by Martha Carr
The Circle had struck back and used their advantage of finally having key players in the military and in the White House. But the margin couldn’t last, making it necessary to keep going until the next phase of their plan could begin.
That was when the war broke out, slowly at first as Management used force to try and take over the old fashioned way by grabbing territory that flanked key areas of North America and Europe.
The Canadian Circle army base was hidden in plain sight in one of the most populous areas of the suburbs. Their cover was as the executive sales team for a software company, hiding their true intent even from the other people who worked in the ten-story building. A thousand people moved up and down the elevators every day, nodding hello or looking the other way as they held on to their coffee or checked their email.
The army unit could come and go without anyone questioning their movements and if someone new suddenly appeared in the elevators on a more regular basis or another person suddenly left, no one thought much of it. Salesmen were known to chase a deal and change their loyalties.
Another squad was based in the corporate headquarters just outside of Chicago in the upscale suburb of Northbrook. They were just far enough away from where the fighting was taking place that their families weren’t in harm’s way. It would have been too much of a distraction.
In both locations the buildings sat off by themselves with large parking lots that made it difficult for anyone to walk up to the building without being seen from a long ways away. That’s where Sergeant Kipling had been based till he was called up to Calgary.
There was a fair amount of sales people in the bigger population areas, but in more rural areas it was harder to hide them. Instead, the Circle had worked squads into different parts of society, using the skill sets that the recruits had to place them in regular employment. Regular communication in the remote area was done mostly through civic or alumni groups where they could congregate to watch a basketball game or grab a beer without drawing too much attention.
They made sure they had enough of a diverse life that there were multiple reasons to seek out other members of their patrol.
The more spread out over different walks of life, the potential for more interaction and information gathering across a larger spectrum was possible, keeping the organized war a secret from the population that was living on the battlefields, ignorant to the danger.
A few Circle members were already placed in positions of power and responsibility in politics, business, and even religious roles and could not only gather information but were useful to push forward agendas that could help them fight the growing war.
Sergeant Kipling and his brother were the grandsons of one of the original twenty who had survived the slaughter in Europe and because of their parents’ early demise, they were even Mercy men, raised on the grounds of Mercy Home in Chicago. All six members of his squad were raised at different children’s homes as part of the Schmetterling Project. They were the beginning of the new wave and a new day for the Circle.
Each of them had volunteered and then learned part of the background of the mission. They all understood how important the directive was and Sergeant Kipling had set out determined to get everyone safely to the next encampment.
But a Management squad had been waiting for them when they moved across the border. The seven men in his command broke into a ‘V’ formation pushing out in all directions. He had counted eight men before gunfire had pushed them back.
Now he was the only one left from his squad, wounded but still moving. He didn’t want their sacrifice to not mean something. He didn’t want to let Dennis down either.
The Circle had tried to get in touch with Mark Whiting for months. None of the encoded radio signals had been answered and time was running out. Encrypted messages had been randomly mailed from different people and different locations, mostly as spam but those had garnered nothing as well. They were down to having to get to him face to face.
Two patrols were moving through the mountains right behind Sergeant Kipling and if they caught onto his trail his instructions were to pass by the target. He couldn’t lead them to the ranch up on Haskill Mountain. That meant the Keeper would arrive on his doorstep unannounced.
Mark Whiting was being entrusted with the safety of the Keeper.
It was a necessary move so that the leaders of the Circle could focus on the war.
The battle between the two old organizations was growing deadly and no one could be sure that the Circle could win and keep the war from spreading beyond the North American continent. If they couldn’t there was always the chance the warfare would spread to the general population, even if it was referred to by Management as terrorist activity. Even if they were really the terrorists.
So far, the battles had been in remote locations and the casualties were noted only by the two sides or were reported in the news as a random act of violence. The pieces were not forming a picture, yet.
“Read ‘em and weep. The dead man’s hand again,” he sang quietly, telling himself, one more step, one more step, occasionally tapping the small pin affixed to his parka. A tight circle of twenty stars against a dark blue background. One star for each survivor, including his own grandfather.
Sergeant Kipling was fighting to keep the Circle alive so that more of the children of the Schmetterling Operation could be given time to finally blossom and a new system to pay off for everyone.
So much had been lost the last time the Circle had tried to take down the older, darker structure and so many millions had died. Only the twenty had made it and after they had immigrated to the United States to start over it had still taken two more generations to finally be back in a position to threaten Management. His father had told them the stories of coming to America so many times that Leonard had started to see them as fairytales. Now, he knew they were all true.
Just two years ago it had all come so close to being extinguished again. The Keeper had to be moved to safety.
Kipling stumbled forward, noticing the small drops of blood in the snow. His nose was bleeding and his breathing had become labored.
