Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed

by Molles, D. J.

  Briggs nodded, his eyes widening as that probability in his mind suddenly bloomed like black mold, morphing into the inevitable truth. “It’s Lee Harden. That’s who it is.”

  Javier glanced about like he thought this was a joke. “Mister President…No one has caught wind of Lee Harden or any of his compatriots since we toppled the United Eastern States.”

  Briggs’s roiling ire suddenly stilled, like being in the eye of a storm. He straightened. Drew his shoulders back. “You think I’m being paranoid?”

  Javier dodged that question. “You asked for probabilities, sir. I believe that Lee Harden still being alive, and furthermore mounting an assault on one of our outposts is…less probable.”

  Briggs growled low in his throat, shaking his head. “You see, Javier, I disagree with you. You don’t know this man like I do. I’ve been dealing with his fuckery for years. Years. I’m not jumping at shadows. This is…” Briggs gave a savage smile. “This is just like him. It stinks of him.”

  Javier chose his words carefully. “What could Lee Harden possibly have to gain by assaulting Triprock?”

  “He’s a madman,” Briggs snapped. “You can’t put logic to his motivations. He’s obsessed with me. He’s obsessed with undermining everything that I’ve tried to build here.” Briggs began tapping a finger rapidly on the table top, the rhythm of it a metronome to his wild thoughts. “He tried to build a nation to fight me, and I beat him at that. He knows that he can’t win in a straight fight. So he’s trying to bleed me dry. He doesn’t even care if he wins or not—as long as I lose.”

  “We’re not even sure that he’s still alive, sir.”

  “No. I’m not making that mistake again. I’ve made it before and it’s bitten me in the ass. Until I have confirmation that he’s dead—by which I mean his fucking head with a bullet hole between the eyes—then I’m going to assume that he’s still alive.”

  Javier shifted his weight from foot to foot. Clasped his hands behind his back. “Well, sir…if that is the assumption that we’re operating on, then what should we anticipate as Lee Harden’s next move?”

  Briggs snatched the chair out from the head of the table and flopped into it, staring into the middle distance, his mind conjuring a hellish image of the madman that was so obsessed with destroying everything Briggs had created.

  But what would Lee Harden do? What was his next move? What did Briggs know about this man?

  “Insane or not,” Briggs said, his voice lower, pensive. “Lee Harden is good at one thing: manipulating people. It’s his training. He was trained to go into a populace and get them all to work together for a common goal.” Briggs looked thoughtfully at the ceiling, a finger on his lips. “He goes in, convinces people that I’m the devil, and arms them. Convinces them to rebel against me.”

  Javier appeared unperturbed by this possibility. “If he chooses to harry a few outposts, it’s really quite inconsequential to us. Greeley is still relatively secure, and now that we’ve begun our conscriptions, we’ll be well defended against any outward attack that he could mount.”

  Briggs shook his head. “It won’t be an outward attack. He’s not stupid. Insane, yes, but not stupid. He would never try to just barge in and invade Greeley.” Briggs lapsed into a silence for a long moment, his mind gradually connecting dots according to the “facts” as he believed them.

  As he connected those dots, a deep frown settled over his brow.

  “Sabotage,” Briggs grunted. His eyes snapped back into focus, peering at Javier. “You’ve already begun the conscription from The Tank?”

  “Yes, sir. That began at first light this morning.”

  “I want you to stop it.”

  Javier blinked rapidly. “Stop it, sir?”

  “I don’t want any of those people to be given a gun. Yet. I want you to gather our best interrogators, and I want them to question every motherfucker that we’ve taken in within the past two weeks—including everyone from The Tank.”

  “You believe Lee Harden is going to try to infiltrate Greeley?”

  Briggs snorted. “No, not himself. But some of his true believers. I can buy that for a dollar.” Briggs nodded to himself, becoming surer by the second. “He’ll have sent someone here to try to start an uprising. And I want to find out who the fuck that is, and I want to put them in the goddamn ground.”

