True fiction, p.14
True Fiction, page 14
The smoke cleared on the screen. He saw the crater where the house had once stood. Ludlow, French, and whomever they’d come to visit were now bone fragments and clumps of charred flesh. The backstory on this operation was finally erased. Now all that was left to deal with were the politics, though in some ways he favored this kind of action. It was clear and decisive.
He saw the Mustang, covered in dust and ash, its windows shattered, but otherwise intact. Not good.
“Take out the Mustang,” Cross told Victoria. “I don’t want to leave any tracks that lead back to Ludlow or Seattle.”
Victoria tapped a key. Another Hellfire missile flew from the drone. The explosion wiped out the car and left another crater. It was like using a tank to kill a fly but at least now the car and its contents were dust.
“Bring the drone home and send a team to collect whatever’s left of the bodies for fingerprint, dental, and DNA analysis,” Cross said. “I want irrefutable confirmation of the kills.”
Long Valley, Nevada. July 20. 4:15 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
They waited thirty minutes after the drone flew away before they decided it was safe to leave the bunker and go above. Even so, Ronnie insisted on being armed. He took one of the rocket-propelled grenade launchers with him from the vault. Ian brought his Straker paperback.
They emerged to scorched earth, two craters, and smoking rubble. The pickup truck was engulfed in flames but the bulldozer and tractor remained, seemingly undamaged. The air reeked of burning rubber, wood, gasoline, and cow flesh. Margo squatted and picked up a few coins from the blackened earth.
“I’m sorry, Ronnie,” Ian said. “I shouldn’t have come here. I brought this on you.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ronnie said. “This day was coming sooner or later and I was getting tired of waiting for it. But it’s not over. They’ll be back.”
Ian knew he was right. They would come for their remains and to clean up the crime scene. He wondered how long they had before the cleaners arrived. A couple of hours? A day? The thought made him look at the book in his hand. Clint Straker would relish the fight. Ian would, too, if he were writing it instead of living it. The fights were the scenes that every reader waited for and they almost wrote themselves. That’s because Straker was totally in his element, one man up against impossible odds, armed only with his determination and cunning. God, how Ian wished he were writing that scene now instead of standing there.
“We have to get out of here.” Margo nodded at the bulldozer and tractor. “Those aren’t going to get us very far and the bad guys will notice right away if they’re missing. We’ll have to go on foot and try to cover our tracks behind us.”
“I’ve got a big woody,” Ronnie said.
“Good for you,” Margo said, annoyed. “Is it that time of day for you or are you aroused by the idea of us running into the mountains and dying of exposure?”
Clint Straker doesn’t run from anything.
That thought made Ian understand why he had such a strong urge to write. He didn’t want to escape the situation he was in. He wanted to beat it, the way Straker would. He looked down at the book in his hand, the one he wrote about the character he created. And in that moment, a chill passed over him, taking with it all of his anxieties. He knew what he had to do.
“I’m talking about the 1974 Ford Country Squire station wagon that I’ve got hidden in a cave,” Ronnie said. “Cars manufactured after 1975 all have electronic ignitions that’ll be fried by an EMP blast. This one is blast safe and it has wood veneer paneling on the body.”
“Oh,” Margo said. “That kind of woody. Let’s find the car, fill it with your weapons and treasure, and get the hell out of here.”
“No,” Ian said. “We’re done running.”
“What’s the alternative?” Margo said. “Hide in Ronnie’s shelter for a year or two until they forget about us?”
Ian held up his paperback. “Clint Straker wouldn’t run and he wouldn’t hide.”
“You aren’t Clint Straker,” she said.
“Everybody keeps telling me that but you’re wrong,” he said. “I am Clint Straker. I created him. Everything he is, everything he’s ever done, came from within me.”
“He’s imaginary.” She grabbed the book out of his hand and flung it like a Frisbee into the burning wreckage of the pickup truck. “You made up his past and everything that he does. You don’t actually have his training or combat experience.”
