Most Revolutionary — Chapter Twenty-Six
Pregnant With Evidence
MOST REVOLUTIONARY — A SERIALIZED NOVEL
During a killer Iowa blizzard, fearless DAPL militant and radical plant nursery grower Sabia Perez first saves then kidnaps the stranded President of the USA to ransom a better world.
Previously: Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez appoints new FBI Director Priama Steiner. Sabia Perez seduces Secret Service Director William Kingsley. President Kristen Silver taunts fugitive ex-FBI Director Maximilian Castelan in the coal mine survival bunker beneath the Perez farmhouse. Jenna Ryzcek and Roca Perez tend captive Tucker Gere in the Perez underground home.
Chapter Twenty-Six — Pregnant With Evidence
Sabia would like things to go another way. But, no — she’s basically fucked.
Led by an FBI SWAT truck, three large armored vehicles and many marked and unmarked cars speed along the country road south from Des Moines toward the Perez farmhouse. They slam on the brakes at the Perez drive and yard.
Fully armed SWAT teams rush out of the armored vehicles. Officers in riot gear pour out of the cars and flood the porch and surround the house and barn. Two FBI helicopters roar to the ground, landing on the road by the farmhouse, blocking off the area north and south.
The lead officer bangs on the front door. “FBI! Open up!”
The officer scarcely waits, then signals forward another officer carrying a battering ram. He easily smashes open the old door.
The SWAT teams and other officers sprint inside. Some rush upstairs, some scout the first floor, most go into the basement where they quickly locate the hidden door — pre-known, pre-planned. They rush through into the stairwell leading down to the mudroom of the Perez underground home.
In the great room underground, Sabia Perez and Jenna Ryzcek sit on the couch holding hands. They know there’s no resisting what’s coming. The alarm for the front door on the nearby wall chirps to no end. Roca sits in a willow rocking chair, field book pressed to his lap. Tucker remains tied to the wood post, sitting on a rug on the stone floor, eyes wide. They all listen to the frightening sounds of the militant approach.
“Jenna, hide!” says Sabia.
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“Hide, Jenna, hide! They want me, not you! Hide, Jenna, hide!”
Roca braces himself — overwhelmed and resigned in face of what might be the end, is surely the end.
The SWAT teams and riot officers storm into the mud room and then the great room, brandishing guns: “Down on the floor! Down on the floor! Down! Get down!”
Sabia grabs Jenna, pleads: “Hide, Jenna, hide!”
The shock troops throw Sabia, Jenna, and Roca face-first onto the floor. A dozen officers kneel on all parts of their bodies. They are abused and bound.
In bed, eyes closed, Sabia gasps. Jenna, beside her, tries to calm and comfort.
“Hide, Jenna, hide! Hide, Jenna, hide!”
“You’re okay, Sabia. You’re okay. Sabia, I’m here, right here.”
Sabia opens her eyes, sees Jenna, sees the room. She knows where she is.
Sabia leans over the side of the bed and vomits.
“It’s okay, Sabia,” says Jenna.
“Fucking nightmare,” says Sabia, face to the floor, hanging half out of her bed.
“You drank too much last night. Did Kingsley get drunk too? How much?”
Sabia shakes her head, stares at her puke. “Maybe it was the spices in the Indian food. Good as it was. I mean I hope that’s—”
Sabia vomits again.
“You never threw up before on that food,” says Jenna. “You should get your money back. Did it taste okay? Or was it the booze.”
“Tasted great.”
“I smell vodka, Sabia.”
“I don’t think that was it.”
“I’d like to know what, Girl.”
Sabia vomits again. She feels nothing like anything she has felt before. The whole room smells horribly.
And suddenly, she knows. It can’t be but — it must be. She knows to her bones.
“Jenna—”
“I'll get some towels, Girl.” Jenna helps Sabia lie back in bed.
“Jenna, I'm pregnant. I think I'm pregnant.”
Jenna stares down at Sabia.
Finally, she says, “Horsehit.”
“No — yes,” says Sabia.
Jenna feels the need to move quickly then, as if to keep up with whatever might be threatening her and her friend in the moment. She hurries to get towels from the bathroom.
Sabia hangs back over the edge of the bed. She pukes. It drips from her lips.
Jenna puts a towel to Sabia's face, wipes her clean. Gets her back into bed. Jenna puts more towels on the floor.
Sabia stares at the dim ceiling lit by lamp. She feels poisoned, and possessed, as if her body has been snatched and is being ransomed against her. Ransomed — for what? Hostage to her own body. She gets the irony. Silver’s revenge — for her outlaw life. Sabia feels taken. Taken over.
