He perused the anonymous message board and frowned at the onslaught of verbal abuse. Consortium shills were labeling Patriot Anon a ‘LARP,’ someone engaged in live-action role playing. Links to fake news articles were characterizing him as a violent, right-wing extremist, and even former “believers” were questioning his legitimacy.
If you’re not just a LARP, get POTUS to say tip top, tippy top in his next chat.
Kyle pondered the challenge, expelled a resigned sigh, and plucked his phone off the nightstand.
It’s six a.m. in Ohio, he thought, composing an encrypted instant message. Ryan’s probably awake.
Fake news is hammering Patriot Anon. We need to boost credibility without sacrificing plausible deniability. Please post to Chatter: Thank you to all the tip-top staffers keeping the White House in tippy-top shape during my absence.
Kyle closed the message board, and a barrage of “what ifs” assailed his mind. What if Abby had consumed another mouthful of that tainted water? What if Wachter had arrived a minute later? What if McCann indicts her on bogus charges?
Angst supercharged the restless energy coursing through his body, and he began sifting through digital records that pertained to the inpatient psychiatric wing. The facility, along with nine others, had been commissioned a week after the election and opened its doors two months later, just after the inauguration; and curiously, all ten were located on Air Force bases hosting TEradS teams.
Coincidence? Kyle asked himself. Or a Consortium plot to undermine them with suicide-inducing prescriptions?
He pored over open-source articles about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), copying and pasting notes into a text file.
“... Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document ... DSM-IV has become a bible and a money-making bestseller—its major failings notwithstanding.”
—Loren Mosher, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with concensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry with a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”
—Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK, Fellow, Royal College of Physicians of Canada
“... What psychiatrists do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating the informed consent right of every patient and poisoning them in the name of ‘treatment’ is nothing short of criminal.”
—Dr. Fred Boughman Jr., Pediatric Neurologist
They’re voting mental diseases into existence and cramming drugs down the throats of American soldiers! Kyle thought. And their buddies at Big Pharma are cashing in. At taxpayer expense!
Ryan needs to stop dicking around and arrest these assholes.
Face flushing with wrath, his fists clenched. The side of his foot thumped against the mattress, beating out a furious cadence, but dispelling a mere fraction of the frenetic energy whizzing inside him.
Jessie’s head lifted from the pillow, and she gazed up at him through sleepy eyes.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” He planted a kiss on her forehead and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Go back to sleep.” Then with the laptop tucked beneath his arm and his cellphone in hand, he tiptoed from the master bedroom and gently closed the door behind him. Kyle padded through the hallway and peeked into the kids’ bedroom. Nikki’s long blonde hair was fanned out across her pillow. Her eyes were moving rapidly beneath closed lids, and her lips twitched into a hint of a smile.
I wonder what she’s dreaming about, he thought, grateful that she’d outgrown the nightmares. For months after her rescue, she’d relived the horror of her parents’ death; and, now, she was a happy, well-adjusted seven-year-old with a stubborn streak that rivaled Abby’s.
Billy lay curled in a fetal position, clutching a partially eaten lollipop that was glued to his blanket, and Kyle smirked, thinking that Jessie would not be happy with the little candy bandit. The four-year-old had grown so much since they’d left Sugar Lake and, with each passing day, he looked more like his daddy.
Kyle peered around the doorjamb at the toddler bed they’d crammed into the corner, but Matthew wasn’t there. He checked the potty-training toilet in the house’s sole bathroom and continued through the hallway, into the family room. He expected to find the child on the couch, snuggled in Abby’s arms. The boy had a gigantic crush on her, blushing and flashing flirty grins, constantly saying, “You w-ook pwitty, Abby. W-ary, w-ary pwitty.”
CJ’s gonna have his hands full in a few years, Kyle thought then panic compressed his heart to the size of a pea. He called out to the toddler, and the alarm in his voice roused Abby from a dead sleep and mobilized his Secret Service detail. “I can’t find Matthew,” he told them, jettisoning his laptop onto the coffee table.
They combed through every closet and cabinet, searched behind every piece of furniture, and beneath every mattress. No Matthew.
The Consortium had kidnapped him; Kyle was sure of it.
Those animals were inside his house ... Had his protective detail been compromised?
He began to tremble with rage. These assholes would never stop, never give up. This was a fight to the death between the forces of good and evil; and posting as Patriot Anon wasn’t enough. He craved retribution. He wanted these bastards in front of a firing squad. Today! He wanted to personally expedite their journey to hell.
Why wasn’t Ryan putting a stop to it?
Hell-bent on getting an answer to that question, Kyle tromped into the bathroom, slammed the door, and dialed the President’s private number. His chief of staff answered on the second ring.
“This is Kyle Murphy,” he barked. “I need to speak with President Andrews.”
Perfidulo’s spoken words materialized as text on his cellphone. “I’m sorry, but he’s in a meeting with Admiral Rone.”
“I. Don’t. Care,” Kyle seethed. “This is an emergency!”
With each passing second on hold, his anger mushroomed. His mind was scudding and careening, unable to complete a thought. His legs jellied beneath him, and he sank down onto the lid of the toilet, scowling at the cellphone until Ryan’s words appeared on the LCD screen.
