The Power of We the People

by Diane Matousek Schnabel

  “Because lives are on the line.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. President, there’s more at stake than the life of your friend.”

  The sentiment struck with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. “Kyle is a former President. We can’t just write him off as collateral damage.”

  “Jeopardizing your presidency will put tens of millions of lives on the line and the country at risk of becoming collateral damage.”

  Checkmated, Ryan redirected his attention to the GNN newsfeed, and his body temperature soared. The chyron on the lower third proclaimed, “Daughter of President Murphy dead at 18.” He grabbed the remote from the conference table and hiked the volume.

  “... An unnamed source is reporting that Abigail Webber has been murdered—allegedly—by the very Secret Service agent tasked with protecting her. A note left behind reads, ‘I couldn’t allow a mass murderer to get off scot-free. I had to protect innocent migrants whose only crime was to seek a better life.’

  “A manhunt is currently underway in District Six. If you have information regarding the whereabouts of Sigmund Quincy Wachter, contact the FBI at the number on your screen.”

  The androgynous-looking anchor raised a manly hand to her ear, intently listening to a directive. Her mouth turned downward, but delight was glistening in her eyes. “Let’s go to our local correspondent outside Langden Air Force Base for breaking news. Parker, what can you tell us?”

  “Rochelle, according to a senior official, former President Kyle Murphy collapsed upon hearing of his daughter’s passing, and has, in fact, suffered a fatal stroke. Father and daughter, in a bizarre twist of fate, passing away within hours ...”

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ryan’s gaze dropped. “Tell me this is fake news.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  Baffled by Rone’s non sequitur, his head bobbed up, and he squinted at the formerly snowy upper monitor. A psychiatric-ward surveillance camera showed an orderly prowling a hallway. Dressed in white scrubs, face obscured by oversized sunglasses and a Texas Rangers cap, the bastard slapped a piece of medical tape over the camera lens, rendering its feed useless.

  Expletives screamed through Ryan’s mind, followed by a nagging question.

  Why didn’t that orderly just turn off the entire surveillance system?

  “Look!” Rone shouted, pointing at the lower monitor. “They’re alive!”

  Kyle was sitting upright, bound to a chair beside Abby’s hospital bed. Both appeared to be screaming.

  With fumbling fingers, Ryan snatched the remote; and, after the third try, fake news yielded to a nonsensical, drug-induced tirade jumbled with a father’s desperate pleas. More powerful than the written word, the audio feed conveyed the pain, despair, and panic resonating in their voices; and Ryan felt like the sound waves were injecting those emotions directly into his nervous system.

  “Get a sitrep from Secret Service,” he barked. “And find out where the fuck Fitz is!”

  Malvado sauntered into the camera’s field of view, wielding a syringe like a musical conductor’s baton and singing, “Happy death day, Mis-ter President,” in a lame impersonation of Marilyn Monroe.

  “Secret Service attempted a breach,” Rone said, his voice thick with frustration, “and is currently pinned down in the lobby. No word from Fitz.”

  Ryan began to pace, converting anxiety and helplessness into kinetic energy.

  Malvado blew Kyle a kiss as she approached Abby’s bedside. “The narrative dictates that her time of death must precede yours so ... ladies first.”

  Grief warped Kyle’s tear dampened face as he pleaded for his daughter’s life, promising money, information, and testimony in an emotional outburst that was as shameful as it was pitiful.

  “TEradS are five minutes out,” Rone bellowed.

  “We don’t have five minutes. They have to move. Now!”

  Heart bucking in his chest, Ryan intertwined his fingers and rested them atop his head.

  The crazy bitch jabbed the needle into Abby’s arm.

  Fuck!

  Ryan squeezed his skull.

  It was infuriating, witnessing a murder in real time, being powerless to stop it.

  Malvado’s thumb retracted, fishing for the plunger, and her head whipped forward. She folded at the hips, swooning onto Abby’s torso, then sank onto the floor, dragged down by the weight of her lower body.

