Against All Enemies (35 page)

“We’re very good at what we do,” Jonathan said.

“Nobody’s that good. Are you bulletproof, too?”

It was a throwaway question, and Jonathan didn’t honor it with an answer.

“I’m not a snitch,” Tommy said. “I’m not a sellout. Why should I tell you anything?”

Jonathan had been waiting for that question, and he took his time. He grabbed the matching chair from the other side of the door and pulled it over. He spun it around so the back faced Tommy, and he straddled it. “I’m betting on the fact that you’re a survivor,” he said. “After the fan has scattered all the shit that is going to hit it, people will go to jail. People will die, and those who don’t will see their lives ruined.” He pointed at Tommy’s nose. “You’ve got a lot of life ahead of you. It’d be a shame for you to spend the next sixty, seventy years staring at the same concrete wall, only seeing the sunlight through bars or chain-link.”

“You said you can’t arrest me,” Tommy said.

“That’s right. But those who can are going to depend on me to point to the ones who should live in a cage. Help me out, and I won’t point to you. Help me out, and you’re free and clear.”

Tommy shot a look to Mary. “Please, Tommy. Listen to him.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“I’d be interested in hearing all of your other options,” Boxers said.

Tommy whirled to look at him. Look up at him.

“I can’t,” Tommy said. “They’re my friends. My family.”

“They’re murderers,” Jonathan said. “Did you know that your man in charge, Victor Carrington, has already murdered one man and tried to murder a second? Did he mention that to you?”

Tommy just stared. Jonathan sensed that he was searching for an angle to work.

“Please, Tommy,” Mary said. “You need to do the right thing.”

“That’s what they’re doing,” he said. He slapped his thigh for emphasis. “They’re doing the right thing. They’re taking the country back from the bastards who hijacked it.”

“The bastards who hijacked the country were elected by the people who are being hijacked,” Jonathan said. As Tommy became more agitated, Jonathan softened his voice. “Think it through. Imagine you win. Imagine the wildest win possible. Say you rally a million people to your side. Then what? What’s the next step? You kill a few politicians you don’t like, along with a couple of senators and congressmen and maybe a few judges. What happens next?”

Tommy’s eyes darted around the room. He seemed to want to be anywhere but here. “Things . . . change.”

“No, they don’t,” Rollins said.

“Shut up, Madman,” Jonathan snapped. He didn’t need any help. “We’ve got a million-plus soldiers in uniform, Tommy. Thousands of federal law-enforcement officers and hundreds of thousands of police officers of various stripes. I suppose you’ll pull a few of those to your side, but not all of them. Not a quarter of them. What are you going to do with the state legislatures and the town councils and the courts? You cannot win.”

“Then why do you care so much?” Tommy asked as if it were a killer question, an argument ender.

“To plug the bleeding before it starts,” Jonathan said. “As bad an idea as your operation is, it can be effective enough to hurt a lot of people. It’s enough to send the economy into the toilet and create panic in the streets. If that’s the picture of victory, then you can have a victory, but you have to know that it can’t last. The American people will demand order, and sooner than later, they will all turn against you. You. Cannot. Win.”

Tommy shook his head. “I won’t turn on my friends.”

“Then save your friends’ lives,” Jonathan said. “You say there are two hundred of them up there. I only want one of them. As far as I’m concerned, the rest of them are free to go.”

“You don’t mean that,” Tommy said.

Jonathan crossed his heart. “Hand to God. If I can get my hands on just one, then everything else falls apart and goes my way.”

Tommy looked like he might cry. He looked to Mary, and then he looked to the ceiling. Jonathan gave him all the time he needed to sort through his options. “Take me, then,” he said.

Jonathan smiled. He almost wanted to give the kid a hug.
Greater love has no one than this, that one would lay down his life for his friends.
How many times had he discovered himself in that same space? “I admire the sentiment, Tommy,” he said. “And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. But you’re not the one I’m looking for.”

Tommy cocked his head.

“Victor Carrington,” Jonathan said. “Him alone. I don’t need the others.”

