From Within (24 page)

Lewis guided his truck through the last section of trees and turned onto the trail. The day before, Alejandro had mustered the energy for the twenty-mile round trip hike to search Beth’s property again. This time, he searched the inside of the house and only found evidence of activity from days before. Nothing gave him the indication that someone had been there too recently. He did the same at Lewis’s property. He had walked along the main road one last time as well to get a view of the other couple of properties that were along the road. He thought he couldn’t be too careful. This group was obviously willing to kill in their search to steal other people’s supplies. They had discussed it upon Alejandro’s return and concluded that they must have run out of places to ransack and moved on to another town. It was time to return home.

It took about an hour to navigate down the rough four-wheeling trail and arrive at Lewis’s. On the drive down, they had decided that Lewis’s house would be where they all lived for now. They still worried about the possibility of the group returning and it seemed most likely that they’d return to Beth’s. Plus, Lewis’s crops went untouched by the large group’s vehicles and tents.

After unpacking the bed of the truck and getting settled in Lewis’s house, Beth, Alejandro, Juana, and Lea decided they should make a trip back to Beth’s house and hopefully be able to salvage some of their things there.

Beth and Lea both seemed to be on edge ever since Will took off with Marcus. They understood, but at the same time, they both couldn’t believe he would leave them behind like that. For Beth, she sometimes still thought of Will as her little boy. She knew better, but couldn’t help it sometimes. Lea too easily descended into her anxiety attacks. Will had become a steadying anchor for her and now he was gone. She almost didn’t know what to do with herself if she had any free time.

Alejandro made sure everyone still had weapons on them. Lewis laughed when he found out his fuel went untouched. He refueled his truck and lent it for their short journey to Beth’s. If they were able to recover any of their things, the truck would make the trip back to Lewis’s much easier.

Beth drove and Alejandro sat in the passenger seat with a rifle sitting partway out of the window. Lea and Juana sat in the back. They arrived after a few minutes and all started to get out of the truck. Without any warning, a helicopter passed low over the trees and then directly over the house. The sound must have been muffled enough by the trees and its low-flying altitude for them to not hear it until it was right upon them. The helicopter climbed slightly as it made a wide arc around them. It descended in a clear area and touched down.

“I bet that’s Will!” Lea yelled over the loud whine of the turbine engines and still-rotating helicopter blades.

She took off full speed towards the helicopter. Alejandro hadn’t gotten all the way out of the truck yet and tried yelling to his daughter. He had to pull his rifle out of the window before opening the door. A couple of soldiers stepped out of the side door of the helicopter. They were in all black garb. They looked like they were a special forces unit or possibly S.W.A.T. They all held rifles at half ready. Alejandro could see the two men yell something to Lea as she approached. The noise was too great and Alejandro was too far away to be able to hear it. Alejandro started towards the helicopter. He thought for a moment that Lea might be correct and they were bringing Will back home.

All of a sudden, the two soldiers took Lea by her arms and took her into the helicopter. Alejandro started sprinting towards them. The two soldiers took aim at Alejandro from inside the helicopter and he immediately stopped, nearly tripping. He threw his hands up in the air in surrender and dropped down low to the ground. Wave after wave of turbulent air from the helicopter’s rotors blasted his face. The two men never fired. The helicopter engines wound up higher in pitch and it took off. Dust stung Alejandro’s eyes as he kept them stuck on the helicopter. The soldier at the door kept his gun trained on Alejandro as the helicopter passed above the trees and disappeared out of sight.

The whole situation took place in maybe a minute or so. Quiet returned to the area. Beth and Juana ran up to Alejandro. Juana was wailing for her taken daughter.

“What just happened?” Juana cried out. “What do we do?”

Alejandro was in shock and full of confusion. He still knelt on the ground staring at the point above the trees where his daughter just disappeared, tears beginning to stream down his cheeks.

Marcus was fuming. His world had just been rocked. Marek Dominski, a man he considered a friend, was behind the Central Management Authority. Marcus realized it meant that Dominski was behind the attempt on his life. He babbled on about the country and the entire world needing to return to a more structured method of governing. He said that he was sure the country became so divided by the freedoms people were given. Marcus eventually decided to keep his mouth shut. Perhaps not talking would save him. From Marcus's perspective, Dominski was an already powerful person that was hell-bent on gaining ultimate power. The model that the CMA was acting out proved his theory.

Dominski tried all he could to find out why Marcus and this random other young man were here in Cheyenne Mountain. Were they trying to stop the bombings? Were they trying to survive the bombings? Marcus and Will kept quiet. Dominski became visually upset at their silence. Ava screamed curses at them. Dominski told them they would regret their decision and then they were left alone again in the cold cell.

