“Sara?”
“I—” Sara looked at her hands. She was plagued by an uncontrollable shaking. “I’m in the mountains. On a compound. Everyone is dead. Dash had Michelle synthesize botulism. He killed them all.”
“Okay, hold on.” Faith’s hand covered the phone. She was relaying the information to someone else.
“I don’t know where Will is,” Sara told her. “He left with Dash and the other men. I think this morning. There were—” She tried to remember what he’d told her. “Forty men with AR-15s. Over ten thousand rounds of ammunition. Dash had them sprayed with botulism.”
“Jesus Christ,” Faith hissed. “I’m putting you on speakerphone. I’ve got the FBI with me. We’re tracing your call.”
“The boxes from the warehouse are here.” Sara peeled open one of the shipping packets. “The shipper is called the Whisting Company in North Carolina. The recipient is ACS, Inc. 1642 Airport Parkway. There’s a part number, a quantity of two thousand.”
“We’re looking up the address,” Faith said. “Can you open the box?”
Sara was already cutting the tape with Will’s knife. The contents were knotted into a plastic bag. At first, she did not understand what she was looking at. “They’re aluminum tins, like the kind that frozen foods come in.”
“Oh, God.” Faith sounded astonished. “Air Chef Services. They make airplane meals. Dash contaminated the containers with botulism. He’s going to poison hundreds of thousands of people.”
“Wait—” Sara started running up the hill. “There’s something else. Dash mocked up a two-story building. It’s at least half a football field. He had teams practicing infiltrations in full riot gear. Two teams, two waves of attacks.”
“What does it look like?”
Sara ran into the Structure. She circled around, looking for clues that would help identify the target. “There’s a second-floor balcony. The stairs go up the middle of the room, then there’s a landing, then two more sets of stairs branch off to the left and right.”
“Can you see anything else?”
Sara had reached the landing. She looked to the right.
“The letters LG or IG are painted on the floor at the top of the right-hand branch of stairs.” She ran up the other side. “If you go left, then to the end of the hall, there’s a capital G spray-painted in front of what looks like a door.”
“Door?” Faith asked. “No windows?”
“Only doors. Five on the right side, three on the left. Then there’s four more opposite the stairs, three in the hall behind the landing where the stairs T off.” Sara looked down from the railing. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to represent. A hotel lobby? Will thought maybe a synagogue or—”
“Wait,” Faith said. “I know what you’re describing. It’s an atrium.”
23
Wednesday, August 7, 9:58 a.m.
“Two minutes out, brothers.” Dash pulled back the slide on his Glock to make sure a bullet was in the chamber. “Remember our cause, my friends. Remember the sacrifices our families have made to bring us here today.”
There were murmurs of agreement all around. They were all clearly scared, but just as clearly, they were eager to do harm.
“What we do today is the first step in cleansing the country of the enablers and mongrels,” Dash said. “We must destroy this corrupt society in order to remake ourselves as the Framers intended. This country will be reborn. We will be reborn. That is our Message. We will bathe ourselves in the blood of the lambs and spread our seed into the wilderness.”
The chanting started again. “Blood and soil! Blood and soil!”
Will looked at his watch.
9:58 a.m.
Five black vans. Forty armed men.
Will mentally walked through what was supposed to happen once they reached their destination.
Team One, the bulk of their number, would go first. Cannon fodder, Dash had called them. Will assumed this meant that security at the incursion was high. Maybe half of the men would make it into the building. The other half would be pared down on the first floor.
That was when Team Two was supposed to charge in.
Bravo toward the LG. Charlie toward the G.
Will could not let it get that far. He would have to take out as many men as he could before they walked through the entrance.
Take out.
He couldn’t let himself reduce these men to collateral damage. Will was going to have to shoot them in their chests, their backs, their heads. They weren’t paper targets with circles over their bodies. Will had spent the last sixteen hours with them. He knew some of their names, what they liked and didn’t like, their bad jokes and origin stories.
They had no idea that Will was going to kill them.
“Damn.” Dobie’s hands were sweating so much that he couldn’t pull the slide on his gun. “What’s wrong with this thing?”
Will stared at the closed back doors. He had purposefully placed Dobie behind him. Will would be the second-to-last out. He was going to shoot Dash, then take out the rest of Bravo and Charlie as they started to run.
The van lurched to a stop. The tires burned rubber as it swerved into reverse.
Will looked at his watch.
9:59 a.m.
Dash said, “Steady, brothers.”
Everyone rolled down their black hoods, clipped on their helmets. Will unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled out Sara’s white headscarf. His only hope of not getting shot by one of the good guys was to tie it around his neck.
The van squealed to a stop.
Dash said, “Not yet, brothers!”
Another van stopped beside them. Then another. Four in all. The time for pep speeches and prayers had come and gone. Doors banged open. Feet started pounding concrete. Instantly, guns began to fire—rifles, Glocks, the pop-pop-pop overlaid by men and women screaming for their lives. The sound of their panic reverberated into Will’s ears.
Gerald banged on the side of the van.
Will tied the scarf around his neck. His heartbeat turned into a stopwatch.
Tick-tick-tick.
The doors broke open.
Sunlight blinded him. Will narrowed his eyes. He saw a sidewalk, some concrete stairs. Neatly trimmed grass and tall trees. Tall, white pillars holding up limestone.
Bravo and Charlie team were already on the move.
Will cracked his elbow into Dobie’s face. The kid’s head gonged against the van before he dropped to the floor.
“Go! Go! Go!” Dash yelled, firing his AR-15 from his hip.
Will felt suspended in the air as he jumped from the van. He took his first look at the target. The sparkling gold dome. The four-story portico. The neoclassical architecture. The east and west wings that housed the legislative chambers.
They were at the Georgia State Capitol.
“Let’s go!” Gerald sounded exhilarated by a happy rage. He shot one of the Capitol police officers. A mist of red exploded from the man’s head. He shot another officer in the stomach. The bullet chunked into the limestone. Civilians were screaming, running out the door, ducking across the grass. Gerald opened fire on them. Tens, maybe hundreds of people, were all running blindly into a wall of bullets.
Will shot Gerald in the face.
The woman behind him screamed.
“Get out of here!” Will pushed her away. He searched for Dash, checking faces, shooting any man he saw in a black hood. A bullet whizzed past his head. Will grabbed the dead cop’s hat and put it on. He dropped his rifle. He drew the Sig Sauer out of his holster. With his Glock, he shot another hooded man. A guy in a suit slammed into Will.
“Move!” Will shoved him aside.
So many people were streaming out of the doors that Will was washed back toward the sidewalk. He spun around, trying to find a target. He shot another hooded man, then another. He aimed at a third. The guy’s eyes went wide.
Daryl.
The man liked to fish. His wife had left him two years ago. His kids wouldn’t answer their phones when he called.
Will shot Daryl in the chest. He pivoted to the next hooded man, then the next.
Oliver, who hated chocolate. Rick, who loved French bulldogs. Jenner, who all night long had kept nervously asking what time it was.
Chest. Chest. Head.
“Please!” a woman screamed.
Will’s Glock was almost touching her face. The slide was back. The gun was empty.
“Run,” Will growled, dropping the magazine, snapping a new one into place.
Where the fuck was Dash?
Will scanned the area around the entrance. Blue dresses and black suits and red power ties and blood and bone and gray matter dripping along the sidewalks, staining the grass. He saw bodies splayed across flower beds, leaning against the trees, propped up against the monuments to Confederate generals and segregationists.
No Dash.