Devon Ford - The Fall

“Surrey. Most people wouldn’t know that,” he said.

“Cal, most people don’t make it their business to know where our guests come from,” he said as the doors opened and he stepped out onto more lush, thick carpet.

Handing the key card over, Cal swiped it over the door of the room. Cal walked inside to find, miraculously, his luggage already in the room and a silver tray bearing a bottle of expensive scotch and a pair of crystal tumblers. Sebastian saw the two glasses and furrowed his brow, no doubt analyzing the performance of his staff and finding fault; providing two glasses was an error in diplomacy, but he recovered it.

“Allow me,” he said, opening the bottle and pouring two measures. “Welcome to New York City,” he said, raising one of the glasses as he offered the toast to Cal. Unable to resist the ingrained manners of an Englishman, he raised his own glass to return the gesture. Sebastian kept hold of the glass he drank from to subtly remove it from the room as though its inclusion were intentional.

“I’ll leave you to get freshened up, I’ll be in the lobby until ten pm,” he said as he turned for the door. “I’ll have a reservation made for you at our restaurant, compliments of the Waldorf.”

With that, Sebastian left. Cal drained the glass, stripped off his travel clothes and moments later stepped under a steaming shower.

Major Stephen Taylor of the National Guard placed the empty piece of paper over the one crammed with tightly packed text. Using a simple decoding pad was old-fashioned, archaic even, given the level of technology at their disposal.

Rotating digital encryption keys would allow the different factions of the Movement to speak freely, but the colonel was very specific; the enemy held those encryption keys as much as they did.

“We keep it old-school, son,” Butler had told him. “Keep those ass-hats guessing.”

The ass-hats he referred to were predominantly the Department of Homeland Security, not to mention the NSA, the FBI, and local police departments, and those shady sons-of-bitches working for the Department of Defense who answered to nobody but Washington. Taylor had once asked him about the CIA, and the big man had enigmatically told him not to worry about the goddamned CIA with a smile.

DHS and their seemingly unending powers, however, did concern him. Absolutely no member of the Movement used a mobile device to contact one another. No emails, no text messages, no using any cell phone connected to the Internet. They met face-to-face when they could, and communicated nothing via the airways.

“We go dark, boys,” Butler had said. “Keep them guessing.”

So they communicated in slow time, with truckers delivering sealed envelopes up and down the country, but slow in this case meant utterly safe, utterly insulated, and utterly anonymous. Even an intercepted message would take some linguistic genius sat at his desk in Quantico months to decipher every possible meaning of the message without an encryption pad, and even if they were successful, the intel would be so old as to be worthless to them anyway.

Taylor read the message again. He was unhappy, and the colonel was most definitely unhappy, because he had failed.

Maj. Move past the problem and find a solution. Destroy or disrupt target by any and all means necessary. Time of execution remains unchanged. Make it happen.

Taylor hated failure. It galled him. He was a professional soldier and he had a duty; a duty to his country, to his commanding officer—of the Movement, not the spineless jerk he had to report to—and above all he had a duty to his men.

The malfunction and loss of their own ‘pinch’ bomb, of their EMP device, was the fault of nobody but still it had happened. They still had a mission to undertake, they still had a target, but now they would rely on plans B and C. Major Taylor had cautioned Colonel Butler that a backup plan would put civilians in jeopardy, would likely result in casualties, but the mission remained. He knew his men would do their duty, and they were all prepared to break eggs making this omelet.

His men. They were what mattered most to him.

His men and women, technically, but the females under his command were the last ones to make a gender distinction, unless to point out that they could kick a man’s ass just as easily as anyone else. His brigade was well trained, and they looked up to him because he looked after them when they felt that their country no longer cared.

His trusted members of the Movement, a great portion of his fighting strength, were disillusioned servicemen and women, the majority of which found themselves pulled from the frontline and sent home with no time to adjust. They were thrown back into a society torn between looking down on them or thanking them for their service. A good number of his troops were from poor families who had joined up fresh out of high school, and now faced rising unemployment, a total lack of belonging, and conflicting media reports that their God-given second amendment rights would be taken from them by a government they felt was unconstitutional.

They felt abandoned; they needed something to believe in and something to fight for. They were part of the biggest war machine in the Western world, and they were trained to kill. There was little space for people like them back in the world; sure enough some went into law enforcement or the Department of Corrections, the lucky ones went home to families and jobs, but many were just hung out to dry.

So, thought Taylor with resignation, plan B it is.

And he made it happen.

Cal, having gorged himself on steak and seafood in the exquisite restaurant before washing it down with an entire bottle of red wine, woke with the echoes of a hangover bouncing around inside his skull and ricocheting off the walls of jet lag.

After throwing off the covers in the enormous and impossibly comfortable yet firm bed, he stepped into the waterfall shower again and let the decadence wash away the stress of yesterday. He dressed, ate a big breakfast of pancakes whilst surreptitiously pocketing a few pastries for later—no sense in buying lunch—and headed outside.

He had never seen so many people congregated in one place. Never seen so many cars packed bumper to bumper. Never heard such deafening ambient noise as every sound in the possible world competed for space in his ears under the overriding wail of sirens and car horns.

He swiped across the lock screen on his phone and brought up the map, even though as something of an afterthought he’d picked up a paper map from a stall near the decadent reception desk, which thankfully wasn’t manned by Bridget and her fake smile. First stop, which was the nearest, was the Rockefeller Center.

The plan, which had been Angie’s plan that he found himself agreeing to, was to see the sights of the famous New York City. Cal still felt bitter about not going somewhere with a beach, among many other things, which made his default position in the world rest at angry, but with the sidewalk under his feet he felt the stirrings of something resembling happiness.

Finding the Rockefeller within minutes, he swiped his phone from map to camera and reversed the lens. Leaning back and holding the phone at arm’s length, he grinned his best “I’m having the time of my life” smile and snapped the shot with the iconic buildings in the background.

Done. Get that online later, he thought, needs a hashtag though… something like, #whoneedsawife? or #f*ckyouangie?

Deciding that he had seen the iconic buildings, he felt that they looked too busy and the line of people waiting to pass through a security checkpoint was too long, he changed his mind about going inside. His intention was to see, if not experience, as many of the landmarks as he could to show the world that she hadn’t broken him. Switching back to the map, he retraced his steps to hit 5 thAvenue again. Almost immediately the building across the wide street from him took his breath away, so much more impressive and attractive than the skyscrapers people talked so much about. The cathedral was packed with people out in front and the sidewalks were cluttered by people trying to take their own picture with selfie sticks. It was like an assault course for anyone trying to just get by. Cal snapped a couple of pictures from his side of the street; even if he’d managed to cross over in one piece he’d end up having to take his own selfie from an angle which would look straight up his nose to get the beautiful building in the frame.