Written in Fire

CHAPTER 8

Owen Leahy had come up through intelligence, but he’d never been a field agent, and the cloak-and-dagger stuff was starting to wear.

He’d left Camp David at oh-dark-hundred, the lone passenger on a transport flight packed with crates of medical supplies. After landing in Denver, he’d climbed in the back of a civilian Honda. While Secret Service agents drove, Leahy spent the next hours reading under a blanket like a kid after bedtime. In Cheyenne the agents stopped in the middle of a car wash, then directed him past the dripping hoses and into a precleared waiting room. He sipped burned coffee as an efficient young woman spent half an hour applying makeup: some sort of crackly rubber cement stuff that made him look fifteen years older, shading to deepen his eyes, powder to darken his skin, and a trim fake mustache. She finished it with a ball cap, and stepped back to gauge her handiwork.

“How do I look?” Talking hurt, but he supposed he should be grateful; he’d bitten off the front half inch of his tongue in the attack on President Ramirez. It was a testament to the wizardry of the presidential medical team that he could talk at all.

The woman said, “Forgettable. Your double is coming in now, sir.”

They were hardly twins, but the man had the same build, wore the same clothes. Leahy took his keys and strolled out to the waiting pickup truck. The woman in the passenger seat appeared to be in her sixties, but her movements belied that; she had the grace of a professional athlete and a submachine gun tucked at her feet. She also had no personality at all, and he was glad the drive to Rawlins, Wyoming, was only an hour.

As wearying as the precautions might be, they were critical. God only knew what would happen if Erik Epstein discovered that the United States secretary of defense was meeting with the civilian militia camped at his door.

It was nearing dusk when they arrived. He knew that Miller had begun to organize the militia, uniting and inspiring them, but it was one thing to scan satellite images and another to drive through the encampment. It was a full-fledged tent city, thousands upon thousands of residents. Hand-painted plywood signs indicated the housing, mess, and training areas. A bed sheet stretched between two pickups read NEW ARRIVALS, with an arrow beneath it pointing to the east, where a large open-air tent had been set up. A teeming mass of people camping, talking, and training, with more arriving every hour of every day. Almost all men, of course, but they spanned the gamut from leather-clad hard cases to suburbanites in ski jackets. Everyone had a gun.

Epstein sowed the wind, and now he’ll reap the whirlwind.

And on the heels of that thought, another: The same could be said of you.

When he’d given the order to attack Epstein’s compound, his intentions had been simple—to force the president to act to respond to the growing threat of the gifted. He’d wanted a nice, small war, one that was easily contained, and out of which could rise a more stable world. A world in which the gifted were valued but also kept very much in check. It wasn’t that he hated them. He just loved his own grandchildren more.

Of course, things hadn’t worked out as planned. The goal was to manage the gifted, not annihilate them. But after the massacre in the desert and the destruction of the White House, well. His nice little war now threatened to engulf the whole country. The bulk of the public wanted the army to fix bayonets and start marching.

Which would be a disaster. There were a lot of complicated reasons and one simple one: abnorms were responsible for most of the breakthroughs of the last ten years. If the bulk of American brilliants were wiped out, the nation would be shooting itself in the head.

There’s still time. You’ve got a chance to turn this around.

And this ragtag army is going to help you.

Idly, Leahy wondered what they were doing about sanitation.

After all, fifteen thousand men generated a lot of shit.

“Mr. Secretary. This is a surprise.” The general wore dusty fatigues. There was dirt under his nails and a pair of reading glasses tucked in his shirt pocket. Behind him walked another soldier, maybe fifty, lean with a killer’s eyes.

“We don’t need to stand on ceremony, Sam. Owen is fine.” Leahy held out a hand.

Miller took it, his grip as firm as ever. “This is Luke Hammond. My number two.”

Hammond nodded, said nothing. He moved through the tent without making a sound and took up a position against the far wall. The tent was active camouflage, and the pattern of the nanite-embedded fabric twisted behind him.

“Saw the assassination attempt on tri-d,” Miller said. “A coordinated attack?”

Leahy nodded. “Three men, all brilliants. Two assault rifles and an RPG. Secret Service took them down.”

“You okay?”

“Bit half my tongue off. They replaced it with a tissue graft. Newtech, some sort of vat-grown muscle generated off stem cells. Hurts like hell. Doc said I was lucky not to have a speech impediment.” Leahy paused. “That would have been a career-ending wound. No one has any use for a secretary of defense with a lisp.”

Miller smiled slightly but didn’t laugh. “And the president?”

“Cuts, bruises, and a new respect for advice on issues of security. She’s moved her office to Camp David.”

