America Rising (15 page)

“Oh, I know who you are,” the man said. His words were muffled, distorted by the mask. “You’re John Patrick Hammer the second, Democrat from Arkansas, Senate Minority Leader, son of former U.S. Senator John Patrick Hammer the first, the richest man in Arkansas, serial asshole and thieving sack of camel pus.”

“You can’t speak to me like—”

The muffled voice cut through John Hammer’s bravado, the whine of the jet engines.

“Shut up, Senator. One more word out of that hole of yours and I’ll plug it up like a stopped drain.” He turned his attention to Miles Severn. “You’re not going to be any trouble, are you?”

“No, sir.” If it weren’t for the fear he might share John Hammer’s fate, he would actually be enjoying this.

“Good.”

The man’s hand left his shoulder, reappeared holding a syringe filled with a clear liquid. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This will just put you to sleep for awhile. When it takes effect I’m going to bind your hands and feet. Not too tight; you’ll be able to work them loose. It will be better for you that way. You were surprised, knocked out, tied up. You’re an innocent victim here. You had nothing to do with this. Okay”.

Miles Severn nodded. The man jabbed him with the needle and his body felt suffused with a soft, warm glow, like the sun bathing him from the inside out. His head lolled, his body went limp. The man checked his pulse, gun barrel never wavering from John Hammer’s head. He pulled a fistful of plastic ties out of his pocket and tossed them in the senator’s lap, then he waggled his pistol in Miles Severn’s direction.

“Get up,” the man ordered. “Roll him on the floor. Do his wrists, ankles.” That done, he tossed a roll of duct tape at the senator. “One strip over his mouth. Then sit back down.” Hammer made like he might speak but the man waggled his pistol again. “Not a word,” he said. “Remember what I told you.”

Hammer remembered, sweating profusely in the air-conditioned cabin. When his chief of staff was trussed like a Christmas goose, he backed into his chair and sat. The gun barrel followed his every movement like an all-seeing eye.

“That was a nice little speech you gave before we took off,” the man said. The ice in his voice indicated this was not a compliment. “You’re a real man of the people, U.S. Senator John Patrick Hammer. At least the people with gold-plated Gucci bootstraps. Your daddy bought you your Senate seat after you ran two of his companies into the ground. I guess he figured you’d do less damage in Washington. Or maybe that your particular kind of weasel would be more successful there.”

John Hammer began to sputter. “Now listen here—”

The man appeared motionless but a second later John Hammer’s cheek stung as if bitten. He’d hardly seen the man move, yet somehow a calloused hand flicked out like a snake’s tongue and hit him hard enough to turn his head around.

“Open your mouth again and I won’t be so gentle.” The man lowered himself into the seat opposite the trembling politician. “You’re a real piece of work, Senator. No bootstraps for you. Everything handed to you on a platter. Hell, why stand on your own two feet when you can stand on daddy’s shoulders? You were born on third base and think you hit a triple. And all those people who can’t afford admission to the game? They’re just a bunch of whiners.

“Well, Senator, I’m here to give you a taste of your own medicine. You want a society that’s dog eat dog, might makes right, survival of the fittest? You’re going to get it. We’ve made a small alternation to your flight plan. You’re not going back to Arkansas. You’re going to California, to a place where daddy’s money, daddy’s influence, all the deals you’ve made, all the power you think you have, don’t mean shit. You chew on that awhile, U.S. Senator John Patrick Hammer. I’ll fill you in on the details when we get there.”

The man rose from his chair, pistol in one hand, syringe in the other. “Roll up your sleeve, Senator,” he said. “You’re about to take a little nap.”

* * *

Christmas and the weeks preceding it left me in a peculiar state of lethargy, as if a giant hand had wrung out my juices and tossed me aside to shrivel. I surrendered fully to Keys’ Disease, broken only by a trip to Key West that reminded my why I usually avoided the place until “season” was over. I’d hit town just as a pair of cruise ships disgorged thousands of pasty-skinned tourists like a swarm of MasterCard-bearing locusts onto Duval Street, where they were ripped off by sleazy merchants and exacted their revenge by getting stinking drunk and obnoxious at Sloppy Joe’s. One look and I turned the Miata around and headed home.

