Ex-Patriots (40 page)

“I didn’t know anything about that,” said
Freedom. He pushed past Kennedy and tapped the code into the
keypad.

Sure you didn’t.

“I didn’t, and if I had I wouldn’t’ve stood
for it. The President has been very firm on the treatment of
prison—”

Yeah, whatever. You’re a real American
hero. Go get your guns.
He shook his head as the door locks
clanged open. Then he snapped,
I’m fine. Don’t you start in on
me, too.

Sergeant Kennedy glanced up as she dragged
the door open. “Sorry, sir?”

Nothing. Go get your guns. I’ll watch the
door.

The three of them slipped into the armory.
“Jefferson,” said the captain, “you’re not combat fit with that
arm. Get a real splint from the first aid kit and then get as much
ammunition as you can into that M35 outside. Once you get all of
it, start on weapons.”

“Copy that, sir.”

Freedom grabbed a fresh ammo box for the
Bravo and slung a spare on his harness. The Mk 19 grenade launcher
caught his eye for a moment but he shook his head. He looked around
and also found a trio of drums for Lady Liberty already mounted on
a harness.

Across from him Kennedy finished wrapping the
Velcro splint on Jefferson’s arm. She reloaded her Bravo with a
fresh box and filled a bag with a dozen more. Two boxes of 9mm slid
into her thigh pockets.

The captain was heading out when he saw the
zip-tied plastic container in the holding cage. He snapped the ties
with his fingers, pulled out the twin Glocks and their magazines,
and stuffed them into his thigh pockets.

Kennedy watched him stash the pistols. “What
are those for, sir?”

He twisted his lip. “If we need a peace
offering.”

* * *

Harrison was on point as they moved through
one of the underground passages between Krypton’s key buildings. It
was hot as hell, but he knew it was safer than being upstairs where
everything was falling apart. The thought crossed his mind and he
felt a twinge of uneasiness. He’d felt it before a few times in his
life. It was when he knew he was doing something wrong.

They had Stealth in handcuffs. After seeing
her move in Smith’s office, he’d used two sets of cuffs. One was
latched on her wrists, the other pinched her arms together a few
inches above the first set. They’d shackled her legs, too. Polk and
Taylor kept her at gunpoint as they marched down the tunnel. The
chains rustled and chimed as she shuffled along the hallway.

Harrison turned to Smith. The agent walked
between him and Stealth. He didn’t seem scared of her at all.
“Sir,” said Harrison, “may I have a word?”

Smith glanced at his watch. “You do know
we’re running a tight schedule, don’t you, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. It’s just...”
Static roared in his head and he had to blink it away. He rubbed
his face with his hand and realized his nose was bleeding again. He
saw the swath of red on his hand and it helped him focus. “It
sounds like there was some truth to what she said, about the Nest
units not working. Perhaps we should contact Captain Freedom and
make sure...”

“Make sure of what?”

“That we’re doing... that we should
be...”

Smith watched the blood flow out of
sergeant’s nose and tried not to take too much pleasure in it. He
twitched when the voice spoke next to his ear.

“He is resisting your attempt to control
him,” said Stealth.

Polk grabbed her shoulder and yanked her
back. Smith could still feel her eyes boring into him. The woman
had incredible willpower. He’d asked her to be quiet twice now. He
hoped her nose was gushing blood under her mask.

“The sergeant just needs a moment to process
his orders,” said the agent. He looked at the other soldiers. “We
don’t need to remember this moment of weakness, do we?”

They nodded with the serene faces of discreet
gentlemen. “Of course not, sir,” said Polk.

“Excellent. Thank you both.” He turned to
Harrison. “We’re going to follow Colonel Shelly’s last orders,
remember? We’re going to get this prisoner to Groom Lake and
establish a base there. It’s even more urgent now that this
‘Legion’ is attacking here.”

Stealth spun and brought her arms down over
Polk’s head. Twin blows to the base of the collarbones stunned him
and trapped his neck between the two sets of handcuff chains. She
vaulted over him, swung her hips across his shoulders, and dropped
to the ground behind the soldier. The cuffs on her wrists pulled
tight across his throat. “Release me,” she said, “or I will kill
him.”

