The Twelve (The Passage 2)

Not wanting to concede too much, Sara nodded.

"As of this morning, there is no Sara Fisher. Sara Fisher, flatlander number 94801, was killed in a suicide bombing that took the lives of nineteen loyal security officers of the Beloved Homeland. The only recognizable part of Sara Fisher that remains intact is, conveniently, an arm with your tag on it. This was procured from a female col who, not twenty-four hours ago, was employing it to beat women and children in the dairy barns. We thought that under the circumstances it had better uses, though she seemed not to agree. Put up rather a struggle, Nina, did she not?"

"The woman was a fighter. I'll give her that."

He regarded Sara again. "I see in your expression that our methods come as a shock. They shouldn't."

It was all going by her too fast. "You kill people. Not just the cols. Innocent bystanders."

Eustace nodded evenly. His face was unreadable, almost emotionless. "That's true. Fewer than our glorious director would have you believe, but these things never come without cost."

She was appalled by his casual tone. "That doesn't justify it."

"Oh, I think it does. Let me ask you something. What do you think the redeyes will do after today's attack?"

Sara said nothing.

"All right, I'll tell you. Reprisals. They'll crack down hard. It won't be pretty."

Sara looked at Eustace, then Nina, then Eustace again. "But why would you want that?"

Eustace took a long breath. "I'll put it as simply as I know how. This is a war, Sara. Nothing more or less. And in this war, we're badly outnumbered. We've managed to infiltrate nearly every level of their operation, but the numbers are still on their side. We could never defeat them if we engaged them directly. Our theater of operations is psychological. Rattle the leadership. Draw them out. Every person who's hauled into detention is somebody's father, somebody's wife, somebody's son or daughter. For each one the redeyes send to the feedlot, two more will join us. It may seem brutal. But there it is." He paused, allowing his words to sink in. "Maybe this doesn't make sense to you. Soon enough it will, if my hunch about you is correct. In any event, the upshot of the afternoon's attack is that you no longer exist. And that makes you extremely valuable to us."

"Are you telling me you planned this?"

He shrugged in a manner that suggested the question was more complex than she'd intended. "There's planning and there's planning. A lot of what we do is a matter of timing and luck. But in your case, a great deal of thought went into your extraction. We've been watching you for some time, waiting for the right moment. It was Jackie who put the pieces together and gave the go-ahead. The episode at the biodiesel plant was staged, as was her sudden disappearance from the lodge last night. She knew you would come looking for her at the hospital. Frankly, I found the whole thing a little elaborate, and I had my doubts, but her confidence in you won the day. And I'm pleased to say she was right."

Sara's mind was swimming with disbelief. No, drowning. "Jackie is ... one of you?"

Eustace nodded. "The woman was with us from the beginning, a senior operative. I can't tell you how many attacks she engineered. Her final mission was to bring you in."

Sara groped for words but found none. She simply couldn't square the woman Eustace was describing with the one she knew. Jackie? A member of the insurgency? For more than a year, the woman had barely been out of Sara's sight. They'd slept three feet from each other, worked side by side, eaten every meal in each other's company. They'd told each other everything. It made no sense; it wasn't possible. Then:

"What do you mean by 'final'?"

Something changed in the air. "I'm sorry," he said. "Jackie's dead."

His words were like a slap. "She can't be!"

"I'm afraid it's true. I know she meant a lot to you."

"They don't move people from the hospital until dark! I've seen the van! We have to get her!"

"Listen to me-"

"There's still time! We have to do something!" She darted her eyes to Nina, still standing impassively with her arms folded over her rifle, then back at Eustace. "Why aren't you doing anything?"

"Because it's too late, Sara." His expression softened. "Jackie was never in the hospital. That's what I'm telling you. Jackie was the driver of the car."

The sensation was of something breaking. That was how it felt. Something broke inside her. A final severing, the last thread binding her to the life she knew cut away. She was floating, floating away.

