by Dana Fraser
Without asking, Reynolds slowly stood and turned to the sink. He pulled a washcloth from a pile and ran it under cold water. He cleared the blood from his face then wiped the bag of corn clean before sitting down again and plucking another smoke from the tin.
With the corn pressed along the side of his nose once more, he lit the cigarette then jerked his thumb toward the tin. “Forgot my manners. Want one?”
Thomas shook his head and took another sip of coffee before reminding the man a question had been asked. “You were going to tell me how you know about Greenbrier—and don’t say you read it in some brochure.”
He had given Reynolds long enough to concoct a story, but Thomas kept his tone light. He wasn’t so much trying to interrogate the man as decide how much information to give him. The kill team had tracked him down first and foremost to stop the broadcasts. If the people behind Project Erebus didn’t want the general population to tie things together, then Thomas wanted to help the public connect the dots. Let the locals still alive and free along his trip home keep his enemies busy.
Reynolds shrugged and flicked the ashes from the tip of his cigarette. “Did some contract work cleaning up out there after the flood. Might have seen some architectural drawings I wasn’t supposed to.”
“You either did or you didn’t,” Thomas said, getting up and retrieving the drawing pads. His first glance had suggested the pads were filled with everyday designs, but he found floor plans as he flipped through them again.
“Guessing I did then,” Reynolds answered with a sour twist, the fingers on one hand smoothing along the edge of the table.
Waiting to see if his host would pull the revolver out or leave it holstered long enough to pull the trigger on an intended groin shot, Thomas thumbed through the drawings. There was the general footprint of the resort and the new wing to the hotel that the government had added back in the 60s or so to conceal the development of the bunker. From there, the lines expanded outward with two arms threading under the highway to connect with an even larger underground facility.
If Thomas’s memory served him correctly, Ellis had said that the bunker was only one-hundred twenty-thousand square feet when he had talked about it on the drive home.
Hank’s drawing put it at close to a million square feet.
Gavin’s short entry hadn’t suggested new underground construction or mentioned anything beyond use of the space for storage. Now Greenbrier was starting to look like a major hub for Project Erebus.
No wonder there had been so many patrols in the woods.
“I need you to sit on the porch while I grab some of my gear,” he said, suddenly feeling exposed.
Plucking another cigarette from the tin and wrapping his hand around the coffee mug, Reynolds shuffled ahead of Thomas. Once Reynolds was seated, Thomas jogged toward the tree line, his gaze frequently darting over his shoulder to make sure the man hadn’t moved or wasn’t reaching for some weapon hidden near the steps.
Once he was past the first tree and concealed in its shadows, he walked backwards to his equipment and scooped it up, shouldering the carryon and the M40.
Seeing Thomas emerge with the ghillie suit settled into place, Reynolds spilled his coffee then laughed.
“Mister, I about pissed myself and now it looks like I did,” he joked, slapping at the hot coffee on his pants as Thomas reached the porch. “You’re better equipped than those guys that tried to beat me back to Sunday.”
“They left a lot of gear about fifty yards out,” Thomas answered. “More than I can carry, so I’m happy to show you where. But first you’re going to tell me why you say the government is working with the cartels.”
“When the explosions started up, I grabbed my receiver and pack and headed the hell up here,” Hank started, following Thomas back into the shack and starting some more water to boil. “Had to rabbit tree to tree, hunker down a few times to wait for some new danger to pass. One of those times, I saw some marines supplying a bunch of tattooed up Mexicans with ammunition.”
Thomas mulled the information over. “Maybe the Mexicans—“
Hank cut Thomas off with a hard shake of his head. When he spoke, his voice broke every few syllables.
“Mexicans were driving a deuce-and-a-half and they had a bunch of women tied up in the back, bruised and crying. One tried to get out of the truck…”
Hank’s gaze grew wet, but he kept any tears in check. He tapped an angry index finger against the top of the table top.
“Over a dozen armed men and all I was carrying was the revolver I got strapped under here.”
Head bobbing with understanding, Thomas reached under the table, removed the revolver then fished the bullets out of his pocket before placing the weapon and ammunition on the table.
Hank lifted a brow then laughed. “Figured you were more thorough than those yahoos. Only reason they are winning is there’s a crap ton more of them.”
“And they’re organized and well-equipped,” Thomas added, reaching into his pack and pulling out his cell phone.
Gavin’s gear included a shortwave radio that had both a solar battery and a hand crank, as well as a way for Thomas to charge his phone. He powered the device up and took pictures of Hank’s drawings of the bunker as the man finished making both of them another cup of coffee.
“How accurate are these?” Thomas asked.
“Pretty good,” he answered, taking a seat. “Got a memory for things like that and I had more than one look.”
“What made you think these were blueprints of an existing build?”
“Well, ya got me there,” Hank admitted. “I don’t know that they are.”
Thomas didn’t know either. He was less than thirty pages into decoding Gavin’s journal and there were two hundred tightly filled pages total. Like any project manager, Gavin didn’t work in a linear fashion, and the journal reflected that.
The pages were also filled with rambling philosophies and petty ruminations.
