The Overton Window

  We have no choice—that was the sad, helpless tone of both the givers and the receivers of those hundreds of billions of dollars, monies to be deducted directly from the dreams of a brighter future for coming generations. AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Citi, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Fannie and Freddie, and the all-powerful puppetmaster behind it all, Goldman Sachs—these companies are the only underpinnings of our whole way of life, so the breathless story went, and if they go down, we all do.

  It was a fresh way of presenting the public with a familiar choice: the lesser among evils. There was talk of a death-spiral drop in the stock market, a wildfire of bank runs and wholesale foreclosures; even martial law was threatened, from the floor of Congress, if the bailout failed to pass. These were the alibis repeated by the PR pundits and the complicit men and women in our supposedly representative government when they were asked, Why did you do it?

  The choice they made was to reward the corruption, but all of them knew the better answer, or should have. It didn’t take a thousand-page bill to get it across.

  “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall!’

  In Molly’s book this quote was unattributed but the ideal it conveyed was ancient, and the central pillar of the rule of law. Thomas Paine, quoted on the same page, had put it a different way, in Common Sense: “In America, the law is king.” Even the most powerful can’t place themselves above it, the weakest are never beneath its protection, and no corrupt institution is too big to fail.

  So that’s what a principle is, Noah thought, as though he were pondering the word for the very first time.

  It’s not a guideline, or a suggestion, or one of many weighty factors to be parsed in a complex intellectual song-and-dance. It’s a cornerstone in the foundation, the bedrock that a great structure is built upon. Everything else can come crashing down around us—because those fleeting things can always be rebuilt even better than they were before—but if we hold to it, the principle will still be standing, so we can start again.

  Next down this page was John Adams’s take on something Noah’s father had told him only that morning:

  The desire of dominion, that great principle by which we have attempted to account for so much good and so much evil, is, when properly restrained, a very useful and noble movement in the human mind. But when such restraints are taken off, it becomes an encroaching, grasping, restless, and ungovernable power. Numberless have been the systems of iniquity contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion in themselves ...

  In short, governments have proven that they always go bad, because they’re made up of imperfect people. But unlike Arthur Gardner, Adams believed that that impossible puzzle had been solved by the ingenious separation of powers at the heart of his new country’s design. Or rather, it was given to the people to solve it every single day, at every election, in the ever-wary supervision of their dangerous servants.

  On the facing page was a quote from another Adams, a cousin of John, and it had been written much larger and bolder than the surrounding text. It was a challenge that Samuel Adams had laid down as the nascent revolution was nearing its point of no return, a gut check for all those who would call themselves Americans:

  If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

  Put up or shut up, in other words; go hard or go home. Freedom is the rare exception, he was saying, not the rule, and if you want it you’ve got to do your part to keep it.

  The plane touched down on the runway with barely a jolt and soon began to slow for its turn toward the arrival gate. Something touched Noah’s leg and he looked up from his reading. Molly was finally awakening from her nap; as she finished a languid stretch he passed her a bottle of water.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sleep this whole time.”

  “You must have needed it.”

  Molly noticed the book in his hands. He closed it and handed it to her. “I hope you don’t mind that I was reading this.”

  “No, not at all.” She pulled her bag from under the seat, zipped it open, and returned the book to a sleeve inside.

  “Hey, Molly?”

  “Yes?”

  He touched her hand. “I think I get it now,” Noah said.

  “You get what?”

  “I really didn’t before, but I understand what you’re doing now, you and your people.”

  “Oh.” She nodded, and continued to check over her things.

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do,” she said, in the way you might address an overly needy child in recognition of some minor accomplishment. “Good. I’m glad.”

  He didn’t know what response he’d expected when he told her of his newfound understanding, but it wasn’t this. There’d hardly been enough of a reaction to qualify as one.

  Before long the plane had reached the gate, and the door nearest them was the first to be opened. She was walking ahead of him in the exit tunnel, as though with some purpose that she hadn’t paused to share. He caught up to her as she stopped to scan an informational display with a backlit map of airport services.

  “I say we grab a meal,” Noah said, “spend the night, and then try to figure something out tomorrow.”

  His suggestion was overlooked as if he hadn’t spoken it at all.

  “I need for you to help me rent a car,” Molly said.

  CHAPTER 40

  “This must be the place,” Danny said. He folded the printout of directions and slipped them into a side pocket of the door.

  According to the map and the van’s odometer, the rendezvous location for the final exchange was right here, somewhere off to the side of the faded gravel road. Out his passenger window there was nothing much to see but a flat expanse of desert and some faraway mountains at the horizon.

  Kearns tapped him on the leg. “Over here.”

