America Rising (45 page)

Within seconds the men disappeared into the trees and the cars sped off, heading back to the rental where their drivers would wait for precisely one hour, then return to the drop-off points. The eight men in the assault team would either be there or they wouldn’t. No one wanted to think about the latter possibility. At the head of one four-man team, Robert Ford flipped down his night-vision goggles. Padding silently through the forest, the rest of Blue Team and Red Team did likewise.

Frank Bernabe’s compound was very well-protected. The first line of defense was an electrified fence that ran around the property all the way to the beach. Beyond that was an array of motion sensors and motion-activated cameras and floodlights that were monitored on multiple video screens 24/7 in the compound’s command center. The perimeter of the clearing around the estate was patrolled by three teams of four men, heavily armed, each team working an eight-hour shift.

The main house was wired to its own alarm system, disabled only by an electronic code that changed daily. The house was also hooked up to a pair of massive generators, fed by giant underground propane tanks, that would kick in within minutes of a power outage. Whenever he was there, Frank Bernabe felt secure, isolated, powerful. Just the way he liked it.

Precisely three minutes into the mission the two teams, spread out and moving in on the compound like pincers, were at the electrified fence. “Blue in position one,” Robert Ford whispered into his throat mic. “Red in position one,” echoed his counterpart. They stood silent and waited for a burst of lightning, a bang of thunder. At the rented house, the team’s tech expert sat at his computer. He’d already hacked into the power company grid and was prepared to bring it down just long enough for Blue and Red teams to breach the fence and slip past.

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound died. Two members of Blue and Red snipped the fence, two others held the flap open. When they were all inside the tech tapped more keys. Power returned. Robert Ford and the Red Team leader switched on their hand-held computers. Ahead was a hundred-yard swath of motion-activated sensors, cameras, floodlights. Each lit up on the tiny screens. Ms. Lee’s information was comprehensive; they hoped it was equally accurate. Her files contained maps, blueprints, codes, schedules and notes that had been pored over, analyzed and worked up into what was literally a road map through a mine field.

“Blue in position two,” Ford said. Red’s leader repeated the message. The teams waited. Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound died. The teams glided silently through the trees. “Position three,” the team leaders whispered. Power came back on.

They were approximately fifty yards from the treeline; through the foliage they could see the beginnings of the great lawn, a full acre of immaculately manicured grass, beyond that the faint glow of lights glimmering in the Bernabe mansion.

Ms. Lee’s information was accurate. When Frank Bernabe was on-premises, each guard patrolled a quadrant at the edge of the treeline from atop an ATV, rotating their position to the next quadrant every fifteen minutes, as regular and predictable as clockwork. They were ex-military, good enough at their jobs but wet, miserable and bored. With nothing and no one to challenge them, they’d long since grown sloppy, relying less on attentiveness and careful observation than on the compound’s array of electronic gadgetry.

Taking them out was easy. Two men from each team crept through the damp underbrush to within about one hundred yards of their assigned target. The HK’s had a range of more than thirteen hundred yards but the foliage and weather made a clear long-range shot impossible. Two members of Red Team edged closer to the staff house. Robert Ford and another Blue moved parallel to the treeline towards the beach, creeping as close as possible to the main house.

Then they waited.

The storm raged. The guards on the ATVs rotated position, wetter and even more miserable. After three minutes Robert Ford whispered into his throat mic, “Call in.” One by one, Blue and Red teams answered, “Ready.” The tech at the computer heard them too. “At your command,” he replied.

They waited. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound died.

Simultaneously:

A single soft “pfft” from each of four barrels of the HKs and four 7.62 mm NATO rounds sped at almost three-thousand feet per second towards the guard on the ATVs. The two members of Red Team rushed the staff house. Robert Ford and Blue Two rushed the main house. Three bodies, shot to wound, not kill, tumbled off their vehicles. The fourth staggered to his feet. Red Team fired flash-bang grenades through front and back windows of the command center. Ford and Blue Two hit the front door of the main house. Ford clicked a button on his radio transmitter, disarmed the alarm. A fifth “pfft” from an HK and the remaining guard went down.

The snipers hustled out to the wounded guards. Red Team broke down front and back doors, stormed the command center, caught one guard leveling a Glock, put three bullets in his chest. The other surrendered. Blue Two pulled out a ring of master keys, withdrew the door’s deadbolt, turned the lock with another, yanked the door open. The snipers field-dressed the guards’ wounds, dragged them to the shelter of the treeline. Red Team bound and gagged the second guard, calmed the house staff, bound and gagged them too.

The snipers took up position on the ATVs, on guard, watching for reinforcements. Red Team locked down the command center. Robert Ford slipped into the main house, headed upstairs for Frank Bernabe’s bedroom. Blue Two followed, closed the door, swept the downstairs, M4 at the ready, just in case. One by one, team members called in. “Target secured.”

“Gaining target now,” said Robert Ford.

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The tech tapped a few keys. Power in the Bernabe compound returned.

* * *

Robert Ford stood at the door to Frank Bernabe’s bedroom, contemplating the solid slab of Honduran mahogany. This was the culmination of a journey begun in his mind more than five years ago, growing from the idea that in a country where the rich and powerful felt no constraints on their behavior, their ambition, their appetites, where neither corrupted government nor neutered and divided citizenry could call them to account, the only weapon left was fear. He fervently hoped this would be the last time he had to wield that weapon. He opened the door and stepped into the room.

If Frank Bernabe was startled, he didn’t show it. He was sitting in an oversized bed, laptop on his thighs, snifter of cognac on the table beside him, glaring at the intruder as if some sort of vermin had dared invade his space.

“Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing here?” he spat. “Get the hell out of my fucking house.”

“Hello, Frank,” Robert Ford said. “Or should I say, ‘Mr. Flowers.’”

