Seven Unholy Days

by Jerry Hatchett

  My shirt was drenched and stuck to me within five minutes. By the time I’d covered a mile I could feel my underwear bunching up in a hot, wet, mess. The laptop weighed four pounds and felt like forty as I shifted it from shoulder to shoulder. After four nights of very little sleep, I had been exhausted when this day began. The adrenaline produced by my anger at Rowe helped me cope with the first couple of miles, but it faded quickly after that.

  I was probably into the fifth mile when I saw a truck coming. Walking in the sweaty socks had rubbed blisters on the bottoms of my toes, making each step painful. I stopped walking and for the first time in my life, stuck my thumb out for a ride. The truck slowed and pulled over, and it was a beauty. Late seventies Ford F150 in a lovely shade of rust. He was heading away from the Iuka Country Inn, but I didn’t care. I wanted off the road and into something with a motor. I had no doubt that wherever he took me would be an improvement.

  “What’s your name?” he said as he eased back onto the road. The truck had no muffler and the sound was deafening. “Matt Decker,” I shouted. The truck reeked of beer and my feet rested on an aluminum mountain of Milwaukee’s Best empties.

  “Henry Roberts here,” he said. I couldn’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure either Henry or a twin brother was in the movie Deliverance. A bag of bones with a week of stubble and a stench to match.

  “Where you heading, Henry?”

  “I’m going to the light plant.”

  “Great Central?” Surely I hadn’t crawled into this rolling hunk of rust only to be taken back there.

  “Yup. And you know what? If they get smart with me, I’m just liable to whoop some ass.”

  Great. I’d just been thrown out by the director of the FBI and now I was about to drive back up with an incestuous hick with three teeth in his head who was “just liable to whoop some ass.” My day kept getting better.

  “What’d you say your name was?” he said.

  “Decker.”

  “Well Dicker, I’ll tell you right now that it ain’t nothing for me to whoop a man’s ass. You might’ve heard of me.”

  “Could be, Henry. Why’d you say you’re going to the electric company?”

  He spit a hefty stream of snuff juice out the window. “They got some lines run across my land. Only reason I let ‘em stay there is because of the lights in the box that I like to go out there at night and look at.”

  “Lights in a box?” It was becoming more obvious by the moment that Henry was an intellectual giant.

  “Yup. There’s a box on a pole, got a running ton of lights in it that flash. I like to go out there at night and watch the lights while I drink beer. Say, you want a beer, Dicker? I got some left.” He popped the top on a hot can of beer from the floorboard.

  “No thanks.”

  “Anyways, them lights ain’t blinking right no more and I aim to tell somebody about it. Bad enough that I got to drink damn hot beer all week long. Now my blinking lights ain’t right. They either ain’t blinking at all or they’re flashing like a bat out of hell. It’s pissing me off, Dicker. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “How big is this box on the pole?”

  “She’s about two foot square, black on the outside with lights inside ... ”

  He was describing a field-accessible diagnostic checkpoint. Power was of course transmitted through high tension wires like it had been for a century, some underground and some on poles. The circuitry that made it all run, though, was pure fiber optics. These bundles of glass lines fanned out from the control center in every direction, providing communication links from the control computers to the grid switches at substations and other distribution points throughout the region. It never occurred to me that there were people on this earth who spent their nights watching the lights blink inside a junction box in what I presume was the middle of nowhere, as was often the case with this particular type of module.

  “ ... and that’s what I’m talking about, Dicker. You sure you don’t want a beer?” he said as he tossed one can out the window and promptly popped the top on another. He’d been babbling nonstop and I’d stopped listening.

  “I’m sure. Say Henry, I don’t suppose I could hire you to run me back up to Iuka before you go whooping ass, could I?”

  “What you paying?”

  “Twenty bucks.”

  He nearly slung me out the window as he spun the truck around and headed back toward Iuka. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to the Iuka Country Inn, where I paid Henry and said goodbye amid the thunder of his departure.

