Nick
The alarm under his pillow vibrated and Nick awoke instantly, but quietly and without moving, with the acquired reflexes of his business.
He opened his eyes turned his head slightly as the screen across the room which had come to life with a bluish glow.
0332.
Damn, whothehell?
Kassie was still asleep. He didn't want to wake her, they hadn't gone to bed until after midnight. Shouldn't have had that last drink of her granddad's brandy. Damn that stuff was stout. Tasty but he made it strong.
He carefully slid off the bed onto the floor and got up. He sat down in front of the computer. Only a handful of people knew how to send the signal that would wake it up.
He tapped a key and the screensaver vanished. The message box was on top.
Bitter Lancer.
Can't put him off. He's too serious to wake me up for something trivial.
He looked over at Kassie, still sleeping peacefully. He found his T-shirt and put it on, walked down the hall and through the living area to the west wing. He sat down at a computer and opened a the messaging program Lancer used.
"Speak."
He typed the single word and clicked the send button. He wasn't in the mood, and whatever Lancer wanted probably wasn't going to improve it.
Lancer must have been waiting. Seconds later he got a reply.
Brass Hammer.
A brass hammer can't wait for me to get a cup of coffee? No, Lancer doesn't panic. Must be something hot.
He replied.
OK. When and where?
Ravenden.
Damn. Ravenden's a half hour away.
On my way.
Lancer knew his location, no need for an ETA.
Kassie would check his notes and know what was up.
Hope Lancer's got coffee on.
He quickly dressed for regular operations. If anything else was needed it would be there. He pulled on the double shoulder rig, carrying a pair of .40 caliber pistols and put a windbreaker over it. A Charter Arms Undercover went into a holster around back, and a kobun into the top of a boot.
That should do it. Time to roll.
He took the Sonoma, his usual vehicle of choice for routine work. The old truck had faded paint and always a coat of dirt. The original driveline had been replaced with that of a modern all-wheel-drive SUV. After some modifications at a League shop it would easily exceed 150. Something he hoped wouldn't ever be necessary but was nice to have.
The road to Ravenden was a few miles through flat farmland before ascending a moderately twisting road to near the top of Crowleys Ridge. Traffic was always light, and at this time the day he could expect nothing more than a few trucks.
Or law. But they stayed clear of the area unless called, and the League maintained order so there were rarely calls. Still he might have a chance encounter. Those could get ugly.
If I happen to run into one of the really dumb ones.
Almost all of the state and local law enforcement had quit their jobs as the regime closed its grip, or tried to, on the rural areas. The ones that replaced them were automatically treated as hostiles. Whatever their reasons were they had chosen the wrong side.
Driving with one hand he took out a small communicator and flipped it open. Lancer should have a bird up if this was important.
"Ramon here. Anyone up there?"
Ramon was a name he used when not attached to a specific operation. He had a feeling his status was about to change.
"I see you." It sounded like Eleanor, from Mantis. What was she doing here?
"Elly?"
"Nice to see you. I've only got about fifteen minutes of fuel. If I can't get a relief bird you may be exposed for a while. For now it looks good."
Easier to see a threat on the flat land.
"Can you do a scan ahead, see if you pick up anything unfriendly?"
"Can do, but no guarantees on that terrain."
"Gotcha. Just scan for comm signals. Heard from Lancer?"
"Just when he sent me up. You got his freak?"
"Better give it to me."
"Channel 36."
"Got it. Can you conference us now?"
"Hang on."
A few seconds passed.
"Ramon. Elly's got you about to hit the hills. I'm sending down three teams at two-minute intervals. First one is leaving as we speak. You should meet them before you get too far in."
"Cool. How does it look?"
"A patrol just came in a few minutes ago. Not a sign of hostiles. If the guys coming your way see anything they'll alert us."
The road began to twist as soon as the ascent began. Ravenden was less than a thousand feet up, near the highest point on the Ridge, and while the highway was better than it had once been driving it was constantly turning and watching for an oncoming vehicle crossing the center line.
The communicator buzzed, three shorts. He was about to meet the first team.
A seconds he met a Chrysler minivan near the apex of a curve. It was probably twenty years old, like his truck faded and dirty. But he knew that under the skin it was heavily modified.
The next one was a four-wheel-drive Chevy truck. Then a 1990s vintage Cadillac deVille.
Just a few minutes more.
He turned at CR 768, a better than usual county road. The clay gravel surface was smooth and free of the potholes that appeared so quickly after a rain. He knew the local Freehold maintained it between the increasingly less frequent county maintenance.