“Sabia, what are you saying?” says Jenna.
“It's been a bad few days. Hasn’t it.”
“Your dinner last night with Kingsley — did he attack you?”
“No, Girl. He succumbed. To me.”
Jenna dabs with clean parts of a towel at Sabia's face — her mouth, forehead, cheeks. She strokes Sabia's hair. “What the fuck, Sabia?”
“Someone needs to be in control around here, Jenna. And that someone is me, okay. In every way.”
“Puking. That’s control?” says Jenna. “Pregnant? To what end? You fucking hate that guy.”
“I mean — I wasn’t trying—”
“You don't need that guy for anything. Anyway, you don’t have him. He probably gave you a disease.”
Sabia smiles grimly. “Health insurance companies classify pregnancy as an illness. Fuck them.”
“Yes, fuck them,” says Jenna.
“It's too late now.” Sabia reaches out and touches Jenna’s arm. “Maybe it's not Kingsley. It could be Avery. Or that rapist Castelan. It could be any one of them.”
Jenna shakes her head. “That’s great.”
“But I'm throwing up right now first time — so it's probably—”
“You don’t know that,” says Jenna.
“I think I do.”
Jenna shakes her head. “We don't know.”
“Not yet,” says Sabia.
“Not ever,” says Jenna. “And we don’t need to go there, Girl. And we won’t.”
Secret Service Director Kingsley stands at the edge of the snowy bomb crater looking down into its cold center. He is a small man in a large desolate landscape.
He considers the obliteration of President Silver’s reelection campaign bus, Ground Force One, so close to the Perez orchard, and the farmhouse, so far from everything else, so deep in the brutal prairie and winter, so far from — Kingsley looks around — anything. It’s like the end of the world. One end.
Kingsley leans into the angry wind. He checks his phone, waits to be put through to the Acting President. He receives another call instead — his Deputy Director Grace Lamont. He hesitates, then answers.
“Grace, I'm on hold for the President. What is it?”
“What’s new in Iowa, Bill?”
Kingsley stares again into the void of the blast crater. He’s tired. From last night. He’s tired of everything.
“Nothing’s new,” he says. “You?”
“The glove — from Sabia’s truck. Quantico came back with the results. No DNA connection to Sabia, or to Roca, or to the Yonkin neighbors. No DNA match in the database at all. So. Some off-grid friend of Sabia, I guess.”
“It’s a man with large hands,” says Kingsley. “Who do we know like that who knows Sabia? No one.”
“What size are your hands, Bill?”
“My DNA is in the system, Grace.”
“Of course, Boss. We don’t have a DNA database of all Sabia’s known acquaintances. Let alone the unknown.”
The cold wind slaps at Kingsley’s face. “Mentally, I’ve got one,” he says. The wind bites his nose and contracts the ducts in his eyes, pushes tears. “Run it again, Grace. Put Quantico on it one more time. Emergency — first priority.”
“Sure thing. But what's the point?”
Kingsley stares into the expanse. “It's the FBI, Grace. They fuck up. They've fucked up before. Maybe on purpose. Who knows. Make them do it again. Tell them we think we know who owns the glove.”
“Do we?”
“No.”
“You got it, Boss.”
Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez stands up behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. She tosses down a pen. Press Secretary Tisha Noori scoops up autographed photos and other signed documents.
“Thank you, Tisha.”
Tisha smiles wearily. “Somehow not even the dull moments are dull around here. Good old-fashioned rush of power, I guess.”
“Don't look up,” says Alecta. She points at the ceiling.
Tisha looks up. “The Great Seal?”
“The other shoe,” says Alecta. “Can’t always see it. But it's always dropping.”
Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier steps into the office and points at the phone on the President’s desk. “Director Kingsley. He said you requested the call. He sounds — different?”
“Different how?”
Shakeeta shrugs. “I don’t know — remote. Like he’s calling from the frontier. Sounds windy. He sounds weary.”
“He met with Sabia Perez. Twice. In Iowa. Over two meals.” Alecta reaches for the phone. “Anyone would be different after that. He must be out for a walk this winter morning.”
Tisha and Shakeeta exchange glances. “So you kept him on but exiled him,” says Tisha. “Anything new?”
Hopefully not, Alecta thinks. “Hopefully,” she says.
Alecta waits for Shakeeta and Tisha to leave the office, then takes a moment to gather her thoughts.
“Director Kingsley. How did it go last night with Sabia?”
Director Kingsley considers how to respond. He gazes at the sky, avoids the sun. He looks again into the crater.
