming. It was a combination that Jack disliked very much. The blend of hot and wet meteorological conditions was low on his list too. There was a delicate balance, somewhere in between, that his sinuses required to work correctly. Even now, he could feel the mucus thickening.

  Bull cleared his throat. “Are you done?” Jack turned around, sweat pouring down his face despite the lowering temperature. “Feel better?”

  “Kind of, yeah,” Jack replied, shrugging.

  “Shall we continue our search?”

  “What for?” His shoulders fell. “There’s nothing here.”

  “That might be true, but we haven’t looked everywhere.”

  Arms out wide, Jack spun in a circle. “Come on, Bull. Where else is there to look? This place has seen hundreds of thousands of visitors over the years. There’s nothing here!”

  Bull smiled. “We must look where others have not.”

  “Um, okay?”

  Jack had learned to trust his partner. Bull knew the land intimately. It didn’t matter what part of the country he was in. He always had a finger on the planet’s pulse. Jack fell in line behind him, and they continued their search.

  “What exactly are you looking for?”

  Bull shrugged. “A hidden entrance.”

  “No, shit, really?”

  He was ignored.

  “All we need to do is discover what others have not.”

  Jack skidded to a stop and pushed a surprised Bull into cover behind a thick pine tree. He dove behind another one eight feet away. Bull didn’t see what had spooked him.

  He told his friend what he had just discovered. “How ’bout Zietz and Hawk?”

  Bull’s eyes opened wide, and he leaned out from behind the tree. Higher up the sloping terrain, the two rangers watched Zietz and Hawk walk side by side. Neither man was brandishing a weapon, nor were the three men coming up behind them. Jack knew they were armed, though. A variety of armaments could fit beneath their heavy, black trench coats. He guessed that they each had some type of sub-compact rifle—maybe something with a folding stock.

  “What the hell is Hawk doing?” Jack asked, voice low.

  Bull quietly shook his head. He didn’t know either.

  Jack had a dozen other questions, but they would have to wait. The only thing he truly cared about was rescuing Hawk from the clutches of a murderous psychopath. Straight ahead of them was a vertical rise of stone with a dense thicket of shrubs at its base. The cliff face wasn’t navigable without proper climbing gear and would have to be circumvented to get to Hawk. Fortunately for them, Bull kept some supplies in his truck—namely a pair of small Maglites and a backpack stocked with a first-aid kit and other survival equipment. It was
n’t dark enough to need the flashlights yet.

  Jack looked up at the thickening cloud cover. We’ll need them soon, though.

  It would be just him and Bull against Zietz and his team. The odds were stacked against them. They needed a way to separate Hawk from his captors without getting anyone killed.

  “Okay,” Jack said, thinking quickly, “we need to take the high ground and force Zietz and his goons toward the cliff. Hopefully, Hawk will take the hint and scram.”

  Bull nodded, and they hurriedly headed off. Staying low, the pair ran right. The plan—a risky one—was to come up from behind and above the others. Getting there unseen would be the hardest part. It was going to take time, an insane amount of stealthy patience, and precisely one metric shit-ton of luck. Jack had left most of his patience behind when he retired from the military. Now, he was more of a gung-ho kind of guy. As far as luck was concerned, he seemed to have plenty of that available still.

  It’ll run out someday.

  A crack of lightning gave Jack hope. If the weather continued to get worse and worse, it might provide them with the concealment they needed. They kept as many trees and bushes between them and their target as they could without losing sight of them. It only took ten minutes of movement before the first droplet of cold rain struck the ground. Then, another—and another.

  It rapidly turned into a substantial, chilling downpour. Jack and Bull were drenched, but so were the others. He doubted these guys had the training he and Bull did. Jack had been stuck outside in a rain shower like this too many times over the years. He hated it, but he knew it well. He knew precisely how to use it to his advantage, and he understood how someone with less training would react.

  Poorly.

  The three newbies fanned out behind Hawk and Zietz with a hundred feet of uneven terrain in between them. The guy nearest to Jack was the centermost one. He was a small guy and had fallen back a bit. He had become easy prey for someone with Jack’s abilities, especially in conditions like this. He signaled for Bull to hang back a bit. He drew his FNS-9C and pistol-whipped “Tiny Tim,” bashing him over the head with authority. Bull quickly scooped up the man’s limp form and dragged him behind a tree.

  The goon to their left was next. Jack had planned on doing the same thing but was forced to hit the dirt when the guy turned his way. Luckily, the wind had picked up. It buffeted a gale of rain right into the second one’s face, blinding him momentarily.

  Jack took the opportunity and ran with it—literally. He jumped to his feet and drove his shoulder into the unsuspecting man’s chest. They both fell, but it was Jack who landed on top, and when he did, he leaned into him good. With the wind knocked out of him, Tiny Tim’s friend did nothing to defend himself from a trio of hard rights. The cold rain felt good on Jack’s swelling knuckles.

  Number three was a reasonable distance away. Luckily, Bull wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty when there wasn’t another option. Add in the fact that his nephew’s life was the one at stake, and—

  Ouch, Jack thought, shuddering as he watched Bull shove his target headfirst into a nearby pine tree. And just like that, there was only one bad guy left standing. Without a second thought, Jack took off at a sprint. He only had eyes for one man.

  Tom “Bigfoot” Zietz.

  He pumped his arms and churned his legs as hard as he could. Reaching a sprint, Jack lowered his right shoulder a little, planning on taking the larger man out as he had just done to Tiny Tim’s buddy. Unfortunately, the wet ground made Jack’s footfalls noisier than usual. Also, Zietz wasn’t an idiot.