  The orderly with the Rangers cap dashed into the hospital room, a Glock in one hand, a folding knife in the other, and he slashed at the tape binding Kyle to the chair.

  Relief struck Ryan like a bolt from the blue. “That’s Wachter!”

  As Kyle and the Secret Service agent unbuckled the leather straps binding Abby to the bed, a new camera feed flickered to life on the upper monitor. Bullets were zinging across the nurses’ station, burrowing into equipment and punching through walls. A lone gunman in white scrubs was exchanging fire with Kyle’s protective detail.

  Their ammo is going to run out, Ryan thought. Damn it, Fitz! Where are you?

  He watched Kyle snag his cellphone and ease Abby down onto the floor, shielding her with his body. Wachter tipped the gurney-style bed onto its side to provide cover, yelled, “Stay here,” and retreated into the hallway, readying his handgun.

  He’s going to flank that son of a bitch!

  Ryan had barely finished the thought when a pair of red rosettes blossomed on the gunman’s pristine cotton shirt, and his body bounded onto the floor.

  Rone celebrated with a fist pump. “Secret Service saves the day!”

  Registering the not so subtle I-told-you-so, Ryan slumped onto his faux-leather chair, as exhausted and spent as if he’d physically participated in the operation. “Why Abby? Why an overdose? And why now?”

  “Her scope camera debunked the murder allegations; maybe suicide was Plan B.”

  “They need to silence her,” Ryan said, thinking aloud. “And they were desperate enough to assassinate a former President. There’s got to be a compelling reason ... Abby must have some damning intel.”

  Unmoved, Rone massaged the back of his neck. “She would’ve reported it up the chain of command.”

  “Not necessarily. What if she knows something ... without even realizing that she knows it?”

  Chapter 6

  Day 719

  Tuesday, February 7th

  32

  Vodvizhenka Air Base, Russia

  CJ WASN’T SURE HOW long he’d been sitting in this godforsaken interrogation room. Hours? Or days?

  Sleep deprived, his buttocks ached from the splintered wooden chair, his bound arms were cramping, and, thus far, his olfactory system refused to normalize the odor of rotting cabbage; but it was the unrelenting silence that was unnerving CJ. He hadn’t heard so much as a footstep since Baklanovich accused him of conspiring with The Consortium to down a commercial airliner.

  The words, “We do hard way,” had been ricocheting inside his skull, rattling, clanging, and inspiring a horror show of potential torture techniques. CJ had heard rumors about the “elephant,” a tactic allegedly practiced on Chechen inmates at a Russian prison camp in Chernokozovo.

  He imagined a hooded gas mask yanked down over his face. Within seconds, the breathing tube would clamp shut, slowly suffocating him until he was on the verge of losing consciousness. Then the tube would reopen, and he would gasp in a lungful of military-grade tear gas.

  I’m psyching myself out, CJ thought.

  Was that the point of Baklanovich’s vague threat? Why he had yet to inflict physical pain? Did he deem psychological torture more effective?

  Only a Russian could turn civility into a mind-bending form of torture.

  He turned an ear toward the hallway, straining to listen. Was that the muted clop of rubber-soled combat boots? Or an auditory hallucination?

  The warped, interrogation-room door swung inward, its paint-swollen hinges groaned, and the doorknob thwacked, enlarging a pre-existing divot in the cinder-block
wall. A soldier jabbed CJ with the barrel of an AK-12, prodding him into a dingy hallway and out onto the tarmac.

  It was bitterly cold, even by Alaska standards, and too overcast to discern the time of day. An icy wind pricked his exposed skin like thousands of straight pins, and he began to shiver.

  The hangar had been reduced to a smoldering heap of rubble, and he bowed his head, guilt-ridden over the Russian who’d lost his life.

  The soldier steered him toward a Tupolev Tu-160, a Soviet-era bomber with a blended wing profile and engines capable of Mach 2; and as CJ marched through the open cargo door, his eyelids snapped shut, clenched, and flew open as if rebooting his vision.

