He was pretty sure he put four of them down. Maybe disabled another. But from this moment on, the M-240 was useless. He had to get to the river, where sniper fire from Reuben’s jeesh would be his only protection while he negotiated the river.
Getting to the edge of the cliff wasn’t bad. Getting down the cliff face wasn’t all that hard. And he really had tried to pick the point with the narrowest gap over the rushing water of the falls. From above, it didn’t look too bad. From here, it looked impossible. Because the boulders didn’t conveniently line up with two flat surfaces. Instead, they were rounded and jagged and even though he could easily make the jump, there was nothing he could be sure of gripping on the other side. So easy—so
He heard the slap-plunk-whine of sniper fire from the Virginia side. The guys had gotten there, even at five bucks a car.
But that didn’t guarantee that somebody on the Maryland side couldn’t get off a round at him while he was exposed on the rock.
A quick prayer. And then a little aside to Rube: I don’t know if they give angel status that fast, but if you can, look out for me here. I’ve got your PDA and Cecily needs it.
Nothing for it but a run and a leap. So he ran. And he leapt.
And even though he scrabbled a little on the rock, he was solidly on and there was nothing for it but to make a shorter leap and then one that was more like a step and now he was on the big center island.
It was rough going. But the guys were doing a good job of suppressing sniper fire.
And then suddenly they weren’t.
Because it wasn’t sniper fire. It was mechs. They were just
His cellphone rang.
He cowered in a depression in the rock, trying not to present a target to the oncoming mechs. Fortunately, the mechs weren’t really designed to walk on terrain as rough as this rock. One of them even tripped. It was keeping them busy. But eventually they’d get where his hiding place no longer hid him, and then he’d be dead. “Hello?” he said into the phone.
“Any way to take those suckers down?” asked Drew.
“Either an AT-4 or two guys pressing the legs apart while two cars run into it.”
“Nobody’s willing to sacrifice their cars,” said Drew. “But hold tight. We’ve got backup.”
“From who? The U.S. Army doesn’t know I’m on their side.”
“Think, Cole,” said Drew. “Our side doesn’t have those mechs. Wherever we see them, it’s okay to kill them.”
It was only a few more minutes, and the Apaches came up the river. No focused-EMP weapon now—where would they plug it in? The mechs didn’t even try to run away. As hard as it was for them to get as far as they had gotten, there was no going back. They aimed at the choppers but before they came in effective range, the missiles the choppers sent by way of greeting ended the conversation.
Cole got up and waved his thanks. He knew there was no way they could land on the island. It was safer for them to get out before the guys from the hovercycles—if there were any left—tried out their antitank rockets to see if they could bring down choppers.
So Cole was on his own getting to the narrowest place on the Virginia side.
Arty and Mingo had both climbed down to the nearest point. What, did they think they were going to catch him?
No. They had a rope.
He caught it. He tied it around himself, up under his arms. Mingo wrapped it behind his back and sat down and braced himself. If Cole fell in the water, they could haul him out, hopefully before he had been beaten to death on the rocks.
He jumped.
He landed.
Arty caught him by the wrist and Cole didn’t even get wet.
Arty and Mingo helped him get up to the observation point.
“Good work,” he said to them.
“You, too, sir,” said Arty.
Drew was waiting up top. He made a point of turning off his cellphone. Cole held up his cellphone and ended the call, too.
“Does Cecily know?” asked Load.
Cole nodded.
Then he staggered to the railing and stood there, leaning on it, and trembled from the spent adrenalin, and then found himself crying, and he decided that it wasn’t for the ordeal he’d just been through, and it wasn’t for the fear, and it wasn’t from killing a bunch of guys in Rock Creek Canyon and back on the Maryland side of the park.
“I only knew him for three days,” he said.
“He makes an impression,” said Load softly. One by one they each touched his shoulder. And the kind touches were enough to revive him. Calm him. He walked back with them along the path, around the ranger station, ignoring the civilians and rangers who were being watched over by a heavily-armed Benny.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” said Benny. “I’m happy to tell you that the operation was successful. You can resume your normal activities.” Then he joined them on the walk to their cars.
Finding the enemy
They also serve, who only sit and type.
It was Reuben’s PDA that got Cecily through the first month of widowhood. Recording the shipments and financial transactions, following the trails, searching for patterns, tracking corporate entities, passing along names and leads to FBI and DIA agents: It was a vast spiderweb, with Reuben’s notes like dewdrops that reveal where the otherwise invisible strands must be.
It was an urgent task. And they were Reuben’s notes. Reuben’s words. It was his trail that she was following. All those days when he traveled on assignments he couldn’t tell her about, all those trips abroad and in America, all those nights when she could see that he was troubled and yet knew he couldn’t talk about it. Now he was telling her.
Meanwhile, Aunt Margaret brought the children down to Gettysburg and stayed with them. “I’m an old widow myself,” she said. “I know how hard it is. You need the children near, and you also need to lose yourself completely in something that isn’t your family. So here I am and here I’ll stay while you save the world.”
It wasn’t the world Cecily was saving. It might be America. It might be herself.
But one thing was certain. It was not going to save Reuben’s reputation. There was no way that he could have helped but see that something wrong was going on. Too much of what he did was within the borders of the United States. Most of the shipments seemed to go from port city to port city, so some illusion could be maintained that these weapons shipments were going overseas. But who would bring weapons from China or Russia to the United States in order to ship them to pro-U.S. partisan groups in Iran or Sudan or Turkmenistan? Reuben had to at least wonder if some or all of these weapons were meant to be used domestically.
Which was why he kept these notes on the PDA—and why he was so reluctant to give it into anyone else’s hands. Because he knew something dangerous was going on and he was helping with it—yet he believed he was doing it for a President that he admired and trusted, and so he acted the good soldier and did the jobs he was
