CHAPTER 23

Sunday afternoon was spent with each of them going over the other’s public background. If they were to appear to be old acquaintances, they couldn’t hesitate on some obvious detail that might come up in the conversation. Then, before loading up the van, they’d made a telephone call to finalize the evening’s meet‑ up with the targets of the sting operation.

Kearns had used a hacker gizmo called an orange box to fake the caller ID display the recipients would see. It would appear to them as though the call had come directly from Danny Bailey’s private number; his actual cell phone was apparently still stuck in the bowels of some evidence warehouse back in New York.

The man who’d answered had been suitably impressed to be talking to one of his longtime media heroes in the war against tyranny. The time and address of the meeting were confirmed and Stuart Kearns was heartily endorsed as a verified patriot who could absolutely deliver the goods. Before sign‑ off, the man on the other end had handed the phone around so everyone could have a moment to speak with their celebrity caller.

Under Kearns’s watchful eye, Danny had played along with it all quite easily, but something began to nag at him after they’d hung up. The troubling thing was that, though each of those men had laid claim to being his biggest fan, and had seen every video he’d ever produced and read every word he’d ever posted online, they’d all apparently seen and heard and read things that Danny Bailey was pretty sure he’d never actually said:

That the only way left to rally the people was to rip aside the curtain and force the enemy out into the light of day.

That the globalist oligarchs and their puppets in Washington had been spoiling for a fight for sixty years, and now they were going to get the war that was coming to them.

That the souls of the Founders were crying out for true patriots to step up and set things right with the Republic.

And that the time had finally come for a twenty‑ first‑ century shot heard ’round the world, the final trumpet to signal the start of the second American Revolution.

But even if not in precisely those words, those sentiments did sound awfully familiar. Maybe he had said those things, and it was only the current context that put them into such a stark new light. After all, things can sound different when echoed back by men who’ve decided to deliver their message with a fifteen‑ kiloton city killer instead of with a bullhorn.

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