Battle Lines (The Survivalist Book 5) (37 page)

Having all but given up on intercepting the enemy’s transmission, Mason was reaching up to remove his headphones when he heard a single beep followed by a moment of silence. He quickly snatched up the pencil and prepared to write.

The same monotonic female voice began to read letters. However, this time, after each set of letters there was a short pause, followed by a second synthesized voice.

“Nps mgkxiwg.”

“Stwlttkn?”

“Ejjevuynyc bfjkcj nn Exzy Ptrrengs.”

“Rialpth?”

“Noxllclj ctxhsoa.”

“Anp ikejdqtajfj?”

“Npcaraae. Etpy zzr xa.”

Mason carefully recorded the letters.
At the end of the back-and-forth dialogue, a second beep sounded. After a brief pause, the random string of letters began again. The conversation was over. He stared down at the message, wondering what it meant. Was it an operative calling in with new information? Or sensitive material being shared between conspirators? Might it be orders for some new nefarious operation? The answer would only be found through careful deciphering.

He took a moment to write the alphabet down the left side of the page, numbering each letter from one through twenty-six. Lenny had said that Hood’s passphrase was “always faithful.” With Lenny now dead, he thought it quite possible that the general might continue using the same code.

Starting from the first letter of the first word, he began to decode the message. The first letter of the passphrase, ‘A,’ corresponded to no shift. That meant that the first letter of the message remained an ‘N.’ The next letter of the passphrase, ‘L,’ corresponded to a shift of eleven letters. That meant that the second letter of the message had already been shifted forward eleven letters. He put his pencil on ‘P’ and counted back eleven letters. ‘P’ became ‘E.’ The third letter of the passphrase, ‘W,’ corresponded to a shift of twenty-two letters. That meant that the third letter in the message, ‘S,’ was actually a ‘W.’

He smiled. The first word was NEW. Not JXT or PQV, but something that actually looked like a real word. The passphrase had not changed.

Mason continued the painstaking process of decoding the message for the better part of an hour. When he was finally finished, he stared down at the message.

New mission.

Location?

Greenbrier bunker in West Virginia.

Mission?

Complete cleanup.

Act immediately?

Negative. Wait for me.

The implications were immediately clear. The message was from General Hood to his subordinates, presumably the Black Dogs. He was not only giving them their next mission; he was directing them to wait for his arrival.

General Hood was coming out into the open.

Tanner and Mason sat on the front porch, nursing half-filled mugs of coffee. Tanner’s old double-barreled shotgun lay across his lap, and Bowie rested at Mason’s feet, snapping at insects as they darted by. The night was alive around them, crickets chirping, frogs croaking, and bats fluttering through the sky. For the past half hour, they had shared their respective stories, and when they had finished, neither man could say who had traveled the harder path.

Tanner stopped rocking and took a sip of what remained of his coffee. It was lukewarm and weaker than a shot of lactose-free milk.

“Things aren’t over yet.”

“No.”

“Do you think Leila’s right about President Glass? That she’s really alive and in hiding?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. Either way, General Hood is coming out to investigate.”

“And you’re going to Greenbrier to stop him.” It was a statement, not a question.

Mason sipped his coffee and stared off into the night.

“Yes.”

“Even if you kill that bastard, it won’t stop Pike. He’s a madman—the bombing of Lexington proved as much. He’ll grab more and more power until he eventually appoints himself benevolent monarch of all of us pissants.”

“That may be true, but I don’t see what we can do about it. Mount Weather is surely a veritable fortress with thousands of soldiers protecting it. There’s no way to get inside.”

Tanner took another sip of the coffee and then slung the liquid into the night.

“I’ll go and take care of Pike.”

Mason stopped rocking and turned to him.

“That would be suicide.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I’m going to end this.”

If another man had said it, Mason might have dismissed it as bravado or mindless stupidity. Not so with Tanner. If he said he was going to kill someone, he fully intended to see it through, and God help the man who was on the receiving end of that decision.

“How?”

“When Sam and I were in the tunnels under D.C., the soldiers said they led all the way out to Mount Weather.”

“That’s got to be forty miles.”

“It’s what they said. And I was on the wrong end of their gun at the time, so they had no reason to lie.”

“Even if you could come up through a backdoor, it would be impossible to get to Pike. He’s surely guarded around the clock. It’s not something one man could do. Hell, even a special ops team probably couldn’t pull it off.”

Tanner shrugged.

“But you’re going to try anyway.”

“Someone’s got to put a stop to this. To
him
.”

Mason knew better than to try to talk him out of it. Tanner was not a man whose mind was easily changed. Some might call him stubborn; others, determined. The end result was the same. Besides, thought Mason, if anyone could kill the President of the United States, it was Tanner Raines.

“So, that’s it then.”

Tanner nodded. “I guess it is.”

“I’ll leave first thing in the morning for Greenbrier, and you’ll head off to Mount Weather.”

Tanner reached across and squeezed Mason’s shoulder.

“It’s a fitting end to our story. The marshal goes off to do one last good deed, and the convict to do one last dirty one.”