  The stark landscape had begun to take on warmer hues as the sun got low, but there was still enough daylight to see things clearly, provided you were shown where to look. Way off to the driver’s side, maybe three hundred yards distant, Danny saw what looked like the only man-made thing for miles around. Whatever it was, it wasn’t much.

  No trail led out there and this vehicle wasn’t made to go off-road. Kearns seemed to know what he was doing, though. He made a careful turn toward their final destination, nursing the van over the lip of the road and out across the hard-packed ground.

  As they got close the scene became clearer. Danny saw the rear ends of two vehicles, a car and a midsize, unmarked yellow cargo truck, both of which were parked behind a square, gray, one-story building.

  “Building” was an overstatement, actually; the simple ten-foot-high enclosure appeared to be made of nothing but cinder blocks and dark mortar. There was an open arched doorway but no roof overhead. About a stone’s throw away from the main structure, in a perfectly spaced circle surrounding the building on all sides, were a number of bizarre, freestanding walls and angled edifices jutting up out of the sand. Some looked like backstops from a playground handball court, one like the black alien monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The layout reminded him a little of Stonehenge, but only if Stonehenge had been built over one hurried weekend by an amateur bricklayer on acid.

  “What the hell is this place?” Danny asked.

  “Out here you never know. This part of Nevada’s full of surprises.” Agent Kearns stopped the van well away from the other vehicles and put the shifter into park. “It could be something the military threw together for part of a nuclear test, could be a target for a bombing range that used to run through here.” He clapped Danny lightly on the shoulder. “What do you think: Are you ready for this?”

  “I already told you what I think.”

/>   “Don’t worry so much,” Kearns said, “or you’re going to look nervous. Listen, this is a milk run. We’ll be in and out of here in five minutes, and then we’ll go get us a hot dog and a cold beer before I drop you off at the airport—”

  He’d stopped talking because something had caught his attention out the front windshield. One of the men they were meeting had appeared by the corner of the main cinder-block building, and with a broad gesture he beckoned them to come on over. Another of the men was behind the first, standing there with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Okay, then,” Danny sighed, “let’s rock.” He opened the door, stepped out, and waved back to the guy who’d greeted them, then put on the light jacket Kearns had loaned him. It was a size too large, but that was fine for his purposes. He reached in and slipped Kearns’s satellite phone from its charger on the console and put it in the left-hand pocket, then flipped open the glove box and removed the pistol. “Do you have an extra clip for this?”

  “No, I don’t. What are you doing?”

  The pistol went snugly into Danny’s belt in back, not in the middle but closer to the right side; the long jacket hid it completely. “I’m getting ready for this whole thing to go to hell in a handbasket. If everything’s fine you can say I told you so. But in the meantime, if I can make a suggestion, why don’t you take that .38 out of your ankle holster and put it where you can get it if you need it.”

  Thankfully, the older man was listening, and even if he wasn’t quite convinced that there was going to be trouble he was at least open-minded enough to move his small revolver to the right-hand pocket of his bomber jacket.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know much about guns,” Kearns said.

  “That’s not what I said. I said I wasn’t an expert.”

  Expert wasn’t a term to be bandied about among Danny’s gun-savvy friends. An expert might be someone who could call their shot from ten yards and then, from a cold start, draw their pistol from concealment and put a bullet right where they said it would go, all in seven-tenths of a second or less. Molly Ross was one of those, and a few years back over one hot and memorable Tennessee summer, she’d taught him everything he knew. He’d been getting even more death threats than usual that year, and she’d wanted him to be safe. So, while he wasn’t an expert, his draw was pretty fast—it was the part about hitting what he shot at that still left a lot to be desired.

  “Okay,” Kearns said. His demeanor was a bit more grim than it had been a few minutes before. “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Their model bomb wasn’t that heavy, maybe eighty or one hundred pounds, but it was unwieldy to carry between them. When they came within sight of the men they were here to meet—and like last time, there were only four of them, not the expected five—one of them motioned to a spot on the ground to show where they should leave their burden. When they got to that spot, they put it down.

  One of the other men had a brand-new-looking satchel at his feet, a bag of the sort that might be holding their twenty thousand dollars for the exchange. The last two men were the ones with the automatic rifles.

  The weapons these guys were sporting appeared to be some knocked-together variant of an AR-15, but with a very short barrel, stock target sights, custom noise suppression, and a nonstandard magazine. Good luck trying to buy something like that off the shelf. Not the most versatile choice for all-purpose combat, obviously laughable for hunting or target practice, but flip it to full auto and it would do every bit as well as a sawed-off shotgun for antipersonnel work at close quarters.

  Situations like this one, for example.

  The armed man to the left held his gun like he’d been born with it in his hands. The other one didn’t seem at all at ease, either with his weapon or his assigned enforcer’s role. His hands were deep in his pockets and his rifle hung haphazardly by its sling over his shoulder, as though it had been put there against his will and he had no desire to deal with it.

