What had started as an impromptu gathering had grown to a massive endeavor. People divided according to rough experience, accountants managing logistics, history professors teaching tactics, line cooks feeding thousands. But it was the private support that really made the difference.
“Check it out, boss—we’ve got corporate sponsorship,” Ronnie Delgado had joked when the trucks from Finest Supplies started arriving. Eighteen-wheelers packed with canned goods, bottled water, blankets, rifles, ammunition, all of it donated by Ryan Fine, the CEO the news kept referring to as an “eccentric billionaire.”
“That’s the great thing about being a billionaire,” Delgado said. “Poor people they just call crazy.”
Delgado was a ranch hand and former national guardsman, a twenty-eight-year-old kid who’d turned out to be a godsend. He worked tirelessly and maintained a steady stream of quips that lightened the mood, but more than anything it was his way with horses.
When General Miller had first announced that he’d convinced Ryan Fine to empty his stables for them—Delgado: “What is it about corporate dudes that as soon as they get rich they want to put on cowboy boots?”—Luke had been less than excited. A thousand horses following in their wake seemed a noisy, smelly irritation. While Luke had never been of the new breed of soldier, those more like hackers than warriors, this took low tech to the extreme.
“Horses don’t break down,” Miller had said. “Computer viruses don’t hurt them, and they don’t need gasoline.”
“And when we run out of food for them?”
“Then we’ve got fresh meat.”
Now, after a blur of constant effort and rapid decision-making, of bleary-eyed labor and bad coffee, it was time. The hundred-yard hole they’d ripped in the New Canaan fence was the first strike.
The trucks led the way. Each had a driver and another man riding shotgun; the rest of the space was packed with supplies, every spare inch filled. It was an inversion of traditional tactics, sending the supply train ahead of the army, but they didn’t expect the vehicles to get far.
Behind them, the rest of the New Sons of Liberty streamed in on foot. They slung packs and rifles, moved in loose groups. Twenty thousand people filing over the torn and broken fence, boots grinding it into the dirt. The day was just below freezing, but the sky was clear, and the men—women too, though not many—moved with a nervous energy, talking and shouting and singing as if they were heading into a football stadium, not marching off to war.
“Here we go,” Delgado said. “The charge of the world’s largest lynch mob.”
“Hey,” Luke said sharply. “Police that.”
“I’m just kidding, boss—”
“Not even as a joke. We may not be the Continental army, but we’re not the KKK, either. This isn’t about hatred.”
Delgado said, “My brother was the first to go to college. Princeton, full scholarship. He beat out five hundred candidates to get a job as a White House intern. Mostly he fetched coffee and answered phones, and that’s probably what he was doing when Erik Epstein blew him up. So don’t—”
“My sons,” Luke said, fighting to keep the quaver from his voice, “burned alive. One was a fighter pilot, the other a tank gunner. We’ve all lost somebody, Ronnie.” He took a breath. “Check the horses, will you?” He paused. “Hey. I’m sorry about your brother.”
Delgado nodded. “You too. Your boys.”
Luke moved through the crowd, shaking hands, answering questions. Everyone knew who he was, and more than one of them said, “This ends now.” He returned it, the meaning of the words already lost to him, transformed into mere sounds.
It took him an hour to catch up to Miller. The general was near the front of the ragged column, on foot. He smiled when he saw Luke. “‘And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered.’”
“‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,’” Luke replied. “‘For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.’ Henry the Fifth. You think the bleeding is gonna start this afternoon?”
Miller shrugged. “Soon enough.”
“We could have spared a jeep, you know. You didn’t need to walk.”
“MacArthur didn’t need to wade ashore in the Philippines, either. Army engineers had put out pontoons for him. But old Douglas knew what he was doing.” The general checked his watch, glanced at the horizon. There was nothing to see but dusty scrub leading to distant mountains beneath grim skies. Very grim; when the destruction started, it would come from above.
That will be the moment, Luke thought. We’ll either win in that moment, or we’ll break, and the New Sons of Liberty won’t be even a footnote in the histories. “Ask you something? Secretary Leahy. You trust him?”
“Not particularly,” Miller said. “Owen’s a politician. But he’ll do what he said, and hold off the military. It serves his ends. He figures if we drive deep enough into the Holdfast, Epstein will come to the government with his hat in hand. Trade his people’s freedom for their lives.”
“That was my read too. But if he’s just using us—”
“Why go along? First, it serves our ends. But more than that, by the time he realizes we’ve got other plans, it will be too late.”
Luke glanced over sharply. “You don’t mean to stop?”
“You were in Viet Nam. What did you learn about partial measures?”
“They don’t work.”
Miller nodded. “We go all the way. Burn the NCH to the ground.”
“But . . . the Vogler Ring. If even half of the rumors are true . . .”
“They’re true. I called an old friend in the DAR, got the agency report. Ten thousand microwave emplacements with overlapping fields of fire. It’ll feel like heat at first, then a bad sunburn, then your eyeballs pop and your blood boils.”
“The government let him build that?” Luke shook his head. “Politicians.”
“Indeed. No doubt Epstein made a lot of generous donations. Mostly, though, I suspect he got away with it because it’s purely defensive, and useless against American military forces.”
“Bombardment could clear a path in ten minutes.” Luke sucked air through his teeth. “But we don’t have artillery or air support. Can we go around?”
“They designed it to turn Tesla into a final refuge. The entire population of the Holdfast can fall back into the capitol. The network surrounds the city with a perfect, unbroken ring of death.”
“So then how are we going to get through?”
Miller smiled.
“I’m your neighbor, for Christ’s sake. Why are you doing this?”
CHAPTER 12
The lobby was broad and tall, with big metal ventilation tubes that flexed and hummed as air whistled through. Three feet above was the concrete ceiling, the wiring for the rooftop solar panels bursting through in colorful bundles that reminded him of the ribbon his mom used to wrap around Christmas presents, the edge of her scissors ripping them into tight curls. Between the ventilation system and the roof were open struts, and it was from there that Hawk kept watch, perched out of sight in the crook of a metal elbow. He’d always liked to climb, and he’d been delighted to discover that if he planted his feet on the wall, he could scurry up a pipe, then swing his legs over and do a sit-up into the struts. Hawk would spend hours here, mostly in the lobby, but sometimes creeping across to other rooms in the building, following people as they moved below.