The Crimson Fall (The Sons of Liberty Book 1) (19 page)

He stumbled on, looking for the house. His thoughts were jumbled and vague and he couldn’t remember the address; only that David had said it was three stories tall with a stone facade and a dark gray roof. Frustrated, he cursed at himself and wondered if maybe he should try to go back to the truck and call for help, but his fatigue had curiously started to change. It started to become something he had not felt before. Something much harder to hold at bay. He shoved that thought aside and spoke against the infringing weariness.

“I’m not ready to die,” he whispered quietly.

He looked around at the houses, but he could barely think anymore. Every other house was three stories with a stone front and dark roof, and if he picked the wrong one, he would likely be taken to the hospital. That might save his life initially, but it would make him nothing more than a sitting duck once Lukas found out what happened. He suddenly remembered David mentioning a red door and prayed to God to help him find the house soon.

Adam limped on faster, scanning both the north and south sides of the street. He was trying in vain to remember the address when his foot found the corner of a low step and he fell face first toward the hard sidewalk. He tried to hold his arms out, but they didn’t quite obey his wishes and did little to cushion his fall. His forehead rebounded hard off a step. He groaned and put his hand to his head where he felt hot blood mixing with the cold rain. He tried to open his eyes but they wouldn’t budge. Every muscle burned and threatened to cease working completely. Darkness began to set in and Adam suddenly stopped struggling.

They had won after all
, he thought sadly.

He slumped down in defeat, unable to move, and welcomed the endless slumber with a heartfelt sorrow.

Climb. . . .

It was a whisper. Something spoke to him from the back of his mind, urging him to keep going. He felt around with his hand.
A ledge. No, a step,
he thought.
A step leading to a house.
He tried to push himself up but only managed to move himself a few inches before collapsing again.

Climb. . . .

Adam thought back to the promise he made to Sarah earlier that night and began to pray. He hadn’t asked God for much of anything since Joe’s death—really since he had abandoned God in his twenties—but he prayed for God to give him strength right then in his greatest hour of need. He pulled himself up two more steps before his arms gave out, lowering him back onto stone.

Climb!

That last word was no whisper, but a deafening boom that resonated through his mind, dwarfing the thunder above. The last of his adrenaline coursed through him and he fought through the pain and exhaustion to climb the steps, one by one, as he continued to pray for God to help him with the ascent. He prayed that he would make it up the next step. He prayed that God would watch over his wife and kids if he didn’t make it home. He prayed for America and he prayed for her future. Finally, he reached the top of the stairs and banged three times on what he prayed was the red door.

And he prayed once more as blackness overtook him.             

C
hapter
T
en

Let Slip the Dogs of War

Lukas confined himself to the long hallway next to the media room as White House Press Secretary Stan Camden rambled on with his usual misguided facts. The man had intended to introduce the president and Attorney General Mary Green shortly after the briefing had begun, but Lukas had asked him to stall so that he could better formulate what he was going to say to the American people. The press secretary had agreed to the president’s wishes and he was now addressing the full room of reporters while simultaneously dodging the unyielding questions they were all there to ask. However, Lukas didn’t really need more time to prepare his speech like he had told Mr. Camden. He had already thought through the big, intricate lie and believed it would suffice for the time being. In reality, Lukas simply needed a moment’s break from the debacle he had found himself in over the past few weeks.

The failed hit had not only left him scrambling to cover up the death of his most trusted agent and loyal friend, John Fresnel, but also with the responsibility to ease the madness that had sprung up all around Chicago in the weeks that followed. Lukas had initially dispatched over two hundred FBI agents to comb the city for the congressman with orders to be silent as to why they were there. The only thing they were told was that Adam Reinhart posed an immediate threat to national security, and thus they were approved the use of deadly force should he resist arrest once he was found. As the FBI began their massive manhunt, Lukas and his small army of agents loyal to him and the Patriarchs expanded their own search as well. He sent a team to seize and question Adam’s family, but even those efforts had proven fruitless. Lukas had been told that they had fled to some Colorado mountain haven called Frontage Lake, but no one had been able to locate such a place. With no concrete leads, his attention was forced back on the city where Adam had last been seen. The civil unrest in Chicago was not completely a result of Lukas’ actions, but too many people had begun to question why federal agents were knocking on their doors, why mandatory traffic checkpoints were wreaking havoc on their daily commutes, and why the tripling of FODs had been ordered throughout the entirety of the Windy City.

More important than the why, the people of Chicago began to question just
who
had given those orders.

