Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2)
Read Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Online
Authors: Michael R. Hicks
Bitter Harvest
(Harvest Trilogy, Book 2)
Michael R. Hicks
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN: 978-0984673087
BITTER HARVEST (HARVEST TRILOGY, BOOK 2)
Copyright © 2012 by Imperial Guard Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Published by Imperial Guard Publishing
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DISCOVER OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL R. HICKS
In Her Name: The Last War Trilogy
In Her Name: Redemption Trilogy
In Her Name: The First Empress Trilogy
Mistress Of The Ages
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In Her Name
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book is always a team effort, and this one is certainly no exception.
To start off, I’d like to thank Tom Swigart, a longtime friend and colleague who taught me how to add, and helped me figure out just how bad the harvester plague was going to be.
Then there’s my primary editing team: Mindy Schwartz, Steph Hansen, Marianne Søiland, and Frode Hauge. They spent a lot of time going through my mishmash of prose, and through their efforts my writing skills (and your reading experience) continue to improve.
After the editors come the beta readers, who had the joyful task of reading through the edited draft and helping me refine it. I’d like to offer a big round of applause to Melody Rose, Kevin Boucher, Jay Lamborn, Rich Duncan, Patricia Egen, and Tera Montgomery for their time and patience in helping me make this book a better reading experience for my readers (like you).
Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank my wife, Jan, who is my alpha reader. Her support and faith in what I can do have helped lead us into a new life, and I love her all the more for it.
FOREWORD
This is the second book of the Harvest Trilogy, and picks up the tale a year after the events described in
Season Of The Harvest
. If you haven’t read that first book yet, I highly recommend that you do, especially since it’s
free as an ebook
. If you just want to dive into
Bitter Harvest
, that’s okay, too, as there’s enough backstory in this book that you won’t be completely lost. I hope.
Now it’s time to buckle up, dear reader, for the ride is about to begin…
CHAPTER ONE
“Are you worried?”
Bryce Moore glanced over at Angelina Matheson, who rode in the passenger seat as he drove the rented sedan east across the Arlington Memorial Bridge into Washington, D.C. It was late January, and the temperature was hovering in the mid-thirties. The landscape was still draped in a mantle of snow left by the worst storm of the winter, two days before. White sheets of ice clung to the banks of the Potomac River, a stark contrast to the dingy gray frozen muck that lined the roads. Directly ahead, the Lincoln Monument rose from the white landscape like a tremendous ice sculpture, framed by yet more threatening, gray clouds. The weather forecasts all predicted more snow.
Fortunately for those concerned about such things, the previous storm had hit after the inauguration ceremony. Bryce suppressed a cringe as he recalled the election campaign that had culminated in a crushing defeat for the incumbent party in November. To call it acrimonious would have been a ridiculous understatement. President Norman Curtis had made clear early on that he had no plans to run for reelection. This had saved him the embarrassment of not being offered the nomination. There would be no political redemption for a president who had authorized a nuclear strike on American soil during peacetime, no matter the reason. Most of his remaining time in office had been divided between helping people in central California where the bomb had detonated, and fending off impeachment proceedings by Congress. There had also been a lot of talk on the Hill about forming a war crimes commission.
The opposing party’s candidate had carried the election in a landslide.
But the question of what to do about Curtis lingered. As far as the public knew, the bomb he had ordered dropped over Sutter Buttes in California had been to save the world from a biological super-weapon developed by the Earth Defense Society. The EDS, as it was more popularly known, had been described as a terrorist group, and was blamed for a series of worldwide attacks that had destroyed the world’s largest repositories of seeds, killing thousands of people in the process. The public story was that the FBI had hunted down the Earth Defense Society and cornered its members in a Cold War-era missile base north of Sutter Buttes. That was when the government found out, or so the story went, that there was a biological weapon in the base that, were it ever released into the atmosphere, could potentially obliterate human life on the planet.
Faced with that nightmare possibility, Curtis had ordered a B-52 to destroy the base with a nuclear weapon.
In the aftermath, the administration had proclaimed that the Earth Defense Society had been destroyed, and that the FBI and the United States Air Force had saved the human species from extinction.
As Bryce, Angelina, and a handful of others knew, this story was a lie carefully bound by strands of truth. If a war crimes commission were formed to investigate the dropping of the bomb, it would inevitably lead to the exposure of that truth.
