Empire

“So Alton was yours,” said Cole.

“Then he decides to improvise and recruit you,” said Verus. “Idiot.”

“You want it done right, you got to do it yourself,” said Cat.

“So am I under arrest, or are you going to murder me?” asked Verus.

“You’re under arrest,” said Cole.

“Either way I win,” said Verus. “Excuse me while I take a leak.” He turned and pushed his way into the restroom, slamming the door behind him before Cole could grab him.

Cole knew immediately that the restroom was not just a toilet. Before he could finish saying “Son of a bitch,” he was at the door, opening it.

Just an unoccupied restroom with a closed toilet stall. Cole immediately dropped and slithered under the stall door. Inside there was a low doorway leading to a sloping ladder going upward. He could hear Verus climbing rapidly. Cole unlocked the stall door as Cat came in. “I think I got the flow stopped,” said Cat.

“He went up here,” said Cole, ducking into the ladderway. “I can see him.”

“Just shoot him,” said Cat.

“We want him alive,” said Cole softly. “And he knows it.”

They raced up the ladder after him. It was easy to overtake him. Verus was physically fit, but he was also in his sixties.

There was no reason to stop him, though, and risk having him fall and injure himself on the ladder. Cole just reached up and tugged on his pant leg a couple of times, to let him know he was right behind him.

Near the top, Verus slapped his hand against a button on the wall and a trap door opened automatically. If he had visions of closing it before Cole could get out, he was disappointed—Cole was out almost before he was, and grabbed him by the arm as he tried to run away. Verus fell to the ground, pulling free of Cole’s grip. At once, Cole pointed his rifle at Verus.

Cat came out of the trap door behind him. Only then did it close.

“Shit, we walked right by this and didn’t see it,” said Cat.

They were only a dozen yards from the cleared area around the observation tower.

There was a helicopter approaching from the northwest. Not the direction any task force would come from— but just the right direction for a chopper planning to take Verus to Seattle.

“No wonder the clearing around this tower’s so big,” said Cole.

Cat got his Minimi into position and fired a burst toward the chopper. It didn’t burst into flames, but the pilot got the message all the same. The chopper swerved away.

Verus got to his feet, watching the chopper fly away.

When he turned around, he was holding a pistol, which he pointed right at Cole.

“Go ahead,” said Cole. “Let’s have the video of Aldo Verus shooting a United States soldier in the performance of his duties. Let’s have that at your treason trial.”

Verus lifted the gun toward his own head.

Cole shot him in the hand. It was a big heavy bullet and his hand exploded in blood. Verus screamed and fell to the ground, holding his hand and writhing.

“I’m a sharpshooter with the U.S. Special Forces,” said Cole. “You’re not getting away with shit.”

“More choppers,” said Cat. “Good guys this time.”

“Your transceiver still working?”

Cat switched it on. “Seems to be. Even wet. Cool.”

“Tell whoever’s doing liaison with the attack force that most of the people they want are in trucks out on Highway 12. And we have Verus.”

Cat made the call.

“Lie down on your belly and put your hands behind your back,” said Cole.

He frisked Verus, then started field-dressing his hand. The bones were pretty messed up inside. That hand would never work right again. Cole knew it was petty, but it made him feel a grim satisfaction. That’s for Rube. That’s for a bunch of cops and a doorman in New York. I hope it hurts you every day of your life.

Meanwhile, he got the bleeding stopped and the wound bound before one of the Blackhawks landed in the clearing to take Verus into custody.

Links

History is never proved, only supposed. No matter how much evidence you collect, you’re always guessing about cause-and-effect, and assuming things about dead people’s motives. Since even living people don’t understand their own motives, we’re hardly likely to do any better with the dead.

Keep testing your guesses against the evidence. Keep trying out new guesses to see if they fit better. Keep looking for new evidence, even if it disproves your old hypotheses. With each step you get just a little closer to that elusive thing called “the truth.” With each step you see how much farther away the truth is than you ever imagined it to be.

In only a few minutes, Cole told the colonel in charge of the task force everything pertinent that he knew, and Colonel Meyers assured him in return that they had already intercepted the convoys heading both directions up and down Highway 12.

“Good job capturing the command center intact,” he said. “And Verus alive. News teams already have him on film.”

“Broadcasting?” asked Cole.

“No way to keep it secret when we went across the border. Lots of uproar on the news about it. So Torrent preauthorized us to allow the embedded news teams to broadcast live any evidence that we had taken the right place. I decided Verus’s face qualified. Along with those rows of mechs still inside. And the convoys.”

“I look forward to watching the coverage,” said Cole.

“You’ve got no time for that,” said Colonel Meyers. “Torrent wants you to go straight back to New Jersey.”

“Jersey?”

“He wants you with the cops who go back in to accept the surrender of the city.”

“They’ve surrendered,” said Cole.

“Not yet,” said Meyers. “Which is why you’ve got time to get there.”

“But I have a prisoner,” said Cole.

“No, sir, I’m sorry. I have a prisoner. You have other orders.” Meyers put a hand on his shoulder. “But you trust these other guys of yours, right? They can stay right with Verus all the way to Montana. We’ll treat his wound and get him back to Andrews and they’re with him, all right?”

Cat grinned at him. “I want to hear him say ‘owie owie’ when they treat his hand.”

“They don’t need me in New York,” said Cole.

“True,” said Meyer. “I think Torrent wants you there for the cameras. Last American soldier out of the city, first one to go back. It’s all for the cameras, guys. We want to get the message out—this is one country, with one Constitution. Your face is part of that. Like it or not.”

Cole was escorted to the chopper that was taking him back out of the battle zone. In the air, he found out that Averell Torrent had been confirmed by both houses of Congress as the new Vice President of the United States, and took the oath of office in the Senate chamber. But it was still Torrent’s operation, and during his few minutes on the ground in Montana before boarding an eastbound military transport, he was given a cellphone whose number Torrent had.

Four and a half hours later, he was standing at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Captain Charlie O’Brien was there to greet him. So were the cops that Cole and Rube had led out of the city a month ago.

By now, Torrent had briefed Cole by telephone. “The city council has assured President Nielson that all their