Dagon Rising(13)

He could also stop killing people, too.

Despite the fact that he was good at it, Clark didn’t really like doing it.

Unfortunately, the events of the last two years had forced his hand. The killings would never be traced back to him. He’d made sure of that, having been trained by the best and the brightest in the US Government. But Tyler’s foot soldiers were still around, and they were causing trouble for him. They were like cockroaches. Pests that invaded your living space and wreaked havoc until you killed them. And just like cockroaches, they kept popping up and sniffing around, trying to find anything that would bolster their theories that a US Secret Service agent had killed President Jeffrey Tyler in cold blood.

Thank God much of this had gone under the radar of mainstream America. They’d been too preoccupied with other things; rebuilding the East Coast, dealing with the emotional turmoil of a fallen President, then the brief shift of power to President Bower followed by Livingston’s sweep a little over a year later. Rebuilding and eradicating the Clickers and Dark Ones threat had been foremost on everybody’s minds since then.

And as that war had gone on, a smaller, more covert, battle was being waged by the last stragglers of the Tyler Administration.

And that battle had led him here, to the dry desert of Arizona. To Tony Genova’s new life.

Clark wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and glanced at his watch. Five minutes had passed since the newcomers had slipped into Tony’s condo unit so effortlessly. Tony would be conscious now. The guy who’d tapped Tony’s neck had used a pressure point technique. If applied properly, it only rendered the victim unconscious for a few minutes. Clark had been planning on using a similar technique on Tony as a first option.

The RNC had been making noise about President Tyler’s death ever since the smoke cleared from the devastation wreaked in DC. Shell casings found in the secret tunnel where Tyler’s partial remains were found matched the Sig Sauer Clark had bought for his own personal use, which was the handgun he’d pulled out of his glove compartment the night Ken White had escorted him out of the building during the height of Hurricane Gary. Clark had had a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, which he freely gave to the FBI and the Homeland Security agents who’d interviewed him in the weeks following Hurricane Gary: President Tyler was not in his right mind when he’d fired Clark, so he’d retrieved his personal weapon and found a way back in to the White House. He had done this to help serve and protect his country. Yes, he’d made his way upstairs to the conference room where so many of Tyler’s cabinet members had met their untimely deaths, but he’d done so out of an obligation to help his fellow Secret Service agents. In the ensuing firefight he’d shot many Dark Ones. It had been utter chaos. And at the height of it, Clark had found one of the secret passages that led to the underground bunkers and shoved President Tyler inside in an effort to save his life.

They’d encountered Dark Ones in the tunnels and he’d fired his weapon in self-defense. He’d tried to pull Tyler through an exit in another part of the building, but the Dark Ones were too fast. They’d attacked President Tyler just as the entire building shook—the giant Clicker tearing the White House apart, he later heard. Clark ran down the hallway, already knowing President Tyler was dead, knowing he’d be killed if he tried to intervene. What was the point in trying to save the President now? He had to get out and try to help others.

Besides, President Tyler’s remains were so mangled there was no evidence of a bullet wound. The official cause of death, according to the government coroner, was by bleeding and trauma due to injuries sustained during an attack by the Dark Ones.

Tyler’s death had just been one among tens of thousands that night. Although he didn’t find out until later, one of Clark’s daughters had been another. She and her husband were slaughtered in North Carolina when the Clickers came ashore. But that didn’t matter to the people in charge. Her death wasn’t as important as the President’s.

Clark’s testimony, which Homeland Security and the FBI accepted, hadn’t been enough to satisfy the Tyler Administration loyalists. They’d demanded a full investigation. They were joined by members of both parties. The FBI Investigation backed up Clark Arroyo’s testimony, which was presented to the Pentagon and the Joints Chiefs of Staff. The RNC formed an independent investigation into President Tyler’s death shortly after Livingston was sworn in to office, and his administration cooperated. Thanks to the turmoil caused by Hurricane Gary, and the destruction caused by the Clickers and the Dark Ones, it took well over a year for the wheels to begin grinding on a proper investigation into the events that had taken place in the White House in the early morning hours of July 5, 2006.