Warrior (Freelancer Book 2)

by Irving, Terry

  Steve raised his hand and opened his palm to indicate the house. "This is as good a hole as any."

  "Better than most," Scotty added.

  Thinking of the basement, Rick agreed.

  Kristee looked at the guys closely as if she couldn't quite believe they weren't kidding.

  "Anyway," she said to Eve, "if you remember, you never saw much of Gary. He came with me, of course, and got a job at the checkout counter at Olsson's. Then he kind of disappeared."

  "Yeah, I didn't really miss him." Eve said. "I always thought you could do better."

  "Well, if you look around Wolf Point, you won't see a whole lot of prime husband material," said Kristee with a bitter smile. "I figured if he was ambulatory at least one night every weekend, I was ahead of the game."

  "OK. OK. Point taken. What happened to him?"

  "Well, the two of us had joined another group besides Kyi-oh, a political discussion group that used to meet in the Humanities Building in the evenings. I never paid all that much attention; it was just a way to get out of that stinking room over the Chinese restaurant and sit with Sage for a while."

  Kristee shook her head slowly, "But Gary…he got real serious. It was as if he was hypnotized or something. Afterward, he would just talk and talk and talk about politics and religion and, you know…" she made air quotes…"'The Revolution.'

  So finally, he was given some sort of scholarship or grant or something and came to Washington for what they called…” more air quotes “…advanced training'."

  Rick had been watching Scotty as his face became more and more concerned.

  Scotty asked, "Advanced training? That's what they called it? What's the name of the group?"

  Kristee looked at him. "It's a weird religious-political mishmash. Originally, it was a bunch of radical left-wingers, and then it got religion and became the Children's Crusade formed by this guy who calls himself Stephen Cloyes and based near here, out in Warrenton. Why?"

  Scotty's face relaxed, and he exhaled a long breath. "I've heard the same phrase, but it was another group. One I used to belong to until I ran out of money for all that 'advanced training,' and they kicked me out."

  "And you are lucky they did," Steve said. "We almost had to resort to drastic measures."

  "Yeah," Eps chimed in, "We were all set up for electroshock therapy."

  Scotty shot them a look. "I wasn't aware of these plans."

  "You would never have known anything about it," Eps said cheerfully. "A couple of thousand volts while you slept and—Shazaam! A deluxe brain wash-and-wax with a mental tune-up thrown in while you wait. We had the contact electrodes built into your pillow."

  Scotty looked suspicious. "Are they still there?"

  "Um, Possibly. Why?"

  "Probably nothing. Some strange dreams."

  "I wonder if there is some residual Gaussian pickup from the house wiring." Eps looked excited. "We could raise the voltage and—"

  "Boys, discuss your mad scientist experiments later," Eve interrupted. "Kristee still has the figurative talking stick. Go ahead, sweetie."

  Kristee jumped off the couch and walked quickly to the stairs. "Sage! I can hear you rutching around up there like a calf after it's been roped. Get your pjs on and brush your teeth, now!"

  There was a muffled complaint from the top of the stairs.

  Kristee pointed one finger and said, "Move, little girl," in what could only be described as a "mom voice."

  Loud footsteps stomped off in the direction of their bedroom. Kristee waited a few seconds and came back to the sofa.

  She sat with her feet up, wrapping her arms around her knees and pulling her face out of sight. Rick thought that she was compressing herself into as tight a ball as possible like someone who expected to be hit. Eve put a hand on her shoulder and massaged gently. Kristee raised her head and took a deep and shaky breath before speaking.

  "I finally graduated and…well, I was married, and married people live together, right?" Eve nodded. "So you helped me pack up Sage and everything we owned—which wasn't much—in Dad's old pickup, and I drove out here. Dad wasn't big on the idea but there wasn't anything for me in Wolf Point. Dad ran a hunting lodge, and I'd been working there all my life, but business is bad and…”

  She hid her face again behind her knees. Her voice was soft and muted. "Since Mom died, Dad hasn't been interested in running the lodge, or seeing his granddaughter or, much of anything, really."