“I have something more important. I know how he thinks and how he reacts. He doesn’t wait for things to happen. He makes them happen,” Ian said. “It’s time I stopped thinking like me and started thinking like him.”
“That’s it, man, get into character.” Ronnie clapped Ian on the back. “I got so into the Vine that by episode thirteen, I was capable of photosynthesis.”
Margo gave Ronnie a cold, hard look. “You can convert sunlight into energy.”
Ronnie held out his arms and tipped his face up to the sky “The sun is my Big Mac.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Margo said. “Get real. We’re talking about our lives here.”
“That’s why it’s time to embrace our true selves and harness our potential,” Ronnie said. He turned to Ian. “So, buddy, there’s one question you’ve got to ask yourself. What would Clint Straker do right now?”
“He’d take the fight to them,” Ian said.
“Damn right he would,” Ronnie said. “It’s going to be the three of us against the C-I-fucking-A.”
“That’s suicide,” Margo said.
“Actually, it sounds just like a Clint Straker book to me,” Ian said. “All I need to do is plot it.”
Margo took a deep breath, and when she spoke, it was in a calm, patronizing tone, like she was talking to a child. “When you’re writing a book, you’re in complete control of the universe. It doesn’t work like that in the real world.”
“Is that so? Tell that to the CIA. If they could use my story idea to kill people in the real world, why can’t I do the same thing to bring the CIA down? Someone has to make them pay.” Ian tore the duct tape off his cast, pulling chunks of plaster away and throwing them on the ground until his pale, bone-thin right arm was revealed. He stretched his arm out and made a fist. “It’s going to be me.”
Ian sounded just like Straker and he knew why—because he was, and always had been, Straker inside. For the first time since this nightmare began, he felt strong and unafraid. Ronnie and Margo could see it, too.
Ronnie raised his RPG launcher. “I’m right there with you, man.”
Margo looked at Ian for a long moment as she thought it over and then sighed with resignation as she came to a decision that she appeared to already regret. “If we’re dead anyway, we might as well go down fighting.”
“We’re going to have to work on your winning attitude,” Ian said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The enemy came in an unmarked black helicopter a couple of hours later. They flew in from the south and circled twice over the charred ruins and smoking craters before landing about fifty yards from the compound.
Two men emerged from the helicopter wearing dark sunglasses and white jumpsuits, white gloves, and white rubber boots. They both carried toolboxes that Ian presumed, based on his extensive experience watching police procedurals on television, were evidence-collection kits.
Ian and Margo crouched side by side and watched the men from under a camouflaged tarp that was spread over several artificial boulders atop one of the rocky hillsides that bordered the compound. It was where Ronnie had been hiding when Ian and Margo drove in that morning.
Margo used binoculars to track the men while Ian watched them through the scope on the rocket-propelled grenade launcher that rested on his shoulder. The RPG launcher was essentially a tube with a rocket stuck in the front and a trigger on the bottom. Ronnie had given Ian and Margo a quick lesson in how to use it. It wasn’t a complex device. Ian shifted his aim to the helicopter, putting the craft in the center of his sights. It would be a hard target to miss.
The weapon was too heavy for Ian’s weak right arm so he propped the end of it on a rock in front of him, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.
The rocket shot out, the blazing backfire scorching the rocks behind Ian. An instant later the rocket slammed into the helicopter and blew it apart. The concussive force of the explosion knocked the two men off their feet, which was fortunate, because a split second later a severed rotor blade sliced through the air where they’d stood. The two men landed facedown on the ground. They lifted their heads and saw Ronnie under the tractor, smiling and pointing an AK-47 at their heads.
“Keep kissing the dirt, assholes,” he said. “Hands behind your backs.”
Up in their hideout on the hill, Margo grinned at Ian. “That was great.”
He grinned back at her. “Now you know why my books are bestsellers. I can plot.”
