“You sure?” the woman asked.
Sara nodded. “Can’t stress it enough,” she said. “We’re as good as it’s going to get. We want to do this; we need to go as planned.”
Margret stayed silent, but after a moment, she nodded. “All right then. We proceed as planned.”
Margret stepped down and hugged Sara, and then Ava, squeezing them tightly. “I’m glad you two are okay. Go, get some dinner and we’ll talk later.” The cell leader turned to the man standing watch on the porch. “Come on, Mitch,” she said. “We need to check on the firetruck.”
Mitch nodded. As he stood, he caught Ava’s eyes and smiled. “See you later,” he said.
Ava returned the smile as he walked away with Margret. But when she turned back around and saw Sara was already heading off to eat, she stepped forward and grabbed her friend’s arm.
“Wait a second there, kemosabe,” she said.
Sara looked at her. “I’m starving, Ava,” she complained.
“What the hell was up with that line of bullshit about everything being fine?” Ava demanded. “You saw the executions. And know as well as I do there was a platoon already outside the wire and patrolling the area. They were on us fast. It’s a miracle we didn’t trip over them going in.”
Sara’s eyes narrowed at her, and Ava had to fight the urge to step back at the coldness she saw there.
“I know what I’m doing,” Sara said.
“I think they’ve caught on they’re being probed,” Ava told her, keeping her voice quiet. “Either from us or one of the other scout teams. You don’t think we should mention to people that our target could very well fucking be waiting for us?”
Sara shook her head. “These guys are serious, but they’re not hardcore yet. They’re nervous and jumpy as it is. You mention a couple of extra guards and it might blow the whole deal,” she said. “Those trucks of people from the Mercy Centers can’t wait any longer. At any time, they could all be executed, simple as that. Do you want that on your conscience? Because I don’t!”
“These people trusted us to be their eyes and ears,” Ava said. “I don’t want to hear your rationalizations and arguments. You’re playing God here, and you’re going to get people killed.”
Sara grabbed Ava’s arm, squeezing. “We don’t know how many more there are,” she hissed. “And we really didn’t see any heavier weaponry. The plan is a good one. I don’t want some people who’ve never been in a really tough firefight before getting cold feet now. Those people in that prison deserve better than that.”
“You’re playing with people’s lives,” Ava repeated, shaking her arm away from Sara’s grip.
“They’re murdering civilians!”
Ava stared at her for a moment more. “Fine,” she said, her voice low. It was clear enough that Sara had her mind made up—anything Ava said would be lost in translation. She turned away without another word. Sara simply followed Ava into the clubhouse restaurant, her arms crossed in determination.
After they’d eaten, Ava sat by herself, not talking, while Sara retired to where their cots and sleeping bags were set up and crashed hard. Her mind was racing with a multitude of thoughts, but she was so exhausted from the exertion of her escape and the adrenaline crash afterwards that she just tucked in, rolled herself into a ball, and fell asleep.
Sometime the next morning, Jake Spooner woke her up.
Spooner was in his late sixties, bald as an egg with a bushy Fu Manchu-style mustache and beard. He owned the farmhouse the resistance utilized and, in the short time she’d known him, Sara had come to like him very much.
“Hey,” Spooner said, “I know you’re tired, but I thought you wouldn’t want to miss lunch.” Sara sat up and he offered her a plate with a massive BLT cut into halves, and a cold beer. Sara took them both with a quick nod and a sincere smile.
“Thank you, Jake,” she said.
After her disagreement with Ava, it was nice to interact with someone who wasn’t angry with her. She took several big bites of the sandwich and washed them down with the chilled beer. Being part of an organized force had its perks.
“How are things?” she asked between bites.
Jake shrugged, waving his hand in a so-so motion. “Can’t complain. America’s turned into a fascist nightmare and I live in constant fear of my own government, after serving it for twenty years in the Air Force, and now it’s turning on all of us and coming in here like it’s Waco, Texas all over again. But, other than that, my bowels have been real regular, so I don’t like to complain.”
Sara laughed. “It’s the little things, right?”
She finished the sandwich as he kept joking, feeling much better. Both the lettuce and tomatoes had been farmer’s market fresh, grown in the patch right behind the house and filled with flavor. She supposed, in the old America, her sandwich would have been a boutique cafe item. She lifted the last half of her beer to Jake.
“Cheers.”
Jake nodded as she drank, but she could tell he had something on his mind, something he wanted to say. After two big swallows, she lowered the can and looked at him, taking in the newly serious expression.
“Jake,” she said. “Shoot. What is it?”
He smiled, looking suddenly self-conscious. “It’s nothing really. I just wanted to come in and… thank you.”
“Thank me?” Sara echoed. “For what?” She’d been expecting another shoe to drop—some bad news or warning—not a random thank-you.
“For what you two are doing, and what you guys and your father did,” Jake said. He sighed, long and hard, and then explained. “Since you guys came, and we learned that most of those escaped convict gangs are orchestrated and armed by this Council, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
“Jake, I—” Sara began.