On the way I stopped for an early dinner at Keys Fisheries, one of my favorite haunts, a squat concrete bunker on the bay in Marathon. They do a lobster reuben that’s the size of a manhole cover and one of the best things between two slices of bread you can put in your mouth. The evening was a little chilly but not too bad. I fought it off with a couple glasses of sturdy red wine and drove off with a full belly and a sigh of relief that they hadn’t figured out how to dock cruise ships here yet.

I pulled into my driveway just after dark, unlocked the door, went inside, flipped on some lights. Poured another glass of red wine, went into my office. Stopped dead and stared at my desk. On it was a big yellow mailing envelope, about a half-inch thick, no address or markings. No anything. It wasn’t mine; it wasn’t there when I’d left. I got that pins and needles feeling all over my body. Someone had broken into my house and placed the envelope on my desk. Who? Why? And was he or she still here?

Still tingling all over, I padded quietly into the kitchen, grabbed a ten-inch chef’s knife and checked every room, every closet, the pantry. I flipped on the outside lights and checked around the house, examined the door knobs and jambs for signs of forced entry, the windows too. Nothing.

I went back to my office and examined the package. There wasn’t much to see. No suspicious bulges, ominous traces of white powder. It wasn’t ticking. I felt a little foolish, creeping around the house with a knife in my hand, studying an envelope like it was some sort of nuclear device, imagining all sorts of doomsday scenarios. So I said fuck it and undid the clasp and spilled its contents on my desk.

They were dozens of pages of official-looking documents. Deeds, records, bank statements. Personnel files. Charts and photographs. I shuffled through each one with growing excitement. This was great stuff. Amazing stuff. Better than even Mongoose could dig up. It was a complete file on Genesis Group. It detailed years of political intimidation, dirty tricks and worse. Showed every facet of the organization, every action, every holding. Showed how it shielded itself from scrutiny as a shell company within a shell company within a shell company. Showed how Genesis Group was a multimillion-dollar octopus whose tentacles reached into every corner of American political life. It was a treasure chest. The motherlode.

The final two pages really grabbed my attention. One was a simple chart that showed Genesis Group and its counterparts as a series of interconnected boxes, a hierarchical ranking that marched up a ladder from many to one. The one was a box labeled Tutis International.

The second page was a photograph. It showed a man who appeared to be in his mid-sixties emerging from a limousine in front of an anonymous big-city hotel. He was wearing a dark suit, fedora with the brim pulled down and impenetrable black sunglasses. A bit of silver hair peeked out from beneath the hat. The man’s face was gaunt, his lips thin and seemingly bloodless. It was not a face that made you feel warm and fuzzy. I turned the page over. On the back was written, “Leland Elliott, CEO, Tutis International.”

That would be my next target: Leland Elliott and his octopus.

I was back in business.

T
he first thing Senator John Hammer heard was the steady thwock-thwock-thwock of helicopter blades grasping at the air. He opened his eyes but the world was black, the air heavy and fetid. His cheeks chafed against the rough fabric of the hood drawn loosely beneath his chin. He tried to move his arms and legs but they were bound, immobilized. His body too; there was no give in the straps that held him tightly to a seat. Fear, bewilderment, a sense of his own impending doom were overwhelming.

Where am I being taken? What do they want with me? And who are these people who can take over a private jet at a major American airport and kidnap a sitting United States senator? He moaned aloud and was startled at its unremitting despair.

“Welcome back, Senator.”

It was the man in the airplane again, talking over the noise of the helicopter, still cold and unforgiving.

“We’re coming to the end of our little journey together,” he went on. “Though yours, I must admit, is just beginning. You probably have a few questions, some of which I will attempt to answer in the short time we have remaining. You have, as you have no doubt deduced, been kidnapped, though I prefer the term ‘borrowed.’ It wasn’t terribly difficult, but it did require a good deal of planning. My colleagues and I simply replaced U.S. Bank’s pilots and filed an amended flight plan. We landed outside of Bakersfield and transferred you to this helicopter, which is now only a few minutes from its destination.

