“You mean that my sensing that I was going to be uncovered is not enough to have me take a powder.”
“Exactly,” Bev said.
“Well, I—” Rosen started to say.
“Okay, Morty,” Jim said, “get ready to start walking.”
“What do you mean?” Rosen asked.
“You’re on your own. Here’s your gun.” Expertly, Jim ejected the clip in the handle and the single shot in the chamber, then handed the gun to Rosen and threw the clip on the ground where it was retrievable, but would take a little time to get to.
“Wait a minute,” Rosen said. “I’ll be on my own out here. I’m a city slicker. I’m not going to last. And they’re going to come again—with more dogs. They’ll track me down.”
“You have a tremendous head start.”
Rosen looked as if he had eaten a goldfish.
“Nothing will do here, Morty, ” Jim said, “except the truth.”
Bev got in the HumVee and fired up the engine. Kindhand said nothing. But he was watching the scene intently.
“Wait,” Rosen said, “wait. I’ll tell you the truth.”
Bev turned the engine off.
“You’re right,” Rosen said, “it was more than my sense that I was going to be uncovered.”
Bev, Kindhand, and Jim were silent.
“Every week,” he said, “the slave women do your laundry, and I did something very stupid. I got mixed up, and allowed one to take away a pair of pants that had my ID card as a reporter for Rolling Stone sewed into it. I never wore them. I just left them in a closet. I figured that one day if I got captured by the Believers—who are savages themselves—I would show my ID. It was my insurance policy.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that?” Bev asked.
“Because . . .” Rosen said, hesitating. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t take me with you because you feared them. You would know for sure that they were going to come after to me. They have to.”
Rosen laid it out some more.
“I was undercover for two months. I got enough in my head about them specifically and in general to create big image problems. And if the Believers get a hold of what I have, it will amount to important tactical information.”
“Will you be willing to tell us what you’ve got?” Kindhand asked.
“Sure,” Rosen said.
“Pick up your clip,” Jim said.
Rosen went over and picked it up. Then he came back to Jim, who handed him the .45.
“Okay, Duke?” Jim asked, meaning, did he accept Rosen’s explanation?
Kindhand nodded yes. Then: “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”
Then, Rosen, Bev, and Jim got into the HumVee and the vehicle started to roll. It was, Jim thought, a situation similar to someone cheating on a spouse. There is a reunion highlighted by people speaking the truth to one another, and the problem is settled and they get back together. But their relationship has changed forever, because what has not changed is the cheater’s capacity to do it again.
And that was exactly the way Jim felt about Morty Rosen.
EIGHTEEN
Otis Williams stopped to relieve himself again about two miles outside Compound W. That was the last thing he needed: to be in the middle of telling the premier all about the slaughter of the unit and then have to ask permission to excuse himself because he had to go to the bathroom.
Thinking about that made him feel like he could go in his pants.
Williams made it back to the camp in under fourteen hours. When he arrived at around midnight, he was very tired, but he knew where his duty lay. The die was cast. He went into the compound and immediately asked to see the premier. Williams was nervous enough because, technically, he was guilty of dereliction of duty—if the premier found out—and there was no telling what he might do. But he was not going to give all the gory details. He was not going to tell him about taking a crap. All he’d say was that he was part of the firefight and was lucky to get away. Period. Keep it simple. Of course, he told himself, he could have just deserted, and it would have been reasonable for the premier to assume that he had been killed like the others, just that his body could not be found. But this way, if he pulled it off, he would be in line for a promotion. In a way, he did not see how he could not get away with it. The premier was more than a little crazy, but there was no way that he could blame Williams for anything.
Five minutes after he arrived, the premier came out of his compound. He was fully dressed but sleepy looking. This surprised Williams. It was a hint of the premier’s being human, and it was hard to imagine him as being that way. Usually he was conferring on some military matter, supervising an execution, or screwing one of the slaves, sometimes two at the same time, and of different ages. Williams had never seen anyone as hungry for sex. He acted more like a fifteen-year-old boy who has just discovered masturbation than a forty-year-old man, which was the age Williams guessed he was.
“What’s up, private?” he said as he approached Williams. “What’s so important that you have to get me out of bed? Where’s the rest of the unit?”
Williams told him, starting with the phrase “we were ambushed,” and as he did, the premier’s face changed from sleepiness to savagery, pure rage.
The premier wanted all the details, such as how far the bodies were from base camp, and how many enemy there were.
“I saw six soldiers—”
“Did you see Rosen?”
“Yes, sir, he was there, and I saw someone else. That religious bitch Harper, the one that got away.”
For a moment, Szabo just looked straight ahead, and then he spoke. His voice was low, but somehow terrifying.
“You’re sure it was her?”
“One hundred percent.”
“What were you doing during all this?”
As nonchalantly as he could, Williams explained that he was on the perimeter of the firefight and was able to kill a few of the enemy before he had to retreat. Here, Williams thought, he had played it very cool. On the way back to the compound he had thrown away all but one clip for the .45 and had fired the gun once. It would not be good to have to explain to the premier why his gun was unfired and full of ammunition!
