A Guardian Angel (29 page)

“No,”
Steven said. The former assassin was a little surprised. Confused. “I
will teach you how to break the code, but that's it. As soon as you
leave here, I'm going to leave the country.”

“Now?”
Andy asked.

“If you're
going to kill Graves,” Steven started, “I'm not too sure
I wanna stick around for the retaliation.”

Andy was
disheartened. “You won't come with me?” he clarified.

“Not this
time, Andy,” Steven replied. “Help me pack, I'll teach
you this code as we move.”

Sighing, the hitman
started toward Steven to help him lift a suitcase. This was not how
he planned it to work.

“By the way,”
Steven began, “have you heard anything about Flynn?”

“She's safe,”
Andy told him.

“Okay, so you
hear the music?” Andy asked the young man he taught. The two of
them listened through large headphones to a transmission from Leroy
Graves to his wife, Loretta. It was a voice mail that they had
recorded on tape and was being dissected by Andy for instructional
purposes, as his agreement to the Knights stood. The young man
couldn't be more than nineteen. He was a redheaded boy with freckles
and braces. He was intelligent, but sometimes irritatingly slow.

“No,”
the lad replied.

“Turn it up,
and listen past Graves' voice,” Andy said. “If you can
tell, there's some light music playing in the background.”

“But what
about the code that Graves is speaking in?” the young man
asked.

It was true, the
message was strange and structured to hold a second meaning. Graves
explained to his wife how America and “the kids” must
adjust their diets and praise the lords of nature. He said a few
other cryptic things of the sort, and at the end provided a series of
numbers. It was an encoded message. But Andy knew where to look for
the code.

“Ignore it,”
Andy instructed. “It's gibberish made up to divert anyone
eavesdropping.” They played the message over again. “Did
you hear how the music changes about every fifteen seconds or so?”

“It's so
quiet,” the boy said.

“Listen
harder,” Andy said. He had started deciphering the message in
his head as he listened. This time around he had broken the code. The
information startled him.

“Okay, so
what?” the young man said. He waited for Andy to reply, but
only received concentrated silence. “Mr. Winter, what about the
music?”

“This message
is useless,” Andy said.

“Sorry?”

“It's just
propaganda,” Andy explained. “Nonsense. Let's use a
different one.”

Reluctantly, the
boy obliged. He loaded up another audio file, this time from one of
the Decree generals to another.

“Hey,”
the young Knight said, “I hear the music again. What does it
mean?”

“What you
do,” Andy started, “is you identify what song is playing
in the background.”

“It sounds
like The Who.”

“Good, that
works too,” Andy said. “You need to know the band
performing the song.”

“Then what?”

“You identify
the bassist of the band. For this first one, it's Entwistle,”
Andy explained.

Light sparkled in
the young Knight's eye. “So the first letter is E?” he
guessed.

“Not quite,
that's too simple,” Andy explained. “You figure out what
album the track being played is from. For example, this one is
'Bargain,' which is the second track from Who's Next. The encoded
letter is N, the second letter of Entwistle.”

“Ah, I see!”
the young man moaned. “Brilliant! I'll start my research and
we'll get these messages deciphered immediately.”

“That's just
one code,” Andy explained. “We have a lot more to go
through.”

A short amount of
time passed before the Knights intercepted and cracked another
encrypted message, from Graves to his generals. This one explained
that he was going to come out to his office in New York in order to
meet with someone from the federal government. The instructions were
to go about business as normal so that he might be able to get in
unnoticed. Merc-cops were meant to guard the Decree Tower from the
inside. The Knights of the Proletariat found this as their one and
only window in the foreseeable future to assassinate Leroy Graves.

Rosa wanted Andy's
help during the operation.

“No,”
Andy answered. He cleaned his three-eighty auto while the leader of
the Knights approached with her request.

“Why not?”
Rosa asked. Andy didn't know whether to read her reaction as surprise
or not. “I had thought that you would want to be there more
than anyone when we take down Graves.”

“I do,”
Andy replied. “But I can't.”

Rosa questioned the
former hitman with silence.

“I'm needed
elsewhere,” he explained. He didn't raise his eyes from his
methodical work. He carried on cleaning and scrubbing any
imperfections along the pistol's inner mechanisms.

“Now?”
Rosa inquired. “Why?”

Andy raised his
gaze. He met her dark brown eyes with his own and an exhausted look
stamped itself on his face. Rosa felt that she only served to annoy
the man. That maybe he was older than his age. Andy didn't answer
her, and after a long moment of staring returned his concentration to
his gun. Rosa lowered her eyes to the floor.

“We really
need you,” Rosa explained. “When you finish whatever it
is that demands your attention, please, consider helping us. Removing
Graves is hardly the last step to a long process.”

With a smile, Andy
nodded. “I will think about it,” he said.

-Chapter Twenty-Nine-

Decree
Tower

Sergeant Milo
Winestock was a proud, barrel-chested mercenary. His face reddened
with sweat, uncomfortable in the heavy riot suit that he made his
squad wear. It wasn't mandatory to do so, but Sgt. Winestock demanded
his men wear it. His defense to this decision was what he liked to
call the blow fish effect. The intimidation that his squad had
mastered so well was the sergeant's greatest weapon, as he saw, and
the reason they had been designated to control riots in several New
England states.

