The Crimson Fall (The Sons of Liberty Book 1) (27 page)

Adam shook his head. “Assassinating the president was one thing. Occupying DC with an army is something else entirely, and I can’t allow either.”

“You can’t allow it?” Gene laughed. “Who the hell do you think you are? This isn’t a . . . dictatorship. This is us trying to prevent a dictator from destroying everything we know and love about America! I say that if the men with guns think we need to take him out, well then the men with guns will do just that.”

“No, you won’t,” Adam said as his anger welled back up within him.

“The hell you say. I’m not sittin’ here anymore and takin’ your bullshit,” Gene said. “Here we are, Americans with the knowledge that our own commander-in-chief is planning to ruin this nation and all you want to do is try and tell someone else so they can take care of it.” Gene shook his head. “This is a pathetic answer to what we found, and if you weren’t too damn scared to—”

Adam threw his cane aside and jumped to his feet. The dormant pain in his leg surged back to life, and he thought momentarily that he might have broken his stitches. However, he ignored the hurt. He crossed the room quickly and grabbed Gene by the collar.

“I said I’m not afraid, damn it!” Adam shoved the colonel against the log wall behind him, knocking off his wide cowboy hat in the process. “Say it again and I will bust your teeth in. I swear to God!”

David, Rick and Max were there behind him, trying to talk him down as they pulled him back, though he hardly noticed. Adam glared at the stunned colonel and breathed heavily through clenched teeth. Finally, after a few more tense seconds had passed, he released the colonel and stepped back.

But Adam wasn’t quite finished with him yet. “You know what, Gene? Maybe I am scared. In fact, I would say we all are frightened right now, including you. We’re afraid of what that man and his friends are capable of doing. I’m afraid that my children won’t live with the same freedoms that I grew up with because we let a man like Lukas Chambers have his way with us. We turned a blind eye to those who’ve changed this country over the past thirty years, and we’ve allowed evil men to rule. But that doesn’t mean I’m afraid to do something about it. What terrifies me most is the idea that we might look back years from now and see that we made the wrong decisions when the time came for us to fight. If we falter now, and we fail to let the country know what’s coming, then there will be no stopping him or the Patriarchs with their Purge. That fear is what drives me to act so passionately, and it is why I will continue to stand against what I can only see as a rash and dangerous course of action. The day that Lukas Chambers hangs for what he’s done will come, but today is not that day.”

Silence commanded the room in the moments that followed. Half a minute had gone by with Adam standing there, staring back defiantly at the colonel as the others began to find their seats once more. Eventually, Adam limped over to the back windows, kindly refusing his wife’s help as he gazed out at the large lake beyond the meadow. In the quiet seconds that passed, Adam began to think he might have made a major mistake.

He knew Gene Smith, Jackson Hewitt, and many other military leaders would be invaluable in defeating Lukas and the Patriarchs. As much as Adam wanted to believe that merely informing the public of what they had found would suffice, he knew that violence, one way or another, was most likely in store for the country. He hated the idea of tearing America apart in the process of trying to save it, and he so badly wanted to unite them behind a cause before he asked any army to march. He had hoped Gene and General Hewitt would help him hold the nation together in the years that followed, but now he wondered if the colonel would stick around for even another hour.

Adam cleared his throat and began to speak.

“Gene, I apologize for—”

Before he could finish his apology, four car doors thudded shut from the front of the house, cutting his words off. For a moment, all anyone could manage were wide-eyed glances at one another. But their pause was only for the briefest of moments.

Eric was the first to move. “Sarah, Elizabeth, Jack—upstairs now, and keep the kids quiet,” Eric blurted out his orders as he drew his pistol and held it ready. “Rick and Tanker, grab the rifles in the mud room. Go!”

“Who knows we’re here?” Adam demanded.

“We haven’t told a soul,” David said. “Does Jackson know?”

“No,” Gene said as they made their way to the front of the house. “If it ain’t the LDS, then they ain’t friendly.”