“Good.” Samuel Miller still carried himself with the air of a two-star general. A man used to being in charge of any room. “So. I presume this conversation never took place.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And I appreciate your courtesy in coming here personally. But you should know that we’re committed.” Before Leahy could respond, Miller held up a hand. “This is a civilian organization on privately held land. More to the point, there are almost fifteen thousand of us, with more arriving every day. Regular men and women who are willing to fight for their country—even if that means defying their president. We’re not going to quietly stand down. If you want to get rid of us, you’ll need to send soldiers.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea, Sam. I’m not here to ask you to disband your army.” The canvas of the tent billowed and snapped in the teeth of the west wind. “I’m here to ask you to use it.”

“We could talk democratic morality and use-of-force doctrine all day,” Leahy said. “The political climate, media impact, the costs and benefits of undeclared wars. But the bottom line is that sometimes to protect America, things have to be done that the government can’t be seen to be involved with. This is one of those times. No matter anyone’s feelings on the gifted or Erik Epstein, the New Canaan Holdfast represents a direct threat to the security of the country.”

“I see.” Miller nodded slowly. “You need a cat’s paw.”

“Just like always,” Leahy said, “America needs soldiers who will do what is necessary to defend her.”

“While providing plausible deniability,” Luke Hammond said.

Leahy had almost forgotten the man was there, he’d been so still. “This isn’t a political maneuver. It’s a practical one. If the United States military attacks directly, Erik Epstein will use every means at his disposal to strike back. We’re taking measures to limit the damage, but over the last fifty years, the nation has become so reliant on technology that protecting ourselves against the NCH is impossible. There are hardwired computers in everything down to our sewers. Any victory would be Pyrrhic. Unless we’re willing to go back to a horse-driven agrarian society, abnorms can simply do too much damage. But a civilian militia acting without official sanction might be able to succeed without raising the stakes to that level.”

Miller said, “What kind of support are you offering?”

“None.”

“None?”

“No equipment, no troops, no advisors, no intel, no air support. There can be no trail between us. In fact, I suspect that the president will condemn any attack on New Canaan and order you to lay down arms. And when you refuse, she will order the army to stop you.”

Hammond and Miller exchanged glances. The general said, “In that case—”

“But they won’t.” Leahy paused, let that sink in. The sound of gunfire drifted in from the distance, the steady organized cracks of a firing range. “The military will not intrude. That’s what I’m offering you.”

Miller stroked his chin. Hammond just stared with those dead eyes. Finally, the general said, “Owen, what you’re proposing sounds like a coup d’état.”

“No. The military won’t be seizing power, and neither will I. That’s the heart of this. We won’t stop you because we won’t be able to.”

“The retrograde,” Miller said.

Leahy nodded. “President Ramirez has ordered that domestic armed forces be reset to a non-technological level, essentially back to boots and bayonets. I’m managing that. And I can guarantee you that we will be able to demonstrate that despite our desire to do what our president wants, we simply won’t be able to. Not without giving Epstein the same control he exploited two weeks ago.”

“Which obviously can’t be risked.” Miller nodded. “But that situation won’t hold.”

“No. This is all based on you moving fast, Sam. If things evolve quickly enough, the military can credibly claim there’s nothing we can do. That despite the president’s righteous indignation, Epstein’s previous attack proves that we don’t dare get involved.”

“What’s to keep him from launching last-ditch strikes anyway?” Luke Hammond leaned forward. “If he sees that the Holdfast is going to be destroyed, why not take the rest of the nation down with it?”

“Two reasons. First, it would take a first-order sociopath to attack innocent civilians across the country if they’re not attacking him—if they are, in fact, trying to support him. Epstein is many things, but he’s not a monster. Second, the NCH as a whole isn’t going to be destroyed. Your army won’t be able to get past the Vogler Ring, not without military support, and Epstein will know that.”

“Then what’s the point? You’re asking us to fight a war you know we can’t win.”

“Genocide isn’t winning,” Leahy said. “My God, man, do you think I want you to destroy the entire New Canaan Holdfast? The goal is to bring Epstein to heel.”

“That’s your goal,” Hammond said. “Not ours. What’s in this for us?”

“Payback. Your army wreaks the vengeance we all desperately want. You beat the shit out of the Holdfast, show the brilliants that actions have consequences. And in the process, you protect America. Isn’t that what you’ve spent a lifetime doing?”

Hammond started to respond, but Miller held up a hand to stop him. “And the end game?”

A nice, small war. And a future for my grandchildren.

“Peace,” Leahy said. “What else?”