“Tippy top? What am I? A fucking trained seal performing tricks for their amusement?”
Panting and swallowing hard to steady his emotions, he shouted, “They kidnapped Matthew right out of his bed. They could’ve taken Nikki and Billy. Could’ve killed Abby. Killed all of us!”
“Slow down.”
Kyle glared at the LCD screen. “You need to get off your ass and do something!”
“We have to wrap up the network in one fell swoop,” Ryan explained. “Taking out one or two bad actors is like shooting an elephant with a .22. You’re not going to disable it; you’re just going to piss it off. Kyle, you have to trust the plan.”
“Fuck the plan! People are dying. Kids are being raped and burned alive. And I’m tired of being the only one who has to follow the rules. Sic the damn TEradS on these bastards. E ... radicate ... them!”
“Kyle, listen to me—”
Incensed, he stopped reading. “I can’t listen to you, Ryan, because I’m deaf. And you know why I’m deaf? Because these same assholes damaged my brain with a sonic weapon. They almost killed my daughter. I want these fuckers arrested. Now! And if you don’t have the balls to act, I swear, I’ll grab my M4 and take care of business myself!”
39
Gulf Coast of the United States
BRADLEY CAME TO, WOOZY yet aware that he was being jostled and hauled like a dead deer. Gradually, his frozen mind thawed. Memories dripped and trickled, forming disjoint puddles—fire ants, CJ in a dog crate, Kevlar laces sawing through flex-cuffs—then they merged into one contiguous sinister pool.
The private jet, he thought. Wingnut couldn’t disengage the remote autopilot.
Bradley’s eyes swept left to right in search of his friend, and he caught a glimpse of CJ being shoved into a pickup truck.
Where are they taking him?
Why are they separating us?
He’d had no idea what that hideous hissing sound was, but instantly sensed that it was catastrophic.
“They’re depressurizing the cabin,” CJ had told him, “and I can’t stop it.”
Hypoxia had set in quickly. Confusion plagued his oxygen-starved brain, and he’d battled the drowsiness, fearful that if he dozed off, he would never awaken.
How far did our oxygen levels plunge? he wondered. Just enough to induce unconsciousness? Or low enough to inflict brain damage?
Bradley tested his faculties, surveying the countryside. The sweet aroma of salty air and a queen palm suggested this private airstrip was located in a southern coastal city; but the sun’s orangey light and low position relative to the horizon puzzled him. How much time had elapsed?
Four Night Sector conscripts carted him inside an enormous steel hangar. Its walls were lined with bales of drugs stacked floor-to-ceiling. A maze of dog crates monopolized the concrete floor, and dozens of heartbreaking little cries shot through him.
These bastards need to be skinned alive for abusing children, Bradley thought.
The men carried him into an area partitioned by corrugated aluminum slats. A brown-haired man in a dark suit sat cross-legged on a director’s chair, hunting and pecking at a laptop keyboard. To his left, there was a floor-standing advertising kiosk with a 55-inch LCD screen; to his right, a television camera aimed at an antique wooden chair fraught with belts, buckles, and wires.
Bradley flailed and bucked, throwing elbows and head-butting his tormentors, until he’d exhausted his energy. Then, outnumbered and overpowered, he succumbed. A pair of belts secured his hands to the wooden armrests, a third strapped his thighs to the seat, and a fourth bound his chest to the backrest. The Night Sector conscripts attached electrodes to his head and legs, and abruptly departed.
“Hello, Bradley.”
“Who are you?”
“Randall McCann, acting director of the FBI, and that,” he paused, hitching his thumb toward the wooden chair, “is old sparky. You have any idea what happens when six thousand milliamps of electricity flow through the human body?”
Bradley knew it would trigger cardiac arrest, but responded with an indifferent shrug.
“Muscles flex involuntarily, and the bowels let loose. The current literally cooks organs and flesh; and witnesses have likened it to the sound of frying bacon.” McCann wedged a cigarette between his thin lips, struck a match, and puffed making the tip glow orange. “Body temperatures can reach 212 degrees, hot enough to burn and blister anyone who touches the corpse. And sometimes the body swells so much that eyeballs pop right out of the head; sometimes they just melt ... People will pay good money to see that.”
That’s why the camera’s here, Bradley thought. The bastard’s gonna electrocute me, market the snuff film, and rake in a profit.
“Go ahead. Flip the switch,” he shouted, “because I won’t betray my country or my President.”
McCann took a deep drag and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. His pale-blue eyes were shining with the zeal of a predator. “This isn’t about Andrews anymore. He’s a dead man walking.” He stabbed the laptop keyboard with his index finger, and a video clip began to play on the kiosk.
“I, General Jonathan Quenten, colluded with the Russian government on behalf of the Murphy-Andrews campaign to deny Carter Sidney the presidency. I instructed Bradley Webber to establish a backchannel with Vladislav Volkov, a Russian asset who stole and publicized Carter Sidney’s e-mail for the express purpose of altering the outcome of the election.
