Five Suns Saga II

by Jim Heskett

  Anders didn’t know if he believed Castillo or not. “I need you to come back here and get control of your people, immediately. There have been some incidents, and the man you left in charge is a worthless brute. How soon can you get back to Denver?”

  “At any reasonable speed, I would think three days, but I’m not going to come back right away.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This compelling man, I wish to follow him. I want to see where else he is going.”

  Anders gripped the sat phone. “Listen to me. We’re knee deep in it here. If we don’t become battle-ready by the time Chalmers decides to mobilize her people, then all of this… all of my hard work, it all comes tumbling down. We need to march now and get to her before she gets to us. We’re too vulnerable here.”

  “I understand. I will be back as soon as I have concluded my business.”

  The connection severed, and Anders felt a rage boil up through his body so fierce that he hurled the satellite phone off the edge of the parking garage. It tumbled through the air, becoming a little black speck, and then bursting into a dozen pieces on the ground below.

  He stormed back through the airport entrance and marched over the skybridge toward B concourse, fending off requests from three of his staffers along the way. Their whimpering and whining could wait for another time.

  Once he got to B concourse, LaVey was sitting at a gate with his shoulders slumped and his hands lazily resting in his lap. He lifted his head. Tears were streaming down his face.

  “What have we done, Pete?” he said.

  Anders gritted his teeth to stifle a scream. He clenched his fists and walked to the former senator, a man who used to possess so much courage he single-handedly exposed a ring of corruption in the International Longshoremen’s Association and took them all down. Now, he was a sniveling wreck who couldn’t be trusted to suppress his sorrow for more than a few hours at a time.

  “Everything we’ve done, it’s been the right thing to do, when we had to do it. It’s all for the greater good, don’t ever forget that.”

  LaVey wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Twenty-five years. I don’t believe you anymore. You’ve taken my vision and twisted it for your own purposes. The Five Suns Movement used to stand for something benevolent.”

  Anders scoffed. “The Five Suns was an impotent Green Party fund-raising group before we took control and changed the mission statement. We gave them purpose and put their resources and connections into making a difference.”

  “Not true. It was supposed to stand for making this country a better place to live. Not about killing our own citizens, bombing entire cities, and lying to the public.”

  “You’re a politician! Every other word that came out of your mouth for your whole career was a lie.”

  “And who put those words there?”

  LaVey stood, smoothed his shirt, and walked away.

  8

  Coyle and Logan navigated the rows of conference tables through the ballroom to reach the back door, and Coyle pressed his ear against the wood to listen to the vibrations.

  “Hear anything?” Logan whispered.

  “No, but that doesn’t mean they’re not back there.” After a few seconds of nothingness, a wave of muffled sound came through the door. Could have been a sigh or a yawn. Whatever it was, it had come from inches beyond the door.

  Coyle turned the doorknob as gently as he could, then cracked the door wide enough to see the hallway. A man’s back blocked most of the view.

  As the man turned his head, Coyle wrapped one hand over his mouth while he drove the tip of his knife into the middle of the man’s back. He twisted it, pulled it out, and drove it home several more times as he lowered the man to the ground. By the time he dropped the body, the man was dead.

  “Jesus Christ, you’re brutal,” Logan said.

  “Please don’t swear.”

  “I’m just saying, you know, you didn’t have to cut him into pieces.”

  “This is how it works, kid. It’s not pretty, but they would do the same thing to us, given the chance.”

  “Fine, but you’re covered in blood now, though, so we can’t exactly waltz around the city and not get noticed.”

  Coyle sized up the man on the ground, and they were close enough. He stripped down to his boxers and put on the man’s camouflage fatigues, then slipped his own coat over the clothes to cover the bloody holes in the back.

  “And what are we supposed to do now?” Logan said. "Anyone who looks close enough at you will know you’re not one of Chalmers’ men.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got an idea. You stay in front of me,” Coyle said as he lifted an M16 from the dead man’s hands and checked to make sure the clip was full. “I’m taking you in to see Chalmers for a disciplinary infraction. I’ll be right behind you, so they probably won’t even notice me.”

  Logan mused on this for a few seconds. “Yeah. It could work.”

  They pushed through an ornate hallway covered in murals until they found a kitchen, and eased toward an EXIT sign. Eyes down, not looking at anyone, and quickening their pace whenever someone gave them a second look.

  Through some kind of service entrance, they found the outside.

  “Where to now, kid?”

  Logan looked up at the sky and pivoted a few times to check out the buildings. “Up two blocks, I think. It’s a brick building with gargoyles on it. I’ll know it when I see it. I mean, if her office is still in the same place.”

  They started up the street, with Coyle pointing the M16 at Logan’s back and Logan holding his hands out in front, like a genuine prisoner.

  “What’s the plan when we get to Colorado?” Logan said.

  “They arranged for me to meet someone in Denver who is supposed to know the exact location of LaVey and Anders. We meet him, and then he takes us to do some reconnaissance. After that, I’m not sure. The guy’s name is Richter.”

  Logan stopped dead in the street and spun around. “Richter? That’s not Kellen Richter, is it?”

  “Yeah, I think so. What of it?”