Hours upon hours had passed. They weren’t quite sure how long they were in the cell. It could have been a whole day for all they knew. They took turns getting whatever sleep they could on the uncomfortable bench. At times they were both awake, they had discussed in whispers the fact that it seemed the explosives went undiscovered. They had been captured with a detonator and a spool of wire sitting at their feet. Did the guards simply rush them off and not even check into what they had been doing? Had Ava completely missed it as well? She saw them both kneeling down working on something. She must have been more focused on the fact that Marcus was alive in order to blank that from her memory.

A door opened and the hallway in front of the cell brightened temporarily as light from another room was let in. The door shut behind two men that walked up to the cell door. They retrieved Will and left Marcus behind. Marcus slumped back onto the bench. He had an overwhelming sense of guilt come over him. This young man, Will, could still be safe in the woods if it hadn’t been for Marcus dragging him along. Maybe he should have died in the plane crash. He placed his face down into his hands and wept for the first time in a long time.

*****

Will had a growing feeling of fear and anxiety building up inside of him. He tried to hide the feelings and appear brave to the two men that held him by his arms and guided him through the maze of hallways and up a set of stairs to a second level. They brought him into what looked like an interrogation room. It was a dull tan colored room, floor included. A single metal table sat in the center of the room with a few chairs sitting around it. Another few chairs sat along the wall by the door. They forced Will to sit down at the table. The men tied his hands behind him and secured him to the chair. Afterward, they walked out of the room. To his right, a large mirror was built into the wall. Will was sure that it had to be a piece of one way privacy glass.

The man that Marcus had told him was Marek Dominski walked into the room. Will only slightly recognized him. Marcus had expected that Will should know much more about the billionaire. Dominski sat directly across from Will.

“Mr. Richards, is it?” Dominski asked.

Will remained silent. He still tried to hide his fear. He shifted slightly in his seat and looked off somewhere beyond Dominski.

“Will,” Dominski said, “I think you are going to want to cooperate with me. What are you and Marcus doing here?”

Will kept up the stubborn act.

“I would talk to Marcus, but his anger for me seems to not allow civilized conversation at the moment,” Dominski said. He paused for a few moments hoping Will would finally give in and start talking. “I see that you are taking too many cues from Marcus. The man might have been a well-known and trusted name in news, but you should soon understand that whatever delusions he’s put in your head are just that...delusions. Is his one-man fight against the inevitable worth joining, Will? Are you really willing to put your life at risk? Are you willing to put...Lea’s life at risk?”

Will’s eyes shot open wide and he snapped his head towards Dominski. The stubborn, silent look on his face disappeared. His skin reddened as anger boiled up inside him. At the same time, he was also slightly confused. How did he know about Lea? The confusion must have been revealed on his face.

“You do recall that you were speaking about Oakhurst and Lea before I came to talk to Marcus,” Dominski said as an evil grin formed on his face. “I was standing right in from of you two. It doesn’t take too long for an organization like mine to figure out where you lived...where Lea was hiding out.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Will said. “If you do anything to her or any of my family-”

Dominski cut him off, “What? What do you think you could do to me?” He lifted his arm closest to the one-way glass and twirled his forefinger around a couple of times.

A bright light was switched on in the adjacent room which revealed the view through the one-way glass. Lea sat in a chair in a room similar to the one he was in. She was watching through the glass with tears continuously streaming down her cheeks. Will could tell she had been crying for a long time due to the puffiness surrounding her eyes.

Will struggled against his tied hands that were also tied to the chair. He was attempting to stand but the bindings wouldn’t allow him to do so. Dominski twirled his finger again. Will had been so focused on Lea that he hadn’t seen the guard in the room. The man walked over to a switch on the wall and Will’s view through the mirrored glass was cut off.

“I’m going to make this decision easy for you now,” Dominski said. “You are going to tell me what you two are doing here and who, if anyone, you are working with. The Liberty Army? The American Rights Foundation?”

Will’s face must have given away something when Dominski mentioned the ARF.

“That’s right,” Dominski said, “I know all about these stupid little groups. I’ll assume you are working with one of those two. Those are the two largest. I couldn't imagine any of the small-time militia groups  could figure out how to get inside here. After you tell me everything I want to know, I will spare you by letting you and your precious Lea go to one of my camps. They are such nice and homey places to live. Quite quaint. You’ll both have to work, of course. It’ll probably be different camps. I’ll be honest, you will probably never see her again.”