“I got nowhere with Sabia last night, Madame President. She played me. This morning, I’m taking another look at the impact site.”
“Did Sabia show you around her greenhouse? She seemed most open to me there.”
“No greenhouse, Ma’am. Not this time.”
“So what can you report, Director?”
“I suggested Sabia get a media manager to handle her interview requests — finances, scheduling, prep. I agreed to help her find a manager. She blew up at that. She thought I would get her an agency spy.”
“She thought right, no?”
Kingsley stares from the wooded edge of the Perez farmstead to the broad flat field and endless blanket of snow that runs beyond the knoll across the road. A barely visible tree-line horizon sketches itself far away. He tries to read the line for whatever it might tell of the present, past, and future. “We protect Sabia from Castelan, Ma’am, if necessary. That’s all. Who knows where he might be, or what he might plan.”
“The guards are already back on her, Bill. My new FBI Director saw to that.”
“I’ve seen them. They’ve seen me,” says Kingsley. “That’s good for Sabia. And good for us.”
“The new Director may have something more to say about that.”
“Priama Steiner.”
“She’s headed your way. Get ready, Bill.”
“Director Steiner has the theory, you know: Why would anyone assume that Sabia’s abuelo Roca is actually dead?”
“He’s dead, Bill. Isn’t he? Wishful thinking that he’s not.”
“Or paranoid.”
“Director Steiner intends to review everything, Bill. She doesn’t trust Sabia. Why should she.”
“No one trusts Sabia.”
“Do you?”
Kingsley turns into the wind briefly but can’t talk with the cold numbing his lips and chin. He faces east, away from the blast. “No leads. No help. No breakthroughs. No cooperation. Not from Sabia. We’ll get nothing from her,” he says.
“Priama would have arrested her by now, Bill. Castelan chose not to. Hell knows why. You chose not to. Why, Bill?”
“Castelan is a bully, that’s why. Took over her house with no cause. A Fourth Amendment violation if there ever was one. Anyway, there’s no evidence.”
“We can’t blame Castelan forever, Director. At some point, we need to figure this out — you and I. Or Priama will. Am I right?”
Castelan studies the Perez farmhouse. “Sabia lives her life out here in a way I’m only beginning to understand, Alecta. She’s more dug in than either you or I might know.”
“What are you saying, Bill?”
“You visited Sabia, Madame President. You know she knows how to host, when she wants to. She’s charming. When not off-putting.”
Charming is not a word Alecta would use for Sabia. Maybe when she wants to be — but when was that? “Look, Bill. Priama’s in charge. Good luck to us all. Find Castelan. Find someone. Do what you need to do to justify my keeping you on after losing President Silver. It can't be nothing, Bill. Do something. And get it to me soon.”
Across the way, the far door to the Perez greenhouse opens and closes. Kingsley sees Sabia walk out from the greenhouse into the snow-buried gardens. She trudges through snow until she enters the fruit and nut orchard, dark trees skeletal against white.
“Sabia may be part of this,” says Kingsley. “But we've got nothing on her. Forget Roca. Rest his soul. Even Priama should acknowledge that.”
“I hear you but Priama wants proof. Of everything. Pro and Con.”
“Strange the way that President Silver held up the tennis ball at the end of the second ransom video — it made me think of oranges and lemons. In Sabia’s greenhouse. A place you and I have been as much as anyone. Was that a message to you and me?”
Alecta stares at the Great Seal. Sabia is playing with fire if she thinks she can trust people who may want to trust her but cannot. Not ever.
“The FBI has been through that greenhouse too, Bill. If you find Silver and Lin among the oranges and figs, let me know.”
“They wouldn't be there.”
“So where?”
“A chicken coop. For all I know. I feel like if we could get one more ransom video, we might figure it out,” says Kingsley.
“Here comes Priama, Bill. She almost seems to think she does know.”
“She doesn't.”
“Work with her, Bill.”
“Of course, Ma’am.”
“And work with Sabia.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Kingsley watches Sabia spread her arms wide against the cutting wind in the orchard. Then she falls flat on her back — and disappears into the thick snow.
“If Sabia needs anything, let me know, okay?” says Alecta. “A media manager, fresh eggs, whatever.”
“As you say, Madame President. I’ll see what she needs.”
“Good, now get going, Bill. Get me something we can tie this off with. If you don’t — I guarantee it — Priama will.”
Even before the Acting President ends the call, Director Kingsley moves through the wind and the cold, the drifts and the banks, the field of snow to where Sabia has vanished.