When rumors started to ignite on social media and news outlets, so did the protests against the invasive and unwarranted searches. Despite local law enforcement’s eagerness to aid the government, the president had been clear with the chief of police that they were not to assist or interfere with the FBI. After a week of growing frustrations—and much to Lukas’ dismay—the restless Chicago police department had decided to deal with the growing number of angry citizens without the president’s consent. Riot police had started arresting dozens of anxious protestors before any actual riots had even started, and the people were on the verge of becoming violent. Though the president wanted to step in and keep the peace, he
needed
to find the missing congressman.

Local state authorities were perplexed by the amount of deception that was swirling around the entire fiasco. Other states watched the televised protests and quickly became worried of the demonstrations spilling into their own streets. When the White House abruptly ceased their daily press conferences just over a week into the ordeal, local politicians looking to make a name for themselves had decided to act. Governors and mayors around the Great Lakes region began to hold their own media briefings where they demanded answers from the president. Lukas had withheld any knowledge pertaining to what they were looking for in hopes that he could quickly locate Adam Reinhart without first tipping him off. Lukas had ignored the public and the other Patriarchs as he guided his federal agents in a maddening game of cautious cat versus a city of angry mice. However, once the local news aired officers beating a graying veteran who refused to surrender an older battle rifle at a checkpoint, all hell broke loose.

The public condemned the unjustified use of force and a small group of armed protestors gathered to take a symbolic stand against the excessive meddling in their lives. Riot police had converged and faced the assembly in their own stand of defiance. Two hours had passed without incident, and the demonstrators were on the verge of disbanding when a protestor dropped his weapon, discharging a round. The edgy police had unleashed a brief but deadly volley of bullets, scattering the crowd and killing seven demonstrators, two bystanders, and a toddler riding in her stroller seven blocks away. As images of the dead flooded the web, the demonstrators retaliated. Two hundred irate citizens armed themselves and gathered in downtown Chicago, seeking out justice by targeting every drone and anyone in uniform they saw. The federal government had dispatched a fleet of FODs at that point to quell the rioters, but before they arrived the city police department sent their own officers to confront the violent mob and they had no intentions of being peaceful about it. Chicago was on the verge of witnessing an all-out battle between her citizens and her sworn officers, so Lukas did the only thing he could think to do.

He shut the guns down.

Lukas had his men in the FBI disable the nVision networks and all other visual communications to conceal what he had done, but that had not stopped those who had been at the front lines from unleashing a windstorm of rumors that spread like wildfire. Lukas knew that not only had Adam Reinhart succeeded in escaping the city by that time, but also that the Chambers System would lose all credibility if the world discovered it could actually be disabled. So he used those two facts—and his remarkable ability to sadistically twist the truth—to his advantage. Standing there in the hallway, just a few steps away from a relentless squall of questions, Lukas silently hoped that the new branches in his rapidly growing tree of lies would hold fast.

From the other room, the press secretary had finally finished up his remarks and introduced the president and attorney general. Lukas took a deep breath, turned, and walked through the open door.

Hundreds of camera flashes quickly illuminated the tiny room, triggering a painful assault on Lukas’ senses and summoning the nightmarish memories of Iraq, a cot, and the most terrifying moment of his life. However, despite the sudden recollection of a night he had tried and failed to forget, Lukas had fortified himself behind an aura of poise before walking under the doorway, and he managed to remain outwardly calm. He walked up to the microphone, nodded to the press secretary, and began to enlarge that simple lie he had started eight months prior.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming today. I am sure you are all eager for me discuss the Chicago riots and the false rumors concerning the integrity of the Chambers System firearms. Please rest assured that I will do so before we are finished here today. However, I feel it is my responsibility to first share with you all the true cause of these tragic days we have witnessed. As much as it pains me to say the words, I must begin by announcing the murder of Secret Service Director John Fresnel.”

Reporters mumbled under their breath as more flashes went off, capturing the president and all his glory as he did what he did best. Lukas was upset about the loss of John, but for the most part his anger was directed at the man’s disastrous failure to do the simple task that had been asked of him. As much as Lukas wanted to mourn his friend, he could not overlook the fact that John’s problems had come to an end while his were just beginning.

“Seventeen days ago, we discovered intel that an individual was planning to abduct and harm Senate Majority Leader David Malcovich. Fearful that the senator was in imminent danger, I exercised my right under executive order to deploy two Secret Service field agents in an effort to protect the senator’s life. Because of the identity of the person this particular threat originated with, we did not know if this individual had moles assisting him from within our federal agencies so my orders were given covertly and only to a few. Director Fresnel and Senator Malcovich had always been good friends so John decided to travel with the two field agents and brief the senator himself. However, just before the three agents arrived at the senator’s home in downtown Chicago, they were ambushed. Director Fresnel, the two agents, and a local patrol officer who tried to assist them were gunned down without remorse. I understand the murders of three federal agents and a police officer must come as a shock to all, but it is truly with great sadness that I must finally announce the man who killed them is none other than Colorado Congressman Adam Reinhart.”

