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“After me, what’ll you do?”
The melody was mournful, Tasia’s voice bright and riven with cracks. She hit a hard minor chord and let it fade. Then she spoke.
“I’m in danger of being silenced. If that happens, I won’t be the last.”
Her speaking voice was bold, ringing, and rushed. “Searle, my love, my baby boy, Mister Blue Eyes with the silver tongue, listen close. Turn your ear, turn your heart, turn your head. Because I might not make it.”
Jo glanced at Tang. “Lecroix?”
Tang nodded.
“Things have gone haywire,” Tasia said. “I can’t tell you more than that. Telling you more would kill me. But if I die, it means the countdown’s on.”
A chill inched up Jo’s neck. She glanced at the tarp on the field.
“It means time’s running out like a train headed for a wreck. My death will be the evidence.” Tasia inhaled, like a swimmer coming up for air before plowing on. “I was confused, but not anymore. I thought I got away without being followed. But they’re after me. Robert McFarland makes that inevitable.” She paused. “Publish this in the event of my assassination.”
She played a heavy chord on the piano, and began to sing.
You say you love our land, you liar Who dreams its end in blood and fire Said you wanted me to be your choir Help you build the funeral pyre.
The chill crept across Jo’s shoulders.
But Robby T is not the One
All that’s needed is the gun
Load the weapon, call his name
Unlock the door, he dies in shame.
The melody changed up and went into the refrain.
Look and see the way it ends
Who’s the liar, where’s the game
Love and death, it’s all the same
Liar’s words all end in pain.
Tang stopped the playback. “There’s another verse, but you get the gist.”
“That’s the creepiest song I’ve ever heard.”
They stood above the field, silent under the harsh lights and the wind.
“ ‘They,’” Jo said.
“Unfortunately. And no, I don’t know whether it was just a paranoid rant.”
“Did she have a psych history?”
“Manic-depression. But that’s not my point.”
“She was bipolar? That’s huge. It’s—”
Tang raised a hand. “It’s not my point.”
Jo thought about it. “If she genuinely feared for her life and brought the gun for self-protection, it argues against an intent to commit suicide.”
“The stuntman claims she said, ‘He’s out there,’ and ‘It’s life or death.’ Maybe she was acting. Maybe she was delusional. But maybe not.”
“Are you suggesting somebody really wanted her dead? Why—because she was once married to Robert McFarland?”
Tang turned to her. “Will you perform the psychological autopsy? Are you in?”
“You bet I’m in.”
“Good. I need you to find out why Tasia McFarland was carrying a pistol that, according to California firearms records, is registered to the commander in chief of the United States.”
6 (#ulink_e98a5b31-828d-5123-8782-cd0997ab33cb)
You can take my cash, but if you won’t shake my hand, I’ll light a fire up your ass…
THE MUSIC RAGED THROUGH THE PARKED TRUCK. IVORY TURNED IT UP. “You tell it, Searle.”
The man sang about the hardest life around, Ivory thought—being a white American. Work yourself into the grave, while the government confiscates your wages and an ungrateful world demands handouts or tries to blow you up.
She stared across the street at the ballpark. “It’s time to launch a rocket up somebody’s crack.”
Behind the wheel, Keyes chewed on a toothpick. “Unbunch your panties.”
“Searle Lecroix’s woman just got shot down like a dog. Two choppers got taken out—you think that wasn’t to cover the shooter escaping? You should put on a pair of tighty-whiteys yourself, and bunch them so tight you squeal.”
“Like you know how to fire a rocket launcher?” he said.
“You’ll teach me.”
That finally earned her a look from him.
“Tasia dying wasn’t any accident. It was a government hit, no joke.” Government came out “gubmint.” “Government brought down the twin towers, Keyes—they wouldn’t think twice about killing McFarland’s first wife.”
Keyes looked away again. He watched the police and media spectacle outside the ballpark with a cool eye. People took that look for boredom, Ivory thought, when really he was scanning the scene for threats, soft targets, weak points in the police cordon. Years of experience, it came as a reflex to him.
“Question isn’t what the government does. It’s what we do about the government.” He turned off Lecroix’s music. “And entertainers don’t have the answer.”
He took out his phone and went online. His face, pale and pocked, looked vivid. His anger didn’t run hot; it was reptile anger—cold and submerged and liable to erupt in ruthless bursts. Being near it made Ivory feel confident. She was in the vanguard, with a man who would be the teeth and claws of the fightback.
She leaned close and saw him load the Tree of Liberty home page. On-screen was a message to the faithful.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.—Thomas Paine
“When did this post?” she said.
“Ten minutes ago.”
Tree of Liberty was the cyberdomain of True America. It was the online outpost of people like Keyes and Ivory, who saw the nightmare of government tyranny darkening the horizon. Tom Paine was their voice crying in the wilderness.
His post began, like all his essays, with a quote from the original Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary. Then it launched.
And so it begins.
Today, in front of a stadium crowd, the Enemy and his legions struck down Fawn Tasia McFarland. And they murdered her in such an audacious fashion because they knew what they’d pull off: a charade.
The circus monkeys of the mainstream media are already spinning Tasia’s death to suit Robert McFarland. It was an accident. Stunt calamity. Boo hoo.
Bullshit. The White House killed her because of what she knew, which was plenty.
The traitor who has seized the Oval Office is a smooth-talking jackal, but he can’t put the rumors to rest. Because, despite his lies, the truth is the truth: He was born in Cuba. Castro did finance his education. Despite the cover story concocted by the Pentagon, he called in the air strike that killed seven men in his platoon, and he did so because they were about to blow the whistle on his sexual deviancy and treason.