Tommy’s face sagged. No matter what followed—no matter what recovery Tommy attempted—Jonathan now knew that Victor Carrington was someone important. He’d mentioned the man twice, and had gotten the same reaction two times.

“I don’t know who that is,” Tommy tried.

“Don’t,” Jonathan said. “Don’t insult our intelligence. That’s just wrong.”

Tommy stared.

“You need to wrap your head around the fact that you really have no options,” Jonathan continued. “I know that sucks—even though it saves your life—but that’s the way it is. You can help us, or you can spend the rest of your life in prison. I need you to choose quickly.”

Tommy continued to stare. It seemed to be too big for him to comprehend.

“Listen to the man, Tommy,” Mary said. “They’re giving you a way out.”

“I don’t want a way out. I don’t
need
a way out. What we’re doing is for the good of everyone.”

“You’re going to lose,” Jonathan said. He didn’t know how he could be any clearer. “If we don’t win a total victory tonight, then the FBI and the army and God knows who else will be here within the next few hours to finish it for us. If it gets to that, you and your surviving friends—however few there are—will all go to jail.”

“And you’ll be dead,” Tommy said.

“No, we won’t,” Boxers said. “Look at me, then look at you. Which one of us do you think has survived more battles?”

Jonathan didn’t appreciate the interruption, but he did appreciate the thought.

“Why do you want him?” Tommy asked. “You know, assuming I know what you’re talking about.”

“We’re going to bring him to justice,” Jonathan said. “I put it that way to be one hundred percent honest with you. Whoever he is in reality, he’s fomenting traitorous activity, and he has to pay for that.”

“He’s doing the will of the people,” Tommy said.

“He’s doing the will of a few people,” Jonathan corrected. “I hate to keep harping on the same point but he’s doing the will of a precious few, all of whom are destined to end up dead or in prison. Mary tells us that you’re a smart kid. Tell me that this hasn’t occurred to you.”

“There’s only one reason for secrecy,” Jolaine said. Apparently, she had a hard time dealing with any period of time that existed without the sound of her voice. “And that reason is to hide something.”

“And who are you?” Tommy asked. Exactly the reason why she should have kept her mouth shut. Until that moment, Jonathan and Boxers were the only people in the room as far as he was concerned. Now, he was aware of a crowd, and Lord only knew what might come of that.

“They call me She Devil,” Jolaine said.

“Why?”

“She Devil, you shut up, too,” Jonathan snapped. “That’s her name for the same reason that my name is Scorpion. The very rough translation is that it’s none of your business.” He paused to regroup, to change his approach.

Jonathan stood from his chair and swung it around to sit normally. When his butt was back in the seat, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. The posture of a concerned father. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “We brought you down off the mountain on false pretenses, and then we startled you when you came through the door. Nobody likes that.”

“No kidding.”

“But Tommy, I really want you to do some serious thinking here. Consider what your options really are. Let’s start with what’s
not
going to happen. We are not releasing you to go back up to the top of the mountain. That’s not in play. So your options are to help us and stay out of prison, or go to prison. In that context, I don’t understand why you’re not one hundred percent on our side.”

“Because they’re my friends,” Tommy said. His voice caught on
friends,
and Jonathan remembered what Mary had told them about his youth.

Jonathan let those words hang in the air for probably a full minute. Entire wars were won by young men who fought to protect their friends. God knew that loftier nationalistic ideals were nowhere on the horizon among junior soldiers once the shooting started.

“Look at me, Tommy,” Jonathan said softly. It took awhile, but he waited for it. “I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I have never been in the position I’m putting you in. Loyalty is important. It really is. But for every man who finds himself in a tough spot, the time comes when he must ask himself what it is that he’s loyal to. Think about the mess in Washington. Whether you want to look at President Darmond or at either party in the House or the Senate, the reason why we’re in the crappy times we’re in is because those assholes are loyal to something other than the people they’ve sworn to represent.”

Something sparked behind the kid’s eyes. Jonathan sensed that he had begun dancing close to the rhetoric the kid had been hearing up in the camp.