“Okay,” Szabo said, “good work. I’m glad you got out.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Williams breathed a sigh of relief. He felt he had dodged a bullet. And, indeed, that was probably close to the truth. A bullet or a spike.
Szabo summoned Duyvill to the war room.
“I don’t know who the attackers were,” Szabo said, “but that little bastard was among them—and our friend Beverly. Whoever they are, they are professional soldiers, not beginners.”
“What do you suggest, sir?”
“Well, I was looking at the map. We can go most of the way by jeep, and then filter through the countryside.”
“How big a force?” Duyvill asked.
“At least a hundred men.”
“When?” Duyvill asked.
“I think we can start out by 0200. This will get us there in daylight, and we can launch the offensive immediately.”
“Sounds good,” Duyvill said.
“When we attack, they won’t know what hit them. And trust me, they’ll never know how we found them.”
“Take prisoners?”
“Absolutely,” the premier said. And then he added, “It’s important to take some of these people alive. I want to find out what Rosen told them and who knows what. They might have contacted others by radio or phone and told them. Every last potential source of this information must be neutralized.”
He paused, his eyes with a faraway glint.
“Oh,” he said, “wouldn’t I like to take this little bastard alive! If I do I’ll disassemble him cell by cell.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Duyvill said.
NINETEEN
It was nighttime. Rosen lay in his tent, and his mind was working overtime. Every sound he heard—and there were many in the W
yoming night, of course—he interpreted not as the sound of nature, but of Rejects corning either to nail him to the cross, make him sit on a stake, or merely give him some mercy—shoot him in the head!
The ambush was, after all, because of him. If he hadn’t been undercover, if he hadn’t escaped, there would be no need to send a doomed escape unit after him.
Oh no, the Rejects would be coming, coming primarily for him.
What was more, what about his story? If he ever got it published, he knew for sure that it would be in the running for a Pulitzer—if they even had such contests anymore. But if he stayed with these Rebels he would likely not get it published, or wouldn’t be around to read it!
Maybe. Maybe he was panicking. Maybe nothing would happen at all. He would join the Rebels and travel north and get away and live happily ever after.
Maybe. Or Maybe he would be getting a colonoscopy with a stake.
He blinked, thought harder. How do you make a decision in something like this?
He took some deep breaths, tried to relax. And he started to think back to the other times he went UC. What did he rely on then?
And he had been in three different situations where he had to make some life-or-death decisions.
He remembered one. The Wolverine MC Club in Brooklyn. He had worked his way inside that over a year’s period, and what had guided him was his fear. He now remembered reading a great book by a guy named Gavin DeBecker called The Gift of Fear, how if your gut told you there was something to be afraid of, then by all means be afraid. It had been the thing that had made him walk away from the MC Club. His gut told him to move his ass toward the door.
And later, after his piece came out and ten indictments were handed up on MC members, and they were tried and sent away for long stretches upstate, it came out that the consiglieri of the club had very great suspicions about Morty and they were within hours of grabbing him and torturing him to find out what the truth was.
His acknowledging his fear had saved him.
So, what about now? The Rebels were a force to reckon with. No question. They had hoodwinked the escape unit and wiped them out. LaDoux was going to lead them out of the area and into the safety, most likely, of the north. How the could Szabo and his force find him? There was no way. No way . . .
No way obvious. But Morty had seen Szabo in action. This guy had away of getting the job done.
Everything pointed to him to continue to travel with the Rebels. They would meet up with a stronger force and then Mr. Szabo.
The only thing telling him now to go was the fear in the pit of his belly. That told him to hightail his skinny ass out of there. And he did have a very good head start.
But where could he go?
He couldn’t go back east, he wasn’t going north, and he had no idea what was down south. What about west?
Then it struck him. An idea. He could go west and . . .
Yes, go west, young man. That was the way to go. And he would leave—now.
He sat up and looked around. The camp was quiet, but he knew there were pickets around. The Rebels didn’t want any unpleasant surprises from the Rejects. And they wouldn’t stop him. They had almost released him on his own as it was.
A half hour later, Rosen had packed everything that he thought he needed: a supply of food, his tape recorder, notebooks, pens, and a .45. He also packed a blanket and some clothing.
He did not plan to say good-bye to anyone, just leave. But as he was trudging out of the camp he abruptly heard the voice of Jim LaDoux.
“Where are you going, Rosen?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
“The Rejects are going to come after me. I want to live.”
“You’ll have a better chance with us,” LaDoux said.
“Why? You got six men and a woman and yourself. They have hundreds.”
“We’re going to be gathering more, building up our strength.”
“I’ll take my chances alone.”
“You look like you’re heading east.”
“So what?” Rosen said. He kept his tone of voice down, his expression quizzical. No way did he want LaDoux to know where he was headed, because in fact he had something else in mind besides just heading west.