  24

  7:45 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

  YELLOW CREEK

  “You did what?” Tarkleton screamed.

  “To be accurate, the director ordered him out of here, not me. He sure got no argument from me on it, though. I think Decker is bad news. Even if he’s not involved in it himself, all he does is piss this guy off. For all we know he’s responsible for what happened in Los Angeles,” Rowe said.

  “You’re as full of crap as a Christmas turkey, Rowe. You know dang good and well that what happened in Los Angeles had to have been planned long ago. It most certainly didn’t happen because Decker was here, no matter what the guy is saying. He’s just yanking chains, trying to distract us, and it looks to me like it’s working. You people need your heads examined if you’re so simple-minded that you can’t see that.”

  “Thanks for sharing your opinion, Mr. Tarkleton. It’s of much value to us.”

  “Abdul,” Tarkleton said, turning his back to Rowe, “what’s wrong with you? You look bothered.”

  “You do not know of the final email to Matt Decker. We are having until 10:22 tomorrow morning to find the CEPOCS password or my family is going to be killed and maybe Matt Decker’s father and many more Americans.”

  “Rowe, you idiot! You sent Decker off with this going on? And why didn’t you mention this email to me just now?”

  “I have no obligation to tell you anything, Tarkleton. You’re a plant manager, nothing more. You have no role in this investigation other than to follow my orders. The Bureau is in charge of this investigation and I’m in charge of this facility until further notice. In case you haven’t heard, we’re under martial law and that means we have a bit more latitude in setting the rules.”

  Rowe never saw it coming as Tarkleton walked calmly toward him. Tarkleton hit Rowe square in the mouth with enough force to loosen three front teeth and send blood pouring. “And in case you haven’t heard,” Tarkleton said, “this is the United States of America, not some piss-ant third world hellhole where people like you decide to take over and everybody falls in line just because you said to!”

  Rowe slowly picked himself up from the floor, using his forearm to wipe the blood streaming down his chin. Abdul watched the fracas for about thirty seconds and returned to the task at hand, his fingers flying over the keys as his eyes scanned the screen for signs of success. Tarkleton stuck a big finger right in Rowe’s face. “You’re out of control, Rowe.”

  “I swear to God, you’ll pay for that, Tarkleton.”

  “Maybe so, Rowe. Or maybe not,” Tarkleton said as he stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  8:13 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

  IUKA COUNTRY INN

  I almost left my skin when I stepped out of the dark shower and saw Jimmy Lee Tarkleton sitting in the chair beside the bed. “Good grief, man, ever heard of knocking?”

  “I did. Guess you were in the shower, so I got the manager to let me in. He’s a friend of mine. How’d you get here, Matthew?”

  “Hitched a ride with a real winner, some guy named Henry. You heard what happened at the plant?”

  “Agent Rowe and I had a discussion about it.”

  “I was wrong about Potella. Rowe’s the mole.”

  “Do tell?”

  “I’ll explain later. Right now we have to figure out how I can get back on this thing. We have a new deadline.”

  “So I heard.
I’m with you, but how do you propose we get you back in?”

  “How many agents do they have on site?”

  “Rowe, Potella, and Reynolds were the only ones there when I left. They have two more in the area, but they’ve been out working the Fulton investigation with Litman’s boys.”

  “Speaking of the High Sheriff, whose side will he come down on?”

  “Johnny and I go way back, but asking a county sheriff to go head to head against another law enforcement agency, especially the FBI, is a tall order. I used to pull a few shifts as a reserve policeman and I can tell you the blue wall of solidarity is a real thing.”

  “I thought it was the blue wall of silence.”

  “Same thing, trust me. They stick together.”

  “We’ll have to tear that wall down this time. We don’t have a choice.”

  “I’m with you come hell or high water, Matthew, and I’ll do what I can with Johnny Litman, but I can’t make you any promises where he’s concerned.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s go.”

