Rest in Peace

by Darrell Maloney

  “Did you believe President Sanders?”

  “Yes. I did. I mean, I was desperate to believe him. I was like most other people, I think, and put my faith in him because I thought we were all doomed if he was lying.”

  “And now… do you believe him?”

  “No. Looking back I believe he was full of crap. I think he knew damn well they couldn’t destroy or divert Saris 7 and he was just trying to pacify the public into believing they could.”

  “What would you say if I told you that Hannah… Ms. Snyder, was the one who went public to expose Saris 7?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Seriously.

  “Her name back then was different. It was before she got married. Hannah Jelinovic, I think. I might be wrong, though.

  “And she wasn’t alone. She had a colleague. Sarah something…

  “The two of them were the scientists the FBI was looking for. The government was going to prosecute them for exposing state secrets. They only dropped the charges because once the news was out they had more important things to worry about.”

  “So… Ms. Snyder worked for NASA?”

  “One of NASA’s contractors, actually.”

  “But she had insider knowledge… knowledge which told her there was really nothing the government could do to stop Saris 7 and that he was lying to the public.”

  “Exactly. And she knew the second freeze was coming. She warned Wilcox and me to prepare for it.”

  “But how did she figure out about the bunker?”

  “She saw the line of cement mixers that day but didn’t put any particular emphasis on it.

  “To her, Montgomery’s assertion made sense. I mean, if you were running a massive greenhouse project you’d want to use the best soil available, even if you had to dig it out of the ground.

  “But once she found out a second meteorite was coming… and would bring with it a second freeze, that put everything in a different light.

  “Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

  “An operation which dug into the earth merely to gather soil wouldn’t need a massive amount of concrete.

  “Another freeze was coming.

  “Colonel Montgomery was a high-ranking officer representing the United States government.

  “The area they were working in was cordoned off with high fences and concertina wire. And armed sentries.

  “It was overkill for an agricultural operation.

  “But not for a top-secret military project.

  “Hannah put two and two together and determined the only type of project that required large amounts of concrete to be poured underground would be a massive bunker.

  “She’d been hearing rumors that the people of San Antonio and Bexar County weren’t getting the food that Montgomery said he was sharing with them.

  “And suddenly it all made sense to her.

  “Montgomery wasn’t just gathering vast amounts of food. He was also building a bunker for the second freeze.

  “And the food he was collecting was going into that bunker.”

  -41-

  Captain Wright finally had the big picture that explained why his client was here.

  He said, “So, I suppose once she came to that conclusion, it wasn’t a stretch to assume the people who were planning to go into the new bunker were Washington elites.

  “The same elites who had given Colonel Montgomery his marching orders.”

  “Exactly. The same type of elites who went underground beneath the streets of Washington, D.C. after Saris 7 hit.

  “The ones every American thought betrayed them and left them to fend for themselves.”

  “So you and Wilcox weren’t coerced. You believed the same thing Hannah did. That you were being betrayed again.”

  “Exactly. But nobody twisted my arm. Wilcox didn’t convince me that the people in the bunker were evil. I came upon that conclusion myself. Just like Wilcox and Hannah did.”

  Medley got tired of pacing and sat on a tiny stool in front of a tiny desk.

  Wright stood and started pacing in his place.

  “Here’s the deal,” Wright said. “There’s plenty of evidence I can show that Wilcox is the type of man who steamrolls everyone who doesn’t agree with him.

  “Hell, it won’t take much convincing. His reputation precedes him, and some on the panel will already know him.

  “If you said you were pushed or pressured into thinking you should breach the bunker and take everyone prisoner we might be able to talk the panel into believing that.

  “The problem is that only applies if it was a senior officer who coerced you. Being coerced or convinced by a civilian wouldn’t do you any good.”

  “But Wilcox didn’t coerce me, or pressure me. I listened to Hannah’s point of view and it made sense to me. I came to the same conclusion.”

  He paused for just a moment before going on, “Wait a minute. Are you saying you want me to lie and blame Wilcox for forcing me to go along with him?”

  “No sir. I can’t legally ask you to do that. Or ethically either. I’m just saying it would make our case a lot easier.

  “And it could well save your life.”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t do that.”

  All his life Morris Medley had trouble making decisions.

  Every woman he ever dated or married gave him grief. He could never make up his mind about what shirt he wanted to wear, what movie he wanted to go see, even what he wanted for dinner.

  In fact he’d almost missed his chance to marry his beloved Helen years before.

  He’d put off proposing to her for a full two years.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t know the two were very well suited to one another; that much was apparent.

  No, it was because he couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to be married.

  For two years he weighed the pros versus the cons, over and over again.

  It wasn’t until word got back to him she’d been confiding to her friends that she wasn’t going to wait forever for him. That there were other men out there who were interested.

