CHAPTER 25

The gathering got right down to business. It had been all talk up to this point, Danny told them, but now this thing had gotten real. Stuart Kearns had what they wanted, so the only question that remained was whether he’d truly found the right men for the job. There would be only one shot at this, a strike that had been years in the planning, so a lot was riding on the proper makeup of this team.

Danny took a printout from his pocket, a transcript of the most recent chat room conversation, and matched up the four men with their screen names. The fifth, he was told, a guy named Elmer, had taken an unexpected trip to Kingman, Arizona, on a related matter and wouldn’t return until well after midnight Monday morning.

At his request they’d each given a bit of background on themselves, sticking to first names only. The one interesting thing about this part was the seamless transition each managed to place between the sane and the insane things they’d said. I’m Ron, I grew up down near Laughlin and worked out here in the mines since I was a teenager. Married at one time, two beautiful kids, and I’ve been wise to those Zionist bankers and the good‑ for‑ nothing queen of England ever since I saw what they did to us on 9/11.

The four who were present had known one another for years, and they’d first met this man Elmer, the one who was missing tonight, through the chat room on Stuart Kearns’s website. All of them agreed, though, that Elmer was a serious player and absolutely a man to be trusted.

One of them had asked about the bruises and other battle damage on Danny’s face, and that gave him an opening to explain his own recent part in all this. He’d been picked up by the cops after a patriot meeting in New York City, he told them, and then they’d beaten him within an inch of his life while he was in custody. Everyone has their breaking point, and this had been his. He knew then that there wasn’t going to be any peaceful end to this conflict; the enemy had finally made that clear. So he’d called his old friend Stuart Kearns to come and bail him out so he could be a part of this plan. He was here now to help with whatever he could, and then to get the story out to true believers around the world when all of this was over.

When Danny gave him the all‑ clear sign, Kearns opened his door and motioned for them to come out to the van. As they gathered around he opened up the sliding side panel, hung a work light by a hook in the ceiling, clicked it on, and showed the men the weapon he’d brought for their mission.

As the men looked on with a mix of awe and anticipation, Kearns began to provide a guided tour of the device. The yield would be about on par with the Hiroshima bomb, he explained, though the pattern of destruction would be different with a ground‑ level explosion. The device was sophisticated but easy to use, employing an idiotproof suicide detonator tied to an off‑ the‑ shelf GPS unit mounted on top of the housing. With the bomb hidden in their vehicle and armed, all they’d have to do is drive to the target. No codes to remember, no James Bond BS, no Hollywoodesque countdown timers‑ just set it and forget it. The instant they reached any point within a hundred yards of the preset destination the detonator would fire, and the blast would level everything for a mile in all directions.

Kearns took two small keys from his pocket, inserted them in the sheet‑ metal control panel, twisted them both at once a quarter turn, and pressed the square red central button labeled arm. A line of tiny yellow bulbs illuminated, winking to green one by one as a soft whine from the charging electronics ascended up the scale.

The GPS soon found its satellites and its wide‑ screen display split into halves, one showing their current position and the other showing the ground‑ zero objective they’d all decided on: the home‑ state office of the current U. S. Senate majority leader, the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse, 333 Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, Nevada.

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