If the people who lived along the suburban streets and commuted the vast ribbons of highways to the clusters of cubicles all along the Northwest knew there was a civil war running past them, they would at first mark it down as just another conspiracy theory. Both enemies would help with the illusion, making up plausible reasons why there was an increase in bloodshed.
But if things got out of hand, no one would be able to keep denying it. The war would spread like spidery veins out toward the coasts.
Panic would quickly break down into mayhem and looting. Then, everything the two sides had built and were now fighting to control could be destroyed.
Some skirmishes had already moved past the Canadian border and were pushing into parts of Minnesota, land of ten thousand lakes.
“You know it’s gonna’ be the Ace of Spades,” Kipling sang. He spit and saw more droplets of blood in the snow. No point in worrying about that right now, he thought. If he made it to the property on top of Haskill Mountain then he could rest.
He was moving through the tall quaking aspens in the Salish Mountains of Montana and was making better time than he had expected. He had been moving all night, crossing from Canada into the States under a new moon, not stopping to do anything but pee at the base of a tree and check his side to see if there was any blood. The bruising had deepened and turned black but he could still move and that was all that mattered.
He was getting sloppy around the edges though and snow had gotten into his boot where shrapnel had torn the Gortex. But it was still more important that he move as fast as possible, away from the Management operatives that were searching for him.
There was no time to stop and take any more inventory.
They couldn’t be sure that he was still alive but their search of the area would be thorough. The SERE training, typical for an Army Ranger was keeping him alive. They had drille
d a basic message into him at the camp and it was helping him to keep going. He had lost just enough blood though to be lightheaded and his attention was harder to focus.
The light of the one house up on this side of Haskill Mountain was just ahead and he hadn’t seen a trace of the squad hunting him for at least the past few miles. He could complete his mission. Mark Whiting’s house was only a mile away when he felt the bullet rip through his shoulder.
“Survival, resistance, evasion, escape,” he whispered, fragile snot bubbles forming on his lips. It was a strange prayer, he thought as he fell forward into the snow. “Save the Keeper,” he said. The snow felt good against his cheek.
Chapter Five
Mark stood in the center of the small stand of trees and looked up through the branches of pines at the small patch of blue sky that was barely visible through the branches. The letter he was holding fluttered in his hand as the cold wind made a whistling sound higher up in the trees. He had left his hat sitting on the kitchen counter and his close-cut afro was doing nothing to protect his head from the cold.
It wasn’t so easy to shake the conservative way of dressing he’d known most of his life as an employee of the Federal Reserve in downtown Richmond, Virginia.
Mark was doing his best to let the new information settle comfortably into his bones.
The trees were close to seventy feet tall and had been seedlings back when Management was first formed with the idea of bringing a little more order to society. Mark didn’t like thinking about an organization that had been growing over the past two hundred years until it stretched into every corner of the world. It made it harder for him to believe he had finally escaped the entire game.
It didn’t matter to him that years earlier he had changed sides and was playing for the Circle, trying to keep Management in check. In the end, Management had wanted him dead and no one in the Circle would have been able to stop them. He wasn’t even sure anyone would have tried very hard.
Someone inside of Management had even figured out how he had used them for a little bologna slicking and stolen millions right from under their noses. The only thing that saved him was probably that whoever they were, he had been able to tell they were stealing in far greater amounts.
He glanced at what was on the letter. He had gotten another letter with another short missive. It was Amendment III from the Bill of Rights. ‘No Soldier in a time of peace, shall be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in a time of war, but in a manner prescribed by a manner of law.’
Every letter had a small star stamped on the front of the envelope. Someone from within the Circle, he didn’t know who, was letting him know that things were getting worse.
Whoever was sending them had taken a chance that he had held onto an old OTP. The message was easily decoded with the only out of date list that he had kept. Usually they were updated once a month. Someone had done their homework.
He was being asked to take in an important cell member, someone either high up or important to the Circle. The frequency of the letters made him wonder if it was really a request.
The previous ones had only mentioned lines from the Constitution that were a body count of some kind. Translated they read, ‘four just outside of Detroit on several floors. News sites said it was workplace revenge.’ The letters had a series of circles and x’s. That one had meant one Circle, three Management were dead. He burned all of the letters as soon as he had read them.
He was sure it was a steady recitation of the dead to let him know there was a quiet war already underway. A civil war was spreading across the map that no one outside of the two giants had figured out was all connected. At least not yet.
Mark was surprised a war hadn’t started sooner. There were rumors of it all the time even before he had left Richmond in the middle of the night.
Once or twice since the letters started he caught himself analyzing what might have finally caused the tipping point but he quickly stopped himself and went in search of his kids to go do something else.
