by James Cook
She turned to me, her usual subtle smile absent, lines creasing the sides of her mouth, eyes puffy from too little sleep. “How do you figure?”
“Plausible deniability.”
“Speak plainly, Gabe. I’m too tired for riddles.”
I let out a breath and pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “The Alliance is going to disavow everything. Even if we can get a confession from all the prisoners, which we won’t, the Alliance will say it’s a lie. A ruse by the Union government to start a war. Without solid evidence, the President will face tremendous pushback if she tries to launch an attack. Not the kind of thing you want less than forty-eight hours into your presidency.”
Liz uncrossed her arms, hands going to her hips, lips pressed in pensive line. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. So maybe it’s not as bad as we think?”
“Oh, it is. Every bit as bad, and worse, probably. The Alliance sent a team of experienced ghoul wranglers against us knowing full well that if they failed, they could simply deny involvement with little chance of repercussion.”
Liz shifted from one foot to the other, one hand idly scratching her graceful neck. “You really think Central Command would let them get away with it? After what happened with the Legion?”
“What choice would they have? Whoever is running the Alliance’s PR campaign is doing a masterful job. They have more than half the loyalists and almost all of the independent city-states believing they want to create a separate, peaceful nation and establish commerce with the Union. With all the other problems people are facing, it’s an attractive sales pitch. After all, who wants a civil war? People have enough to deal with right now. Just let the Alliance create their own stupid country. What’s the harm?”
“That’s bullshit. The Alliance hates the Union. For Christ’s sake, where do people think all the marauders out there are getting their weapons?”
“The truth has nothing to do with it, Liz. It’s what people want to believe, so they believe it. And the Alliance does nothing to discourage them.”
“So that begs the question, what will it take to convince them?”
I shrugged. “Most Americans never took Al Qaeda seriously until the nine-eleven attacks.”
She frowned and put her hands on her hips. “Do you think it will come that?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly, moving to sit down next to me. “And if the Alliance had succeeded with the horde, their people would have just left it at our doorstep and high-tailed it back to their own territory with no one the wiser.”
“Exactly. A smart play. But I don’t think they were going to settle for simply leaving the horde at the gate. It would have created an inconvenience, but not a devastating one.”
“I don’t know, Gabe. It would have been a hell of a problem.”
“Yes, but nothing we couldn’t handle. I think they planned to take it further.”
“What makes you say that?”
I pretended to study my fingernails. “Intuition. Deductive reasoning. Experience. And the small matter of several Semtex charges found among their equipment.”
She sat up straight, eyes wide, face going pale. “What?”
“Walt hasn’t given you his report yet?”
“No, he’s still busy questioning the prisoners.”
I let out a breath and slid down further in my seat. “They were going to try to blow a section of the wall, I think. Probably on the south side, where it’s all made of telephone poles.”
“Oh my God.”
I laid my hand on her thigh and squeezed gently. “Hey, we stopped them. We know they’re after us now. We can take precautions, beef up security on the wall, double up the patrols, give First Platoon something to do other than dig latrines and shovel snow. We’ve been here before, Liz.”
“I know that, Gabe. But what if you hadn’t stopped them? How many people would have been killed?”
“Don’t waste your time on what-ifs, sweetheart. You’ll drive yourself crazy.”
She smiled then, unexpectedly, and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. Some of the deeply etched lines smoothed from her face, making her look ten years younger. Her eyes grew warm, the color of dark chocolate.
“I like it when you call me that,” she said.
“What?”
“Sweetheart. It sounds a little odd coming from you, so surly and gruff. It’s enough to make a girl think you’re not as unassailable as you look.”
I smiled back, pulled her close, and kissed her gently. “Then I’ll have to do it more often.”
I kissed her again, meaning for it to be just a quick thing, but Liz’s fingers slipped around the back of my neck and held me, lips growing soft and urgent. Her tongue touched mine, sending a jolt of electricity go all the way to my heels. She kept me there long enough that I began to seriously consider brushing the papers off her desk. But then, to my disappointment, she pulled away, one hand lingering on my face, thumb tracing a scar under my right eye. Her smile faded, replaced by the look of concern that had rarely left her in the last few months.
“We were supposed to have some peace and quiet with the Legion gone,” she said. “Things were supposed to settle down.”
“Nature abhors a vacuum, Liz. The Legion controlled a big chunk of territory smack in the middle of three major trade routes. Now that they’re gone, all the little fish want a piece of the action.”
She let out a weary sigh and sank deeper into her chair, hand rubbing at her eyes. “And now this thing with the Alliance. When does it end, Gabe?”
I didn’t have an answer to that, so I held her hand and stayed quiet.
*****
Sheriff Walter Elliott took my statement over breakfast at the VFW hall, then asked me to walk with him to his office. Never being one to pass up a chance to gather intel, I agreed.
At the station, he sat down behind his desk and removed his hat. It was new; his old one had suffered a tragic death in the mud outside Stall’s Tavern while he and I were breaking up a bar fight. I happened to have a few Stetsons in storage at the time and traded him one—to which he affixed a brown band with a miniature sheriff’s star—in exchange for his last twenty rounds of .45 ACP.
