Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

“Gabriel, it’s going to be very difficult to get all of this to Hollow Rock on such short notice. You have to understand, medical supplies are in high demand. The things we ship to communities like yours come from warehouses and vaults scattered all over the country. Every bean, bullet, and bandage is earmarked long before it ever leaves the shelf. It’s against regulation to divert a shipment once it leaves storage.”

  I ground my teeth, feeling the rigid plastic in my hand start to bend. “Yeah, and you’re doing it every fucking day, Phil. Don’t hand me that bureaucratic bullshit. This is Elizabeth Stone we’re talking about. You know her personally. She served you a chicken dinner on your first visit to Hollow Rock for Christ’s sake. If you don’t help her, she could die.”

  I heard him heave a weary sigh. “And if I divert those medical supplies, someone else in some other town could die. I’m sorry, Gabe, but I can’t place her life as a priority over anyone else’s.”

  I spoke through gritted teeth, fuming in frustration. “Are you kidding me? Do you think I’m stupid, General? You’re fucking stonewalling me.”

  His voice took on an edge. “Gabriel, you need to remember who you’re talking to.”

  I took the phone away from my head and snarled a curse. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Count backwards from ten. This is not the time to lose your temper.

  After a few moments, I was back in control. I raised the phone back to my ear. “What do you want, Phil? What’s it going to cost me?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Gabriel.”

  “Yes you are.”

  Another pause. “You remember that commission I offered you?”

  I closed my eyes, heart sinking. “Yes.”

  “It’s been filled. The man I put in charge of your region is doing an excellent job.”

  My right hand balled into a fist. Steady, Gabriel. “General, I know you’re a powerful man, but believe me when I say you do not want to play games with me. Not over this.”

  “I’m well aware of your capabilities, Mr. Garrett, and I assure you this is not a game. What I meant to say is I don’t have an opening of sufficient importance for someone of your talent. That’s not to say I couldn’t use you in some other capacity.”

  “Such as?”

  “One that doesn’t require a uniform.”

  I closed my eyes, head bowed. “Which is to say, one that does not officially exist.”

  “You know, it really is a pleasure to speak with someone who doesn’t need me to hold their hand and draw them a picture. I understand you spent a few years with the CIA. Is that correct?”

  I went still, a cold feeling spreading from the bottom of my gut all the way to my face, like being splashed with ice water. Several seconds went by before I answered.

  “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “I’m a diligent man, Mr. Garrett.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “You remember the information I shared with you about the Flotilla and the Republic of California?”

  “Yes.” You have no idea how well.

  “We managed to get to someone inside their central leadership. They’ve been feeding us intel for some time now. The President is ready to act, but the plan we’ve put together requires more operators of sufficient skill than we currently have available.”

  I spoke without hesitation. “Count me in.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, but I’m afraid it’s not enough. Tell me, does Eric Riordan still reside in Hollow Rock?”

  “He does.”

  “What are the chances of bringing him on board?”

  I let out a breath and scraped a cold palm over my face. “I don’t know, General. He’s recovering from a bullet to the leg right now.”

  “Do you think he’ll make a full recovery?”

  “His doctor thinks so.”

  “Then I repeat the question.”

  I scratched at my chin, considering. Eric would never admit it, but when it came to action, he couldn’t help himself. He was never so alive, nor so in his element, as he was in a fight. He liked to consider himself a peaceful man, but I knew better. The more danger he faced, the brighter the fire in his eyes burned. Convincing him to work for Jacobs would depend upon presentation, on how noble and important I could make being a black-ops killing machine sound. With a little additional training, Eric would make one hell of an operative.

  Wait, are you really considering this? Are you willing to bring Eric into that world just to save Elizabeth? You know that road. You know where it leads.

  No, it wasn’t like that. I would not force him into anything. I would not tell him Elizabeth’s life was the price of admission. I would inform him of the stakes. I would tell him what he was getting himself into, and his participation would hinge upon informed consent. It would be his call, not mine.

  “I can’t make any promises, General, but I’ll try. Either way, I’m in.”

  I heard the pen tapping again. “Is there anyone else you can think of? Anyone who might be a viable candidate?”

  I almost said no, but then remembered a certain tall, wiry, scarred young man from Texas. A man who had displayed uncanny intelligence and combat proficiency. A man who worked hard to make people see him as less than he really was, to dim their expectations. When people do things like that, they usually have very good reasons. Reasons I knew all about it.

  “Maybe. I’ll have to get back to you.”

  “In that case, I might be able to pull a few strings.”

  “How soon?”

  “The day after tomorrow, most likely. Will she last until then?”

  “Does it matter? It’s not like she has a choice.”

  “Good point. Before I send those supplies, Mr. Garrett, I want your word you will hold up your end of the bargain. Because if you don’t, you and I are going to have a very serious problem.”

  In spite of the implied threat, his voice sounded regretful. I wondered how many conversations he’d had exactly like this one, bargaining human lives against holding what was left of his nation together. He may have been hanging me over a fire, but I still felt sorry for the old man. His burden was a heavy one, and I did not envy him the weight of it.

