by Sean Liscom
“Everything okay? You guys need anything?” she asked in her bubbly voice.
“Ma’am, this culinary delight that you have offered us this evening is fit for none less than royalty! My compliments!” Jack said loudly.
“Thank you!” she blushed and continued to the kitchen.
“Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the plane crash,” my father changed the subject. “Yeah, I knew Paul had put the bomb on the plane. It was intricate, he knew what he was doing when he built it, gotta give him credit there. There was no way for me to disarm it without setting off.”
“The original plan was; I was just gonna ditch the plane off the coast, deploy the life raft and float on in. With Paul’s little gift onboard, I had to ditch early. Two hundred and fifty miles early, in fact. I knew there were going to be thunderstorms in my ditch zone but having to put it in the water early put me right in the worst part of the weather. Worst place possible.”
“Bad news was, those storms were a lot worse than I had anticipated. Instead of an easy water landing, I got clobbered by a huge wave when I was about 20 feet from the water. I was trying to put it down in one of the troughs but man, that wave came outta nowhere. That plane hit the water so hard both wings snapped off and the fuselage broke in half. The plane was rolling all over the place and it started to sink right away.”
“There was a minute there, I thought I was a goner for sure. I was probably 50 feet below the surface when I finally got the seat-belt off and clear of the wreckage. My right leg was all wonky and I had a good gash on the back of my head. When I finally broke the surface, I took the biggest breath I’ve ever taken in my life.”
“Now, at this point, I had a couple of problems. First, I was about five miles from shore and the water was rough, real rough. Second, I couldn’t swim for shit because my right leg was pretty messed up. All I could muster was a half-assed doggy paddle. The third issue was the blood pouring from my scalp. Sharks weren’t uncommon in that area and they love the smell of blood in the water! Things were looking worse by the minute, but I did have to take a moment to laugh at my predicament.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, here I was, trying to fake my own death and damn near killed myself in the process!” again with the belly laugh. “I suppose I probably would have been dead if it hadn’t been for the small fishing boat that showed up about 20 minutes after I hit the water. They were trying to get back to shore when they saw me ditch the plane. Only thing they caught that day was me!” he paused as Megan filled the plates for the kids. When she had left the room and was out of earshot, he resumed speaking.
“Braden, the only people who know that little secret about Allison are sitting at this table. I’m sure none of them will say a word. If it goes any further, it’s because you, and only you, choose for it to do so. Am I clear about that?” he asked.
“Yes,” Braden answered. It was clear that Jack had removed any and all wind from his sails.
“I have a question, Jack,” Jill said.
“Yes, my dear?” after a lingering, withering gaze, he turned his attention from Braden to Jill.
“Well, as amazing as it is to have you sitting here, at our table, to know that you’re alive.... Why go through all the trouble to fake your death?”
“And why are you here?” I chimed in. Jack took another big bite and sat back in his chair. He seemed to ponder the questions while he chewed.
“Faking my death was a necessity, Jill. You see, the people that I had been working for were about to find out some rather interesting details about what I had been doing while in their employment. In other words, if I hadn’t faked my death, they would have made sure I had a much more, shall we say, permanent ending,” he finally replied.
“I’ll tell you what, let me back up a little and give you a better picture of what was going on at the time, this will answer your question too, Jason. Is that okay with everyone?” after receiving affirmative nods, he began his tale.
“This whole sordid affair began the night your mother was killed. It was that night that made me who I am today. At the time, I was employed by the United States government. Jill, your father was my boss and my best friend. I was working on the ground in various countries around the globe gathering real time intelligence. When Irene was murdered, I lost my shit. I stepped across a line, no, I take that back. I sprinted across a line in the sand and never really came back from that dark place.”
“I made it my personal mission to kill every son-of-a-bitch who was involved. Everyone, no exceptions. It took me six months of slinking around every third world shithole and even a few back alleys of some pretty swank first world shitholes, but I completed that mission. Obviously, I wasn’t getting any help from the agency, I was on my own.”
“Left to my own devices, I started financing my operation with what I could steal from my enemies. Guns, drugs, cash…. You name it, nothing was off limits. When it was all over and done with, I had amassed a sizeable fortune and I needed to dispose of it.”
“After thoroughly laundering it and with a little help, I used about half of it to set your grandparents up. They were going to need it if they were going to raise you,” he held up his hand, “I already know what you’re going to ask.... Why didn’t I come back for you? Right?” he got a nod from both Braden and me.
“At that point in my life, I couldn’t be the one to raise you. It’s not that I didn’t want to. I just wasn’t that man anymore. I’ll make no bones about it; I had become what I had tried to destroy. I had become an evil man. It took a long time for me to be able to separate Jack Sterling from Jack Kenshaw. To this day, it’s like having dual personalities.”
“Is that where you got the money to build this ranch?” I asked.
