Empire (Empire 1)

“Can we keep it after?” said Benny.

“If you pay for it yourself,” said Mingo.

“Of course we’re going to pay for it ourselves,” said Benny. “You think they’re going to take a DOD purchase order?”

Cole shook his head. “They’ll fill our ATM accounts with plenty of money. This is the United States government. Possibly the only entity with more money than Aldo Verus.”

So it came down to Cole in a U-Haul. Everything they needed for a week in the woods—including rations, uniforms, backpacks, weapons, and ammunition. Covering it: a bunch of used furniture and boxes filled with old kitchen stuff. A Goodwill somewhere had been stripped of everything, it looked like.

If somebody just looked into the back of the truck, fine. If they pulled out a few boxes and looked inside them, fine. If they unloaded the fi

rst three layers, fine. But if the search got serious, Cole was toast.

He tried to picture the truck on the lonely back roads and he didn’t like the picture. Oh, he had his cover stories—if he took the northern route, then he was moving from Genesee to Pasco, but he needed to pick up stuff from his mother-in-law’s house in Colton on the way. If he went into Washington through Clarkston, then it was still Genesee and Pasco, only he could skip the mother-in-law. He even had the mother-in-law’s name—a woman they knew would not be home, but who had a daughter the right age to be married to Cole. Just in case they got a guardsman who happened to be a local boy.

Still, once he got across the border near Uniontown, why in the world would he take that circuitous route on Schlee and Steptoe and Wawawai River Road? Obvious answer: He wanted to avoid crossing the border again. Maybe they’d buy it. But it was a lot of miles out of the way. If I were a patrolman and I heard that story, I’d unload the whole damn truck.

It had been a solitary drive. A few cellphone calls, but not too many, just verifying that Drew was in Washington and that there were more guards but they didn’t seem particularly alert or hostile. Business as usual. Only . . . everybody in the airport watched the news. Baseball season, the Mariners were even in contention, sort of, but even in the bars, more people were watching CNN than ESPN or whatever game happened to be on.

“They care, man,” said Drew. “I just don’t know from looking which ones want the revolution to succeed, and which ones want it to fail.”

“Probably most of them just want it all to go away.”

“Don’t see many people inspired by President Nielson, tell the truth.”

“They inspired by the New York City Council?”

“The mayor’s acting like he thinks he’s the new President of the U.S.A.,” said Drew. “People kind of laughed.”

“Well that’s a good sign,” said Cole. “But we’ve talked long enough. Cellphones. Somebody might be listening.”

“In D.C. I worried,” said Drew. “Didn’t know who was doing what, and everybody had all the tech. But out here? What, they’re listening to all the cellphone calls?”

“Talk to you when I get in place,” said Cole.

Well, now here he was on Down River Road in Lewiston. He’d picked a wide spot to pull off and pretend he needed to take a quick nap. Then he walked like he just needed to stretch his legs. Got to a place where he could see the crossing. Not bad. Two National Guard guys stopping everybody, but they were mostly just looking inside cars and passing people through.

Of course, that might just be people they knew. But this was the road that became Wawawai River Road at the border. There were a couple of trucks, too. And those got looked at more carefully. Backs got opened up. Anyplace big enough to hold—well, to hold the kind of stuff that Cole was carrying

Still, nobody was unpacking anything.

He should go north. That’s what Drew and Load both told him. But last thing before he left, Mingo just said, “Barney Fife,” and grinned.

I’m not the U.S. Army invading Iran. I’m not a terrorist with a truck full of explosives to blow up a building or a city. I’m an American citizen crossing through a weird new security checkpoint where there didn’t used to be one. What have I got to be afraid of?

It was too far to see the faces of the guards. If he showed binoculars, that would make him look suspicious. The crossing on Highway 12, right in town, that was a bad one. Lots of guys with guns, lots of traffic, six cars at a time, no way could he cross there. And from here, not too late to turn around, go north; if somebody noticed him, he could say he just pulled off to reset, decide whether to stop by his mother-in-law’s house or not.

He sighed. Stretched. Sauntered back to the truck.

Hot hot day. That was the good thing about going in civvies. He could wear shorts and a T-shirt, sandals.

He got in the truck. It had done okay, crossing over the Rockies, driving more than twenty-five hundred miles. Good truck. Only three hundred miles to go.

He called Drew. This close to the border, they might be eavesdropping. So the call was circumspect. “Mom there?” asked Cole.

“Napping,” said Drew.

“Well tell her I’m on the way.”