“I don’t pretend to know what it is,” Jonathan continued. “Whether it’s their party or the hatred of the other side, or just plain greed, they have locked up our system of governance for reasons that have everything to do with themselves, yet nothing to do with us. Can we agree on that much?”

Tommy seemed startled to be presented with an actual question that demanded an actual answer. He thought for a few seconds. “Sure. I can agree with that.”

“Good. I’m glad. Then you can understand how people can become loyal to things and people and causes that ultimately have less to do with the greater good than they do with self-aggrandizement.”

Tommy stared some more. Jonathan thought he saw tears. That was almost always the precursor to a breakthrough. He went for it.

“Tommy, your friends are plotting bad things, and they’re trying to take you with them. That makes them not your friends. They’ve been using you.”

Tommy shifted his eyes toward Mary, who was instantly on her feet. He stood, too, and as they embraced, the disappointment and embarrassment poured from the kid. At the sound of the soft sobbing, Jonathan looked toward Boxers, who had his arm—his hand, actually—draped around Jolaine’s shoulder. No one wanted to witness anyone else’s pain.

“Listen to them,” Mary whispered in his ear. “Please listen to them. I don’t want you to come to harm.”

A minute passed, maybe more. Finally, the kid found control. He kissed Mary on the cheek and pushed her away. “What do you want me to do?”

Chapter Twenty-five

“H
ow accurate is this photo?” Jonathan asked. All of them—Jonathan’s team, plus Mary and Tommy—stood in a cluster around the screen of Jonathan’s laptop computer. Venice had uploaded a satellite photo of the top of the mountain.

Tommy studied the image carefully. It showed a sheared-off mountaintop with all manner of buildings, mostly of prefab construction. “I can’t tell you building by building without really studying it,” he said, “but it looks pretty close.”

“Take your time,” Boxers said.

Tommy did exactly that, probably five minutes in silence to process all of the details.

“Let me help,” Jonathan said finally. He pointed to the cluster of trailers in the lower, southeastern corner of the site. “These look like barracks to me. Is that right?”

“Yes. That one there is mine.” Tommy pointed to one of the trailers in the image.

“How are the barracks arranged? How many people in each trailer?”

“Ten,” Tommy said. “Five to a wall. The latrine is at the end.”

Jonathan noted the military term for toilet. “Showers, too?” he asked. The question had no purpose other than determining the relative size of what he was looking at.

“No,” Tommy said. “The showers are here.” He pointed to a separate trailer. It made sense, when you thought about it. Running zoom pipes out of commodes was an order of magnitude less complicated than providing high-volume running water. To focus the showers in a single facility made a lot of sense.

“Are you telling me that two hundred men all shared the showers in one little trailer?” Rollins asked.

“We’re on shifts,” Tommy said. “Assigned times.”

Much of what Jonathan saw in the rest of the image was fairly self-explanatory. Shooting ranges look like shooting ranges, no matter where they are, and the big tent is always the mess tent, both observations confirmed by Tommy.

“What are those buildings on the top of the hill?” Jolaine asked, pointing to the middle-top of the screen.

Dylan scrolled in closer, highlighting a series of twelve buildings, six to a side, flanking an access road, and each served by what appeared to be gravel walkways.

“That’s officer’s country,” Tommy said. “Quarters and offices. That’s the motor pool right there.” He indicated a parking lot just to the north of the northernmost building.

“Which one is Carrington’s?” Jonathan asked.

Tommy said nothing for several seconds, then he sat taller in his seat and declared, “You’ll never get through to him. You’ll never get through the security.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Jonathan said. His heart raced at the thought of the kid volunteering in a fit of pique the information he expected to be most difficult to wring out of him.

“Multiple fence lines, each of them patrolled. One gate in each fence, and they’re guarded by some serious soldiers. They’d as soon kill you as look at you.”

As Tommy spoke, Dylan scrolled back up to about two hundred feet. The image moved, and then he dialed back in again. “These are the gates here, right?” he asked.

Tommy stopped himself. He blushed and his ears turned bright red. He said nothing, but clearly he understood what he had done.

“Let’s go back to the buildings on the hill,” Jonathan said.