  ***

  Griffin’s army had driven through the night and arrived in Texas by dawn. But it wasn’t until almost noon that Griffin had his growing fears confirmed.

  As the sun had arced into the sky and gave Griffin a reminder that the Texas sun was not to be fucked with, he’d retreated into the refinery—the last known location of the rebels.

  Right around the time Griffin had been setting up outside of Fort Bragg, preparing to invade North Carolina, this particular refinery had been wrested out of the hands of the Nuevas Fronteras cartel, and taken over by elements from the United Eastern States.

  Griffin was aware of this—he’d received the intelligence reports after they’d lost two birds and a squad of Cornerstone operatives to whatever the hell had gone down between Lee Harden and Mateo Ibarra, the head of the cartel.

  But the place was a ghost town now.

  He’d approached with due caution, sending in several assault teams to clear the massive collection of structures. It had taken them a while. They’d gone slow and deliberate, initially fearing an ambush from people, and then, as the reality that the place was abandoned became clear to them, they began to inch along slowly, checking for booby traps.

  There were neither rebels nor booby traps in the refinery.

  There was, however, still electricity running to it. And electricity provided air conditioning. Which Griffin was extracting as much pleasure from as he could manage, with his gut sinking and his concerns mounting in his deadlocked, puzzled brain.

  But, hey…air conditioning.

  He stood in a small office that must’ve been the foreman’s back when the refinery had things like that. His armor lay, inside out, draped across a desk, drying out. His helmet lay next to it, the pads inside still dark from Griffin’s sweat.

  Were you here, Lee? Griffin wondered as he looked around the room and drank from a water bottle to try to replace what he’d lost. Did you come here after Butler? Or did you just run?

  Running didn’t sound like Lee.

  Someone had been here, though. Griffin was positive about that. He could smell their habitation in the nooks and crannies of small rooms like this. He could smell their fading body odors, and the smells of their sweat-and-salt stained clothes, even though the clothes were no longer there.

  And whoever had been here had left recently. Which seemed an awful big coincidence to Griffin for it not to be Lee Harden.

  Lee had been here. And then he’d left.

  But why? Why give up your one resource? Why throw away the one ace in your pocket?

  He heard the footsteps coming down the grated walkway outside the office. He didn’t move as he perceived them, just kept staring at the room around him, mulling over the possibilities. Wondering what he was missing.

  The footsteps stopped at the open door to the foreman’s office.

  “Captain Griffin, sir.”

  “What.” Griffin didn’t bother to turn. He knew who it was.

  Lieutenant Ron Paige stepped up to Griffin’s side. Even without looking at him, Griffin could see unwelcome news on the horizon. He could tell by the tone of Paige’s voice, just in the three words he’d spoken.

  Paige didn’t mince his words. He laid it out plain and simple. “Holding tanks are bone dry. There’s not a fucking gallon of any refined fuel left in this place. Even the crude oil’s been drained off.” A discomfited sigh. “And the system’s been sabotaged.”

  Griffin had no strong reaction to this. He’d been expecting it. He planted his hands on his hips and turned to look at Paige. “What do you mean by ‘sabotaged’?”

  “Honestly, I don’t even know.
Pulowski’s from the Engineering Corps and he said the word ‘sabotaged’ so I just repeated that to you.”

  Griffin gave Paige a flat smirk. “That’s very helpful.”

  Paige shrugged. “What do you want from me? I shoot things. I don’t do engineering.”

  “What about the offshore rigs? Are they still viable?”

  “Well,” Paige shifted his weight. “I’d love to be able to have info on that, except for there’s no way to get to the rigs. There’s a dock out back that looks like it had some boats, but…no boats.”

  “Well, I guess that figures, now doesn’t it?”

  Paige nodded. Swiped a bead of sweat from his brow. “I may be just a humble ground pounder, and know nothing about high level strategy, but from my layman’s perspective it appears we’ve been denied resources.”

  Griffin gave a more genuine smile this time. Because what the hell else were you going to do in these situations? Get pissed and yell? Sometimes you just had to see the humor in these things. Sometimes it was hard to find, but Griffin and Paige were quite practiced in finding it amongst all the bullshit. They were like humor cactuses.