“That was the beginning of it, yes. Once I had gone back to work for Bill and the agency, I continued being a very successful thief. See, we conducted covert missions all over the planet. We would take down corrupt politicians in Uganda. A terrorist or two in Pakistan. A cartel head in Columbia, it didn’t really matter who or where, they all had one thing in common. Money.”
“Well over half the time, I could make their wealth vanish into thin air with a few keystrokes on a computer. It wasn’t hard to do. The advantage of stealing bad guy’s money was that they weren’t going to report it. Is a politician, who stole millions of dollars from his people going to tell those very same people that it was in turn stolen from him? I should think not. Same with terrorists. Are they going to tell the head dude they lost his money? Nope! Drug Cartels? Again, no.”
“From what I’ve been able to decode from the journals and from what Bill told me, you stole tens of millions. Is that correct?” Braden finally found his voice.
“That sounds about right. Honestly, I lost track of how much I had ripped these guys off for. The thing of it is, the farther down the rabbit hole I went, the greedier I got. I figured that these guys love money and what better way to hurt them, even if only temporarily. I also figured their loss should be my gain. Hence the construction of the ranches.”
“Braden said there were two others. One in Costa Rica and another in North Dakota, is that right?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s correct. This ranch was the first and when it was nearly complete, I sent Chad Thompson and his family to Fortuna, Costa Rica to get the second one going. It was-”
“Wait!” Jill spoke up again. “I remember how pissed dad and Allan were when Chad left here. I thought there was some sort of falling out between you two.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted everyone to think! Bill and I are the only ones who knew about Fortuna’s existence. Even then, Bill didn’t know about the Ambrose site until he helped me code the 44th journal.”
“But, why?”
“Compartmentalization my dear. Yes, Chad knew this ranch existed, but he doesn’t know about Ambrose, North Dakota. Tyler Banks up at Ambrose knows about Fortuna but he doesn’t know about this one.”
“And we wouldn
’t have known about any of them if it hadn’t been for Bill and the journals,” Braden remarked.
“Even without Bill, you would have eventually found out through the journals.”
“But, how would they have known about us?”
“Braden, each ranch is modeled after this one, right down to having their own set of journals.”
“Listen, Jack.” I began. “I understand, or at least I think I understand why you built this ranch. You wanted a place you could come and hideout after you left the agency. I get it. You didn’t want to do it alone and that’s why you brought in the people you did. This was supposed to be your retirement retreat. Is that close to right?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Something changed along the way though. This place went from being a retreat to a fortress. Something changed and you felt the need for two additional ranches. That something had to be pretty damn significant.”
“It’s like I said, Jason. I spent a lot of my career dealing with some bad players. In that time, I discovered many of their secret plans. They hate us with a passion, and they wanted nothing more than to bring this country to its knees. The more of us they could kill, the better. They wanted to destroy us, our financial institutions, our military, and our way of life. They wanted to destroy everything that made us who we were.”
“I’d get information and run it up the ladder. When it got somewhere near the top, that was the end of it. I was told that my sources weren’t credible. Any number of excuses were given to me and nobody in the damn government took the threats seriously!”
“I should have known better; I should have known that they were all in bed with the global elite. The real power players of the world. To them, countries shouldn’t exist. To them, we are all just piss ants who should be serving them!” his voice was beginning to rise. “Terrorism and war were just one of many tools they used to manipulate the average John Q Citizen!”
“Think about it! We used to be terrified of the Russians. When the soviet empire imploded, we needed a new bad guy and the Muslim extremists fit the bill. Once they were shoved back in their goddamn caves, we needed another bad guy. Here come the extremists in our own damn country!”
“It doesn’t matter if your extreme conservative or liberal, both are bad news. All they did was subvert the media and politics and then pit one American against another. They wanted anarchy. They wanted to shit all over the Constitution and trample the flag! They WANTED us at each other’s throats! While we were having pissing matches about what bathroom to use, they were destroying everything around us! Rome was burning for shits sake!”
“Those of us who saw it, those of us who don’t give a flying rats ass what you do in the privacy of your own home, we saw what they were up to. I don’t give a shit what color your skin is. I don’t care if you are gay, bi or transgender. I don’t care if you want to own guns or not own guns. I don’t care what religion you believe in! I do care when the elite use those things as weapons against us!”
“They infiltrated the education system decades ago and they spent a long, long time brainwashing our kids. At first it was subtle but by the time the world came crashing down, they weren’t even trying to hide it anymore. With no parents at home, the indoctrination became easy. Why weren’t their parents’ home? Because they had to work multiple jobs just to try and make ends meet.”
“They were taxed to death! You want a car, pay taxes. You want to drive, pay taxes. Want to register that car, pay taxes at the DMV. Buy tires for it? Pay taxes. Do an oil change, pay taxes. That’s just for a damn car! Never mind buying a house and food and clothes and anything else you might need to live!”
“It was all a part of their plan. Keep people poor and keep them dependent on the government! Any politician who promised free shit got elected. They broke our system and they did it on purpose! There were a few of us who saw what was going on. There were many more that didn’t give a damn. If they had their cable TV and their microwave meal, life was good!”