More than that, it would no doubt lead to the revelation that two of the Earth Defense Society’s most prominent members, Jack Dawson and Naomi Perrault, who had both been at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list, were alive. Not only that, President Curtis had created a highly secret agency to investigate the true origins of what insiders had come to call the “EDS affair,” and had put Dawson and Perrault, with fabricated identities, in charge. If that secret ever leaked, though the EDS had been the “good guys,” the political ramifications, at home and abroad, would be staggering.
The personal implications for Jack and Naomi, who had accepted Curtis’s offer to start new lives as Bryce Moore and Angelina Matheson, could be fatal.
Jack grimaced as he recalled the last video teleconference he and Naomi had held with Curtis, who had always used their real names in the tightly controlled meetings and video sessions. The now-former president had held meetings, by video or face to face in the White House, every two weeks. For a long time, before the truth had been revealed, Jack and Naomi had thought he was a collaborator with the true enemy, what they called the harvesters. But like the other “collaborators” the harvesters had gathered around them, Curtis had been duped, and had spent the rest of his time in office trying to atone for the sin of ignorance. While Jack had never liked the man, he had come to respect him.
But the last words he spoke to Jack and Naomi as the President of the United States offered little comfort. “This is it,” he had told them. Deep lines of worry were etched across his forehead. “I’ve spoken to the incoming administration and briefed President Elect Miller on your agency and mission. Unfortunately…” He bit his lip and looked away for a moment in a gesture that had profoundly disturbed Jack. It was the first time he had ever seen Curtis falter. “Unfortunately, he thought the entire thing was a bunch of hogwash.”
“What?” Naomi had leaned forward, her face a mask of disbelief.
“I assume you had the Secret Service detail verify his status?” Jack asked.
Curtis nodded. “Yes, it was done with our feline friends and thermal imagers.” He looked down at the top of the conference room table for a moment. Then he said, “The transition between the administrations has been strained, to say the least. Daniel Miller doesn’t want anything more to do with me than is necessary, and I can’t really blame him. Who would believe any of this? The only reason I do is that one of the bloody things tried to kill me. And the rest of it…” He waved a hand dismissively.
“Where does that leave our agency?” Beyond their own safety, Jack and Naomi had been worried about the vital work they had been doing at the Soil Erosion Analysis Laboratory, or SEAL, the boring-sounding name given as a cover to their agency. “There’s still an enormous threat out there.”
“I just don’t know,” Curtis told him. “I just don’t know.”
The summons to come to Washington and meet with the new administration officials had finally come after Curtis was out of the White House and Miller had been sworn in as president. Jack and Naomi, using their aliases, of course, had flown from their small agency’s headquarters in San Antonio, Texas to Reagan National Airport. It had been the first communication from the administration, despite repeated calls and emails. They had simply been stonewalled.
Upon their arrival in Washington, instead of being met by a limousine and driven to the White House as they had been in the past, they’d had to rent a car for the drive to the vice president’s residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in northwest D.C.
It was not an auspicious beginning.
“Jack, did you hear me?” Naomi always called him Jack, because the middle name of his alias was John, just as her identity conveniently had Naomi as one of two middle names. It hadn’t been intended for convenience, although they tended to use it as such, but for security. In case they slipped in public, there was a plausible explanation. She reached over and gently gripped his arm.
“I’m sorry.” He blew out a breath. “Yeah, I’m worried. I understand Miller wanting to keep Curtis at the end of a ten foot pole. But giving us the cold shoulder all this time…”
“I know. I think what worries me more is that we haven’t heard from Richards.”
Carl Richards had been a senior Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who, through a series of tragedies in the EDS affair and his status of hero at its explosive conclusion, had wound up as the acting Director of the FBI. He had worked closely with Jack and Naomi, but a week ago had stopped returning their calls. Jack had been worried that something had happened to the irascible man, but Dr. Renee Vintner, another survivor of the Earth Defense Society who worked as a consultant for the FBI, had assured him that Richards was fine, at least physically.
“But something’s up,” Renee had said. “He won’t tell me anything about it, but I know he’s really upset.”
Jack took the exit for the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway and headed north past the Kennedy Center and the Watergate Hotel. “I can’t believe Carl would hang us out to dry.”
“I know he wouldn’t if we were in danger,” Naomi answered. “But he’s also a creature of duty, Jack. If Miller’s tightened his leash, Carl isn’t going to fight it. That’s just the way he is.”
Jack couldn’t think of anyone he’d want covering his back more than Richards, but Naomi was right. So long as Richards wasn’t asked to do anything illegal or downright underhanded, he would do what his boss said.