But writing it didn’t compare to the exhilaration of actually doing it. The gleeful expression on Margo’s face told him that she enjoyed the visceral experience as much as he did even though she hadn’t pulled the trigger. It just proved what everybody in Hollywood already knew: everybody loves an explosion.
Ian and Margo rose from their hiding place and made their way carefully down through the rocks to the ground, where Ronnie stood over the two men with his AK-47 aimed at their backs.
“Be still, boys,” Ronnie said. “One twitch of my finger and you’re both vulture chow.”
Ian and Margo removed zip ties from their pockets and they each took a man, first binding their wrists, then rolling them over onto their backs. The two men, dirt sticking to their sweaty faces, scowled furiously at their captors.
“It could be worse,” Margo told the two men. “We could have shot you out of the sky.”
Ian got the feeling that she would have been okay with that, too.
He and Margo opened the men’s jumpsuits and searched their pockets, retrieving wallets, key fobs, and photo IDs. Margo stood up and flipped through the wallet that she’d found.
“This one is Edwin Pessel.” Margo nodded at the man at her feet. “He’s a security specialist for Blackthorn Global Security in Las Vegas.”
That didn’t make sense to Ian. What did Blackthorn have to do with the CIA?
Ian opened the other man’s wallet and found another Blackthorn ID. “This one is Stuart Bowers. He also works at Blackthorn.”
“Of course they do,” Ronnie said.
Ian put his foot on Bowers’ chest to keep him down and looked at Ronnie. “Why ‘of course’?”
“Because Blackthorn is the SS of the New World Order. It’s full of ex-spies, ex-politicians, war criminals, disgraced scientists, and professional psychopaths. Their job is to terrorize the populace so that they are so scared that they will gladly give up their freedoms in exchange for the false promise of safety.”
“And you think these guys do that by flying jets into buildings,” Margo said.
“That’s one way,” Ronnie said. “The Kennedy, King, and Elvis assassinations, Watergate, AIDS, Botox, crop circles, the Ebola epidemic, opioid addiction, and genetically engineered fruit are just some of their greatest hits.”
“You left out artificial sweeteners,” Margo said.
“Because that goes without saying,” Ronnie said.
Blackthorn was a plot twist that Ian didn’t see coming. It changed his perspective about everything that had happened since Bob first knocked on his door. It also gave him hope. “What if it’s Blackthorn, not the CIA, that crashed the plane and is trying to kill us?”
“So what?” Ronnie said. “They’re both puppets of the New World Order.”
“I don’t see how that makes things any better for us, either,” Margo said.
“It’s a game changer. I’ve met the man in charge of this conspiracy but I don’t know his name or anything about him.” Ian looked down at Bowers, who glowered at him from under his foot. “Now we have a way to find out.”
Ronnie and Margo worked fast. She helped him bring up all the weapons, ammo, and other supplies that they needed from the bunker while Ian stood guard with the AK-47 over Pessel and Bowers, who remained bound and on their backs in the dirt. Ronnie dismantled the bunker’s surveillance system with a sledgehammer. Then he and Margo gathered up anything inside that could be used as a weapon or a tool, piled it all into the vault, and locked it up. When Ronnie and Margo came back to the surface, Ian told Pessel and Bowers to get to their feet and ordered them down the stairs.
Ian, Margo, and Ronnie gathered around the hatch and looked down at the two Blackthorn operatives, who now appeared more fearful than angry.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Ian said. “We’re going to park the tractor on the hatch and leave, trapping you in that bunker. The good news is, after you break those zip ties, you can survive down there for years.”
“Assuming you like freeze-dried beef stroganoff,” Margo said. “And don’t kill each other fighting over the sex doll.”
“But first,” Ian said, “you’re going to tell us how to get into Blackthorn’s building in Las Vegas, access their computers, and find photos of their senior employees without getting caught.”
“Why the fuck would we do that?” Pessel asked, practically spitting out the words.