  Maybe that wasn’t the stench of rotting cabbage, he thought. Maybe it was a gaseous drug, covertly administered to induce delusions.

  Convinced this was psychological torture, CJ ignored the disturbing vision and clumsily parked his backside next to the illusory corpse. His gaze swept the dirt-streaked, rivet-studded, curved walls of the aircraft. The ceiling was an irregular grid of steel crossbeams, hosting a labyrinth of wires, pipes, and insulated ductwork. Then a terrible tenseness besieged his body.

  He was sitting atop bomb bay doors, designed to deploy free-fall bombs. Were the Russians going to drop him into the ocean?

  He had heard tales of dissidents being “disappeared” in that manner, and his mind ran amuck with macabre possibilities.

  Dying of thirst, drowning, eaten by sharks ... No, he decided. Hitting the water from that altitude, at that speed, would be like landing on granite ... At least death will be instantaneous.

  He glanced at the apparitional cadaver, surprised that it hadn’t morphed into a limbless carcass or a bloated, decaying body.

  What if it’s not an illusion?

  The implications chilled him.

  CJ rocked and pivoted, his bound hands reaching for definitive proof, and he fully expected his fingers to glide through empty space. When they came in contact with human flesh, he choked on his saliva.

  Bradley really was lying prone, his face caked with crusty blood emanating from a gash in front of his ear. He jostled his friend’s shoulder then, unable to rouse him, he groped for a pulse.

  Relief flowed through CJ like a sedative, relaxing and cathartic, then the weapons bay suddenly darkened. The rear door closed with a hollow, metallic clunk, and turbofan engines whined to life.

  The fuselage bounced and shuddered as the Tupolev rumbled along the runway and took to the skies. The droning sounds and familiar vibrations were a lullaby luring CJ into a restless sleep and a smorgasbord of nightmares: beatings, electric shocks, and severed appendages; Bradley transformed into a mind-controlled robot, doing The Consortium’s bidding; Missy imprisoned in a foreign country, sating the perverse desires of strangers; Matthew sacrificed to Moloch; and the toddler’s cries sounded so realistic that they jarred CJ from his slumber.

  It was just a dream, he reassured himself, shivering uncontrollably. Unlike commercial aircraft, the bomber wasn’t insulated against the negative-thirty-degree temperatures that persisted at 30,000 feet.

  “Enjoy your nap?”

  His head jerked toward Bradley, who was sitting upright, wrists shackled behind his back.

  “Wha-what happened?” CJ stammered, his lips numb and unwieldy. “How’d you end up in Russian custody?”

  The Sniper’s eyes slanted toward the armed soldier, indicating this was not the time or place, then he said, “Did you take care of business?”

  Assuming that he was inquiring as to the fate of the owl, CJ said, “Terminated with extreme prejudice.”

  The horizontal grooves in Bradley’s forehead flattened, and as he gave an approving nod, the Tupolev’s engines throttled back and the bomber began losing altitude.

  “You have any idea where we’re landing?” CJ asked.

  “I overheard them talking.” Bradley’s voice was a smothered whisper. “La Condesa, a maximum security prison for foreigners ... in Cuba.”

  Cuba? CJ thought. How long was I asleep?

  Yawning to relieve the pressure in his ears, he contemplated why the Russians would transport them halfway around the world. Was Cuba another Consortium stronghold like North Korea?

  It seemed unlikely, given the CIA’s fanciful plots against Fidel Castro: exploding cigars, bombs hidden in seashells, contaminated dive suits, poisoned pens, and shoes dusted with thallium salts to make his iconic beard fall out.

  Were all those assassination attempts fake news? he wondered. That would explain why the all-powerful intelligence agency never managed to kill Castro ... And why they publicized their failures.

  The landing gear whined and thunked into position, and the aircraft began to shake violently. It rose and dipped, buffeted by wind gusts. Without the benefit of seatbelts, hands bound behind their backs, CJ and Bradley were tossed as if riding a mechanical bull, knocking heads, elbows, and knees against the floor of the fuselage and each other.

