John Gilstrap - Threat warning

Or their paranoia, Jonathan didn’t say. “What exactly are they contracted to do for the government?”

Another annoying shrug. “Make stuff, I guess. Whatever stuff they make. What does any of this have to do with the phone call from the boy? Is he somebody special?”

Jonathan said, “He is now.”

Ryan tried to find a comfortable position in the straight-back wood-and-leather chair, but it wasn’t possible. It was a dining room chair-the kind you’d find only in a very rich man’s house. The chair back was framed in wood, but with a black leather panel that ran down the length of his spine. They’d run his arms through the openings on either side of the panel, and then fastened metal handcuffs to his wrists way too tightly. The only way for him to take the pressure off the bones of his wrists was to shove his arms all the way through the openings, up to the bends in his elbows. To do that, though, meant pressing his forearms through some very narrow spaces. Sure, he was skinny, but there was a limit.

Even as the sheriff pulled up to the front of the house to drop him off, Ryan had sensed that trouble was on the way. First, there’d been the way the sheriff had been acting all during their ride, after he’d picked him up; but the real fear didn’t hit him until he saw the guards dressed in black on the front porch.

He was tired of guards dressed in black. Apparently, everybody in West Virginia was a terrorist.

When Sheriff Neen looked at him, Ryan sensed that he even felt a little apologetic.

“Why are you doing this?” Ryan had asked.

“It’s a new world, son,” he’d said. “And it appears that you just got sucked up into it.”

He’d allowed himself to be cuffed without a fight, partly out of sheer exhaustion, but mostly out of a hopeless sense that he’d been rendered powerless.

So here he sat trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey in the middle of some rich guy’s dining room, sucked up into a steaming pile of bad news, while on the other side of closed doors on the opposite side of the house, two men yelled at each other.

Ryan couldn’t make out the words, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that whatever was being said, the anger was about him.

Michael Copley’s mind reeled at the multiple layers of incompetence. Kendig Neen sat comfortably in the leather club chair next to the fireplace in Brother Michael’s office, his legs crossed while he casually fingered the waxed edge of his mustache.

The son of a jackal didn’t even have the decency to show remorse. “What do you have to say for yourself?” Copley challenged.

Neen seemed to ponder that, and then said, “You’re welcome?”

Copley felt his ears redden. Neen had always worn an arrogant streak, but this was too much. “Excuse me?” He sharpened his tone to sound as menacing as he could.

Neen cleared his throat and said more loudly, “You’re welcome. You know, for bringing the boy back in safely and stopping this publicity hunt of yours from turning into a disaster.”

Copley felt himself breathing heavily. “You arrogant prick,” he said. “He’s a boy, and he escaped from the prison you set up, after getting past the guards that you trained.”

“Which in both cases never should have existed in the first place.”

“We’re at war, Brother Kendig,” Copley bellowed.

“On two fronts,” Neen bellowed back, matching the tone exactly. “One of which should never have been opened.”

“That is not for you to decide! The Board of Elders decided that now was the time-”

“I’m on the Board of Elders, remember?” Neen said. He’d modulated his voice back to the late-night-DJ tone that suited him so well. “And with few yet notable exceptions, the elders are your lapdogs. If you asked them to stick needles in their eyes, three quarters of them would do it without questioning the wisdom of blindness.”

Brother Michael took a deep breath to yell, but settled himself. Spiking his blood pressure would help no one and change nothing. “We’ve had this discussion before, Brother Kendig. That you disagree with the opinion of the majority does not grant you authority to disregard their decision.”

“Which is why I established a prison room on the compound and why I trained a contingent of guards.”

“Yet their performance was abysmal.”

“I don’t know that that’s true,” Neen said. “I mean, clearly, something went wrong if the boy was able to get away, but I have no idea yet what that something might have been. I’m told that the guard who was supposed to be on duty-Brother Stephen-is in fact missing.”

“Where-”

“I don’t know where. But Brother Michael, you have to understand that this is yet another case where you refuse to acknowledge that actions have consequences.”

Copley scoffed, “Certainly it’s plain that investing in guard training has the consequence of incompetence.”

“And what about the panic you instilled in that family by making them read a statement to the world that they would be executed? Do you think maybe that increased their desire to get out, and therefore made them take chances that they otherwise never would?”

“We needed symbols-”

“To hell with the symbols, Michael,” Neen blurted.

The words hit Copley like a hammer. “How dare you?”

Neen laughed. “How dare you? Don’t you think that the trail of dead bodies across the country is enough of a symbol? Do you really think that we need the image of a mother and her child to make people any more frightened than they already are?”

“You pretend to know the entire plan, Brother Kendig,” Copley said. “You do not. All of this plays an important role.”

“I know more than you think I do. I know that the importance of the GSA contract for your company reaches far beyond the revenue that it will generate. We’re this close, Brother Michael, to accomplishing all that we’ve fought so long to achieve. We can bring the disunited states of America back to its roots. We can tear it away from the money grubbers and the Users.”

“It’s not that we can, Brother Kendig. It’s that we will.”

Neen gave a little wave to concede the point. “Fine. Absolutely. We will succeed. Just as you said. But we can do it without the grandstanding for the cameras.”

Copley eased himself into the chair opposite the one occupied by Neen. “I heard the recording, Brother Kendig,” he said. “I know who this boy’s father is. He’s one of the very people who is bringing so much misery to the world.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankles as he interlaced his fingers across his chest. “His father is a U.S. soldier. Special Forces.”

Neen became suspicious, cocking his head to the side. “What’s your point?”

“He is the point on the sword,” Copley said. “He leads the fighting that creates all the evil. We have an opportunity to show the world that no one is safe. Not even their most elite warriors.”

Neen waited for the rest.

“Think of the spectacle. We can hold a public trial and stream it to the world.”

“No,” Neen said. “God, no, Michael, you can’t go there. You can’t even think that way.”

Was that weakness he saw in the sheriff’s face? Fear on the countenance of Kendig Neen?

“This is what I was talking about,” Neen said. His voice grew louder. “This is the hubris that will be our undoing.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Copley fired back. “This is what will make the Movement famous throughout the world.”

“As the stupidest thing done in a generation. Have you forgotten nine-eleven?”

“Don’t patronize me, Brother Kendig. That was a botched effort by a bunch of amateur-”