“You are a natural-born terrorist,” I acknowledged.
I pulled over to the side of the road and the pickups pulled up behind me. I got out, and we all huddled over a roadmap. “Here is where we’re going, Camp Dawson, near Kingwood, West Virginia, in Preston County. I thought we would stay off the interstates and do the back roads. But along the way, I’d like to take down some of these transmission towers. Two or three on each right of way, to put the wires on the ground. Use C-4, set the timers to the max on the dial.”
“That’s an hour,” Armanti Hall said.
“You guys can drop off, do a couple of towers, then catch back up. Try to make them fall in the woods or streams, not on the road. We’ll meet here.” I jabbed my finger at a crossroads, near Kingwood.
“Okay by me,” Travis said. The others nodded their heads.
I went back to the van and climbed in.
“I could use a bathroom,” Sarah said.
“The side of the road is brushy,” I pointed out. “No one will see you. Climb on down there.”
“I don’t have any toilet paper.”
I reached around the seat to my duffle bag, extracted a roll, and passed it to her. “I stole a roll of yours this morning when we were leaving.”
She scanned the roadside weeds, then observed, “There might be poison ivy or snakes.”
I started the engine and got the van rolling. “Maybe we’ll find an open filling station with clean restrooms,” I said brightly, “or even a McDonald’s.”
“Jerk.”
She ended up using a port-a-potty on a road bridge rebuild project. The construction crew wasn’t around. After she finished, I used it too. It smelled like every port-a-potty I’d ever been in, but it was like the facilities at the Ritz compared to the places I had pooped in the Middle East, often merely a hole in the floor you squatted over. Or a patch of desert. The miracle of toilet paper has not yet been revealed to most of the sons of Islam. Muhammad never said a word about it. If you don’t believe me, read your Koran.
When we were back rolling again, I told her, “There may come a day when you dream longingly of that port-a-potty.”
“Did you see the graffiti in there?”
“Yes.”
“Men are such pigs.”
I let that one go by without comment.
A little while later Sarah began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about the irony of it all. Jake Grafton and I have been listening to the goings-on at the White House for about six months. He knew all about Soetoro’s plan to declare martial law and tear up the Constitution.”
I stared at her, trying to decide if she was telling the truth. And almost ran off the road.
She chuckled. “He refused to do anything about it, of course. Said there was nothing he could do. And maybe he was right. If he told people about Soetoro’s plan, they would have thought him crazy. It would have gotten back to the White House, and they would have arrested him and locked him up. So he decided to do nothing and he got blamed for a fake coup and assassination plot and he’s locked up anyway. Life is crazy.”
“Tell me more.”
“Only Grafton and I know about it. When the Iran treaty was being negotiated in Switzerland, he asked me if we could bug the hotels where the delegates were staying. He wanted to know what the Iranians were talking about, what their negotiating strategy was. The problem was that the hotels were going to be swept repeatedly, and any bugs with transmitters would be quickly discovered. So I ginned up a program to use all the hotels’ computers and security systems as listening devices and have the feed sent to me over the internet.
“But when I got into their systems, I found that the Israelis had been there first. They had a surveillance system in place using the computers and security cameras and even the personal computers that everyone brought with them and that used the hotels’ Wi-Fi systems to connect with the internet. You may have heard about it last year. The Russians had the same idea, and they announced the Israelis’ espionage.”
“I did hear about that.”
“The Israeli system was better than mine. So I got all their computer code and we just listened in.”
“Jesus,” I said, trying to think as I steered the vehicle. That Grafton!
“Then about six months ago, he asked if I could use the Israeli system on the White House.”
“Jesus!”
“He and I have been listening for six months. All the plotting, all the plans, all the bullshit. But he wouldn’t do anything about it.”
“You are saying he knew about the coming of martial law?”
“Oh yes. He and I knew. They were merely waiting for an excuse. They thought the excuse would be a domestic terror incident, but if that hadn’t happened, it would have been something else. Martial law was going to happen. We were the only ones who knew outside the inner circle at the White House. I demanded the admiral do something, but he just gave me those cold gray eyes and asked, ‘What?’”
Indeed, I thought, what? Whom do you tell? Who will believe?
“So here we go, riding to the rescue,” she said sourly, “and he knew all along.”
“So did you.”
“Yeah. I had to agree with Grafton. What do you do when the president is plotting to become a dictator?”
“Assassinate him,” I suggested.
“Who? Me? Grafton? Or should Grafton have sent you to do the dirty deed?”
She had a point.
EIGHTEEN
The Blackhawk helicopter settled onto the tarmac at the Longview, Texas, airport, shut down, and JR Hays went forward to speak to the pilots. CWO4 Erik Sabiston was in the right seat.
“Wait for me,” JR said. “Be back late this evening. Fuel the chopper and get something to eat.”
“Yes, sir.”
JR climbed out and walked across the tarmac into the FBO. “I need a car,” he said to the lady on the desk.
“We have a courtesy car, sir. It’s kinda old and wrinkled, like me, but it’ll probably get you there and back again. Always has so far, anyway.”
She handed him the keys and he made a pit stop, then went outside and climbed in. It was an old Ford with sun-scorched paint and more than a hundred fifty thousand miles on the odometer. It started on the first crank.
He had gotten the address from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. It took him a while to find it that afternoon. There were high cirrus clouds up there, making the afternoon light gauzy. It didn’t do much to soften the heat, though.
JR found his address in a newer subdivision, parked on the street, and walked up the driveway. Inside he heard a dog barking, a little one from the sound of it. Rang the doorbell.
In a moment a man in shorts and an old army T-shirt opened the door, a man in his mid-fifties.
“JR Hays! As I live and breathe!”
“Hello, Nate. May I come in?”
“Of course.” The man threw the door wide, then closed it behind JR. His name was Nathaniel Danaher, and he was a retired army colonel with thirty years service. JR had served under him on his last combat tour in Afghanistan. Danaher was from Connecticut originally, but he hadn’t lived there since he went away to VMI for college. He hadn’t been able to score a West Point appointment so he joined the VMI corps of cadets, got a reserve commission, which, after a few years of outstanding service, the army transformed into a regular commission.
“I like the gleam of those stars on your blouse, JR. Somehow they look exactly right on you. Want a beer?”
“Sure.”
With beers in hand, they sat on the covered porch in the backyard, a ramada as the old Texans called it. It kept the sun off and allowed the people sheltered under it to savor any breeze. The dog, some kind of terrier, was friendly enough. He did some exploratory sniffing and then found a shady spot to lie down.