The Crimson Fall (The Sons of Liberty Book 1) (33 page)

Tim McKinley opened his bag and pulled out the five brand new Chambers firearms that he had purchased illegally from a trusted friend in town. They would be useless to him without being registered first, but he didn’t plan on using them as they were. He leaned forward, took a deep breath, and began the long, tedious process of trying to figure out how he was going to beat his perfect and unbeatable creation.

Jackson, Mississippi

Day Eleven             

Rendell Boss, a grim-faced man wearing a red and white Ole Miss hat, had never thought of himself as a leader. For most of his life he had seen himself as a devoted warrior who would serve with loyalty and an unwavering malice, no matter what his orders were. Years ago, as a young teenager, Rendell had become a destitute orphan after the Russians had pushed into his native country of Georgia. His father had abandoned Rendell and his mother long before the brief conflict ever began. So when two Russian-backed Ossetia soldiers entered his home and approached his defenseless mother to do the crime that only cowardly and pathetic men do, there was no man able to stop them but a young and scared Rendell Boss.

Despite his initial few seconds of shouting and protest, he was quickly silenced when one struck him in the face with the butt of his gun—breaking his nose and ensuring it would never be straight again. The soldiers had laughed at the bleeding teenage boy and began to force themselves on his screaming mother. They were so preoccupied with their appalling act that they did not notice when the broken-nosed boy, grabbing a long kitchen knife that he had sheathed behind his belt, rose from the floor without a word and buried the blade in the back of the soldier who watched his comrade. Rendell yanked it out and began to stick the man as fast as he could with what he would later recognize as the birth of his unwavering malice. The second soldier, caught by surprise, began to draw his side arm in an effort to intervene, but Rendell’s mother attacked with a vengeance. She grabbed the man’s face and buried her thumbs into his eye sockets. The soldier had screamed as he pulled the gun free and began firing into the woman’s chest. Rendell cried out as he ran to his mother’s aid and turned his knife on the soldier, ridding the room of all noise other than Rendell’s own heavy breathing. When the dust from the war had settled and people began to move on with their lives, the teenage boy soon discovered that he would never be able to move on in the same way.

He began to work for the mob as a young man, doing the deeds others were too squeamish for, and he quickly became known as a ruthless killer. After a bold hit on a rival mob boss and three of his thugs, he and his actions became legendary in the darker circles of men. Soon after that was when he was first approached by the unnamed man with the promise of a richer, more meaningful life in exchange for his services. Rendell initially wanted to reject the man’s offer, but something inside told him to follow that road and see where it led him.

The unnamed man’s promises did not disappoint. Rendell would go on to become rich, feared, and more dangerous than he could have ever imagined. He never faltered, never failed, and never regretted leaving his country behind when his new orders came. His actions impressed his mysterious employers so much so that they chose him personally to become one of their sleeper agents imbedded in the United States.

That’s how Rendell Boss, at the age of twenty-eight, came to find himself in Jackson, Mississippi. He had never traveled to America before, but he quickly fell in love with the place. He became a fan of college football, made friends with salesmen, truckers, and engineers, and enjoyed the occasional lighthearted game of poker with them. Eventually, he even caught the eye of a woman in town. Months of waiting turned into years. Rendell went on to marry, have kids, and open a couple gas stations as a cover. However, every year, the money that was deposited into his bank account reminded him that he was there for a reason. His unwavering malice had almost disappeared completely by the time he watched Dan Martin lose his life on television.

The initial riots in New York and Washington told him that his new country—the country he now loved—could very well be on the brink of war. Days later, as he watched the riots unfold, he took the phone call he had waited to receive for almost seven years. It was the same nameless man, wondering if Rendell’s loyalty still remained. Rendell paused, searching deep within himself as though to determine the answer. To his everlasting sadness, he guaranteed the man he was still loyal.

The unnamed man told him a tiny fire had been lit within the United States of America and that he needed Rendell and the other sleeper agents to fan that fire and stoke the flames. He gave him his orders and assured him he would be the first of many to strike. So a couple days later, once Rendell had riled up a few men in a local crowd of angry protestors before approaching a parked semi-truck full of food, he opened the door to do what he did best. He looked inside only to see one of his confused poker friends staring back at him, wondering just what in the world Rendell was doing. Nevertheless, Rendell only hesitated briefly before he raised his shotgun and fired with the sad realization that his unwavering malice would never leave him.

When the deed was done and the crazed gang of men began to empty the truck, Rendell only stood to the side and dialed the number the nameless man had given him. It rang five times before being disconnected. Thirty seconds later, just as he was promised, Rendell’s phone rang.

“It is finished,” Rendell said quietly.

“Not yet, my old friend,” the man on the other side of the phone said. “The new Promised Land awaits us, and we have only just begun.”

Atlanta, Georgia

Day Eighteen

The clicking and clacking of rapid keystrokes only slightly disturbed the classical music that filled Trey Webster’s lair of digital madness. Mozart was finishing his Requiem in D Minor and would be randomly replaced by Bach, Beethoven, or—as the back of Trey’s busy mind hoped—something more modern such as Song for Sienna. He had always loved the classics; the rise and fall, and their elegant side-to-side movements that would weave through one another and into his soul as he weaved in and out of his extremely difficult and nearly impossible feats of code hacking.

Trey had earned his riches and infamous reputation by brokering the stolen secrets of the legally rich and famous. Because of him, affairs had been discovered and, for the right price, they had remained hidden from those they threatened to destroy. Corporate espionage, insider trading, financial scams; as long as he believed none would die because of him, he saw it all as fair game as he became secretly rich from the basement of his parents’ own home. However, as his searches expanded, so did the severity of what he discovered.

