America Rising (46 page)

We didn’t care. We all did everything. I was nominally in charge of handling the press but I spent most of my time working side-by-side with John, from setting up chairs in meeting halls and dishing up food at potluck dinners to marching with laid-off public employees and banging nails with neighborhood groups fixing up dilapidated homes. John’s energy and stamina were amazing; the rest of us were left breathless trying to match him.

Free time was a mostly unobtainable luxury, but John and I did manage to spend a few early-morning hours making a dent in a bottle of good bourbon and listening to vintage jazz and blues. AnnaLynn and I didn’t have much time together either but we made the most of what we had. It brought us closer, made us more comfortable with each other. We still hadn’t slept together—crazy schedules, numbing fatigue and still-unresolved baggage took care of that. But we’d lit a spark and enjoyed slowly fanning it to flame.

Even so, as August rolled into September I knew it was time for me to go. I didn’t want to leave John and the rest of the team dangling so I called Chloe Enders and asked if she’d be interested in taking my place. “It’s too much work, virtually no money and everybody wants a piece of you,” I told her. “It’s the best job you’ll ever have.”

She didn’t hesitate. She took the first flight out of San Francisco. I introduced her to John and AnnaLynn and they all liked each other at first sight. So I could leave in good conscience. The night before my departure they threw me a party in some diner in a neatly trimmed suburb of Kansas City. The owner kept the place open after hours and kicked in free beer. John brought his bottle of bourbon and AnnaLynn somehow dug up a decent Oregon Pinot Noir and we all got a little loose and then a little rowdy and then a little sentimental. In the morning I was gone, on a plane bound for Miami.

My first few days at home I saw no one, did nothing. I caught up on my sleep, hung out on my little beach, paddled my kayak around the mangroves and watched movies until late at night. It didn’t take long for that to grow old, though, so I fashioned a comforting and comfortable routine: Get up early, have a light breakfast, take my coffee out to the beach. Work on my book until noon, eat, then depending on the day, paint in the little studio I’d fashioned out of a spare bedroom or practice my scales before going off to guitar lessons or study Italian in preparation for my twice-weekly class. In the evening I’d fix dinner, then read or watch a movie or head down to Pilot House for a beer or several with friends.

It was after one of those nights that I came home late, having probably downed a beer or two too many. I was tired and tipsy so I looked right past the big black Mercedes parked across the street, ignored the footsteps behind me, was too late to react to the strong, callused hand that clamped itself around my mouth while the other grabbed my wrist and twisted it up painfully behind my back. I could hear quite well the calm, quiet voice in my ear, however. The one that ordered, “I’d like you to come with us, Josh. There are some people who want to talk with you.”

For some reason I wasn’t afraid. Or maybe I was drunk or feeling fatalistic or just had all the fight drained out of me. But I let the man steer me down my driveway and into the Mercedes, slide me into the back seat, slip in next to me and close the door. He produced a black felt bag from a seat pocket and said, “It’s for your own protection. We’re not here to harm you. I think the people we’re taking you to are people you’ll want to meet.”

Funny thing is, I believed him. So I let him slip the bag over my head as the car sped up the 18-Mile Stretch towards the mainland. I tried to keep track of time and direction but once we hit the turnpike I lost all perception of both. There was nothing for me to do, nothing for me to say, so I sat back, closed my eyes and let it all go.

At length I felt the car slow, stop, turn, go. Stop and go again. Then stop once more. I heard the engine die, a large door unroll and bang shut. My friendly kidnapper helped me out of the car, guided me past doorways and through rooms. Over tile, over carpet. Down a step, a feeling of space. He halted, took the bag off my head. “Please sit down, Mr. Henson,” he said.

I sat and looked around. I was in the living room of one of those South Florida houses that are as common as grains of sand on Ocean Beach. Vaguely Mediterranean, vaguely Caribbean, without the slightest speck of character, the kind of house fast-buck developers lined up like dominoes on previously unspoiled land. The room’s furnishings were similarly generic. The lighting in the room was dim.

On the chairs and couch across from me sat three men and two women. There was nothing remarkable or memorable about them. They were of more or less average height and more or less average build, dressed in well-worn, comfortable clothes. They gave off none of the aura of cartoon menace of the black uniforms or the men who snipped off my little finger, none of the serene self-confidence and Zen-like reserve of John Doe. But when I looked more closely there were little tells—the posture erect and yet relaxed, the eyes calm yet lit with a fire that never went out, the unmistakable sense that, despite the cordial setting, they were equally comfortable shaking your hand or putting a bullet in your ear.

The one sitting closest to me was the youngish-looking woman known to her colleagues, if not to me, as Weapons. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with short brown hair, sky-blue eyes that radiated intelligence, and a body that was all cords and tendons and fast-twitch muscles. She spoke as if she was in charge.

“Thank you for coming, Josh,” she said, in a voice surprisingly light and musical. “I apologize for the method of your transport. But I think we had good reason.” She motioned at the four people sitting with her. “I would introduce myself and my colleagues but it’s best we have no names.

“As I’m sure was mentioned to you, we mean you no harm. Robert asked us to meet with you, to fill you in on how we came to be, on everything that has happened since. We know you’re writing about it and he thinks—we all think—that it’s important for the story to get out. I’ll tell you everything I reasonably can, then you can ask whatever questions you like. I can’t promise I’ll answer them, and I seek no control over what you write. I only ask that you be mindful of the stakes here, of the lives in balance, of the future of our country. Is that agreeable to you?”

Agreeable? It was as if Santa Claus had crawled down my chimney with a red Ferrari, a villa in St. Barts and a million dollars in cash and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking them off his hands. Hell, yes, it was agreeable.