Spooner held up his hand, stopping her. He went on right away, his voice sounding thick. “No, I need to get this out. We tried to go into town, me and my Amy,” he said. “Married thirty-two years, thirty-two good years, though we had our problems like everyone else, I guess. We wanted to get to our church, to try and help people.” He paused, swallowed, and then pushed on. “But we got caught by a gang from Manville Correctional Facility.” He raised his shirt, showing Sara two bullet wound scars in his torso. “They gave me this; they thought I was dead.” Tears built up on the edges of his eyes, and Sara suddenly realized that even though she’d grown to like this man, she hadn’t spent much time with him without a whole group of others being around; he must have been waiting to tell her all this for days.
Jake continued, “I couldn’t move after they shot me, and there was a lot of blood, so they thought I was dead. They started raping Amy, like a pack of animals. The whole time—” The tears started running down his face. He didn’t even seem to notice them. “She was trying to crawl to me, to help me. They just kept laughing.” He stopped talking and shuddered, but continued before Sara could figure out how to respond. “After a little bit, I could move again, but nothing was working right. I tried to get to her, but they saw me moving and kicked the fuck out of me until I was unconscious. I woke up when Margret found me. Amy was dead. They’d hit her with a hammer until,” his voice was strangled as he tried to continue, and he choked before adding, “until I couldn’t recognize her face anymore.”
Sara swallowed, and reached out her hand to lay it on his shoulder, the food she’d eaten suddenly feeling like a boulder in her stomach. “That’s awful,” she said after another moment had passed, when Jake seemed to be getting a hold of himself again. “It’s so awful, just saying it’s awful seems like an insult. I’m so sorry, Jake, I don’t have words.”
Spooner nodded. He took a hard breath and cleared his throat, using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the moisture from his face. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay. I just wanted to tell you that, to have you know, so the next part of what I say makes sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when those spooks from the UN to
ld us what was really happening, and Margret started running this cell, and I learned who was really behind what happened to Amy… I wasn’t on board. I was too broken up that people in my own government had done this to me. Had done this to Amy. I let Margret use the place and do what she needed, but I wasn’t much help. Not really.” He smiled at Sara, his eyes still wet. “But the stories about how you and your dad fought back, how you were able to go toe-to-toe with those Council bastards and bloody them good… all that started getting passed around. When I heard that, I felt like I was my own self again. Like a real fight might be possible, and coming. You could say it shook me out of my grief.”
He took one of Sara’s hands in both of his, and she looked down at his hands. They were big, strong hands. The hands of a worker. They reminded her of her father’s. She thought about how he’d suffered through those years when she’d been with the Church of Humanity and how he’d fought to find her. She missed him, her worry like a dull ache behind her breastbone. She put her hand over Spooner’s.
“Jake, I—”
“You were a hero, Sara. You inspired people, whether you know it or not—that’s what I want to make sure you know. Your father is a hero. He’s inspired people. No one else has been able to fight back the way you did, not to that level, not yet. You were the first, and that makes you heroes, understand?”
He stood, smiled, and picked up the plate and empty beer can. “I’m done,” he laughed. “I just wanted you to know.”
Sara nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to speak.
After Spooner had gone, she sat quietly for a while, lost in her own thoughts, practically trapped by them. She’d never seen herself as a hero; she’d seen her dad’s efforts as heroic in their magnitude of struggle, but not in a clichéd sort of knight in shining armor way. She hadn’t thought of him as a hero, definitely—not in those words. The reality of the brutal acts they’d had to execute had tarnished any concept of heroics for her.
Yes, they’d been brave, and yes, they’d been strong, but “hero” was such a clean word… and much of what they’d done had been far from clean. And really, their motivations had been selfish. Her dad had been a sworn law enforcement officer as well her dad. Yet, he’d never taken up the struggle against the Council for any reason other than his own. Even his saving Ava, she knew, could be attributed to his inability to process the pain of having failed to protect his own daughter.
And Finn had been a magnificent person. Maybe the best of all of them. But, in the end, she’d done what she had out of love for Ava, not love of freedom. And Ava? Ava fought for her own freedom and out of hate. Sara had been little different. For a while, she’d even been a willing pawn of her oppressors. Nothing was clear-cut and noble here. Nothing was heroic.
I’m not a hero.
The heroes were the people in the resistance. People courageous enough to fight not just for themselves, but for others, for an ideal much larger than themselves. And saving their countrymen from whatever horrors were going on in the prison in Terre Haute would make everyone see that. She just had to make sure they took up the fight. They couldn’t be scared off before it had even started.
Resolute, she stood. Ava was right. She needed to tell Margret and the rest of the cell the truth about what was happening at the prison so that they could all go forward and engage in this fight.
After asking around the house, Sara found Margret and the rest of the cell about half a mile down the road. There was an old rural substation for the county fire district there. She nodded her way past two sentries and slipped inside.
Behind a full-sized ladder truck, she found them standing around a map of the area south of Terre Haute. Ava stood on the far side of the room, her arms folded. She didn’t make eye contact when Sara entered. Margret did, however. The cell leader didn’t look happy.
“Okay,” she told everyone. “That’s the plan. Finish the modifications to the firetruck and we’ll be set.”
