America Rising (37 page)

In the end, I had a few facts. I had a few thousand questions. Mostly what I had was two timelines. I sat at my desk in my cute little house in the middle-of-nowhere Florida Keys and compared, running down those times, dates and places, one by one. Looked them over, ran them down again. I began to shiver. I had no proof. I had no evidence. I had no smoking gun. All I had was two timelines.

And they scared the hell out of me.

* * *

After dropping off Billy Dean Rafer at the Memphis airport, Blue One talked to John Doe. Told him everything, from Hattie McDaniel’s tip in New Orleans to Blue Three putting three bullets in Leland Elliott on the top floor of a downtown parking garage. Doe listened attentively, his anger melting, the lines in his face erasing. Sheila Boniface sat in silence so deep her teammates ached for her.

When Blue One finished John Doe’s eyes were wide and glistening. They fell on each of his protectors, one by one, and for a moment they saw what made men and women he’d never met instantly give him their complete faith and trust.

“Why?” he asked, his voice almost breaking. “Why would you do all this for me?”

Blue One regarded him solemnly. “Because you’re you. Because someone has to.”

“I. . . I. . .” John Doe was searching for words. Couldn’t find them. “All I can say is, thank you. Thank you.” He reached over and squeezed Sheila Boniface’s knee. Took her hand and entwined his fingers in hers. His lips brushed her cheek. “Thank you,” he whispered. Her smile was beatific.

Blue Three drove the white minivan to a ranch in northeastern Tennessee, several hundred isolated, densely forested acres belonging to Eleanor Beatty, the woman called Logistics. There she ran the group’s motor pool, complete with body shop where the minivan would be repainted, scoured of fingerprints, strands of hair and any other identifying markers, then given new license plates and stored until the next mission.

The members of Blue Team showered, ate a quick dinner, slung the luggage they’d stored at Eleanor Beatty’s place in their own vehicles and drove off. Their mission was over; they’d had too much exposure in Memphis. They would go to ground now, either overseas or in isolated locales that had been identified and made secure months earlier. But there would be a new Blue Team, and Weapons’ Red Team was already standing by to throw a shield over John Doe, wherever he would go.

But he wasn’t going anywhere yet. Eleanor Beatty gave him and Sheila Boniface the keys to a guest cottage about half a mile down a dirt road from the sprawling wood-frame main house. They walked, flanked by towering pines, hand in hand, saying little. When they arrived at the house, John Doe let them in, shut the door, then turned to Sheila Boniface, took her by the shoulders and said, “All of that, before, did you mean it?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, falling on him with a passion that left him weak in the knees. “Oh, yes.”

* * *

The call came from a frantic Ray Carmody.

“What the hell happened, Frank?” he shouted. “What the hell happened? First I hear about two guys taken out on the sidewalk. Then I send my team to the rendezvous and your guys don’t show. Then I get a call that this Elliott character was found in a van with his head blown off and John Doe is gone. Jesus Christ!

“Do you have any idea of the kind of problem we’ve got here? If Doe stays alive we are utterly and completely fucked. Have you seen the latest poll numbers? He already creams everybody, anybody in the election, Nancy hasn’t got a prayer. I thought you were going to take care of this, Frank. You told me you were going to take care of this. And now it’s all gone to shit! What am I going to tell the president?”

Frank Bernabe had no patience for Ray Carmody’s whining. “Stop acting like an old lady,” he said coldly. “You tell Nancy you are going to handle it, then you work with me to handle it.”

His tone turned reflective. “I admit, I may have gotten too cute trying to hang the Doe hit on Bigby. But that’s done. Give me the contacts for your black ops people, the ones you used in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve got some people in mind myself. No more fucking around. We’ll put the two of them together, have them track Doe down and take him out once and for all. Okay, Ray?”

No answer.

“Ray?”

