Now that had changed.
Not president of the United States. That was a fantasy—and who would want the job today, the way once-proud America had gone to hell? No, Barnhart had a shot at something better, something realistically attainable, in his opinion.
And the trick was not to screw it up.
The phone call from Lamar Ridgway had been a summons, plain and simple. When the oil man told Barnhart to jump, Barnhart replied, “How high?” Sometimes, just for good measure, he might add, “How many times?”
He never had to ask, “Which way?” Lamar inevitably spelled that out in simple English, telling Barnhart what to do and how it should be done. Sometimes he had a script prepared for Barnhart. And when it came to thinking, Barnhart did his level best to see the world through Ridgway’s eyes.
He harbored no illusions about being independent, holding power in his own right, making any of the big decisions on his own. It was a game of strategy, played out on levels he had barely glimpsed from Bastrop County and for stakes that still bewildered him. He was content to be a pampered pawn.
For now, at least.
Ridgway’s butler greeted Barnhart with a nod and took his Stetson, hung it on a hat rack that they passed en route to Ridgway’s study. When the butler knocked, Ridgway’s familiar voice growled, “Enter!”
“Mr. Barnhart here to see you, sir.”
“Malcolm, come in! Come in!”
Ridgway was standing near the wet bar, topping off a glass of Jameson’s—the only thing Barnhart had ever seen him drink, besides iced tea. Based on the color in his cheeks, Barnhart surmised that Ridgway had been drinking through the morning, but with his epic capacity for alcohol, it scarcely seemed to matter. He was clear-eyed and alert, as always.
“Drink?”
“I wouldn’t mind a cold Corona,” Barnhart said.
“We’ve got ’em. Help yourself.”
Barnhart retrieved a longneck and uncapped it, didn’t bother with a glass or slice of lime. “You mentioned something on the phone about a problem, sir.”
“Maybe I should’ve said a challenge. Are you ready to proceed if we advance the schedule?”
Barnhart felt a tingle of excitement laced with apprehension, unrelated to the ice-cold beer. “Advance?” he parroted.
“To later in the week.”
“This week?”
“Maybe tomorrow or the next day,” Ridgway said.
“Well, um...I mean...it was supposed to be—”
“Next month, I know. Something’s come up.”
“If I may ask...”
“No need to dwell on details,” Ridgway said. “I’m handling it, but there’s a chance something could leak ahead of time. So are you ready?”
Any further hesitation could be fatal. “Yes, sir,” Barnhart answered. “Absolutely!”
“Good. We’re this close—” Ridgway raised his free hand, thumb and index finger half an inch apart “—from being ready with the big punch, just in case the federales try to shut us down. Once that’s ready to go, I’d say tomorrow at the latest, we’ll announce it and watch the bastards run around like headless chickens.”
Barnhart forced a smile, then sipped his beer. It tasted flat now, even though he heard it fizzing in the bottle.
Christ, tomorrow! He’d been marking days off on the calendar, anticipation mounting, but to lose a month of preparation time...
To hell with it. Barnhart reckoned he was as ready as he’d ever be.
To lead a brand-new nation, sure. Why not?
Rivercrest, Fort Worth, Texas
“AND HOW LONG must I stay here?”
Simon Coetzee watched George Roth pacing around the mansion’s library, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets to keep them from twitching nervously. “We’re not sure yet. As long as necessary,” he replied.
“I have important work to do,” Roth said. His voice was nearly childlike in its petulance.
“You’ll be transported to the plant later this morning.”
“And tonight?”
“Back here,” said Coetzee. “Under guard.”
“If I’m to be a prisoner, you could be guarding me at home.”
“First, you are not a prisoner. We are protecting you from harm. And second, we must take for granted that the enemy knows where you live.”
“These enemies,” Roth said, turning to face Coetzee. “Who are they?”
“That remains to be determined. Mr. Ridgway will explain to you in due time, I am sure.”
“But if you don’t know who they are—”
“There have been incidents.” Time for a little shock and awe. “Craig Walraven is dead.”
“Walraven! How?”
“Shot in his home,” Coetzee replied. No reason to explain that he had carried out that execution on the Big Man’s orders.
“My God! But—”
“Now you see why you could not remain in Dallas and pursue your normal schedule. No one knows about this house. They cannot find you here.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
“I’m certain.”
The safe house Roth and Coetzee occupied was in Rivercrest, one of Fort Worth’s most desirable neighborhoods. Located on Tremont Avenue, the house had been built for a Confederate general, then renovated in the 1920s for a new generation of wealthy Texans. It was owned by a subsidiary of Lone Star Petroleum, with no reference to L. E. Ridgway on the deed.
Untraceable.
“And is the plant secure?” Roth asked.
“No worries there.”
Coetzee had thrown a ring of men with guns around the place, doubling the normal guard, which was substantial in the first place. Nothing, no one, would be permitted to derail the Big Man’s plan.
“Can you eliminate this danger?” Roth inquired.
“It’s being handled.” Not so well, thus far, but why upset the genius?
“Good. I wouldn’t want to live here for a month.”