But someone was trying to draw him back into what he had successfully left just four short, calm years earlier. It was just long enough to lull him into thinking maybe he had pulled off the impossible. Then, a few months ago the letters started.
Mark had made a point of not watching any news. Whatever he needed he’d gather at the local diner and that was plenty.
Anything more than that, anything that reached out to even statewide news would cause his old training to kick in till he was looking for the connections and reading the currents, forming a picture. Knowledge wouldn’t be power for him. It would only keep him from sleeping at night.
He worried for just a moment that he had created the same watchful eye inside of his oldest, Jake. He was constantly carrying around the small Sony Action camcorder filming around the property. Mark caught him taking it to school with him and Jake had insisted it was to film his friends for a class project but he didn’t believe him. He had seen Jake’s light on late at night, often enough as Jake scanned the footage on his computer as if he was searching for something. Jake had become his own surveillance team and Mark wondered if he was searching for signs of Watchers. He wasn’t sure that it wasn’t after all a good idea but the thought of his teenage son working so hard to protect the family was a little hard to bear.
Mark pushed the thought aside, trying not to feel the regret wash over him.
He shuddered and felt the cold wind across the back of his neck. It was getting harder to hold on to a sense of ease that he had only been able to claim in the past year.
Mark had just recently started to relax and let the older boys, Jake and Peter wander into town on their own. Ruthie was still a little too young to go without him. All of that would have to end.
Jake would know right away something was wrong and demand an explanation. Mark had also found evidence in Jake’s room that the young teenager was keeping a surveillance log. Mark told himself that training Jake and Peter had been a necessity back in Richmond to ensure their safety. That never completely sat very well with him but the other choices were worse. Management could have used them for their own purposes.
Mark had to protect his children, particularly since he was all they had anymore. His wife had cut and run a long time ago and they had lost touch. She had been a Management operative and was disgusted with him when he switched sides.
The whole point of getting off the grid in Montana had been to let the kids be kids. Maybe it was too late for Jake. Still, he was willing to do whatever it took to give them a better life than the one he knew.
“Hard ground,” he mumbled to himself, feeling the frozen ground beneath his boots, “smell of sap”, he said as he turned in a slow circle taking in the small spots of muddy green and brown visible through the snow drifts. Down below in Flathead Valley he could see through his binoculars the ribbon of gravel roads where they had plowed and the smoke winding up from chimneys spaced out across the landscape. He liked this part of the world, even if he did miss his old hometown of Richmond, Virginia. There was no going back though, not if he wanted to live past his forties.
The fall weather had been brutal and there was already a thick layer of snow on the ground. The wind was blowing in from the north and was making the trees sway and creak as if they could snap in two at any moment.
He felt the anxiety lift for just a moment as he labored to breathe in and out. A thin trickle of cold sweat crept down his arm as he grasped the letter more tightly. He looked out over the valley from his perch on the mountain and wondered if he was as well protected as he thought.
He had destroyed all of the letters, he reminded himself. The first few he had burned without really reading them, but they kept coming. Temptation got to him eventually. Besides, he had to know if they were all a warning that something was creeping closer to his sanctuary in the mountains.
He heard what sounded like a familiar whistle that he couldn’t quite place but still some part
of him knew and his entire body tensed with the effort of listening for what was coming next. It was gunfire of a certain kind. Long-range and quiet, professional.
There was a very small chance that it was someone illegally hunting for deer out of season and on his property but he knew most of the hunters in these parts. None of them would be shooting so close to a house where they knew there was children, no matter how much alcohol or weed they had ingested.
He strained to see if he could tell if the gunfire was coming closer to the house or moving away. The wind was making it difficult to accurately identify the direction it was coming from.
Another faint whine. That one seemed a little further away, a good sign but he couldn’t be sure. He turned to run toward his house wondering if he could get picked off before he even got there. He was suddenly glad that Jake was still so watchful. If he didn’t make it back Jake would hesitate before heading out to look for him. He knew better to respond than react to any given situation.
He came up the last hill toward the house and heard another faint, high-pitched whistle and realized the direction had changed. Someone was firing back. Mark wondered for just a moment if the war had spread to right outside his door and everything was in far more chaos than he realized.
“Dammit,” he said, as he ran the last few yards. Unplugging from all of the news had seemed like such a good idea. It had felt like a relief until those letters had started coming.
It had never occurred to him that the country could unravel in just two short years while he was out of touch.
Jake came running out of the house, breathless, looking like he was about to take off for the woods. His son was already taller than his father and the wind was making his long hair that surrounded his face in a large halo, blow straight back. Mark had tried to get him to cut his hair shorter, blend in more but Jake was always explaining to Mark that this was the current trend. Cutting his black curls short would actually make him look like he was a newcomer to town and only draw attention. Mark had let it go.