"She knew how sick she was. At most she would have lasted a few more months before they sent her to the feedlot." Eustace leaned closer. "It was how she wanted it. The crowning moment of a glorious career. She wouldn't have had it any other way."

"She's dead," Sara said, to no one.

"She did what she had to do. Jackie was a hero of the insurgency. And here you are, ready to pick up where she left off."

She couldn't seem to make herself cry. She wondered why this was, and then she knew: the last tears of her life had fallen; there were no more left inside her. How strange, not to be able to cry. To love someone the way she'd loved Jackie and find no mourning in her heart.

"Why me?"

"Because you hate them, Sara. You hate them and you're not afraid of them. I saw it in you that day in the truck. Do you remember?"

Sara nodded.

"There are two kinds of hatred. One gives you strength, the other takes it away. Yours is the first kind. I've always known that about you. Jackie knew it, too."

It was true; she hated them. She hated them for their leering eyes, their easy, laughing cruelty. She hated them for their watery gruel and icy showers; she hated the lies they made her shout; she hated their battering batons and the smiles on their smug faces. She hated them with her bones and blood, each cell of her body; her nerves fired with hatred, her lungs breathed hatred in and out, her heart pumped an elixir of pure hatred through her veins. She was alive because she hated them, and she hated them, most of all, for taking her daughter away.

She became aware that Eustace and Nina were waiting for her to speak. She understood that all they'd done and said had been arranged for this one purpose. Step by careful step, they had led her to the edge of an abyss. Once she stepped off, she'd be herself no more.

"What do you want me to do?"

Chapter 41

The three of them were rescued the next afternoon by a DS patrol sent to look for them when the tankers failed to arrive in Kerrville. By this time, Peter, Michael, and Lore had left the hardbox and returned to the scene of the attack. The blast had gouged out a wide crater, fifty yards at least; heaps of twisted wreckage lay spread over the adjacent fields. Oily smoke poured forth from still-burning pools of petrol, smearing a sky already inhabited by a cloud of airborne scavengers. Bodies, charred to blackened crusts, mingled with the debris. If any of the grisly remains belonged to their attackers, it was impossible to tell. All that was left of the mysterious gleaming truck were a few sheets of galvanized metal, proving nothing.

Michael was a wreck. His physical injuries-a dislocated shoulder he had rammed back into place against the wall of the hardbox, a sprained ankle, a gash above his right ear that would need stitches-were the least of it. Eleven oilers and ten DS officers: men and women he had lived with, worked with. Michael had been the one in charge, somebody they trusted. Now they were gone.

"Why do you think he did it?" Peter asked. He was speaking of Ceps; during their long night in the hardbox, Michael had told Peter what he'd seen in the side-view mirror. The two of them were sitting on the ground at the edge of the river; Lore had moved upstream. Peter could see her squatting by the water, shoulders shaking with tears she didn't want them to witness.

"I guess he thought there was no other way." Michael squinted upward, watching the circling birds, though he seemed not to be really looking at anything. "You didn't know him like I did. There was a lot to the guy. No way he'd let anybody be taken up. I only wish I'd had the guts to do it myself."

Peter could read the pain and doubt in his friend's face: the disgrace of the survivor. He had known this emotion himself. It wasn't the kind of thing that ever left you. "It wasn't your fault, Michael. If the blame is anyone's, it's mine."

If his words were any comfort, Peter couldn't see it. "Who do you think those people were?" Michael said.

"I wish I knew."

"What the hell, Peter? A truckload of virals? Like they were pets or something? And that woman?"

"I don't get it, either."

"If it was the oil they wanted, they could have just taken it."

"I don't think that's what they were after."

"Yeah, well. Neither do I." A ripple of anger tensed his body. "One thing I do know. If I ever find those people, I'm going to make it hurt."