“Okay,” Ray Carmody said finally. It was more like a whimper. He opened his desk drawer and stared at the big black Smith & Wesson he’d brought from home. He stared at it for a very long time.

* * *

John Doe and Sheila Boniface spent two days in Eleanor Beatty’s cottage, sleeping late, making love, walking the forest, eating home-cooked dinners that evolved into long explorations of philosophy, politics, the arts. It was a joyous, carefree time, as if the rest of the world beyond the house and giant pines and land split by running streams and teeming with animal life didn’t exist.

It couldn’t last.

On the third day they woke up, made love. John Doe rolled over, Sheila Boniface’s head on his chest, and said, “I have to go back to New Orleans.” She kissed him on the lips and said, “I know.”

They gathered their few possessions and said goodbye to Eleanor Beatty, taking off for New Orleans in one of her cars, a ten-year-old Chevy coupe outfitted with a small-bore V8, heavy-duty suspension and run-flat tires. Sheila Boniface drove. John Doe used her cell phone to call AnnaLynn Conté.

“It’s John,” he said when she answered. “I’d like to have my old job back.”

Her surprise and excitement were palpable. “At the same pay?” she said, laughing. Then more seriously, “When can you start?”

By evening they were back on the same Lower Nine street John Doe had fled a little over a week ago. They parked at the curb in front of his old house. His crew had kept working. The exterior was freshly painted, the rotting steps to the porch torn out and rebuilt. Sturdy new windows replaced the original wood-frame ones that leaked air like a sieve. They could see dim light through the windows, hear the faint whirring of a power drill.

John Doe took Sheila Boniface by the hand and led her up the steps. He knocked at the front door, now a handsome dark wood slab with a small oval etched-glass window. A tough-looking young black man with gang tats scrolled up his arms and a blue do-rag wrapped around his head peered out the window. When he saw who was there he put down his drill and flung the door open.

“Wassup, JoDo?” he said, flashing a full set of grills that gleamed even in the weak light.

“I’m back, Nathan,” John Doe said as they went through an elaborately choreographed handshake ritual the white guy had obviously never managed to master. They abandoned it midway, laughing, and hugged with real affection.

“This is my friend Sheila,” he said. “Sheila Boniface, Nathan Franklin. Best damn carpenter I ever worked with.”

Nathan Franklin flashed his grills again, prepared to give the stocky black woman a good-humored dose of street jive. But something made him reconsider and instead he politely shook her hand, trying not to wince at the unexpected power of her grip. “Very nice to meet you, Sheila Boniface,” he said gravely. He nodded at John Doe. “That’s a good man you’ve got there.” Then with a sly grin: “And if you stop trying to crush my fingers I’ll get us a round of beers from the fridge.”

Sheila Boniface let go. Blushed. Nathan Franklin flexed his hand, got the beers. The three of them sat on the floor of the unfinished living room and drank, made small talk. Then Franklin looked at John Doe, his expression somber.

“They came after you, right?” he said. There was no need to specify who “they” were. Both knew there were very many “theys.”

He turned to Sheila Boniface. “And you stopped them.”

“With a lot of help.”

“They’ll try again.” It wasn’t a question.

“Undoubtedly.”

He drew her eyes to an AK-47 propped in a corner. “They try that shit here and they’ll get seriously fucked up.”

“Enough, you two!” John Doe exclaimed. “There has to be something less depressing that we can talk about. Besides, Nate, we’re just going to be here a couple of weeks. I’m going to help out over at SayNo, then we’ll leave with the caravan for D.C. You mind if we crash in one of the rooms here until then?”

“Mind? Hell, it’s your house.”

John Doe shook his head. “No, it’s not. It’s yours. You’ve done all the work.”

If Sheila Boniface had blinked she would have missed the light that shone for just a second on Nathan Franklin’s face. It looked very much like love.

“That’s the first time anyone has ever given me something without expecting something in return.” He said it so quietly it was more a thought than actual words. Then he stood and said, his voice hoarse, “Don’t get up. I’ll go find you a mattress and sheets.”

