Empire

“I’d go with you,” said Drew. “Except that’s white man’s country. Eastern Washington? Might as well be North Dakota. Black face with you in that truck, they’re going to look extra hard at whatever you’re carrying. They’ll be looking for drugs.”

“Come on,” said Cole. What century was this?

“You never been black in the United States,” said Cat. “Trust me on this. Drew and I travel separately or we’re a gang. We come through Seattle airport, and we try real hard not to look like drug dealers.”

“How’s this,” said Load. “The truck comes in from Genesee, Idaho, on this Cow Creek Road.”

“That’s a promising name,” said Cole.

“Not exactly a major highway,” said Arty.

“That’s what we want, right?” said Benny.

“If they got nobody on it, then yeah,” said Mingo. “But if they put somebody there, it’s gonna be Barney Fife. Real eager to inspect every vehicle to count the bolts in the chassis.”

“I look at the map and it looks like this goes nowhere,” said Cole.

“No, you pick up Schlee Road to Steptoe Canyon Road and take that south to Wawawai River Road.”

“Is that a real name?” said Arty. “Wawawawawawai?”

“What is this, the Grand Canyon?” said Cole. “Nothing crosses this river for miles.”

“That’s right,” said Load. “You backtrack almost to Clarkston before you can cross the river. But we’re not working to save gas, we’re trying to go undiscovered.”

“So what shows up more,” said Cole, “a truck on main roads, or a truck driving on back roads? We have to remember they’re watching by air, too.”

“Maybe the guys with the truck go there and see what it looks like,” said Mingo. “Play it by ear.”

“There’s no second chance,” said Drew. “The first time you try is the only try you get. How can you see how it looks?”

“Cross in a car first?” said Arty.

“And then you decide that’s a good place to cross, but when you come back with the truck, the guardsman recognizes you?” said Drew. “One shot.”

“So whoever drives, decides,” said Arty. “We can’t decide it from here, looking at a map.”

“Okay,” said Drew. “Cole, when you’re about to come through, you call me on your cell. If I don’t hear from you in two hours that you got through, then we lay hands on whatever weapons we can buy inside Washington and go on without you.”

“Okay,” said Cole. “I’ll do it.”

“Of course you will,” said Drew. “You’re still active duty, so you’re used to taking shit from everybody.”

“It’s the assignment I want,” said Cole.

“Why?” asked Arty.

“When Rube and I came out of the Holland Tunnel, the National Guard saved our butts. They did their job and they went the extra mile. I want to be there to make sure we don’t hurt any of them.”

Arty rolled his eyes. Cat coughed.

“An idealist,” said Drew.

“A pacifist,” said Mingo. “Did you join the Peace Corps and got Special Ops by mistake?”

“Just teasing you,” said Load. “None of us wants to hurt American soldiers. We all agree with you. But it’s your job because you’re the one most willing to do it. We trust you to bring us the tools of the trade.”

“Of course, you got to change your appearance,” said Mingo. “You went on CNN, people are gonna know you.”

“I went on O’Reilly,” said Cole.

“So even more people,” said Mingo.

“How fast does your beard grow?” said Drew.

“Bleach your hair?” suggested Arty.

“Fake glasses?”

“Wax teeth?”

“You’re getting silly now,” said Cole. “I’ll grow my beard, I’ll dye my hair darker. It was a month ago. Nobody’s going to remember.”

Then they got down to the serious business of choosing their weapons. Torrent had opened the whole arsenal to them—including all the prototypes that were meant to counter mechs and hoverbikes.

“Guys, it’s a candy store, I know,” said Arty. “But we got to shlep these things through the woods and over a ridge that looks like it’s, what, eight miles high.”

“Vertical exaggeration,” Drew reminded him.

“A hundred and fifty pounds on your back gives you all the vertical exaggeration you need,” said Arty.

“Want to buy good backpacks in Washington?” said Drew. “Easier than trying to carry them through airports.”

“Can we keep it after?” said Benny.

“If you pay for it yourself,” said Mingo.

“Of course we’re going to pay for it ourselves,” said Benny. “You think they’re going to take a DOD purchase order?”

Cole shook his head. “They’ll fill our ATM accounts with plenty of money. This is the United States government. Possibly the only entity with more money than Aldo Verus.”

So it came down to Cole in a U-Haul. Everything they needed for a week in the woods—including rations, uniforms, backpacks, weapons, and ammunition. Covering it: a bunch of used furniture and boxes filled with old kitchen stuff. A Goodwill somewhere had been stripped of everything, it looked like.

If somebody just looked into the back of the truck, fine. If they pulled out a few boxes and looked inside them, fine. If they unloaded the first three layers, fine. But if the search got serious, Cole was toast.

He tried to picture the truck on the lonely back roads and he didn’t like the picture. Oh, he had his cover stories—if he took the northern route, then he was moving from Genesee to Pasco, but he needed to pick up stuff from his mother-in-law’s house in Colton on the way. If he went into Washington through Clarkston, then it was still Genesee and Pasco, only he could skip the mother-in-law. He even had the mother-in-law’s name—a woman they knew would not be home, but who had a daughter the right age to be married to Cole. Just in case they got a guardsman who happened to be a local boy.

Still, once he got across the border near Uniontown, why in the world would he take that circuitous route on Schlee and Steptoe and Wawawai River Road? Obvious answer: He wanted to avoid crossing the border again. Maybe they’d buy it. But it was a lot of miles out of the way. If I were a patrolman and I heard that story, I’d unload the whole damn truck.

It had been a solitary drive. A few cellphone calls, but not too many, just verifying that Drew was in Washington and that there were more guards but they didn’t seem particularly alert or hostile. Business as usual. Only… everybody in the airport watched the news. Baseball season, the Mariners were even in contention, sort of, but even in the bars, more people were watching CNN than ESPN or whatever game happened to be on.

“They care, man,” said Drew. “I just don’t know from looking which ones want the revolution to succeed, and which ones want it to fail.”

“Probably most of them just want it all to go away.”

“Don’t see many people inspired by President Nielson, tell the truth.”

“They inspired by the New York City Council?”

“The mayor’s acting like he thinks he’s the new President of the U.S.A.,” said Drew. “People kind of laughed.”

“Well that’s a good sign,” said Cole. “But we’ve talked long enough. Cellphones. Somebody might be listening.”

“In D.C. I worried,” said Drew. “Didn’t know who was doing what, and everybody had all the tech. But out here? What, they’re listening to all the cellphone calls?”

“Talk to you when I get in place,” said Cole.

Well, now here he was on Down River Road in Lewiston. He’d picked a wide spot to pull off and pretend he needed to take a quick nap. Then he walked like he just needed to stretch his legs. Got to a place where he could