America Rising (33 page)

“War and revolution.”

Leland Elliott and Armando Gutierrez. The attack on AnnaLynn. The mobs at Rescue America Day. The attack on John Doe. Maybe even the attack on me. The throttling of the Internet. The ceaseless attacks by corporate media. The thugs who traveled the country, bringing violence and intimidation. The black-clad figures who attacked me and Julie Teichner.

What if this really was a war, a war taking place in the shadows, off the books, beneath the radar? A war between a band every bit as cunning and ruthless as the elites they opposed, the ones who controlled every lever of government, business and the media and would press every one to have them hunted down and exterminated.

“The president and Frank Bernabe.”

Were they the ones pressing those levers? Who else could? True, Nancy Elias was no worse than any other representative of the elites who’d occupied the Oval Office. But faced with a challenge that could actually topple those elites, would she really act less cold-bloodedly than the head of any other government whose control of its citizenry was threatened? As for Frank Bernabe, I knew of him, vaguely. Obscenely wealthy, obsessively secretive, reputed to be the man who’d put Nancy Elias in the White House. What if they really were afraid? What if they really had come to know fear?

A war, in fact. A revolution, in deed.

I couldn’t think about it any more. I shut off my computer and spent the afternoon at the beach.

* * *

The next step was to put Leland Elliott in play. Goddam fool, Frank Bernabe snorted as he punched up Elliott’s number. But no matter, he was simply one more piece to move around the chessboard.

“This is Mr. Flowers,” he said curtly as Elliott tried to keep from swallowing his tongue. “I suppose you also received a package?”

At the “also,” Leland Elliott almost fainted, but he managed a strangled, “Yes, sir.”

“You fucking idiot!” Bernabe exploded. “Do you realize you almost compromised the entire mission?! You were not authorized to go after that chickenshit reporter. You had one target, and one target only. Not only did you disobey my orders but you fucked up your own folly besides. Did you think you could hide that from me? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? You worthless piece of shit, I’ve taken people’s heads for less.”

Frank Bernabe smiled thinly to himself. He could hear Leland Elliott’s terrified breathing over the phone; his display of anger had had its desired effect. Now it was time to reel the idiot in.

“Fortunately for you, unfortunately for me, I still need you for this mission. Now, Mr. Elliott, I want you to listen to me very carefully. You will do exactly what I say, when I say and how I say. If you fuck up one more time I will have things done to you that you would not believe are possible. Are we clear on that?”

Leland Elliott was by now far too scared to speak.

“Good. You will lead this mission yourself. Pick your two best men—hopefully better than those incompetents you sent to the Keys—and be ready to move out within twenty-four hours. The target is the same: John Doe.

“But you will also have a third man, a patsy. A Lee Harvey Oswald, if you like. He is being chosen now and will be put in contact with you shortly. This man is your responsibility. When the target’s location has been determined your team will go, surveil the area, track the target and develop a plan to take him out. When that plan is approved you will terminate the target and retreat to a pre-determined location. There you will be paid half your agreed-upon fee as punishment for your previous stupidity. You will be given new identities and travel documents and you will disappear. And you will stay disappeared until you have been told otherwise. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” The thought that he might be allowed to live brought Leland Elliott’s voice back.

“Now, listen to me, Mr. Elliott. Your survival as a functioning human being depends on your executing what I am about to tell you down to the absolute letter. The slightest failure on your part will result in the consequences I have described to you.

“You must place the patsy in position to plausibly strike the target. It is possible that he might, but this man is not a professional and cannot be counted on. It is the task of you and your team to ensure that the target is struck and terminated. You will also ensure that the patsy is held—unharmed—until he is taken into custody by the authorities. This last is very important, Mr. Elliott. It is necessary that the patsy be put on trial to show the American people we believe in justice and the rule of law. Then, and only then, will your team retreat and follow the other steps as I have outlined. Is that clear?

“Yes, sir. Crystal, sir. And let me say how much I appreciate the second—”

“Save it,” Frank Bernabe said brusquely. “Just do your fucking job.”

He broke the connection and scowled with disgust. The man’s cowardice was revolting. Thank God he won’t be fouling the air with it much longer.

* * *

The FBI may have let Hattie McDaniel slip through the cracks but not the two men with the harsh Brooklyn accents and granite chips for eyes. With real-time access to the Bureau’s reports and communications, they quickly noticed the agents’ oversight and met the Greyhound clerk at her Lower Ninth Ward home. She took an instant dislike to the men and angrily ordered them off her property, but before she perished on her kitchen floor, almost decapitated by a fierce swipe of a freshly honed Marine Combat knife, one of them was already texting a message to New York.

It was a single word: Memphis.

* * *

Having moved Leland Elliott into position, it was now time to arrange for his demise. Frank Bernabe got a secure line to the White House. Ray Carmody would see to the details.

“The president has briefed you on our discussion of the Doe matter?” Bernabe asked after exchanging curt greetings with Nancy Elias’s chief of staff.

“She has,” Carmody acknowledged.

“Then I will need two things,” Bernabe said. “One, I will need an ops team to terminate the shooters after the target has been struck. There will be three of them. Once the patsy has been secured, they have been instructed to rendezvous at a location which you will be given. They will be expecting payment and new identities, so your team will have tactical advantage. How they dispose of the bodies is up to you.

“Two, I will need someone in the administration, preferably the Attorney General, to leak to the press the patsy’s connection to Ed Bane. Also, through the Revere Corps, to William Bigby. It is important to have our friends in the media play this up in order to discredit Bane and Bigby and neutralize them and their supporters in the coming election.