“Because if we get captured or killed, nobody will ever know you’re down there,” Ian said. “You’ll be buried alive for years.”
“When the food runs out, one of you will murder the other for the meat,” Ronnie said. “But that’ll only buy you a few more weeks of solitary confinement, thinking about the savage thing you’ve done and knowing you’re going to starve anyway, dying in wretched agony while you desperately suck the last speck of marrow from another man’s bones.”
“What a horrible way to die,” Margo said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like.”
But Pessel and Bowers could. They told Ian everything he wanted to know.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ronnie and Margo took turns driving the 1974 Ford Country Squire on the ten-and-a-half-hour journey to Las Vegas. He drove the first four-hour stretch, southwest into California so they could travel on paved roads, then due south for two hundred miles on US 395 before they veered east again, crossing back into Nevada. They rolled into Reno at about 8:00 p.m. and stopped at a Goodwill store. Ronnie reluctantly ditched his aluminum foil helmet before he and Ian went inside. The men bought used business suits, ties, and dress shoes while Margo went to a gas station and got them some food at Carl’s Jr.
Margo picked them up and stayed behind the wheel as they headed southeast, stopping four hours later at a Shell station in Tonopah, Nevada, which was on the northwestern edge of the 4,530-square-mile US military range for aircraft gunnery training, aerial bombardment, nuclear weapons testing, and army combat exercises. Their proximity to all of that secret military hardware and testing made Ronnie very nervous. He desperately wanted to put his aluminum-foil helmet back on but Ian convinced him it would draw too much attention to them. While Margo refilled the gas tank, Ian and Ronnie went to the restroom, where Ronnie shaved off his beard and they both changed into their Goodwill suits.
Ronnie took over the driving and put his helmet back on. Nobody argued with him about the helmet. It was fine for him to wear it in the car. Ian figured the helmet was like a security blanket for him and he couldn’t blame Ronnie for feeling anxious. Ian wished he had a security blanket of his own and thought about sucking his thumb instead but it wasn’t something Clint Straker would ever do. Margo hummed to herself for relaxation. It wasn’t a song Ian recognized so he assumed it was one of her own compositions.
They reached Las Vegas at 3:00 a.m., cutting across the city to Henderson Executive Airport, a popular hub for corporate and private aircraft. This was where the helicopter and corporate jet used by Blackthorn’s Las Vegas office were based. Ronnie parked the station wagon beside the black Suburban that Pessel had driven to the airport. It was Bowers who’d flown the helicopter.
Ronnie took off his helmet and the three of them got out of the station wagon. Ian pointed Pessel’s key fob at the Suburban and unlocked it. He took a deep breath and tossed the key fob to Ronnie so he could drive.
“Now comes the fun part,” Ian said.
“Good luck,” Margo said.
“They’re the ones who are going to need it,” Ian said.
It was a Straker line, and it made Margo roll her eyes, but Ian liked how it sounded coming from his mouth. He and Ronnie walked toward the Suburban. It was a hero moment. Ronnie, being an actor, instinctively knew it, too, and it showed in his confident stride.
“Wait,” Margo said and both men stopped. She went up to them and yanked the tags that dangled from their right sleeves. “You forgot to take off the price tags.”
That completely deflated the hero moment but it didn’t shake their confidence. Ian and Ronnie got into the Suburban and they drove toward the glittering Las Vegas skyline.
Las Vegas, Nevada. July 21. 3:35 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Blackthorn provided enhanced security services for several casinos and operated out of a new six-story building in downtown Las Vegas, a block west of the Plaza Hotel. It was one of the first buildings in an envisioned “world-class” office park, the latest attempt by the city to rejuvenate the heart of Old Town after a $70 million light-show canopy over Fremont Street didn’t generate much of a pulse.
Ronnie stopped in front of the garage gate and next to a camera mounted beside the driveway. He rolled down his window and held up Pessel’s ID to the camera so that it blocked most of his face from being seen by the lone, bored security guard on duty.
