She punched in the number of her boss at ACN, tapping impatiently on her breakfast room table as she waited. The last vestige of jet lag had been gone for several minutes now, and she felt like her old self. The nuclear furnace was burning in the pit of her stomach again, every newshound instinct screaming at her to move, get off her ass, and beat the competition.
When her boss finally answered, she said, “I’m going to Idaho. Fly the camera crew to the capital, whatever the hell it is.” She tried to remember. She could name the capital of every obscure nation in the world, but it had been so long since she’d reported a domestic story that she found herself groping to even localize Idaho on a map.
“Butte,” Harbaugh said. “What have you got?”
“I’ve got a confirmed report that an FBI action in Bull Run, Idaho, went down and went down hard. Four civilians, including two kids, are dead, and my sources tell me that the Feebies got the wrong people. Have a camera crew and tech support meet me at Dulles with my tickets. I’ll call you when I know something.”
She clicked off, knowing that every rudeness or lack of manners would be forgiven in the chase for the story. And regardless of how much he might dislike her high-handed manner, her boss would feel the same way. There would be a camera crew waiting for her, and probably an entire backup team from the local affiliate as well. And somewhere along the way, there would be a low-level eager national reporter to stand by her side and feed her trivial details. Starting with what the hell the capital of the state really was.
NINE
As Abraham Carter listened to the voice on the other end of the phone call, he felt his blood pressure start to go up. Gus Anderson, a farmer in Bull Run who’d contacted him the week before about Free American Now, was claiming there’d been an abortion of an FBI raid on a neighbor’s farm. No one had seen the family since then, and smoke still stained the air from the vicinity of the Smart homestead. All the roads leading to or near the Smart farm were blockaded by civilians — if that’s what they really were. A neighbor in the National Guard had been ordered to report to the armory with gear packed for a two-week “exercise,” but according to Anderson, there’d been none of the normal pre-exercise preparation there.
“Jackson,” Abraham shouted. “Get your ass in here and pick up the extension. Now Gus, you were right to call me. I want you to start over again from the beginning.”
His son, Jackson, ambled into the room from the kitchen and flopped down on a couch. Without comment, he picked up the other phone and listened to Anderson retell the story. His face remained impassive, even when Anderson’s voice choked as he described the Smarts’ children. After Anderson hung up, reassured by the senior Carter that they’d get to the bottom of it, Jackson rolled into a sitting position.
“Feds killing people again,” his father muttered, his gaze staring off in the distance. “I told you, boy. It’s coming to a head real soon.”
“And about time,” Jackson said, his voice soft and deadly.
As outraged as he was, Abraham was disturbed by something in Jackson’s tone. He glanced over at his son, wondering again what combination of genes between him and Nellie had produced such an enigma.
Physically, Jackson resembled his father more than his mother. He was tall, almost an inch taller than his father at six feet two inches, and built along the same lanky, rambling lines. His beard and hair were a shade darker than his father’s, picking up an almost blue-black sheen that he’d inherited from his mother. His eyes were all Nellie, though. Ice-green, flat, and unreadable, unlike his father’s own dark brown ones that burned with passion.
But even if you could trace out the source of his son’s physical characteristics that wasn’t what bothered Abraham. It was the boy’s mind. Not that he was dumb — far from it. If anything, he had more sheer raw mental ability than either his father or his mother, and Abraham was no slouch in the brains department himself. Formerly employed as a chemical engineer for a large household products company, Abraham had excelled at analytical chemistry and synthesis. He was particularly keen on coming up with new ways to combine existing products to create another one that did pretty much the same stuff but could be relabeled as a new product.
Abraham had survived for ten years in the corporate world, and had had a fairly good career for a Ph.D. He had been headed for a slot as manager of his own product line, and he and Nellie had been living the good life. Jackson had been just a little tyke, no more than six or seven years old, when Abraham’s world collapsed.
Nellie got sick, and nobody could figure out what was wrong with her. What started abruptly transitioned into a long, lingering illness during which she gradually went downhill as one by one her bodily functions shut down. Finally, she was little more than a husk of flesh, barely aware of where she was or anybody around her. Abraham had been frantic for a diagnosis, anything. If they knew what it was, he had the feeling he could bring his analytical chemistry abilities to bear on the problem and single-handedly save her.
But the best the doctors could come up with was environmental poisoning. For some reason, her liver had stopped processing out the toxins she absorbed from food, water, and even the air she breathed. They accumulated, gradually destroying tissue in all her major organs. Finally, as her kidneys began shutting down, it was simply too much for her body.
When she died, Abraham was devastated, Jackson only slightly less so. Nellie had been the center of both of their worlds, and when she was gone they found they had little in common. Abraham began to suspect that part of the problem had been chemicals of the products that he himself was responsible for. How could he have been so blind, to look away from the consequences of what he was doing? Sure, he’d read the warning labels — even helped to write them. But he never, ever allowed himself to contemplate what the cumulative effect of all his chemicals on a susceptible body might be.
When the realization finally came, Abraham left his position at the company, cashed in his 401(k) plan, and headed for the mountains. He bought a stretch of land with a small cabin on it and began raising his own crops and animals. He hunted year-round, providing a steady stream of meat for the table, and he stored vegetables from the growing season in a root cellar. He lost himself in the mindless hard work required to keep his small spread going.
Jackson, at first, had had a harder time of it. Plucked from an upper-middle-class existence in the suburbs and transplanted into an alien world, he’d lashed out at his father. His mother was gone and nothing in his life made sense anymore. And, in his anger, he began looking for answers. Abraham struggled to keep the boy under control, but there were increasingly frequent incidents of vandalism, failing grades, and the beginnings of drug use.
It was Abraham’s quest for a program that could help him deal with Jackson that had led him to the Free America Now militia. At first, he thought they were primarily a social service agency with a good healthy dose of discipline and structure. Later on, as he found that their more privately held views reflected his own disillusionment with corporate American culture, he knew he’d found a home.
Jackson, too. He hooked up with boys tougher and stronger than he was who showed him the ropes. At first, Abraham was a bit uneasy about their influence on them, but when the destructive impulses and rages at first dwindled and then ceased, he could only be relieved.
In the last year, though, he’d come to understand that his reprieve from worrying about his son had been only temporary. Abraham was active in the organization — Jackson was a fanatic. His son embraced all of the values, and then extended his political opinions into what smacked of racism.
Over the years, Abraham had come to be a district commander for Free America Now. Jackson had risen to a leadership position as well, commanding a small company. They were everything that Kyle and Betsy Smart were not.
Jackson seemed frozen in place, his gaze locked on the TV. The flat, cold eyes betrayed nothing of his feelings. Finally, when the news anchor broke for a commercial, he turned to his father. “We don’t have much choice, do we?”
“No, we don’t,” his father answered heavily. “Not this time.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. The council will have to decide.”