One day, about five years ago, he had discovered a trail that whispered of some monumental secret. He dug deeper, tunneling through every backdoor he could find before uncovering what had been the very first secret to truly scare him. As he began to unearth more, he eventually learned that another man—a politician by the name of Joe Reinhart—had been doing his own digging.

For eight months, Trey had watched Joe Reinhart from afar, monitoring his actions and his deleted web page history while the senator believed he was safe from suspicious eyes. He knew what the senator was looking for and when the same three word—‘murders’ and ‘Chambers System’—were searched for eighteen times within a period of three days during the presidential primaries, Trey knew the time had come to make the secret known to someone else.

He contacted Joe Reinhart—a simple overriding of the man’s computer screen—and began his own weaving of events. Though never truly revealing who he was, he guided the senator as they began to uncover more and more every two or three weeks. The two men worked together secretly for five months. When Joe lost the Republican primaries to Lukas Chambers, Trey had decided the time had come for him to reveal everything he knew.

Emails and correspondence—mostly hidden in what Lukas Chambers had thought to be a bottomless pit—contained dates, notes, and enough to suggest that Lukas Chambers had designed some new weapon system and killed those who knew what it was capable of. Though Trey and Joe had plenty to fuel their speculation, what they had needed was proof. So Trey and the senator devised a plan to get what they needed nine months after Lukas had become the president.

Trey hacked the FBI’s own spy satellites, directing the signal through the senator’s office and listened in with Joe Reinhart to a conversation that hinted at much more than a firearms conspiracy. However, the signal abruptly ended just as they were getting their glimpse at the full truth of what was really going on. Trey then watched helplessly through security cameras as the senator and hundreds of others lost their lives in the Dulles Airport Massacre.

He had wanted to help the senator somehow, but Trey had never been one to assume an avoidable risk. So he played it safe and worked anonymously with the few politicians he trusted by giving them bread crumbs to follow from behind the comfort of his basement walls.

However, all that changed a week after the president’s damning interview when Trey discovered the approaching freighters. He had done what he could to alert the authorities outside of Lukas Chambers’ inner circle, but he knew every email and plea for help was buried beneath a thousand others as the riots in New York and Washington began. After a week of contemplating what to do, Trey decided—just as the masters of music had many times before—to begin to draft his very own masterpiece. But instead of weaving in and out of musical notes, he would weave through an almost endless supply of encrypted lines of code and try to discover just how in the hell he could help the people of the United States fight back against a horde of tanks, planes, and vehicles.

Or, more specifically, the approaching army of drones.

Gulf of Mexico, Seventy Nautical Miles South of Mobile, Alabama

Day Twenty-Three

The ship lurched to the right as lighting cracked overhead, throwing Captain William Ward down hard onto the deck. A thick plume of smoke continued to rise from the stern of the ship behind him where the fight had begun. He climbed back to his unsteady feet, slipping underneath the torrential rain before resuming his slow flight from those who hunted him. The left side of his abdomen throbbed where the bullet had struck him earlier. He pressed his hand tight against the wound and bit back a curse, hoping that it had passed through cleanly as he continued to snake his way through the towering grid of shipping containers.

His ship—a Triple-E class freighter called the
Nautilus
—had been scheduled to arrive at the Port of Virginia two days from then carrying a cargo that allegedly consisted of electronics, Russian alcohols, and children’s toys. It did carry some of those things, but even William had known beforehand that there was much more than Vodka and cheaply printed trinkets aboard. Days before leaving the Russian Port of Vladivostok, a corporate liaison had approached him with a request for a cargo change before he sailed. William was told the contents of the new cargo was classified and would be supervised by eight guards. He was also informed that he would be rewarded with five million dollars—two up front and three upon arrival—for his assistance and willingness to turn a blind eye to what lay below decks. William had agreed. It had not been the first time he had willingly smuggled weapons into the United States; he had been raised an opportunist, and he figured someone else would have done it if he had not. However, when one of his men decided to venture to the cargo hold at the bow and take a peek, everything had changed.

Gunfire erupted from behind him, causing him to instinctively fall to the ground. He heard the ping of bullets ricocheting off the sides of the steel containers as he crawled over to the next passageway. The unguided ship pitched again, this time dipping far below what William knew was safe, and the towering crates above him began to shift. He rose to his feet, ignoring the pain as he ran for an entrance to the bow of the ship.

He threw the steel door open and dove down the stairwell as the massive crates behind him crashed down. The automatic alarm—which had failed to activate during the explosion before—began to holler as the ship dipped. His wound pounded at his side, causing him to cry out in agony. Rain water cascaded down the stairwell, rushing over William as he struggled to remain conscious. The lights overhead flickered before being replaced by the red emergency bulbs. William gritted his teeth as he stood and continued to hobble toward the belly of the ship. He slowly stumbled around the darkened corridors around him before reaching the ship’s immense storage.

That which he had been told to turn a blind eye to was strewn all around the floor. Soviet era tanks barely held to their foundations as their tie downs and chains flexed under the pressure of their weight. William staggered forward and began searching for something he could use to radio the Coast Guard. Everything that had been packed nice and neat beforehand lay about in complete disarray. He decided to try the radio in the tank and sluggishly mounted the mechanical beast. He began to open the hatch when the
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire filled the room.

He threw the hatch open and ducked into the dark tank. He shut the steel door, locked it behind him, and then began to search around for a flashlight. Unable to see and not finding any light, he began flipping as many switches as he could, causing the tank’s lights and computer to come alive. More pings from machine gun fire bounced off the tank outside. He heard muted shouts as the men quickly approached. Boots thudded across the tank before a vigorous pounding on the hatch began. The men above screamed at him to open the door, but he ignored them as best as he could as he continued to fumble around with the controls, trying desperately to find the radio. He saw a headpiece connected to the computer by a spiral cord, flipped a switch at its base up, and shouted.