  No one spoke and, after a long moment, Kristee said, "Mom got to see Sage, but the cancer took her like a month later."

  Eve put both arms around her friend and squeezed. Rick looked at his housemates. Their frozen faces demonstrated what he already knew. They were even worse at handling emotion than he was.

  After some sniffling and a deep breath, Kristee said, "So we came out here. The Crusade has a big place. I think it used to be owned by millionaires or something. It's got one big house and about a dozen smaller places that used to be for cars or servants or something. Now it's all just bunkrooms for the… Well, the people who truly are way deep into this thing call themselves 'Crusaders’." She shook her head. "I never bought the whole thing. The leaders—the Inner Circle—are just creepy."

  This caught Rick's attention. "What did you call them?"

  "Crusaders?"

  "No, the people in charge."

  "The Inner Circle." Kristee looked puzzled. "Why?"

  Eve and Rick exchanged a look, and Rick said, "No real reason. I've just heard something like that before."

  Eve cut him off with an eyebrow and then pulled Kristee a little tighter. "Never mind, Kris, get on with the rest of your story."

  Kristee leaned her head on Eve's shoulder. "Well, the whole setup was fucked-up from the beginning. Sage and I were put up in a big bunkhouse building way out in the back—in the woods, really—with the other mothers and children. Gary wasn't allowed to stay with us. He was only allowed to visit once a week."

  She shook her head. "What was really strange was that it didn't seem to bother him at all. I mean, we might have stayed in Montana for all we saw of him, but he said it was fine. He had to concentrate all his energy on praying for strength and preparing to fight to bring about God's will. Or whatever.

  "I mean they kept changing what they believed in. They made me go to special 'women's classes.' What a load of crap. It was like you'd taken Jesus, Saint Augustine, and Che Guevara and mashed them up with bits and pieces of Sun Dance and Blessing Way rituals and cooked them in a pot for a couple of weeks. And when you'd finally learn something like how awful capitalism was and that capitalists were The Real Enemy, they'd go and yell at you because 'everyone knew' that capitalists were their best buddies and radicals and anarchists were The Real Enemy."

  She glanced over at Eve. "Most of the guys obviously didn't have a clue what it really meant. However, when Stephen preached, wow, it all made sense and you just felt like you would be…I don't know. Wrong? Evil? If you didn't dedicate your life to making it all happen."

  Scotty nodded and, when Kristee looked at him quizzically, said, "Yeah, that's what I thought about 'Cosmic Wisdom' where I took all those lessons. When I listening to them, it all seemed to make sense, and it felt important. But afterwards," he shook his head, "it just didn't cohere into a logical whole."

  Eps said, "Dude, that's what we kept trying to tell you."

  Scotty looked at the smaller man skeptically. "You think that there are billions of tons of 'dark matter' out between the stars. That's not exactly a sign of an excess of logical consistency."

  "Wait a minute! If you take Einstein's equations out to their logical endpoint and then factor in the latest computer runs from the telescopes in Hawaii—" Steve held up his hand. "Guys. Remember the rule. No quantum mechanics around civilians—it just scares people. We'll take dark matter up at lunch on Wednesday like we always do." He broke off and said quietly, "I see a child's size-4 foot at the top of the stairs."

  Kristee didn't even ge
t up this time. "Sage! Bed. Now!"

  Loud stomping noises came down the stairs. In a softer voice, Kristee called, "I'll be up in a couple of minutes to tuck you in, kiddo."

  CHAPTER 19

  May 20, 1973, Ingomar Street NW, Washington, DC

  Rick's muscles were stiff from too many days in a microbus, so he slid down until he was lying full-length on the floor. Eve stretched out a bare foot and rubbed his shoulder. Most of her attention was on the thin woman still tucked into a defensive knot on the other end of the sofa.

  "OK, now we know how you got to DC but why did you leave the happy little family out in Warrenton?"

  "It was bad enough to be stuck in the back and expected to cook and clean in the Big House." Kristee's face tightened and her eyes appeared to darken with anger. "The women would have to do household chores all morning. Then we were supposed to stick around our bunkhouse in the afternoons and evenings when the guys would take classes and do some sort of weird martial arts training. I think they said it came from Brazil, but it just looked like trying to dance and fight at the same time to me.