  Only then did he propose.

  Medley was famous far and wide for his tendency to procrastinate.

  He was constantly breaking what the Air Force called “suspenses,” and the rest of the world called “deadlines.”

  Not because he was lazy or incompetent.

  Rather, it was because he took forever and a day deciding which word he wanted to use or what conclusion he wanted to include.

  For a man who had a lifelong habit of not being able to make up his mind, he decided this time in lightning-fast speed.

  He was a man whose decisions might come slowly, but he was also a man of impeccable character.

  And he would not, could not lie to save his own life.

  -42-

  Marty was fuming by the time he returned to his cell.

  He was adamant that whatever Richard would plan to retake the prison, he and Ace and Gary would contribute to the effort.

  He looked forward to telling Richard in a cryptic note that he had three men armed with knives on the inside who would spring into action when needed.

  As Marty saw it, if they timed it right and if they caught Sennett’s men off guard they could take out three of the five all by themselves.

  All Richard’s team had to do was to blow away the other two before they could retaliate.

  He paced back and forth, and an old saying kept popping into his head.

  Actually half an old saying.

  “Sometimes the best laid plans…”

  Something.

  He couldn’t remember the rest of it. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was they were screwed.

  Yes, he still saved one knife from being confiscated.

  So he could take out one man with no problem.

  But he couldn’t ask Ace and Gary to try to overpower two of the thugs before the other two reacted.

  With three knives the odds w
ere pretty good.

  With only one knife they didn’t stand a chance.

  There had to be another way.

  He wanted more than anything to retrieve the fishing line to see if Richard had developed a plan and answered his note.

  But no. It hadn’t been long enough.

  Richard was an analytical kind of guy. He wasn’t one who did things half-assed or went off half-cocked.

  He’d consider all his resources first.

  Then he’d look at all the environmental factors: whether he should go while adrenaline was running high.

  Or whether he should wait a couple of days so the bad guys would get complacent.

  He’d consider the way a lack of sleep would affect all of them: the hostages, the captors and his own crew as well.

  Only after all those things were considered would he search for a plan.

  He’d ask each of his men for their input.

  And there might be several plans to consider.

  It might take a day or two.

  There was no real hurry.

  By that time Paul had been on the ground in the old exercise yard for twenty minutes.

  The yard was full of cargo trailers, which made it ridiculously easy for Paul to move around unseen.

  Unfortunately, his adversaries were able to hide as easily as he did.

  Or rather, they’d have been able to if they were out there.

  They were nice and warm on the inside of the cell block, though, alongside John Sennett.

  It was a major oversight on Sennett’s part, but quite understandable.

  After all, he had no military background and no training as a tactician.

  He thought that pushing a heavy storage locker in front of their entry point and telling his hostages to stay away from the doors was sufficient.

  It was his first real blunder.

  Well, actually his second, after leaving Richard and his men alive outside.

  The smart money would have been to gun them all down when they went out to move Lenny’s body.

  Now it was too late.

  It didn’t take Paul long to ascertain that he was alone in the yard.

  Just to be sure he not only looked for bodies.

  He looked for footprints as well.

  The freshest footprints he was able to find in the entire yard were the ones which went from the ladders to the vent on the side of the cell block building.

  And they were covered by more than an hour’s worth of snow.

  Paul pulled his radio from his belt and clicked the microphone twice without saying a word.

  On every radio, on both sides of the walls, two brief bursts of static could be heard.

  Sennett’s men didn’t even notice.

  And even if they had, they’d have thought nothing of it.

  To Richard and his men, it was their permission to proceed.

  -43-

  On their way to the fence Richard and his men took a wide berth around the blood stained snow where Lenny had fallen.

  It wasn’t that they were superstitious or squeamish.

  No, that wasn’t it.

  They were being respectful.

  There would have been something… unseemly about tramping upon the blood of a friend.

  They wasted little time going over the fences, though a little mindful the aluminum ladders were slippery and a bad fall would endanger their mission.

  Once in the yard they trusted Paul’s assessment the coast was clear and went directly to Cell Block B’s exterior wall.

  They met Paul there.

  Paul had already found Marty’s note, and was holding it in his hand.

  Although he hadn’t expected it and in fact didn’t even know of Marty and Richard’s means of communicating under such circumstances, it was easy to see the yellow piece of paper lying atop the fresh snow.

  His first thought was one of concern.

  For if Sennett had posted a man in the yard he likely would have found it before Paul did.

  His second thought, once he took the note off the fishing line and read it, was that it was a brilliant piece of work on Marty’s part.

  For they now had a good overview of the enemy’s strength and firepower.

  When Richard walked up he immediately dispatched Red.