Will couldn’t believe how arrogant this man was. How did Marcus ever consider him a friend?

“The alternative,” Dominski said as he pounded a single fist down on the table, “is that you get to watch me, personally, kill your girlfriend over there.” He pointed to the glass. “I’ll make sure it’s a painful death. Then, I’m not going to kill you. You heard me correctly. I won’t kill you. That’d be too easy, wouldn’t it? You’ll be sent to a camp in, let’s say, a remote and barren part of North Dakota. We can have you dig trenches in the frozen ground for absolutely no reason at all and then fill them back up again. All the while, you get to relive your decision to blindly follow Marcus and let Lea die.”

There was spit flying from Dominski’s mouth as his emotions were erupting. Will was beginning to see this man as a psychopath. Although that was already obvious from what he was doing to the country. Will’s anger and rage matched what he saw in Dominski, but what could he do? Dominski had all the upper hands. Will was just some idiot tied to a chair. He had nothing. No cards up his sleeves. In fact, at this point, he had no cards at all. His mind was racing trying to figure a way out. He couldn’t come up with anything. The only two options that he had been given were both horrible. Of course he would choose the one that kept Lea alive. Either way, he was beginning to think the last time he would see her already happened a minute ago. The view of her through the glass crying would be stuck in his head forever.

“Which is it going to be?” Dominski yelled at Will. He pounded his fist down on the metal table again.

Will looked over at the glass. The look of anger subsided. A look of sorrow, sympathy, and longing took over his face. He mouthed the words, ‘I love you,’ towards the glass. He hoped she could see it and hoped she was saying it back.

Marcus wiped away the tears from his face with his sleeves. Will had been taken about five minutes ago and all Marcus had done was cry. He regained himself.

“Crying isn’t going to do anything,” he muttered to himself.

He needed to figure out a way out of the cell and to save Will. He walked up to the cell door and tugged on it. He didn’t have much hope for that plan anyway. He walked back to the bench and sat down to think. The hallway door opened again and this time, it closed quickly and quietly. Whoever just walked in made sure the door didn’t make any noise as it shut. Marcus’s face immediately turned to a scowl. The thought of anyone who worked for the CMA now enraged him.

“Marcus,” a whisper came from the dark figure in the hallway.

“Who’s there?” Marcus asked.

“Keep quiet, Marcus,” the voice said, still a whisper.

Marcus furrowed his brow out of confusion now and walked all the way up to the bars. Kenneth stepped forward. He still stayed near one end of the hallway by the door.

“Ken?” Marcus was surprised to see him. He almost became happy and then he realized that Kenneth probably knew that Marcus was being sent to his death on that flight. It was all the more evident since Ken was here just like Ava was. His scowl returned.

“You disgust me, Ken, you know that?” Marcus said. “How can you go along with these people? You probably knew that Marek was sending me to die in a plane crash. How convenient for all of you. Get rid of me and then play heartwarming stories about my life so people keep thinking you care about them right before you bomb them and their homes.” Marcus cursed at Ken.

“Shut up, Marcus,” Ken said in a low voice. “Would you just listen to me for once? I’ve been trying to get you to keep your mouth shut since this all started. If you would have never done that speech on the news this all would have worked out better.”

“What do you mean?” Marcus asked.

Kenneth kept looking back at the hallway door. “I don’t know what you were told, but I received the messages. It has just been impossible for me to respond.”

“What?” Marcus asked, still confused. “You aren’t making any sense.”

“Jackson!” Kenneth was getting louder, “Marcus, I’m Jackson. I’ve been in contact with Thomas for years. You know those groups I always hung around that you hated? That was me spying for the ARF.”

Marcus’s head was beginning to spin. He almost felt like he was going to faint. He had so many emotions flowing through him recently that he was also getting a splitting headache. He stepped forward and held on to one of the cell bars.

“Are you okay?” Kenneth said. “Marcus, we need to finish this. The bomb, Marcus, where is it? Is it on a timer? Can we get out of here in time?”

“A timer,” Marcus said with a sigh. “Wouldn’t that have been a good idea.” He shook his head. “No timer Ken...or Jackson...whatever your name is.”

“It’s still Ken. Jackson was a code name. What do you mean by no timer?”

Marcus took a deep breath. He knew he didn’t have time for all the questions he wanted to ask Ken. “We were planning on remotely detonating it. We never got the remote detonator in time. We heard the bombing started and we came straight here. We have a spool of wire and a detonator.”

“Who’s the kid?” Kenneth asked.