  “He’s the Soothsayer, the guy who tried to expose the whole thing. He’s also nutty as a fruitcake, you know. I heard they kept him locked in the dungeon of some castle in Scotland for five years, and he fought his way out, leaving a bunch of corpses behind. Melted his brain to mush while he was in there. If this is the same guy, you can’t trust him not to knife you in the back.”

  Coyle flicked the M16 to get Logan to keep moving. “You let me worry about that. Let’s focus on one thing at a time.”

  A woman wrapped in blankets was nursing an infant under the awning of a cigar shop, and she smiled at Coyle as they walked by. Were Chalmers’ men kind to these people because they lived on the south side of the wall? Were they equally as cruel to anyone who lived outside of those boundaries, even though geography was literally the only difference between them?

  Logan pointed at a four-story brick building on the corner of Wabash and 79th. A set of gargoyles near the top leaned out over the street, looking ready to break free and pounce on the city. “I’m pretty sure that’s it.”

  Two guards with SMG submachine guns stood out front. Their uniforms were different from the rest of those worn by the grunts in the city, which probably signaled they were elite guard.

  Most of the building’s windows were boarded up. Significant sections of the exterior were either crumbling or so drenched in graffiti that you couldn’t see the underlying brick, but such a thing would make for excellent camouflage if they were worried about infiltrators. And given what they’d seen with the war-planning committee in those tents, looked like they were expecting something.

  “Okay, then, we’re going in the front,” Coyle said. “This time, you let me do the talking.”

  “Sure, but tell them I was a Percher on the South wall, and you caught me sleeping or jacking off or something. That should work.”

  Coyle pressed the tip of the rifle into Logan’s back,
and his shaggy-haired companion raised his hands in surrender as they crossed the street.

  Both the guards raised their SMGs at once.

  “What’s going on here?” said the one on the left.

  “Percher,” Coyle said. “Caught him napping on duty.”

  The guard on the right narrowed his eyes. “Then why didn’t you take him to the Unit Commander at the tower?”

  Coyle’s breath caught for a second. The guard on the right moved his hand closer to the gun’s trigger.

  “I demanded to speak with Chalmers,” Logan said. “I wasn’t sleeping. My eyes were just closed. We went to the Unit Commander, and he said I could wait in Chalmers’ office for a meeting.”

  Guard on the left laughed. “You’ll be waiting for weeks.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Coyle said. “I’d appreciate if you’d stand down. My back is killing me and I can’t take my break until I drop this brat off.”

  The two guards looked at each other, and Coyle mentally prepared himself to disengage the M16’s safety.

  “Sure,” the left guard said. “Surrender your weapon and you can escort him inside.”

  Coyle handed over the gun and the guards stepped aside. They entered the building, eyes forward and trying to seem as natural and unassuming as possible.

  “Not bad, kid,” Coyle said, once they were alone.

  “You keep calling me kid. I’m almost thirty, you know.”

  “Still a kid to me. What do we do know?”

  Logan shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never actually been in here before. She would appear out of the window sometimes to address people, but she wasn’t ever much of a public relations person, know what I mean?”

  They were standing in some kind of reception area, with a large desk, a set of elevators, glass doors on either side, and stairs going up. A massive plaque next to the desk with slots for different names suggested this building was doctors’ offices at one time.

  “I’m going to say it’s the top floor,” Coyle said. “She’d be up high.”

  Coyle tested the elevator button, which didn’t light up when he pressed it. He drew his knife and jerked his head at Logan to get him to follow up the stairs. Strangely enough, there was no sound coming from anywhere. No boots on the floor, no conversation, no doors opening and closing. “You sure this is the right building?” Coyle said.

  “I think so. Why would those tight-ass guards be out front if it weren’t?”

  Up onto the second floor, Coyle peered through a window in the door and saw no sign of movement on the other side. Just an unfinished floor with ladders and tarps and pieces of drywall scattered about. They continued on to the third floor. Same procedure, except for a muffled sound carrying through the other side of the door.

  He pressed on the door handle, and the thing didn’t want to budge. He pressed again, and as the door inched open, a body that had been lodged against it slumped to the ground. Blood everywhere.

  “What is that?” Logan said.

  Coyle dropped to one knee and pulled the man’s shoulder toward him to get a look. He wore the same uniform as the guards downstairs, with the same submachine gun cradled in his arms. A deep gash across his jugular. Whoever had done this knew exactly where to strike.

  A collection of tall cubicles divided the room, and papers were strewn everywhere. Coyle eased into the room with his knife out and found six other bodies in a similar state. All of them dead, most with their throats cut. One of them bled from a dozen holes in his chest.

  “This one’s fresh,” Coyle said, pointing at the oozing blood.

  “What do you think happened here?”

  Coyle took a dead man’s SMG and slipped the strap over his shoulder. “No idea, but I think we’ll find out at the top of the stairs.”

  As they returned to the stairwell, Coyle noticed a trail of blood dotting the concrete underfoot. Cursed himself for not seeing it the first time. The blood zig-zagged up the stairs, so they followed it to the top floor. The splatters disappeared under the door.

  “You ready?” Coyle said as he placed a hand on the door.