“Who are we? That, I’m afraid, you will never know. Let’s just say we’re Americans who can no longer sit by and let you and your ilk destroy everything that is good and just about this country. Call us patriots, call us terrorists. It really doesn’t matter. As to what we have planned for you, rest assured that you will not be killed or tortured or harmed in any way. At least not by us. But you will be forced to live by your own philosophy or, rather, the one you seek to impose on those less fortunate than yourself.

“Remember what I said about might makes right, survival of the fittest, dog eat dog? Well, Senator, you’re about to live it. We’re currently flying over Inyo National Forest, almost two million acres of untamed and unspoiled wilderness on the California-Nevada border, one of the most beautiful places in the nation. Also one of the most isolated.

“This will be your new home for. . .” John Hammer could sense the man’s shrug. “Who knows how long. Or it may be your graveyard. That’s up to you. You’ve perhaps noticed that your clothes are a bit more substantial than that finely tailored Brooks Brothers suit you were wearing. You are dressed in full cold-weather hiking gear—North Face, lots of layers, very good stuff. You’ll need it. Temperature on the ground is approximately thirty-five degrees, not counting wind chill.

“You’ve also been given a backpack with a one-man, all-season tent, thermal-insulated sleeping bag, miscellaneous hiking gear and a week’s supply of freeze-dried food. In just a minute now we will land and you will embark on an exciting new adventure. You may walk out of here on your own, you may meet up with a group of fellow adventurers who will take pity on you. You may die and be eaten by animals. Honestly, I don’t much care. But you will have to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, Senator. You will have to stand on your own two feet. And then we’ll see if you’re one of the fittest who deserves to survive.”

The man’s voice dripped contempt. “And, remember, no whining.”

The helicopter began its slow descent and suddenly John Hammer didn’t want to break free from his bonds but to embrace them, to beg his captors to tie him down tighter, for all eternity if need be. The craft jumped and shimmied as it hit ground, the engine whine lessened, the rotor chop slowed. Hands were all over him, unhitching him from the seat, unwrapping the ties at his wrists and ankles, jerking the hood off his head.

At last John Hammer saw the man who would turn his life of comfort and prestige and privilege into a filthy, dangerous and quite probably terminal hell. He was an unremarkable-looking man—no plastic face mask now—but there was neither mercy nor hesitation in his clear blue eyes.

“Please don’t do this, please don’t do this,” Senator John Hammer wailed. He was weeping, begging. Unashamed. “I have a wife and children. I have—”

The man’s eyes held nothing. He said nothing. He stepped in front of the pleading senator, swung open the helicopter door and yanked John Hammer to his feet. He picked up the backpack and tossed it onto the rocky earth. Finally, he spoke.

“This is it, Senator. Time to go.”

“No! Please, please. . .” Hammer grabbed at the man’s down jacket, tears staining his own. “Please don’t do this, please don’t do this.”

The nothingness in the man’s face was terrifying. It was like peering into a block of stone. His hand disappeared into his parka and emerged with the long-barreled black pistol. Frigid winds whipped at them as they stood at the open door. The man grasped John Hammer by the hair, roughly pulled his head back, jabbed the barrel into the soft tissue under his chin.

“When people came to you—people who were hurting, desperate, people you had taken an oath to represent—and said Help me, I’ve been laid off and have no money for food. Help me, my home is being foreclosed on and I have no place to live. Help me, my wife or husband or son or daughter is dying and I can’t afford health insurance, what did you say to them, United States Senator John Patrick Hammer?

“When they said, ‘Please, please, please,’ what did you tell them? You bragged about your expensive booze and your freeloading on a corporate jet. You called them wimps and whiners and told them to stop crying and pick themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they had no shoes. You told them to go fuck themselves, Senator, because they had nothing to offer you but their hope and trust and belief that their government actually cared about them. So it’s too late to beg for mercy; that ship sailed a long time ago. Now, if you don’t get out of this aircraft, pick up that pack and start walking, I swear to God I’ll put a bullet between your eyes and leave your carcass for the animals to fight over.”