  The touchdown was hard, the deceleration abrupt, and they skidded forward; then, mercifully, the aircraft rolled to a stop. The rear door gradually opened, and a warm tropical breeze made CJ’s frostnipped cheeks sting.

  The armed soldier, still harnessed in the bombardier’s seat, pointed toward a vehicle parked just beyond the tail of the aircraft. It was a vintage, eggplant Cadillac Eldorado with rocket-ship taillights, winged fins, and primer gray doors. An equally ancient-looking Cuban General climbed from the driver’s seat. Proffering a taunting grin, he ambled toward the rear bumper and unlocked the cavernous trunk.

  33

  District Nine, California

  AN OVERLOAD OF ENERGY whipped through Glen Anthony’s central nervous system. His mind felt like an overloaded transformer, buzzing and crackling, spitting out thoughts that glowed brilliant with potential and vanished like sparks.

  It’s the only rational solution, he reminded himself.

  Hellhound’s obsession with Matthew Love was a personal vendetta, one that would never dissipate over time, prompting Glen to accept a disconcerting truth. He couldn’t emerge from this ordeal without blood on his hands. His only choice was whose blood. The inhumane general’s? Or his wife and daughter’s?

  He’d spent the past twenty-four hours extracting ricin from castor beans, a poison more potent than cyanide. Ingesting a dose the size of a grain of table salt would inhibit protein production, cause cells to die off, and vital organs to fail within days; but symptoms would present within a few hours, limiting Glen’s operational window. How long would it take to collect his family and secret them away in District Six, one of the few regions not under Night Sector control?

  What if the ricin doesn’t work?

  Glen hadn’t had the time—or the heart—to test the toxin on a living creature.

  Maybe I should abort this insane plot ... But then Hellhound will brutalize Ellen and Gabby.

  Squeegeeing a film of fear from his face, he retrieved his Chi-phone and texted Hellhound, “Toddler located. Will only relinquish to you, personally.”

  The sadist replied, “1100 hours. Night Sector HQ.”

  Like hell, Glen thought. “Negative. 1000 hours. Eastern gate, Edgar Air Force Base.”

  Minutes passed without response, then, pocketing his phone, Glen traipsed into a coffee shop celebrating its grand opening. He ordered a decaf, handed the barista a 9mm bullet as payment, and settled onto a gray wicker chair woven from synthetic resin. A ceiling-mounted television featured a Global News Network broadcast, and he gave a contemptuous snicker. The media had abandoned caravan coverage in hopes of nurturing a nationwide amnesia concerning their fraudulent reporting.

  The overhyped narrative du jour was Russia’s malicious attack on a civilian airliner inside Ukrainian airspace. Pundits were clamoring for U.S. military intervention and declaring inaction to be proof that President Andrews was an agent of the Kremlin.

  The Consortium and their media assets are growing increasingly desperate, Glen thought, sipping his coff
ee. And exponentially more dangerous.

  An elderly woman shuffled into the coffee shop, and he couldn’t help but stare. She was a dead ringer for “Granny” of Beverly Hillbillies fame—slicked back gauzy gray hair, pale wrinkled skin, and wire-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

  “Tune out fake news!” she hollered, mimicking a carnival barker and dealing out paper scraps. “Check out the present-day version of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense!”

  Glen thanked her and keyed the hand-written web address into the URL bar of his Chi-phone. His heart swelled with nationalistic pride. Ordinary Americans were awakening, declaring war on The Consortium; and instead of merely posting flyers in the public square, they had compiled all the Patriot Anon posts into a user-friendly website to disseminate the truth.

  Grinning, he perused the most recent post.

  KM stroke?

  Fake News.

  AW murdered?

  Fake news.

  Airliner shot down by Russia?

  Fake news.

  Second attempt thwarted?

  Perpetrators in Russian custody?

  Beneficiaries of World War III?

  “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes ... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense ...” –President Dwight D. Eisenhower