  “You have my word, General. When the time comes, I’ll answer the call.”

  “And you’ll talk to Eric?”

  “Yes. And whoever else I think can help.”

  “Very well, then. You have a deal. Keep that satellite phone in your hand close by. My secretary will call you in the morning with an update.”

  “Understood. Thank you for your help, General.”

  “No, Gabriel. Thank you.”

  He hung up.

  There was something in his voice in that last sentence. Something I didn’t like. If I had to put a name to it, I would have said it was sorrow.

  I climbed down and went back to the clinic.

  TWENTY SIX

  I waited three days.

  On the morning of the first day, Jacobs’ secretary called me back as promised. She politely informed me the equipment Elizabeth needed was en route, and we would have it by the next day. Relief is not a strong enough word. I had to sit down for a long while after I spoke with her, hands trembling on my knees.

  Allison kept her stabilized and sedated, saying it was necessary because of the pain, and because too much movement could aggravate the damage to her lung. I stayed by Liz’s side as much as possible, holding her hand, speaking to her in low, gentle tones. Every few hours, when her meds began to wear off, her eyelids would flutter and she would smile at me, hand squeezing mine. At those times, I told her everything was going to be okay and buzzed the nurse’s station for more sedative.

  The supplies came on the second day, a cloudless Monday morning, brilliant sunlight shining on an endless sea of reflective white. The kind of day if you didn’t wear sunglasses you had a migraine by eleven in the morning. Any other time, it would have put the town in a festive mood. People would have crowded the streets, shopping,
talking, trading, going about their business. Instead, I found myself standing alone in a crowd, the people around me keeping their distance. When they weren’t darting nervous glances my way, they shaded their eyes and watched a Chinook drop a cargo net in the clinic’s parking lot.

  Allison and her team moved quickly unloading the supplies and carrying them to the ICU. While they worked, I sat in the lotus position on the floor of the waiting room, eyes closed, hands curled atop each other, concentrating on my breathing. I could feel the stares of the clinic staff on my back, but right then, I could not have cared less. The meditation was necessary if I wanted to get through the day without causing someone grievous bodily harm.

  The day before, I had noticed that when I spoke to people they wrung their hands and slowly edged away from me, as if stumbling upon a bear in the woods. A minute spent standing in front of a mirror enlightened me as to why.

  My face was a gaunt roadmap, scars standing out angrily, jaw set in a hard line, eyes burning with the eerie light of the mentally unhinged. As a consequence, Eric sat close to me while Isaac Cole strained the legs of a chair on the other side of the room. Next to him lay a taser, charged to its highest setting, along with a bundle of heavy-duty zip ties. Upon arriving, he had jokingly asked me if I thought the precautions were really necessary. I gave him a level stare and told him I couldn’t make any promises. His ever-present smile stayed fixed in place, but it was about as sturdy as porcelain.

  Not long after sunset, when my legs felt like disconnected rubber tubes and my lower back had taken as much as it could stand, I stood up and moved to a chair. The ensuing pins and needles would have been maddening at any other time, but at that moment, I welcomed them. The pain gave me something to fixate on other than the churning tornado where my stomach used to be. Finally, the door to the ICU opened, and a short time later, Allison joined us in the waiting room.

  “She’s doing much better, Gabriel.”

  I nodded and remained seated. It would have been impossible to stand up even if I had wanted to. “What’s her long-term prognosis?”

  “Very good, I think. We have everything needed to properly treat her. I can’t rule out further complications, but I don’t think she’s going to throw anything at me I can’t handle. I don’t know how you managed to get those supplies, Gabe, but it probably saved her life.”

  Allison surprised me by leaning down, wrapping her arms around my neck, and squeezing tightly. “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me. I won’t forget it.”

  And that was when I finally broke down.

  *****

  Cole went back to his barracks.

  It did not take a genius to figure out his services would not be necessary. Eric stayed at the clinic with me, occupying a bed in an unused recovery room.

  I slept on the floor of the waiting room, propped upright in a corner. I didn’t want to sleep too heavily, lest Elizabeth wake up and the nurses couldn’t rouse me. At just past five in the morning, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Hello? Mr. Garrett?”

  I opened my eyes and patted the hand. “I’m awake. Laura, is it?”

  The nurse smiled. “That’s right. I’m surprised you remembered.”

  There was a lot I could have said about that. “How is she?”

  “She’s awake.”

  If I had been a cartoon, I would have left a smoke outline.

  Elizabeth was sitting upright, the nurses having adjusted her bed to aid her breathing. The skin of her hand was cold and dry as I held it. “Good to see you again, pretty lady.”

  She smiled and curled a finger for me to come closer. I did, and she kissed me softly. “How are you?” she said.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  “You could, but I would just say I feel like I’ve been shot, and then you would roll your eyes and groan.”

  “That’s a very good point.”

  “I notice you conveniently neglected to answer the question.”

