Swords of Exodus

by Larry Correia

  There was the highway. The headlights were beacons. I could see the field that the pilot had picked out, a giant strip a slightly different shade of brown than the rest of the countryside. The numbers on my altimeter were changing rapidly. I’d changed the ground level on it before jumping, which was good because Arizona was a lot closer to the sky than Saint Carl.

  Jill would really love this. She’s never jumped before. I can only imagine how fun she would think this is.

  Strange, the thoughts that wander through your head when you’re streaking toward the ground at a speed sufficient to turn you into a red paste. Here I was, taking a stupid risk with a very high potential for death, and I was thinking about Jill. Well, that was understandable, since she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Someone like me certainly didn’t deserve someone like her. Hell, someone like me didn’t deserve to be alive at all, let alone happy. It was probably best not to think such bad karmic thoughts while whistling through the air, flipping gravity the bird.

  Pay attention. The ground was closer now, and every fiber of my being told me to deploy the chute. I’d disabled the automatic deployment preset. I checked my altitude again. Still a little too high on the horizon. A single police report that might show up in a government database would defeat the purpose of this idiotic stunt. I waited.

  I flared my arms and legs out, feeling the current change over my body, turning myself into a giant air brake. The ground was close, screaming toward me. Ground! Ground! I told the panicky part of my brain to shut up. NOW!

  I pulled the hacky-sack-looking ball from the base of my pack. The pilot chute shot out, but the big ram chute seemed to take forever to unfurl. The slider kept it from opening so fast that the straps would smash into me. That was always the sucky part. The parachute cracked and snapped above me. I glanced up. Nice and open, and I was shedding velocity.

  It was only open for a few seconds, then there was the earth, scrolling beneath me at too high of a speed. This part was always really difficult in low light. Flare too soon, stall and free fall the last little bit, flare too late and you hit the ground too hard. I was out of practice, but landing felt pretty clean. My boots hit the ground running. I made it about ten huge steps before I stepped into a soft depression and pitched sideways, twisting my ankle before landing on my hand, elbow, shoulder, and then I was rolling in a mass of dirt clods, parachute fabric, and cord.

  Yep. It’s been awhile.

  I lay in the dust, spitting dirt and catching my breath under a pile of blue fabric. My right ankle throbbed. Not my best landing by any means, but it would do. I untangled myself and stood. The field was dark and quiet in every direction. All clear. I checked my gear. One spare magazine was somewhere in the dirt, but I didn’t have time to look for it.

  Unbuckling the chute, I crumpled it into a ball in my arms and began to limp in the direction of the highway. That had been fun, but now it was time to catch a ride.

  I had thrown the chute in a drainage ditch. I had no doubt it would be found shortly. Everything I knew about agriculture could be written on a 3x5 card, with plenty of space left over, so I had no idea how often people checked those kinds of things, but all I needed was a day or two.

  My ankle was good and swollen by the time I reached the highway. I stepped out in front of the first set of headlights, waving my arms above my head. It was a pickup truck. The driver hit the brakes, and I had to step back onto the shoulder to keep from getting run over. The Dodge stopped twenty meters past me. I trotted up to the window as the driver rolled it down.

  “What the hell’s the emergency?” He was an older man, with a puffy trucker hat and a scruffy grey beard. Both the driver and the passenger, a younger clone of the driver, eyed me suspiciously. “You look like hell,” he drawled.

  “I’ve had a rough night. I need a ride into town.”

  “Where’s your car?” he asked. The old man kept his right hand down at his side, probably on his gun. This was Arizona, after all. “I don’t pick up hitchhikers.” Smart people in Arizona.

  “Long story.” I knew that I looked suspicious. Especially since I still had Smoot-colored hair, was dusty, and I was walking along a highway in the middle of nowhere. “It’s embarrassing, okay?”

  He put the truck back in drive and started to roll.

