Fall Back Read online

  Christ, I sound like fucking Nixon, he thought, his stomach clenching.

  But it seemed to work. No one said a word, just looked at each other, then back to Jax. A few clasped their hands under their chins or ran their hands through their hair. All of them appeared deep in thought.

  He’d struck a chord with that line. Hit the people where they lived. For one brief, shining moment, the future looked clear.

  Then it all blew up in his face.

  Chapter 12

  “I think you’re full of shit,” said the white-haired man who had been the first to speak from the original armed contingent that had shown up early. “You’re just looking for us to kowtow to you army fuckers!”

  “Shut up, moron!” another man yelled. “You’re the one who’s full of shit!”

  “You want to watch your mouth,” the white-haired man said, dropping his hand to the pistol on his belt.

  “Okay, let’s dial it back,” said Jax, raising his hands. “This is supposed to be—”

  White Hair cut him off. “I know what it’s supposed to be; it’s these idiots who don’t know. Be honest, Captain.” He said it with a sneer in his voice. “You’re here to tell us the army is in charge of everything. Go ahead and tell me that’s not true.”

  Alarm was starting to creep across Maggie’s face. At three and nine, Ruben and Val were squaring their stance and moving their right hands to their weapons. By the door, Jax could see the cords on Price’s neck standing out.

  “A central authority is crucial—” he began.

  “Central authority!” White Hair hooted. “Yeah, I heard that before. That’s what the socialist regimes used to tell people in banana republics before they started grinding them under their boot heels!”

  “Sir, you need to calm down,” Maggie said from behind Jax. He could hear the natural air of authority in her voice. “This is supposed to be a civil meeting. If you don’t sit down, I’ll be forced to charge you with disturbing the peace.”

  The men around White Hair began to snicker. He himself held up his hands as if to surrender.

  “You gonna lock me up, Sheriff?” he asked in a mocking tone. “’Cause I only see one of you.”

  Before anyone could speak, Jax covered the ten feet between him and the white-haired man in three strides, until their faces were only inches apart. The man’s shocked expression would have been comical under other circumstances.

  “STAND DOWN!” Jax bellowed straight from his diaphragm, startling the man backward until he tripped over the bleachers and went sprawling on his ass.

  Some of the crowd erupted in laughter. Unfortunately, Jax saw, the original armed contingent weren’t among them. He felt a blade of adrenaline slice through his belly as they started to unshoulder their weapons. A few had shotguns, but what concerned him were the handful of AR-15s. The rifles were semi-auto, but could have easily—if illegally—been modified to full auto. He doubted that was the case, but he couldn’t be sure about anything these days.

  White Hair scrambled to his feet and pulled a nine-millimeter from the holster on his waist.

  “You’re gonna take this from my cold dead hand,” he spat. “The Constitution warned us about letting ourselves be taken over by armies.”

  “You’re insane!” a woman cried out. “They’re here to help!”

  “Oh, they’re always here to help,” said White Hair. “Next thing you know their boots are on your throat. Not me, sister.”

  Several of the rest of the crowd started to make their way to the door. Out of the corner of his eye, Jax saw Price advancing into the room from the doorway, hand on his holster. At three and nine, Ruben and Val were doing the same.

  The eerie calm that Jax always felt in combat swept over him like a cool wave. This he was familiar with.

  “Drop your weapons,” he commanded. “Now.”

  “Or what?” asked one of the others, a muscular man in his early twenties who was now pointing his Remington over-under at Jax’s chest.

  “Or you won’t have to worry about Eko,” said a female voice.

  Jax glanced over to see that Maggie had somehow managed to approach the kid from his flank without being seen, and was now pointing the barrel of her service revolver at his head. Shit.

  Jax reached down to the radio on his belt and hit the squelch button three times.

  “We can end this right now,” he said evenly. “Everyone lowers their weapon. No one needs to get hurt here.”