Recognition flickered in Frank Bernabe’s eyes. “Mr. Thorn. Well, aren’t you clever. Elliott and his people were a bunch of fucking idiots. That reporter too. And so are you. Now get out.”

“Not just yet, I’m afraid, Frank. There are a couple of things we have to discuss.”

“I have nothing to say to you. Get out.”

“You’re a real hard case, aren’t you, Frank? I’m not impressed.”

Frank Bernabe said nothing. Glared harder. His right hand slipped beneath the bedsheets and inched towards the headboard.

“Don’t bother with the panic button,” Robert Ford said. “The system’s been disabled, your security people neutralized.” He shook his head sadly. “I really thought I understood you, Frank. You and people like you. You took and took and took. You took the government. The president, the Congress, the statehouses, courts. You took the law. You took people’s jobs and homes and bank accounts. You took their hopes and dreams and futures. You even took their lives. I thought one day you might have taken enough. I guess I was wrong.”

“You are a fucking idiot,” Frank Bernabe sneered. “There’s never enough. There’s only more. And don’t give me that ‘man of the people’ crap. The ‘people’ were begging us to take it; we couldn’t do it fast enough. The more we took, the better they liked it. We told them anything and they believed it. Every goddam time. What do you call people too stupid to act in their own self-interest?”

He didn’t bother waiting for a response.

“Americans.”

“Not so stupid now, though. Huh, Frank?”

“Fuck you. If it weren’t for that idiot Bigby and Elias and that fucking Doe—” He stopped and stared at Robert Ford, recognition once more glittering bright in his eyes. “You. . . You’re the bastard in Memphis. In New Orleans. You’re following that little shit around, protecting him. I’ll be goddammed.”

He hacked up a laugh. It sounded like a death rattle.

“That bitch in D.C. was one of yours.”

Robert Ford went very still. Slowly, reverently, like a priest bestowing a sacrament, he pulled the SIG from its holster, raised the muzzle, held it there, steady, like an unspoken promise. Then he gently squeezed the trigger and blew off Frank Bernabe’s kneecap. Shrieks of pain caromed off the walls, were swallowed up and lost in the enormous bedroom suite. The laptop slid to the floor. A tide of red surged over the sheets. Robert Ford waited patiently for the screams to die down.

“Her name was Sheila Boniface,” he said softly. “You’re not fit to speak it.”

“Ah, you motherfucker! Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou. . . “ Frank Bernabe’s face was the color of curdled milk. His breathing was heavy and labored. He clutched at his shattered leg as if he could somehow put it back together and staunch the bleeding. He was still snarling, though. He was still Frank Bernabe.

“So what are you going to do now, Thorn? Or whoever you are. Kill me?” He hacked up another laugh, but this time pained, feeble. “You think that will end this? Think someone else won’t take my place?”

“You’re right, Frank,” Robert Ford said. “But your life is at an end.” He reached into a pocket of his camouflaged jacket. “And whoever comes after you will at least know this.”

He drew his hand from the pocket and flicked an object across the room. It fluttered like a dying butterfly and landed right side up on the bed. It was a plain white business card, printed with a single word in big black letters. Frank Bernabe’s eyes went wide. His mouth worked but no sound came out.

Robert Ford nodded. A final benediction.

The first shot blew most of Frank Bernabe’s heart out his back. The second two finished the job. The fourth went through his right eyeball and splattered the wall and headboard with blood and tissue and brain matter. Robert Ford studied the scene for a moment, knowing, accepting, that it would be a part of him, like a limb or an organ, for the rest of his life.

Then he walked out of Frank Bernabe’s bedroom, closed the door and disappeared down the darkened hallway.

T
he six weeks I spent with John Doe were the most exhausting and exhilarating weeks of my life.

They began portentously, only hours after AnnaLynn picked me up at the Baltimore-Washington airport and ferried me to the hotel where John Doe and the rest of his campaign staff were staying. We were in the middle of our first brainstorming session when AnnaLynn’s computer beeped with a news alert. It was a short item, two paragraphs beneath a headline that read simply, “Frank Bernabe Dead of Heart Attack.”

I thought back to the set of Robert’s face out on his deck in Key Largo, the loss in his eyes and the flat promise of his words, “His time will come,” and I felt my own face flush with shame all over again. There was no heart attack; I’d stake my life on it. Robert was true to his word, as I’d always known he would be, even in the depths of my momentary insanity. I still held out hope that one day I could tell him so.

The next day brought more news. William Bigby sold All-American Media to a group of Arab investors and retired to a castle in the English countryside. He was replaced as CEO by Russell Millar. Given considerably wider and grander play was the news that Ed Bane, the bane of the existence of liberals, Democraps, socialists, losers and anyone who didn’t think like he did, was found dead in his Palm Beach estate. Shot four times in the chest. Apparently during a robbery gone bad.

As sure as I was that Robert Ford had dispatched Frank Bernabe to the furthest corner of hell, I was equally confident he had nothing to do with the killing of Ed Bane. My confidence was bolstered a few days later when Public Interest reported that Bane’s chief of security, a former Mossad agent named Moises Ben Levi, had conveniently left the country just a week before the murder, taking half of his men with him, and was reportedly living large on a sprawling estate in Costa Rica.

None of us shed tears over any of them, if for no other reason than we were too ridiculously, stupendously busy. From the beginning John set a relentless, grueling pace—a new city every three or four days, traveling in a caravan of buses and rental cars, sleeping in people’s homes or cheap hotels, eating on the fly or out of machines or not at all.

We were essentially working for free. The “campaign” was taking in thousands of dollars a day, virtually all of it in donations of a hundred dollars or less, but John was giving it away as fast as the checks could be processed. We had our meals, cellphone bills and a few miscellaneous expenses covered but that was it.