  “Hell, Tark, I could wind up in jail. Not a good place for a sheriff to be.”

  “Johnny, you remember Billy Sneed?”

  Litman wagged a finger in Tark’s face. “This ain’t going to work, Jimmy Lee.”

  “Do you remember him?”

  “You know dang well I do.”

  Tark turned to me. “Billy was the class bully from the first grade on. Always had it in for this scrawny little buddy of mine named Johnny Litman.” He looked back at the Sheriff. “How many times you reckon I saved you from him?”

  “Plenty, but—”

  “No buts, Johnny. I was always there for you. Always. Didn’t matter if it was Billy or somebody else, first grade or summer camp or tenth grade or whatever. Until you got where you could take care of yourself, I was there for you and I’ve never asked you for one thing. Now I’m asking. This nut’s liable to kill a million more people if he’s not stopped, and Matthew here is the one with the best shot at that.”

  “Why don’t ya’ll call Rowe’s boss and let him handle it?”

  “The people in Washington and Quantico aren’t getting anywhere,” I said, “and we can’t sit around waiting for them to get their act together. And besides, how do we know who we can even trust up there? We know there’s at least one other turncoat and there could be a dozen more,” I said.

  “Dang it, Johnny, why don’t you reach down in your britches and be sure you even got a pair left,” Tark said. Litman’s nostrils flared and red splotches appeared on his face.

  “Sheriff, I’m going back in there,” I said. “Maybe we can avoid anyone getting hurt if you’re with us, but I’m going in with our without you.”

  “That goes for me, too,” Tark said.

  Litman rolled his eyes. “Decker, if this backfires I’ll be knocking on your door for a job.” He keyed the mike on his shoulder and turned his head toward it to speak. “Dispatch, S.O. One.”

  “S.O. One, Dispatch. Go ahead.”

  “Find Ray Johnson and patch him through to me, ASAP.”

  “Ten-four, Sheriff.”

  Litman had been slow to come on board, but once he did he fully engaged and had the clout to bring plenty of high quality guests to the party. I learned that Ray Johnson was Lieutenant Ray Johnson, brother-in-law of Johnny Litman and somewhat of a local hero as a result of his service in Afghanistan, during which he led a charge into al-Qaida’s Tora Bora cave complex.

  Of current interest was the fact that he was the Army Reserve officer in charge of the local e-brigade, Itawamba County’s National Guard component of Mississippi’s 3rd Brigade, 87th Division, which rolled under the moniker Dixie Thunder.

  The Humvee was loud and hot. “Matthew, way back in 1787 Thomas Jefferson said something that we might be put in jail for saying today. He basically said a rebellion was needed at least every twenty years, that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of both patriots and tyrants. Those were telling words.” Tark was shouting to be heard over the roar of the hefty engine and the whine of the mammoth tires on the behemoth.

  “I’d rather not water the tree tonight if we can avoid it,” I said.

  “Do I strike you as a violent man?”

  “You could.”

  He grinned and slapped me on the back. “I’m just a big old teddy bear, son.”

  Our Humvee was the number two vehicle in the convoy, right behind Sheriff Litman’s cruiser as we made our way into the GCE complex. Behind us were three more Humvees, two of them topless and bristling with mounted M-60 .50 caliber machine guns. And rumbling along way back at the back of the pack, unbelievably, was an M1A1 Abrams tank.

  Abdul is a codeslinger extraordinaire. He was one with his machine, barely looking up when we burst into the room like a team of vigilante commandos at midnight. I did see him crack the faintest smile, though. He knew the cavalry had come.

  Potella and Reynolds spared no time getting their hands airborne when the swarm of armed men hit the room. For about a thousandth of a second, Rowe looked like he wanted to reach for his gun, but common sense took over and he too raised his hands. Litman relieved Rowe’s shoulder holster of the .40 caliber Glock, along with a .32 revolver tucked away in a nylon ankle holster. He cuffed him and a pair of deputies escorted him to the side of the room. “Hold him right there for the time being,” Litman said.

