Open Season

Source

Matthew Burleson left the EEOB shackled and with a bag over his head. It wasn't that the people moving him didn't want him to know where he was going, it was so he wouldn't be readily recognized. His escort had also draped him in an overcoat so that the orange jumpsuit wasn't as obvious from a distance.

Burleson was already disoriented from being sleep deprived, having a bag over his head just made things worse. He knew how close he was to the White House as he was being moved (the EEOB is just across the street) and the thought of almost having the opportunity to  be President and actually working out of the White House made him sick.

They had been so close. At least in his own mind he thought they had been close to overthrowing the existing government and replacing it with a group of men who saw things clearly and wanted to be part of a new world order. In his view, the world was becoming far too complex to let the average citizen decide who ran things.

It didn't faze him that there were also women involved in the plot, but Burleson discounted them. He was not a proponent of equal rights, not by a long shot. Which might have been a factor in his three divorces, not that he cared one way or the other. He was still under the impression that powerful forces were behind him and that his current predicament was temporary. His arrogance was palpable.

Ephraim Johansen was set up in his new cell at the JBAB brig. He was still hooked up to a monitor but his IV drip had been discontinued, he was able to eat solid food now. Though there was still some seepage from the stump where his leg used to be, the doctor had assured him that that took a while to go away.

He'd just had his first solid meal in a few weeks, though it was "jail food" it wasn't bad. When you haven't eaten for a while, damned near anything tasted good. He wondered what they were going to do with him.

He knew that his employer, the Central Intelligence Agency, was under some suspicion at the moment. His credentials at Homeland Security were perfectly valid, so far no one could find anything indicating that it was against the law to work at both places simultaneously. He was only paid for the hours he worked at either agency. At CIA that was mostly meetings, taking less than ten hours of his sixty hour week.

He was lucky he didn't have any association with the FBI, that agency was in total disarray at the moment. The old director had been gunned down in the street, though no one said anything out loud, Johansen would bet money that he knew the shooter, or shooters, personally. Did another agency in the Federal government murder William Sheppard? Johansen thought so, when parts of the government are trying to usurp control of the government, the holders of the offices trying to be taken over might fight back. Sheppard was arrogant enough to have assumed they'd just roll over.

He opened his eyes as his door opened, it was the Deputy Director of the CIA.

"Rest easy, Ephraim, I'm in the process of getting you cleared. I talked with Bill Aspinall this morning, the President's closest advisor, we have the documentation to prove that everything you did was in the interests of national security and had my blessing. If they want to hang you, they'll have to hang me as well."

"Really Sir, you think it's that simple?"

"It can be. I know you did some sketchy things out there. Ambushing those Park Service guys was nasty, but you weren't directly involved, that idiot Morgan was the driver behind that."

"Sir, I personally caused the deaths of the guys who opened fire with a machine gun at Federal agents."

"On my order."

"Do you think that saved the camp guards at Auschwitz?"

"No, it didn't. But you didn't kill innocents, you killed three men who had fired on, perhaps even hit, those Feds in that alleyway. They made war on the United States. You, as an agent of those United States, made war on them. They lost, we won. The President understands that, Aspinall assures me that above all else, Nakagawa is a pragmatist. Right now he's trying to put things back together, we need you at the Agency."

Johansen gestured at his missing leg, "I'm not much use in the field, am I?"

"No, you're not. But I think you'd make a damned useful Director of Operations. Feel up to it?"

"Well ..."

"Not immediately, of course. Your doc wants you to recover for another week, then physical therapy until you're ready to come back to work."

Johansen nodded, "Okay, on those terms, I'm in."

The electricity died somewhere around midnight. Senator Hawthorne assumed the government was behind that inconvenience. With the loss of power, the central air went down as well.

He sat up in his bed, wondering why the emergency generators hadn't come on automatically, then he heard it. They were running. He reached over to his bedside lamp and switched it on. Maybe the generators didn't have enough power to drive the air conditioning and keep the lights and refrigerators running.

There was a knock on the door, it was his personal aide, Jess Conwell.

"What is it, Jess?"

"I think the air isn't on because one of the breakers tripped."

"So turn it back on."

"Not that simple, Sir. The circuit panel is in the utility building. I told one of the maintenance guys to go out and reset it. He flat out refused."

"What?"

"Well, Wickford's corpse is still out there, the staff is freaking out. They're refusing to work."

Hawthorne sighed, "You go turn it on then."

"Sir?"

"Did I stutter, Jess?"

"Uh, Sir, there are guys out there, professionals with rifles and probably night vision gear as well. Do you think they're not watching the utility building?"

"Good lord man," Hawthorne dressed quickly in khaki slacks and a yellow polo shirt, slipping his feet into a pair of loafers, "I'll f**king do it myself."

Conwell followed the Senator downstairs where the door that led outside to the utility shed was wide open. Just inside the door, Congressman Otto Birmingham of California was sitting on the floor, his belt tightened around his leg just above the knee. Most of his calf muscle was missing.

"Otto, what happened?"

Birmingham grimaced, "I got shot you f**king idiot, what does it look like?

Senator Jackson Abrahams the Second chimed in, "As soon as he took one step out of the door, he was hit. Thank God they didn't kill him."

Jess Conwell looked at the door, moved over to it and slammed it shut. "I don't think they were trying to kill him, Senator. Have they missed anything they've shot at yet?"

"Whatever do you mean, Jess?" Hawthorne said angrily.

"They don't want you dead, Senator. They want you alive." Conwell gestured around the room, "They want all of you alive, to stand trial. For treason."

Hawthorne had an odd thought at that point, Conwell had said "you," not "us." It was if Conwell was distancing himself from the Dozen.

"Hell of a shot, Avi."

"It was tough, he was moving, slowly but he was moving. If he'd stepped the wrong way, I might have hit him higher up, severed the femoral, he'd bleed out before those people down there could stop the bleeding. As it is, he needs medical attention, soon. He's going to lose that leg, what's more, he knows it. He's probably already mentally separated himself from the group. He's in pain, they're not."

"They also know that we're not screwing around." Howard said as he came over.

"Next member of the Dozen that shows him or herself, blow their f**king head off."

Stein looked at his boss, "Uh, you want me to assassinate a member of Congress?"

"No, I want you to kill a traitor. Bill Aspinall just came on over the radio, the acting Attorney General has issued a warrant for the capture of every member of the Dozen. Dead or alive."

"Acting?" Hector Driscoll asked.

"Attorney General Proctor hanged himself in his garage. They found the body this morning."

"Damn."

"Aspinall wants Hawthorne and Chavez alive, the rest ...?" Howard shrugged.