He put the hat on his desk the proper way, brim up, the crown perched atop a stack of papers. I sat across from him in an uncomfortable metal chair, a far cry from the lushly upholstered leather in Elizabeth’s office. The steady noise of a multi-fuel generator, one of several donated by the Phoenix Initiative, sent a gentle hum through the walls of the police station.
“They’re denying everything, of course,” he said.
“What about Folsom? He’s the one who told me how to find the others.”
Elliott shook his head. “Says he had nothing to do with that horde. Says the only reason he talked is because you threatened to torture him.”
“Lying bastard.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Threaten to torture him.”
My eyes narrowed, jaw growing tight. “I didn’t exactly have time for a detailed interrogation, Walt. Not with over a thousand infected breathing down my neck.”
“I can’t say I approve of your methods, Mr. Garrett.”
I counted to ten before answering, willing the heat creeping up my neck to slow down. Then I spoke slowly, measuring each word.
“I don’t remember asking for your approval, Sheriff. And before you go passing judgment, you remember one of those sons of bitches tried to kill me, and you think about those Semtex charges they were carrying.”
Elliott stared for another moment, then leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. I heard a rasp of stubble as he passed a hand across his face.
“Would you have done it?” he asked.
“If I thought it would save lives, or if I thought I could gain information to make this town safer, yes, I would have. But only if I was sure.”
Elliott nodded, not mak
ing eye contact. “I radioed a report to Central Command and e-mailed copies of their statements, photographs, fingerprints, all of it. Not sure how much good it’s going to do. Depends on how much of the old federal databases are still intact.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Ishimura says those databases are in the Archive.”
“Mr. Ishimura says lots of things.”
“He’s delivered so far, hasn’t he?”
Elliott’s chair squeaked as he leaned back, arms crossed over his chest. “Yeah, but I don’t trust him. Nine out of ten questions I ask him, he can’t answer. Just says ‘sorry Sheriff, that’s classified’, then expects me to find any damn thing he asks for. It’s startin’ to get on my nerves.”
“He’s trying to restore the power grid, Walt. That’s not an easy thing to do. And lots of people in this town wouldn’t have heat in their homes right now if not for him.”
The sheriff’s sour expression softened a bit. “I know that. But all the secrecy makes me nervous. This is a small town, Gabriel. Everybody knows everything about everybody. I’m not used to having strangers around.”
“Wasn’t that long ago I was a stranger.”
A faint smile creased the deep lines around his eyes. “True. But you’re one of the folks, now.”
He reached across his desk, took my report, stapled it, and put it in a folder. Wrote something along the tab I didn’t catch. As he was putting the stapler back in the desk, he hesitated.
“I don’t suppose you found any office supplies yesterday, did you? We’re running low around here.”
“Actually, I did, and I’m willing to let some of it go. For the right price, of course.”
“Of course.” Elliott frowned. “All I can trade you is food from the municipal supply. If I had anything else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be coming to you for staples.”
“How about information?”
“Excuse me?”
“I ask questions, you answer them, and I decide what the answers are worth.”
“Sounds like a bad deal.”
I offered my most affable smile and held out my hands. “Maybe I’m feeling generous, Walt.”
“Contributing to the public good, is it?”
“Something like that.”
Watery blue eyes glared at me, did the math, and decided it was worth it. “Strictly off the record, you understand,” he said. “Anybody asks, I’ll call you damn liar.”
“My lips are sealed.”
He made a whirling gesture with one hand. “All right then, go on. Ask away.”
“What’s the next step in your investigation?”
“Right now, nothing. The prisoners aren’t marauders, they’re insurgents. They admitted their affiliation with the Midwest Alliance on the record, which puts the whole mess under federal jurisdiction. The only thing I can do is keep them on ice and wait for instructions.”
“What do you think the feds will do with them?”
He shrugged. “One of three things, probably. They’ll fly ‘em off to Kansas and we’ll never see ‘em again, or they’ll pass the buck and make me hold a trial on whatever charges they dream up, or they’ll give ‘em back.”
“Give them back?”
“Send them back to the Alliance.”
I went still. That possibility had not occurred to me. “Why in the hell would they do that?”
“They probably won’t. We have a case here, especially with your testimony. But it happened a few times with the previous administration.”
“How?”
Elliott scratched at the back of his neck. “Let’s say you’re a citizen of the Alliance. You get caught on Union soil doing things Union citizens don’t appreciate, so they truss you up and haul you to the local constabulary. Let’s say the constabulary, like us, is under treaty. They conduct an investigation and present their evidence to federal authorities. Now let’s say no real harm was done, and the case for the prosecution isn’t that strong. The administration doesn’t want to touch off a civil war, so, in an act of good faith, they return said offenders with a stern warning that although the patience of the federal government is considerable, it is not without its limits. The Alliance apologizes for the incident, proclaims their innocence, condemns the act, and offers assurances the offending party will be dealt with harshly upon his or her release into Alliance custody.”