  "In the beginning, it wasn't so bad. Sage had other kids her age to play with, and I could hang out with the wives and girlfriends, so I wasn't all that lonely even without Gary."

  Kristee paused so long that Eve prompted her with a low "but?"

  "Yeah, there's always a 'but,' isn't there?" Kristee's face twisted into a quick smile and then returned to its previous introspective impassivity. "When Sage got to be old enough to go to school, first grade, Gary told me that it wasn't allowed."

  Rick spoke from the floor. "'Wasn't allowed'? Since when is first grade not allowed?"

  "Beats me." Kristee shook her head. "I should have known something was wrong. All the kids went to kindergarten, but the following year, the girls were just left sitting at home. Sage is a real tomboy and usually hung out with the boys. She just wouldn't let it go. Kept bugging me every morning when the bus left."

  She took a deep breath. "And she was already almost a year behind because of all the moving around, so I talked to Gary and said we were going to send her to school. That's when we had our first real fight. Just screaming at each other, banging doors, throwing dishes, the whole thing."

  Kristee laughed without humor. "I guess having our first fight after seven years wasn't that bad, but we hadn't seen each other for almost four of them."

  Her voice sobered as she spread her hands out and shrugged. "I packed, put Sage in the truck, and left. I wasn't really leaving him. I just wanted to get her into school, so we rented a room over a biker bar in Leesburg. In the end, Gary calmed down and even helped us settle in. He still lived at the mansion, but he'd come by and play with Sage on the weekends sometimes.

  "I put Sage into first grade and worked the day shift in the bar in exchange for rent. The tips were good, so things were OK. I figured Gary would come to his senses at some point and we'd get back together. Hell, I liked the guy. I still do, for that matter."

  She shook her head as if she couldn't believe what she was about to say. "But then they came and got us."

  Eve broke in, "'Got you?' What do you mean, 'Got you'?"

  "One evening, Sage and I were watching TV, and Gary knocked on the door and said he'd come to hang out, but when I opened the door, Gary wasn't standing there. It was these guys, kind of like Stephen's foremen or lieutenants or something. They just walked in, didn't say a word to me. They grabbed Sage, packed up all our stuff, and drove us back to Stephen's."

  Steve asked, "Didn't you say something?"

  "Hell yes, I was screaming bloody murder, but they didn't pay any attention." She rubbed her cheek. "And that bastard Flick backhanded me three times, real fast and told me that he'd smack Sage next if I said another word. Then we were down the stairs, through the bar, and into the truck."

  Rick sat up slowly. "What did you say his name was?"

  "God, he was such a horse's ass. He didn't like his real name or whatever, so he made everyone call him Flick like he was a tough guy." She pursed her lips and then said, "And since he was the best fighter they had, no one argued. Why?"

  Rick looked at Eve who gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. "Oh, it's a strange name, that's all." He swiveled on the floor and leaned back against the sofa again. "So what happened?"

  Kristee sighed. "Well, it was even worse than before. Sage and I had to stay in our room anytime we weren't doing chores, and one or another of Stephen's tough guys was always keeping an eye on us. I think Gary didn't like it, but they were just as angry with him for letting us leave, so he was on lockdown, too. Then it got weird."

  "You mean it wasn't weird already?" Eps asked. "What would be your definition of 'weird'?"

  "OK, it got weirder." Again, Kristee responded with a hint of humor in her voice, which disappeared fast. "I started hearing stories from the other girls. Stuff about how girls were taken to the Big House for 'special training' when they turned nine, and, well . . ."

  She paused and looked off into nowhere, seeing something that wasn't in the room.

  A muffled thump came from the top of the stairs.

  Eve got up and ran up the stairs, returning with a struggling, pajama-clad Sage over her shoulder. "I think the grown-ups—if you can call us that in this house—have talked quite enough tonight."

  She knelt down in front of Rick. "Could you help me? I think these feet need tickling."