  “Answer the question!” a man shouted from the crowd. He wasn’t part of the armed contingent, but the anger of his face was obvious. “Or what? What if we don’t go along with you? We got our rights! Like he said, it’s in the Constitution!”

  More murmurs of agreement in the group. Jax squeezed his eyes shut and hissed out a breath. He wished it hadn’t come to this. But deep inside, hadn’t he always known it would?

  “President Fletcher’s last act as commander-in-chief was to declare a state of martial law across the United States,” he said evenly. “The military is the final authority in the country until further notice.”

  On cue, he saw Ruben, Val and Price draw their weapons. He stepped forward, ignoring the shotgun pointed at him.

  “Jesus Christ!” someone yelled. The crowd was agitated now.

  Jax raised his voice but kept it under control. “This is the new reality,” he called. “And at the risk of putting too fine a point on things, if you’re a civilian, you are either on the bus or you are under the bus. Is that clear?”

  Things went to hell quickly after that: One of the armed contingent leapt from the third riser of the bleacher and tackled Maggie to the gym floor, which allowed the man she’d been holding her weapon on to raise his shotgun to a spot between Jax’s eyes.

  Two things happened immediately after that. First, Ruben put a bullet between the shoulders of the white-haired man, who had crawled his way back to the front of the bleachers and thumbed back the hammer of his nine-millimeter, preparing to fire at Jax.

  An instant later, Jax pivoted to his right and brought his right arm up and around in an arc that knocked the barrel of the younger man’s Remington away from him. He followed through on the movement, trapping the barrel under his right arm and driving his left elbow into the kid’s nose.

  Jax was dimly aware of shouts around him as some of the crowd stumbled over each other trying to get out of the way. He was focused on the ten or so men who had shown up armed. They were all in various stages of drawing their weapons; it was obvious none had been properly trained, but there was no doubt what was going to happen next.

  Maggie moved to get to her knees, but Jax kicked her back down to the floor with the sole of his boot, drawing his own sidearm at the same time. Two taps later and the kid with the shotgun was jigging backward into the third riser. Meanwhile, one of the men in camouflage had turned to face Cruz and was squeezing off rounds from his AR-15. The sound of the shots echoed off the high walls as the sergeant returned fire and dropped him with three rounds to the head and throat.

  “Motherfucker!” another of the dozen hollered, raising his rifle in Ruben’s direction, but it was too late. He was down before he even got the stock into the crook of his shoulder.

  Jax dropped to the floor, covering Maggie’s body with his own as the rest of White Hair’s allies started firing in earnest. From his position, he could see Ruben and Val diving for cover behind the risers as Price walked calmly toward the shooters, firing steadily. Jax thought the major was either the stupidest military man he’d ever seen or the bravest.

  “We have to get out of here!” Maggie yelled from under him.

  “Stay put!” he ordered.

  Two seconds later, he saw what he had been waiting for: Grant had sent in the half-dozen members of Echo Company who had been positioned outside the school. They converged on the gymnasium, firing high-caliber weapons at every armed civilian in the bleachers. They were the best shots in Echo, and Jax knew they would do everything in their
power to keep anyone without a weapon from being hurt.

  The ad hoc militia lasted about eight seconds against Echo. Jax watched as a stray round shattered the backboard of the basketball net, raining tempered glass down on Carol Firth’s coffee urns. A few rounds chewed chunks out of the plaster in the gym walls. When the shooting was over, there were a dozen bodies draped over the risers. Two dozen more people huddled, unharmed but screaming, in various spots between the bleachers and the entrance. Another forty or so had fled the building during the melee.

  Jax made a quick scan of the battlefield: Ruben and Val were unhurt. Price was nursing a bleeding bicep, but he was standing.

  An Echo corporal named Farries advanced on him. “Sir!” he called. “All clear?”

  “All clear,” he said, pushing himself off the floor. He reached down and offered a hand to Maggie Stubbs, who took it shakily.