Taylor had his Bravo inches from her head,
brushing the fabric of her hood. Harrison and Hayes stayed a few
feet back with their weapons raised. “Don’t be stupid,” said
Harrison. “You know you can’t get out of here.”

She tugged on the handcuffs again and laced
her fingers over Polk’s mouth and nose. “He will asphyxiate in two
minutes if you do not place your weapons on the ground and give me
the handcuff key.”

“Standard procedure for moving prisoners,”
said Harrison. “The key’s never in transit, only at either end of
the—”

“The key is in the left front pocket of your
pants on a silver ring. Corporal Polk now has one minute forty-six
seconds left to live.”

“You’re supposed to be one of the good guys,”
said Hayes. “You’re not going to kill a soldier in the line of
duty.”

“One minute thirty-three seconds.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Smith, shaking
his head. “You’re not going to kill him, are you, Stealth?”

The cloaked woman lurched forward an inch,
just enough to loosen the chain. Polk took a deep, wheezing breath.
“No,” she said.

“Would you mind releasing him then?”

She unlaced her fingers and pulled her arms
over his head. In the process she yanked out his earbud, mussed his
hair, and knocked off his cap. He took another deep breath.
“Fucking bitch,” he muttered.

Smith gave her an annoyed look. “Can we make
it all the way onto the helicopter without any more outbursts?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Do not expect to bend me to your will,” she
said. Her voice was loud and clear in the tunnel.

“Lady, you’re already bent,” he said. “Be
thankful I just want to get out of here or you’d be putting on a
donkey show for the soldiers.”

Taylor chuckled.

“You have demonstrated a small amount of
control when I was unprepared. Your limited influence forces you to
use more indirect means. If you could assert direct control, you
would have done so.”

“I’ve got direct control of half the base
already,” snapped Smith.

“But not us,” said Stealth. “St. George and I
are too strong-willed for you to influence directly. I would
imagine Captain Freedom is too strong for you as well.”

“Freedom will put a gun in his mouth the
moment I ask him to,” said Smith. His own voice was rising to match
hers. “They all would. Don’t you get it? This has been my base for
almost two years now.”

Harrison cocked his head and looked back and
forth between the soldiers.

“Is that why you killed Colonel Shelly? Did
he become a threat to you?”

“Shelly was my sock puppet up until he died,”
said Smith. “He had just enough willpower to turn his own brain
into mush trying to resist me. He’s lucky I let him live as long as
I—”

“Sir,” barked Harrison. He held up his hand.
The soldiers were looking back and forth at each other. The staff
sergeant snapped his fingers, then again, then once more. Taylor
tapped his collar and Hayes rubbed his own between his fingers.

Polk pulled his duty cap back on his head and
coughed. They all looked at him. He blinked. “What?”

“You’re keying,” said Harrison with a glance
at Stealth. “She turned your mic on!”

* * *

Ummmmm... did everyone else just hear all of
that?

They’d just made it back to the main gate.
Freedom and Kennedy exchanged looks. All the super-soldiers gave
each other uneasy glances. St. George looked up at the gleaming
wraith.

I never liked that guy.

* * *

Sorensen sat in the workshop and watched
figures stumble by outside. He’d stayed hidden in the back office
for an hour, but at some point he’d wandered out without thinking
of it. From here, hidden in the shadows of the shop, he could see
groups of soldiers running by, or the far more frequent mobs of
exes. Several of them wore his non-functioning Nest units, but many
more did not.

He tapped the fingers of his left hand
against his thumb. His right fingers traced lines back and forth on
one of the worktables. He was aware he was doing it. It was one of
those faint moments of clarity when he realized he looked like a
madman. He also realized he needed to trim his beard. Eva hated it
when his beard got long.

He heard the cries and the screams, the
clicking of teeth, and various shouted calls and orders. Someone
would probably come to collect him, soon.

It all seemed distant. The guilty thoughts
about the Nest and the ex-soldiers that had weighed on his fragile
mind were gone. For the first time in over a year, he felt
peaceful.