“Unable to live with my treasonous crimes, I intend to take my own life. May God have mercy on my soul.”
Bradley glared at the LCD screen, unable to breathe. Shock and disbelief mutated into betrayal and demoralization then into revulsion and righteous anger. “Not a word of that is true.”
McCann proffered an egotistical smirk. “You know who’s the ultimate arbiter of truth? The Consortium. The triumvirate decrees it, the FBI asserts it, the media broadcast it, and the American sheeple believe it.”
Although no current was flowing through the electric chair, Bradley’s body was heating up, converting outrage into a sticky coating of sweat that was aggravating the fire-ant bites on his backside.
“Tell me about the LIT Society.”
“Fuck you!”
“You think I’m some kind of amateur?” McCann’s mouth twisted into a condescending smile. “I won’t be provoked into a premature electrocution because, believe me, death is preferable to the alternative. And this ... is where that road begins ... with your beloved wife.”
Bradley gaped at a depraved, abhorrent scene unfolding on the kiosk’s LCD screen.
His stomach lurched, vomit raced up his throat, and he began to gag.
40
South of District Six, Texas
GLEN ANTHONY HAD spent a miserable night inside the caged bed of a Night Sector pickup truck. His captors had been driving since his abduction, stopping periodically to refuel and relieve themselves; and shortly before sunrise, they’d barreled through a rainstorm that sent temperatures plunging into the fifties. Drenched then air-dried by the speeding vehicle, Glen had shivered uncontrollably, aggravating his cracked ribs and transforming every breath from unpleasant to agonizing. He’d had no food, but managed a few mouthfuls of rainwater, and thankfully, his vision had normalized.
Was my temporary blindness a psychosomatic reaction? he wondered. Did I imagine Hellhound’s wrathful voice? Or is that peculiar-looking satellite dish on the roof of the truck an acoustical weapon?
Glen reassembled snippets from an internet lecture his wife had forced upon him years ago. Woody Norris, the CEO of LRAD Corporation, had touted ultrasound waves that vibrated 100,000 times per second and produced sound along a column of air, enabling its precise placement. A target milling amidst a crowd would be able to hear a broadcast message no one else could hear; and, depending on the decibel level, the device could burst the target’s ear drums while everyone around him remained oblivious. Norris had even suggested that biblical verses or godly orders could be directed into the ears of terrorists, ordering them to lay down their weapons.
That would account for Hellhound’s voice, Glen thought. But what about my temporary blindness? Is the technology able to manipulate light waves too?
And how the hell am I supposed to live in a world where I can’t believe what I hear with my own ears? What I see with my own eyes? How can I ever know what’s real?
Glen slipped a hand into his pocket and, with numb fingers, gripped the contact lens case containing the ricin.
If I end my life now, I can avoid a prolonged, painful death, he thought. And spite Hellhound, denying him the sadistic pleasure of torturing me.
“You can’t abandon Ellen and Gabby,” his conscience protested. “Hellhound will exact vengeance on them in your stead.”
He’s going to torture and kill us anyway, he rationalized. Will my suffering diminish theirs? Or will Hellhound heighten it to punish me?
The pickup truck exited the highway and navigated a series of turns that led to the campus of Gramsci College. Concrete walkways meandered between Colonial-style stone buildings and, judging by the religious symbols and statues, it appeared to be a Catholic institution. A grassy triangle hosted a racially homogeneous group of men in Air Force ABUs, who were cranking out pushups and jumping jacks haphazardly, lacking the discipline of professional soldiers.
Is this a basic training site for Night Sector conscripts? Glen thought. A rally point for caravaners? Or both?
The truck braked to an abrupt stop, the doors squawked open, and his captors dragged him toward a large gothic building with contra
sting rough granite walls and brown sandstone trim. Churchlike with its steep gabled roof, intricate stained-glass, and twin bell towers, the performance hall reverberated with a bloodthirsty roar. Military-aged males occupied every seat and spilled into aisles; and, gazing up at the curved balcony strewn with arched columns, Glen felt like a prisoner at the Roman Coliseum about to be devoured by wild animals.
The soldiers steered him onto a stage littered with dust-covered props: an eight-foot wooden cross, a thorny crown, and a half dozen metal spikes.
I hope the college was rehearsing an Easter production when the EMP hit, Glen thought as they forced him onto his knees.
Hundreds of conscripts were shaking raised fists, their faces contorted with anger, and Glen could feel the animosity propagating through the air.
“Decapitate the traitor!” a voice shouted above the raucous chorus.
“Dunk him in acid!”
“Disembowel him!”
Then, draped in a velvety purple robe, Hellhound made a grand entrance. With a flick of his hand, the auditorium fell silent. “Corporal Anthony, where is Matthew Love?”
“I’ll relinquish him,” Glen stated with lawyerly poise, “as soon as you guarantee my family’s safety.”
The audience booed and jeered. Competing chants clashed, some calling for crucifixion, others lobbying for him to be burned at the stake; and this time, Hellhound muted his audience with a glare. “You have the boy in custody?” he asked, baring his teeth in a wolfish smile.
The Power of We the People Page 16