  Logan took a breath. “Sure, I guess so.”

  Coyle pushed out into a hallway. Blood trailed up and to the left. They passed several doors marked with nameplates of various doctors and followed the dark droplets to the door at the end of the hall. Jessica Rubens, MA, LPC, the nameplate read.

  Coyle readied his knife, nodded at Logan, and opened the door.

  9

  Inside the office, a young woman with close-cropped hair stood, holding a lit match in one hand and a bloody knife in the other. An older woman writhed in a chair next to her, alive but dying fast. A second knife stuck out of her chest, and she convulsed like a landlocked fish while trying to remove the blade. The room stank of gasoline.

  The girl noticed them and she dropped to a crouch. Coyle felt the knife moving through the air toward him before he saw it. He barely had time to twist out of its path, and the blade clipped his ear as he moved.

  The girl snatched the blade from the dying woman’s chest, who screamed as she slumped out of the chair and onto the floor. She gurgled and gasped, trying to speak and failing.

  “Wait!” Logan shouted.

  The girl bared her teeth and held the knife high, ready to throw it. Her match had extinguished. “You’re not guards. Who are you people?”

  “We came to see Chalmers,” Coyle said as he clamped a hand over his ear to stop the bleeding. “She has something we want.”

  “Oh, she’s right there,” the girl said, pointing at the woman struggling to breathe on the carpet. “She’s not very talkative right now, though.” She spat at Chalmers.

  “Please put the knife down,” Logan said. “We’re no friends of New Chicago. We just need a document that can get us across Kansas and into Colorado. Whatever beef you have with Chalmers has nothing to do with us. We’re not going to stop you, but we need to get what we came for and then we’ll leave you to… finish what you started.”

  She said nothing.

  “The passes,” Logan said. “That’s all we care about.”

  The girl laughed as she took another match from the book in her pocket. “Passes? These people haven’t given out passes to go west in two years.”

  Coyle winced. Seems that Agent Williams had given him old information, which made the rest of the data in the folder suspect, at best.

  She flicked the match. “When they come to burn this city to the ground, I want to save them some trouble.”

  “Who’s coming to burn the city?” Coyle said.

  “Chalmers is sending troops to Denver. The remnants of the old United States government will crush those men and then come back here to finish the rest of us off.”

  The lit match in the girl’s hand flickered. Fumes from the gas were going to ignite it at any second. Coyle thought about lunging for her, but he could see the gasoline-drenched carpet around her feet. If the match fell, they were all dead.

  She stomped on the chest of the woman on the floor, who’d stopped breathing while they were talking. “This bitch killed my whole family.” She smiled at Logan. “It was only a matter of time until she came for me too, so I wanted to get my kicks in before the whole city goes up in flames. Whatever you guys are going out west to do, I’d say good luck, but you’ll end up as dead as the rest of us.”

  Logan inched across the room, bumping into a chair. She jerked back, and the match gave off a whiff of smoke. It had almost burned down to her fingers.

  She held up a hand to keep Logan back. “It’s time to end this.”

  She dropped the match, and Coyle grabbed Logan by the shirt collar and yanked him out of the room as a massive swirl of flame emerged from the floor and ballooned into the air.

  The fire chased them five feet down the hallway, licking the walls and leaving charcoal-colored remnants as it spread, and they felt the heat until they were safely in the stairwell. The door kept the flames out, but the building would s
oon be engulfed.

  “That didn’t go how I thought it would go,” Coyle said as they hustled down the stairs. “But it doesn’t matter now. We still have to get across that border.”

  Logan put a hand over his heart and took several huge breaths and the next floor’s staircase landing. “You want to try for that broken fence you mentioned in Nebraska?”

  Coyle thought about it. “No, you were right before. It could take days to find it… if it even exists. Know any way to get across one of those border station checkpoints, Border-Crossing Specialist?”

  They stopped at the ground floor and Coyle checked around for a back door exit.

  “I do, actually,” Logan said. “It’s a long shot, but there’s a station in north Kansas along the border that’s not very well guarded. Sometimes they even leave it unoccupied, since most people try to cross along I-70. It’s past St. Francis on Highway 36. If we can get there at the right time, we can make it.”

  “And you’ve done this before?”

  “At that particular crossing station? Not successfully, no.”

  10

  Anders kept his hands clasped behind his back as he strode through the troops in formation on the tarmac. He thought it might make him look more official, but he didn’t feel any bump in confidence. He felt like an interloper, even though these were supposed to be his people.

  Castillo, who still hadn’t returned from tailing his “compelling” man, had left the smarmy bastard Nadall in charge of the troops. Nadall was proving distant and evasive, but Anders knew he shouldn’t relent when it came to asserting his authority.

  Today the army was running rifle assembly drills, and Nadall kept peering at Anders out of the corner of his eye. No arguing that they didn’t like each other. But as long as Nadall kept the troops occupied until Castillo returned, Anders would let him continue as their leader.

  Nadall had arranged the men in two groups. One was practicing the drill while the other was lounging about under the shade of a jetway at gate A34. Some of them were rooting through a few stray suitcases that remained on a baggage cart.