“Lee,” Angela said, turning to him. “There’s no good call here. There’s no safe solution. Any way you cut it, we’ve got equal chances of getting wiped the fuck out.”
“You just thinking out loud?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m telling you what I think. All things created equal, we’re fucked. We’re fucked if we charge into Greeley, and we’re fucked if we don’t, although it might take a little longer if we go that route.” She reached up and clawed a hand through her blonde curls. “Will another opportunity come along if we’re patient and we wait? Maybe. But that’s just hoping. That’s just crossing our fingers and praying.”
“I’m still not clear on what you’re saying.”
She released her hair, let her hand flop to her side. “I’m saying we go. I’m saying we do this. We made promises. And now we gotta follow through with them. We made promises to these people, that we were going to take the fight to Greeley. ‘Greeley or Bust,’ remember? And we made promises to Sam. Hell, I dunno how that turns out for us. Maybe we’re all fucking dead in a few days. But…but…” She appeared to struggle mightily for words in that moment, then finally shook her head. “Fuck it. I’d rather die fighting than on the run. If I gotta go, I wanna go swinging.”
“Hey,” Abe said, his tone completely different now.
Lee jerked at the sound of his voice, looked up and saw Abe’s hand outstretched, pointing to the south.
“We got incoming,” Abe husked.
THIRTY-FOUR
─▬▬▬─
AT THE CORE
Distance estimation?
A mile?
Lee had watched, unable to identify the two figures they’d seen walking towards them. Farther back behind the approaching figures—two miles, I think—sat what appeared to be a white pickup on the side of the road.
Why had they left it there? It didn’t make a lot of sense to Lee, but he found himself in a sort of neutral mental place. Experience made him dread the newcomers. Were they here to deliver news? Were they messengers from the Greeley army pursuing them? If they were, did that mean that the location of Lee’s army was known to them?
Would he kill these messengers to keep the location of his army a secret?
Strangely, none of these thoughts felt extremely pressing. It was like he’d been drained of emotion, so beaten that he’d become numb to it. Now it was all just facts and figures. It was as dispassionate as a math problem.
The two figures, made small by distance, had been proned out on the road. They looked like they had complied without much fuss. It was a squad of Brinly’s Marines that had gone to take them. They’d fanned out across the roadway, two of them approaching and securing each figure in turn. Then they’d hauled them up and piled them in the back of the Humvee, and raced back to the convoy.
Now, Lee and his small inner circle stood, not too far from where they’d walked to have their quiet conference. The Humvee cut wide around the jumble of vehicles parked in the middle of the flat, scrubby plain.
No one spoke as the roar of the diesel engine filled the air and the tires skidded slightly in the dirt as it rocked to a stop, a handful of yards from Lee.
The Marines poured out of the Humvee. It was the open-bed model of Humvee, and Lee watched the two Marines in the back bed, standing over their new prisoners.
The squad leader who had exited the front passenger side nodded to Brinly, and then to Lee. “What do you want to do with them, sir?”
Lee started walking, unrushed. “I’ll talk to them.”
Brinly, Angela, and Abe fell in behind Lee as he skirted around to the backend of the vehicle. As he cleared the rear fender, he saw the two individuals, seated with their legs kicked out in front of them, hands behind their backs, and backs against the cab of the Humvee.
Lee halted in mid-stride, one hand up on the truck bed. “Well. Holy shit.”
Marlin Maclean squinted tiredly at him against the sun. “God. I’m glad it’s you.”
“Captain Maclean!” Angela gasped as she rounded Lee’s shoulder, coming to a shocked halt beside him. “Lieutenant Wibberley!”
Lee raised a hand to cut off any further speaking. Again, it was empty of feeling. Simple arithmetic. “Where’d you come from and who sent you?”
Wibberly’s face screwed up and he looked away.
But Marlin simply coughed out a dry chuckle. “That’s what I like about you, Lee. Always on point.”
