A Guardian Angel (28 page)

Gunshots ripped
through the air from behind him as Barney sped away from Union
Station. Glass cracked and broke as the bullets tore through the back
windshield. Barney drove while ducked as low in the seat as he could,
barely able to see where he was. He sped away, uncaring of what he
ran over and knocked down as he fled the scene.

The man on the
stage didn't stop the execution for long.

-Chapter Twenty-Seven-

Rosa

“What's she
said?” Andy asked when Rosa reentered the room.

Rosa looked upset;
solemn. Not that she looked defeated, but that she didn't know what
to try next. “She said she would think about it,” she
answered. “Right now she's being introduced to her bodyguards.
I don't think she liked the idea.”

“Are you
letting her go?” Andy asked.

The Latina
sharpened her eyes at him, as if being accused. “Of course,
she's not our prisoner,” she replied. “What is it that
you even think about the Knights, Mr. Winter? You do just think that
we're terrorists, don't you?”

“I think
that's what a lot of people would call you,” Andy said.

“What about
you?” Rosa asked. Her voice softened up. “You of all
people must understand the difference between what is wrong and what
is necessary. You must be able to see that our actions, while
unpopular, are crucial to this revolution.”

Andy was silent for
a while. He took a large drink from the glass of water he had been
given before. The woman stared him down. He could not escape her
expectant gaze. “I really don't think any of us are qualified
to be right,” Andy said. “There is no such thing. There's
just what's going to work and what's not.”

“And what do
you think is going to work?” the Knight leader asked.

Andy hummed for a
second. “I think you and Flynn have a lot to learn from each
other,” he said. He took another large gulp.

Rosa thought on
that comment for a moment. She stood up and brought her seat up close
to Andy's, then sat back down on it.

“Do you know
where the Knights come from?” she asked Andy.

Andy said nothing.

“I think if I
tell you, you'll understand better what kind of world we are fighting
against,” Rosa started. “I lived in a small little town
at the very foot of the Sangre de Cristos. On the mountain, they had
this little military supply depot. They have it there for training
camps in the western states, in case weapons ever go missing, a
vehicle gets totaled, or the men are using more ammunition than
estimated. It was a good little reserve, and it was guarded by a
group of soldiers who lived there. Most everyone in town worked
there, or at least did something to help the troops.

“When Decree
started their little Standstill, there was no real warning. Nobody
came and told us to pack up our things and grab our loved ones. They
strolled into the village as if they had always been there, before
anyone noticed them. No announcement was made, or some barrel-chested
reading of bullshit law. Just gunfire.”

Rosa stared down at
the floor. Her head hung heavy.

“It was a
massacre,” she continued. “A lot of people took shelter
in their houses, their apartments. Pedestrians were cut down in the
street with such determination and effort. Overkill. They were
unarmed, but engaged as if they were enemy combatants.

“There was a
little boy,” Rosa said. She looked back up into Andy's face. “I
was in my classroom, during a lesson, when the shooting started. We
tried to keep the children calm and help them take cover. We tried to
hide out in the school building. They were so scared; so freaked out.
This little boy, Brandon, he jumped out the window and tried to make
a run for it. We screamed at him to come back, to stop fleeing. And
they shot him down right in the playground. Right in front of his
classmates.”

Still, Andy said
nothing.

“I thought
there was no way they wouldn't come into the school. To hunt us out
like rats. Make us run. But it got quiet and still. Naturally, we
didn't trust it, so we stayed in hiding and watched. We couldn't see
the mercenaries. Finally, the time came when we decided that it was
safe enough to make a run for it. Even when we got out in the open,
none of the Decree dogs were in sight. We got everyone on a small
caravan of school buses and left the town.”

“So you lost
a student,” Andy commented. Rosa just looked at him with stern
eyes as she shook her head

“We didn't
have enough vehicles to get all of the children out in one go, so we
had to make the nerve-racking second trip. Some of the staff had
stayed behind to keep the children calm, to hold them all together.
We didn't even get back to the town limits before these dark jets
shot overhead. They were Air Force. 'Finally!' we had said. 'The
government is coming to help us.'”

Rosa looked like
the words had left a bad taste in her mouth. Andy continued to
listen, his expression blank.

“The planes
dropped fire bombs on the village,” she explained. “See,
they saw that Decree had taken control of the supply depot. That was
unacceptable. They added up the numbers and found it too risky to try
to take it back; to try and save the town. So they ordered the deaths
of our friends, our neighbors. Our family.”

Andy averted his
eyes and stared at the floor. He could never contribute anything to
the moment to make it any more comfortable. Silence rested upon them
for a while before he lifted his gaze again. Rosa was devoid of grief
in her expression. She did not wince or hesitate as she told her
story. It must have been told a hundred times, Andy thought.

“I will help
you,” Andy concluded. “But only to get to Leroy Graves.”

Rosa smiled. “You
know that that's our next move,” she said. Andy nodded. The
woman walked across the room. “Do you know anything about the
code Graves uses?”

“Code?”
Andy asked.

“To
communicate classified information,” Rosa explained. “With
some effort, we dug up some old transcripts from Graves to an
unlisted number. The message given was encrypted. And I believe his
contact was you.”