A mile in he turned into a wide drive flanked by tall replicas of totem poles. A few large chainsaw sculptures were scattered about the lawn in front of a large metal building. They kept company with several antique automobiles.
Before the war was underway the decor camouflaged the site's owners. Just some crazy hill people selling antiques and curiosities. Now it was hardly necessary, the government didn't have the resources to track down the myriad lairs of their enemies. And the local minions would happily take the money and more importantly the immunity that came with selling out, they did as little real work as possible.
Nick parked in the circular drive and got out. Kassie would probably be awake by now. He felt guilt, or something. He didn't want to be here, about to go on another mission. He wanted to be with Kassie.
A covered porch ran the full length of the building. As Nick approached a door opened and a man walked out.
Lancer.
He was older than Nick, old enough to be his father. Maybe grandfather. He wore the usual usual outfit of the rebels. Jeans and a khaki shirt, long sleeves with two pockets and epaulets, a military look. His only weapon was a revolver in a belt holster. Nick knew it was a Smith in .45 Colt, modified by his personal armorer. The eight inch barrel was the main alteration, but it was tuned to Lancer's taste. He could put all six shots into the ten ring at thirty yards in not much more than that many seconds.
Must be hot, him out here waiting.
Nick went inside, past a pair of his bodyguards. There were probably a dozen in the immediate area. The enemy wanted Lancer badly, and if they ever found out where he was they'd risk putting a commando team in to get him. Assuming they could assemble one.
Nick sat down in a chair before Lancer could get around the desk to his seat. He picked up a photograph and passed it to Nick.
Nick looked at the picture, a pretty young woman. Not especially young, thirties probably. Early thirties, but hard to tell from a picture.
"Nancy Faulkner," Lancer said. "Age thirty-one, five six, one twenty something. I know you like skinny blue-eyed blondes, but we're stuck with this.
Kassie ain't skinny. She's just right.
"What's Miss Nancy done?" asked Nick.
"Wrong place, wrong time. She was in a crowd of protesters at a Feinberg campaign event. They rounded them up, several hundred, and gave them the usual treatment. The jails were full so they let most of them go with monitors. Some ran, and a few made it. She got out of the city and made her way to Mayville."
Mayville was over a hundred miles away. Nick waited.
"We've got a small station there. They want Miss Nancy bad, he father is in prison and they wanted her as a lever. Our man decided to get her as far out of reach as possible, and last night they brought her in here."
"Pretty," Nick said, "but not too smart. Protesting. One-way ticket to the gulag."
"Probably. But the situation people are in, emotions get the better of them. They'd been going easy on the lately, with the prisons full. As long as they didn't approach the barricades of throw things or start fires. And they never did that anyway. So it seemed safe enough."
"Maybe they should start some fires. Just not in public. And throw things from concealment. With an escape route of course."
"Probably they will," said Lancer. "Eventually, when it gets bad enough. Which is why they relax a bit sometimes. She went to one just in time for them to tighten the screws again."
"How'd she get away?"
"They had ankle bracelet monitors, and had to check in with an assigned officer every day. They're overworked, and each officer was having to manage twenty or more. It had been three, four weeks, since she was arrested. She reported every day, sweet-talked the officer, got him thinking he might get lucky.
"She got him to a secluded place, caught him off guard and slashed his throat with a straight razor. Our people say she cut halfway through his neck. Took his gun and communicator and got to a friend that got her most of the way out of her authorized radius and cut off the monitor.
"The alarm went to the officer first, and didn't escalate for a half hour or so, That gave her enough time for one of our guys to pick her up and get her out of the city. Once in open country it was fairly easy." "I'm not gonna ask, so you might as well spit it out."
"We need to get her hidden good. They wanted her because of her father, but now they're mad. Seriously mad. We need to get her further out, and buried deep, and soon. She doesn't believe they implanted a tracker, but they've some serious resources on it."
"So we take her a little closer to the middle of nowhere than we already are."
Lancer opened a small cigar case, extracted one and pushed the case across the desk towards Nick. Nick took one and they lit up.
"Yeah," he said after a moment. "You don't have to tell me what your thinking because I'd be thinking it too. And you won't say if for the same reason I wouldn't."
"We gotta do what we gotta to," Nick said. "If we want this to be over someday."
"Yeah."
"So where's the lady," asked Nick.
"Here." Lancer touched a button on a keypad.
"Irondog here."
"Bring our guest up please," Lancer said.
Four doors were evenly spaced across the wall behind Lancer. One of the opened and a young woman who was apparently Nancy came out, accompanied by a young man in black BDUs. A large pistol on one hip was complemented by a katana slung across his back.