My initial reaction was anger, but then I scratched at the stubble on my chin and thought it over a while. “That’s actually smart maneuvering on the administration’s part,” I said.
Elliott looked owlish. “How do you figure?”
“The last thing the federal government needs right now is a war on two fronts. If things escalate with the Alliance, you can bet the beer money the Republic of California will throw their hat in the mix. Even if we beat them, which isn’t a sure thing, it would be crippling to all parties involved. Let’s face it, if ROC forces and the Alliance thought they could take us, we would have been trading leather months ago.”
“I thought we already were.”
“Not yet, we aren’t. Not in earnest, anyway.”
“Really? ‘Cause I seem to remember a bit of trouble with some yokels calling themselves the Free Legion.”
“That was kid’s stuff. You remember the Iraq War, right?”
Elliott blinked a few times. “Of course. What does that have to do with anything?”
“The insurgency. Some of the troops were locals, but most were recruited from elsewhere. Syrians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Saudis. Hell, we even ran into a few Serbians. Most of them were young Muslim men, not soldiers or anything, just regular guys. Worked day jobs during the week, fought the jihad on the weekend, then went back to work on Monday. The problem they ran into, initially, was scrounging up enough weapons to fight us with. At least until the Iranians got involved. That was when things went from bad to worse. They supplied the insurgents with military hardware, and in exchange, the Ayatollahs got the satisfaction of believing they were contributing to the downfall of the Great Satan. This situation with the Alliance isn’t all that different. They source their gear from the ROC, who probably brought it over from North Korea or China or wherever the hell they came from, and then the Alliance trades those weapons with anyone looking to make trouble for the Union. Take the Free Legion, for instance. Strong leadership, halfway-organized military structure, a clear objective that lines up with the Alliance’s agenda. And if it all goes tits up, it’s an easy out for the Alliance. What evidence do we have of their involvement? How can we prove they were supporting the Legion?”
Elliott ruminated, fingers drumming on his desktop. “None, and we can’t. Not enough to please the populace, anyway. The Legion’s leadership died in the fighting, and they were the only ones who knew where the weapons came from. Who the suppliers were. That explains why the previous President didn’t raise more of a fuss over what happened last year.”
“Exactly. I’ll bet you there’s a whole network of arms dealers out there, and we haven’t the faintest clue where to look for them.”
“But Gabe, I still don’t see how giving the enemy their troops back is a smart move on the Union’s part. Especially if they were actively working against us.”
“That’s just it, Walt. Think about it. If we execute every asshole we catch trying to play saboteur, pretty soon we’re going to have a lot of blood on our hands. That’s going to incite the Alliance citizenry and give their government, such as it is, all the excuse they need to retaliate. By only prosecuting the slam-dunk cases, the administration saves face among loyalists. Meanwhile, the Alliance has to eat a big slice of humble pie and apologize to the Union in order to quell the fears of their own people.”
Elliott held up a finger. “I think I found a hole in your logic there.”
“What’s that?”
“The glue holding the Alliance together is their mutual hatred of the Union. The Alliance government doesn’t have to play ball with us. Their people want a war.”
<
br /> “That’s where your wrong, Walt.”
“How so?”
“Have you ever heard the term groupthink?”
More blinking. “Can’t say as I have. Is that a real word?”
“It is. It’s a psychological phenomenon common in governments, business organizations, and political parties; a culture of conformity that discourages independent thinking and disagreement. Anyone who challenges the consensus of the greater body, regardless of how valid that challenge might be, is considered disloyal. This produces deviant outcomes. People thinking they are always right, everyone else is wrong, and their logic is unassailable, no matter how divorced from reality it might be.”
One of the sheriff’s bushy eyebrows came up half an inch. “Okay. I’ll pretend I followed all that.”
“In other words, it’s a bunch of people sitting around telling each other what they want to hear, and shouting down anyone who says different.”
“That makes a lot more sense. Hell, I’ve been in the room when that happened. But what does it have to do with anything we’ve been talking about?”
“I think there is a huge disconnect between the Alliance’s government and its people. The ruling body wants a fight. They see the Union as an existential threat, and they want us out of the way. I think the people want peace and independence, and I think that is what stayed the previous President’s hand where another might have launched air strikes. Your average Alliance citizen has no love for the federal government, but they’re in no hurry to take on what’s left of the military. Even diminished as they are, our armed forces are still the most powerful on the planet. If it comes to a brawl, the Alliance loses no matter what. Why do you think they issue a public apology every time one of their people gets caught?”
Understanding dawned in the sheriff’s eyes. “I see where you’re going with this. Even if they win, the Alliance will lose too many people and burn up too many resources to recover. And that’s their best case scenario. Worst case, we beat them, wipe their fortifications off the map, and the survivors have nothing left to go home to. They’ll be fodder for every bandit and slaver in the wastelands. Their people know that, and they’re putting pressure on their leaders to avoid war with the Union at all costs.”