Patriots Betrayed by John Grit Page B

laps. First, they had to take a shower and change their pants, and then they took a few stiff drinks and smoked a few joints. By that time, they didn’t give a damn about anything. So, yeah, it’ll be a little longer. But once it finally pops, it’ll spread like wildfire all over the world.”
    She screamed at the mountain on the other side of the gorge. “Will any of this make any difference? God, are you listening?” There was no answer.
    Raylan put his right arm over her shoulders. “It’ll certainly make a difference to us. We’ll know we did our best to warn the American people that their government is as corrupt as any other criminal organization.”
    She leaned against him. “The difference it’ll make for us is we’ll both be dead soon.”
    He held her tighter. “We were dead before we ever broke our vow of nondisclosure. My only regret is having dragged you into this. You were legally out of it and home free.”
    “There is no home free, no forgetting, no escaping what we’ve done, what we must live with.” Her voice grew angry. “That’s a hell of a thing to say. You have no right to think of me as an accessory after the fact. Hell, I’m the one who has gone after the president.”
    His puzzlement lasted for all of three seconds. Then he held her face and kissed her. “No fool would ever think of you as an accessory.”
    Forcing a smile, she looked up at him. “Let’s buy some liquid giggles and go back to the camp and have an orgy. My preference is expensive champagne, but I know you like bourbon. We’ve already lost our immortal souls, so what’s to lose?”
    Her eyes told him she wasn’t completely joking. “I don’t know about losing our souls. We thought we were serving our country.”
    She started back to the car. “Well, some say God is lenient on fools. Maybe we’re not damned after all.”
    ~~~
    A week later, Raylan handed a pile of papers through the car window to Carla. “The shit has hit the fan!”
    She tore through the papers in her lap. Headline after headline blared in bold letters: Ex-CIA Agents Expose Corruption, Highest Levels of Government Involved. Another headline read: CIA – Murder for Hire. Still another read: Ex-CIA Operative Claims President had Mistress Killed.
    She read from one of the biggest and most respected newspapers in the U.S.: “The two agents, who provided the names Raylan Maddox and Carla Baylor, gave enough details that our investigators were able to verify they are what they claim to be and most likely are telling the truth about the crimes and corruption that go all the way to the White House. Such details include where and at what time periods they trained and what the training entailed, what part of the world they were in at particular dates over the last decade or more, and who they killed (under CIA orders) and on what date and in what city. They even included the method of assassination, such as bombs or the type of firearm used.
    “There is plenty of evidence to lead us to believe they are also being truthful in their claims that the CIA has been trying to kill them over the last two weeks, in that they have provided details and locations of shootouts and dead bodies discovered by local police, and we have verified every single detail to be accurate, including details not revealed in news reports and therefore not common knowledge.
    “To further verify their claims, we have asked former CIA antiespionage and terror experts their opinion of the duo’s accusations. They gave their opinions in writing, stating the authors of the accounts sent to our newspaper are who they claim to be. They refused, however, to make any statement as to the veracity of their accusations, only that the authors are not posers or frauds. But our investigators have looked into several of their accusations of killings overseas and in South America and have found far too many verified details and facts to brush aside their claims without further investigation. We