Page 80 of Battle Mountain

Then, as the full room gathered themselves up to leave the old hotel, Soledad said to the anarchists, “All your lives you listened to your professors telling you about the good old days when they marched in the streets and fought against the pigs. But theyneverdid something as important as this. You’re about to be heroes of the resistance, true children of the revolution, and people will know your names.”

When they were gone, he smiled to himself and took smug pride in choosing the people he’d gathered together in Soledad City. They’d swallow anything.

—

In the nextroom, Mark Eisele struggled against his constraints. He had heard it all, and until Soledad’s briefing, he would never have believed what they were about to do.

He recalled seeing the B-Lazy-U Ranch from the top of the ridge when he and Rankin had been shot up by Double-A and her team. Now he knew why they were up there: to scout out the target.

He had to alert his father-in-law, the governor. He had to alert anyone who would listen.

Tears came to his eyes as he strained against the nylon straps that held him down, but he managed to stretch them enough that at least the top one had an inch of slack in it.

He reached up and slipped his right hand under the strap with his palm against his chest. The shoulder wound screamed at him and his buttocks wound throbbed.

Eisele soon felt his fingertips under his chin, but he couldn’t advance his hand any farther. His arm was stuck at the elbow by the strap.

Then, with a grunt, he was able to get his arm free. The skin of his forearm burned from chafing it against the underside of the strap.

When the door opened and Soledad looked inside to check on him, Eisele quickly lowered his free arm down along his body and lay still. Would Soledad notice that his arm was on top of the constraint?

Eisele went cold with fear.

Should he continue to feign sleep or try to talk his way out of the situation? His heart whumped in his chest.

He listened over the sound of whooshing blood in his ears for thezzzzztsound of Soledad unsheathing his long blade from his crutch.

Then, outside the room, there was a disturbance in the hotel lobby. Someone came back in and slammed the door.

“Axel?” a male voice called out.

“In here, Sergeant.”

A figure approached Soledad from behind and said, “We’ve got a problem.”

“What now?”

“Two of the anarchists say they won’t budge until you lead them in the land acknowledgment. That purple-haired girl is one of ’em, and her boyfriend, the pencil-neck geek.”

“You’re kidding me,” Axel spat.

“I wish I was. Those people you brought in here are children, and children throw tantrums, because nobody ever told them to knock it off. I think you should pistol-whip those two and show ’em we’re not screwing around here.”

There was a pause as Soledad considered his options. Eisele remained still.

“That might make a few more of them revolt,” Soledad said. “We need them all, at least for now.”

“So what are you going to do?” the sergeant asked.

“I’ll go lead them in the fucking land acknowledgment,” Soledad said. Then his voice got icy. “We can deal with those idiots after all of this is over.”

“If that’s what you think.”

Eisele listened as Soledad left the room. His gait was unmistakable on the hardwood floor of the lobby: a footstep followed by thethunkof his crutch pad. But he continued to fake sleep, and he’d managed to slip his free arm under the sheet to conceal it. The sergeant hadn’t noticed.

—

When the sergeantwas gone, Eisele slipped his free arm out from beneath the sheet and reached down on the side of his bed until he felt the cold metal of the ratchet tie-down mechanism. He could reach it, but he couldn’t turn his head to view it. He used his fingers to trace the ratchet, trying to locate the release, aware that he had trouble with the procedure even with two hands. Rankin had chided him about it.

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