  Over screams of protest that dissolved into giggles, Rick obliged. Glancing over at Kristee, he was glad to see that she had relaxed her defensive tucked-in position. She was even smiling a very small smile.

  Eps stood and went to the battered stereo on the bookcase by the stairs. "Well, I guess it’s time for this place to quiet down but, first, we have something special prepared."

  He selected an album, pulled the record out of the cover without showing the front, and placed it on the turntable.

  He called over his shoulder, "Everyone up. We need to clear some space."

  Rick stood. "Wait a minute. You guys have taken up dancing?"

  Scotty just nodded solemnly, but Steve took a notebook filled with graph paper from where it was leaning against his chair. "Well, just the one song, really. We saw it twice, and between us, we managed to get it all written down."

  He handed the notebook to Rick. It was covered with strange symbols, squares, triangles, and things that looked like stick figures. It was meticulous and dense with intricate lines and dots.

  Rick studied the notebook. "What is this?" "Labanotation. It's a way of recording dance."

  Steve came around, looked over his shoulder, and pointed at the first figures. "See, this tells you where the hands are, here are the feet, and then you can see how the weight moves in a curve to the left, resting on the ball of the foot as the hands clap—"

  "Enough tech talk," Eps said as he dropped the needle and stepped over to Scotty. "Come on. We have five seconds, four, three . . ."

  Steve joined the line and, as the drumbeat started, all three began to sway in unison, their arms coming up from their hips as they swiveled from side to side.

  "L.A. proved too much for the man."

  "Too much for the man." The three men responded together, hands out, fingers wagging, dead-on imitations of the Pips.

  Eve clapped her hands, her eyes sparkling. This side of his normally staid friends astonished Rick, and he noticed that Sage had cuddled up against her mother with a big smile on her face.

  Spinning, swaying, clapping—the three had every step, every gesture, and every word down perfectly, even the "pull the cord" motion on the "whoo hoo."

  When they finished to a round of applause, whistling, and foot stomping, they motioned everyone to join them as the turntable recycled to the beginning of the song and started again.

  Dancing wasn't one of Rick's strong points, but Eve had the whole sequence down the first time. By the third time, Kristee joined one end of the line and Sage, concentrating furiously, was in t
he center with Steve and Scotty coaching on each side, matching them move for move, laughing, and scampering to catch up whenever she missed a step.

  CHAPTER 20

  May 21, 1973, Ingomar Street NW, Washington, DC

  The gunshot broke the silence with the flat crack of a bullet that's heading straight toward you.

  I'm on the ground before I even realize I've moved. "Incoming! Sarge, where do we dig in?"

  No answer. I look to my right where Sgt. Rickard is standing.

  He's looking down at his stomach.

  Crap! Where did that fucking hole come from? His guts are falling out.

  Sarge begins screaming, a terrible high sound. Shit, he's not even taking a breath.

  There's another round. Ten.

  Twenty.

  Fuck! Where are they coming from?

  More bullets are smacking into the mud around me with vicious snaps.

  Where is it coming from? It has to be back there. Way up in the trees.

  Fuck. We just cleared that area!

  In front of me, Spandau suddenly loses all his bones and flops straight down.

  Wait, he's sitting. No, he's down.

  Shit. That guy from C Company.

  I can't breathe. My fingernail breaks as I scrabble in the dirt.

  I need a hole.

  I look around. Man after man after man just…falls. I'm trying to scream.

  A warning.

  A call for help.

  Nothing is coming out. My throat is locked. All around me, the men keep falling.

  Jones spins, Brant…Lardner…Bout…disappear in the grass.

  More fall. There.

  There.

  My chest is burning.

  I can feel the scream coming up from my chest.

  "Whuff!"

  A blow in the stomach chuffs out Rick’s air and doubles him up. He reacts by whipping his hands forward and grabbing, looking for a strap or a belt that he can use on his attacker. Needles slash into his arm.

  Rick opens his eyes.

  Max, the house "watch cat," was sitting on his crotch with a paw up and his claws out. A deep warning growl came from his chest.