  He felt the attack coming and simply stepped out of the way. Jack reached for Zietz’s jacket and snagged its left-hand pocket. The jerking motion was enough for Zietz’s shot to go wide. Luckily, Jack wasn’t alone. Bull, who was somewhere in between Jack and Zietz’s size, collided with the former cop. The duo went spiraling to the earth and slid for a few feet. Zietz swiftly and violently reacted to the assault with one of his own. He got in a pair of strikes before Jack crashed into everyone. All three of them went rolling and sliding in different directions.

  Sitting up, Jack noticed that Zietz no longer had his pistol. It was their chance to finish it. But then Bigfoot had to go and draw a second weapon.

  Jack thought about pulling his gun free but ditched the idea and shouted, “Scatter!” He zigged and zagged, doing his best to dodge Zietz’s bullets. If the other man had been an alligator, Jack would’ve survived. Regrettably, Zietz wasn’t some dinosaur-era reptile, though, he owned the disposition of one.

  “This way!” Jack yelled, waving the Durhams along.

  “No!” Hawk called back, “there’s noth—”

  Jack shook his head. “No time to argue!”

  “Jack, stop!”

  He didn’t listen to Hawk’s warning, and he nearly tumbled off the thirty-foot-high cliff. Multiple sets of hands found his body and pulled him back. Bull and Hawk had come to his aid.

  “I tried to tell you,” Hawk said. “There’s nothing here.”

  He was just about to thank them when he noticed something. The shooting had stopped. They turned around and looked on in horror as Zietz released his gun’s empty magazine. He reached into his jacket and procured another. With nowhere to go, and horrible footing to boot, Jack drew his pistol and spun back around. He’d just got a crazy idea. Even if they engaged Zietz in battle, they would all be shooting uphill while tumbling down it.

  “We need to jump.”

  “Jump?” Hawk shouted. “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes, I am.” Jack sent a handful of rounds Zietz’s way as a distraction. Holstering his pistol, he grabbed both men’s shirt sleeves and yanked them along as his feet left the ground. “Aim for the bushes!”

  While in midair, one of Zietz’s bullets pierced the flesh of Jack’s left shoulder. He cringed and grabbed at the injury. The trio fell feet first and crashed into the shrubbery below. But, oddly, they didn’t stop when they hit the ground. In fact, they didn’t hit any ground at all. Jack was the first one to smash through a dirt-covered, wooden partition. He was bombarded and beaten by splintering shrapnel—his flesh cut in several places. But it was nothing a little Neosporin and a lot of pain killers couldn’t fix.

  He looked up and witnessed the branches bend back into place and cover the entry. The shaft kept going. Jack and Bull latched onto one another again, like they had done in the river at Yellowstone. In the pitch-black, both men groped for the third member of their party. They each snared Hawk’s shirt and held on for dear life.

  Jack felt the ground reappear beneath him and slowly begin to level out. He let go of the Durhams and held his hands out to either side, bracing himself. Eventually, the passage turned into a slide of sorts. The stone beneath him felt smooth to the touch. Years of rainwater had drained through the antiquated barrier and had eroded the tunnel. However, the natural wear didn’t do anything to prevent Jack from developing the worst “rugburn” of his life. It was, quite literally, a pain in his ass.

  Finally, they skidded to a grinding halt and tumbled atop of one another. Jack morphed into the over-tenderized meat at the center of a Durham sandwich.

  “Get…off,” Hawk moaned, unlucky to be the one on the bottom.

  Jack couldn’t move until Bull did. Once he climbed off, they each clicked on their handheld flashlights and helped the younger man to his feet. Jack decided against using his pistol-mounted light unless he needed it. They were powerful but lacked sufficient battery life. Wheezing heavily, Hawk softly patted them both on the shoulder, earning a grimace of pain from the retired soldier.

  “Oh, damn. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Hawk begged, looking sick.

  Jack went down to one knee and waved him off, biting his lip, eyes watering. “It’s, um, fine. You didn’t, ugh…” He took a deep breath. “I’m fine. Gonna hurt in the morning, though.”

  Hawk leaned in close to his uncle and whispered, “Is he going to be okay?”

  Bull nodded. “I’ve seen hi
m in worse shape before.”

  Turning away from the Durhams, Jack’s flashlight inadvertently found something interesting. He stepped toward it with Bull and Hawk close behind. With Bull’s added light, they made a monumental discovery.

  “Is that a ladder?” Hawk asked, igniting his own small flashlight.

  “It sure is,” Jack replied, amazed. “Would’ve been nice if we had found it earlier.” He rotated his shoulder and cringed.

  Someone had installed an archaic rope ladder to the shaft wall. It was old, narrow, and held simple wooden slats between the two heavy-duty, braided ropes.

  “Think it’ll hold our weight?” Hawk asked.

  “Probably not,” Jack replied, being honest. He turned and smiled. “Either way, I’m not ready to try, quite yet.” Behind them was something more encouraging, considering what awaited them up above. It was a second, naturally formed passageway.

  “Why not?” Hawk asked, still inspecting the ladder.

  Bull turned and answered, seeing it too. “Because Jack thinks he’s found another way out.”

  Jack wasn’t sure of anything. What he did know was that he had discovered something. But what?

  Zietz couldn’t believe what he had just seen. Seconds ago, Jack had pulled both of his friends over the edge of what Zietz knew to be a treacherous cliff. At a minimum, the men would break their legs—probably even their backs. A fall like that—one from thirty feet up—would more than likely kill them. He hoped it did too. It would solve a lot of his problems.

  If it did, he could head back to the hospital and deal with Nina. With those four people silenced, Zietz’s world could go back to normal. He had only caught a glimpse of the news earlier and was happy to see that he wasn’t in any of the footage. His name had been mentioned, but that was it. Regardless, he still needed Roosevelt’s letter. And he would happily retrieve it from Jack Reilly’s body.