It was a plain specimen, a simple cord wrap on the handle with none of the ornamentation on the ancestral Japanese warrior blades. Nick knew they were manufactured in small numbers at a certain freehold, of a type of damascus steel of their own manufacture. Nick owned a set, and several knives from the shop. This guy had a higher rank than his appearance would suggest.
"Thanks Irondog. You remember Nick."
Irondog nodded.
"Good to see you again."
"Nancy," Lancer said, "this is Nick. He's going to take you to a safe place, and Irondog will be going with you. There aren't two better men to hold your life in their hands, me included."
The picture didn't do her justice, Nick thought. The physical description quoted by Lancer seemed to be accurate, but he wasn't prepared for this. Somewhat dusky complexion, jet black hair, a shining waterfall over her shoulders. Smoldering green eyes. A bit of a haunted look.
The thought of her in a prison sparked something in him, like what he'd felt when he kicked open the door of a cell in a dirty prison to find a teenaged girl, naked and dirty and near starved, cowering against the wall she was chained to.
He tried not think of this woman in that situation. He wanted to shoot some people, a lot of people. And blow things up and burn them and..
"Nice to see you, Nancy. You're safe now, and we're going to keep you that way."
She smiled, shyly he thought.
"Nick, you and Irondog are taking Nancy south." He tapped some keys and a map appeared on a large screen on the wall beside his desk.
"Delight," he said, indicating the location with a laser pointer. "Very few people down there."
"I've been there," Nick said. "Before the war. It's in a dry county. We had to drive to Texarkana to get liquor."
"I don't imagine a problem these days," Lancer replied dryly, "but you seem to know how to handle it. We have a couple dozen people there, and there's a lot of traffic to and from Texas. We have some safe houses there. Liquor and smokes won't be a problem.
"When do we leave?" asked Nick.
"ASAP. Can you have Kassie pack for you? You'll go by there on your way out."
"Yeah. Is this down and back or do I need to stay a while?"
"A few days. They'll lose interest soon enough, they've too many bigger problems to deal with. We have a good team there, they can take over. But until the heat dies down a bit I'd feel better with you and Irondog there."
"Got it."
Nick took out his phone. Might as well get it done.
Kassie was on the front deck as they arrived. Nick was in the lead vehicle, Irondog and Nancy were in the second. Two others followed, an early 2000s Crown Victoria and a 1990s Chevy cargo van. The four men in the Crown Vic and four more the van, together with the weaponry the extra space in the van allowed made a formidable force that could deal with anything sort of a military airstrike, and even if they could be located it was unlikely the air resources would be available.
Kassie didn't say anything, just kissed him and hugged him a little tighter than usual.
"I'll be all right," Nick said. "You're safe here, most of the tribe is around at any time. We're about eight hours from our destination, and I have to run dark. Lancer will be tracking us though, and he'll give you hourly updates."
"Got it," Kassie said. "Just tell Irondog not to be distracted."
Nick was the only one who had gotten out of his vehicle, but Kassie could see Nancy sitting beside him in his vehicle.
"Irondog? Not worried about me?"
"Hardly."
She smiled, but there was concern. He couldn't tell her what was going on, but she knew it was serious or Lancer wouldn't have called him.
Nick kissed her again and picked up his bags. He tossed them into the back of the Sonoma. He went over to Irondog's vehicle.
"I'll have to refuel on the way out," he said. "Waldenberg's the best place."
"Gotcha. The others are topped off."
Nick led the way. After a fuel stop they continued south. It was all back roads, as I-40 was one of the few routes likely to be surveilled by the meager government resources. And with Nancy as a target there was likely to be increased presence.
They couldn't cover the entire three hundred thousand square miles of what they once contemptuously called flyover country. Even a small part of it.
Darkness was near as they rolled through Delight.
His communicator buzzed and he looked down at the screen. It was Lancer on the short range radio, only effective for a quarter mile or so.
"White Chevy dually. Follow."
Nick looked ahead. He was on Antioch street, the main drag. If a town of three hundred had a drag of any sort.
There.
The big white truck was on the side of the street and pulled out ahead of him. It had a camper shell, the windows tinted. Nick knew a half dozen or so men were inside, with some heavy weapons. There would be one or two S-200s capable of taking out a Blackhawk helicopter a mile away. As they had done more than once.
He followed it on into the countryside, and about three miles later it took a side road. A hundred yards off the road was a fenced enclosure. The gates were opened and the convoy followed the leader inside.
The enclosure was about three hundred yards square, with a network of streets among the hundred or so mobile homes. All were old and appeared to be deserted.