  “Well, that’s a very astute observation for a ground pounder.”

  “I know. They should give me your job.”

  Another set of footfalls became clear, and Griffin and Paige both waited expectantly, until Mr. Smith came stomping into the room. He did not look like he was capable of seeing the humor in the situation. He looked quite angry.

  “There you are!” Mr. Smith spat. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Griffin’s sense of humor dried up under the arid suck of Mr. Smith’s presence. “Well. You found me.”

  “There’s no fuel. The tanks or completely fucking empty.”

  “I’m aware.”

  Mr. Smith arched his eyebrows. “And the system’s been shut down, and our guys don’t know how to get it back up and running again. Did you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “You just gonna stand there?”

  Griffin slowly turned himself to Mr. Smith. “As opposed to what? Running around and getting pissed about circumstances beyond our control? Getting all flabbergasted because our opponent had half a brain? You seem to be doing a good job of that.”

  Mr. Smith’s face reddened. Not so much at the jibe, Griffin detected, but the fact that it had been done in front of an “underling.” Mr. Smith’s eyes jagged to Paige, and it didn’t seem to help the situation that Paige was smiling at him.

  Griffin watched the Cornerstone man with a sort of clinical curiosity. Mr. Smith was somewhat volatile, but he wasn’t an idiot. He did seem to be easy to fluster, but he also knew when his chain was being yanked, and he knew how to shut it down.

  Mr. Smith relaxed himself with a deep breath. “Alright. Glad we’re all up to speed then. Have you uncovered any evidence as to who was here?”

  Griffin shook his head. “Whoever it was didn’t leave much behind. Certainly nothing we could use to identify them with. But I think we can reasonably assume it was an element loyal to the United Eastern States. And if I were to place a bet, I’d say that it was Lee.”

  “Why?”

  “Why would I bet it was Lee?” Griffin swept his gaze around the room. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose you had to have known the man. He’s fucking stubborn as a mule. One of those fight-to-the-death types. Assuming he did make it out of Butler, he would have come here. And it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to stay. He’d know this refinery would be our next objective. He’d know he couldn’t hold it.”

  “So, instead,” Mr. Smith offered. “He chooses to deny the enemy resources. Takes whatever he can, sabotages the rest.”

  “Right.” Griffin leaned back and sat on the edge of the desk next to his armor. “Question is, what’s next? What does he do after that?”

  “Takes the money and runs,” Paige put in. “So to speak.”

  “Where?” Griffin asked. “Can’t go back east. South is Mexico, and a cartel that wants to skin him alive.”

  “West?” Mr. Smith suggested.

  Griffin shrugged. “Possible. But he’s gotta know at this point that the west coast didn’t fare any better than the east coast. LA to Seattle is a fucking dead zone. Too many massive cities, just like the northeastern population centers that wiped out everything north of the Carolinas. I don’t think he would go west. Too much risk, not enough potential gain.”

  “Which leaves two options,” Mr. Smith reasoned. “Either he’s in hiding somewhere in Texas…or he’s heading north.”

  Griffin frowned. Looked at his dirty boots as his thoughts meandered through the possibilities. Mr. Smith was correct. As Griffin saw it, those were the only two realistic possibilities. But which one was it? A hit and run guerilla insurgency in Texas? Or something more aggressive?

  “You say you know the man,” Mr. Smith prodded. “Where do you think his head’s at right now?”

  Griffin grimaced. “I said I knew the man. But a lot has happened. And I don’t know what affect the loss of the UES has had on him. I don’t even know if he has people backing him at this point.”

  “The number of civilians left in Butler was nowhere near where it should’ve been. A good chunk of them got out before we got in.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re with Lee. They could’ve just scattered.”

  Paige crossed his arms over his armor. “Something like that? The fall of Butler? It either breaks your will…or it pisses you off even more.”