* * *

I told myself I called AnnaLynn Conté because I hadn’t heard from her in awhile and was wondering how she was holding up. That I was worried about her safety. That I cared for her and didn’t want to lose the connection. But I really called because I just needed to hear a friendly voice.

I caught her around dinnertime. She sounded tired and stressed and hyper all at once but also confident and excited. I kept it light, not wanting burden her with my arcane conspiracies and theories of civil war, and I think she was glad for a break from the seriousness and relentless pace of her day. It was a good conversation; whatever we had between us was still there. I was making my goodbyes when she dropped her bombshell.

“Oh, by the way, Josh. I meant to tell you. John is back in town.”

Like everyone else in the country, I’d seen the video of John Doe, seen it a couple dozen times. And like every reporter in the country I’d have traded my left nut for the chance to interview the young man who’d come out of nowhere to represent the last best hope for a reborn America.

“You think he’d agree to an interview?” I asked cautiously. “Any time, any place.” One more thought. “Would you be willing to vouch for me?”

“Of course,” she answered without hesitation. “In fact, he’s right here. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

There was a rustling of papers and scraping of chairs in the background, then John Doe got on the line.

“Yes?”

“John, this is Josh Henson with Public Interest. I think AnnaLynn mentioned me. I’d like to do an interview with you. Your impact on the country, the political process, the American people is just. . . phenomenal. Everyone wants to get to know you better, find out who you are, what you are. It sounds clichéd, I know, but you’re a beacon of hope to millions of Americans.”

Silence. When he finally spoke his voice was soft, pensive. “Maybe they’d be happier not knowing.”

That threw me.

“I don’t think so,” I said, trying hard to salvage my chances. “There are no saints in this world, only self-proclaimed ones. What draws people to you is you don’t pretend to be anything other than who and what you are. I’m speaking not just as a reporter, John, but as someone who sees what’s happening in this country and has real concern for its future.”

His response came quick and forceful.

“I don’t want this. Any of it. No offense, Josh, but I don’t want to be a celebrity. I don’t want to do interviews. I don’t want to be on TV. I don’t want people pointing at me and saying, There he is. I want to do what I’ve done—help a few people at a time, as best I can. Quietly. Alone. Without cameras and reporters and dogs and ponies and dancing bears. I’m trying to take my life back, not give it up even more. I’m sorry, Josh. I know AnnaLynn likes you, respects you. But I can’t do it.”

There was no point continuing.

“I understand your decision, John,” I said. “And I hope you do get your life back. But sometimes our fate is chosen for us. We’re just passengers, along for the ride.”

* * *

Frank Bernabe wasn’t lying. There would be no fucking around in his next attempt.

Shortly after midnight on a calm, starry late-June morning a three-hundred-foot megayacht owned by one of Frank Bernabe’s associates through an elaborate maze of shell companies left its harbor on the west coast of Florida and set a course for New Orleans. Several hours later the military version of a Eurocopter AS350 landed on the yacht’s flight deck. The pilot and his three passengers were employees of a private company founded by former CIA and Mossad agents that had carried out numerous black ops on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The quartet disappeared into the belly of the giant yacht and waited.

By two o’clock the following morning the yacht was moored one hundred fifty nautical miles off the coast of New Orleans, well within range of the helicopter. The pilot and passengers, outfitted and equipped in full military combat gear, boarded and took off on a flight that in approximately one hour would take them over a dilapidated house in the middle of the Lower Ninth Ward.

Flying low to avoid civilian radar detection and with radar operators at NAS New Orleans instructed to ignore any small aircraft approaching the city from the Gulf, the pilot was confident he could get to the target and get out with no interference. As he got closer he radioed a message to another team on the ground, this one of eight members waiting in twin SUVs in an abandoned warehouse just across the Industrial Canal.