“Kid?” Marcus said. “He’s no kid. He’s one of the bravest guys I know.” He paused for a moment. “Apparently you are too.” He gave Kenneth a half smile. “Will. His name is Will. He rescued me from the plane crash out in the wilderness in California. When he found out about what the CMA was going to do he joined up with me immediately.”

Kenneth took a set of keys from his pocket. “We have to blow this place up, Marcus.” He unlocked the cell door. “Come on, we have to be quiet.” He motioned for Marcus to come out of the cell. “They are bombing the country in planned waves. They don’t have the forces they had expected. Once a lot of the troops found out what they were going to be doing, they either abandoned the CMA or tried to sabotage the operation. It’s got to be all out civil war out there right now. A lot of those guys joined up with the ARF or one of the other militias. The bombers that already went out destroyed all the major cities on the west coast. Another wave started hitting all the major cities from Florida to North Carolina. Marek only needs to give the order for the next wave.”

“Why hasn’t he?” Marcus asked.

“Because of you,” Kenneth said. “You’ve got him spooked by showing up here. He thinks that the ARF and other militia forces have a way into the mountain. He’s on edge with so many of his troops abandoning him. He could still accomplish his plan, though. We can stop him from giving the order for the next wave of bombing if we blow this place now. Your friend will crack for sure. He brought in his girlfriend.”

“What!?” Marcus said too loudly. Kenneth shushed him. “Lea is here? We need to get them.”

Kenneth sighed. “I don’t think we have time. I don’t see any way of doing it without getting us caught again. Marek has himself surrounded by armed guards now. Marcus,” Kenneth paused, “he is feeding him a line about getting a chance to live and save his girl but he is going to kill them no matter what.”

Marcus’s heart sunk to his feet. How could he have brought Will into this? Now Lea was brought in and he felt like it was all his fault for telling them about the CMA in the first place.

“The bomb, Marcus?” Kenneth was urging on. “We are wasting too much time. I’ve worked too many years to bring a stop to Marek’s crazy plans to slip up at the end.”

Marcus knew Kenneth was right. He somehow had a stroke of luck that Kenneth was on his side and was able to break him out. The explosives needed to be set off. If he tried to go after Will and Lea then it was most likely that he would just get caught again and then the explosives would never get blown. Marek would continue to obliterate all the population centers around the country and then he’d have his camps full of slaves and he and all the other CMA scum leaders would get their way.

Marcus sighed. “We need to get back towards the engineering department. We placed a ton of C4 plastic explosive against the water storage tank.”

“Water tank?” Kenneth asked raising his eyebrows.

“A military guy that used to work in here said there are over six million gallons of water storage,” Marcus said. “It was meant for long term survival from nuclear winter. He said it should flood a couple of the floors. The explosion will trigger the automatic closing of the main blast door, which is what we want to hold the water in. The inner blast doors should still be on manual operation. There is a natural spring that fills the water tank. The water should keep pouring in and eventually fill the entire air tight mountain. Once we use the extra spool of wire, we might be able to hurry after triggering the detonation, maybe we have a chance of making it through the blast door before it finishes closing. It should bring us somewhat close to it.”

Kenneth looked at Marcus as if he wasn’t believing they had any chance of survival at all. He nodded his head. “Let’s go.”

They snuck out of the prison area and headed towards the engineering department. As they hurried along, Kenneth spoke with Marcus in hushed tones.

“By the way, I had no idea that you were working with the ARF,” Kenneth said.

“Really?” Marcus asked. “I thought I was being blatantly obvious. Especially around you. You know, the whole worthless news stories so I could get to the cafe.”

“Made up? What was at the cafe?”

“There was a transmitter at that table we were sitting at with Anthony.”

“A transmitter? What do you mean by a transmitter?” Kenneth looked puzzled.

Marcus explained that once the CMA moved the WWNL staff to the camp and tightened their leash on him, the ARF had to come up with a different way for him to pass information to them. He divulged the process of how it worked and how stressed he had been the day he was trying to pass the information about the bombings with Anthony sitting right across from him.

“Wow,” Kenneth said. “I had no idea. This whole time, even back in New York at WWNL, I was only trying to get you to walk a straight line to keep any heat off of myself.”

Marcus laughed. “I wondered what was going on with you. I couldn't figure out why you were always acting weird. Wish I would’ve known.”

“You and me both, buddy,” Kenneth said.

“Look,” Marcus said and pointed down the hall at the floor. They had just turned down a hallway in the engineering department. “There’s our stuff still laying on the floor. It is some kind of miracle those idiots missed this.”