  Mr. Smith’s face screwed up. “What could he possibly do with a handful of civilians on the run? Except mount an insurgency. Try to hassle us and mount raids and generally make our lives difficult.”

  Griffin looked at his Cornerstone counterpart. “That does seem pretty weak, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s not what I was getting at.”

  “No, but it’s true nonetheless. The very fact that he came here and fucked up the refinery and took all the fuel…he’s not running scared. He’s pissed. He wants revenge. That’d be my bet.”

  Mr. Smith let out an unstable-sounding titter. “What could he possibly hope to accomplish besides hit-and-runs?”

  “Well, that depends on how much he knows about Greeley.”

  “About Greeley? How would he know shit about Greeley?”

  “They knew our invasion force was coming,” Griffin answered. “They were prepared for it. More than they would have been if they’d just spotted us coming. Someone told them ahead of time that an invasion was happening, or we wouldn’t have received half the resistance we did.”

  Mr. Smith’s eyes narrowed. “The fucking Canadians.”

  Griffin nodded. “We know they had an envoy from Canada and the UK embedded with them. And yet, we never came up with any Canadians or Brits. Whoever was with Lee in Butler would have been in contact with the envoy in Greeley. And they would have known the invasion force was coming.”

  Paige scratched at his stubbled face. “Okay, I can buy that. But what’s that got to do with Lee’s current strategy?”

  Griffin looked at Paige. “If the Canadians told them about the incoming invasion force, doesn’t it stand to reason that Lee would know that Greeley shoved all of its resources into that invasion?”

  Paige and Mr. Smith were silent for a moment, chewing on it.

  But the more the silence stretched, the more confident Griffin became in his ultimate conclusion. And it was very strange, because at the same moment that he felt a certain dread for Greeley, he also felt a thrill work through him. And he couldn’t quite pinpoint why he felt that way. A hundred shadowy possibilities lay deep within his psyche and he had neither the time nor the inclination to dive that deep into himself at the moment.

  Mr. Smith finally cleared his throat. “He’d be mad to try to invade Greeley.”

  “Would he?” Griffin shrugged. “I don’t know. Depends on how many people he has with him. Bu
t let’s assume my theory is right. Put yourself in Lee’s shoes. You come off of a big loss in Butler. You’re pissed, and you’re stubborn as fuck. You know Greeley is virtually undefended. You got a bunch of pissed of civilians and a collection of Marines and Texas militia—mostly former military, mind you—that want to hit back. What would you do?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I’d do,” Paige inserted himself. “I’d grab all the fuel I could from this refinery, take it off-line, and head for Greeley.”

  Mr. Smith was vehemently shaking his head. “He doesn’t have the manpower for that. Even if everyone that was missing from Butler is still with him and willing to fight for him, that’s still not enough people to invade Greeley. So he’s either completely insane, or we’re missing his real objective.”

  Griffin wasn’t so sure. “Mr. Smith, how many settlements through Oklahoma and New Mexico and Colorado have your goons pissed off?”

  “Fucking excuse me?”

  Griffin wasn’t trying to bump chests. He was just being honest. “Come on, Mr. Smith. It’s no secret that your Cornerstone operatives have a history of being a little heavy handed. Let’s not argue the obvious here. Just accept it as fact and see where it takes you.”

  Mr. Smith’s jaw muscles bunched as he stared Griffin down. But he didn’t bother denying it any further. “You think he’s going to try to get support from the settlements that…shall we say…are a little peeved at Cornerstone.”

  “That’s typically how rebellions are born, Mr. Smith. Some faction of people, feeling marginalized and abused by another faction. That’s what pisses people off to the point they’re willing to take up arms and fight.”

  Mr. Smith’s expression gradually changed. From defensive, to accepting, to thoughtful.

  After a few moments of silence, he reached into his back pocket and drew out the satphone that would connect him directly to President Briggs. “Well,” Mr. Smith said, airily. “Assuming you’re correct, that’s an easy enough situation to fix.”

  FOURTEEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  AN INTERVIEW

  Sam was drenched in sweat by the time they called him off the bus.