Opening to a blank page in the drawing pad, Thomas borrowed a pencil and began to write down almost everything he had learned about Project Erebus. He didn’t name it as such and left Gavin out of the picture to protect his own identity. For all the government knew, Thomas was dead or wandering around somewhere in D.C. He wanted to keep them ignorant as long as he could.
When he finished, a few hours remained until dawn. He and Hank retrieved the dead men’s equipment and the gear Thomas had left further downhill. Taking everything back to the shack, they divided up the team’s food and first aid supplies. At the bottom of the packs, they found sealed Ziploc bags containing trophies from prior encounters—wedding rings, watches, and other jewelry. They even found gold teeth, the roots stained with blood.
Taking the fullest Ziploc bag, Thomas removed his dive watch and wedding ring and dropped them inside, stripping the last of his identity from his body.
Cocking his head, Hank looked at Thomas, his sun lined face heavily wrinkled with confusion.
Thomas lifted the patch covering his eye. Hank almost rolled out of his chair in reaction. The older man laughed, his shocked mirth provoking a coughing fit that lasted a full minute or longer.
Hank wiped at his eyes then blew his nose before wiping at them again.
“That belong to the body out by the tree?”
Thomas nodded. Patch’s corpse had been face down when Thomas stopped to relieve the dead man of his identification card before he and Hank continued on to retrieve the packs. Having successfully masqueraded as Patch once, he figured he might be able to pull it off again, especially with dirt or camo paint on his face.
Hank’s gaze landed on the paper with all the Project Erebus details.
He thumbed one edge. “Is this why you risked your neck to save me?”
“People have to know,” Thomas answered, preparing to leave. “They need to know that they are in a fight for their lives and the government is the one trying to kill them.”
Hank glanced at the transce
iver and nodded.
Thomas thrust his hand at Hank and they shook as he gave the older man one last warning.
“Get the word out then go,” he said. “Go hard and go fast.”
CHAPTER TEN
ANOTHER EIGHT DAYS on and no more than ninety miles closer to home from where he had lost the Cadillac, Thomas looked down on a valley filled with military vehicles and personnel, more than a hundred tents and a constant stream of semi-trucks driven by civilians.
Patrols were everywhere in the woods around him, too. Ever since he left Reynolds’ shack, Thomas had unwillingly maintained a constant pissing distance from death. He had killed three more times, first when a two-man patrol stumbled upon his hiding spot for the day, then when a lone wolf had begun tracking him.
Thomas still didn’t know why the man had hunted him, didn’t know whether he was part of Project Erebus or just trying to get home. All Thomas knew was that the man had made a mistake in following him.
Retreating from the tree line, Thomas put his field glasses away and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree. He pulled the ace bandage from his bag and dropped his pants. His skin prickled in the mid-October cold as he placed the ID badges he had taken from the dead bodies and strapped them to his thigh. The only ID he kept out was the one he’d had hanging from his neck since leaving Hank’s place.
William Howard Harris—Billy to his team members, Patch to Thomas.
There had been nothing in the dead man’s pack to flesh out who he was—no pictures, no writings. Preparing to walk into a valley full of enemies dressed as one of them, Thomas had to find a way to play Patch convincingly.
He had been working on the role for days, memorizing what little information he had for the men on Patch’s team. He kept his face constantly covered with camo paint. His body had a gamey smell, ensuring that no one would want to remain near him for long.
To hide any noticeable difference in his voice, his throat had a shallow cut across the Adam’s apple and a bandage dotted with blood over that. And, as he stood and prepared to gather his gear for the walk down the hill, he pulled a cotton ball with dried blood on it and stuck it in his ear. That way, if someone called Patch’s name and he didn’t respond, he had a visible excuse.
Having observed at least a dozen patrols through his field glasses after leaving the cabin, the last bit of stagecraft Thomas performed was to fish out the Ziploc bag from his pack and put on several rings, including his wedding ring, plus his dive watch and a second expensive timepiece.
Returning to the tree line, he hesitated.
Infiltrating the encampment was a choice of last resort. He was low on food and even lower on time. If he wanted to help his family—to even have a chance of finding them—he needed to make a bold move.
To help his family, he needed to forget about them for a while. But he couldn’t. Thoughts of how they were faring kept flooding through his head. Had Becca seen the danger and headed home early, had she gone by the school and signed Ellis out? Had Hannah? Were they all together or hundreds of miles apart?
What do you care—you’re never here!
Thomas inhaled slow and deep as his son’s words mocked him from the past.
He did care, but he had been foolish to think he could be both a good soldier, a faithful servant of his country, and a good husband and father.
All the many years away from those he loved rose up inside him. He felt every second of every hour he had spent chasing false flags. He felt the weight of every last man he had watched die for a country that didn’t deserve them.
Vision blurring with his rage, Thomas marched down the hill wishing he had a flamethrower. He would scorch every inch of earth on his trip home just as Sherman had burned his way to the sea. When the people from Project Erebus came up from their bunkers, there would be no fields ready to plant, no trees to harvest.
They would look upon a vast emptiness and finally know despair.
