see the crossing. Not bad. Two National Guard guys stopping everybody, but they were mostly just looking inside cars and passing people through.
Of course, that might just be people they knew. But this was the road that became Wawawai River Road at the border. There were a couple of trucks, too. And those got looked at more carefully. Backs got opened up. Anyplace big enough to hold—well, to hold the kind of stuff that Cole was carrying
Still, nobody was unpacking anything.
He should go north. That’s what Drew and Load both told him. But last thing before he left, Mingo just said, “Barney Fife,” and grinned.
I’m not the U.S. Army invading Iran. I’m not a terrorist with a truck full of explosives to blow up a building or a city. I’m an American citizen crossing through a weird new security checkpoint where there didn’t used to be one. What have I got to be afraid of?
It was too far to see the faces of the guards. If he showed binoculars, that would make him look suspicious. The crossing on Highway 12, right in town, that was a bad one. Lots of guys with guns, lots of traffic, six cars at a time, no way could he cross there. And from here, not too late to turn around, go north; if somebody noticed him, he could say he just pulled off to reset, decide whether to stop by his mother-in-law’s house or not.
He sighed. Stretched. Sauntered back to the truck.
Hot hot day. That was the good thing about going in civvies. He could wear shorts and a T-shirt, sandals.
He got in the truck. It had done okay, crossing over the Rockies, driving more than twenty-five hundred miles. Good truck. Only three hundred miles to go.
He called Drew. This close to the border, they might be eavesdropping. So the call was circumspect. “Mom there?” asked Cole.
“Napping,” said Drew.
“Well tell her I’m on the way.”
Cole turned the key. Started up again. The air-conditioning kicked in. But he turned it off, rolled down the windows.
There was only one car ahead of him. The two guardsmen were looking in the windows. They waved the car on.
Cole pulled up to the portable stop sign. “I really got to do this to get to Washington now?”
“How it is,” said the guardsman. “Air-conditioning broken?”
“Trying to save on gas,” said Cole. “Moving is expensive enough.”
“From where to where?”
“Heading for Pasco.”
“Address there?”
Cole rattled it off. He was tempted to add chatty comments but decided against it. This guy looked serious. Young, but definitely Barney Fife-ish. Full of his authority, like a rookie cop. Didn’t have to go the northern route to get that, after all.
“And where you from?”
“Genesee.” He gave the address, but the guy wasn’t listening.
“Open up the back, please.”
Well, that was routine, he’d seen that from the top of the hill. He got out and headed for the back. Meanwhile, another car pulled up behind him.
The guardsman waved the other car around. “You take this one, Jeff.”
So now it was just Cole and the man in charge. No use wishing it were the other way around. They couldn’t have fit what they needed to carry inside a car trunk. Or even eight car trunks.
“Saw you up on the hill,” said the guardsman.
Shit, thought Cole. “Yep,” he said.
“Deciding whether or not you wanted to come through here?” asked the guardsman.
“I shut my eyes for a few minutes. Then I took a walk to stretch my legs.” Cole let himself sound just a little bit defensive, because he figured a regular citizen probably would. But he didn’t like the way this was going.
“Already tired of driving, just from Genesee?”
“I got up tired this morning,” said Cole. “I loaded the truck yesterday and I’m still sore.”
“Don’t look like the kind of guy gets sore just from loading a truck,” said the guardsman. “In fact, you look like you’re in top physical condition.”
“I used to work out,” said Cole with a smile. But his heart was sinking. The one thing they hadn’t taken into account was that even in civilian clothes, Cole looked military. And in shorts and a T-shirt, his utter lack of body fat was way too easy to see.
The guardsman leaned against the open back of the truck. “What am I going to find when you and I unload this truck?”
“Crappy furniture,” said Cole. “Crappy stuff in nice new boxes. The story of my life.”
The guardsman just kept looking at him.
“Why are you doing this to me, man?” said Cole. “I served my time in Iraq. Do I have to have uniforms hassling me now?”
“Am I hassling you?” asked the guardsman.
Cole sat up on the tail of the truck. “Do what you’ve got to do.”
Another car pulled past them. So Jeff would be busy again for a minute.
The guardsman pulled out the ramp at the back of the truck and walked up, started untying the ropes that were holding the load in place.
And Cole remembered Charlie O’Brien, the guardsman at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. That had been so much easier, soldier to soldier. They each had respect for what the other one was doing.
“You know,” said Cole, “it’s not like Washington is at war with the rest of the United States.”
“I know,” said the guardsman. A rope end dropped down across Cole’s shoulders. “Sorry.”
“It was the President and Vice President and Secretary of Defense of the whole United States that got murdered on Friday the Thirteenth. No matter what your politics were.”
“I know that, too,” said the guardsman.
“So… what if the guys who set the whole thing up—the assassinations—fed the information to the terrorists and then invaded New York. What if the U.S. Army had hard information that those guys were inside the state of Washington? What do you think they’d do?”
The guardsman stopped what he was doing. “I think they’d go in and get them.”
“But the state of Washington says they aren’t letting any military in. Which means, if the bad guys are already
“And the U.S. Army doesn’t want to launch a big invasion,” said the guardsman. “They just want something quiet. Something… Special Ops.”
“Like that,” said Cole.
The guardsman stood there awhile. “It’d make a difference, though, if those guys were gonna start shooting at guys like me.”
“They’d be crazy to do that, wouldn’t they? I mean, you’re part of the U.S. Army, aren’t you? What is this, a civil war?”
“I hope to God not,” said the guardsman. “We’d get creamed.”
“Nobody’s going to be shooting at the Washington National Guard, I’d bet my life on that.”
“Yeah, but can I bet
The question hung there.
“Man, think about it,” said Cole. “If Special Ops sent a guy in, and he wanted you dead, you think you wouldn’t be dead already?”
The guardsman’s hand strayed to his sidearm. But then his hand went on.To reach for the rope end. Cole got it and handed it to him.
The guardsman started retying the knot.
“Thanks,” said Cole.