The collective gasp that rose from the room dwarfed the murmurs that had come earlier. Cameras flashed relentlessly as the reporters looked to one another in shock, forfeiting any self-restraint to ask if anyone else knew beforehand about the startling bombshell that had just been detonated by the president. Lukas waited about ten seconds for the room to quiet down and for the information to settle into the pit of their gossip-hungry stomachs before he continued with his fabrication.

“For the sake of the ongoing investigation, I must refrain from speaking about much of the details behind Congressman Reinhart’s involvement, but I will share with you what I can about the events leading up to the Chicago incident. As you are all aware, Adam Reinhart campaigned heavily against the Geneva Peace Treaty for reasons that even he could not clearly state. While his motivation for doing so had eluded us for months, we recently learned that Mr. Reinhart had been working with a cell of neoconservatives that saw the treaty’s passing as an assault on a sacred line that must not be crossed.

“A few weeks ago, Mr. Reinhart visited me at my Virginia home under the pretense of abandoning his self-righteous campaign against me and joining hands cordially to unite America under this new law. However, when the media departed, leaving us behind closed doors, the conversation became anything but cordial. He lambasted me with insults and vindictive promises that I would be sorry for what I had done. In fact, he became so irate that we were forced to remove him from my property. His violent outburst and threatening words caused us to investigate whether there was any credibility to him actually retaliating. That was when we first discovered his involvement with a fanatical group and their plans to abduct Senator Malcovich.

“We were unable to track the congressman after he left my home, but I immediately contacted Director Fresnel and dispatched agents to protect Senator Malcovich. We do not know if Adam Reinhart had been expecting the three agents and patrol officer when they arrived, but what we do know is that he caught them off guard. With the men eliminated, he approached David Malcovich as a friend before subduing him and taking him to an unknown location. We did not know whether Mr. Malcovich was in imminent danger or not, so we withheld the information of his abduction. To make matters worse, a fraction of those right-winged extremists initiated the violent riots in Chicago in an attempt to hamper our search for Mr. Reinhart and Senator Malcovich. Though we know little about the motivation behind the domestic terrorists that the congressman has joined, we do know they are fanatical bigots and they have decided to act out violently. We have confirmed that they are the ones responsible for crashing all visual communications in and out of downtown Chicago in what we believe was a desperate attempt to evade our federal agents and sneak Mr. Malcovich out of the city. We estimate that twenty of the terrorists remained behind to fight local law enforcement and insight the riots. Despite any hopes they may have had to inflict heavy casualties to the officers on the ground, we were able to successfully subdue most, but not all, of the insurgents.”

Those in the room shifted in their chairs, seemingly uncomfortable with what Lukas joyfully recognized as distress. He had now planted those precious seeds of fear that would make the nation think terrorism had returned and was living among them. It was a lie—an expansion on his suggestion that they were not yet safe—and once Adam was located, there would be none left to uncover the truth.

“Some of you may have heard the claims that a portion of weapons that the protestors were using, specifically those equipped with the Chambers System, were remotely disabled. I want to make it very clear to everyone in this room and every American watching today that any such allegations originated with the group of fanatics we have yet to apprehend. Such accusations are completely untrue and are nothing more than an attempt to instill doubt and fear into those who have participated with the program. The fact is that the Chambers System is what instills fear into the hearts of our enemies, and for that I implore you, the people, to fight back by continuing to partake in the exchange. In the past we have been led to believe the lie that only the government can protect you from those who wish us harm, be they foreign or domestic. But we are at a pivotal crossroad in our society and this has become a war we must all wage. I stand here before you today to declare that with your help we can rid this nation of these hateful men. Before I finish, I would like to briefly hand the floor over to the Attorney General Green.”

Mary Green nodded to Lukas and approached the podium. She had been one of many White House officials who had been eager to help the president when Chicago turned south. She wasn’t a Patriarch, but Lukas didn’t need her or the others to swear the Oath and know the full truth. Like so many other politicians, she had been more than willing to help hunt down Adam Reinhart, even with the little information the president had revealed. She knew it would only advance her career—a conclusion she undoubtedly reached on her own—and thus she charged forward willingly. Though Lukas was happy to have her assistance and the support of the other zealous officials, he also despised them. In a way, their selfish and blind ambition represented exactly what he hated about American politics. Nevertheless, he would use her and the others like her for now. When the Purge began, however, they too would be forced to convert or perish in the fires of change.