The men ran over to the front window, and Adam hobbled closely behind. Eric slowed and pulled back the thick drapes far enough for the men to peer out at the gravel driveway. Five men stood next to a blacked-out SUV fifty feet from the window, talking casually as they surveyed the property. The man at the front laughed and turned around for a moment to grab something out of the truck, but a moment was all Adam needed to see those three bold letters imprinted across his back.

Five FBI agents were there and would soon be knocking on their door.

“Shit!” Gene muttered under his breath. “How the hell did they find us?”

Rick came around the corner and tossed a shotgun to Adam. He handed a fully automatic carbine to Gene and unshouldered a wooden-stock hunting rifle for himself. David trailed behind him, gripping the twin of the gun Rick held.

“We’ve got five agents at the front,” Eric said. “Gene, you’re in the den next to the entryway. Guard the front door and stay hidden as long as you can. Where’s Tanker?”

“I sent him upstairs,” Rick said. “He’s up in the room with Judah and all the girls. He’s got his pistol and my bowie knife just in case.”

“If we’re smart,” Gene said, “he’ll never need either.”

“Remember,” Eric said in a low voice, “if the lead starts flying, hit anyone trying to launch a drone first. We’re blocking any transmissions within three hundred yards, but that won’t stop a drone from flying outside our blackout radius. Rick and David, you two are upstairs at the windows. Stay out of sight and snipe anyone who runs.”

Rick threw his bolt open and closed, chambering a round. “Sons of bitches ain’t getting near my grandbabies.” He shouldered the long rifle and quickly mounted the stairs ahead of David.

“That leaves you and me,” Eric said looking at Adam. “I’ll be at the rear in case they circle around. You guard the mud room entrance next to the kitchen and—”

“You heard the man,” Elizabeth said from behind them.

She startled Adam so much that he had half raised his shotgun before quickly lowering it. He was thankful he had not been the only one to do so.

“Damn it, Elizabeth, get upstairs.” Gene said.

“Why? Do you really think he’s found us?” she asked casually. “Lukas has no idea where you are, and I’d very much like to keep it that way. If he had any inclination of our whereabouts he would have sent a bomb and not five men and a truck.”

“You don’t know that,” Eric said. “We can’t—”

“I suggest you take up your position, Captain,” Elizabeth said. “If I cannot slay them with my kindness, then you can do whatever you need to afterward. Now, if you’d excuse me.” She approached the door and ignored the men’s hushed pleas.

Gene let out one last curse and crouched just out of sight in the den. Adam ran as best as he could, but his leg cried out for him to go slower. Eric rushed past him toward the breakfast nook at the back of the house where he ducked low behind a wooden table. Adam entered the kitchen, dropping down between the island and the refrigerator, racked the shotgun once to load it, and peered out cautiously toward the foyer from which he had come. Elizabeth smoothed her skirts as the muffled voices of the approaching agents drew clearer. Adam ducked back out of sight as she reached for the door and opened it.

“Fine afternoon, gentlemen.” Though he couldn’t see her, Adam could clearly hear the shakiness in Elizabeth’s voice. “What can I do you for?”

“Ready the drone, Roberts. You two around back. Anderson, here with me. Hi, ma’am. How are you doing today?”

“Just fine,” Elizabeth said with more composure. “What seems to be the problem, Officer?”

“Actually you can call me Agent Kelly.”

“Very well. You may call me Elizabeth, and it is a pleasure to meet you all.”

“Ma’am, is this your home?”

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t quite say it’s mine, but I’m not sure anyone really knows who owns this old place anymore. My husband, God rest his soul, used to drag me up here all the time. I used to hate the endless travel and road trips, but life is a funny thing. With him gone, I find myself. . . .”

Her words trailed on as Adam caught the sound of two men talking near the side door. He couldn’t quite comprehend what they were saying before their voices ceased altogether. His pulse quickened when he heard the crunching of approaching footsteps on the gravel. His heart beat even faster as he listened to the dragging of rubber soles across the fibrous welcome mat just beyond the door. But his heart threatened to stop altogether when someone tried to turn the knob.

