He took his coffee from the lieutenant volunteering behind the counter. “Still cold turkey?”
She sighed. “I’d take a swing at you, but it wouldn’t even put a dent in your fat head.”
He smiled and led her to a table near the side of the room. “There are worse things to be addicted to. I should know. I did a stint with the DEA.”
She shook her head. “It was getting out of hand.” Waverly sipped from his cup and she groaned. “It doesn’t mean you should throw it in my face.”
“Sorry,” Waverly said without sincerity. “What’s up?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when you came out of the conference room, you had an expression on your face that I haven’t seen before.”
“I probably shouldn’t say. Not yet. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Fair enough,” Waverly said. He regarded her thoughtfully. “You have Eric’s ear, though. You can keep him on the straight and narrow.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That means that you need to see what Eric needs and then help him.”
“What he needs?” she asked. “And what do you think he needs?”
“Moral clarity,” Waverly said. He glanced around the empty coffee shop. “When Eric recruited me, he told me a story about the OTM. A… narrative.”
She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“Eric knew just what buttons to push,” Waverly said. “He told me about missed opportunities. About bad guys getting off. About how I’d seen the good guys suffer because their hands were tied.”
“That’s true,” Karen said. “If we had to operate within—”
Waverly held up his hand. “I’ll admit that it’s true, but his story was worded so that I’d join this crazy circus. He turned me, Karen. I’ve always believed in the rule of law. It’s in my DNA.”
“You think he lied to you.”
“No. Not lied. He worked me.”
“Eric is a good man,” Karen said, biting back anger. “He only does what he does because he has to.”
Waverly sat his coffee on the table. “I’ve known men like Eric. Military men. Men who are trained to achieve their objective, no matter what.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Karen said. “Is that a bad thing?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in our mission, but I didn’t shut off my personality when I joined the OTM. I can’t not be who I am, Karen. I have to ask the hard questions.”
“It’s John,” Karen rushed out. “He regained his memories over two years ago, and Eric has known the entire time.”
Waverly took another drink of coffee and said nothing.
“You’re not surprised?” Karen asked. “How are you not surprised?”
“Nothing here surprises me,” Waverly said. “How does Eric’s decision to keep you in the dark make you feel?”
“I don’t understand it,” she admitted. “Frist is dangerous.”
“I don’t know Eric well enough to understand it, either, but I’m not sure if that’s the most important thing.”
“What’s the most important thing?”
“Do you trust him?”
She blinked. “Yeah, I trust him.”
“Then be there for him,” Waverly said. “Provide him with moral clarity. Without it…”
“What?”
“I’m not sure someone can survive in his position without becoming… hardened.”
Lila flung the sack of groceries on the table next to her hoodie. The soup cans went in the kitchen cabinet, along with the crackers, but she removed the top of the tomato juice can with a can opener, poured the tomato juice down the sink, then finished by washing the can out with water and setting it aside to dry.
Her feet hurt from the walk to the convenience store, but since she was too afraid to take a bus or cab, her feet would just have to suffer.
A few minutes of work with her multitool to punch a hole through the tomato juice can, another few minutes with her hot glue gun, and the makeshift antennae was glued into the can and connected to her laptop’s external wireless network card.
She remembered Patrick’s warning as she fired up BackTrack on her laptop.
Surely it can’t be that bad.
A shiver ran up her neck and shrugged it off, then looked for a suitable open wireless access point.
Bingo.
Based on the signal strength, she had found an open wireless access point at least two miles to the north. She connected to the access point and directed her browser through the Tor network to the undergroundrising.com site. The top posts all concerned a DFA video of an attack in London.
Oh no.
Her hands shook, and she had to stop and take a breath before clicking on the link. Although the video was grainy, she could see Patrick in the fading light as the men shoved him out of his flat.
Patrick’s mouth opened like he was gulping for air, and then he collapsed to the ground and lay still.
The other men dove to the ground and it appeared one was shot, and then the video cut to a man holding a military-style assault rifle lying in the street. The man shuddered and then his body exploded in a spray of smoke and flesh.
She stared at the screen, then gasped for air and let out a choking sob.
The poster of the video claimed an unknown hacker had been murdered by an American soldier named Jeff Haskell, a former Marine from the First Marine Regiment and a Navy SEAL.
Patrick is on his way to Dallas. He’s not dead. He can’t be!
She replayed the video again, but the tears in her eyes made it hard to focus. On the screen, Patrick dropped to the ground. She paused the video and stared in disbelief.
They murdered him!
She fell out of her chair and onto the cold tile floor. She sobbed hysterically and shook her head in disbelief for what seemed like hours. When she finally composed herself enough to drag herself to her feet, the sky was turning dark.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Patrick had been right. They were in danger.
What were we thinking?
They pushed back against the ruling elite and their hegemony, and the military-industrial complex had found Patrick and executed him.
If they want to keep control, they are going to have to do it with their dirty secrets exposed.
She opened the Armageddon file and scanned the financial records from banks around the world. Vast sums of money had flowed around the world since 9/11, money used to prop up governments friendly to the United States and to its allies.
The money trail covered purchases of military weapons, drugs, and drones. One document from a Citibank server showed transactions to terrorist groups in Syria. The timing of those transactions strongly hinted at attacks on Al-Qaeda in Syria and Yemen by a competing Muslim extremist group friendly to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
Much of the contents were beyond her understanding. She would need a background in forensic financial analysis to unravel it, but she was sure if it were made public, someone more capable could make the appropriate links to the CIA.
She wrote a quick description on the undergroundrising.com website and paused as her mouse hovered over the submit button. One click and hundreds of gigabytes of data would upload, taking hours on the stolen connection.
There’s no going back from this.
She replayed the video of Patrick’s murder and her heart hardened. She flipped back to the upload and clicked the submit button.
You killed Patrick, and now you’ve brought about your own Armageddon, you bastards!