  “Okay! Okay!” I said. The old man braked. “I had a fight with my girlfriend. I called her fat, ‘cause she’s totally let herself go. We pulled over so I could take a leak. She was mad, and drove off without me. My cell phone’s in the car. I fell in a ditch running after her. Just give me a lift to the next place with a phone, and I’ll call one of my friends in Flagstaff to pick me up. Come on, man, please?” I’m a very convincing liar. Might as well cut to the chase. I held up one hand with several twenties. “I can pay you for gas!”

  He looked at me disdainfully and spit a mighty stream of chew out the window. “Get in back,” he said with a jerk of his head.

  Chapter 8: Shadows

  Lorenzo

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  February 15th

  It was a school night, so hopefully Bob’s kids would all be home and not out screwing around. All I needed to do was break in without being seen by the government agents who were surely staked out around the place, convince my sister-in-law—whom I barely knew—to trust me, and get them out of there without being spotted. Then somehow I needed to get them across the border, and to someplace safe. This sucks.

  I made one pass through Bob’s nice suburban neighborhood in the Jeep Cherokee that I had boosted from the truckstop on the outskirts of town. I knew where Bob lived because I’d broken in the last time I’d been here. He really should just give me a key. I spotted the watchers on the end of the street in an unmarked surveillance van. There was no one in the cab, heavily tinted windows all around, the standard stuff, it was really obvious. I tried to look nonchalant as I cruised past them, by the front of Bob’s house, and around the corner.

  I parked on the cul-de-sac that backed up to the Lorenzo family’s backyard and checked my watch. It was pretty late and there was no one outside. It was drastically warmer than Montana, and happy insects swarmed the street lights. Some neighborhood dog started barking in the distance. It took me a few moments to pick the yard to cut through, no sign of pets, no motion-detecting lights, and it didn’t look like anyone was home. It was a straight shot through the yard and over the back fence.

  Two minutes later I was using my bump keys to break into Bob’s back door. He still had the same high-tech alarm system. This time it took me almost a minute and a half to bypass it. All that soft island living had made me sloppy.

  The lights were on inside the Lorenzo house. The TV was playing in the family room, something obnoxious with a laugh track. A radio was on upstairs. I crept through the kitchen, trying to formulate a plan. This woman had married my brother, so I had no doubt that I was a split-second from getting a load of double-aught buckshot to the face if I startled her.

  There were children’s toys scattered across the living-room floor. The wall was covered in family pictures. They were all happy and smiling. I listened to the sounds of the house. Something was wrong. There were supposed to be several people home, but it didn’t feel right. I had broken into a lot of homes, and I knew how an occupied house felt. Nobody was here.

  The bedroom closets were open. Clothes were spread on the beds. It felt like they had bailed out of here in a hurry. There was a pink Post-It note stuck to the mirror just inside the front entryway. The message had been written in neat, cursive handwriting. The pen was still lying on the hardwood floor directly below the mirror.

  Dear Government Assholes,

  I’ve been married to an FBI agent for fifteen years. Did you honestly think I would be stupid enough not to notice your van full of idiots watching my house and following me around?

  I don’t know what you’ve done with my husband, but we have made contingency plans. You will not find us. You will never fin
d us. But my husband will find you. You picked the wrong family to fuck with. Bob is ten times the cop you pussies are.

  Hugs and kisses

  Gwen Lorenzo

  p.s. Kiss my ass and die, you filthy,

  crooked sons of bitches.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me that the Lorenzos had a bugout plan. I was rapidly discovering that there was a lot I didn’t know about my relatives. It looked like my mission had already been accomplished. I was willing to bet that Gwen and the kids had gone out the same way that I had come in, probably had somebody waiting to pick them up in the cul-de-sac. Hell, I might have passed them on the way into the neighborhood.

  It appeared that Bob had married up.

  “Well, since I’m here . . .” I muttered to myself. I might as well see if he’d left any clues as to what he had been working on that was so damned important.