Nobody was better positioned than Tasia to know Robert McFarland’s lies. She was once his consort. And she was a patriot. Read her interviews. She didn’t shrink from speaking truth to power.
Now power has shut her up.
Before tyrants launch a crackdown, they assassinate their most dangerous foes: the people who could expose or stop them. Tasia’s murder is like a flare fired into the sky. It’s a signal that McFarland’s troops are moving into position. Time is short.
Robert Titus McFarland must be stopped. Who will do that? The dumb populace, grown soporific on junk food and reality TV? Never. When the government opens its internment camps, they’ll slouch through the gates without complaint, like cattle.
Patriots must stop McFarland. And it’s pucker time, because he has us in his sights. But we refuse to shrink from the coming fight.
His name is Legion, people. Stand up. Rip off his mask.
Rise.
Keyes and Ivory stared at the screen. Nobody knew who Tom Paine was. Tree of Liberty skipped around the Net, changing host sites to prevent the feds from tracing it. Paine was a specter.
“Fuckin’ A,” Keyes said.
Ivory drew a breath. She had chills. “We’re at ground zero. We need to send him photos.”
Nobody had met Paine, but Keyes and Ivory volunteered as his scouts. Keyes got out of the truck and crossed the street toward the ballpark. Ivory put on a ball cap and followed.
The cap said BLUE EAGLE SECURITY. She was clocked in for work, so she covered her hair, which she dyed as snowy as a swan’s wing. She covered her tattoos with long sleeves. And at the depot, she kept her opinions to herself. She worked in San Fran-freak-show, where whack jobs could parade bare-butt naked, chanting about diversity, but an Aryan woman had to hide her Valkyrie Sisterhood tattoos and apologize for the crime of being born white.
Outside the ballpark, it was a scene. News trucks, reporters with microphones. And police cars lined up for a hundred yards, lights shrill, a bigfoot presence that made her skin creep.
Keyes tapped his watch. “Sixty seconds, max.”
They were on a late run, one of Blue Eagle’s night pickups in the city. The truck’s onboard computer automatically tracked their route. It had logged them taking a detour to the ballpark, and if they loitered there too long, their jobs would be toast.
“Do you care?” Ivory said. “When the fightback comes, these jobs won’t matter.”
“When the fightback comes, I want access to the truck and everything in it. So I stay on the payroll until shots are fired.”
The Blue Eagle uniform shirt stretched across his sloping shoulders. Years in the army, Ivory thought; a decade spent working as a security contractor on behalf of the government, earning three hundred thousand dollars a year, and for what? To get fired. To end up sitting on his butt behind the wheel of a courier truck, wearing that cheap-ass shirt. The “gubmint” had reduced a warrior to a delivery boy.
Ahead, barricades were set up. Behind them people huddled, lighting candles, laying flowers, crying. A TV crew was interviewing a Mexican woman and her little girl. The woman wiped her eyes. “Tasia grew up here—it’s like losing a member of our family. How could an accident like this happen?”
Ivory kept her voice low. “The lie’s taking root.”
Keyes’s face flattened, like a club. “Soon enough we’ll give her something to cry over.”
They kept moving. Being near so many cops gave Ivory the willies. She had a record. She’d been caught patrolling the border. Illegals infested America like lice, but hunt them, take their drugs, and you got called a criminal.
Keyes snapped photos with his phone. “Didn’t I tell you, Frisco is at the heart of the government’s plans?”
Ivory nodded. He certainly had told her San Francisco would be a staging center during the government crackdown.
“Killing Tasia here proves it,” he said.
He sent his photos to Tree of Liberty. Nearby, the little Mexican girl laid a spray of white carnations by the barricade.
“God have mercy on their souls,” Ivory said.
“Mercy, on lice?”
Keyes eyed her with what felt like disgust. True America, the realm of freedom and power where they lived—in their hearts—was a hard-core place.
“Don’t hurt my feelings. I meant God better, ‘cause we won’t.”
He should know how serious she took it. She risked everything for True America. This job, her whole life in San Francisco, was a front. And if the cops found out, she’d take a hard fall.
Then Keyes put a hand on her shoulder. “The rocket launcher rests right here. I’ll teach you.”
She lifted her chin, thrilled. Around them, gawkers and weepers continued to gather. Cops came out of the ballpark, and a few stragglers who had been at the concert. Some wore bloody clothing. One, silhouetted by the white light of television cameras, was a lumbering figure in fatigues, a—no motherloving way—a Goliath holding a chunk of the turf from the field as a souvenir.
Ivory turned and pulled Keyes toward the truck. “Freak alert. The night crawlers are coming out.”
Keyes didn’t linger. When you drove an armored car for a living, you couldn’t afford to be late to the bank.
7 (#ulink_e560b365-04fc-5361-af63-fb1e847a0b9c)
ROBERT MCFARLAND OWNS THE COLT FORTY-FIVE?” JO’S HEART rate kicked up. “I’d better see the footage of the shooting.”
“You should. But don’t expect it to clarify anything,” Tang said.
Tang led her to a control room on an upper deck of the ballpark, overlooking the field. One wall was lined with television monitors. Cops and stadium officials filled the room. Below, under the bleached stadium lighting, forensics techs in white bodysuits searched the scene. The medical examiner was preparing to move Tasia’s body to the morgue. A gurney had been brought in and the yellow tarp pulled aside. Against grass churned to dust, Tasia’s clothing stood out, sharp swipes of magenta and black. She looked small, delicate, torn.
