CHAPTER 38

Danny Bailey and Agent Kearns had been on the road in their bomb‑ laden van for nearly five hours straight, and they were past due for a fuel stop and a stretch.

After taking his turn in the gas station’s cramped restroom Danny picked up a diet soda and a candy bar and brought them to the counter. As the cashier was ringing him up he scanned the visible stories on a bundled stack of newspapers off to the side. Two headlines stood out, and he read them over again.

NATIONWIDE TERROR ALERT STATUS ELEVATED ONCE MORE

DHS CHIEF: INTEL CONFIRMS ‘CREDIBLE THREAT’ FOR WESTERN U. S.

He looked up into the corner and saw a dusty security camera looking back down at him. Even out here, he thought, on the outskirts of civilization, some backward distant cousin of Big Brother is still watching. From that odd camera angle Danny’s fuzzy, jerky image was displayed on a small black‑ and‑ white TV on the side shelf, wedged between the cigarettes and a rack of dog‑ eared porno magazines.

“I’ll take one of these, too, ” he said, holding up the paper.

Stuart Kearns walked past him toward the door, still rubbing his hands dry. “Let’s go, kid, we’re burning daylight. ”

Danny nodded an acknowledgment but the words and their urgency had barely intruded on his running thoughts. A few seconds later the cashier had to nudge his hand to snap him out of it, and he picked up his bagged purchases and his change and headed for the van.

As the trip progressed southward the Nevada roads had gradually become more and more rustic and empty of traffic. From the first wide interstate, to four‑ lane turnpikes, down to the aging two‑ lane desert highway they’d now been on for a good while‑ in a sense it felt as though they were traveling further back in time with every passing mile. At this rate they’d be bumping down a mule trail before sunset.

Danny still had the newspaper he’d bought draped across his lap, though he’d stopped reading it several minutes before.

“Can I run something up the flagpole, Stuart? ”

“Sure. ”

“The terrorism alert is elevated. I take that back‑ it was already elevated two days ago, and now it’s been raised again. ”

“Right. ”

“They’re talking here”‑ he tapped the paper‑ “about what they call a specific credible threat, maybe two, that they’re tracking somewhere in the western United States. They’re already stopping and searching cars at all the bridges in San Francisco. ”

Kearns looked over, then put his attention back on the road. “What are you getting at? ”

“Put on your tinfoil hat for a minute and I’ll tell you. ”

“Okay, okay, go. ”

“You remember the 7/7 bombings in 2005? ”

“Of course. ”

“Do you know that a security company, with a former Scotland Yard guy in charge, was running a terrorism drill in London that very morning? And this random drill involving a thousand people was planned out months in advance to simulate the same kind of bombing incidents, on the same targets, on the same day, and at the same times? ”

“No, I didn’t know that. ”

“And then it really happened. While they were running the drill, the exact, actual thing they were practicing for actually fricking happened. What are the odds of that being a coincidence? ”

“If any of that were true, ” Kearns said, “I’d know about it. So what does that tell you, Oliver Stone? ”

“Well, then, ” Danny went on, undaunted, “do you know that the guy your old friends in the U. S. government believe was the actual mastermind of those bombings‑ his name is Haroon Rashid Aswat‑ was also some sort of protected double agent who was on the payroll of some obscure faction of MI6? The CIA knew all about him but they weren’t allowed to touch him; he even lived over here for a few years. Hell, he tried to organize an al‑ Qaeda training camp in Oregon‑ ”

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that? ”

“One more thing. The guy that we haven’t seen yet, his name is Elmer, right? ”

“Right. ”

“The guy in charge on September eleventh was Mohamed Atta. He had a lot of aliases, and that’s the one he started using after 2000 when he got into the United States. He was born Mohamed Elamir awad al‑ Sayed Atta Karadogan. But the name on his work visa, the one he showed when he enrolled in flight school in Florida, was Mohamed Mohamed el‑ Amir. ”

“And el‑ Amir sounds like Elmer” Kearns said. “Do you take a nap during the day? Because you must stay up all night thinking about this crap. ”

“In English, el‑ Amir translates to ‘the general. ’ It could be a code word. Atta used el‑ Amir back then in 2001, and this guy’s using it now. If this whole thing is part of some false‑ flag operation‑ if they’re really trying to bring this war back home‑ they need a new boogeyman right here on U. S. soil, and they need to connect him to past events and to the patriot movement so they can demonize the resistance. ”

“Mohamed Atta is dead. ”

“Yeah? So is Osama bin Laden, but that doesn’t stop him from putting out a tape every six months. And I’m not even saying it’s a real live Islamo‑ fascist behind any of this, but making it look that way will make the story that much scarier when something happens. ”

“Look, ” Kearns said, “I’ll tell you one thing I do know. There’s an election coming up, and fear has been a swing factor in party politics for as long as I can remember. The timing of this whole thing, the terror alert, and all the rest of it‑ it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find out after all this is over that we’re just playing a bit part in somebody else’s political ambitions. Technically, I guess you could call that a conspiracy, if it makes you happy. ”

It didn’t make him happy, but Danny decided to let it lie.

“How much farther now? ” he asked.

Kearns checked his watch and then glanced at the screen of the GPS. “About a half hour, maybe less. ”

As the ride went on in silence Danny looked across occasionally at the older man, hoping that he’d at least planted a seed of warning. In that small way it seemed he’d been successful. You can’t see another man’s thoughts, but you can sure see him thinking.

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