  His office was the only locked room in the basement. It took me ten seconds to pick. Judging from the looks of the place, he took after Dad. The desk was a mess of papers, a type of organized chaos that the Lorenzo men seemed to cultivate. Every wall had pictures, newspaper clippings, maps, timelines, and hundreds of Post-It notes stuck up. Under the notes were awards, commendations, citations for bravery, framed and then forgotten, things that most people would have thought to be very important, but Bob was too personally humble to worry about things like that. There were five guns hung on the wall behind the desk, muzzles pointed down in a half circle, the main rifles of WW2, an M1 Garand, a Russian Mosin Nagant, a British Enfield, a German Mauser, and a Japanese Arisaka, and that was the only space without notes taped to it. That’s because those had belonged to our father.

  I scanned the notes. Names, dates, some circled, some with question marks after them. A lot of it was from the data that Valentine had dumped on the internet before he wasted Gordon Willis. There were a few familiar words that popped up a lot, like Blue and Alpha Point. The most common word was Majestic. It appeared over and over again. It was everywhere, oftentimes with an exclamation point behind it, like an angry afterthought.

  Majestic is the shadow government. Majestic is the cancer.

  There was a handwritten note on the top of the desk.

  To whom it may concern,

  If you’re reading this, I can only assume that I am dead. I hope you’re not one of them. If you are, congratulations, you bastards win again. I’ve made arrangements for my family. If I disappear they know to go someplace where you’ll never find them. They know nothing, so leave them out of it. I’ve kept them in the dark to protect them.

  If somebody else finds this, I hope this information proves of more use to you than it has to me. I have spent the last few years of my life learning about a secret government organization usually known as Majestic.

  They are the end result of secrets and decades of lies. At one time they existed for a good reason, to defend our country, to do the dirty jobs that others could not do, but they’ve become corrupt, perverted. They exist only to grow in power. They are in every facet of the government. The Bureau is infested with them. They’re watching my every move.

  I first found out about them as a young agent, after they arranged the murder of several witnesses to their crimes. These were innocent people. Since then I’ve been watching them, learning, and what I’ve found out is terrifying. They’re always in the shadows, pulling the strings. They are above the law.

  They are not evil. Just like a disease isn’t evil. It just is. Majestic is a disease. May the truth be the cure.

  Robert T. Lorenzo

  I began flipping through Bob’s ramblings. If I hadn’t had first-hand experience with this sort of thing I would’ve thought it was the rantings of a crazy man. He’d been working on this for a long time, way before he’d gotten Valentine’s information from Zubara.

  Just like Silvers, Bob had been preoccupied with this Project Blue. There was a printout with a few photos on it. Four Majestic operatives were involved with the creation and implementation of Project Blue.

  I didn’t recognize the first man, he looked like a politician type. Under his name had been written Former Senator Barrington, head of operations, killed under mysterious circumstances. The second man I had seen briefly in Quagmire, Nevada last year. He was a popular guy in my house, since he’d tried to have Jill murdered. Gordon Willis, murdered/possible suicide in Virginia. Head of Majestic black ops. The third picture was somebody else I’d met in less than perfect circumstances, mostly because his men had just captured me and he had my fingers broken during an interrogation. Colonel Curtis Hunter, Dead Six field commander. Killed in Zubara.

  The last spot was blank except for where Bob had drawn a giant question mark. Apparently he didn’t know who the fourth man was.

  Blue was the doomsday option against Ill.

  I paused. I hadn’t seen a note that explained who or what “Ill” stood for. I doubted Majestic needed a doomsday option against Illinois.

  Four operatives knew about Blue. Barrington came up with the plan. He enlisted the other three to implement it. Willis took command when Barrington was killed. Hunter and unknown subject set the Alpha Point. Hunter got cold feet. He must have realized that Majestic was up to no good. Gave up Majestic to Valentine when Willis betrayed Dead Six in Zubara. Two down. Before Willis can bring more operatives into the plan for Blue, he dies.

  Four men knew about Blue. Three are dead. Majestic scraps Blue. But the final operative has gone rogue. Why? Maybe he thinks Majestic killed his compatriots?

  Majestic is panicking. I’ve watched these bastards for years, and I’ve never seen this before. Majestic doesn’t know what Blue entails and they’re scared of it. Zubaragate hurt them. If information on Blue leaks, it will kill them.