  “Take cover behind that forklift. It’ll protect you from gunfire much better than one of the trailers.

  “Watch that door. If any bad guys exit the building they’ll come out there.

  “If any of them come out, hold your fire and stay hidden. Make your way back to me. We’ll figure out a way to take them out without announcing to Sennett we’re out here.

  He turned to Paul and said, “Good work.”

  Paul nodded and handed the note to Richard without comment.

  Five men, heavily armed.

  Be careful, whatever you do.

  Ready to assist however we can.

  -Marty-

  Richard smiled.

  That in itself was a monumental achievement for a man who’d just lost his son.

  And who still didn’t know whether his wife was still alive.

  But he had a mission to do, and grieving wouldn’t help get it done.

  He had the rest of his life to grieve.

  He’d thought to grab a pencil from the tiny desk in the gatekeeper’s shack, where it was once used to log entries and exits.

  There was a pen there too, but ink pens were hit and miss these days. They were all more than ten years old now and the ink was dried up in most of them.

  Even those which still wrote might freeze up in the extreme cold.

  He put an “X” over Marty’s message and wrote his own.

  We can see how they got in.

  Is it safe to follow their path?

  Richard

  The tape Marty used to attach the note to the fishing line was damp and frozen and was now worthless.

  For a minute Richard was at a loss.

  He didn’t know how to attach the note back to the fishing line.

  Finally he rolled it up into a very tight tube, pushed it through the hole of one of the steel washers and wrapped it back over itself in a half-square knot.

  It would never win any Boy Scout knot-tying competitions, but it would stay in place while Marty reeled it back in.

  He placed it back on top of the snow where Paul had found it.

  Then, as an afterthought, he covered it with a thin layer of snow.

  Just in case Sennett’s men came outside to do a walk-around and they had to temporally relocate.

  To Richard’s amazement, after only a few seconds the slack went out of the line and the note began to levitate.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Tony said. “How in heck did he know you answered him?”

  He looked around and above them, thinking Marty must have been watching from a high window or something.

  Marty didn’t know, of course.

  He finally got tired of waiting and just chose that particular time to pull the line back up to see if he had an answer.

  Richard shivered in the cold as he watched the note rise to the second story and then disappear into the gap between two panels of concrete.

  He wanted so much to write more.

  He wanted so much to ask Marty if Ruth was still alive.

  He’d resisted an incredible urge, knowing he needed to keep his head in the game.

  It was hard enough focusing already, knowing he’d lost his son and feeling an almost overpowering need for revenge.

  Such revenge would cloud his judgment, though. It might make him commit unforced errors which would get others killed.

  If he found out Ruth had been murdered as well he wouldn’t be able to hold back.

  He’d fly off in a rage, intent on strangling every one of the bastards with his bare hands.

  And that wouldn’t do anybody any good.

  So no, he’d hold back on his questions for now.

  Now he had enough things to
occupy his mind. He didn’t need any more.

  “Now what?” Tony asked.

  “Now we wait for a response.”

  -44-

  Two floors above them and a heavy concrete wall away from them, Marty reeled in the fishing line while Ace stood lookout in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry they got my knife,” Ace was telling him.

  “It wasn’t your fault. Those things aren’t easy to conceal. And if you’d left it in your cell they’d have found it anyway.”

  “I’ve got a backup plan, though, if you want to hear it.”

  “At this point I’m so done with these guys I’ll listen to anything.”

  “Don’t laugh.”

  “I never laugh at your ideas, Bob, no matter how ridiculous they are.”

  “Promise?”

  “Oh, geez. Yes, I promise.”

  “It’s actually not my idea. It’s Kathy’s.

  “Wasp spray.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kathy told me a friend of hers used it to incapacitate a home invader who tried to rape her a few months before Saris 7. She said it worked amazingly well. So amazingly well she went to work and told all her girlfriends to start packin’.”

  “Uh huh. Packing wasp spray. Sure.”

  “Well, not packing as in carrying it on their person. But having it close by in case of emergencies.”

  “Bob, these aren’t wasps we’re dealing with. In case you haven’t noticed they’re a little bit bigger.”

  “Marty, have you ever shot a wasp with wasp spray and seen how fast it kills ‘em?”

  “Yeah. It’s almost instantaneous. I’ve shot ‘em in the air and they’re dead before they hit the ground.

  “But they’re not men, Bob.”

  “It doesn’t matter Marty.

  “It affects a full grown man as fast as it affects the wasp. It doesn’t kill him, but it does a great job of incapacitating him.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s a nerve agent. Not quite military grade, but close to it. Spray a guy in the face with it and he’ll go right to the ground. He’s temporarily blinded and he can’t breathe. His lungs go into standby mode. He can’t catch a decent breath for several minutes.