  I sighed, sitting down in a chair next to her bed. “I’ve had better days. That’s for damn sure.”

  “All of this must have been very hard for you.”

  I stared at her for a long moment, unable to speak. Here she was lying in a hospital bed with a bullet hole in her lung, after nearly dying, and she was worried about how hard it had been on me. I squeezed her hand tighter, voice coming out as a choked whisper. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost you, Liz. You’re all I have.”

  She smiled chidingly, shaking her head. “Now that’s not true and you know it. You have Eric, and your business, and the Glover family, and all your other friends, and half the women in town chasing you around with stars in their eyes. It’s a good thing I snatched you up when I did. These frontier girls around here would have eaten you alive.”

  With a pang of regret, I realized that at least the first half of her statement was correct. I may have been in love with Elizabeth, but she wasn’t the only person out there who cared about me. There was Tom and Sarah and Brian, not to mention Miranda, the guys on my crew, Mike Stall, and the regulars at the now famous Saturday Night Texas Hold-Em Poker League. When I thought about it, the list was actually pretty long. And I had neglected every single one of them the moment I hit a bad patch. Liz saw the shame on my face and patted my hand.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’m sure they’ll forgive you if you’ve been ignoring them. You’ve had a very stressful couple of days.”

  “There you go again, comforting me when you’re the one who got shot.”

  Her eyebrows came together and her eyes cleared, gaze growing intense. “Speaking of, has the sheriff made any headway in his investigation?”

  “I have no idea. Haven’t talked to him. I imagine he’ll be stopping by very soon when he hears you’re awake.”

  “I hope so. I would very much like to know who did this to me.” There was a heat in her voice I had not heard since the fight with the Free Legion. With a sinking heart, I took her hand in both of mine and braced myself.

  “Liz, I think I might know the answer to that.”

  She had been looking away, pondering, but now her head snapped around. I could practically see the cogs and gears grinding their way to the obvious question. “You don’t think this was related to Sean Montford’s murder, do you?”

  “I’m pretty sure it is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Remember I told you those men I killed were sent to capture me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I know who sent them.”

  She sat back, her face darkening. “Who?”

  “His name is Sebastian Tanner. We worked a mission together about eight years ago.”

  “A mission?”

  “For the CIA.”

  I could have grown a beard in the time it took her to speak again.

  When she finally gathered herself, I felt as if an invisible distance had sprung up between us. Invisible, but very real.

  “You...worked for the CIA?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were a Marine?”

  “I was. I joined the CIA after I got out.”

  Another long pause. “Okay. So…what did you do for the CIA?”

  I released her limp fingers and passed a hand over my face, scrubbing at my eyes. “A lot of things. Sometimes it was surveillance, sometimes I was a messenger, sometimes I helped with investigations. Mostly, though, I was just hired muscle. Someone smart and capable enough to capture people or, when necessary, make them disappear.”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You were an assassin?”

  “When they needed me to be, yes. But that wasn’t my only job.”

  Liz digested this new information, eyes distant, clearly not liking what she was hearing. The urge to kick myself for not telling her all of this from the beginning was very strong.

  “So this Tanner fellow,” she said finally. “He’s the one you think might have shot me?”

  I
nodded.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “If you’re half as smart as I think you are, you already know the answer to that.”

  “I want to hear you say it.” Her tone was sharp.

  I winced as if she had slapped me. A real slap would have hurt less. “He did it to get back at me. To hurt me. To punish me for something I did.”

  “And what was that?”

  I sighed and sat back in my chair, closed my eyes, and told her the story. When I was finished, I opened my eyes again. Liz’s color didn’t look so good, but her voice was gentle.

  “Gabe, you did what you had to do. I know it must have been a difficult decision not to help him, but you were under orders. What would have happened to you if you had disobeyed?”

  “Nothing good. If I did that and Villalobos got away, I could have been facing criminal charges. The penalty for insubordination and dereliction of duty is a stiff one.”

  “Imprisonment?”

  “At least.”

  “And at worst?”

  “Execution. And not the long-term, death row kind. A bullet to the head and an incinerator was the usual method.”

  I did not think Liz could get any paler, but she proved me wrong. “Then why is Tanner doing this? He has to know you were just following orders. It’s not like it was anything personal.”

  “In my experience, when you deliberately allow someone to fall into enemy hands, regardless of the circumstances, they tend to take it personally.”

  “Touché.”

  The conversation lulled for a while, and we sat not looking at each other, lost in our own thoughts, an uncomfortable tension hanging between us. I couldn’t blame Liz if she was upset with me; I had withheld information from her I shouldn’t have and she had nearly died because of it. The crippling guilt I had been feeling for the last two days returned in a rush, threatening to smother me. The room seemed suddenly too small, as if the walls had grown close and were trying to crush me.

  “Gabe?” Liz said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you okay, sweetie? You’re breathing really hard.”

  I turned my head toward her and saw concern on her face. It broke the spell immediately. The room went back to its normal size, and the blood rushing through my ears receded. I gave a weak smile.