  “Jesus Christ,” she breathed. “That was… That was…”

  “That was regrettable,” Jax said with a frown.

  With the shooting over, the rest of the crowd bolted frantically for the doorway. A part of Jax wished he could do the same—as much as he knew he’d had no choice but to do what they did, he also knew he’d essentially just wiped his ass with the Constitution. Martial law or not, those men had every right to show up armed and ask hard questions.

  Deep down, he knew he’d made the right call. That didn’t make what they’d done right—not by a long stretch—but what choice did they have? Order had to be maintained at any cost or Colorado Springs would descend into chaos, and once they started down that road, there was no hope for America.

  “Regrettable?” Maggie’s eyes widened. “You just killed a dozen civilians!”

  He rounded on her. “That’s one way to look at it,” he said coldly. “Another is that we just stopped a dozen armed civilians from making a mistake that could have cost the lives of every last person in the room.”

  Maggie shook her head. “You know that’s crazy, right?”

  “It sure is,” he said. “Welcome to the new republic.”

  Then he pulled out his radio and sent a message to the resort to get Archer on the line ASAP.

  Chapter 13

  The green carpet of the resort meeting room was particularly ugly in the fading light of the afternoon as Jax went over his story in his head. Every angle, every possible outcome, every what-if. Whoever was coming to debrief him on the high school incident—he assumed it would be Archer—wouldn’t see any remorse in his eyes. He’d dealt with the situation in the only way he could have.

  When he finally heard the sound of the door handle turning, he stood and prepared to salute his colonel. But the man entering the room wasn’t Archer.

  It was the man from Atlanta.

  “Captain,” the man said, dropping a stack of papers on the conference table. “Sorry I kept you waiting.”

  Jax noticed the man’s hair had been trimmed since he’d last seen him, and he’d sprouted a pair of oak leaf clusters on the shoulders of his fatigues. Whoever he was, he was apparently a major.

  “Sir,” Jax said with a salute. “I was expecting Col. Archer.”

  “I know you were,” he said, motioning for Jax to sit. “Plans have changed. I’m Major Smith. Pleased to meet you.”

  The man’s tone suggested he couldn’t care less about meeting Jax. What was this about? He was supposed to be debriefed, and Jax had some pointed questions about the direction he was expected to take going forward. He’d worked out a long, detailed explanation of his actions at the school, and was prepared to argue in his defense.

  Now he was in the room with a man he didn’t trust as far as he could throw, and he had no idea how much Smith knew about what he’d been discussing with Archer and the president up till now. He wanted to speak, but he wasn’t about to offer information to this guy. Not a hope in hell.

  The major scanned a piece of paper—Jax saw it was the handwritten report he’d submitted—for several long moments before finally looking him in the eye.

  “Anything unusual to report?” the major asked.

  The line reminded Jax of the bland way Smith had reacted to learning Hayley would be joining the transport from Stuttgart. That wasn’t what he’d expected to hear at all.

  “Sir?”

  “This summary is pretty straightforward to me,” Smith said. “Civilians brought weapons to a public meeting and threatened Army personnel. You utilized appropriate specialists to eliminate the threat with minimal consequences. Anything else to add?”

  He had plenty to add, but didn’t know how far he could go with Smith.

  “We were assisted by the El Paso County sheriff,” he said. “I think she could be an asset going forward. She’s smart and capable.”

  “Has she been vaccinated?” Smith might as well have been asking about the soup of the day.

  “Not that I know of, but she appears to be healthy.”

  He nodded. “If she hasn’t started to show symptoms by now, chances are she’s one of the lucky few who are naturally immune. In any case, go ahead and draft her if you think she’ll be of use.”

  Jax cocked an eyebrow. “What if she doesn’t want to be drafted?”

  “No one wants to be drafted, Captain. That’s why they came up with a different word from ‘enlisted’.”

  Jax couldn’t argue with that. His gut cramped at the thought of passing along the news to her. He’d make a point of shielding his groin when he did.