“Dad....” Isabella spoke. This was the first time I’d heard her say anything. He glanced to his left and made eye contact with her.
“I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” he asked sheepishly. She replied with a nod. He took a second to collect his thoughts. “I apologize. I’m passionate about what happened, and I get off on these rants. Totally off subject and out of context, I just go where my mind takes me,” he laughed a little and picked up his coffee cup.
“Basically, you built all three ranches because you were afraid something bad was going to happen and you wanted a safe place for those of like mind to go? Does that sum it up?” I asked trying to get the conversation back on track.
“I didn’t think something bad was going to happen. I knew it was only a matter of time before it did,” after a sip of coffee, he put the cup back on the table. “Unfortunately, it happened before I could get all of my ducks in a row.”
“How’s that?”
“Ambrose wasn’t fully operational at the time of the EMP. Their wall wasn’t finished. Supplies hadn’t been laid in and there was only a skeleton crew onsite at the time. The only thing they had going for them was their location.”
“How well have they fared?”
“Don’t know. We haven’t heard from ‘em since the EMP. Total radio silence from their end.”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You want us to make a run up and see what’s going on.”
“No, that’s not why we’re here. We got bigger fish to fry,” I raised my eyebrows and leaned back in my chair. I crossed my arms and braced for the other shoe to drop. And drop it did!
CHAPTER 2
Thursday, August 31st, 2017
“Then why are you here?” I asked hesitantly.
“It’s complicated so let’s start by talking about Ambrose since you brought it up,” Jack took the last bite of meat from his plate and chewed it before he spoke again. “Originally, we left Fortuna to go find out what their status was. That was four months ago. We’ve been sidetracked several times by any number of problems.”
“When we finally crossed back into the states down in Yuma, Arizona, we thought we would start making better time. Yeah, that didn’t happen. That’s when we caught wind of the newly formed Western States Coalition. We spent a little over a month harassing them at every opportunity.”
“Unfortunately, that had unintended consequences. They thought that our forces were forces from here. They thought it was you and your teams waging a guerrilla action against them. That’s why Ray Judge made this place a priority. He wanted to make an example out of the ranch, that’s why he wanted to turn it into a prison. That’s also why he wanted to take you to Vegas.”
“He wanted to destroy the following that the ranch has, a cult-like following that you have inspired. What better way than to turn the ranch into a hellhole and execute you in front of as many people as possible. I don’t have to tell you how that ended. You were there,” he smiled. “After the battle of Vegas, we were just going to vanish into the night and make a beeline for Ambrose. Problem is, we’ve run our equipment into the ground. Just about every vehicle we have is on its last leg. Months and miles without maintenance have exacted a heavy toll.”
“We could probably help you with the equipment. Major Jackson has been a real godsend when it comes to stuff like that,” Jill offered.
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
“Major Jackson will be here tomorrow, we can ask him for help then,”
“Worn out rigs is only part of our problem.”
“What’s the rest of your problem?” she asked.
“A second mission has presented itself. One I can’t walk away from.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We have a very real opportunity to put an end, once and for all, to the WSC and the ARK.”
“I thought we threw the brakes on their plans when we took out Ray Judge. I mean, Between Jill and Braden, they pretty much scram
bled his conscripts. Major Jackson stole his fuel supply and then we hammered their regulars in Vegas.... Am I wrong?”
“Y’all definitely gave ‘em a good ass kicking but it’s a whole lot more complicated than what Ray had at his disposal. He went rogue and took a bunch of their men and equipment. He tore off across the desert with one thing in mind. Power. He wanted to seize as much territory and control as he could get, a toehold, so to speak. That was only the first step in his grand plan.”
“He felt the WSC was too soft and he wanted to be the one sitting at the head of the table. That table just happens to be inside the ARK in Los Angeles. He was going to return there with the backing and manpower that the ARK didn’t have and force their hand. With him holding all the aces, he’d have had that seat, too. Now that you have taken him and his army out of the equation, I fully intend to capitalize on the opportunity!”
“Whoa, wait a minute! What the hell are you trying to say?” I asked already knowing the answer.
“Jason, it’s my intention to make a play for the ARK itself!”
“That’s crazy!” Braden finally chimed in. “Everything I’ve read, all the drawings.... That’s suicide for anyone who attempts such a damn fool thing!”
“If we went in with a large force attempting to take them head on, you’d be right. With a small force and my knowledge, the risks are acceptable.
“I don’t know just how you define acceptable, but I do know that you can count us out of that equation,” I said firmly. That got a nod of approval from Braden. “If you want to take off on some fool’s errand, that’s on you! We’ve had enough bullshit to last us a good, long while.”
“Before you decide, let me tell you the rest of the story,” he held up both of his hands.
“What else is there? Whatever it is, you’re not going to change my mind. We’re spent and we need some downtime.”
“What if I told you the ARK is ripe for the picking?”
“Meaning?”