“Jesus,” the woman said, still holding the skillet and spatula in the air as if her limbs were frozen, “It’s him.” She had a pleasant Southern accent that made everything she said seem significant and earthy.
“Is it the infamous Nate Romanowski?” Kennedy boomed, then appeared on the threshold in his wheelchair. The woman stood motionless behind him.
“Oscar,” Nate said as a greeting, and stood up.
“You can put that thing away,” Kennedy said, wheeling down the hall toward him. “She’s on our side.”
“Maybe not his side,” the woman huffed, pronouncing it like sad and throwing a vicious evil eye toward Nate, and turned on her heel and vanished out of view.
Nate grunted, holstered his weapon, and leaned forward to give his old friend a greeting hug. They slapped each other on the back-Kennedy was surprisingly strong, and the slaps stung Nate’s injured shoulder-then released quickly.
“What’s her problem?” Nate asked.
“Haley? She’s all right. You scared her, is all.”
From out of view in the kitchen, Haley called out, “He didn’t scare me, and you know it. Now, make him go away.”
Oscar Kennedy waved his hand as if to suggest to Nate to pay her no mind. “Let me look at you,” Kennedy said, wheeling back a quarter-turn and squinting. Then: “You look not so good.”
“I’m fine,” Nate said, releasing the rifle sling and letting the weapon slide down his arm, where he caught it before the butt hit the floor. He crossed the room and propped it up in the corner.
“I guess the fact that you’re actually here and still with us is a miracle in itself,” Kennedy said.
Nate sighed. “So you know.”
“Some of it, anyway.”
“So where is everybody? Where’s Diane Shober?”
“Gone.”
“Where are the others?”
“Gone.”
“‘Gone’?”
“Nate, the purge is on. But for some reason the operators seem to have packed up and left. I’ve seen no sign of them since yesterday.”
“I might know why,” Nate said. Then: “‘The purge’?”
Kennedy nodded. He was dark and fleshy, his bulk straining the pearl buttons of his patterned cowboy shirt. His condition had made him resemble an upside-down pear: pumped-up upper body, shriveled legs. His big round head was shaved, and he had no facial hair save a smudge of silver-streaked black under his lower lip. Nate noted the holstered. 45 semiauto strapped to the right side of his wheelchair within easy reach. The old-school operators still loved their 1911 Colts.
Oscar Kennedy narrowed his eyes. The look, Nate thought, was almost accusatory.
“They’re taking us all out,” Kennedy said. “And you’re the reason why.”
“So where did everybody go?” Nate asked Kennedy. He sat at the kitchen table. A bank of computer servers hummed in the next room. Somewhere above them on the top floor, Haley stomped around in a room. The reading room of the lodge, which had once been where hunters gathered after a day in the mountains, had been converted into a communications center. Large and small monitors were set up on old pine card tables. Wiring, like exposed entrails, hung down behind the electronics and pooled on the floor. Nate remembered the size of the generator in one of the outbuildings that supplied the compound with power. From this location, Oscar Kennedy could monitor events and communications across the globe via satellite Internet access. And because he didn’t draw from the local grid, he could do so without raising much attention.
Kennedy wheeled his chair up to the table and sighed. “This isn’t High Noon,” he said. “They didn’t desert you when you needed them most. It’s a lot worse than that.”
Nate cocked his eyebrows, waiting for more.
Kennedy said, “Sweeney and McCarthy were killed in a car accident two weeks ago. On that steep hill into Victor. The Idaho Highway Patrol said they lost control of their vehicle, but I think they were forced off the road.”
“Any proof of that?”
“None,” Kennedy said. “Other than they’d negotiated that stretch of highway hundreds of times. Yes, it can get treacherous in the snow and ice, but they were used to that. We had our first winter storm that morning, and they were going into town to get groceries. They never came back.”
Nate felt cold dread spreading through him. Jason Sweeney and Mike McCarthy were serious men. Sweeney was paranoid at times and scary when he got angry, but he was capable of locking his emotions down when the going got tough. McCarthy was an ex-Navy SEAL who was so silent it was easy to forget he was in the room.
“Two weeks,” Nate said. “That’s about the same time things started happening in Wyoming. You heard about Large Merle?”
Kennedy nodded and gestured toward the communications center.
“Any chatter about McCarthy and Sweeney from official channels?” Nate asked.
“None. Which told me everything I needed to know.” Kennedy smiled sadly. “Whenever one of our brothers passes on, there’s chatter. Guys email and post stories about the fallen warrior and let others in his unit know where to send flowers and donations and such. But in this case, there was nothing. Not a word. Not even a link to the write-up in the local paper. And when I sent a few emails out to their old unit, there were no replies. That means somebody put a lid on it.”
“How can that be?” Nate asked. “Nobody has the juice to tell ex-operators not to grieve. No one can tell them anything.”
“It’s not that,” Kennedy said. “The emails I sent never got there. And if anything was posted on the secure blogs and websites, it got deleted just as fast. Our guys in high places have that ability: to scrub digital communications. They’ve had it for years, but I’ve never encountered it personally. Somebody somewhere put out the word that there would be no mention of Sweeney and McCarthy. And because all communications go through conduits that we-our government, I mean-own, they can squelch anything they want to. They even have the ability to go back and ‘disappear’ items that were posted years ago. That’s a new capability, I think, but I’ve heard them talk about it unofficially.”
Nate shook his head. “You mean they can delete history?”
“Digital history, at least,” Kennedy said. “They have the ability, if they wanted, to scrub every story, article, post, or reference to the moon landing. They could make it appear that the event never took place. Or change the narrative.”
“Christ.”
“It’s a tremendous tool for counterinsurgency,” Kennedy said. “Think about it. The terrorists use email, websites, and social media to connect. If our guys can alter or delete their communications and history, they’re fucked.”
“But someone is doing it to us,” Nate said.
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Official or unofficial?”
“You tell me.”
As Oscar Kennedy talked, Haley reentered the room and studiously avoided eye contact with Nate. She padded over to the sink.
“Mind if I do the dishes now?” she asked Kennedy.
“It can wait,” he said.
She turned on him, and her eyes flared. “How about you do them when you feel the time is right, then? I’m not your maid.”
“Fine, then,” Kennedy said with a sigh. She did a shoulder roll away from him and turned on the taps.
She said, “Let me know when he’s gone, okay?”
Nate looked to Kennedy for an explanation.
“She came with Cohen,” Kennedy said. “They were an item.”