  Smith shrugged. “Anything else to add?”

  Jax took a deep breath. He needed to take a step further here, consequences be damned.

  “To be honest, sir, I expected a little more pushback about my decisions this afternoon.”

  For the first and only time since Jax had met the man, Smith smiled. Even more surprising, he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

  “President Raines and Col. Archer both sing your praises, Captain,” he said. “I can see why. You don’t have any illusions about the situation the republic is in, and you apparently understand the old proverb that he who hesitates is lost.”

  Jax felt a surge of pride in spite of himself. He wondered if Archer and Raines had brought Smith up to speed on his particular mission.

  “Sir,” he said, nodding. “I appreciate that.”

  “If every person under my command was like you, I could sleep eight hours a night.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but who is under your command?”

  Smith glanced at his watch. “Not to be an asshole, Captain, but I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to hang around here. The president will be broadcasting a message via closed circuit throughout the mountain and here in the resort at 1800 hours. That should answer any questions you might have.”

  And just like that, the cloak of secrecy was back. But Jax at least felt some satisfaction in knowing a bit more about the mystery man who shot riot cops in airports and had the ear of the top brass.

  “Sir,” he said, nodding.

  “One more thing,” said Smith. He reached under the conference table and emerged with a silver and black box. “This is for you and your men. I liberated it from the bar here at the resort.”

  He handed the box to Jax. It was familiar to him, though he’d never seen one outside of a locked glass case: the top featured the well-known Jack Daniels logo. Under that was the word “Monogram” and the numeral 1998.

  “Sir,” he breathed. “You, uh, you do realize this goes for over a thousand dollars a bottle?”

  Smith grinned again. “I’ll be sure to worry about that as soon as the banks reopen.” He gathered up his papers. “Are you familiar with the navy rum ration, Captain?”

  Jax nodded.

  “Sailors were given a pint a day for their service. It was the only way they could keep men doing the shitty work of serving in the navy during wartime. America got rid of it early on, but the British held onto the tradition until 1970. Do you know why they settled on rum?�
�

  “Nosir.”

  “Because the West Indies were lousy with it. It was cheaper than fresh water.” He opened the door to leave. “Seems to me we’re in the same situation now, Captain. Gallons of it sitting around, waiting to be picked up. So enjoy that bottle with your men. If you develop a taste for it, I’d recommend liberating some for yourself. We might as well get some sort of compensation out of this shitty situation.”

  Jax watched as the door swung closed behind Smith. He was still thinking about his parting words as he drove the twenty miles back to Cheyenne Mountain.

  ***

  Ruben Lambert raised his Styrofoam cup and the rest of the table followed suit.

  “Here’s to Major Smith,” he said. “The mysterious, cold-ass, airport-shooting motherfucker with the excellent taste in booze.”

  Jax snorted a laugh out his nose, almost spilling his cup.

  “Don’t do that, man,” he chuckled. “This stuff is expensive.”

  They were in the mess hall sharing the bottle with Price, who was at the mountain for medical care, along with Farries and the other five members of the Echo cavalry that had saved the day at the school. Cruz wasn’t a drinker and had begged off.

  Ruben leaned closer to Jax and spoke in a low voice. “So did you get any more info on Smith?”

  “Naw,” said Jax. “My gut’s telling me he’s a Virginia farm boy, hence the secrecy. Whether that’s MI or INSCOM, I couldn’t guess.”

  “Or maybe the one he works for doesn’t have a name.”

  Jax shook his head. “Try to stay out of the rabbit holes, man. You’ll get stuck down there.”

  Farries smacked his lips. “This stuff pretty damn good. I don’t know if it’s thousand-bucks-a-bottle good, but there’s no denying it beats the shit I can afford on my pay.”

  Price was drinking with his left hand because his right was in a sling. He was lucky that the stray bullet he’d walked into at the school had only creased the flesh of his bicep.