“This whole operation—mission, if you will—was Robert’s idea,” the woman began, clicking on a small voice recorder and setting it on the table between us. “But all of us here were with him from the beginning. We debated what to do, how far to go, were we justified, were we not.” She smiled semi-fondly at the memory. “God, how we debated. But in the end it came down to a simple question: Do we want to be better than our opponents or do we want to win?”

She led me through the early days, months of reaching out to like-minded individuals in the government and business, of assembling a team of experts in every field, more than one hundred men and women who were willing to put their own lives on the line, to make hard choices and eat the consequences, who believed the promise of America was too great to abandon without a fight.

From there they reached out to create a support network, hundreds more people who had access to information, equipment, the kinds of secrets governments work tirelessly to keep buried. “No one will ever know who they are,” the woman said. “We don’t know most of them ourselves. But they are real American heroes. They risked everything to help us and asked nothing in return.”

She led me through the weeks and months of acquiring and analyzing detailed information on everything from the sex habits and secret bank accounts of politicians to the financial and personal dealings of the country’s most powerful corporations and their executives to the top secret contingency plans of Frank Bernabe and the country’s intelligence agencies in the event of a public uprising.

She told me of planning and strategizing, setting up secure lines of communication and transportation, making sure they could operate beneath the radar of the organizations that would spare no effort or expense to see them terminated. And she told me of the power of fear, of the plain white business card with a single word printed in big black letters.

Then she led me through the actions themselves, one by one. The disappearing senator. The home invasions. Jefferson Dalworth. The K Street lobbyists. Senator John Hammer. Former Vice President Joe Josephson. It got more personal. The file on Tutis International. The disposal of two bodies in the Everglades, and the packages delivered to Leland Elliott and Frank Bernabe. Then a change of mission. Protect John Doe. The two attempts in Memphis, the firefight in New Orleans. The debacle in D.C. At that she flinched, ever so slightly. Her pain at Sheila Boniface’s death hadn’t lessened.

When she was done I had a million questions and asked a few thousand. I learned of the assault on Frank Bernabe’s compound and his subsequent “heart attack,” of the last assignment Bernabe had given the head of the black uniforms and the resulting death of Ed Bane. I learned dozens of other things too, more than I wanted to, more than I could comprehend. We were still talking when the sun came up and I finally realized I had everything I needed, that it was time to go and digest what I’d heard and begin working on what would indeed be the final chapter of this part of my life.

I pocketed the voice recorder and my five hosts stood up and I went to each of them in turn and shook their hand, thanked them for bringing me here, for trusting me, for what they had done. To the woman who’d briefed me I said, “When you see Robert, tell him I’m sorry for the way I acted. It was inexcusable. I’d like to say that to his face one day.”

She nodded gravely but her voice was kind. “I don’t think he needs an apology,” she said.

After that, I could have made it back to the Keys under my own power.

M
y story posted to Public Interest and was picked up by media around the world.

“There
are
angels in America.

 

“Guardian angels. Avenging angels.

 

“Two days ago I spent several hours with them. They are men and women you have never heard of, have never seen, will never know. For years they have fought battles gone unheard, unseen, unknown. Battles in a war against those who had taken the country for their own. Battles in a war for the very soul of America.

 

“It’s a war that has gone entirely unreported. Until now. . .”

 

* * *

For the next two weeks my life was not my own. Within minutes of the story going live my phone started ringing, and it didn’t stop until I had the number disconnected and the phone itself stashed in the bottom of my linen closet. I turned down everyone and everything—interviews, profiles, radio and TV appearances, speaking engagements. I didn’t want to be a celebrity. I wanted to be left alone.

It was not to be. The press got hold of my address and reporters camped out in my yard, clogged the narrow streets of my neighborhood with their satellite trucks and annoyed the hell out of my neighbors. Somebody got hold of my cellphone number and I had to change that. Twice. My friends couldn’t call me. I couldn’t go outside without getting a microphone stuck in my face or questions thrown at me like I was an ax murderer. I was getting a taste of my own media medicine and, to be honest, I didn’t like it very much.

When I could no longer stand it I waited until after midnight and jumped my back fence, jumped a couple of neighbors’ fences until I landed at a friend’s house, where he laid me down in the back seat of his car, covered me with a blanket and delivered me to the blessed peace and quiet of my friend Peter’s Islamorada manse. After a couple of days the media hordes realized I wasn’t there. A couple days more and I was yesterday’s news and they left and my life returned to normal.

I picked up my comfortable routine where I’d left off, this time, I hoped, for good. I formally quit Public Interest, though I promised to write the odd piece here and there, help out if they were short-handed. I didn’t much follow the news, though I was pleased to note that SayNo seemed to be in good hands, that its “Starve the Beasts” campaign had put real fear into corporate America. I stayed in touch with AnnaLynn too. We talked at least once a week and made plans to see each other sometime in the new year. And I periodically checked in with John’s campaign, shooting off the occasional email with advice, encouragement, random thoughts. Once or twice he even responded.

I got an email from Julie Teichner that cheered me up for days. She and Megan loved San Diego. She and her sister had opened a small bakery. She’d met a man. Megan was doing well in school and seemed to have recovered from the trauma of being forced from her home by men waving automatic weapons. Julie thanked me for my help and money, sent me a check and a photograph. The check I tore up, the photo I framed and hung on the wall over my desk. It was taken on a beach, Julie and Megan holding hands with the sun and Pacific Ocean behind them. They looked healthy and happy and deserved every bit of their good fortune.