“Answer the question,” Lee said, flatly.
Marlin nodded. “We came from Georgia, by way of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Following that army that kicked us out of Butler, who was following you.”
“Were you in with them?” Lee asked.
“Christ,” Wibberley grunted. “You suspicious wanker. Do you know what we went through to get here?”
“Easy, Buddy,” Marlin sighed. To Lee, he nodded again. “You got every right in the world to be suspicious of us. But no. We weren’t in with them.”
“I thought you were dead.”
Marlin’s expression went deadpan. “Well the rest of my squad is.”
Lee’s eye narrowed. “Sorry to hear that.”
Marlin studied Lee’s face, taking in the raw wound of his left eye, the scars that pocked and slashed his skin. “Looks like we all got our asses kicked in Butler.”
Angela took a half step forward and put her hand on the tailgate of the guntruck. “What are you doing here?”
Marlin looked at her. “Are you aware that the army that took over Butler is about one day’s drive behind you?”
“If that,” Wibberley quipped. “Six hours, tops.”
“Yes,” Angela replied. “We’re aware. But that still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Hell,” Marlin tilted his head back as though to stretch his neck. “I guess we’re here, hoping you had some sort of plan.”
Lee blinked a few times. “We did. Until this morning.”
“The fuck happened?” Marlin asked, quietly. “What happened in that town you left this morning? We were outside of it, watching. We weren’t sure if it was really you we were tracking. Then, this morning, everyone starts driving off in separate directions.”
“It was the people from those towns,” Wibberley said, half question and half statement. “The ones that army is burning through right now. They heard about it and cut and run.” Eyes on Lee. “That about right?”
Lee didn’t respond, but he figured his silence was answer enough.
Wibberley hunched forward, rotating his shoulders as though to ease the tension of his bound hands. “What was the plan prior to everything going to shit this morning?”
Angela started to speak again, but Lee cut her off with a grunt. “Let’s stop there. Captain Maclean, Lieutenant Wibberley…I’m glad you’re alive. You might be surprised to learn we have some old friends of yours with us right now.”
Both Marlin and Wibberley looked briefly confused.
Lee turned to Brinly. “Radio one of your squads. I want them to locate Guidry and Worley and bring them here.”
Marlin straightened. “Wait…what? You have Guidry and Worley?”
Lee held a finger to his lips and shook his head. “No more talking until we figure things out.”
***
“I can’t imagine a reason why they would come all this way just to fuck you over,” Worley said, looking at the Humvee over Lee’s shoulder.
Lee had his back to the Humvee, about twenty paces away. He knew that neither Guidry nor Worley could see their compatriots. Only the Marines that Brinly had ordered to untie them and give them food and water.
Lee looked at Guidry. “What about you?”
Guidry raised his eyebrows and regarded Lee. “I think you’re being a little paranoid.”
Lee smiled without humor. “Am I? After everything that’s happened, you think I’m being paranoid?”
Guidry sighed, shook his head. “I suppose your…suspicions are warranted. But honest
ly. They fought for you in Butler, didn’t they?”
“You know that they did.”
“Against our recommendations.”
Lee was silent at that.
Guidry pressed his point. “They refused lawful orders from their own command to back you. And in the process, their entire team got wiped out. All their friends.”
“So they say,” Lee said, not liking his truculent tone, but there was nothing he could do about it. Again, it was just facts and figures. Was he being paranoid? Perhaps, but not in the emotional way that it seemed Guidry was implying. Lee wasn’t ringing his hands and sweating about it. He was beyond such things at this point. He was simply looking at all the possibilities. “Or they got captured by the invading Greeley force—”
“Griffin.”
Lee halted, midsentence. “Excuse me?”
Guidry exchanged a glance with Worley. Then nodded at Lee. “That army that kicked you out of Butler and is now pursuing you? It’s headed by Captain Perry Griffin. I’m assuming you know him. He was Project Hometown, was he not?”