BEFORE STARTING his trip into the valley, Thomas had watched others leave the woods and walk the same path that carried him toward the military encampment. After the first six days of chasing his own tail down one hill and up another, he had made a nest and set up surveillance. He noted the routes the soldiers and hired mercenaries regularly took. Where they tended to stop first—a command tent—and where they went from there, which was usually food, women, sleep or showers.
The perimeter of the camp was made up of an ever shifting supply chain. Convoys of trucks came in, the drivers parking the beasts then heading out on buses in tandem with fuel trucks. Thomas figured they were clearing the roads of commercial vehicles that had run out of gas and resupplying the camp and the nearest bunker in the process.
There was a certain beauty to the plan Gavin and the others had created. For more than a decade they had manipulated the economy into printing devalued money that benefited Project Erebus. They built banks that were “too big to fail,” issued mortgage-backed securities…hell, they had even turned student loans into asset-backed securities. The kidlets got their cash for “college” then used it to buy cell phones and tablets, designer clothes, and gourmet everything, the fever of spend-spend-spend creating obscene, untaxed profits that were funneled to the conspiracy and used to build and stock the bunkers. Then, once the current phase was initiated, what little assets of real value remained above ground would be taken at the point of a gun.
Reaching the camp’s border of semi-trailers, Thomas slipped between two of them and stepped onto a makeshift lane filled with forklifts and hand carts.
“You just coming in?” a jocular voice asked from a few feet away.
Thomas turned and stared at the man before offering a slow nod. Based on his expression, this was a man who had never met William Harris Howard.
“On my way to get fresh orders,” Thomas said, forcing a bit of gravel into his voice to match the bloodied bandage around his throat.
The man leered then wiped at his sweaty face with a soiled bandana. “You mean fresh orders and credits to spend before you go out again.”
Thomas nodded as the man moved closer. Thomas wasn’t blind to the abuses that went on during times of war. The only thing different about the current hostilities was that there were no more rules—at least it was a free for all outside of the bunkers. From what he had read so far in Gavin’s journals and the conversations he had heard between Patch and the other team members, killing, robbing and raping were all sanctioned as long as the violence was directed away from those in charge.
The man tucked the handkerchief away and shoved out his fleshy hand. “Chuck Yardley.”
“Billy Harris,” Thomas responded. “You about to catch another load?”
Yardley shook his head and grinned. “Just logged my tenth, now it’s time for a ree-ward!”
Just being near the man turned Thomas’s stomach greasy, but he was walking in the same direction Thomas wanted to go and being in the trucker’s company gave Thomas a light patina of belonging—a sort of social proof that he was one of the psychopathic misfits filtering in and out of the camp.
“You’re a new recruit,” Thomas guessed as they headed toward the center of activity.
“Yeah,” Yardley laughed. “Got picked up in Illinois about a week ago and I’ve been humping loads day and night ever since.”
“Been in the bush twice that time,” Thomas said. “What’s it like to the west?”
“Fun times,” Yardley grinned. “That’s what it’s like. Civilians are doing most of the killing for us. Blacks killing whites, whites killing everybody.”
Yardley’s hands lifted in the air like he was at a Sunday tent revival. “The lions and the sheep are dead in the street, their blood running down the gutters.”
Starting to wheeze, he stopped and wiped his face. “And here I am.”
“Here you are,” Thomas agreed, his fingers itching with the need to thumb open the Karambit and slit the man’s throat.
“My daddy always said one of the best jobs you can have is being a truck driver. Doesn’t matter the weather or the politics, the wheels are gonna keep turning.”
“Your father was right,” Thomas said, stopping in front of the command tent and shaking Yardley’s hand in another show of belonging. “Enjoy your wages, my friend.”
“Oh, I will,” Yardley answered with a malevolent glow in his eyes. “For I am the prodigal son come home. And I shall feast on lamb at my father’s table.”
Nausea rolled through Thomas but he kept a thin smile plastered on his face as he parted the flaps on the tent and stepped inside.
BEING inside the tent gave Thomas an odd sense of homecoming. After a rough upbringing, the military had been his first real family. Through all the changing duty stations, the friends made and the brothers lost, it had kept its womb-like appeal.
Even though the men around him were traitors, he let the ease of being home seep into his bones. Patch would be comfortable here and, for the moment, he was Patch.
“State your name,” a young lieutenant with a tablet ordered as Thomas stepped up to his desk.
He had been waiting in line about a dozen minutes, giving him plenty of time to scope out the operations. The first desk was check-in and he would either be given a new assignment or sent elsewhere for a debriefing based on what he had witnessed with the five men in line before him. If it was a new assignment, he’d go to the quartermaster’s counter for ammo and MREs and credit to spend in camp for however many hours he had before his assignment started, everything flowing to keep the men in a sort of perpetual servitude.
“William Howard Harris,” Thomas said. Mimicking the men who had already cleared the first station, Thomas handed the lieutenant the ID card he had taken off of Patch’s corpse.
The officer ran it through a card reading device plugged into the tablet then spent a few seconds reading the display.
“Where’s the rest of your team?”
Thomas shrugged. “Dead, I imagine. We got split up. Tried to regroup, but…”