“I want to introduce you to some of the people who will be making this journey with me. First among equals is my wife, Kate.” He held out his hand; she took it and joined him for a moment. “You’re going to be seeing a lot more of me than you will of Kate, because she has important work to do here in Washington, and I’m not going to take her away from it. Wouldn’t be good for the country.” He introduced Sam Meriwether, Tim Coleman, and Kitty Conroy. “Finally, I want to introduce you to someone who hasn’t decided yet whether to vote for me. I’m determined that this campaign will follow the letter and the spirit of the laws governing campaigns, and that the actions we take will be not just legal, but ethical. With that in mind I’ve asked former federal appeals court judge Mason Rutledge to be an objective arbiter of all our actions. Judge Rutledge has had a long and highly distinguished career at the bar, in the Justice Department, and in the courts. He has been, since his retirement from the bench, a professor of constitutional law and legal ethics at Harvard Law School. He will remain there during the campaign, but he will be on call when we need him to help us make the right decisions. And if he feels we haven’t, he’ll be free to call a press conference and tell you why. Judge Rutledge?” He beckoned the tall, handsome man forward.
Rutledge faced the cameras for only a moment. “I’m here,” he said, “because I was impressed with Senator Lee’s insistence on running a clean campaign, and I’m happy to help him do it. I expect I’ll decide sometime before the first Tuesday in November whether I’ll vote for him.” He stepped back.
Will came back to the microphones. “Now we’re going to invite you all to join us on a brief tour of our new national headquarters. There are buses here for those of you who need a ride, and the rest can follow. We won’t keep you long. And the next time I see all you folks watching on TV, I’ll be asking you for money.” Loud laughter.
Preceded by two Secret Service agents, Will boarded a bus with his campaign workers and chatted with them while they were driven to the downtown office building that housed the headquarters.
Will, Kate, Sam, Tom, Kitty, and Judge Rutledge sat in the Lee kitchen and ate hamburgers while they watched the evening news and Will’s performance before the cameras. They made the top, or near the top, of every newscast.
“It went beautifully, Will,” Tom Black said. “I can cut at least three good commercials out of the footage we got.”
“I was very impressed,” said Judge Rutledge, who was staying the night. “It was a good announcement, not too long.”
“I hope I can make ‘not too long’ the hallmark of my campaign,” Will said.
Kate spoke up. “And I’m grateful, sir, for having been publicly let off the hook so early in the campaign.”
“I promised, and I meant it,” Will said. “Tom, what’s next?”
“Buy some long underwear,” Tom said. “We’re going to New Hampshire.”
20
Zeke Tennant woke habitually at dawn, and Sundays were no exception. He left the bed gently, so as not to wake his sleeping wife, Bonnie. He got out of his flannel pajamas and into long underwear, jeans, a flannel lumberjack shirt, and heavy socks and boots, then tiptoed out of the room.
Zeke’s sixteen-year-old son, Danny, was leaning against the inside of the front door, peering out of a narrow slat at the world outside. “Morning, Daddy,” he said.
“Morning, Danny. What kind of night did we have?”
“I thought I heard a noise, but I couldn’t spot anything with the night goggles. Heard a helicopter, though; I’m sure of that. Must have been two, three miles off, to the west.”
“Yeah, they come around with their heat-detection systems, trying to catch one of us out of the house at night.”
“We had a couple of inches of snow, but it’s stopped.”
“You keep watch, and I’ll get you some breakfast, then you can go to bed.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
Zeke threw some homemade sausage in the pan and got some eggs from the gas-operated refrigerator, then sliced some of Bonnie’s bread. A few minutes later, he set two plates on the table by the front window, and they sat down to eat.
“That mirror plastic stuff on the outside of the windows was an ace idea,” Danny said. “Nobody can see in.”
“Yeah, there was a time when we wouldn’t dare sit down in front of the window like this.” The window was made of steel, and the panes of armored glass. As the sun came up, the scenery outside took on a gray cast from the mirrored material. They could see down the mountain road, some five miles, to the highway. Zeke had chosen the site to provide an early warning.
“You going to church?” Danny asked.
“You know we can’t do that right now. I’m going over to Harv Shelton’s place for a little meeting, though. You’ll be okay here; the younger kids can keep a lookout, and I don’t think they’re going to try anything in broad daylight. And if they do, they’ll have to deal with the land mines. You feed the dogs, then let them in.”
“Daddy,” Danny said hesitantly, “is anybody for sure looking for you right now?”
“You never can tell,” Zeke said. “I’ve got a failure-to-appear warrant out on me in Georgia; they can always use that for an excuse.”
“But that’s ten years old, isn’t it?” the boy asked.
“All they need is an excuse to come up here legal, and if they want to, they’ll do it.”
“How long you reckon we could hold out against them?” Danny asked.
Zeke looked at him sharply. “As long as we have to, boy; you remember that.”
“Yessir,” Danny said.
Zeke finished his breakfast and took a turn around the house. There were three bedrooms and two baths, a little office for himself, a kitchen, and a large family room. He and his family and co-militiamen had built the log cabin themselves, and not from a kit. It had taken them two years, but they had done it. They were completely self-sufficient. The well had been drilled first, then the house built over it, so nobody could poison them; the cellar was stocked with dried and canned food, a year’s worth. There were two huge propane tanks sunk into the earth — enough for two, maybe three years — and, if worse came to worst, there was the escape tunnel that ran two hundred yards under the woods, connecting with an old mine. On top of the house, reached by a ladder from the family room, was an eight-foot turret. Like the rest of the house, it had been built of two layers of logs and was lined with sandbags. The roof was six inches of poured concrete on top of logs, lined with cedar shingles and, on the southern exposures, an array of solar panels that kept a large bank of batteries in the cellar charged and ready. The whole exterior house had been repeatedly sprayed with a fire retardant. The place had been built so that no small arms could ever penetrate; it would take heavy military weapons to breach the walls, and the feds couldn’t do that, for fear the media would find out. And if they did anyway, he had two M60 machine guns, with mounts in the turret.
Zeke got into a shoulder holster and jammed in his 9mm automatic, with two extra clips. He put a smaller automatic in his coat pocket, then strapped another to his ankle. He put on the sheepskin coat Bonnie had made for him and walked into the connecting utility building. He took the three-wheeler — not enough snow for the Sno-Cat, and too much for the pickup. He popped the steel garage door, started the engine, and drove out. The door closed automatically behind him. The two German shepherds on the front porch lifted their heads and watched him go. Keeping a sharp eye out, he roared down a well-beaten trail, scattering powder snow in his wake, and plunged into the woods. He drove for nearly two miles along the trail, then stopped at a heavy fence topped with razor wire and whistled loudly. A moment later, he heard another whistle, and a section of the fence swung open. He gunned the engine and continued toward the cabin ahead of him.