Lee’s jaw clenched, molars grinding. “Yes.”
“Well. It’s his army.”
“And how long were you aware of this?”
“The whole time,” Guidry admitted with a tone that implied it wasn’t a big deal. “But that fact seemed immaterial.”
Lee narrowed his one eye. “You were concerned I would make a rash decision.”
Guidry shrugged. “If you knew who it was coming after you, it would have become personal. I believed it would be better for all if you didn’t have a face to put to the army. But at this juncture, it seems you should know.”
Worley spoke up. “Were we wrong for that, Lee?” The way he asked it, he obviously didn’t think they were.
Lee wasn’t so sure. His hands were balling at his sides.
Worley noticed. Nodded to them. “Look at your reaction right now. Teeth clenched. Hands fisted. You want to tell me we were wrong to assume that knowledge would make things personal for you?”
Lee relaxed his hands and jaw, almost self-consciously. “No. I suppose you were right.”
“And it’s neither here nor there,” Guidry continued. “Now you know who it is coming after you. It doesn’t change things.”
It changed everything. It changed the way that Lee saw it. And, though Lee didn’t like it one bit, he felt the emotional distance between himself and these facts suddenly wither and disappear. All of the sudden everything was close. Crowded. Right on top of him. He wasn’t looking at things from above them, but from within them.
In the space of a few seconds, things had become personal for Lee.
Had they ever stopped being personal? Or had Lee just numbed himself to it, rather than feel the pain of it?
He took in a ragged breath. “The point remains the same,” he ground out. “They could have been captured by…Griffin’s army. Their squads could be held as hostages to get them to cooperate.”
“Or it could be exactly as they said,” Guidry remarked, curtly.
Lee put his hands on his hips, trying to stuff down that rising feeling in him that threatened to cloud his judgement. God, but Guidry and Worley had been right. “Then explain to me why the hell they would travel halfway across the fucking country to be here right now?”
“Maybe because they want to help,” Worley snapped. “They already gave up everything for you. The least you could do is hear them out.”
“Help?” Lee growled back. “Two fucking troopers? What the fuck do they think they’re going to do?”
Another secretive glance between Guidry and Worley.
It was Worley that made eye contact with Lee again. “We have an inkling. And perhaps this is the right time to go and talk to them. All together.”
Lee started to object, but Guidry cut him off.
“What do you have to lose, Lee?” He shook his head. “Griffin’s army is a day away from overtaking us. If this was all a fantastical ploy to find your location, then it’s already been found. If it is what you fear it is, then you’re already fucked. That’s the cold, hard truth. You’re up against the wall, and you’re up against the clock, outmanned and outgunned, approaching a hardened target that you’ve got a—maybe—fifty-fifty chance of beating, and an entire army breathing down your neck that already ruined you once, and likely will again.” Guidry tossed his hands up. “So what the hell do you have to lose?”
By the time Guidry finished talking, Lee had already turned away and begun stalking back towards the Humvee. “Alright,” Lee called over his shoulder. “You guys coming?”
***
No punches were pulled. Lee was beyond that now.
Guidry and Worley had been absolutely right. Lee knew it. They knew it. Hell, every single man and woman, soldier and civilian, in that convoy probably knew it as well.
They had nothing left to lose. This was the Hail-Mary toss, with two seconds left on the clock. And Lee didn’t hold back. Not a single thing. He laid it all out on the line, to an audience of grim-faced envoys from Canada and the United Kingdom, and hollow-eyed Marines, and an exhausted Brinly, Angela, and Abe.
No one stopped him from telling them everything. Brinly, Angela, and Abe all knew their current reality, just as much as Lee did.
Not just do or die time anymore. No, it had become everyone does, or everyone dies. Not just physical death, but the death of the idea. The death of the possibility of something that Lee had been working for—he now realized with an ugly flush of adrenaline—since the day he’d emerged from his bunker.