Nick noticed though, that it had regular maintenance. The grass was long in most places but apparently was being mowed regularly if not frequently. Some windows were covered with plywood or sheet metal, and there were only a few vehicles.
The driver of the dually parked in a driveway, got out and walked back to Nick's vehicle.
"Just distribute your vehicles among the empty spaces," he said. "Don't worry about security. I've got over fifty men in here, and a bird overhead.
Nick didn't look up. There would be some kind of small aircraft, an ultralight maybe, keeping an eye on them. Possibly more than one.
He parked in one of the empty driveways and the other drivers did the same. He and Irondog went over to where the leader had parked. He was waiting.
"Enoch, Coppertree." he said.
Coppertree was the freehold based near the Texas border. Texarkana was their local resource for needs related to civilization. Texas was almost entirely free of federal interference, effectively a separate country. The Arkansas part of the twin cities made it a busy crossing point.
Nick had heard of Enoch Flynn but had never met him. One of the five elders of the Coppertree freehold, he was something of a legend in the Resistance.
"Good to meet you," Nick replied. "You've got the picture?"
"Lancer briefed me yesterday," Enoch replied. "We got on it at once."
"Sounds good. What's the plan?"
Irondog had joined them, and Enoch produced a cigar case and offered them a smoke.
"This facility is pretty low-key," Enoch said. "We haven't detected any interest in it. As far as anyone knows it's a few derelicts squatting in an old trailer park. We work hard to keep it that way, it's got a few interesting features.
"Over there in the corner is the place we prepared. The OIC and his staff stay there, there's always a regular force here. Once we get your lady settled in I'll show you around.
"If you'll bring her over I'll make the introductions."
Irondog went back to his vehicle and Nick to his and they followed Enoch.
The mobile homes in the corner looked no different from the others, but there was more evidence of traffic. Enoch led them to one of the homes that had a large covered deck on the front. It looked old and in moderately bad repair.
"You never know when a satellite might decide to take a closer look," Enoch said. "I doubt they have the time but if they're tipped off they might give us a bit more scrutiny. So we try to keep it low-key. The insides are different. Come on in."
They followed him inside, to what looked like a modern well-kept office. A young woman in casual gear, the default khaki with only a sidearm, rose from a desk as they entered.
"Hi Enoch. Let me get Bill."
She went down a hallway and returned shortly.
"He'll be with us in a minute," she said. "You must be Nancy. How was your trip?"
"Good." replied Nancy. "The further away from Ohio I am the better I feel."
"You're in good hands." she said. "The best. I'm Alysin."
"Nice to meet you."
Alysin had an intriguing look, Nick thought. Pretty but not too pretty, a look of intelligence and strength, like most of the Resistance people he'd met. But without losing that, what was it he always thought, niceness. They seemed people who would rather be doing anything other than what they were doing, but knew it had to be done.
Bill appeared with another man.
"Nancy, good to see you." he said. "This is Roger, and you've met Alysin. You're as safe here as you can be anywhere, except maybe in the middle of Texas. Alysin, can you find someone th help Nancy get settled in and show her around?"
"Not a problem. Give me a minute."
"Let's get a drink," Bill said. He turned to a bar across the room. "What's your pleasure? We have pretty much anything you want."
"Some wine would be good." Nancy replied.
"Grab a seat," Bill said. "Let's see what we have."
Nancy sat down at the large round table, Nick and Irondog joined Bill and Roger at the bar.
"Red, white or pink?" Bill asked.
"White is fine."
Bill opened a cooler and removed a bottle, poured a glass. He brought it to Nancy and returned to the bar where the other men were helping themselves to the stock. Bill poured a brandy and joined them at the table.
"Jen and Aaron will be over in a bit," Alysin announced.
"They'll get you settled in and provisioned," Enoch said. "You don't have any special medical needs, go you?"
"None. Thanks for helping me out. I'm all alone, everything I had I left behind."
"We know about your father," Enoch said. "I hate it, it must have been hard for you to run. But the tide is turning, and has been for some time. Some of them realize it, some don't, but either way this will end. I hope he can hang on."
"So do I," Nancy said. "Anything I can do to help, I'm ready."
"For now we'll keep you safe." said Enoch. "They're pretty hot after you, but there's no sign they have any idea where you are. We're going to keep it that way. As thin as their resources are spread, they won't be able to keep it up long."
Nick
Kassie
Bitter Lancer
Lancer
Brass Hammer
Ravenden
Crowleys Ridge
Ramon
Eleanor Mantis
Nancy Faulkner
Irondog
Texarkana
Waldenberg
Enoch Coppertree
Enoch Flynn
Alysin
Bill
Jen Aaron