  My phone rang. “Damn it.” I didn’t have time for this. I had to know what was going on. “What?” I snapped.

  “It’s me,” Reaper said quickly. “I’ve intercepted some traffic. They’re keeping the details hushed up, but there’s been an alert out of Montana. Dude, they know.”

  I can’t get Valentine out of North Gap. The only other person alive who knows about Blue is the final operative. Majestic was looking for him in a place called The Crossroads, he’s tied to some sort of mythical figure known as Sala Jihan, the Pale Man. I’ve got to find the final operative. It is the only way to destroy Majestic once and for all.

  “Boss, are you listening? The government knows!” Reaper insisted.

  “Okay. I’ve got to go.” I put my phone away. I had to get this stuff out of here, fast. The goons outside would probably move as soon as they got the word. I looked for something to shove paper into, and spotted a small garbage can. It would have to do. I dumped the can’s contents on the floor. At the very top was a crumpled letter from the FBI telling Bob that he was fired from the bureau for gross misconduct.

  CRASH! I cringed at the sound of the front door splintering open.

  Discretion is the better part of valor. I comforted myself with that platitude as I ran away like a coward. I’ve done my fair share of fighting, but I always try to fight on my terms. I always have a plan. I always ambush. And when I don’t have the element of surprise, I retreat. I’m a thief first and foremost, and thieves who pick fights tend to die young.

  The Majestic goons got the call and moved right in. At least two hit the front door, and the third circled through the backyard. I hid behind the fridge, my 9mm in one hand, garbage can full of paper in the other, and waited for the Majestic goon to kick in the back door, stomp through the kitchen, and run right past me.

  They were expecting a woman and some frightened kids, an easy target, probably lots of screaming and crying, real obvious stuff. I waited for the man in the suit to leave the kitchen, and he headed down the stairs to the basement. I slipped across the floor without a sound, paused briefly at the back door to scan in both directions, figuring correctly that they’d rushed in rather than form a perimeter, and then took off in a full sprint for the fence
. It was wood, five feet tall, and I vaulted it without slowing.

  I landed with a grunt on the neighbor’s lawn, having forgotten about my swollen ankle. The yard was dark, a couple of big bushes, a swing set moved slightly in the breeze, but it appeared to be clear. I hadn’t been spotted. Seventy feet and I would be back to my stolen Jeep and out of here.

  “Move and I’ll shoot you down where you stand,” a man said from behind me, utterly calm. I hesitated, my pistol at my side. I could spin and dive, factor in his reaction time. Ca-click. The sound of a hammer being cocked was piercingly loud. “You’re fittin’ to get tumped. Drop your piece.”

  The voice had a slow drawl to it. My trained ear told me probably Arkansas, and somebody who meant business. The gunman was ten feet behind me, and was just another shadow in the bushes. He had me dead to rights. I tossed my STI on the grass. “I’m guessing you aren’t the guy that owns this house.”

  “Nope. Turn around real slow-like.” I did as I was told.

  The man moved forward, the glint of a revolver coming out of the darkness. He was keeping his voice down. “Well, if it ain’t Bob’s kin, his brother, the thief.”

  “I know you?”

  “Nope. And you never will. I asked around about your rep after Bob met you last, so I don’t think we’d make good friends. I only recognize you because of the old family pictures on his wall. Bob’s a sentimental type . . . I watched you go in his house, all sneaky. Real smooth.”

  I had been pretty sure that nobody had been watching. This guy was good. “And I’m assuming that you’re not with them,” I said calmly, nodding back toward the house. “Who’re you?”

  “Let’s say I’m a friend of the family.” He moved closer. He was probably in his early fifties, tall and lean, his face weatherbeaten and creased, long hair tied back in a ponytail, and eyes that scanned me like a wolf. His revolver was classic blued steel and polished walnut, and the front sight never wavered from my heart. “I owe Bob a favor. Me and him share some mentors, if you know what I mean . . .”