They spent the night with the search party in a hardbox east of San Antonio and arrived in Kerrville the next morning. Once inside the city, they were separated into different chains of command: Peter to Division Headquarters and Michael and Lore to the Office of the Domestic Authority, which oversaw all ex-murus assets, including the Freeport oil complex. Peter was given time to clean up before his debriefing. It was midday, the barracks mostly empty. He stood in the shower for a long time, watching the greasy soot swirl down at his feet. He knew himself well enough to understand that the full emotional impact of events hadn't quite sunk in. Whether this was a weakness or a strength he could never decide. He knew he was in a lot of trouble, but this concern seemed petty. Most of all, he felt sorry for Michael and Lore.

He dressed in his cleanest fatigues and made his way to Command, a former office complex adjacent to city hall. When he entered the conference room, he was startled to see a face he knew: Gunnar Apgar. But if he'd expected any word of reassurance from the man, it quickly became evident that none was forthcoming. As Peter snapped to attention, the colonel shot him a cold glance, then returned his attention to the papers resting on the long table before him-no doubt the report from the DS patrol.

But it was the second man of the three that gave Peter the most pause. To Apgar's right sat the imposing figure of Abram Fleet, general of the Army. Peter had laid eyes on the man only once in his life; it was tradition that the GA administer the oath of induction for all Expeditionary. There was nothing physically remarkable about the general's appearance-everything about him communicated an almost perfect physical averageness-yet he was who he was, a man whose presence altered a room, seeming to make the molecules of air vibrate at a different frequency. The third person seated at the table Peter didn't recognize, a civilian with a trim gray beard and hair like brushed wheat.

"Have a seat, Lieutenant," the general said. "Let's bring this to order. You know Colonel Apgar. Mr. Chase is here as a representative of the president's staff. He will serve as her eyes and ears in this"-he hunted for the correct phrase-"unfortunate development."

For over two hours, they pounded Peter with questions. The general did most of the talking, followed by Chase; Apgar was largely silent, occasionally scribbling a note or asking for clarification. The tenor of the whole thing was disquietingly peremptory, as if they were trying to ensnare Peter in a contradiction. The underlying suggestion seemed to be that his story was a cover-up for some man-made catastrophe for which Peter, one of only three survivors, including the convoy's head oiler, bore the blame. Yet as the grilling continued, he began to sense that this suspicion was hollow, a front for some deeper concern. Again and again they returned to the matter of the woman. What was she wearing, what did she say, how did she look? Had there been anything odd about her appearance? To each of these repeated probings, Peter related the order of events as accurately as he could. She was wearing a cloak. She was remarkably beautiful. She said, You're tired. She said, We know where you are. It's just a matter of time. "We," the general repeated. We who? I don't know. You don't know because you don't remember? No, I'm positive. She didn't say anything else. Round and round, until even Peter began to doubt his own account. By the time it was over-his questioning came to a close with an abruptness in keeping with its hectoring tone-he felt not just emotionally but physically exhausted.

"A word of warning, Lieutenant," the general concluded. "You are not to discuss what happened on the Oil Road, or the contents of these proceedings, with anybody. That includes the surviving members of the convoy and the search party that brought you in. The determination of this body is that for reasons unknown, one of the tankers exploded, destroying the convoy as well as the San Marcos bridge. Is that clear?"

So, the truth. What had happened on the Oil Road was not the whole story; it was a piece of a larger puzzle the three men were trying to wedge into place. Peter stole a glance at Apgar, whose expression communicated only the manufactured neutrality of someone obeying the orders of his superior.

"Yes, General."

Fleet paused, then continued with a note of caution: "One last matter, Jaxon, and this is also to be treated with the utmost confidence. It seems that your friend Lucius Greer has escaped from detention."

For an instant Peter doubted that he'd heard the general correctly. "Sir?" He darted his eyes toward the others. "How did he-?"

"That's not known at this point. But it seems very likely he had help. The same night Greer went missing, one of the sisters left the orphanage and failed to return. A DS at the western pickets reported seeing two people leaving on horseback just after oh three hundred hours. A man-Greer, obviously-and a teenage girl, wearing the tunic of the Order."