Adam pushed himself up against the stainless steel refrigerator—a penetrating cold seeped through his shirt as though it had been dipped in ice—and he raised his shotgun slowly. He heard the doorknob jiggle once and then again more fervently, and he tried to ready himself to kill again.

He tried to mutter his creed before the hunt—tried to conjure up the courage he had found in the alleyway weeks ago. However, a newfound fear had gripped him so strongly that he was barely able to keep himself from throwing up. He hadn’t prayed since Chicago, and he was about to resume that prayer once again when the handle shook one last time and the man beyond the door let out a curse in defeat. After a few more breathless moments, Adam released a sigh of relief. He leaned back again, lowered his gun, and listened to Elizabeth as her charm seemed to be winning the two agents at the front over.

“Oh I remember Holt firearms, ma’am,” Agent Kelly said. “Your husband made some damn fine weapons when I was growing up. Nothing like the Chambers Systems now, I’ll say, but better than. . . .”

The sound of electronic spinning and clicking was barely audible before the side door opened with the creaking of unoiled hinges. Adam pressed himself against the refrigerator once more and raised his gun. Someone was in the house and unless whoever it was turned back, they were moments away from battle.

“Well, we’re just going to have a look around,” Agent Kelly said. “Roberts, fly the drone and—”

An FBI agent stepped into the kitchen hallway, tucked some sort of device in his front pocket, and looked down at Adam curiously as the shotgun blast thundered. The agent rose from his feet—soaring backwards as though he had leapt in reverse—and slammed hard against the other side of the hallway.

Gunfire around the home began to ring out.

The recoil from the shotgun caused Adam to fire once more into the man as he landed, though he saw the agent’s eyes had already begun their final stare into nothingness. He rose to a crouch and looked for Eric. Another agent who had begun to open the back door danced backwards as the captain’s lethal rounds struck him. He tumbled over the side of the deck railing and fell to the ground below.

Mere seconds had passed since Adam’s first shot when the gunfire stopped suddenly, and, in a way, more jarringly than it had begun.

“Anyone hit?” Eric shouted as Gene blared out the same question. Adam didn’t answer. He fumbled over a response as he stood up and crossed the room—his adrenaline suppressing the distant pain that burned in his leg. He turned to mount the stairs when his dad came running down.

“They’re fine, Adam,” Rick said. “They’re all fine.” Adam fell to the stairs and drew a long breath. He hadn’t realized it until that moment, but he had been unable to breathe until his father had spoken. “I shot the man by the SUV. He didn’t launch the drone.”

“Thank God,” Gene said. “Elizabeth, are you alright?”

Elizabeth sat on the floor, white hair ruffled and arms shaking in shock.

“I’m fine,” she said. She shook her head and looked herself over quickly as though she needed to prove it to herself. She brushed her frayed hair back and looked up at the colonel. “I’m fine.”

“Grab the bodies and bring them inside,” Gene said. Eric was already out the back door and heading below to retrieve the man at the rear of the house. “Max, David—you two help Eric get those bodies down to the basement. Adam, get the doctor and tell your family they have ten minutes before this house is empty. I’ll search their vehicle for anything we can use.” Gene ran out the front door.

Instead of turning to run upstairs and tell his family, Adam paused for a moment before following the colonel outside.

“Wait a minute, Gene.”

“We ain’t got time to wait, Congressman,” Gene shouted as he trotted over to the SUV.

              The black vehicle had its back hatch open and an agent slumped up against the rear panel, eyes open and a slow drip of blood coming from his nose. Gene peered into the vehicle’s driver seat, and grabbed a see-though glass tablet, scrolling quickly through the device with one hand as he held the other one up to silence Adam. After a few moments, he spoke.

“Thank God,” he said. “They were a system tasked unit only.”

“What does that mean?” Adam asked.

“It means we were lucky. This was one of probably ten thousand computer generated pings that was shot off for whatever reason. We’re lucky they didn’t just send in a FOD. I’ll take their truck and ditch it when it runs out of power.” He peered in at the dashboard and stepped back. “By the looks of it I should get a good three hundred miles on the charge.”