  Upon their arrival Kearns had made a bit of small talk with each member of the group, and soon all agreed it was time to do the deal they’d come to do.

  “Here’s your money,” said the man on the end. He’d introduced himself as Randy at their meeting the previous night. As Kearns walked over to retrieve the satchel Randy motioned to his men to pick up their merchandise and stow it in the back of the cargo truck.

  The rear door was opened and two of them carefully carried the bomb up the mover’s ramp, set it down, and flipped on a hanging work light in the compartment to check over their purchase. Meanwhile, Kearns had come back with the satchel to stand at Danny’s side.

  “Ain’t you gonna count it?”

  This deadpan question came from one of the guys with the guns, the one doing his level best to come off like a natural-born bad-ass.

  Kearns shrugged. “If we’re short, at least I know where to find you guys tomorrow morning, am I right?”

  That brought a little chuckle from everyone—everyone except the man who’d spoken up.

  Danny’s attention was on the other contents that were now visible in the truck’s rear compartment.

  Down the center, on a welded-together, waist-high metal rack, was what appeared to be a long, silvery torpedo. Not really, though; the nose was too blunt and flat and its far end was tapered and ringed by large aerodynamic fins. It looked like something from a war museum, an overbuilt piece of heavy-duty air-dropped ordnance from a bygone era of the Cold War.

  That wasn’t all. Tucked back in the corner, away from the light, some thing was wrapped up and bound in a black plastic tarp on the floor. It could have been a lot of things, but to Danny’s current frame of mind, what it looked like most was an occupied body bag.

  He glanced at Kearns, and by all appearances he was seeing the same thing.

  A loud ringtone from the phone on the belt of the man named Randy broke the silence. He held up a polite index finger, as if to say, Sorry, I’ve got to take this, turned, took a half step away, and answered.

  And that, Danny thought, would be a call from el-Amir.

  Kearns bent and put the satchel down between them, shivered a bit, breathed some warm air through his hands, and then put them into his jacket pockets. When he looked at Danny, just for a second or two, there was such a crystal-clear communication between them that he almost heard the words form in his head.

  You were right. Now we’re going to let these guys give us just one more bad sign, the tiniest sign, and then we put their lights out. No “freeze, FBI!,” no warning shots; we shoot to kill until they’re all down, or we are. And you and I both know who gets it first.

  Danny took his right hand from his pocket, casually scratched the side of his nose, feigned a leisurely yawn, and then let his arm hang back down by his side.

  Randy, the one still on the phone, looked back over his shoulder.

  He was listening intently, not talking; his eyes went first to Stuart Kearns, and then over to Danny, and then he turned back around, with his back to them, as he’d been before. A few more seconds passed, and still facing away, Randy’s free hand came up slowly and touched the shoulder of the man to his right, the mouthy guy who looked like he just couldn’t wait for the lead to start flying.

  And that was it.

  When you’ve practiced enough it gets to look like one fluid motion, but there are four distinct parts to a quick draw, at least to the one that

  Molly had taught him. In the beginning the count is slow and you stop between the steps so your teacher can make sure you’ve got them right. After a few months and several thousand repeats, though, it starts to go so fast that if you blink, you might miss it.

  Danny’s right hand swept back to clear his clothing and found the pistol grip just where he’d left it; he pulled the weapon free and brought it forward, the barrel coming parallel to the ground and his left hand joining the solid grasp; he extended toward center-mass of his target with the iron sight rising level to his eye; a
nd at the end of the forward movement, as it all came together at his ideal firing position, without a pause he squeezed the trigger to its stop.

  The boom of their first two shots was almost simultaneous, though Kearns had a much easier draw from his pocket. They’d chosen the same primary target, the man to whom Randy had given his too-obvious go-ahead, the guy who would have cut them in half with a hail of bullets if they’d given him half a chance to shoot first. As Kearns took off to his left, still firing, their designated executioner was crumpling backward, likely dead on his feet, but surely out of commission.

  Danny broke right, aiming by the seat of his pants and squeezing off another shot as soon as any one of the scattering men appeared in his line of fire. He was a below-average marksman on a static range, but now he and his targets were moving and they were starting to return fire, so he was shooting a lot but not hitting much of anything.

  But at least he’d gotten their full attention. In the next moment he ran out of ammo and good ideas at the very same time as the second man with the heavy artillery had finally found his wits and started shooting. A jagged line of bullet impacts stitched across the sand toward him, and as Danny dropped to the ground in a shallow gully he heard a tire explode and the windows shatter in their van just behind him. He saw Stuart Kearns step from behind the cover of one of the random concrete walls, and the FBI man made his next four rounds count. As the last gunshots echoed back from the mountains, three of the men were lying motionless on the ground, and one was unaccounted for, but only for the moment.