  I noticed earlier that the knuckles on Tark’s right hand looked bruised. I saw Rowe’s swollen lip and understood. Someone stripped Potella and Reynolds of their weapons and escorted them from the control room.

  “What do you want me to do with this bunch?” Litman said, pointing at Neo and his band of merry misfits.

  “Got any work for them over at your jail?”

  “My computers work fine, thank you very much.”

  “Who said anything about computers? Any floors need mopping?”

  Litman grinned. “Now you’re talking.” He motioned for a deputy to round them up and usher them out.

  “Tark,” I said, “let’s get the Bureau on the line and break the news about who’s in charge down here. Maybe Brandon will come to his senses and work with us.”

  “Rowe, give me the director’s phone number,” Tark said. Rowe broke loose from the two deputies and hit the door running, his arms shackled securely behind his back thanks to a regulation pair of Smith & Wesson handcuffs. The deputies gave chase and we fell in behind. Ten yards down the hallway I stepped on something that clanked. The handcuffs. He used his own key to release the locks while we were talking.

  He flew through the outer door and hit the parking lot in a sprint. The man could run. I was in good shape, normally running four to six miles a day depending on how busy I was, and I was getting winded after a hundred yards. He was going toward the waterway, showing no sign of slowing down as adrenaline pushed him forward. I heard the splash as he hit the water, then another as one of the deputies plowed in after him. The second deputy wanted no part of the water, manning the flashlight from the bank instead.

  He swept the beam of the Mag-Lite across the surface of the water, looking for Rowe but finding only the other deputy. Rowe was nowhere to be seen. He had dove underwater and surfaced elsewhere. The black water of the unlit night made it tough to see anything. Lots of talking and pointing flashlights and speculating went on, but Special Agent Bob Rowe was gone.

  “Abdul, any progress?”

  He shook his head but his fingers never stopped. Tark was still dialing the phone. He covered the handset and said, “You see what I mean about a biblical flavor on that last email?”

  “Yeah, let’s brainstorm that as soon as we get it quietened down around here.”

  DAY FOUR

  FRIDAY

  And I looked, and behold a pale horse:

  and his name that sat on him was Death,

  and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth,

  to kill with
sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

  Revelation 6:8

  25

  1:02 AM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

  YELLOW CREEK

  It took forty-five minutes but Tark finally had FBI Director Keen Brandon on the phone, explaining the newly established Yellow Creek command structure to him. I was talking to Abdul when Sheriff Litman walked back into the room. “Of all the times for Henry Roberts to pull one of his routines, he sure picked a doozy.”

  Litman turned to one of the deputies. “Bobby, go out there and get his drunk self and see if you can find a place around here to lock him up. Make it as far away from here as you can so we ain’t got to listen to him.”

  “I had the good luck to hitch a ride with Henry today. He’s a piece of work,” I said.

  “He’s been like that his whole life. Hell, his daddy was like that. Always drinking and picking fights. Thank the Lord he and Missy didn’t have kids. Maybe that line will finally die off.”

  I was wondering why any human woman would want to marry Henry, when an avalanche of realization fell over me. “Take me to Henry right now,” I said.

  “Why on Earth—”

  “Sheriff, I’ll explain later, just take me to him.”

  “Bobby, take him on,” Litman said while he shook his head.

  They had him locked in the guard shack at the main gate. Another deputy stood outside the diminutive structure while Henry threatened to whoop all kind of ass from inside. “Open the door,” I told Bobby. He nodded to his colleague and seconds later Henry came charging out.

  He stopped in his tracks when he saw me with the deputies and just stood there trying to figure it out. “Dicker!” he finally said. “You come to help me whoop these candy ass sumbitches?”