His strong mustache
bristled like a steel comb in the wind. He always rode shotgun in the
vans that his squad was issued. He turned his helmeted head back over
his shoulder and soaked in the portrait of his men. There were five
of them excluding himself, and he had a fatherly respect for each and
every one of them. Winestock's mercenaries had named him “the
Grandfather.”

Sgt. Winestock
loved his nickname. It explained how the man thought that more
leaders should believe; these men are family.

There was a new
member to his family today.

Barney watched the
other men speak out of the corner of his eye. Sergeant Winestock
observed his face tremble.

“I've heard
stories about the Knight's and that monster they have,” one
mercenary said. “This guy who supposedly went feral a long time
ago.”

“Where did
you hear that?” another asked.

“From some
guys in training,” the first replied. “Their C.O.s
mentioned him, always talked about him like he's a mythological
beast.”

“Well, then
maybe he is,” the second said. “I bet you those guys made
him up to scare the recruits.”

“Maybe,”
the first said. “But why would they do that?”

“I've heard
he eats people after he's killed them,” a third merc-cop
interjected. “The story that I was told said was that he was
part of some hidden, indigenous tribe in Latin America that would
catch tourists and sacrifice them. I heard that he's the
executioner.”

“That's
enough,” the Grandfather said. The men clammed up and waited
for him to speak again, like kids caught by their parents. “You
doing okay, Barney?” he asked through his thick, gruff voice.

With the color
dulled out of his face, Barney looked at the man. Sgt. Winestock had
a warm smile. “Yes, sir,” he answered. Then he bent his
face parallel to the road they skipped over. A warm flush spilled
over him.

“Why so
nervous?” one of the other mercenaries asked, observing the
mist of perspiration above Barney's lip.

Sgt. Winestock
continued to gaze into the eyes of the newbie until the stare was
returned. “You witnessed an execution,” he said, in a
voice that aged like fine wine. “Is that right?”

Barney nodded. He
then stared out of the window for a minute straight before taking
notice of the continued gaze the sergeant held on him. He could feel
an air of expectation. The only words he constructed were, “It
was unpleasant.”

Sgt. Winestock's
eyes glazed warm as he finally got Barney to look into them for
longer than a moment. “I've encountered that executioner they
have,” the sergeant told him. “The man with the
dreadlocks and the machete. The 'monster,' as you boys called him.”

Barney's expression
showed surprised interest.

“Oh yes,”
Sgt. Winestock said in response to the look, as if it were an audible
question. “He calls himself Guillotine. Unfortunately, I'm sure
you know why that is.”

Silence stilled the
air of the vehicle for a second. “Where did you meet him?”
Barney asked his commanding officer.

“In Maryland,
on Interstate Ninety-five,” the sergeant began. “We were
transporting some terrorist prisoners up toward the super max in New
York state. Guillotine and some of his men ambushed us on the road,
rammed our trucks off into a ditch. There was a shootout that lasted
no longer than a minute. I had been shot through the side, here,”
he indicated a healing wound under his body armor. “I thought
they were going to free the prisoners, but Guillotine killed each and
every one of them. Then he cut off my men's heads. Left me to tell
the story like the sociopath he is.”

The men around the
van had clammed up in respectful silence. They must have heard the
story themselves before as they knew which parts to hang their head
somberly to. Barney couldn't think of anything to say to the
sergeant, so he tried to look away.

“Point is,
we've got each others' backs. Nothing like that is going to happen
again because we are together,” Sgt. Winestock concluded. “We
are family. Welcome son.”

Holding onto her
megaphone, Haley felt cold. It was a windy and chilled day. The air
seemed to moan and groan as it whispered past her ears. The sky was a
loveless gray.

“Leroy Graves
is on his way to this tower today,” her voice exploded out of
the megaphone. She swung her arm back to gesture at the looming
building behind her. “He will have no choice but to hear us. He
WILL have audience with us.”

The crowd before
her was restless. A haggard collection of upset and scared people.
Haley worried that she wouldn't be able to keep things civilized.
These people wanted blood. Roars emanated from them in response.

Haley had been told
about Graves' arrival in New York by the Knights. Rosa believed it
best if Haley continued her civil work. It was her idea to have an
assembly at the base of the tower and invite people from all over the
city to protest the Decree occupation. When Haley seemed hesitant
about it at first, she was assured that there would be Knights there
at all times, keeping everybody safe.

She still had her
doubts.

Something felt
different about this protest. All of the previous gatherings that she
had spearheaded, Haley could always feel the sense of community and
positive enthusiasm. People were standing together and creating
ideas. These people today were tired and stressed. They were like
animals that had been backed into a corner. Snarling. Barking. It
wasn't the time for a discussion, they thought. Now we must fight or
die.

With a roar that
tore through the bleak sky, a helicopter came fluttering up above the
city. Faces turned upwards and ears perked at the noise. Heads
followed the flight as it circled around the top of the tower. Its
momentum was shifted down and the machine managed to land. Curses
erupted from the crowd below. Fury bellowed out from them. Things
were being thrown about in pure outrage.