His entire reason for being, his mission, his life for the past several years, all hinged upon this one concept, this intangible idea, that a fallen country could be resurrected. That if enough people fought for it, they could breathe life back into it. That they could, if they struggled and bled enough, and lost enough, and kept pressing forward no matter the cost, live a life that bore at least some semblance of freedom like they’d known in their past lives.
Somehow, all the roads had led to this point. All the decisions, all the blood, all the death, all the friends and lovers lost and buried and left behind—it had all led to this moment, right now, standing around in the middle of an abandoned Colorado plain. The very history of themselves hanging on a razor’s edge and teetering, ever so slightly, in the direction of absolute destruction.
It was not lost on any of them, the import of this moment. It was as large as the sky over them, and as weighty as a mountain.
So many times through recorded history, the actors that swung that course of things on its hinges had no real concept of the importance of the individual moments and decisions that they made, almost bumbling through it blindly, relying only on vague morals and ideals to try to puzzle their way through the maze of possibilities.
That was not the case with any of them, huddled around the back of that Humvee. Every single person present, from Lee, all the way down to the lowest ranked Marine, knew that what was decided in this moment wasn’t simply the success of a mission, or the toppling of a regime, or the taking of a city. It was the very soul of them.
And when Lee was done talking, his tongue was dry, his heart thudding uncomfortably inside of him, his guts all in a tangle, nerves freshly reborn in the light of their circumstances. A protracted silence overtook the group, and no one made eye contact with any other, but stared into invisible places and distant possibilities.
Wibberley, seated at the edge of the Humvee’s bed alongside Marlin, blew a long breath out and squinted into the late morning sun. “Well. That’s all a bit of a clusterfuck, isn’t it?”
No one replied. The observation was obvious.
Marlin’s eyes finally came up from his battered boots and found Lee. “How long can your boy Sam hold out in Greeley?”
“Not long,” Lee said. “He’s trying to stay alive until we get there.”
Worley, with his elbow up on the truck bed beside Marlin, ground his heel thoughtfully in the dirt.
“There is another option.”
Marlin looked at him, clearly understanding something unsaid. “Donahue?”
Worley nodded.
Wibberley and Guidry both made a face.
“Who’s Donahue?” Lee asked. “Another envoy?”
Marlin shook his head. “He’s our point of contact for command. Colonel Donahue. CAF. He’s parked just north of the border.”
Lee folded his arms across his chest. “And what’s he doing there?”
“Waiting,” Marlin said. “Or at least, he was, prior to us going off the radar. Worley, have you guys been in contact with him at all since you snuck out of Greeley?”
Worley shook his head. “We’ve been radio silent. Weren’t sure how he would take it.” A small smirk. “Better to ask for forgiveness, you know?”
Lee glanced between the two Canadian operatives. “What was he waiting for?”
Marlin watched Lee carefully. “He’s got a roughly a battalion. Joint task force. Canadian and British. His job was to back our play. QRF if absolutely necessary. But more to show up on a white horse and demonstrate some loyalty to whoever command decided to go with—Greeley or the UES.”
Lee frowned. “The UES is dead. Does that mean he’s backing Greeley?”
“Not necessarily,” Worley answered. “As of two weeks ago, no decision had been made about who Canada and the UK was going to back. I imagine he’s holding out for word from us. Certainly, us going dark wouldn’t give him any overwhelming sense of trust in Greeley—which is something we were counting on.”
Wibberley sniffed loudly. “He won’t commit against Greeley, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not at this point. Let’s all just be completely honest here. Command wanted to back the winning horse. The United Eastern States is dead. Not even in the race anymore. Command will back Greeley. In fact, if you guys roll on Greeley, there’s a chance they might swoop in and set up shop with Briggs. Which will make the objective impossible.”
That was the last thing Lee wanted to hear. In his mind, their chances of success dipped even further. A bubble of anger rose up in his chest and popped like magma. “Then why the fuck is that another option for us?”
Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed Page 37