The group standing around her began dispersing. Hoping she wasn’t too late, Sara pushed forward. She walked up to Margret just as Ava wandered over.
“Margret, there’s something I have to tell you, based on the Terre Haute recon,” she began.
Margret held up her hand. “Save it, Sara. There’s nothing you can tell me that Ava hasn’t already.”
Surprised, Sara looked at Ava, who shrugged.
Ava met her eyes as she spoke, her words coming solid in the air between them. “You were playing with people’s lives, Sara. They deserved to know the truth.”
Sara swallowed her discomfort, nodding. “I realize that now… I couldn’t agree more.” She turned to face Margret. “Obviously, we can’t go ahead with our plan if they’re expecting us.”
Margret shook her head. “We’re going ahead with the plan, as is.”
“But—” Sara protested.
Margret cut her off. “There’s been an update in the situation.”
Sara looked at her. “What update?”
“The prison is under the control of Warden Spencer. He’s inside now. Killing him wouldn’t do much to change FEMA capabilities, but it would definitely deliver a blow to the Council. We’re going to hit that prison with everything we’ve got.”
Sara froze, stunned.
Margret smiled and reached out to place her hands on her shoulders. “But we’re on the same side, so no more lies, okay? Even if you think your reasons are justified.”
Sara forced a smile for the other woman. “Deal.”
At that moment, one of Margret’s lieutenants, a Chinese American named Brian Chan, hurried up to them. Instead of having his rifle slung over his shoulder, he carried the AKM in both hands, and Sara saw the fire selector switch was off safety.
“We’ve got to move!” he half-shouted, breathless. “There are armored vehicles rolling our way—the government’s coming.”
5
Parker didn’t know how long he’d been in the cell. Time had become one sharply linear moment of cold reality and harsh white light. Time simply passed, and he waited it out.
He was naked now. Lying on a rough concrete floor that held patches of damp seeping up from below. The walls were bare cinderblock. The single door was a blind-riveted heavy iron plate. Once it had been painted firetruck red. Now the paint was bubbling and peeling from the surface, exposing scabs of rust.
There was no bed, not even a mattress on the floor. Only a bucket with a white plastic lid was there for Parker’s use, and it stank like a desert latrine. It was emptied periodically; the observation plate in the rusting door would clang back, and eyes would look in to gauge the depth of Parker’s waste in the bucket. If it was deemed necessary, a voice would bark orders for Parker to stand against the far wall, hands clasped behind his back, his forehead against the chill cinderblock. The heavy door would open and the bucket would be removed, a clean one left in its place. Afterwards, the door would boom shut and Parker would be left alone.
The room temperature never went above uncomfortably chill.
For prolonged periods of time, speakers set in the high ceiling, which Parker couldn’t reach even if he tried jumping, blared Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” on a continual loop, hundreds and hundreds of times. Keeping him awake, robbing him of the respite of unconsciousness. Just when Parker thought he could cope with the high volume and psychopathic repetition, the song would cut out. There would be a minute of blessed silence, and then Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” would begin the next insanely loud rotation.
Over and over and over again. Maybe he’d gotten some enjoyment out of the songs once, long ago, but he never would again.
Parker was well aware of this particular flavor of psychological torture. Iraqi prisoners had been subjected to it in Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. To the eternal shame of the military, prisoners had been isolated and subjected to heinous humiliation. Pictures taken of them being forced to masturbate, climb all over each other naked, go through mock executions, and g
enerally get humiliated had not only brought the U.S. Army into disrepute with the international community, but painted a bigger target on any U.S. forces soldier who’d then gone patrolling, even in areas that had been considered relatively safe.
Parker’s knowledge of the tactics employed to unsettle him didn’t help him cope with the constant playlist from Hell’s iPod. Far from it. The noise had put him in a low-level state of anxiety when he’d considered what might come next—when they got bored with playing ultra-loud, awful faux country music for him.
However, despite the panic he’d felt upon the breaking of his earlier routine, Parker did take some comfort from two facets of the situation. First, the anxiety he felt about the future mindfucks and abuses his captors might visit upon him had not even a hundredth of the force of the panic attack he’d suffered on the way to the cell. Second, although his captors were still feeding his addiction, Calhoun was no longer coming into the cell to inject him; instead, every third or fourth tray of food that was placed in the center of the room by a guard—once Parker had “assumed the position” against the wall—was accompanied by a small plastic medicine pot, each one filled with 40 ml of methadone.
Methadone was a commonly used opioid substitute for heroin addicts. Green, sticky, and foul, and taken orally, it gave none of the rush of a good hit, but it still mercifully denied the onset of a full cluck of cold turkey.
Parker measured time now in how he was feeling between doses. When Parker felt he was teetering on the edge of a comedown, he would sit in the center of the cell trying to mind-force the door open with sheer willpower. It took his mind off the sweats and the ugly flower of panic unfurling in his gut. These sweaty-mouthed moments waiting for his next swallow of methadone provided him with a clock of sorts. Marking the passage of hours between hits. This was what he had become now, a junkie clock.
Dead Reckoning (911 Book 3) Page 4