“No problem.” Coetzee sipped his coffee, wishing it was a bottle of Castle Lager. And again, there was no need to tell Roth that the schedule had been drastically advanced. Let the Big Man break it to him in his own inimitable style.
“I ought to have a weapon,” Roth declared. “For self-defense.”
“Protecting you is my job,” Coetzee said.
“As you protected Walraven?”
Touché.
“Are you experienced with firearms?”
“From my childhood,” Roth replied. “My grandfather, as you may know, was in the military.”
More specifically, an oberst, or colonel, in the Allgemeine SS, assigned to the V-2 rocket works at Peenemünde, on Germany’s Baltic coast. The closest he had ever come to battle was the day he had surrendered to U.S. forces in June of 1945.
“I may be able to provide you with a pistol,” Coetzee said. “You have a preference, from personal experience?”
“Nine millimeter,” Roth replied. “Perhaps a Walther or Beretta?”
“That should not be difficult.” He had an arsenal at his disposal; pistols were the least of it. “I’ll have a sampling waiting for you when you leave the plant today.”
“Thank you.” The words were stiff, as if Roth found it difficult to speak them.
He was certainly a prick, as Coetzee had decided on the day they had met. Roth’s background—his familial history, the inbred arrogance—made simple courtesy unnatural, even distasteful to him, though he managed to perform within the standards of so-called polite society. Coetzee had known men of his type, back in South Africa, diehards from the old National Party, now mostly affiliated with the separatist Afrikaner Volksfront. They were living in the past.
Unlike the Big Man, who had laid the groundwork for a revoluti
onary future.
Now all that remained was to fire the opening shot.
Tom Green County
“MISSED ’EM AGAIN, by God!” said Waylon Crockett. “Fancy plan fell through. They shoulda let us do the job ourselves.”
Kent Luttrell sipped from a mason jar of clear corn whiskey, savoring the burn, and passed it off to Crockett. He was not about to mention how their own men had screwed up the first attempt to bag their enemies.
“That Cozy fella works for Ridgway,” Crockett groused, garbling Coetzee’s name. “He ain’t even American.”
“Can’t argue with the Big Man,” said Luttrell, glancing around in case someone was listening.
And then felt foolish for it. They were walking near the fence line of the compound, buildings clustered to the west of them, nearly a quarter mile away. Nothing but cactus, creosote and lizards on this portion of the property, maybe a red-tailed hawk from time to time. Luttrell’s men drove around outside the compound twice a day, checking for Feds or sheriff’s deputies who might be lying in the weeds with parabolic microphones or some such gear to eavesdrop, and they’d found nothing so far.
That didn’t rule out drones or satellite surveillance, but Luttrell didn’t concern himself too much with that. The CIA or NSA could read a name tag on your shirt from outer space, all right, but sound was out. As far as spying from the sky went, he had drilled the compound’s residents to keep their more exotic weapons under cover when they left the buildings. Ammo and explosives, with the big guns, moved through tunnels excavated underneath the desert settlement, hidden from flying eyes.
“They’re movin’ up the deadline,” Crockett said, after a shot of whiskey oiled his tongue and calmed his nerves a bit. “Good thing, I say.”
“Uh-huh.”
Luttrell agreed in principle, of course, but it was also worrisome. It made things real. They weren’t just playing soldier anymore, talking about a revolution that could happen next year or five years from now. There’d been no urgency to speak of in the planning stages. Even when they’d hooked up with the Big Man, it still sounded like a fantasy. Like playacting. Now folks had started dying, and The Day had been advanced. The rhetoric was giving way to action, and Luttrell would have been lying if he’d said it didn’t scare him, just a little.
The way it all had been explained to him, it sounded like a breeze. Secession, backed up by the big surprise that Mr. Ridgway had planned out, and nothing Washington could do about it without starting World War III right in their own backyard. The more he thought about it, though, the more it sounded just a mite too simple.
Would the president really take it lying down? Or would he send the army, air force, navy and marines to kick ass all the way from Corpus Christi to the Texas Panhandle? Luttrell knew there were fourteen active U.S. military bases in the state, ready for action when the order came, but would they risk it after Ridgway showed his hole card?
No way to tell, until that hand was dealt and played.
One thing Luttrell had promised to himself: no matter how it finally went down, he’d never see the inside of a prison cell. Live free or die, and hadn’t Adolf shown the way? He could’ve wimped out and surrendered to the Russkies back in ’45, instead of choosing death by his own hand. Long gone but not forgotten.
When his own time came, Luttrell did not intend to make it easy for his enemies. No cyanide or pistol in the mouth. He’d go down fighting, take as many of the bastards with him as he could before they finished him. The kind of death white-power bands would sing about for years to come.
Or maybe they’d get lucky. Hell, maybe they’d actually win.
Crockett passed back the mason jar, and Kent put down another healthy swallow of the liquid fire, a product of the compound’s own distillery. Another way they thumbed their noses at the Feds, just for the hell of it.
A few more days, and none of it would matter.
One way or another, it would be a whole new world.
