Epstein’s mouth fell open like he’d been slapped. He stared for a moment, then turned away, pawing at his eyes with the back of his hand. Behind him the data whirled and spun, sharp holograms floating in nothing. Jakob looked at him disdainfully, then went to his brother, put a hand on his shoulder.
His back still to Cooper, Erik said, “The militia is not a factor. No sophisticated weaponry, no air support. Not a factor.”
“You’re underestimating emotion again. Especially hatred.”
“And you,” Jakob snapped, “are underestimating us. Again. The Holdfast is a long way from defenseless.”
“Even so—”
“Others tried to hurt us. They died. If these people try, they will too.” Erik turned to face him. “They will burn in the desert.”
Burn in the desert? That phrasing can’t be accidental. Cooper said, “It’s true, then. The rumor about your little defensive perimeter. The Great Wall of Tesla.”
“If by ‘little defensive perimeter,’” Jakob replied, “you mean a redundant network of ten thousand microwave emplacements generating targeted radiation that can reduce flesh to ash and bones to powder, then, yeah. It’s true.”
“I don’t want that,” Erik said. “I like people.”
Cooper wanted to hurt him again. Wanted to lash out and make the man feel what he had done, make him suffer for it. He checked himself. Despite Erik’s actions, the sincerity in his voice was hard to question. He’s never made an aggressive move, only defensive. Brutal ones, certainly, but they were to protect his people.
Besides. Like it or not, you’re going to need his help.
“John Smith,” Millie said. She was staring at him again, her eyes aglow with reflected data.
Cooper sighed. “Yeah. As bad as things are right now, he’s about to make them worse.” He told them about tracking Abe Couzen, about the fight on the street and the chase through the train station, the way Abe’s gifts had manifested, and he walked them through his kidnapping. “Now, it’s possible that Smith just wants to keep the serum from us.”
“No,” Erik said. “That would be the maneuver of a journeyman. Smith is a grandmaster. Every move functioning to highest efficiency on multiple levels.”
“I agree.”
“Which is why I asked you to kill him three months ago.”
My God. Three months. Is that all it’s been? Cooper flashed back to that conversation, when he’d first met the real Erik Epstein. The man telling him stories of ancient history, the early terrorists in first-century Judea who killed Romans and collaborators. How that had provoked a reaction that punished not just the killers but all the Jews. Comparing them to John Smith. Saying that if he were allowed to live, the US military would attack the NCH within three years.
Only, because you spared Smith—hell, you exonerated him—it happened in three months, instead.
You did what you thought was right, what your father taught you. And the world is suffering for it.
In a very real way, this is your fault.
“Yes,” Millie said.
He fought the urge to glare, to snap at them, to say that he’d done the best he could. Forced it down, and his temper with it, until he could speak in steady, level tones.
“We’ve been over my mistakes. And yours. For now, we have to put that aside and focus on ending this. Because John Smith certainly is.”
For a moment, the brothers just stared at each other. Finally, Erik turned to him. “What do you propose?”
“First we’ve got to find Smith. I don’t suppose you know where he is?”
“No.”
“You did before.”
“That was before.”
Right. Well, so much for the easy way.
“Then I need to talk to someone who does.” Cooper took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I need to sit down with the man who killed me.”
“I just wanted to see if it would work.”
CHAPTER 11
As the chain drew taut, Luke Hammond felt something bloom in his chest. A raw feeling he’d known a few times before.
At nineteen, huddled in the bush in Laos, watching a village burn, black smoke blotting out a sweating sky.
On a ruined rooftop in Beirut as an ancient mosque collapsed in a cloud of dust.
Staring at the computer monitor tracking operators terminating a training camp in El Salvador.
It wasn’t a feeling he’d sought out. Not one he was proud of, per se. Not something he’d tried to pass to his sons, but though they’d never discussed it, he’d suspected each had known it as well.
A furious, terrible joy in destruction. The triumphant howl of victory—no, not quite—of . . . power. Power that you possessed and your enemy did not.
He downshifted the truck, looked to his left and right, to the dozens of others, pickups and jeeps and semis, all tethered by cold steel chains to the fence behind which hid the people who had murdered his children.
Then he hit the horn, held it for a long blast. A second time.
On the third, he floored the gas, heard the roar from all the other engines as their drivers did the same.
A strained scream filled the air as steel stretched to the breaking point, and he let up, put the truck in reverse, bounced back ten feet, then threw it forward again, the others doing the same, and the collective force rippled back through the chains to the fence, the metal bending, earth popping, razor wire twining and singing, and the post ripped right out of the ground, along with nineteen of its brothers. In his rearview mirror, he saw a hundred-yard span of the New Canaan Holdfast’s border ripple and collapse.
Then, from the crowd, the cheer.
“This. Ends. Now!”
Thousands of voices yelling as one.
“This. Ends! Now!”
Pounding through his chest, pumping through his veins, howling through his lungs.
“This! Ends! Now!”
The past days had been a blur of activity. There seemed always to be fifty things that needed doing, a hundred urgent tasks. They’d established a command hierarchy, not a formal rank structure so much as a loose delegation of effort. Miller was at the top and Luke his number two, but beneath them were ten other former soldiers who formed the primary team. After that, leaders were chosen by the groups they represented. Miller had been adamant about that, insisting the leadership be shallow and wide. They were analysts and ad men, the presidents of motorcycle clubs and backwater militia commanders, neighborhood watch organizers alongside scoutmasters. Those who had come as a group tended to stay with it; others paired off like pickup teams for a basketball game, resulting in ragtag squads ranging from ten to two hundred.
Thus far, the system worked. For all the differences, everyone was united by anger and pain and loss. There had been squabbles, but fewer than Luke would have guessed.
“As long as we keep moving,” Miller had said, “we’ll hold together.”
“At least until the dying starts. This isn’t an army.”
The general had smiled grimly. “The dying is what will turn us into one.”
Time would tell, Luke supposed, but over the years he’d known Miller, he’d learned not to bet against him. Besides, there had been so much to do.