A trio of exes stumbled in through the
wrecked doors. They weren’t any of his. These had all been
civilians. The woman was dressed in a pant suit, bleached from ages
in the sun. The two men were in plaid shirts and jeans. One of them
had a thick beard. The other tripped over the edge of the door and
fell forward. Its skull hit the ground with a solid crack, but
Sorensen could hear its limbs moving on the floor, trying to push
it upright. Not enough damage to the cerebellum, but it may have
broken its jaw from the muffled sounds its teeth now made.

The dead woman saw him and stumbled forward.
Her skin was like leather, and there were a few twigs and tiny
leaves in her dark hair. He could see an elaborate cobweb stretched
from a ragged ear to her shoulder. Her brittle lips were pulled
back in a smile.

“I knew you’d come,” he said. “I kept telling
them you were out there somewhere. None of them believed me.”

He pulled her close. His wife wrapped her
arms around him and buried her face in his neck.

NOW

“HOW MUCH LONGER WE GONNA KEEP THIS UP?” Hundreds of
dead faces split into hundreds of grins. “YOU ASK ME, YOU GONNA RUN
OUTTA BULLETS LONG BEFORE I RUN OUTTA BODIES.”

“First things first,” said St. George. “Let’s
get this gate blocked.”

Freedom gave three quick hand signals and the
chisel-nosed truck coughed to life. It was a long, eight-wheeled
vehicle with a crane mounted on the end of it. They pulled it
across the gate and the soldiers fired around and under it as the
driver leaped clear.

St. George hooked his fingers under the
truck’s frame and heaved. The flatbed’s side lifted up and he
grunted. The damned thing was armored and weighed twice what he’d
thought. He got the tires three feet off the ground, then four. He
heard a rattling noise as some of the chains on the bed slid off
the far side, but he couldn’t get it to the tipping point.

His forearm throbbed. He could feel his pulse
in the wound and the wet bandage over it. It felt like the fang was
tearing into him all over again.

Legion laughed from a hundred throats.

“Unbreakables,” shouted Freedom, stepping
forward, “give the man some assistance.”

The captain’s oversized hands slammed into
the truck’s frame next to St. George’s. Pierce, Kennedy, and
Garfield added their strength, too. The side of the truck went up
another six inches, then six more, and the five of them rolled the
ponderous flatbed onto its side across the gate. The soldiers
behind them cheered.

“That’s not going to hold forever,” said St.
George.

“Agreed,” said Freedom. “The fence line’s
been compromised in at least three places, and weakened beyond each
of them.” He pointed at either side of the gate, where the
chainlink sagged. “No tension, no strength.”

“Sir,” said Kennedy, “we haven’t been able to
reach Captain Creed. If Colonel Shelly is dead...” She looked at
him with a neutral face.

“Ranking officer?” guessed St. George. “So,
what are we going to do?”

Freedom knelt and scratched a rectangle in
the sand. “We’re here,” he said, pointing. He made two quick
crosses on the opposite side and gestured to one on the corner.
“We’ve got breaches here and here. That’s where your friends
are.”

“And this one?”

“Most of third company’s there. Two more
squads on the way.”

“How many is that? Fifty, sixty
soldiers?”

“More or less,” said Kennedy.

“Any of them your people?”

Freedom shook his head. “We’ve got Twenty-two
here. Squad Eleven’s still cleaning out the barracks. That leaves
Twenty-one escorting Agent Smith.” He glanced at the gate. “First
Sergeant, now that we’re here with St. George let’s get Sergeant
Pierce and his people to the south east corner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know this place,” said St. George. He
nodded at the upended flatbed. “Are we going to be able to block
the other holes?”

The captain looked at the map in the dirt.
“Maybe,” he said after a moment. “It depends on how much Legion has
to throw at us.”

“Zzzap?”

The gleaming wraith shot into the sky. When
he was a few hundred feet above the base he turned in a slow
circle, taking in the lay of the land. A moment later he raced back
to the ground.
Lots of exes coming,
he said.
I’d guess
you’re looking at two thousand or more in any given
direction.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Kennedy.
“Most of them should be coming from the southwest, Yuma. Every
other direction is a hundred miles of nothing. Where are they all
coming from?”