Andy's muscles
tensed. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew who
would.

Rosa continued.
“Lately, every single one of his messages has been in code.
Even personal ones to his wife and his colleagues. We want to catch
him by surprise, but it's impossible to get any information about
where he is at any given time. Any messages sent between Grave's
generals regarding him communicate the same way. Nobody else is
cleared to discuss him.”

Something in Andy
resisted. “Why can't you get the information from his misses?
Or any of his generals?” he inquired.

Rosa gave him a
soft look. “Andy, we're trying to protect people,” she
started. “If we did anything as serious as that, we'd have a
lot more than Decree blood on our hands.”

Andy turned to the
wall and hummed in thought.

“Will you
help us?” Rosa asked.

He faced her again.
“I need to get a hold of a colleague and then I can teach you
the code,” he answered. “But only if you destroy all of
Grave's past transcripts.”

Curiosity bled onto
Rosa's sharp features, but she asked nothing of it. “Deal.”
She extended her arm for a handshake.

Haley didn't much
like the car that the Knights had given her to make her return trip
to New York, but it was far more than she could have ever expected.
They blindfolded her and drove for about twenty miles before meeting
up with her new vehicle. One of them told her that if she drove
straight for a hundred and twelve miles, she would cross into the
state of New York. Then, without a spare word, they got back in their
cars and waited for her to drive away.

Rosa decided that
it was the best decision to let Haley return home, even though she
had not made up her mind about helping the Knights. Haley had been
introduced to two men who were to be her designated bodyguards. She
had been told that their presence would be minimal at most, and that
she should just remember that they are near. Remember that she is
protected.

Something terrified
Haley about Rosa and her organization. She couldn't quite put her
finger on it. Perhaps it was her pacifist heart that hesitates to
help such violent people.
But,
Haley thought to herself,
I
had wanted to help them or I would have said 'no.'
Haley did want
Leroy Graves to be brought to justice.
His crimes would always go
down in history as perfect justification to his execution,
Haley
thought,
but what precedent would that set us off with? Am I wrong
to think that starting off a new society with an act of violence is
the worst thing we can do?

That wasn't it,
Haley decided. It was something else. Something about the look in
Rosa's eyes was so alien, so hard for Haley to recognize, and it
scared her. Rosa had the stare of someone who couldn't understand
that they were in the real world. That their actions had real
consequences and their words would be subject to realistic scrutiny.
The woman spoke like someone out of a movie, Haley believed. Like she
didn't grasp this world.

Almost,
Haley thought.
That's very nearly what it is.

Haley oo'ed out
loud when it became crystalline to her. What terrified her about the
Knights of the Proletariat is that everyone else might be like them.
That she was alone where she stood.

-Chapter Twenty-Eight-

The
Expert

It was difficult to
say whether it was Andy or Steven that was more surprised to see the
hitman back in the city of Lumnin. Mr. Amidon's expression would
contend to say that it was himself. Andy stood outside on his porch
with an idling orange van waiting on the corner. Steven's eyes
ignited when he saw the vehicle.

“Andy, my
God, are you with them?” he asked as low as he could so that
only Andy would hear.

The former hitman
waved back at the van. The driver killed its engine and watched the
two men through the windshield. “No,” Andy said. “May
I come in?”

Steven opened the
door and offered his friend entrance, peering out behind him as the
door was closed. Andy hung up his coat while his host stood in the
entrance.

“They aren't
going to follow me in,” Andy explained.

“What's going
on?” Steven asked. He seemed scared. “What are you doing
with Decree?”

“It's not
Decree,” Andy explained. “Do you have any coffee?”

“Not Decree?”
Steven repeated. He ignored Andy's request. “Who then?”

“There's a
revolution brewing, Steven,” Andy started. “Please.
Coffee?”

Steam rose off the
two mugs of coffee in fine, long strands. Steven had taken his place
in his old recliner and Andy sat on the floor before him. He sipped
on his cup as he watched the man across from him.

“How have you
been able to stay right in the same house?” Andy asked. “You
didn't run?”

“No one came
looking for me,” Steven replied. “I thought for sure they
would, but no one did.”

There was a pause
in which Andy accepted this answer. “Have you kept up with the
news?” Andy asked his friend.

“Of course,”
Steven answered. “It's kind of hard not to these days. It's
shoved right in our faces.”

“Then you
know that Graves has to be stopped.”

“Yeah,”
Steven started. “I pretty much assumed that from day one. Is
that what this is all about, Andy? Who are those people dressed up as
Decree?”

Andy looked back
out the window at the orange van that had moved a single parking
space in his absence. Eyes stared back at him through the glass.
“They're called the Knights of the Proletariat,” Andy
said. “They, too, want to stop Graves.”

“So why are
you here?” Steven questioned.

“I need your
help,” Andy started. He gestured out the window. “The
Knights need you. Do you still remember the code that you and Graves
would communicate in?”

Steven nodded with
a stone still face. “Yeah, I do,” he stated. “So
they're planning to kill him?”

“I'm
planning,” Andy pointed to his own chest. “But I need
you, Steven. I need you to teach these Knights everything you know
about Decree.”