“They’ll come up with more dogs,” LaDoux said. “No question.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Okay,” LaDoux said, “have it your way.”
“I will,” Rosen said.
Rosen could feel LaDoux’s eyes burning into his back. He would be glad when he could put this dude far behind him.
TWENTY
After losing sight of LaDoux, Rosen headed due east for about a mile. During the last quarter of a mile he looked back frequently to make sure that he wasn’t being followed by LaDoux. The moon was up so he could see pretty well through the trees, and once or twice stopped and looked back. There was no one behind him. It was safe, he thought. Then he started heading back west, glad to be going in the opposite direction that the Rejects would be coming from.
His route was not straight west. He walked at an angle so he would not retrace his steps. The last thing he needed was to run into LaDoux. No, that was the second worst thing. The worst thing would be running into a Reject force coming west.
He had walked about two miles south and west before he started to feel comfortable. Of course there was always wildlife to worry about, but he was starting to get used to that. It seemed that if you didn’t bother them, you didn’t get bothered by them.
He knew that what he was about to do was morally wrong. A reporter’s job was to report, not get involved in the internal politics of something. But he also had to be concerned about saving his ass. And that’s why he had decided to hook up with the Believers. And he knew that what he was about to do was going to lead to a battle—a big one.
He pictured, as he walked quickly through the woods, him having to explain all this to John Wagner, his editor in chief at Rolling Stone. He would come into his office, a surprisingly threadbare affair given that he was editor of Rolling Stone, one of the most influential magazines in America, and would tell him what he had in mind. And Wagner would say: “Christ, Morty, you can’t do that. You’re a writer, not a purveyor of public policy! As far as danger goes, that comes with the territory.”
He would say that before the event took place. But if it came to pass in the way Morty hoped it would, he knew that Wagner would have an entirely different reaction, because he would have gotten what could be one of the best stories of the last couple of decades—and an exclusive. Then he would say something like: “Morty, you shouldn’t have done that.” Bad boy.
But around Christmastime Morty would find a bonus check that would be the largest in his ten-year career at the Stone.
Actually, Morty thought, and he didn’t think he was rationalizing things, he was involved in the conflict. And why wouldn’t he be? He had heard from his mother and father that many years ago during World War II many relatives had been executed by the Nazis. And what was the difference between the Rejects and the Nazis? Nada. They were the same savages with different names.
Thinking that, Morty felt better. Yes, indeed, he was more than a reporter in this conflict. He was a soldier trying to do the right thing.
He stopped by a creek at one point, got himself a long drink of water, rested for a moment—and relaxed as much as he could. There was no way, he thought, that the Rejects were going to get to him. If they were going to go after anyone, it would be Jim LaDoux and the Rebels. But they also would be long gone into the wilderness by the time the Rejects came across their slain brethren. Hopefully. Of course the dogs would have his scent, if there were dogs. The only ones Morty had ever seen were those attached to the escape unit. Maybe there were no dogs. Great.
He did not, Rosen thought, know quite as much about his destination, the Believers, as he did the Rejects, or the Rebels for that matter. He knew the Believers were fanatics, but they weren’t Nazis.<
br />
He had done research on them before going UC. Numerically, they were probably superior to the Rejects’ forces, but they weren’t as well trained. Still, in head-to-head confrontations in maybe forty towns across the U.S. they had fared pretty well.
While they weren’t fascists, Morty thought, they were still nutcases, and many of the people who were part of the Believers had gone over to them in desperation. They were so rocked by the horrific things that had happened in America that they had joined the Believers and their bedrock adoration of Jesus Christ.
One of the things that made them fanatics, maybe the only thing, was the rules they lived by. They didn’t believe in the Ten Commandments, they believed in what they called the Fifteen Commandments—ten plus five. As a Believer a sexual affair before marriage was forbidden, you were required to attend services three times a week, there would be no marriage between races, homosexuals were not allowed in their ranks, nor were Jews. And there were maybe four or five other restrictions and rules.
But while nuts, they weren’t—at least not yet—killers. If you did not accept their way of life, or their religion, you were not allowed in or banished.
They also saw themselves as “Soldiers of Christ,” and had taken up arms against the Rejects, whom they characterized as “godless hordes,” because they threatened their way of life, just as “infidels” threatened the church and its way of life during medieval times. Hence, soldiers of Christ went out and kicked some ass. This was a holy war.
The head of the Believers, Rosen thought, rising to his feet, his break over, was Jay a.k.a. Father McAulliffe, a born-again believer who had been a drug dealer in the south Bronx. Wasn’t that always the case? Rosen thought. Born-again believers were among the most fanatical people oil earth. Of course there were some very good born-again Christians, and being born again was certainly not ipso facto bad. He had seen many people come back from the brink because God came into their lives, or they believed He had.
Rosen was walking more rapidly than he had before. His eyes scanned for bears or unfriendly people.
Survivor (The Ashes Book 36) Page 16