McLennan County, Texas
MORE DESERT AS Bolan and Granger crossed the county line, with cultivated acreage here and there along I-35. The bleak landscape, to Bolan’s mind, reflected both the region’s history and hard times in the present day. For decades prior to World War II, McLennan County had been known for lynchings and for public demonstrations by the Ku Klux Klan.
McLennan’s most famous event, before the Waco siege, dated back to September 1896, when forty thousand spectators paid two dollars per head to watch a pair of locomotives crash head-on, deliberately, in Crush—a town established purely for this publicity stunt. Although the gawkers were supposed to be kept well back from the railroad tracks, three died in the resulting blast of ruptured boilers.
Things were quieter around McLennan County, these days, but an estimated one in five inhabitants lived below the federal poverty line.
“You get a lot of agitation here?” asked Bolan, as they passed through West, a wide spot in the road some twenty miles due north of Waco.
“Not so much,” Granger replied. “A lot of people hate the government, but if you ask them why, it all comes out confused. Plenty of monthly checks go out from Medicare, social security, but people cashing them still seem to think they’ve got no ties to Washington. They think somebody’s coming any day, to confiscate their guns or close their churches, make them swear allegiance to Sharia law. It’s weird.”
“Impressed by demagogues?”
“Lots of them definitely drank the snake oil,” Granger said.
“Frustration does that.”
“Not to mention ignorance. You may have heard that we aren’t doing as well as we could be in terms of kids finishing high school. And we’re something like thirtieth in bachelor’s degrees, and thirty-third in graduate degrees.”
“There’s always common sense,” Bolan replied.
“You’d think so. But what does it tell you when over two hundred thousand people believe they can just pull up stakes and start a new country?”
“Right now I’m only thinking of the ones who actually mean to try it.”
“Focus, sure. I get it,” Granger said.
“First pass by your apartment,” Bolan advised. “You ought to stay down out of sight. I’ll cruise around the block and try to pick out any watchers.”
“What if they’re already hiding out inside?” she asked.
“They’ll be in for a rude surprise.”
“Or you will.”
“Chances are they won’t start shooting right away,” he said, “if you’re not with me.”
“Way to make a girl feel welcome.”
“If they’re not inside, they’ll spot me going in and follow up,” Bolan continued.
“Then I get to surprise them,” Granger said. “I know the drill.”
“We’ll try to keep it quiet, for the neighbors’ sake,” Bolan added. “But it all depends on how the opposition wants to play it.”
“I guess it makes a difference whether they’re Lone Star or the NTR. That chopper wasn’t Crockett’s, I can tell you.”
“Someone should be working on the registration,” Bolan said.
“Likely the FAA, out of Fort Worth,” Granger replied.
“Could be a headache for the Lone Star team.”
“I doubt they’d field a chopper that was traceable to Ridgway or the company. Coetzee’s smarter than that.”
“Smart enough to take Walraven off the table.”
“So to speak.”
“And stash Roth somewhere safe.”
“I would’ve liked to put him through the ringer,” Granger said.
“We still might have a shot at him.”
“You mean, if we can bag someone who knows where Coetzee’s hiding him.”
“With any luck.”
“We need to hope
it’s Lone Star sitting on my place, instead of Crockett’s people then. I doubt they’d share that kind of information with the NTR.”
Something was nagging at the back of Bolan’s mind and making him uneasy. It was one thing for a billionaire to dream of privatizing outer space. Twenty-odd American, European and Japanese firms had hatched similar plans, some busting out, with others still in various stages of development and testing. It was a different story entirely, though, if that same billionaire was a known political extremist with ready access to fissile material.
Rockets plus nukes equaled potential for disaster, maybe on a global scale.
For all he knew, the countdown clock was running, even now.
And if they couldn’t find the rocket man, how would they shut it down?
Chapter 8
Waco, Texas
“How long are we supposed to wait around out here?” Ben Godwin asked.
“Long as it takes,” Roy Mattox answered. “You got someplace else to be?”
“I’d like to wrap it up, is all,” Godwin replied.
“We do the job Simon assigned to us,” Mattox reminded him. “Nobody said we have to like it.”
They’d been sitting in the Jeep Grand Cherokee, outside a Stripes store on Clay Avenue, since six o’clock that morning. Mattox had arranged it with the manager, showed him a set of bogus FBI credentials and explained about their classified surveillance job, a matter of security and yada, yada, so the guy wouldn’t get nervous and dime them out to Waco P.D. They were feeding the kitty besides, with their coffee and sodas and snacks, all of it going onto Lone Star’s tab.
A block north of the store, they had a clear view of their target. It was an apartment house, six units, one of them belonging to the Texas Ranger they were waiting for. She hadn’t turned up yet, but until she did, the four of them were under orders to remain on station, ready to move in the moment she showed.
“We oughta rotate,” Colin Page suggested, from his backseat vantage point. “Get Otto out of there and let somebody else relax a while.”
“Otto’s on duty, same as you,” said Mattox.
Godwin snorted. “Likely going through her underwear right now.”
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