“What’s the A stand for?” she wondered, trying to distract herself from the sight.
“Augustus.”
Diane almost rolled her eyes, but fought the urge. This guy really was full of himself. He then asked for her name and she told him.
“It suits you,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if he was trying to be flattering, but this whole thing was giving her the creeps. “I’m not sure what this meeting is supposed to be about,” she started. “But none of those people deserve to be locked up. Your men are committing crimes by going around confiscating guns and burning down folks’ homes.”
“I’m acting on behalf of the president,” the Chairman cut in. “And I’m not the only one. Delegates chosen by him personally have been sent from the capital to every city with a population greater than five thousand. Our objective was to help the local leadership accept and implement the president’s directives. Unfortunately, not everyone saw fit to comply, including Oneida’s former mayor.”
“So you had him locked up and then killed.”
“We were forced to make an example of him,” the Chairman said. “But this wasn’t why I wanted to see you.”
Diane had seen other women pulled from the jail cells since she’d arrived and all of them had returned with torn clothes and tears. They wouldn’t say much after that, but it was clear they’d either been roughly questioned or abused in other ways.
“Do you have someone?” he asked.
“Have someone?”
“Are you married?”
“Yes,” she replied, holding her wedding band in the air. John had the duplicate and they’d vowed to never remove them.
There was something really strange about this guy and it wasn’t just the way he looked. It was the way he spoke. Almost like he didn’t belong.
“Of course you’re married,” the Chairman told her as he rose out of his seat and circled around the desk toward her. He was tall, but John had taught her the bigger they were, the harder they fell.
“I hope for your sake you don’t have any funny ideas about you and me.”
He grinned again and the tar between his teeth from years of smoking made her stomach lurch. “A beautiful woman like you should be careful,” he said, casually. “This is a violent world we live in, especially for those with no one to protect them.”
“I can handle myself just fine.”
“I’m sure you can.”
He was reaching for her when she grabbed his hand in a pronating wrist lock John had taught her, bending it back until the bone clicked. A squeal of pain escaped his lips as the Chairman’s eyes grew wide with shock and his head connected with the table. He made a bizarre noise that sounded like biliat, a word that didn’t make a lick of sense.
She kicked the seat away and angled her grip, bringing the Chairman to his knees. Looking around, she didn’t see anything nearby she could use as a weapon.
The Chairman howled in pain again and a second later the door flew open. Jeffrey, the guard, saw what was going on and before she could maneuver swung his baton against the back of her skull. Diane saw stars as she crumpled to the floor.
He hadn’t knocked her out, just stunned her enough to let go. Jeffrey’s hands came down and pulled her up and into the seat. He was getting ready to hit her again when the Chairman stopped him.
“You have guts, Diane. I like that in a woman. I like it a lot. But if you try another stunt like that I’ll take you out back and shoot you myself.” He rubbed his wrist, rotating it in slow circles. “Put her back,” he told Jeffrey, “and bring me the woman sharing her cell.”
Chapter 19
Back in the Patriot camp, a team of thirty was being assembled for the ambush on the approaching supply trucks. Very few of the fighters had actual military combat experience, so Marshall had asked John if he would consider joining them. He agreed on the condition they were going to avoid any unnecessary killing. While John felt zero compunction disobeying laws instituted by a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats, he also worried about the countless innocent souls caught up in the gears of the terrible machine they had set in motion.
The plan, Marshall assured him, was to force the trucks to stop, remove the drivers and take them back to camp as prisoners along with whatever supplies they were transporting.
They would be leaving soon and John wanted to make sure he took care of something before they left.
He arrived at the command tent to find Rodriguez sitting before the radio.
“Listen, I need you to do something for me,” John said.
Rodriguez swiveled around in his chair, looking decidedly uncertain. “Conversations that start off that way usually spell one thing: trouble.”
“That contact you have inside Oneida. I need you to send him a message.”
“No can do, John, and it’s not because you’re new around here. You know we’re only allowed a limited number of transmissions each day. We start breaking that rule and—”
“I know, they’ll figure out where we are. I’m not asking to send something every day. I just need one message.”
Rodriguez didn’t look like he was going to budge.
“I know food’s been hard to come by lately,” John said, rubbing his hands together. “What would you say if I gave you a mouth-watering goose?”
“A what?” Rodriguez sat bolt upright.
“Caught him down by Stanley Lake yesterday. Been feeding him wild grasses. He’s in the back of my truck. You do this for me and I’ll let you have him.”
The radio operator’s gaze drifted over John’s shoulder for a moment. He seemed to be considering the offer, maybe even imagining how the bird would taste.
“Looks like you got yourself a deal. So tell me, what do you wanna send?”
John leaned in. “I need your man on the inside to find my wife and kids, make sure they’re all right. Tell them to stay strong, that I’m coming for them.”
“That’s very touching.”
“There’s nothing worse than losing the ones you love. I hope you never know the feeling.”
Rodriguez’s eyes fell.
John laid down a paper on the desk with the radio. It contained the names of his wife and kids, along with those of the Applebys.
“You’ve got a big family, John.”
John grinned. “I’m a lucky guy. Just make sure your man looks for them and gives them the message.”
“What do you mean you gave George away?” Brandon was following John toward the back of the Blazer.
“What’s more important, Brandon, a dumb bird or making sure our families are okay?”
Brandon became quiet for a second. But it wasn’t that he was weighing the question. John could tell like most teenagers his age, he wanted two contradictory things at the same time. Life was about making choices, often difficult ones that tended to leave long jagged scars. The deepest marks were the toughest to forget. Turning away those poor people at the barricade on Willow Creek Drive, that was a scar still fresh in John’s mind.
But sacrificing George for the greater good hardly qualified. Sooner or later he was going to end up on someone’s plate. This was the reason John had been so against naming him in the first place. That was also the reason he’d initiated the chat with Brandon. In some ways the kid had proven himself a man, particularly in prepping the cabins, during Cain’s assault and in coming to John’s aid near Oneida. When push came to shove, the kid was there, but it was times like these that John saw the boy in him coming through loud and clear.
John opened the hatch and pulled out his tactical vest. With the cabins and all of his preps and ammo gone, he only had what he’d brought with him to the lake. He hoped the ambush would help replenish his dwindling supply. For now, he still had four polymer magazines with thirty rounds of green-tipped 5.56 ammo stuffed in the front mag pouches. The ammo box itself was down to two hundred rounds.