Damn, there were too many questions to be answered. All he wanted to do was go back to his old life, but that was probably going to be too much to ask. Adding what he may feel about Jackie was another complexity that he didn't want to have to deal with.
Somewhere was the Schwerpunkt — the center point of all this that was going on. The term came from Blitzkrieg, where the enemy line may be pierced by an explosive combination of multiple weapon systems. Once the line is pierced, armored forces dive deep into enemy territory to disrupt command, control and logistics systems. Once these systems are disrupted, the top-heavy military units they support collapse in confusion. The same thing could be found in many dynamic systems, including societies. If you wanted to collapse an organization, you looked for where you could expend your resources the most efficiently to cause the most chaos.
The Children of the Constitution, whoever the hell they were, obviously had identified what they considered the Schwerpunkt and were working to disrupt society by taking out key individuals to achieve their goals. He thought that most people wouldn't be able to function without the embrace of government controlling their every action.
Leo had little or no use for government in any form. He was responsible for his own actions and just wanted to do his own thing without interference from agencies like the IRS, OSHA, and most importantly, the BATF. There was a concept for a rifle sound suppressor that he would have liked to develop, but he didn't want to jump through all of the government mandated hoops to do it.
And don't even get him started on the IRS. As the coin store was largely a cash business, they were under constant scrutiny and had been audited the past three out of four years. Nothing out of the ordinary had been found, but it had taken many hours to straighten out the mess generated by the IRS.
There were people who were probably cheering the demise of all the government workers, feds and other power hungry leeches. He didn't feel sorry for those killed. They had taken the money to do their jobs and had finally been called accountable for their actions.
He looked up and saw the time on the clock… almost noon.
Where the hell did Jackie go and how long did she figure to be gone?
Settling his pistol into the holster, he set off to look for her.
Chapter 22
Jackie was exhausted to her very soul. Since Nathan’s death, her world had been essentially destroyed and despite finding Leo — which may or not have been the best thing to do — what he did to her left her unsettled and uncertain.
She settled into the coffee shop next to the hotel. The triple espresso latte seemed to help. Perhaps that was it; she usually drank two or three of these coffees a day and she was way down on her caffeine consumption. She could feel the stimulant surge through her.
She looked around the coffee shop and noted the people hunched over their laptops. They were probably watching the headlines and reading alternative versions of the news.
Taking another sip of her coffee, which had turned cold the way she liked it, she considered what to do next. Authorities had apparently come to a dead end as far as finding out who was behind the Children of the Constitution. That the attempts on her life and they were tied together, there was no doubt. There wasn't any direct evidence tying the two neatly into a bow, but her problems started about the same time that the Children began their reign of terror. Adding to the evidence was that, according to Leo, professional killers had been sent after her, and had probably killed Patrick Lackey, her accountant, in almost exactly the same way that politicians and power brokers had been killed. They could all be attributed to the Children.
So she was a target of the Children of the Constitution. What had she done to deserve this? She had never even registered to vote, and while she did tend to agree with some of Nathan's anti-government rantings, she never took it to the extreme that Nathan had suggested — the destruction of every government function not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
He was behind it, enacting his revenge from the grave. And he had been responsible for the deaths of perhaps hundreds of people over the years — that is, if had been behind the assassination organization. Someone must answer for all of those deaths.
According to the news report, only one or two 'innocents' had been killed since the Children launched their campaign. The rest had been government workers all with lengthy histories of violating civil rights, ranging from the EPA to the IRS to OSHA and city, state and federal government workers. They had died by poisoning, fire, sniper, explosions and strange accidents. Somewhere, someone was taking stock of government workers and measuring them to a standard — if they failed, they died.
Government at all levels in Denver and the surrounding areas was essentially shut down through fear. Meanwhile, most people seemed to be continuing on with their lives.
There had been some civil unrest, but it had been quickly and quietly put down. Details weren't well known, but rumored through various blogs were hints that the citizens took care of their own problems and the police stood aside and watched.
Then it hit her. Had she had something to do with the start of this mess? The DVD she had loaded into the network. What had been on it? Was there someone running the Children of the Constitution, or was it something? The more she thought about it, the more the evidence seemed to add up. But there were still some pieces that needed to be filled in. She knew who she needed to talk to.
She gulped down the rest of her coffee. As she stood, a large black van, blue and red lights flashing, tore around the corner accompanied by half a dozen squad cars.
They pulled in front of the hotel. She stepped onto the street and moved back behind a mail box to watch what happened.
A dozen heavily armed and armored police officers jumped from the van and shuffled over to a hotel room. They knocked the door in with a large battering ram. Then she recognized the door — it was where she and Leo had been staying.
She couldn't break away, watching the door that the police had stormed. Deep down, she knew that she should do her best to put some distance between her and police, but she was stunned into inaction.
A few minutes later, the door opened and Leo was led out in handcuffs.
She slipped back into the gathered crowd of spectators. She had to talk to a couple of her old employees.
Matthew Tudor had come up with a truly interesting way to destroy the police department's armored vehicle. It was stored in a very secure building and with all the recent problems, it had more security than made him comfortable.
A scouting mission had given him an idea. The building was simply a large concrete warehouse structure. As a warehouse, it didn't have great ventilation, but did have automatic carbon monoxide detectors that started fans if there was too much exhaust gas present in the air — say if they were running a vehicle without the doors open.
He surprised himself on how clever his attack was going to be in making a gas enhanced explosive to take out the whole building.
When most people thought of using gas to take out a structure, they tried to use propane or natural gas, thinking that any amount could be set off. Well, the Lower Explosive Limit on propane was 2.1 % and the Upper Explosive Limit was 10.1 %. Below or above those percentages, all you would get was a very interesting fire. Yes, there may be an explosion, but it could simply blow out the fire. Besides, propane was heavier than air and tended to sink into basements and such, completely screwing up the desired effect. He could use propane in a pinch, but the calculations required were quite difficult to pull off.