“If we are successful at these tasks we will deprive the opposition on both the left and right of their most important players. Then we can deal with the secondary players on our own time. Of course, I will be available to you and the president for consultation, and to provide any services or intelligence you might request.”

Frank Bernabe cleared his throat, giving his listener time to think things through.

“Is there anything else you require at this time?” he asked.

“Not at this time,” Ray Carmody said. “I will inform the president that the matter is being handled.” And may God help me, he prayed silently. I’ve become a murderer.

B
lue Team arrived in Memphis thirty-six hours after a smog-belching bus disgorged John Doe and a clot of other stiff, weary travelers onto Union Avenue. Armed with still photos of their subject and Hattie McDaniel’s anecdotes about his affinity for barbecue and blues, they immediately hit the restaurants and clubs in and around Beale Street. No sign of him there so they checked into their hotel, freshened up, had dinner, then held a quick meeting

As always, when in the field they referred to each other only by number. Blue One was the man known as Leader. Blue Two was a thirty-five-year-old African-American woman, ex-Army sergeant, tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, proficient with pistol and knife. She was short and stocky, homely in appearance, but with an open, honest manner that instantly drew people to her.

Blue Three was a former Army Ranger sniper, an expert with a variety of weapons with absolutely no compunction about using them. Blue Four was the group’s computer geek, a former gangbanger who realized he could make more money designing software than sticking up liquor stores and banked his first million before he turned twenty-five.

After the meeting they went back to their rooms and got a few hours’ sleep. They would be up at dawn to find John Doe and surround him with an invisible shield. They had no idea if he was still in the city or, if so, where he might be. But they were confident in their abilities and sure that one of the most-broadcast faces in the country couldn’t remain anonymous forever. The trick was to find him before the hunters did.

What they didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that they already had. He was in room 306, just down the hall from Blue Four, sleeping off a day’s orgiastic consumption of bourbon, barbecued pork and highly amplified electric music. His former neighbors in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Mendocino and elsewhere would hardly have recognized the gray-skinned, bleary-eyed figure sprawled inertly on the bed, which he’d only leave to make a stumbling rush to the bathroom.

* * *

Occasionally they’d glimpsed the underside of his unfailingly serene, almost Zen-like demeanor, despite his best efforts to keep it hidden. It was as if the pressure of being the man he’d willed himself to be built and built until it had to be released, in ways typically involving alcohol, drugs, food and women. He supposed it was a character flaw, but he derived a certain inexplicable pleasure from the after-effects of his excesses, even the head-pounding, nausea-inducing ones. He’d always felt like an alien, an outsider, among people yet not of them. The pain made him feel more human, and he liked the way being human felt.

After a night’s sleep and several gallons of water, the rest of him was feeling better too, good enough to eat some solid food, wash it down several cups of coffee and get on with his journey to Nashville. He showered, dressed, gathered his few possessions and rode the elevator down to the hotel restaurant.

Blue Three almost lost it when he walked into the restaurant and saw a slight young man with a stubble-patched face and bottle-blond hair beneath a black baseball cap ravishing a plate of bacon and eggs. He recovered quickly, palmed his cell phone and snapped the man’s picture, then grabbed a table in the corner where he could keep his quarry in view. He ordered breakfast and sent the photo to Blue Four to run through “Face”—the facial recognition program he’d created using still shots of John Doe. The confirm came back immediately.

By the time John Doe finished shoveling the last of his eggs, the rest of Blue Team was in position. He paid his bill and left the hotel, heading east on Union Avenue with Blues Two and Three following on foot. One and Four were already at the bus depot, parked around the corner in a white minivan with blacked-out windows.

Four kept the minivan idling while One made a sweep through the depot. He was dressed like a laborer—heavy, well-worn jeans, white t-shirt under a nylon windbreaker, ancient yellow baseball cap with a Caterpillar logo. The depot was bustling with morning arrivals and departures. Blue One skirted the perimeter, looking for the unusual, the stand-outs, anyone who seemed out of place, who paid more attention to others than to his own business, was standing around for no discernible purpose. He saw no one. The room was clear.

“Subject approaching depot,” he heard Blue Two say in his earbud.

Then, with urgency, “Heads up, Two and Three.” It was Blue Four in the minivan. “Union Av, Silver Ford, single driver. Just made his third pass.”

“Subject at depot.” Blue Two again. “Stopping. Buying newspaper. Maintaining distance. Three approaching.”

“What’s going on, Three?” Blue One asked.

“He’s reading the damn paper,” Three said, baffled. “I’m moving away before he makes me. Keep an eye on him, Two.”

“Roger that.”

“I’m coming out,” One said. “Three, go inside. You may have gotten too close. Two, hold position.”

“Roger that.” She slipped around the corner of the depot, just a few feet from the entrance, and peered around. “Eyes on him.”

Blue One exited the depot. John Doe was at the entrance, leaning against the building, newspaper under his arm, consumed by thought. One moved past him down Union Avenue, ducked into a recess in the depot’s façade, looked up and down the street. He didn’t like what he saw.

“Two males coming toward you on Union,” he said into his wrist mike. “Gray sport coat, black leather jacket. Two, you take the subject. Three, get out here. Four, back up Two. Move, people.”

No one else paid any attention to the two men on the sidewalk. In fact, there seemed nothing out of the ordinary about them. But to Blue One there were tells. Their eyes, for one. They weren’t on each other or where they were going but flitted back and forth like pinballs, sweeping the street, assessing each occupant, gazes hanging a millisecond too long.